First of two parts
WE mentioned in our previous column that the Brains of the Katipunan, Emilio Jacinto, dropped out of his law studies at the University of Santo Tomas at the age of 18 to join the secret revolutionary society called the Katipunan. But Katipunan historian Jim Richardson pointed out to me an important article by National Historical Commission of the Philippines Commissioner Dr. María Eloísa G. Parco de Castro entitled “A First Glimpse of the Professors of Philippine Secondary Education in the Spanish Period, 1858-1898” (Philippiniana Sacra, vol. LIII, no. 159, May-August 2018, p. 268.) which states, “Emilio Jacinto was Fr. [Mariano] Sevilla’s student as he appears in the records in 1889-1890 (Libros de Matriculas, 1889-1895). Since the Sevilla school was licensed to teach only up to the third year of secondary education, Jacinto had to move to a school which offered the last two years of the course. So, he went to Santo Tomas and obtained his Bachelor of Arts in 1895, continuing on to law right after. As most biographies say, his studies were interrupted by the Philippine revolution.”
If he obtained a Bachelor of Arts in 1895 when he was already 19 and went on to law school after, since his birth month was December 1875, that makes him 20 when the revolution broke out in August 1896 — that was the time he stopped school.
More important than his age when he stopped school was the fact that he was taught by Father Mariano Sevilla of Bulakan, Bulacan. Richardson told me: “It’s a nice coincidence (or could it be more?) that Fr. Sevilla is said to be the first Tagalog writer to have coined/used (c.1867) the word “calaya-an” to render the notion of liberty, specifically the liberty enjoyed by those in heaven to roam wherever in the universe they wished. In the early 1870s, it is also said, Sevilla lived for a time with Marcelo H. del Pilar, and the latter (it has been speculated) might have picked up the word from his housemate and adopted it (in 1882) to signify, for the first time, liberty in the modern political sense.”
Sevilla supposedly invented the word “kalayaan” in his translation of the “Flores de Mayo” prayer book to Mary, Mother of God, from Italian to Tagalog around 1867. The propagandist del Pilar uses the word in translating the concept of liberty in Rizal’s “El Amor Patrio” for the Diariong Tagalog, which became “Pag-ibig sa Tinubuang Lupa” in 1882. Del Pilar and Sevilla both came from the same town — Bulakan, Bulacan. Despite this, Rizal was asking his older brother Paciano Rizal, what this word that del Pilar used in translating his essay meant in his letter of Oct. 12, 1886, which denotes his unfamiliarity with this word. Which meant that “kalayaan” was not part of regular usage. “Katimawaan,” which was the ancient equivalent, has changed meaning because the former “timawa,” or “free man,” had become an “indio.” “Kalayaan” was a neologism or a new word, at that time.
With this connection, it is possible that Jacinto got wind of the concept of “kalayaan” as freedom from Father Sevilla himself. (He would eventually be a delegate of the Malolos Congress in 1898.)
Which brings me to December 1895. Dr. Pio Valenzuela, who had become supreme fiscal of the Katipunan, suggested to Bonifacio that he be given the responsibility to publish the organ or newspaper of the Katipunan. By the middle of the next month, the printing press, which was donated by two Panayanhon migrant workers from Australia — Candido Iban and Francisco del Castillo — from their prize money for winning the lottery, was transferred to Valenzuela’s house on Lavezares Street in Manila’s San Nicolas district.
But because he was so busy being a doctor and organizing the Katipunan, Valenzuela passed the responsibility of publishing the newspaper to Miling, who went to the Lavezares house after his classes.
To fool the authorities, they named as editor Marcelo del Pilar, who was sick at that time in Spain, and Yokohama as the publication place. Some of the articles and editorials included: “Sa mga kababayan” and “Pahayag (Manifesto)” signed with the pen name Dimas-Alan by Jacinto; “¡Katuiran din naman! (Reason yet again!)” signed by Madlangaway, who was Pio Valenzuela; “Ang dapat mabatid ng mga tagalog (What the Tagalogs should know)” signed by Agap-Ito Bagum-bayan, who was Andres Bonifacio; and “Pagibig sa tinubuang bayan (Love of country)” signed A.B. or A.I.B., who was also Bonifacio.
Valenzuela said that from only 300 members in March 1896, when the paper was published in its first, and also its last issue, by the outbreak of the revolution in August 1896, their membership grew from 20,000 to 30,000. And that with only about 1,000 to 2,000 copies printed!
And the name that Valenzuela chose as the name for the newspaper edited by Jacinto: Kalayaan.
