Apolinario Mabini
(1864 – 1903)
IN 1864, Apolinario Mabini, second in the family of 8 children, was born in Tanauan, Batangas to Leon Mabini, an illiterate peasant, and Dionisia Maranan, a vendor. A lucky break in life came when Fr. Valerio Malabanan took him in as an academic scholar in his school in Lipa. Among the young Mabini’s schoolmates was Miguel Malvar who later led the armed revolt in Batangas.
Apolinario Mabini later studied at Letran, the Dominican college in Manila. Among well-dressed young men, Mabini’s visibly shabby clothes prompted a professor to pick on him. But the young lad amazed this unkind professor by answering difficult questions in classical Latin. At Letran, Mabini earned a “Bachiller en Artes” with the distinction of “Professor of Latin.”
The poor but highly intelligent scholar went on to study law at another Dominican institution: the revered Universidad de Sto. Tomas, where he finished law, despite financial hardships and interruption in studies while tutoring to earn tuition.
The times Mabini lived were both dangerous and exciting. Resentment against bad Spanish government officials led the young Mabini to join a movement, but he unlike, Andres Bonifacio, he aimed at reform, not revolution. For this aim, Apolinario penned an ideological framework for his compatriots. Despite his Catholic upbringing Mabini later became a freemason.
Unfortunately, he got stricken by paralysis, an infirmity which his enemies, both Filipinos and Spanish, falsely attributed to syphilis. Even the national writer, F. Sionil Jose, fell victim to the false report. When corrected by the historian, Ambeth Ocampo, the former wrote:
I committed a horrible blunder in the first edition of Po-on. No apology to the august memory of Mabini no matter how deeply felt will ever suffice to undo the damage that I did.... According to historian Ambeth Ocampo who told me this too late, this calumny against Mabini was spread by the wealthy mestizos around Aguinaldo who wanted Mabini's ethical and ideological influence cut off. They succeeded. So, what else in our country has changed?
Years after his death in 1903, the nation salutes the brains behind the Philippine Revolution, the man they honor with the title “the Sublime Paralytic.