WHAT date is today?
It’s Dec. 18, 2018, the 162nd birth anniversary of the Ilonggo national hero Graciano Lopez Jaena, whose pioneering work as founder and editor of the fortnightly La Solidaridad eventually led to the armed revolution against the Spanish government in the Philippines in 1896.
Graciano was born to a poor family in Jaro, Iloilo City on December 18, 1856. His mother worked as a seamstress; his father, a repairman. Poverty, however, did not deter the couple from sending him to study at the Saint Vincent Ferrer Seminary in Jaro, Iloilo City.
While he would like to be a physician, having actually pursued medical studies, he ran short of earning an MD degree. But he went as far as filling the position of an apprentice at the San Juan de Dios Hospital and later came home to Jaro to practice medicine.
It was not for the money; most of his patients were poor and unhappy, enduring subhuman life. Some patients complained of having been beaten and injured by local Spanish officials. Jaena’s immersion with them kindled his desire to speak and write in their behalf.
His first attempt at addressing problems in local society erupted through a story he wrote at age 18, “Fray Botod,” which depicted a fat and lecherous friar who “always had the Virgin and God on his lips no matter how unjust and underhanded his acts are.” This incurred the fury of the friars. Although no one could prove that Jaena wrote the story, the Spanish authorities suspected him as the author.
He sailed to Spain in 1880 to evade potential harm in his own country. There was no turning back. The young Graciano had found his niche in oration and journalism. In a triumvirate with Rizal and Del Pilar, he spoke and wrote to motivate the masses to demand independence from Spain.
It was there where the three met and laid the foundation of the Propaganda Movement through the La Solidaridad, which first broke into print on February 12, 1889. Its mission was to galvanize the pliant Filipino masses into fighting for independence from Spain.
Believing that “the pen is mightier than the sword,” he personally conveyed his demand for freedom in a speech before the Spanish officials in Madrid, Spain.
Lesser written of Graciano was his love for a woman named Elena, to whom he promised marriage. Unfortunately for the woman, Lopez Jaena had to indefinitely postpone it “sa tamang panahon.” That opportunity was not to materialize. He got very sick and died young at age 39 on January 20, 1896 in Barcelona, Spain.
A few descendants of the hero and their rich friends in Iloilo organized the Dr. Graciano Lopez Jaena Foundation in 1983 to perpetuate his memory and, to quote Douglas Montero at that time, “to support present-day journalists.”
Sad to say today, not even the said foundation replicates the ideals that Graciano Lopez Jaena exemplified – as in exposing and condemning graft and corruption in government. Reminiscent of his time, dissenting Filipinos today fear abusive government officials who would jail and even kill people on planted evidence. Worse, these rulers are no longer foreigners but our fellow Filipinos.
Worst, we have become so inured to abuse of power by public officials – reminiscent of the oppressive era of President Ferdinand Marcos — that we think subservience to them is normal, and that press freedom means “praise Duterte.”
As this corner was saying in previous commemorations of his birthday, Graciano Lopez Jaena must be turning in his grave. (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
Herbert: The unbearable atrocities of the Spaniards to the Filipino people had been forgotten by time. It appears as a “record” and written as an “account”. And we also embraced their religion. Here in the States, Islam is the fastest growing religion in terms of new converts: largely because, especially among the African-Americans they view Christianity as a “tool” of enslavement and containment of their own people. Look at how impoverished the “Banana Republics” of South America as they continue to embrace the religion handed to them by the Spaniards. I am still a Christian but do not embrace the Spanish version of Christianity.