Category: revolutionary routes

Family memory as fine history

By Alfred Yuson

If there’s one book that has impressed me overmuch with its conceptualization and execution, read ambition and fine writing, it’s Revolutionary Routes: Five Stories of Incarceration, Exile, Murder and Betrayal in Tayabas Province, 1891-1980 by Angela Stuart-Santiago.

The exemplary work is based on the memoirs in Spanish of Concepcion Herrera Vda. De Umali, as translated into English by Concepcion Umali Stuart.

That it’s a history book should not intimidate our usual readers, for there are lessons to be learned here: basically how an author can transmute extant material that may have only been originally of interest to family, clan, tribe or province into a nation’s pure gold.

I’d be very disappointed if it doesn’t grab a book award next year for its category, or even when ranged against all other titles produced this past year.

The foreword alone by the eminent Reynaldo C. Ileto attests to its importance:

“Revolutionary Routes is more than a family history across three generations. Author Angela Stuart Santiago has deftly woven together the memoirs, clippings, correspondence and other traces of her family’s past into a micro-history that spans the late 19th century up to the 1950s. While this book is rooted in the specific experiences of a family that lived in Tiaong and its adjoining towns in southwestern Tayabas (now Quezon) province, it also tells us much, from the ground up, about everyday life in the countryside under the shadow of successive imperial and national regimes. This book can also be read as a modern history of the Philippines.”

Indeed, deft has been the handling of material that turns precious only through projection and extension into what it may also or all mean, like poetry. And no, it isn’t simply interpretation or “deconstruction” at work here, but a loving, inspired, and often brilliant retelling that gathers both kinds of force — centripetal and centrifugal — to whip up the fervor of candor, imagination, personal mythos, narrative construct — yes, that very telling tapestry of all things cerebrated and celebrated — often accompanied by a Cheshire cat’s grin.

Fast takes:

“Señor (Rafael) Palma continued to relay to Conchita’s maestras the course that the revolution was taking, such as the attacks and advances in some provinces, towns, and the outskirts of the capital. By then the action was in Cavite where Emilio Aguinaldo was proving to be a knight in shining armor. And Jose Rizal was back in Fort Santiago, accused of treason and complicity in the evolution.”

Follow an excerpt from a young Palma’s recollection, then the author’s interspersed dialogue with this voice, as it does with other voices, such as that of the child Conchita:

“We did not hear the shots but we did wake up when we heard drums and shouting. We ran to the windows and saw a town crier flanked by two soldiers. He was striking a drum hanging from his neck, announcing at the top of his voice: ‘Ngayong umaga babarilin si Dr. Jose Rizal!’ (Dr. Jose Rizal will be executed this morning!) This was repeated every 10 minutes all over the streets of Tondo, probably in all the streets of Manila.”

Forward to the Spanish-American-Filipino contretemps of triangulation, with the home turf of Tayabas as scene, and the author providing a compressed picture show:

“Life was organized so that anytime the war’s wounded, sick, and hungry walked in, there would be food and medical treatment available. Every night, six men came to pound two sacks of palay and six women to air and clean the one cavan of rice produced for consumption the next day. Adjacent to the corral where the carabaos rested at night was another enclosure where farmers stacked the hay and grass for feed and also where the cooks broiled meats. Sometimes, as many as two hundred barbecue sticks with five pieces of meat on each stick would be cooking at one time.”

Conchita is made to “weigh in”:

“Several times we gave refuge and food to our soldiers who with courage and fervor sustained the war against the Americans bent on forcibly taking over the Republic. The Battalion Banahaw had its quarters here, and a company led by Captain Norberto Mayo of Lipa, and two other battalions.”

Why, this is fascinating storytelling, with many voices, of past and present, immersed in conversation, and the reader simply eavesdropping in sustained delight. And what we’ve quoted is only from the third chapter, on “Isidro, the Revolutionary,” which follows “Family Secrets” and “Paula, the Peasant.” Characters are introduced and allowed entry, if peripherally for some, into the dialogue.

The rest of the chapters are titled “Tomas, the Lawyer”; “Crisostomo, the Guerilla”; “Narciso, the Congressman”; and “Family & Country.” Thus do the five stories of incarceration, exile, murder, and betrayal (and then some: the back stories involving romance, gossip, farming rice and coconut, generational torch-passing, etc.) unfold and provoke an ear to be better pressed against memory’s “dear filial roar” of nation-building.

This is how history ought to be shared, or okay, dispensed or taught, in schools and hearths and homes. Not just by applying the now over-trendy “out of the box” mode, but by throwing out the box altogether. And allowing all of the gift items that come prancing through the family door equal, individual entry. And have them dance together in the moveable feast of a ballroom, enclosed or rustic, that spells clan party.

These convergent narratives aren’t just an airing of skeletons in aparadors and tocadors, but an orchestrated jangling of memory as of those nights of street caroling, from house to house, provincial boundaries go hang (as a mobile that could fascinate and bode well for the occupant of a rocking baby’s crib.) And we are all taught how a nation we’ve become, or are becoming, in more ways than one.

The book is published independently, that is, by StuartSantiago Publishing, Mandaluyong City and Pulang Lupa Foundation, Brgy. Lumingon, Tiaong, Quezon. And for the most part, made available through direct purchase. Check out www.revolutionaryroutesbook.com. You’d do well to curl up with this book through cloudy Christmas.

Author, author! Bravo, Angela Stuart-Santiago!

‘The past is present still’ in Revolutionary Routes

By Sylvia Mayuga

Its “uncharted maps” to “paths of self preservation where there aren’t any,” make Revolutionary Routes the perfect title for Angela Stuart-Santiago’s new book. “No one’s made into a hero” in this story of an old Tayabas clan “finding community in times of revolt and revolution.” Historian Reynaldo Ileto calls it an “alternative history,” with family secrets revealed casting new light on written history.

It began with a curious grandson asking his Lola about her life in bygone eras. Concepcion (a.k.a. Concha) Herrera vda de Umali, 88, first responded with Spanish proverbs, then succumbed to a writing fever. In a year, she filled ten notebooks with the handwritten Fragmentos de mi juventud (Fragments of My Youth).

Only her Spanish-speaking daughters could read it with ease, but with her passing in 1980, they saw what a pity it would be for her English-speaking descendants to miss out on Lola’s life. Her eldest daughter Nena struggled with incipient blindness to do the translation. Blind by the time she finished, she passed on an heirloom of memory to her writer daughter Angela.  Click here for the rest

Revolutionary Routes: Elias wrestling the crocodile

By Elmer Ordonez

IN the center of Tiaong, Quezon, stands a run-down mansion with a sculpture of Elias, the rebel in Rizal’s Noli , wrestling a crocodile. Both house and sculpture were designed by Tomas Mapua for the Herrera-Umali family in 1928 in a period of growing radicalism. The Elias sculpture may well be the “objective correlative” of Angela Stuart Santiago’ s Revolutionary Routes, a family saga dating back to early people’s struggles during the colonial/post-colonial periods.

As Nita Umali-Berthelsen (the author’s aunt) notes: “The crocodile was a symbol of greed. The struggle between Elias and the monster gave rise to many suppositions, some flattering, others not at all.” (Tayabas Chronicles, The Early Years, 1886-1907, 2002). Revolutionary Routes (2011) sheds new light on the context and meaning of the sculpture.

Creative non-fiction is a relatively new term for biography/autobiography, family chronicles, memoirs, and other literary forms that hew closely to fact but may be written in a style akin to fiction, modern or post-modern, with an eye for detail. As family history, Revolutionary Routes focuses on five characters, forebears of the author, starting with Paula, a peasant woman from Bina-ngonan. who marries Julio Herrera of Tiaong. For refusing to pay the exorbitant fee for the church burial of a child cholera victim, and burying instead the remains outside the church, Paula is jailed and then forced to walk with four guardia civiles from Tiaong to Tayabas. This recalls the experience of Rizal’s mother who was accused wrongly and made to walk from Calamba to Sta. Cruz, Laguna to be jailed.

Paula’s husband, Julio Her-rera, is also a peasant who manages to acquire land which produce enables them to send their son, Isidro, to school. He works as personal secretary of the commissioner of religious affairs, escribano, and notary. Through diligence Isidro Her-rera becomes a landowner who actively takes part in the revolution, and is jailed by the Americans.

A rising young politician Manuel Quezon befriends the Herreras and plays a role in the misfortune of Isidro’s son-in-law, Tomas Umali of Lipa, Batangas.

Tomas Umali, lawyer/writer running a school in Manila, meets Conchita Herrera, and doesn’t relent his courtship which leads to their union in marriage. He gives up his school and law practice in the city, and settles with Conchita in Tiaong. Quezon and Tomas are partners in a railroad expropriation case in the province. Later Umali is charged with estafa but Quezon, on his way to become resident commissioner in the US Congress, is not. Tomas flees to Macau where he joins the revolutionary council made up of political exiles Artemio Ricarte, Vicente Sotto, Macario Adriatico, and others. In time no less than US president William Howard Taft intervenes toward Umali’s exoneration in the railroad expropriation case. Who was behind this? The author speculates it was Quezon himself or his fellow masons who had earlier abandoned him.

Tomas’s son-in-law Crisos-tomo Salcedo’s run-in with Vicente Umali in UP law school yet and later over the job of justice of the peace in Tiaong is said to be at the root of his tragedy. Both are members of the PQOG (President Quezon’s Own Guerrillas); their rift ends with the brutal murder of Crisostomo.

Narciso Umali, Tomas’s son, also a guerrilla officer, enters post-war politics marked by electoral fraud in 1949 when Elpidio Quirino won over Jose P. Laurel in what was then said to be the dirtiest election ever. Narciso wins as Nacionalista congressman but is later falsely charged with rebellion complex with murder and arson over the Huk raid and burning of the house of the town mayor and the death of some policemen. This is the most trying ordeal of the Herrera-Umali family who struggle, Sisyphus-like, to win justice for Narciso. In 1958 Narciso is pardoned by President Carlos Garcia, and outlives all his tormentors.

The above summary does not do justice to the rich but somber tapestry that the author weaves from family memoirs, testimonies, letters, newspaper clippings, published historical material, court orders, petitions and interviews. It catalogues the friar abuses, corruption, double dealing in patronage politics, insurrections, and colonial /neocolonial greed as well as the customs, mores and cuisine at the turn of the century. In parts the book reads like a Jacobean play full of intrigue, betrayal, violence, and retribution.

The Narciso Umali case occurred during the height of the anti-communist drive involving President Magsaysay and his CIA adviser Col Lansdale in the early 50s. (My older brother, a scout ranger, was killed in action in 1953. As student and later instructor in UP I saw and became a victim of McCarthyite witch-hunting on campus.)

Revolutionary Routes is not only a social history of Tayabas but of a feudal/colonial country marked by rebellions and oligarchic politics. Historian Reynaldo Ileto says the book could well be an alternative history of the Philippines.

The author admits to an “anti-colonial bias” in writing the book. But aren’t histories written from the “perspective” of victors in the war or those who were vanquished and exploited by colonialism? Who else will express the racial memory and struggles of a people but writers and artists bearing witness.

Revolutionary Routes is indeed creative non-fiction at its best.

Revolutionary Routes…

… Five stories of incarceration, exile, murder, and betrayal in Tayabas Province, 1891-1980 is the title of the book i’ve been working on for the last 5 years (10 years if i count the encoding and editing of my mother’s translation) that i’m self-publishing and launching on august 20, come rain or come shine :)

it’s based on the memoirs of my lola concha (1886-1980) that she started writing in 1974-76 at age 88 (!) all in spanish, 894 pages typewritten double-space, bound into three volumes.

much of it is very personal and mundane and everyday, growing up in sariaya, tayabas (now quezon province), recounting the early history of her parents and grandparents, and then her pagdadalaga and being swept off her feet by a former revolutionary soldier who had fought side by side with miguel malvar, and how the family acquired land through sariling sikap, and developed these into coconut and rice plantations.

but parts of it, through the decades, are highly political — close encounters with the powers-that-be — in the time of the friars, of the 1896 revolution, of the fil-am war, of the american regime in the time of quezon, of the japanese occupation, and post-war in the time of magsaysay’s anti-huk campaign.

stuff i thought were eminently worth sharing asap (while waiting for a publisher of the entire work), especially because none of the five stories has made it to our history books.