cry of balintawak or cry of pugad lawin. where did bonifacio cry?
Renowl
tradition. Since the turn of the century, it has been widely believed that the
first cry of the revolution took place in Balintawak, Caloocan. Then along came
Agoncillo who gave the exact date for the cry as August 23, 1896, and the exact
place to be not Balintawak but Pugadlawin. Despite these becoming textbook
facts, the Balintawak tradition continues to thrive. Nick Joaquin still writes
in support of Balintawak, and I myself did not think about this very much until
I was invited to deliver a paper for the first Annual Bonifacio Lectures in
1989. Reviewing sources on the revolution, I found out that the Balintawak
tradition was more popular than that of the Pugadlawin.
This controversy remains unresolved except in our textbooks. What was so
surprising was to find out that depending on the book one read, there were five
dates for the Cry – August 20, 23, 24, 25, and 26 – and five different
venues for the first cry: Balintawak, Pugadlawin, Kangkong, Bahay Toro, and
Pasong Tamo!
Writing about it did not settle things because readers demanded an exact answer
which I was unable to give. So when and where did it actually happen? To this
day, I am still confused and stumped, and the only reply I have is that the cry
occurred towards the end of August 1896 and that all the places mentioned are
in Caloocan, which in those times was a district of Balintawak!
In 1989, after a series of articles on the controversy over Balintawak and
Pugadlawin, I received a batch of photocopied manuscripts with an invitation to
peruse the originals of what appeared to be the papers of Bonifacio. Knowing
that these were transcribed and printed by Agoncillo in two separate books, I
did not bother to decipher Bonifacio’s fine script. Months later, on a lazy
afternoon, I decided to compare the Agoncillo transcriptions with the Bonifacio
originals. I was surprised to find discrepancies in the text. While Agoncillo
reproduced the “orihinal sa Tagalog,” it proved to be slightly different
from the manuscripts. I realized immediately that Agoncillo did not have access
to the original Bonifacio papers. He merely translated an English translation
of the Bonifacio papers, which were themselves translated from Spanish by
Epifanio de los Santos who possessed the original Tagalog manuscripts.
Agoncillo’s so-called “originals” were actually a tertiary or, at least,
a second-generation translation! Missing for almost fifty years, the original
Katipunan papers were offered for sale and broken up into smaller collections
now owned by at least two private collectors and an antique dealer.
Fortunately, Bonifacio’s papers are made available by the present owners, Mr.
Emmanuel Encarnacion of Quezon City and Atty. Jorge de los Santos of Malabon;
but the notebooks of Emilio Jacinto continue to be with an antique dealer who
would not allow scholarly access unless one was interested in buying them!
If there is so much that is debatable in simple things, like the date and place
of Bonifacio’s Cry or his attire and weaponry, what more with the general
picture of the Katipunan and the Revolution? As materials resurface and new
documents and manuscripts both here and abroad are discovered, it becomes
necessary to evolve new ways of interpreting the Katipunan, such as that of
Reynaldo Ileto in his book, Pasyon and Revolution (1979). Perhaps we need
another major book on the Katipunan that will give us a view different from
that of Agoncillo’s. Instead of focusing on the great men or heroes, maybe we
can try to find out about the “underside” of history – those forgotten
men and women who fought under the Katipunan, and their beliefs, motives, and
appearances, among other things. Only then can this generation rewrite its own
history, separate myth from reality, clarify legend from truth, and thereby
gain a new way of seeing into our past and hopefully into our future. 5 July
1992
Reprinted with permission from Ambeth R. Ocampo from Bonifacio’s Bolo (Pasig:
Anvil Publishing, Inc., 1995).
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