First of three parts
THE Philippines commemorated Independence Day on June 12. Every Filipino knows the basic tale. However, memory is fickle. Not all of us remember the Philippine history lessons we received in school. And other historical facts are taught only to Filipinos who aspire to get a degree in history.
Filipinos recognize June 12 as the country’s Independence Day, because of a decisive move taken by the late President Diosdado P. Macapagal.
On May 12, 1962, Macapagal issued Proclamation 28, declaring June 12 as the official date of Philippine independence.
Current history textbooks explain that Macapagal decided on the date of June 12, because it was the day when Emilio Aguinaldo, President of the First Philippine Republic, officially declared the country’s independence from Spain.
That’s the basic tale. But things were not that simple. There was more to what prodded Macapagal to drop July 4 as Philippine Independence Day. It was known as the Filipinization Movement.
The Filipinization Movement
ACCORDING to the book Legacies of World War II in South and East Asia that was edited by David Koh Wee Hock, there were prominent Filipinos who were getting tired of being viewed as America’s lackey in Asia.
“The dominant narrative of modern Philippine history reflected here, as it was in the school textbooks of that period [late 1940s and the 1950s], where the Philippines is pictured unabashedly as the light of freedom in Asia, a bridge between East and West, America’s outpost of democracy, and so forth.”
Barely eight years after the United States government granted independence to the Philippine Third Repubic in July 4, 1946, on February 5, 1954, Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Leon Maria Guerrero delivered a speech titled “Asia for Asians.”
According to Koh Wee Hock’s book, Guerrero called for a “fundamental reorientation of Philippine foreign policy toward Asia.”
“This implied a loosening somewhat of the special ties with the United States,” the book said.
Unfortunately for Guerrero, his speech also rekindled the memory of Imperial Japan’s slogan promoting the Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere “Asia for Asians.”
“Guerrero’s early career as a diplomat in the 1943 Second Philippine Republic was dug up and he was accused of resurrecting a slogan of the Dark Age of the Japanese Occupation,” the book added. “President Ramon Magsaysay, after consultation with his American advisers, came down hard on Guerrero.” Among those who joined in slamming Guerrero was Diosdado Macapagal, who was, at that time, still a member of the House of Representatives.
Fortunately for Guerrero, one of his supporters was then-Vice President Carlos P. Garcia. Garcia, who assumed the presidency upon the death of Magsaysay in a plane crash, “would take up Guerrero’s initiatives in the latter part of the decade.”
And then Macapagal came into the picture once again.
Macapagal, upon becoming president, “would change his stance dramatically, flirting with Sukarno’s
vision of a united Maphilindo [Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia] and proclaiming the Malayan roots of Filipino civilization and the need to belong to Asia rather than to the United States.”
This charged political atmosphere was one of the factors that influenced Macapagal to drop July 4 as the country’s independence day and adopt Aguinaldo’s date for declaring Philippine independence. It was both a move to assert the country’s Asian identity and a step away from the label of being a lackey of the US.
However, the Maphilindo initiative did not come to pass, but it did serve as inspiration for the rise of a new grouping of nations in Southeast Asia. Today that group is known as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).
“Flag Days”
AS our country evolved, so did our ways of commemorating Philippine independence. The most recent addition to the country’s practice of celebrating Independence Day is now known as “Flag Days,” which begins every May 28 until the eve of June 12.
This was initiated by President Fidel V. Ramos as part of the events leading to the celebration of the country’s first centennial of Philippine independence.
It was on May 23, 1994, when Ramos issued Executive Order 179 “stretching National Flag Day into an extended period, from May 28 to June 12, culminating on the celebration of Indepedence Day,” an article on the Official Gazette said. “All Filipinos are encouraged to display the Philippine flag in all offices, agencies and instruments of government, business establishments, schools and private homes throughout this period.”
Flag Days, in turn, is based on a historical event.
It was on May 28, 1898, when the flag of the First Philippine Republic was first unfurled. The event was the Battle of Alapan in Imus Cavite.
It was adopted as the Philippine flag after its official presentation to the public on June 12, 1898.
However, upon the defeat of the First Philippine Republic, the US took control of the country.
The display of the national flag was banned.
However, the ban on displaying the Philippine flag was lifted in 1919.
“Until 1940, Flag Day was observed in October, the date the Philippine Legislature had restored the flag,” the Official Gazette said. “From 1941 to 1964, Flag Day was commemorated on the date the national flag was unfurled in Kawit: June 12.”
In 1965 Macapagal altered this practice when he issued Proclamation 374 moving National Flag Day to May 28. Twenty-nine years later, Ramos would introduce the latest change in how Filipinos observe the run up to Independence Day. The change initiated by Ramos is still being observed today.
Lucky charm
ASIDE from being the national flag, the country’s banner can also be seen as the nation’s symbolic amulet or lucky charm.
According to John Ray Ramos, a heritage conservation advocate and history instructor from the Far Eastern University, the symbols within the flag were also the same symbols used by soldiers of the Philippine Revolution for their lucky charms or anting-anting.
Prof. Xiao Chua from the history department of De La Salle University agreed with Ramos.
“The sun can be viewed as the symbol for bathala or god,” Xiao said. “That is a symbol used in the anting-anting. Amulets either included a triangle or were made in the form of a triangular medallion. The triangle is supposed to stand for the god’s mountain.”
“These symbols of the sun and the mountain were found in amulets used during the time of the revolution,”
Ramos added.
Ramos explained that from this point of view, it can be said the national flag can also serve as the country’s national amulet or lucky charm.
“Symbolic letters were etched on each point of the triangle to provide mystical protection,” Xiao said. “The belief was that anyone who wore such an amulet was able to safeguard his soul from harm. This was then carried over in the national flag, but the letters were transformed into stars, which represented the main island groups of the Philippines—Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao.”
The sun
HOWEVER, the sun in the flag may also stand for something else.
“Most Filipinos are no longer aware of this, but it can also be said the sun in the national flag may also stand for Sol de Mayo, which was used as the South American symbol for liberty,” Xiao added.
“There were some prominent Filipinos, known as Ilustrados, who were aware of how this symbol was sued in South America at that time,” Xiao said. “However, it would be wrong to say they copied it because we already had a history of using the sun as a symbol. What essentially happened was that these two symbols merged.”
Ramos added that the sun was already displayed in early versions of the flag of the Katipunan, the organization that was later led by Andres Bonifacio that initiated the revolution against Spain.
“It was supposed to be a sun with the stylized ancient letter ‘K’ emblazoned within it,” Ramos said. “The ancient ‘K’ was for kalayaan or freedom. But it was not really a sun.”
Xiao agreed.
“Actually, it was not a sun but a glowing letter ‘K’,” Xiao explained.
“Documents from Spain dating back from the Philippine Revolution were recently obtained from the
Archivo General Militar de Madrid,
” Xiao added.
“These documents explained that this was not the Sun of Liberty. Based on the recently discovered Katipunan documents, this symbol actually stood for the Light of Liberty.”
Though Xiao acknowledged that the term Light of Liberty was now generally accepted among historians, however, there were still some who still view that the symbol stood for the sun.
“But for Andres Bonifacio’s Katipunan, it was simply the Light of Liberty,” Xiao said.
Xiao, citing a letter written by Mariano Ponce, said that, aside from being viewed as the South American symbol of Sol de Mayo, it was pointed out that the sun was also a symbol of progress, as well as a depiction that Filipinos belonged to the Oriental family.
According to Ponce, in a letter he sent to a friend, there were still those who clung to the South American symbol of Sol del Mayo. For Ponce, he believed that the sun was a symbol of progress, as well as showing that Filipinos belonged to the Oriental family.
The stars
XIAO explained that the stars in the flag originally stood for Luzon, Panay and Mindanao.
“The stars depicted the three big islands, which certain writers said where the places where the fight against Spain took place,” Xiao said. “It has to be noted that Panay already played an important role in the
revolution. Panay was where the Philippine flag was first unfurled in the Visayas.”
“Then Mariano Ponce wrote a letter to his Japanese friend,” Xiao added. “Ponce explained that the three stars represented the three major island groups in the Philippines: Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao. This explanation was later adopted and is still in use today.”
Changing the current flag
ACCORDING to Ramos, the historical record clearly showed that there was no need to alter the national flag in order to include a specific symbol for Muslim Mindanao.
Ramos said there was no justification to change the present flag’s design. Xiao agreed with this point
of view.
“Because Mindanao is also depicted as one of the stars in the flag, this means that Filipinos in Mindanao, who practice the Muslim faith, are included in our national banner,” Xiao pointed out. “The star is not just about an island group in the Philippines. It represents the people living within that island group.”
“Any attempt to change to the current flag is redundant,” Xiao added, “Because they are already included.”
As for the suggestion to add a ninth ray to the sun to symbolize the Muslim Filipinos fight for freedom, Xiao explained that there was a very specific reason there were only eight rays in the flag.
“The eight rays of the sun stand for the eight provinces that the Spanish colonial government put under martial law,” Xiao said. “These were the provinces of Batangas, Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, Manila, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga and Tarlac. The rays are not simply about eight provinces that fought against Spain. The revolution was not confined in those eight provinces.”
“It’s a misconception to say that the sun’s rays in the flag stood only for the provinces that fought against Spain,” Ramos added. “It’s really a misconception. The rays simply depict the eight provinces that took the brunt of Spanish reprisals when the Spanish colonial government declared martial law upon the onset of the Philippine Revolution.”
To be continued