AS IN years past, May 2 quietly passed, a cathartic denouement to the sound and fury of Labor Day.
As in years past, by all appearances, only the City of San Fernando remembered the significance of that day – May 2 – not only to the city, not only to Pampanga but to the whole Philippines.
May 2 marks the martyrdom of Chief Justice Jose Basco Abad Santos, caretaker of the national government of the Republic at the time of the Japanese Occupation, foremost Kapampangan.
In the great epochs of the history of the Philippines, Abad Santos stands shoulder to shoulder with national hero Jose Rizal: what the latter was to the Spanish colonialists, the former was to the Japanese imperialists.
A vignette of history from the website Kapampangan Heroes: At the outbreak of World War II, President Manuel L. Quezon temporarily moved the seat of Philippine government to the USA.
Together with Vice President Sergio Osmena and other cabinet members they escaped by submarine from the invading Japanese Imperial Forces as General Douglas MacArthur transferred his general headquarters to Australia to re-organize the Allied Forces.
Chief Justice Jose Abad Santos chose to remain in the Philippines as caretaker of the national government administration in the Philippines.
The Japanese Military Command repeatedly approached him to make him pledge allegiance to Japan and to the Japanese flag but he did not swear in. A Japanese colonel and his troops overtook him in Lanao and he was told that he would be shot to death if he would not swear allegiance to the Japanese flag.
He did not comply with the request of the Japanese so he was shot by firing squad.
Immortal of the heroic moment were Abad Santos’ parting words to his grieving junior: “Do not cry, Pepito, show these people that you are brave. It is an honor to die for one’s country. Not everybody is given that opportunity.”
Indeed, a patriot – and a martyr – of the highest order there.
“Don Jose Abad Santos’ life takes parallelism in today’s political firmament. The ultimate sacrifices have to be made for integrity and nationalism. Precisely what our citizens need for emulation, precisely what our leaders need for virtues. Precisely to be ever remembered.”
So spoke Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez after laying a wreath at the foot of the Abad Santos monument at the Heroes Hall.
Spoken two years ago, Rodriguez’s words find even greater resonance today. Given the reduction to ignominy of that hallowed seat that is the Chief Justice’s.
Rodriguez’s prescience manifests his keen sense of history – his is the keenest, unarguably, among all political leaders, current and immediately past.
No doubt forged in the anvil of materialism – dialectical and historical, and purified in the crucible of ideological praxis in the parliament of the streets, in the Marcos dictatorship, in the EDSA Revolution, in EDSA Dos, in the continuing struggle, albeit on a different front, for national liberation.
In celebrating Abad Santos’ martyrdom, Rodriguez impacts in all of us one bitter lesson of history: Unhappy is the land without heroes. But cursed is the nation that forgets its heroes.
We are that nation accursed. So shall we ever remember.
