April / Abril Retreat, Deadly Heat and Cool Words
27th, 1521 Ferdinand Magellan is felled by poison arrow from Datu Lapu Lapu?s men on Mactan island, Cebu.
2d, 1788 Birth of Francisco Baltazar, ?Balagtas?, author of epic poem Florante and Laura (1838)
16th, 1902 Miguel Malvar, last general of the first Filipino republic surrenders to American forces.
9th, 1942 Faced with great odds, American and Filipino soldiers cornered in the Bataan peninsula surrender to the Japanese Imperial Army.
April marks the height of the Philippine summer, the final month that ends the Dry Season. April is about retreat. By 1902, the colonial experiment the United States have embarked upon the Philippines began in earnest. The Filipino army was in retreat. It?s last general, Miguel Malvar surrendered on April 16, 1902, ending in the eyes of Americans, the ?Philippine Insurgency?. The mechanisms for colonial governance such as public schools, public works and taxation were in full swing. The one thing missing to mark its entry among the colonial elite was a colonial city built in its own image. Although Manila was remade into a city with pseudo-Grecian columnades and wide plazas, it was no Darjeeling like what British India retreated to during summer. Instead, in April, when the Manila?s heat made even the breezy Luneta seaside promenade unbearable, the colonial elite retreated to Bagiuo, up the famous zigzag road that was built by imported Japanese coolies. Bagiuo was the creation of Daniel Burnham, one of America?s prominent urban planners and architects and who was also known for this Flatiron building in New York. Anyone who has been to Baguio before it became a badly planned and congested modern city, will remember the charming homes with gabled roofs and brick chimneys nestled among the pine trees — a pine-scented little piece of America.
America?s fortune in the Philippines was reversed on April 9, 1942. Taken by surprise, the U.S. army in the Philippines retreated to the Bataan peninsula for a last stand. Short of supplies and promised reinforcements, surrender was the only choice and the fate of some 76,000 American and Filipino soldiers fell into the hands of its captors. In the heat of April?s summer the survivors were marched along the Bataan and Tarlac highway to POW camps in Camp O?Donnel in Tarlac and Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija. Ironically, just past the plains and up the northeast hills, was the road to Bagiuo. Many died, if not from Japanese summary executions, from heat, thirst or hunger. Of the fifty-four thousand who were forced into this nine-day Death March, fifty-thousand made it to the Camp O?Donnel POW camp. Towards the end of the war only four thousand survived, making this episode one the lowest points in modern Philippine history and inhumanity. Four years later, on April 3, 1946, General Homma, the commanding general of the Japanese Army in the Philippines was executed for war crimes in the campus of Los Banos, Laguna.
Magellan was not one to retreat from belligerent local rulers in his grand plan to christianize the Cebuanos. Having successfully convinced Cebu?s ruler, Rajah Humabon to convert, the ruler of Mactan, Datu Lapu Lapu, still refused to pay tribute to him. Not one to hold back his aspiration, Magellan in the cool dawn of Cebu, waded towards Mactan?s rocky beaches intent on teaching Lapu Lapu and others a lesson on Castillan resolve. Confident of his prowess and weaponry, he bade his native allies to stand back and watch. But Magellan was lured into an ambush that ultimately caused him his life, ending his glorious vision of circumnavigating the globe. In the sardonic words of a tourism official who is best unnamed here ? Magellan was the first ?tourist? to have met a fatal end in the country. Magellan?s body was never recovered. But the event left an indelible mark on the history of the country. Within a century the country was colonized, now named the Philippines after the reigning Spanish king Felipe. Manila became the Hispanic outpost of Spain?s global empire and introduced Europe to the riches of China by way of Manila. By the 1800s, except for the Islamized areas of Mindanao, historically known as Moros (from Moor in Spanish), the Hispanization of the Philippines was complete and one that lasted for three centuries until abruptly ended by the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century.
For the christianized lowland and coastal areas, native culture took a markedly Hispanic tone. Strict Roman Catholicism dominated the daily life of the people. Beneath this however, bubbled a verdant and imaginative native culture, transforming and re-purposing European forms into distinctly unique Filipino expressions.
Spanish tunes became the kundiman, Spanish waltzes became the Cebuano sinulog, Spanish oratory became the balagtasan. Francisco Balagtas from whom the Balagtasan ? a poetic joust ? was coined after, was born Francisco Baltasar on April 2, 1788. His Florante at Laura an epic poem first published in 1838, bore themes and characters from medieval romances and the Crusades. Its verse, written in Tagalog was patently native, but many saw it as an allegory of Spanish rule in the Philippines. Ultimately its words became a source for Filipino folkloric wisdom and virtue:
Ang laki sa layaw, karaniwang hubad (Who grows in ease is often bare)
Sa bait at muni?t sa hatol ay salat (Of virtue, sense, and judgement fair)
Masaklap na bunga ng maling paglingap (Dour fruit of misdirected fair)
Habag ng magulang sa irog ng anak. (His loving parent?s deep despair.)
—— —–
Sa loob at labas ng bayan kong sawi (There, hapless state and even ?yond)
Kaliluha?y silang nangyayaring hari (Treason has flung his tyrant-bond)
Kagalinga?t bait ay nalulugami (Virtue the while lies moribund)
Ininis sa hukay ng dusa?t pighati. (Stifled in sloughs of deep despond.)
(trans. Trinidad Subido)
As the dust of April?s summer retreat from the first rains of May, the evening turns cooler and plans for festivities for coming planting season are afoot. The stifling heat of April is left behind, May arrives with hope and rain.
Suggested Readings:
Teodoro Agoncillo, The Fateful Years: Japan?s Adventure in the Philippines 1941-1945, v2. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2001 edition. First published in 1965.
Francisco Baltasar, Florante at Laura (1838), trans. Trinidad Tarrosa Subido, Manila. National Historical Commission, 1972.
