#philippine national heroes

[thou-shall-fucketh-off]

A list of notable and famously known national heroes/military events that shaped the Philippines’ history to remember where we come from!

(These are the famous stories, if ever there are inaccuracies, do correct them!)

01. Lapu-Lapu - The First National Hero!

Lapu-Lapu was a tribe Datu (ruler or king) that occupied the land, with several other Datus, before Ferdinand Magellan’s arrival at Mactan, Cebu.

Magellan, if unfamiliar, was a Portuguese explorer who yielded Spanish ships to travel around the world in order to prove the world was not flat! He set foot in Mactan in 1521, and with him he brought Christianity.

The same year, the occupants of what was then just a bunch of islands close together became Christians. The Spanish, our first colonizers, did what colonizers do, and Lapu-Lapu didn’t like that, like at all.

Lapu-Lapu and his men went to war with Magellan’s men then, with just their spears and bows. Lapu-Lapu was victorious! They had defended their land and defeated a Western conquerer, making him the first ever national hero.

PS. Most people believe Lapu-Lapu killed Magellan, but that’s not true, a warrior of his killed Magellan with a poisoned arrow to the right leg!

[ano-po]

Sometimes, it makes me laugh (sorry baeyanis) that Bonizal and Gomburza died of revolution-sparking political reasons, while my fathers Mabinaldo just died of natural reasons while being at the front of war. Funky guys, I tell you. And Aguinaldo died with all his thoughts and regrets in mind... Hah, desurv.

Can you recognize these people?

//yey, thankies for the follows.//

[yuhlmaooo]

mirrors

[peanut0w0]

Happy Mabinaldo Day-- Este National Heroes Day!!

"Say cheese, Mahal." ASKDAJKSGDASD

[kiiyovee]

happy national heroes day to our golden boy!! 🇵🇭🪙🪙✨️

i had this in my drafts ever since the olympics, but my schoolworks kept me from finishing it 😭😭

belated congratulations~!! WE ARE SO PROUD OF YOU ♡♡

[ricisidro]

Today June 19, 2024, we celebrate the 163rd birth anniversary of the Philippines' national hero, Jose Rizal, a Filipino nationalist, a doctor, a writer, a polymath and a key member of the Filipino Propaganda Movement, who advocated political reforms for the colony under Spain.

[kianclarkyetyet]

Happy National Heroes Day Everyone 🇵🇭

[shythalia]

His name's Jose RIZZal with how many ladies fell for him.

[jailrose]

Exam paper.

USERNAME LORE GIVE IT TO ME NOW YOU ALL

[the-lazyyy-artist]

one more shift later and it's long weekend once again HAHAH

[carlocarrasco]

Local hero of Muntinlupa City commended by Mayor Biazon

Recently in the City of Muntinlupa, a man who risked his life to save his young relatives during a fire that destroyed their home was commended by Mayor Ruffy Biazon, according to a Manila Bulletin news report. To put things in perspective, posted below is an excerpt from the Manila Bulletin news report. Some parts in boldface… Muntinlupa Mayor Ruffy Biazon commended a man for his heroic act of…

[popcornbutterfly]

[jmlistings]

National Heroes Day: Honoring the Brave and Remembering the Sacrifices

National Heroes Day is a time to honor the heroes who fought for the Philippines' freedom and independence

Every year on August 28th, the Philippines celebrates National Heroes Day, a day dedicated to honoring the brave men and women who fought for the country’s freedom, independence, and democracy. It is a time to remember their sacrifices and reflect on the significance of their contributions to the nation’s history The Significance of National Heroes DayNational Heroes Day is observed in…

[arkipelagic]

The Spanish surnames of many Filipinos have often misled foreigners here and abroad, who are unaware of the decree on the adoption of surnames issued by Governor-General Narciso Clavería in 1849. Until quite recently in the United States, the Filipinos were classified in demographic statistics as a “Spanish-speaking minority,” along with Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Mexicans, and other nationals of the Central or South American republics. The Philippines, as is well known, was a Spanish colony when Spain was mistress of empires in the Western Hemisphere; but the Americans were “hispanized” demographically, culturally, and linguistically, in a way the Philippines never was. Yet the Spanish surnames of the Filipinos today—García, Gómez, Gutiérrez, Fernández—seem to confirm the impression of the American statistician, as well as of the American tourist, that the Philippines is just another Mexico in Asia. Nor is this misunderstanding confined to the United States; most Spaniards still tend to think of “las Islas Filipinas” as a country united to them through the language of Cervantes, and they catalogue Philippine studies under “Hispano-America.” The fact is that after nearly three-and-a-half centuries of Spanish rule probably not more than one Filipino in ten spoke Spanish, and today scarcely one in fifty does. Still the illusion lives on, thanks in large part to these surnames, which apparently reflect descent from ancient Peninsular forbears, but in reality often date back no farther than this decree of 1849.

Somehow overlooked, this decree, with the Catálogo Alfabético de Apellidos which accompanied it, accounts for another curiousity which often intrigues both Filipinos and foreign visitors alike, namely, that there are towns in which all the surnames of the people begin with the same letter. This is easily verifiable today in many parts of the country. For example, in the Bikol region, the entire alphabet is laid out like a garland over the provinces of Albay, Sorsogon, and Catanduanes which in 1849 belonged to the single jurisdiction of Albay. Beginning with A at the provincial capital, the letters B and C mark the towns along the coast beyond Tabaco to Tiwi. We return and trace along the coast of Sorsogon the letters E to L; then starting down the Iraya Valley at Daraga with M, we stop with S to Polangui and Libon, and finish the alphabet with a quick tour around the island of Catan-duanes. Today’s lists of municipal officials, memorials to local heroes, even business or telephone directories, also show that towns where family names begin with a single letter are not uncommon. In as, for example, the letter R is so prevalent that besides the Roas, Reburianos, Rebajantes, etc., some claim with tongue in cheek that the town also produced Romuáldez, Rizal, and Roosevelt!

Excerpt from the 1973 introduction to Catálogo de Alfabético de Apellidos by Domingo Abella

[littlestpersimmon]

Jose Rizal, the philippine national hero (chosen by the American occupation but whatever lol) believed in peaceful means to achieve liberation, even tried to convince his contemporaries to NOT revolt. And the Spaniards still marched him off to prison where he was eventually executed via firing squad.

Andres Bonifacio, dude who rebelled against both the Americans and the Spaniards, started the revolution that lead to the philippines being among the first democracies of Asia and the entire global south. And the American occupation had him assassinated by the puppet government they set up.

Rizal grew up a member of the bourgeoisie, while Bonifacio grew up among the lower classes. And it didn't matter, because regardless of how differently they resisted, they were both killed by the oppressive regimes they were under. The difference is that Andres died fighting, dedicating his life to the rebellion, and his dream of liberating his people.

Anyways. If a lot of you guys are constantly picking between two lesser and greater evils, what difference do you have from medieval peasants waiting for a benevolent king to have mercy on you.

[zedecksiew]

Monument vs Shrine

In "Replica, Aura, and Late Nationalist Imaginings", the political scientist Benedict Anderson (most famous for his Southeast Asia scholarship and that definitive critique of nationalism, Imagined Communities) muses on the Lincoln memorial:

Within a temple explicitly mimicking "the religious edifices of a safely pagan Greece";

Mazda Corp floodlights designed "to ward off unnatural, indifferent sunlight";

The abstract enshrinements of "Lincoln's memory" in the "hearts of the people", while neither Lincoln's actual remains or any rites for people to perform are present;

The sense that ultimately the most reverential thing to do there is to take photographs.

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The Lincoln Memorial; the Jefferson memorial next to it; both figures repeated again on Mt Rushmore; both figures repeated ad nauseum on dollar bills.

These monuments are designed to proliferate. Not only must they create a sober, stately experience for the visitor---but they must also do so consistently, because they are built for visitors: the mass audience of the national population.

Otherwise they must be physically replicable: a memorial to a particular national hero, erected in every city.

The very format of monument-building get copied:

Post-colonial countries, in need of new myths, choose to manufacture national cenotaphs of their own, in imitation of Western models.

Malaysia has Putrajaya, a federal capital sprung ex nihilo from palm-oil agricultural land, its buildings all arches and onion domes and imitation arc de triomphes in inhuman scale, its avenues broad and utterly unwalkable in the tropical heat.

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At such monuments the citizen is cast as tourist.

Of this state-sanctioned object of devotion you are encouraged to take photographs, sell merchandise---ie: continue the process of replication. With every copy nationalism is reified.

God forbid you tweak the official monument with your own meanings, though! While writing this post, I found the following story, from December 2023:

"Lincoln Memorial temporarily closed after being vandalized with 'Free Gaza' graffiti"

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Anderson's essay cites instances where the personal and irreproducible sneak back into, or leak out from, or vandalise, national monuments:

"Early in the 1910s,"---in Manila's Cementerio del Norte, a municipal cemetery planned by an American urban designer---"a small pantheon was constructed for the interment of Filipino national heroes."

This monument was to emulate the Pantheon in Paris, where "great Frenchmen" of the national canon are memorialised.

But the Filipino version failed.

"Today, hardly anyone in the Philippines is aware of this dilapidated pantheon's existence ... What has happened is that the Filipino Voltaire and Rousseau have managed to escape, summoning devoted, often familial bodysnatchers, to convey them to home-town shrines."

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Not that the municipal cemetery itself is deserted. Custodians and their families live in the very mausoleums they care for.

Further, Anderson describes All Saints' Eve in the Cementerio del Norte, when thousands pour into its precincts.

But these multitudes adjourn to their own myriad family graves and small ancestral shrines: spending the day with immediate loved ones, "drinking, praying, gambling, making offerings ..."

Most of the Philippines' presidents have mausoleums in Norte, "but no one pays attention to them ... and only their separate descendants come to attend them."

"There is something exhilarating here that one rarely sees in national celebrations, maybe because the structure of the ceremonial is not serial, but entirely cellular."

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Hometowns re-exerting themselves within the nation; ordinary people scrawling meaning onto the edifices of the uppercase-P People. A multitude of the singular, instead of a single mass.

Despite nationalism's efforts to centralise and clone a national identity, still we mutate, still we bootleg, still we graffiti, becoming once again ourselves.

And---particular to post-colonial societies---in doing so we casually continue the work of liberation, sneaking the idea of freedom away from our own architects and elites and prime ministers, who would seek to seize its meaning for their own purposes.

The churches or mosques or temples to demos that the federal government builds are ours to transform. To take from. To ignore.

"No need. We've got our own shrines at home."

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National heroes become local saints and slip out of national control.

Does the Filipino government really control the various Rizalista sects? Karpal Singh is now a datuk kong, without his political dynasty's consent.

Across Melaka and Negeri Sembilan there once existed shrines dedicated to Hang Tuah, Malay folk hero, now a powerful figurehead of Malay-Muslim ethno-nationalism.

One such shrine existed at Tanjung Tuan:

With a plain altar---more a porch, really---of poured cement, for folk to leave food offerings;

Sunlight mottled from the surrounding forest, and fluorescent lights from a nearby gazebo;

A large rock, with an indent on its crown, said to be Hang Tuah's actual footprint;

The idea that this was a sacred space, where you could come to ask the spirits of the place for love or children.

The shrine that existed was sited in a forest reserve. It was swept clean of leaves by locals; its adherents belonged to all faiths and ethnicities; following the transactional logic of folk religion, those who had received its blessing would've paid for its maintenance.

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"Existed".

Because the Religious Department of the State of Melaka destroyed the Hang Tuah shrine sometime in 2022, for the crime of idolatry.

A double heresy. An affront to both orthodox Sunni Islam---

But also to the Malaysian state, that sanctions Sunni Islam as its official religion; whose nationalism requires its mythic hero to have only the attributes and magics the state ulama and historians say he must have---and no others.

Local shrines are destroyed, because the nation-state intuits them to be threats to its exclusive franchise.

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Image sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_five-dollar_bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_de_Triomphe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putrajaya https://www.facebook.com/PilipinasRetrostalgia https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/984521.shtml https://www.facebook.com/PerakPress https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malays_(ethnic_group)