THANK God Aurelio Tolentino is dead, because if he saw where they interred his bones and erected his monument—in the intersection of two busy streets in Guagua, instead of a church, a park or at least a cemetery, where dead heroes are supposed to be laid to rest—you can just imagine how this fiery poet-patriot with a volcanic temperament would react.
He once slapped a Spaniard who owned a local drugstore for calling him a barbaro (barbarian), and he once stormed on stage and trampled upon the Stars and Stripes in full view of American officials in the audience.
Aurelio Tolentino is such a great hero that both the Tagalogs and the Kapampangans want to claim him. After his death in 1915, the Tagalogs buried him in the Manila North Cemetery but six years later, Kapampangans transferred his remains to his birthplace, barrio Sto. Cristo in Guagua.
But the Tagalogs continued to honor him by naming the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ main theatre after him, while all that the Kapampangans could do for him was build a tiny, solitary monument in the middle of the street and a statue that looks like a seated cop directing traffic. They didn’t even bother to surround it with an island that would’ve protected it from wayward vehicles. (One drunken driver is all it takes to smash it to pieces and spill his bones all over the place!)
If we knew what sacrifice this man has made to defend the country from colonizers and imperialists, we’d treat his gravesite with more respect. Otherwise we should probably just return his bones to the Tagalogs who I’m sure would give him a more decent place of rest.
I urge the people and town officials of Guagua to do the right thing now: Transfer Aurelio Tolentino’s remains and build him a monument that’s safe and conspicuous and dignified, befitting what this man achieved in life and what he did for the country.
He was one of very few Filipinos whose role in the nation’s quest for freedom stretched from the Revolution against Spain in 1896 to the Philippine-American War in 1899 and even beyond.
He helped Andres Bonifacio organize the Katipunan and search for a cave in Montalban and San Mateo, Rizal to serve as the Katipunan’s secret headquarters prior to launching of the Revolution.
When the Revolution did break out, the Spaniards arrested and imprisoned him for nine months. Upon his release, he joined up with the revolution’s new leader, General Emilio Aguinaldo, and was one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence in Kawit, Cavite on June 12, 1898.
But Tolentino gravitated towards his former comrades in the Katipunan whom he organized into another secret society, the Junta de Amigos, which had guerilla units carrying on the resistance movement against the new colonizers, the Americans.
After Aguinaldo’s capture in 1901, Tolentino (with Artemio Ricarte) attempted to reorganize the revolutionary army. When it failed, Tolentino shifted to propaganda: He edited two anti-US newspapers, La Patria and El Liberal and published a third one, Filipinas.
When those were closed down by American authorities, Tolentino went on to edit two more anti-US newspapers, El Pueblo and El Imparcial, including their Kapampangan versions, Ing Balen and Ing Emangabiran. The Americans, pressured in the US mainland to show more tolerance to Filipinos, this time left Tolentino alone.
Emboldened, Tolentino used theatre to attack the colonial authorities. His Tagalog verse drama, Kahapon, Ngayon at Bukas caused a riot during its premiere at Teatro Libertad in 1903 when an actor failed to tear down the American flag on cue after seeing American officials in the audience. It was Tolentino, the scriptwriter, who jumped on stage to do it himself, shocking the audience and causing his arrest after the curtains went down.
Again, the Americans released him and again, Tolentino resumed his nationalistic campaign. This time, he trained his eyes on the plight of laborers. He founded the Katimawan (Samahang Hanapbuhay ng Mahihirap), the first workers’ cooperative in the Philippines (which paved the way for the socialist movement of fellow Kapampangan, Pedro Abad Santos, in the 1930s) and wrote Ang Bagong Cristo, a proletarian play that reinterpreted the story of Christ (which antedated Pasyon ding Talapagobra, the socialist version of the passion play, by another Kapampangan, Lino G. Dizon).
The leftists recognized enough ideological kinship with Aurelio Tolentino that when the Kabataang Makabayan (KM) was founded in 1964 (incidentally by another Kapampangan, Nilo Tayag), one of their first acts was to donate his statue to the people of Guagua—the same statue now sitting in the middle of the street.
Tolentino’s patriotism was matched only by his poetry. When he was still in Guagua, he and his brother Jacinto put up Teatro Trining, which did for Guagua what Crisostomo Soto’s Teatro Sabina did for Bacolor during the Golden Age of Kapampangan Literature. (The three-way version of the Kapampangan poetic joust crissotan has come to be known as tolentinuan.)
His Tagalog novel Maring was way ahead of its time because it had a strong-willed female protagonist at a time when women in literature were typecast as pale and helpless.
His works in Kapampangan include Ing Buac nang Ester (whose Tagalog version Ang Buhok ni Ester was his own translation), Daclat Kayanakan (a book of admonitions for the youth) and Kasulatang Gintu (a narrative of pre-Hispanic Pampanga). He wrote an allegorical poem Napun, Ngeni at Bukas (which, by the way, is not a translation of his drama Kahapon, Ngayon at Bukas).
Although he was quite proficient in Kapampangan and loved his amanung sisuan. Tolentino wanted to see his country’s unification so much that he advocated the promotion of Tagalog as national language. He even founded a school, El Parnaso Filipino, for this purpose.
He married fellow Kapampangan Natividad Hilario and had four children (Cesar, Corazon, Raquel and Leonor). Only Raquel, now 97, is still alive and residing in Australia with son Rene Vincent.
Guagua should have learned by now how to treat its heroes because it is the town of quite a great number of heroes, saints and leaders. This is where the country’s first priest, Francisco Baluyut, was born, as well as the country’s first cardinal (Rufino Santos of barrio Sto. Niño), and one of the Trece Martires de Cavite (Agapito Conchu) and one of the most cultured Filipinos who ever lived (poet laureate Amado Yuzon). The Puyats and the Punos are also from this town.
I am sure Guagua’s town officials have already started doing something about it.