NOVEMBER
3O, 1949
Augusto Cesar A. Espiritu
1949-1950
As This is being written, even as the
nation remembers with rhetorics and rituals its heroic dead, tanks and cannons and
instruments of destruction continued to pound the beleaguered rebels among the lonely
hills of Batangas. From the wild beauties of Bombon and Taal lakes and the scenic Taal
Volcano, sobbing winds day by day blow in from the south tragic accounts of clashes
between the government troops and the dissidents. As mobilized PC units continue their
deadly fire, and as casualties from both sides continue to mount, frozen tears dim the
eyes of an unhappy country that sees the tragedy of brothers rising up against brothers in
a period that, more than any other, demands the unity and brotherhood of a people who were
once upon a time forged into a single unit in the anvil of blood and fire in the epic
struggles of Bataan and Corregidor.
Bataan and Corregidor - we remember these
names as we pause to think of the brave and the free who had lent the passion and glory of
their young lives to this country they had loved so well. But the profound irony of a
National Heroes’ Day being celebrated with orations and speeches and flowers all over
the land in praise of our countrymen who had fallen in the night cannot be felt keenly in
the hearts of a people that sings praises at one spot and rain death on another in a
woe-stricken country.
These are days for humility and reflection
for our people. There is hardly any place for oratory and grandiloquence when our country
is visited by affliction upon affliction. Speeches and outbursts of golden language would
only augment the bitter feelings running high among our discontented countrymen.
National Heroes’ Day is a day for
remembering the living and the dead. The blurred image of a thick line of slowly moving
figures in a dim spiritual procession should keep us sober and let us remember that the
greatest honor that can be accorded those who were truly great- they who, not having much,
have given all - is a living consciousness that these men had died for some sublime cause,
for some consuming ideal; that today, these herocauses and these ideals are being dimmed ,
the candles that these heroes had bravely waved in the dark night of tyranny and
oppression are slowly being consumed, their lights being slowly put out…
This November 30 comes in the wake of
strife in Batangas. Day by day, reports in screaming headlines adorn the front pages of
the metropolitan papers. More than anything else, this day, this year should keep us awake
to the existence of the hard fact that our country is in the throes of a vicious cancer;
that blood flows freely in a province that has contributed t the army of the noble dead
whom we remember such names such as Malvar and Apacible and Mabini …
But the present situation in our country
does not duly call for a remembrance of our heroes or suggest a vague knowledge of some
little uprising of some foolhardy men in the little province of Batangas. The implication
is crystal clear: No matter how vehemently some quarters may denounce the harshness and
futility of uprising, one thing remains incontrovertible: there is certainly something
wrong with a government when its citizens, or a sizeable portion of them, take up arms and
flee to the hills and risk life and fortune and honor. This is so obvious that a
government that refuses to breed the symptom and choose to remain blind to the compulsion
of this fact has ether lost its soul and conscience as the leaders who hold the reins of
power have turned renegades to a people’s trust, or such government vainly attempts
to hide the fact of its failure behind the cloak that covers the stretch of its notorious
incompetence.
We celebrate National Heroes’ Day
today. We repeat: For us Filipinos, this is a day for remembrance; this is a day for
humility, and if need be, for prayer. |
