The Great Plebeian and other heroes

What do we know of Andres Bonifacio, whose 148th birthdate we commemorate today? Ask any school pupil the question, and the answer would probably be a puzzled look or a sheepish grin.

Such ignorance doesn’t come with young age. Turn to their parents and ask them the same question, and they are most likely to be as clueless as their children, able to tick off only a bare-bones outline of the hero’s life: born in Manila (Tondo, specifically), of humble stock (hence the trademark look of crimson kerchief, camisa chino and rolled trousers), founded the Katipunan that ignited a national revolt that led to the country’s liberation from Spanish rule, was killed by fellow Katipuneros—Emilio Aguinaldo’s cohorts—in Cavite, now occupies his own imposing monument in Caloocan (though quite a number who pass by the Guillermo Tolentino sculpture every day probably have no idea that it’s Bonifacio up there, familiar as they are only with the landmark’s generic moniker: “Monumento”). Those who traverse Manila’s streets could point out another likeness of him in the plaza that now bears his name, in the more recent Eduardo Castrillo monument commissioned by Mayor Alfredo Lim that historian Ambeth Ocampo has described as “a multi-colored komiks version of the hero of Manila beside City Hall.”

It is perhaps the greater tragedy of Bonifacio’s life, infinitely more unkind than his betrayal and untimely death at the hands of fellow Filipinos while in the midst of the freedom struggle he had helped instigate, that not many more of his countrymen these days are conversant with the details of his brief but indispensable existence, beyond the sketchy caricature they have been fed in high school history class. Rizal’s, understandably, is familiar to nearly everyone, as is Aguinaldo’s, to some extent, the country’s first president having outlived the Revolution to die of old age and leave behind enough records and historical fingerprints that have helped define his side of the story. Bonifacio, on the other hand—are students even taught that he was a part-time actor in moro-moro plays? That he had a previous wife who died of leprosy before he married Gregoria de Jesus? That, while he wasn’t upper-class by any means, his father held a position of some importance as teniente mayor in Tondo, and that Bonifacio himself, while formally unschooled (he completed only the equivalent of grade four), steeped himself in European literature and crowned his attempt at self-education and social betterment by becoming a member of the Freemasons, some of whose secret rituals would inspire the goings-on inside the Katipunan?

These are far from petty trivialities, considering how little we know of the heroes in whose supposed honor we hold holidays of remembrance and commemoration. Whatever odds and ends of their lives that are filtered to us through the haze of history allow their granite likenesses to assume more human dimensions, allowing us in turn to make clearer, more helpful sense of their heroism and example—to draw inspiration from the greatness they have forged out of everyday lives and concerns and anxieties that were, in so many ways, not quite unlike our own.

Still, the one day in the year dedicated to the Great Plebeian is not only a time to lament the paucity of popular knowledge and appreciation of certainly the country’s most consequential hero next to Rizal (note that even that hierarchy remains the subject of fierce discussion). More constructively, it is an opportunity to pay tribute to the country’s men and women who hail from the mold of Bonifacio—the working classes, of underprivileged to middle-class stock who, without the benefit of economic wealth, political clout or social standing, strive to lift themselves up by their bootstraps, finding dignity and self-worth in jobs the educated and privileged would have neither the inclination nor the skill for.

The garbage man who collects the city’s trash every day, the traffic cop steadfast in his post despite sun, rain and the vituperation of motorists, the maids and nannies that allow those able to hire them the freedom to construct blazing careers at work, the morticians lending respect and dignity to fallen loved ones, the gasoline boys and waitresses and fishwives and construction workers—those whose backbreaking work makes others’ lives gentler and easier, and, of course, the multitudes of blue-collar OFWs toiling in foreign ships and deserts and wintry cities all over the world—they are all heirs to Andres Bonifacio. His day is theirs, too.