In search of the hidden Andres Bonifacio

Those who say that I have a great job probably can't imagine the hardships my team and I go through sometimes. But most of the time I have to agree, especially in the last few weeks when I have been immersed in the life and times of Andres Bonifacio. I have always loved history, but much of the Philippines' past for me had become hazy recollections of classroom lectures and cramming for exams. Now I feel more enlightened, but also sadder than ever about the fate of our most beloved heroes. Our mission for our episode airing on Monday, November 26, was to search for the hidden Bonifacio, which I learned is almost everything about the man. The Supremo of the Katipunan left little documentation of his life, few letters and no known journals or newspaper interviews. There are only two known photographs of him. And the authenticity of nearly every one of these personal items associated with him have been questioned, even the famous Tagalog poems that have inspired generations and songs. Our main source was Gregorio Bonifacio, center, the first of Andres's descendants to become a lawyer, or at least as far as Gregorio knows since many Bonifacio kin don't even know each other. At the Liwasang Bonifacio in Manila, he encountered a group of Mapua students who were visiting the monument as part of their history assignment. As a secret revolutionary organizer, Gat Andres purposely didn't leave much of a paper trail. So in addition to what has been written up, we mined the oral history passed on to his great-great grand nephew, Gregorio Bonifacio, the first known lawyer in the clan. Since the Bonifacios were scattered from Tondo after the summary executions of Andres and his younger brother Procopio, Gregorio's direct ancestor, many of these relatives don't even known each other. Gregorio tells me some Bonifacios even changed their names out of fear that they would suffer the same fate. And so we learn about a secret romance as well. Andres was an older man, a widower, when he courted the teen-age Gregoria de Jesus, a well-connected Manila girl. The two at first could only communicate by letters since Gregoria's parents disapproved of Bonifacio, who in addition to being previously married was also a mason. They didn't know then that he was already organizing a fighting force, the Katipunan, that would attempt to kick out of the Philippines what had been the most powerful empire in the world, Spain. Andres and Gregoria (or "Oryang") finally did tie the knot, at the Binondo church shown above. My friend, the UST architectural historian Manolo Noche, tells me that the plaza with the fountain fronting the church (there's another one just like it not visible in the picture) was called the "Calderon de la Barca," and was a well-known source of community drinking water. It was a new system in Bonifacio's youth in the 1880s when natural spring water was piped down by gravity from the hills of Montalban so it would flow out of what was not just an ornate piece of outdoor art. People from the shops and homes around the church would bring their water containers to the fountain. In those days, only the well-to-do had running water in their houses. (As quaint as that fountain story sounds, it could also have been one source of the cholera epidemics that killed many Manila residents around that time. Drinking water then was unchlorinated.)