A new debate on national heroes
Credit to Author: Tempo Desk| Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2019 17:03:02 +0000
THIS year’s celebration of National Heroes Day was notable for two reports about our national heroes.
One was the disclosure by Sen. Imee Marcos that we have no officially declared national heroes because no law to this effect has ever been enacted by Congress. The last bill filed remains buried in the records of the House of Representatives Committee on Laws since 2017.
The other report was about a bill filed by Deputy Speaker and Surigao del Sur Rep. Johnny Pimentel seeking to rename Camp General Emilio Aguinaldo, headquarters of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in Quezon City, to Camp General Antonio Luna.
The discovery that we have never proclaimed any national hero was highly disappointing. All along, our school children have been taught about Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, Apolinario Mabini, M. H. del Pilar, and all the other great men and women in our history. All over the country, there are monuments to them. Towns and roads are named after them. Holidays honoring them have been proclaimed by presidents and approved by Congress, but they were never officially acknowledged as national heroes. All the while, Senator Marcos said, we have only been honoring “implied heroes.”
In 1995, the Philippine National Heroes Committee officially recommended several people for the official designation of National Hero. The proposal got lost in debates among so many officials driven by regional interests who could not reach any agreement on an official list. A bill to proclaim Rizal was filed by Bohol Rep. Rene Relampagos in 2014 – the one now buried in files of the House Committee on Revision of Laws.
This failure to agree on an official list of national heroes may be due to the regionalism that has held back national unity in all of our history. The Spaniards and the Americans who came after them found tribal groups who fought one another, rather than one nation, probably because of seas and mountains that separated them.
The Philippine Revolution launched by Bonifacio in Tondo, Manila, in 1896, was overtaken by military victories by Aguinaldo. The rivalry between the two leaders and their men led to the killing of Bonifacio by men identified with Aguinaldo on May 10, 1897, in Maragondon, Cavite.
In the Philippine-American War that followed in 1902, General Luna of Binondo, Manila, was seen as a rising leader, making use of guerrilla tactics that were used by later world leaders like China’s Mao Tse-tung and Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh. Luna was such a military leader that the American officers he fought held him in high regard, one calling him “the only general the Filipino army had” and another calling him “the ablest and most aggressive leader of the Filipino republic.” Like Bonifacio, Luna was killed by men believed linked to Aguinaldo, but there is no such claim in our history books, only persistent stories and, more recently, a film about the young general.
That sore point has now been raised anew with Deputy Speaker Pimentel’s bill to rename Camp Aguinaldo to Camp Luna. As may be expected, Cavite Rep. Jesus Crispin Remulla has immediately opposed the bill.
The new debate is now just beginning. We hope it will not lead to even greater divisions among our people.