Bernardo Carpio:

Awit and Revolution

One issue in the historiography of the Philippine revolutions of 1896 and 1898 is
demonstrating the relationship between the informed, verbalize world class illustrados
who have deserted the greater part of the reports, and the inarticulate "masses" who
battled and died in the different wars.
John Schumacher, S.J., has demonstrated how the
illustrados made the reason for a Filipino history that
would undermine and displace a Spanish historiography
which ordered Filipino devotion to Spain under good
endorses." Such history absolutely gave a “rational and
moral legitimation for the new nation,” yet it isn't clear
how it given the drive to the breaking of ties of utang na
loob (obligation of appreciation) to Spain that era of
provincial standard had urged the indios. How this
could have occured is the subject of this discussion.
On account of the limitations forced by control and
different types of scholarly suppression of Spaniards,
well known passage, up to the 1880s, appeared as
religious tracts and metrical sentiments called awit. As
it were, the awit was a successful frontier weapon. Awit
and other related structures supplanted the indigenous
writing.
By the eighteenth century shabby of awit were
"imprinted in the urban areas and towns and afterward
sold in walkways, and conveyed to the most remote
barriors by vagrant sellers." Awit stories were regularly
performed, or if nothing else sung in broad daylight.
In paticular, we will investigate a Tagalog
awit, the Historia Famosa ni Bernardo
Carpio, in light of legends of the Spanish
Bernardo Carpio, that the uncovers a well
known view of the past whereupon Filipino
nationalists pivoted their separtist desires.
The Historia Famosa has not been regarded as a
literary milestone of the Tagalogs. The authorship
remains unknown, and it has been dominated by
the more cleaned and "urbane" awit, Florante at
Laura.
So as to land at some comprehension of this
unforeseen development, let us look at, first, a few
highlights of the Historia Famosa ni Bernardo
Carpio and, second, the awit's association with
patriot works on the eve of the insurgency.
To begin with, the author of the Historia
Famosa states at the beginning that he has
selected details from the Spanish story of
Bernardo Carpio. Like most awit, the
Historia Famosa's story line is gotten
from legends sorrounding the Spanish
eminence and their Moorish enemies.
This is the manner by which the account procceds.
The king and queen of Spain have died, leaving behind
two little children named Alfonso and Jimena. Don
Sancho, count of Cerdeňa, rules over Spain until
Alfonso comes of age and accept the honored position.
The writer remarks that King Alfonso stays unmarried
and has no affection for ladies.
Meanwhile Don Sancho has been appointed as royal
counselor and commanding general of the army.
Another major character, Don Rubio, is presented as
Don Sancho’s friend and captain of the army.
After fourteen stanzas of the awit, a major change
happens. The occasion is "activated" by the
brilliant magnificence of the ruler's sister, Jimena.
Her brilliance, portrayed in such a large number of
symbolism filled stanzas, causes disarray in the
loob(inner being) of notables, the lords, in Spain
and abroad. Don Sancho and Don Rubio are both
pulled in to Jimena's magnificence, and their
reactions are immeasurably unique.
Rubio, having been reproached by Jimena,
responds with outrage and disgrace (hiya). On the
other hand, Sancho's loob is depicted by the writer
as equipped for adoration. Jimena's magnificence
has the impact of making Sancho's confounded
loob accomplish a completion meant by his
readiness to languish and bite the dust over his
darling.
In a scene normal of most nineteenth-century
awit, a Moro emissary shows up with an impolite
test to the Spanish lord. King Alfonso
immediately instructs General Sancho to lead his
military against the villains. As the military
assembles in the field, Don Sancho, sneaks into
Jimena's room in the pinnacle.
His goodbye discourse again offers the writer a
chance to soak in the symbolism of adoration and
detachment normal for society verse.
Overwhelmed, Jimena at that point begins sobbing
uncontrollably, and surrenders herself to her lover.
Don Sancho’s victory over the Moros is compared
to the ravaging of a garden by a cyclone. The
general, however, is not fated to profit by it. His
rival Don Rubio, aware of the lover’s meeting,
vent his ill feeling upon Sancho by recommending
to the king that the latter accept the count of
Barcelona’s proposal to have a political alliance
by marrying Jimena.
Hearing this draws an outburst of anger from Sancho.
Rubio, whose loob is filled with shame and
“confliciting elements,” backs down in fear. Another
opportunity for revenge presents itself. However, when
Rubio hears the birth scream of Jimena’s child, who is
named Bernardo, Rubio rushes to inform the king, who
is completely torn apart by the news of Sancho and
Jimena’s “crime.” The king suddenly forgets his past
relationship with Don Sancho and can think of nothing
but schemes to destroy him.
As Sancho is about to take the infant Bernardo to
Cerdeňa, the poet is given another opportunity to evoke
in the reader the experience of anguish and loss, for the
separation of the infant from his parents. As the poet
himself remarks, after a description of Jimena’s sadness:

What loob however hard

what heart would not be overcome by this
and be saddened and struck with pain
for the two lovers with a pure loob?
As Sancho leaves the pinnacle with the tyke,
he is trapped by the lord's troopers. Battling
with just a single hand, Sancho stops and asks
for leniency from the King. All he asks is to
be married to Jimena before he is executed.
The lord quickly consents to the marriage yet
deceptively sends Sancho to the palace of
Luna with a fixed letter sketching out specific
disciplines to be distributed to the carrier.
Sancho, to his mortification, is bound in
chains; his eyes are gouged out and he is
tossed inside a dim cell.
Is the agony of visual impairment his reward
for the hardships he had to safeguard the
kingdom? mourns Sancho. Again the writer
gives free rein to pictures of agony and
divisions: Sancho from Jimena, the guardians
from their tyke Bernardo. Sancho's regret
closes with an intrigue to God to have feel
sorry for his child:
And may he eventually recognize
his true mother and true father
and when, Lord, he comes of age.
may he, Lord God, recognize me.
Meanwhile Don Rubio becomes the closest
confidante of the king. He is entrusted with
bringing up the child Bernardo, whose true
parents are ordered never to be revealed to
him. Jimena, whose treachery brought great
shame to her brother King Alfonso, is sent to
a cloister.
 Alfonso scolds her for forgetting all the
love and caring he had showered upon her
and for failing to show utang na loob for
things in the past. As the child Bernardo
grows up, it becomes obvious to all that he
has extraordinary strength and energy. He is
in constant movement, running back and
forth, up and doown stairs:
He walks and walks, but goes nowhere
his loob and heart always perturbed . . .
His vitality is discharged in an inefficient and
standoffish way: hitting, slaughtering steeds,
carabaos, and other creature he meets. Angry
townsfolk grumble to Don Rubio. Bernardo
clarifies that he can't control his very own
body. One day Bernardo asks his "father"
Don Rubio to convince the lord to knight him
with the goal that he may go far and wide
fighting worshipful admiration and quelling
wild monsters.
 Rubio reprimands him: how will he be a
knight if his own roots are obscure? Bernardo
then understands that Rubio isn't his actual
father. Fortunately, the King happens to go
along. Indicating pity, he makes Benardo a
knight and adopted him. Afterward, having
killed the presumptuous Rubio in a fencing
match, Bernardo is made general of the
military.
As the received child of King Alfonso,
Bernardo's energies turn into more "framed"
and coordinated toward battling the Moors.
The most considerable adversary is the
Emperor Carpio, whose immense regions
can't be infiltrated even by armies of the
Twelve Peers of France.
 One day, Carpio's agent, Verommilla, arrives
at the Spanish court requesting vassalage
from the King or else confront attack.
Bernardo, in his standard energy, rather
uncontrolled manner, reacts brutally toward
the emissary:
He struck the chair upon which the envoy sat
causing him to fall over
everything was crushed, broken to pieces
the king tried to calm Bernardo:
My son, he said, just take it easy
to attack an envoy as you did
is against all the rules
so straighten out your loob.
As Veromilla comes back to his camp,
Bernardo tells the King Alfonso that, he will
battle the adversary single-handed. Indeed, he
approaches the Moro lines alone and is
scorned by Veromilla. Bernardo completely
devastates the enemy. Veromilla escapes in
incredible frenzy.
When Bernardo comes back to the court, he
humbly devotes his triumph to the King. He
ascribes his victory to God's kindness (awa).
Also, he requests to be allowed just a single
request: that he be told the characters of his
actual parents. The ruler at that point attempts
to delude Bernardo by consenting to his
demand providing that he defeats Emperor
Carpio.
Knowing Carpio's notoriety, the King
anticipates that his young general should be
killed in fight. Bernardo's capacity, has no
equivalent on the planet. Battling like a "lion,
tiger, and snake" he efficiently overcomes
Carpio's nineteen castles until the point that
the sovereign surrenders, hands over the
entirety of his domain to Bernardo and
consents to pay tribute to Spain.
Upon his arrival yet again to Spain, Bernardo
Carpio, as he is currently called, is stunned to
locate a french sovereign, likewise named
Bernardo, administering the kingdom. King
Alfonso, who had incidentally surrendered
the position of royalty while on chasing trip,
legitimizes his choice as far as "tradional ties"
between the Spanish and French decision
families.
Bernardo contemptuously rejects this
argument. Moreoever, he is disgusted by the
King’s refusal to reveal his parents. In an
angry confrontation Bernardo announces that
he will discover his parents by power.
Now Bernardo Carpio's energies appear to
wind up more engaged ever. Having rejected
another stepfather, his first act is to obliterate
all the lord's steeds. While he stops by the
wayside to implore God and the Virgin
Mother, a letter drifts down from paradise
with reality about his folks. Before he can go
looking for them, notwithstanding, he is told
to initially end Spain's binds of vassalage to
France.
So he continues to the French court, where
Emperor Ludovico discloses to him that his
relations with Spain are based on age-old
agreements passed on from age to age. Bernardo
has only hatred for conventional ties. Neither has
he respect for Ludovico, whom he seizes by the
neckline and physically scares. The French court,
in dread of Bernardo's capacity, yields. The ties
are broken. Bernardo then continues to the castle
of Luna to search out his dad.
The scene movements to Sancho lamething in jail:
the lord has demonstrated no pity, keeping him for
a considerable length of time in the dimness of a
cell:
And you my beloved son
who, I heard, is now called Don Bernardo Carpio
have passed through a multitude of towns and
kingdoms and yet have not found your father ,
Sancho
Why my beloved child
have you not searched for your lord, your father?
Haven’t your heart and loob been moved
by my sufferings and laments?
"As if he heard this lament," Bernardo arrives,
murders the watchmen and frees his father.
Unfortunately, Sancho soon died not long after the
reunion. However, it does not keep Bernardo from
legitimizing his tie to his parents.
He brings his father to the King’s palace where the
wedding with Jimena happens. Only after father,
mother, and son are formally rejoined does
Bernardo pretend to find that his dad is dead.
Bernardo declined the Spanish throne. He arrives
in a churchlike structure with two lion statues by
the entrance. Because the doors are shut, he kneels
outside and prays. A bolt of lighting strikes and
destroys one of the lions. Angered by the
lightning’s challenge, Bernardo hurls the other
lion away and vows to search for the lightning and
destroy it.
 Not faraway, he sees two mountains hitting each
other at regular intervals. Then a handsome youth
—an angel—appears and tells Bernardo that the
lighting has entered the mountain. God commands
that Bernardo shall not see, much less captured it.
 When the angel himself takes the path of the
lighting, Bernardo stubbornly follows, the twin
peaks closing in on him. The awit ends with the
remark that since Bernardo was such great and
powerful hero, God cast a spell on him and thus
kept him alive though hidden.
The awit is imperative for the investigation of the
revolutions in two aspects. First, the appropriation
by the Tagalogs of a Spanish hero enabled a
people without a history of themselves. Second,
the awit reveals a form of meaningfully
structuring events, which was used by nationalists
to communicate their political ideas to the people.
The first point is borne out by proof from nearby
accounts of local and southern Tagalogs towns.
The Historia Famosa's record of Bernardo's last
voyage is gotten from pre-Spanish convictions in
journeys to the underworld to wrestle with spirits
as a trial of one's inner strength.
The writer simply insists that the universe of
Bernardo Carpio is the Philippines. Continuously
50% of the nineteenth century, Tagalog laborers,
trusted that Bernardo Carpio was their indigenous
lord caught inside a mountain, attempting to free
himself. Catastrophic events were deciphered as
signs of his action..
The uneducated countymen's conceptions of
freedom dominated by this legend did not get
away from the notice of some ilustrados. In Jose
Rizal’s novel, El Filibusterismo, he entertains the
possibility of armed revolt against Spain, there is
this reflection upon an a cart driver’s firm belief in
Benardo Carpio:
The pleasants of that day kept alive a legend that
their king, imprisoner in chains in the cave of San
Mateo, would one day return to free them from
oppression. Every hundred years he had broken
one of his chains, and now he already had freed
his arms and his leg. Only his right leg was still
held fast.
It was he who caused earthquake as he flailed
about and struggled against his chains: he was so
strong that one could one could shake hands with
him only by stretching out a bone, which
crumbled in his grasp.
For no apparent reason the natives called him
King Bernardo, confusing him perhaps with
Bernardo del Carpio, the semimythical Spanish
hero of the ninth century who was said to have
defeated the French Ronald at Roncesvalles.
Then Rizal has the cart driver mutter: “When he
gets his right foot free, I shall give him my horse,
put my self under his orders, and die for him. He
will free us from the constabulary.” Yet, unlike
other patriots, as we shall see, Rizal was careful to
separate the “mythical” and what he considered
the “national” in his writings.
He probably would not have appreciated the
widespread rumor, at the outbreak of the
revolution in 1896, that Rizal had gone to the
depths of Mount Makiling, proven his intelligence
and sincerity to Bernardo Carpio, and been told
that it was time for the people to rise against
Spain.
Mirinda even states that “the masses were
awaiting the liberation of Bernardo Carpio, a
caharacter in aTagalog legend, from the two
enormous cliffs of Biak-na-Bato so that he might
exterminate the Spanish soldiers who defended
their outposts.”
The second point which concerns the state of the
Historia Famosa ni Bernardo Carpio and its
association with patriot thoughts of the past, is
best manage by comparing different parts of awit
and patriot works. In 1888, while Rizal was in
London doing research for his explanations to
Morga's history of the Philippines, —a sonnet of
sixty-six stanzas titled Hibik ng Filipino sa Ynang
Espaňa (Filipinas' Lament to mother Spain)— was
being appropriated in the nation.
Its writer, Hemenegildo Flores, was an educator,
artist and "disseminator" who united with
understood patriot author Marcelo del Pilar to
convey the antifriar issue to the Tagalog perusing
open. The way to the Hibik's importance lies in
the edge built up by the opening stanza:
Oh, beautiful and generous Mother Spain
where is your loving concern for your child?
It is I, your youngest born, unfortunate Filipinas.
Glance at me, you cannot ignore my suffering.
What follows is basically a past filled of the
Philippines under the domination of the friars. The
friars guaranteed quick access to paradise to all
who agreed to their requests, yet this was a type of
daya (deceit). In the Historia Famosa, the past, as
narrated by the awit’s characters, is always shaped
by the idiom of personal relationship.
 Don Sancho’s laments to Jimena, King Alfonso,
and his son Bernardo project vivid images of the
past, which appear periodically in the text, serving
as markers to which the complicated elements of
the story adhere. Sancho’s expressions of love to
Jimena are constant reminder to his beloved as
well as to the audience of the hardships which he
has experienced in order to prove that his love is
genuine, or “in the loob.”
In Jimena, this lament has the effect of
transforming an initial confusion into a
commitment to her suitor in the face of retribution
by the king. To the audience or reader, the laments
serve as as a reminder that Bernardo has not
experienced a parent’s love.
To a person reading or listening to the awit,
Sancho’s laments, would have evoked a response
conditioned by his or her own experience of
personal relationships. He would have
experienced, not only Sancho and Jimena’s
suffering, but also the loss of parental love that
haunts Bernardo and frames his activities.
This audience response, the stimulation of which
rather than the mere telling of events is the awiit’s
function, is called damay (empathy, participation).
Flores and Del Pilar used the hibik (lament) form
in order to evoke from their audience a similar
state of receptivity for nationalist message.
The novelty of Flores’s hibik diminishes when the
poem is seen in the context of its time. Scholars
seem have ignored Apolinario Mabini’s
observation that the first sign of a genuine
nationalist stirring among the inhabitants of
Manila and Cavite was a pervasive feeling of
damay in a patriotic context.
According to Mabini, the friar-instigated public
execution in 1872 of three priest under the false
charge of plotting a mutiny in the Cavite arsenal
had a deep impact on the masses. As rumors of the
event spread through the provinces, ordinary
Filipinos developed a hatred of the friars and
“deep pity and pain for the victims.
This pain wrought up a miracle, . . . feeling pain,
[Filipinos] felt themselves living; so they asked
themselves how they lived.” These enigmatic statements
simply mean that there was damay with the victims; not
just a private feeling of pity, but a consciousness of
some common fate. The first recorded patriotic song, Sa
Iyong ang Dahil (Because of You), makes sense in this
connection. Allegedly sung after 1872, it is simply a
suitor’s lament to his loved one, describing the pain in
his heart caused by his love. It ends:
You should remember
that my sufferings are caused by you;
always remember until death
that you are my only love
no one but you and only you.
The informant states that “the song’s meaning, to put it
simply, is the desire for liberty; but since the lives of
Fathers Burgos, Gomez, and Zamora were in a quite
precarious state, the people expressed their aspirations
in this way.”
The advancement of Tagalog "devoted" music, in any
case, demonstrates that the damay evoked by kundiman
is characteristic for recalling the past. The occasion of
1872 was converted into symbolism, therefore ending
up some portion of the vocalist's or audience's attention
to the past. Flores without a doubt knew the adequacy
of the regret shape, which is the reason he used it as an
edge in any case.
The Hibik isn't unadulterated symbolism. The last ten stanzas
of the Hibik summarize the Philippine past regarding a
relationship whose genuineness is uncertain: Spain had sent
the friars here, and because we had utang na loob to Spain for
her protective care, we gave the frairs eveything they wanted.
The friars reciprocated with acts of cruelty, executing the
individuals who had damay for Filipinas' tears. How is it
possible, Filipinas asks, for a mother to mistreat her ownchild?
Has Spain, herself seduced by the Friars (as King Alfonso had
been by Don Rubio), overlooked the past?
In 1889, a year after the presence of Flores' Hibik, Marcelo del
Pilar's continuation Sagot ng Espaňa sa Hibik nang Pilipinas
(Spain's answer to Filipinas' regret) was distributed in
Barcelona and illegally circulated in the Philippines. Once
more, it is as a regret: an old and vulnerable mother requests
her little girl's compassion and offers counsel. The casing is
built up in the initial couple of stanzas:
My heart was appalled when I heard
your cry and dolorous plaint, my child;
you have no sorrow, child, that’s yours alone,
for your mother always shares [damay] it with you.
You have no suffering, no affliction
that I don’t undergo with you:
since you’re the creation of my love,
your humuliation is also mine.
When you were born, dear child, into this world,
then when I had not yet become impoverished,
as your mother I had no other wish
than to give you every comfort and pleasure.
Tagalog films and mainstream magazine stories are shot
through with scenes like this. Stories made for mass utilization
perpetually contain one or a few scenes in which an old
mother, seeing her little girl's (or son's) want to cut parental
ties, sets out upon a long, sorrowful mourn which endeavors to
influence the little girl to recollect her youth and the hardships
experienced by her folks (especially the mother) to guarantee
that the tyke experiences childhood in state of layaw. .
'Layaw,' which isn't anything but difficult to decipher, implies
an agreeable, lighthearted childhood, educated by adoration
among parent and tyke. In Sagot ng Espaňa sa Hibik nang
Pilipinas, Del Pilar utilized the idea of layaw to outline the
portrayal of the Philippines past started by Flores.
The subject of a youngster's broken childhood by a surrogate
parent shows up likewise in the Historia Famosa, in Don
Rubio's inability to treat Bernardo as his very own child.
Firmly reminiscent of Don Sancho's regret about his missing
child is Mother Spain's very own mourn about the minister's
unfeeling treatment of her little girl Filipinas:
As your mother, I would like
to remedy all these ills
but what can I do—I have grown
old and poor and helpless
The famous Legaspi and Salcedo
all the others in whom I put my faith
as the ones who would take good care of you
have departed and made us feel our loss.
It is thus necessary, my child
to learn to suffer and accept
every affliction if from their slumber
your children refuse to stir.
Mother Spain proceeds with accounts of her own past,
especially the European experience under the friars. Del Pilar
used reality to extend his readers’ consciousnes of
contemporary political substances and potential outcomes.
"Spaniards, Frenchmen, Germans, and individuals of other
European countries" are envisioned as having acknowledged
the friars in accordance with some basic honesty, and having
been sucked dry beacause of their own naivete.
The twenty-four-stanza portrayal of the friars’ mistreatment of
the European individuals parallels prior aaccounts of the
circumstance in the Philippines. The accentuation is one the
symbolism that summons feel sorry for the people in question
—a basic fixing in awit that keeps up the gathering of people
in a condition of damay. The following six stanzas depict the
"terrifying" outcome of a people's indignation released. Once
more, the awit outline is essential to Del Pilar.
His readers understood images of "individuals control"
because of their recognition with strikingly similiar depictions,
in awit, of Christians battling Moros. In the accompanying
stanzas, for instance we are helped to remember the wanton
demolition that Bernardo delivered upon the powers of
Emperor Carpio.
The people’s vengeance was terrifying
for nothing could hold back their anger
the monasteries were burned
as though they were the dens of vicious beasts
The friars fought back, but what
could shelter them from the people’s wrath!
When the quiet sea raises a threat
no heroic men can hold back the onrush of waves.
Yet, this is the way other peoples took, cautions Mother Spain.
All she can do for daughter Filipinas is to relate her story so
that it can be passed on to the next generation—Filipinas and
her children. Emancipation will have to come from Filipino
youth who must first be awakened from the dream-state (a
state of forgetfulness) in which the “secret enemy’s deceptive
flaterry” has cast them, causing them to ignore their mother’s
tearful lament. The worst that can happen is that they will not
show utang na loob for the layaw she gave them:
Heaven forbid that such a curse should fsll
upon your children, my percious child:
may they learn to look after you
and learn to dry your tears.
This is all that can be said in reply
to your plaint by your crippled mother, dear;
your vessel is fragile: let not your children sleep
for a tempest tosses in midsea.
The last line of Del Pilar's ballad comprise of the commonplace picture,
in Tagalog religious verse, of a watercraft hurled by a tempest in midsea.
In contrast to prior artists, be that as it may, Del Pilar does not praise the
light or reference point that manages the pontoon to shore. It is neither
the lessons of the ministers nor the Virging Mary, Star of the Sea. The
ballad is left open-finished. A large portion of 10 years after the fact, a
progressive mystery society called Kataastaasan Kagalanggalang
Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan (The Highest and Most Honorable
Society of the Sons of the Country), or Katipunan for short, would
broadcast itself as the light. In the compositions of its author, Andres
Bonifacio, the Philippine past would again be talked about in the
expression of individual relationship and correspondence, yet in a
rationale that requested upset.
There is maybe no identity in Philippine history as dubious as that of
Andres Bonifacio. What is progressively essential is to understand why
his compositions drove a large number of Filipinos to join the
insurgency and why, long after the discontinuance of hostilities, the
pictures and images related with his development kept the soul of
autonomy alive among the basic society.
Bonifacio experienced childhood in the world of awit verse. As a young
fellow, while not at work as a trivial representative in a transportation
organization, he was a performing artist in Tagalog shows. He knew
about the greater part of the awit type writing and, as a performing artist,
would have retains vast sections of them. His most loved work was the
Historia Famosa ni Bernardo Carpio. As per the declaration of one of his
friends, Bonifacio changed the names of spots, scenes, and mountains in
his duplicate of the Historia to Tagalog names. Ruler Alfonso was Spain.
The tragic Don Sancho and Jimena were mother and father Katagalugan
(later to be called Filipinas). The jealous and deceptive Don Rubio more
likely than not represented the friars. Bernardo Carpio was the young of
the land. Every one of these characters remained in different terms of
relationship to one another, while the Moros implied the outside,
unfriendly universe. The mountain in wich Bernardo was detained was
Montalban, later to end up an asylum of the Katipunan. There are
obvious impediments to deciphering a Spanish-based content written in
the primary portion of the nineteenth century.
However, Bonifacio would have been quite mindful of
the way that his uneducated compatriots' attention to the
past was interceded by the awit and corrido frame.
Moreover, he probably gained from Rizal's El
Filibusterismo, if not from his own involvement, that
the Historia Famosa was exceptionally mainstream
among the "people" and that Bernardo Carpio had just
been appropriated as a Tagalog legend.
To Bonifacio and his kindred revolutionists, the
Filipinos of his age—i.e., the young who, said Del Pilar,
lived in a dreamworld—must be prepared to ascend
against Spain when their conceptions of utang na loob
to Mother Spain were undermined. For a general public
held together exactly by such ties, notwithstanding, the
disintegration of a relationship must be occasioned by
the formation of another one. The way Bernardo Carpio
took appeared to be the ideal model of an answer.
In an authentic broadshet, Ang Dapat Mabatid ng mga
Tagalog (What the Tagalogs should Know), distributed
in 1896, Bonifacio uncovers his obligation to the
proselytizers' viewa of a flouring pre-Spanish past.
Spain, pulled in by such excellence and riches, came
and aligned herself to Filipinas. Their bond, solemnized
in the "blood minimized" between King Sikatuna and
the agent of Spain, Legazpi, isn't not normal for the
connection between Don Sancho and King Alfonso.
Utilizing pictures which could have been enlivened by
the Historia Famosa, Bonifacio depicts the early
Filipinos battling Chinese and Dutch trespassers out of
faithfulness to Spain, just to be remunerated with bad
form incited by the ministers. Filipinos were "made
visually impaired," their character degraded, and when
they "set out to ask even the scarcest sympathy, the
constant answer was banish, partition from the
organization of [their] dearest youngsters, life partners
and old guardians."
The parallel here with the substance of Sancho's regret
in jail is unquestionable. However, Bonifacio require
not have been utilizing the Historia Famosa as a model.
The symbolism of misery and division, and the damay
evoked by such, are components of Tagalog attention to
past occasions. The idea of Spanish guideline is, in
Bonifacio's piece, brought out not as incongruity or
direct maltreatment however in the accompanying
portrayal of misery:
Our tranquility is presently bothered by the groans and
languishments, the moans and distress of endless
vagrants, widows and guardians of countrymen
wronged (anyaya) by the Spanish usurpers; presently we
are deluged by the spilling tears of a mother whose child
was killed, by the cries of delicate kids stranded by
mercilessness and whose each tear that falls resembles
liquid lead that burns the agonizing injury of our
enduring hearts.
The English interpretation does not satisfactorily catch
the conditioning and "softening" of the loob that such a
surge of pictures and sounds produces, impacts which
are significantly increasingly articulated when tuning in
to Bonifacio's ballads. A specific readiness of the loob is
affected before Bonifacio then approaches the general
population to pursue the way (landas) uncovered by the
light of truth.
"the time has come" for the general population to
demonstrate that they have emotions, honor,sense of
disgrace (hiya) and damay. "The time has wanted the
Tagalogs to know the beginnings of their hardships." To
reword Bonifacio regarding the youthful Bernardo's
involvement, it is the ideal opportunity for the general
population to end up one in loob by knnowing reality
about themselves and their past. To achieve this
information and to follow up on it involves denying the
traditonal tie with "stepmother" Spain.
The status of the “people” as youngest child (bunso) in
Bonifacio’s discourse shows a striking similarity to that of
Bernardo Carpio. Owing to the friars’ influence, the youngest
child has grown up under a false parent, Spain. S/ he has no
awareness of relationship with his true mother, Filipinas, in a
time of ginhawa, a paradise-like state of comfort and security
and a condition akin to layaw. Seeing the “people” in this light
Bonifacio, in his best known poem, Pag-ibig sa Tinubuang
Bayan (lit., “ Love for the Country of One’s Roots”), seeks
precisely to evoke in his audience an awareness of a common
past by transposing personal memories of layaw to a “national”
key. A few stanzas from the poem illustrate this:
Ah, this is the mother country of our birth
she is the very mother who first opened our eyes
to the delightful brightness of the sun
which brings warmth to the weak body.
To her we owe [utang] the first kiss
of the wind that brings relief
to the ailing heart that is drowning
in the deep weel of misfortune and suffering.
Entwined with this is love of country
everthing dear to the memory
from a happy and carefree childhood
to when the body is brought to the gave
the bygone days of joy
the future that is hopd
when the slaves will be freemen
where can this be found but in one’s native land?
Each tree and each branch
of her fields and forest joyful to behold
it is enough to see them to remember
the mother and the loved one, happenes now
gone.
It has been referenced regarding the Historia Famosa that
honorable, caring deeds are the results of a legend's steady
awaareness of past relationship. The iamage of past snapshots
of wholeness drives him to make the future in these terms.
Having aroused in his group of onlookers an inclination for
country as mother and cherished one, Bonifacio then harps on
the subject of division and how the hole betwwen over a wide
span of time can be shut by a brave demonstration. To have
sympathy and utang na loob for homeland implies taking an
interest in the demonstration of liberating her, and my this one
move toward becoming "Filipino."
The viability of Bonifacio's works can be ascribed to their
capacity to summon damay for the nation, which is represented
and given a past. The fantasy of bernardo Carpio is converted
into the historical backdrop of the Tagalog individuals, which
sustains into the development of a Filipino people. Not
exclusively was Bernardo Carpio the man in the mountain who
might boil down to free his kin from oppressors, yet as
Bonifacio and his comrades in the Katipunan saw it, each
modest indio could be Bernardo Carpio.
The last's story, understood and cherished by all, was
being happened on the "national" level. Bonifacio's
compositions were close to signs driving people who, it
should again be focused, lived in the realm of awit, to
arrive at their own decisions about the manner in which
the story should end.
At the horizon, Mother, has risen
the sun of Tagalog fury;
for three centuries we kept it
in the sea of woes wrought by poverty.
Your children’s hut had nothing to hold it up
during the terrible storm of pains and troubles;
all in Filipinas are of one heart
and you are no longer a mother to us all.
The rejection of false mother—Spain—parallels
Bernardo Carpio’s denunciation of his stepfather,
the king, annd the beginning of the journey to
restore his wholeness lost soon after birth. The
absence of layaw that sets him on this course of
action appears, too, on a “national”scale:
Filipinas has received nothing by the way of
comfort [layaw] from her mother, only pain our
sufferings grew: revenues for this and that charges
made and taxes levied left and right.
To Bonifacio, the process of dissolving an old
bond creating a new one demands a release of the
people’s energies in the right direction. As he
describes it:
In the world will now explode the sound of guns
and cannons loud like thunder, the furious storm
when blood will flow while bullets and shells
contend among themselves.
Such an event was not unfamiliar to Bonifacio’s
audience. When Bernardo Carpio finally
discovered the names of his true parents, his first
act was to unleash his tremendous power to
frighten France into submission to her former
vassal, Spain.