Epifanio de los Santos

Historians work with traces of the past, with diaries, letters, photographs. One could say historians work with ghosts from the past—they are there but you cannot see, touch, or talk with them. One person who took a step historians will never take was Guillermo Tolentino, first National Artist for Sculpture, whose keen interest in the Philippine Revolution is narrated visually and forcefully in his works.

Tolentino not only relied on library and archival research, he also interviewed participants of an age that gave birth to the nation. Information he could not get from documents, books and oral history he sought from beyond the grave. As a founding member of the Union Espiritista Cristiana de Filipinas, he hosted regular séances in his home on Retiro Street in Sampaloc, where he conversed with all sorts of spirits, many of them figures from our history. In Tolentino’s book “Si Rizal” (1957) is the transcript of a séance that bridged time and space between Rizal and Trinidad Rizal, the hero’s lone sister who lived long after World War II.

To get a sense of Tolentino’s genius you must visit the Security Bank hall dedicated to his work in the National Museum. Here one can literally stand eyeball to eyeball with heroes and other figures from Philippine history. On my last visit to the National Museum the bust I spent the longest time with was that of Epifanio de los Santos, the obscure historian for whom Edsa, the longest street in Metro Manila, was named. I know his name, I have read many of his works, and I have seen a youthful photograph of him in the rogues’ gallery at the National Library that gives you the faces and names of all the directors from James Alexander Robertson to Antonio Santos. If we rewrite the history of our National Library, the first director should be Pedro Paterno, but then that is another story for another column.

Epifanio de los Santos was a friend of Tolentino’s and they were considered two of the best guitarists of their generation. Tolentino even made a charming plaster portrait of “Don Panyong” playing a guitar that has since been lost. As I looked face to face at the image of De los Santos—where he was described as “slender, standing about five feet high, with slightly drooping shoulders … his eyes … behind his glasses betray[ing] the prolific poet … a voice as soft as velvet”—I could not see that in a dirty plaster sculpture. But one of the things that make Tolentino sculptures come alive is the way he forms the eyes. In the image, the eyes of De los Santos reminded me that he was a collector of Filipiniana and that some important documents, like the manuscripts believed to be in the hands of Andres Bonifacio (presently in the collection of Emmanuel Encarnacion), were collected and preserved by him. J.P. Bantug, one of the important prewar collectors, described De los Santos as “a lawyer by profession, an historian by choice, and a collector of antiques by accident.”

According to Rosa Sevilla de Alvero, “[De los Santos] was very fond of studying any kind of books, especially those that referred to the Philippines and the Filipino people. He was [so] fond of this hobby that he was considered as a plague in the libraries of his friends, searching for books of this kind, which he never failed to read and study carefully with or without the unwillingness of the owner.”

When he accepted the post as director of the National Library, where he served from 1925 to 1928, De los Santos gave up all his passions except for music and books. He stopped collecting Filipiniana and writing history because he considered these a conflict of interest. Bibliographer Gabriel Bernardo explained:

“Assuming his duties as Director of the Philippine Library and Museum at the sacrifice of personal convenience, [De los Santos] religiously renounced collecting for his personal hobbies and devoted all his energies to the enrichment of the resources of the institution under his care. He also laid writing aside to wait for a greater personal leisure. For it was his creed that no librarian can be a public servant and at the same time be a library’s competitor in the acquisition and use of its resources.”

Another contemporary remarked that: “When he assumed the position of Director, at a sacrifice of the comfort his independent means gave him, he abandoned all his collecting and gave the same zeal to the furtherance of the Government’s interest that had made his own collection in works, paintings, sculpture, furniture and all other lines of artistic Philippines unrivalled. The Library and Museum profited by his administration more than under any of his predecessors, counting that their work was adding large known collections by purchase made possible by legislative appropriation.”

Although he redirected his personal collecting zeal to the benefit of the National Library, De los Santos did not turn over or sell the best pieces in his collection to the National Library or Museum. Months after he died of a heart attack, the Philippine Legislature passed Act 3475 on Dec. 7, 1928, appropriating funds to purchase his collection.

But what of his collection was acquired? What of his collection was destroyed during the Battle for Manila in 1945? Those were questions I asked as I contemplated the Tolentino bust of Epifanio de los Santos.

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