IT'S a typical topic lately, imagining how a historical figure will be brought to our present times and thinking what this person would say to find their revolutions birthing this kind of republic. Rizal being a national hero has always been a favorite topic. But what about Bonifacio?
Since Bonifacio Day is coming, why don’t we imagine Bonifacio, Father of the Philippine Revolution, stepping foot to our present? A hundred years after his assassination in the hands of Aguinaldo’s boys, he steps to the present, and this is what he sees:
He finds a centennial monument for him ten years ago in Makati that is now toppled down to give way to a road project, linking a place ironically called Bonifacio Global City in Taguig and Ortigas Center in Pasig. He may paraphrase Rizal’s quote: those who wipe out history will never move forward. Moreso this road.
He sees a city named after him, Bonifacio Global, and is occupied mostly by foreign companies. To think he fought a foreign oppressor and the country ends with this. “Bakit global, saan ba ang lokal?”
Boni will be pleased that a movie is made about him, starring an action star and winning best picture. But he’ll be pissed that cinemas pulled out the film early for not earning much. He’ll be pleased though that Rizal and Heneral Luna are better crowd-drawing and thought-provoking films. “It must be their bigote,” he’ll muse.
His face on a 10-peso coin side-by-side with Apolinario Mabini. “Aguinaldo’s adviser, beside me, immortalized. I guess that should have been better.”
Perhaps he would go on speaking tours talking of revolution, his secret to success through self-education, and how he writes fluent nationalist poetry.
He’ll wonder what petmalu and lodi means, and thinks back in his time, codes were to protect their secrets, but now everyone is talking without sense.
Bonifacio will wonder what the hell happened to his hometown Tondo. The poverty before that sparked a revolution has now sparked a war eating its own young.
He’ll wonder why revolutions are coming one after the other. Edsa I, II, People Power, a national democratic revolution sparked by a youth group organized on his birthday in the 1960s called Kabataang Makabayan. What is this country I envisioned turned into?
It is a republic of dictators and oligarchs taking turns in power. People searching for answers everywhere, from books to Facebook to business gurus to green pastures abroad.
He’ll wonder why a president is calling for a RevGov on his birthday and his followers hyping him as the country’s last hope. He finds this revolution is founded on fears, rumors, and threats that doesn’t stir him at all. Revolutions come from the heart, he believes, it comes from love for our mother country and for our fellow Filipinos. Idealistic that he is, or naïve to some, his words still ring true.
A millennium after the first revolution, the first president finds things have not changed for the better. And perhaps another revolution and more patriotic words are needed to stir our hearts in the right direction. Hindi pa tapos ang rebolusyon.
(tyvelez@gmail.com)