ILOILO City – A foundation seeks to preserve the memory of the only Ilonggo national hero, Dr. Graciano Lopez Jaena by building a center housing the hero’s memorabilia.
The Dr. Graciano Lopez Jaena Foundation Inc. hopes to complete the center before this year ends.
Construction of the center, located on Fajardo Street, Jaro district where the hero was born, started last year. Lack of funds, however, has slowed down the work.
The foundation allotted P2.5 million for the center.
“We hope to finish the center before the Graciano Lopez Jaena Day on Dec. 18 this year,” said Sangguniang Panlalawigan of Iloilo member Demy Sonza, foundation chairperson.
According to Sonza, Mayor Jose Espinosa III offered help to complete the center.
This month, the foundation and city government would be signing a deed of usufruct, revealed Sonza. The center would house the city government library, too. Resource materials on Lopez Jaena could be accessed there.
Lopez Jaena, born on Dec. 18, 1856 in Jaro district, was considered the “first Filipino propagandist” in the struggle for freedom from Spain.
Historians regard Lopez Jaena, along with Dr. Jose Rizal and Marcelo H. del Pilar, as the triumvirate of propagandists that challenged Spanish rule in the Philippines.
Lopez Jaena wrote the satirical story “Fray Botod” which depicted a fat and lecherous priest.
Botod’s false piety “always had the Virgin and God on his lips no matter how unjust and underhanded his acts are.” He reaped the friars’ fury and thus left Jaro for Spain in 1879.
In Spain, Lopez Jaena founded and edited La Solidaridad, a newspaper that aimed to galvanize Filipinos to into demanding independence. He also gave fiery, nationalistic speeches. There he met Rizal and del Pilar.
Believing that “the pen is mightier than the sword,” Lopez Jaena personally conveyed his demand for freedom in a speech before the Spanish officials in Madrid, Spain on April 27, 1883.
He died of tuberculosis at age 39 on Jan. 20, 1896 in Barcelona, Spain and was buried by the Sisters of Charity in an unmarked grave at the Cementerio Sud-Oeste.
He did not live long enough to see the fruition of his efforts aimed at freeing the Motherland from colonial Spain.
On Dec. 18, 2017 Ilonggos marked the 161st birth anniversary of Lopez Jaena. It was a public holiday in this city and Iloilo province. The center of activities was the Graciano Lopez Jaena Park, also known as Jaro Plaza./PN
