Philippine National Artists and National Heroes [Archive] - Page 3

Gold Surfer

February 11th, 2008, 12:57 AM

Here's a brief explanation of the Canon Law from the Masonic point of view

http://www.io.com/~janebm/churchlaw.html

ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH LAW REGARDING FREEMASONRY

BY

REID McINVALE

Full Member, Texas Lodge of Research

Member, Holland Lodge No. 1, Houston, Texas

Note: This paper was presented before the Texas Lodge of Research A.F. & A.M. (TLR) on June 13, 1992 and has been published in volume XXVII of "Transactions", the official publication of the TLR. Further, this paper has also been reproduced and published in The Illinois Lodge of Research "Transactions", Volume 8, Number 2, page 14 (August, 1997). Publication of this paper without permission of the author is prohibited by law. This web page has no relationship to the TLR or any Masonic organization, and the author is solely responsible for its content. Questions and comments regarding this paper should be directed to the Editor of The Freemasons' Page of Reason and emailed to reid.mcinvale@gmail.com

RETURN TO FREEMASONS' PAGE OF REASON

Freemasonry is an important topic of discussion for Catholic theologians and clerics. The Roman Catholic hierarchy are, and historically have been, quite interested in Freemasonry. For over two hundred and fifty years the Vatican has been condemning Masonry and seeking to prevent the Lodge membership of Catholics.

Masons are of many opinions regarding the present state of affairs between the Roman Catholic Church and the Masonic Fraternity (or Freemasonry). There seems to be a growing assumption that antipathy between the church and Masonry is a matter of historical importance only and that relations are such that Catholics can become Masons without retribution by the church. Some brethren and some Catholics believe that since the Second Ecumenical Council, which was conducted from 1962 to 1965 and is informally known as "Vatican II", the attitude of the church has been to regard Freemasonry as an acceptable sphere for fraternal interaction. This paper is intended to present current Roman Catholic Church law regarding Roman Catholic membership and participation in Freemasonry, along with historical background to the development of that church law.

Roman Catholic Church Canon Law is defined as "That body of law constituted by legitimate ecclesiastical authority for the proper organization and government of the church as a visible society. The term Canon is used to designate the body of law that is proper to the Roman Catholic Church."1

Canon Law was for centuries a simple compilation of Papal pronouncements including constitutions and encyclicals, as well as Sacred Writings and other church generated documents, some of which were contradictory. The first generally accepted authoritative collection of Roman Catholic Church Law was what is now known as the Decretum of Gratian, formally known as Concordia Discordant Cononum. This work by a twelfth century monk includes apostolic constitutions, Canons of Sacred Councils and patristic texts, all with commentary. Gratian's commentary attempted to reconcile conflicting authorities and compose a comprehensive treatment of church law.

In later centuries various church councils promulgated laws, and popes made pronouncements, but a comprehensive, consistent and authoritative statement of church law was lacking. Finally, the Codex Iuris Canonici, commonly known as the Code of Canon Law, was promulgated by Pope Benedict XV on 27 May 1917 in the Constitution Providentissim Mater Ecclesia. It went into effect 19 May 1918, and constituted the first codification of church law.2

Whether under the influence of papal pronouncements or under the Code of Canon Law, the Church's attitude toward Masonry has been consistent. After Freemasonry became known to the world at large in the early eighteenth century, the church took notice of it, and objected to it. Eight popes have issued pronouncements either explicitly condemning Freemasons or those activities and principles identified with Freemasonry.3 The pronouncements took the form of constitutions, encyclicals, apostolic epistles, and addresses. Constitutions were the old style position papers or statements of church law issued by popes. Encyclicals are letters from the pope circulated to the bishops stating the church's position on certain matters.

The papal pronouncements relating to Freemasonry are as follows:

Clement XII, In Eminenti, 28 April 1738

This constitution was the first public written attack by the papacy against Masonry. In In Eminenti the principal objections to Freemasonry given were: that it was open to men of all religions; that there were oaths taken; that Masons denied clerical authority, and that Masons met in secret.4 Pope Clement forbade Masonic membership by Catholics and directed the "Inquisitors of Heretical Depravity" to take action against Catholics who became Masons or assisted Freemasonry in any way. He ordered excommunication as punishment for those who defied his ban.

Benedict XIV, Providas, 18 May 1751

This constitution confirmed In Eminenti and condemned Freemasonry on the grounds of its naturalism, demand for oaths, secrecy, religious indifferentism, possible threat to the church and state. It specifically forbids Roman Catholics from seeking membership in any Masonic group.5

Pius VII, Ecclesiam A Jesu Christo, 13 September 1821

The constitution Ecclesiam specifies excommunication for Freemasons and gives as reason for the censure the oath bound secrecy of the society and their conspiracies against the church and state. It also links Freemasonry with the Society of the Carbonari, known as the "Charcoal Burners", who at that time were active in Italy and were believed to be a revolutionary group.6

Leo XII, Quo Gravioria Mala, 13 March 1825

This constitution restated the Roman Catholic Church's objection to Freemasonry as a secret society, with oath-bound secrecy, which conspires against church and state.7

Pius VIII, Traditi Humilitati, 24 May 1829

This encyclical is considered by some Roman Catholic authorities to be an anti-Masonic polemic.8 It warned against a secret society whose "cunning purpose is to...lead the students along the path of Baal." It called for Catholics to "...eradicate those secret societies of factious men who, completely opposed to God and to princes, are wholly dedicated to bringing about the fall of the Church, the destruction of kingdoms, and disorder in the whole world."9 It also makes reference to the anti-Masonic pronouncements of previous popes.

Litteris Altero, 25 March 1830

This apostolic letter reiterated earlier papal condemnations of Freemasonry. It specifically condemns the influence of Freemasonry in education.10

Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, 15 August 1832

This was an encyclical on liberalism and religious indifferentism. Religious indifferentism is defined as "... the fraud of the wicked who claim that it is possible to obtain the eternal salvation of the soul by the profession of any kind of religion, as long as morality is maintained." This encyclical does not mention Masonry, but religious indifferentism is one of the charges often leveled against Freemasonry in papal pronouncements.11 Some Roman Catholic authorities identify this pronouncement as anti-Masonic.12

Pius IX, Qui Pluribus, 9 November 1846

This encyclical calls for Roman Catholics to fight against heresy. It decries those who put human reason above faith, and who believe in human progress. Strangely, it also attacks secret "sects" and "crafty" Bible societies who "force on people of all kinds, even the uneducated, gifts of the Bible." This encyclical also calls "perverse" religious indifferentism.13 While not mentioning Masonry directly, it criticizes those it does not identify for those same faults that the previous papal pronouncements imputed to Freemasonry, and is regarded as an anti-Masonic pronouncement by some Catholic sources.

.

Quibus Quantisque Malis, 20 April 1849

This pronouncement is referred to by some authorities as anti-Masonic,14 but is unavailable in English translation.

Quanta Cura, 8 December 1864

This is an Encyclical condemning "current errors", including naturalism. It calls liberty of conscience and worship the "liberty of perdition". It attacks communism and socialism directly, but does not mention Freemasonry.15 Quanta Cura is referred to by some authorities as an encyclical dealing with Freemasonry.16 An attack on naturalism is usually understood to be an attack on Freemasonry.

Multiplices Inter, 25 September 1865

This is an address made by Pope Pius IX condemning Freemasonry and other secret societies. In it, he accuses Masonic associations of conspiracy against the church, God and civil society. He further attributes revolutions and uprisings to Masonic activities, and denounces secret oaths, clandestine meetings and Masonic penalties.17

Apostolicae Sedis Moderatoni, 12 October 1869

This is a constitution relating to Canon Law. It clarifies the procedure regarding censure in Canon Law, changes some Canons and establishes a new list of censures.18 Some authorities state the document relates to Freemasonry,19 but it is unavailable in English translation.

Etsi Multa, 21 November 1873

In the encyclical Etsi Multa, Pope Pius condemned Masonry by stating that Masonic groups were among the "sects" from which "....the synagogue of Satan is formed ...."20

Leo XIII, Etsi Nos, 15 February 1882

This papal encyclical speaks about the conditions then prevalent in Italy and refers to a "pernicious sect" at war with Jesus Christ, which sect he blames for civil unrest in Italy.21 Some Roman Catholic authorities identify this as a reference to Freemasonry.22

Humanum Genus, 20 April 1884

The encyclical Humanum Genus is considered to contain one of the most vicious attacks on Freemasonry of any papal pronouncements. It states that "A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor a bad tree produce good fruit...the Masonic sect produces fruits that are pernicious and of the bitterest savor." It goes on to say that Freemasonry's goal is the destruction of the Roman Catholic Church, and that Freemasonry and the Roman Catholic Church are adversaries. Pope Leo further stated that many Freemasons are unaware of the ultimate goals of Freemasonry and should not be considered partners in the criminal acts perpetrated by Freemasonry. He also condemns the naturalism of Freemasonry, by which is meant the belief that "human nature and human reason ought in all things to be mistress and guide...they allow no dogma of religion or truth which cannot be understood by the human intelligence, nor any teacher who ought to be believed by reason of his authority."23 It is interesting to note that Brother Albert Pike stated that this encyclical was a "...declaration of war, and the signal for a crusade, against the rights of man...."24

Officio Sanctissimo, 22 December 1887

This is an encyclical epistle concerning Bavaria and includes a warning against Freemasonry. It states that Freemasonry is a "contagion", and is a "sect of darkness".25

Dall'Alto Dell'Apostolico Seggio, 15 October 1890

This encyclical, also known as Ab Apostolici, dealt with Freemasonry in Italy. It condemned the contemporary course of public affairs in Italy as the realization of the "Masonic programme". This alleged "programme" was said to involve a "deadly hatred of the Church", the abolition of religious instruction in schools and the absolute independence of civil society from clerical influence.26

Inimica Vis, 18 December 1892

This encyclical epistle to the bishops of Italy addresses Freemasonry in Italy. It reiterates the urgent necessity of combating the ends of Freemasonry, and entreats the bishops to work to convert victims of Freemasonry. It complains that some Roman Catholic clergy are entering into or cooperating with Freemasonry.27

Custodi di Qualla Fede, 18 December 1892

This is an encyclical epistle to the people of Italy attacking Freemasonry. It tells how to work against Freemasonry in ways such as guarding Catholic homes against infiltration, setting up Catholic schools and mutual aid societies, and establishing a Catholic press. It contains virulent criticism of Freemasonry.28

Praeclara, 20 June 1894

Praeclara is an apostolic letter to the rulers and nations of the world which calls for union with the church of Rome, and which warns against Freemasonry.29

Annum Ingressi, 18 March 1902

Annum Ingressi is an apostolic epistle to the bishops of the world reviewing the 25 years of his pontificate. It also urges resistance to Freemasonry.30

As one can tell from the increasingly harsh attacks on Freemasonry by the popes, the various papal pronouncements appear not to have impeded the progress of Masonry. The attitude of the Vatican has not always been the attitude of the clergy or of the people.

It is important to note that in the 18th century the then popes' condemnations of Freemasonry were not promulgated in America by the church's chief cleric, Bishop John Carroll. Bishop Carroll wrote in a letter in 1794, and spoke of the lodge question as follows: "I do not pretend that these decrees (against Freemasonry) are received generally by the Church, or have full authority in these dioceses."31 That wasn't to be the last time that American Catholics refused to freely support the Vatican's position regarding Freemasonry.

British Roman Catholics had a similar attitude toward church authority. There were Roman Catholic Grandmasters of English Masonry during the 18th Century, including Thomas, Duke of Norfolk who was Grandmaster of the Premier Grand Lodge of England in 1730. Robert Edward, Ninth Lord Petre, who was considered the head of the Catholic community in England, became Grandmaster of the Premier Grand Lodge in 1772 and served for 5 years.32

With the advent of the 1917 Code of Canon Law, the Church incorporated the attitude of previous papal encyclicals into something akin to statutory law. In Canon 2335 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law, the church held that "those who joined a Masonic sect, or other societies of the same sort, plot against the church or against legitimate civil authority, incur excommunication". This was explicit church law for decades thereafter.

After the Second Ecumenical Council (Vatican II) there began clerical questioning of the church's condemnation of Masonry. In 1968 a book was printed in Spain entitled La Masoneria Despues del Concilio (Masonry after Vatican II).33 The author was a Jesuit Priest, Father J. A. Ferrer Benimeli, whose thesis was that regular Freemasonry should not be condemned. He condemned irregular Freemasonry only, since it was atheistic and anti-clerical.

The growing ambivalence of the church's position regarding Freemasonry became official in 1974 when Franjo Cardinal Seper, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, sent letters to John Cardinal Krol of Philadelphia and others regarding the force and meaning of Canon 2335 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law.34 The Cardinal, doubtlessly prompted by the ecumenical fervor of the times, stated that the Canon still remained in force, but that since penal laws are subject to strict interpretation, excommunication would only be applicable to those Roman Catholics who joined organizations which actively plotted against the Roman Catholic Church. Given that Masonry does not plot against the Roman Catholic Church, the letter was interpreted by many to mean that the Cardinal's statement signaled that the ancient strictures against Roman Catholic membership in Masonry had been removed.

It will be remembered that in 1978 both Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul I died and Pope John Paul II was elected. With him, conservatives in the church regained power. Their influence can be felt by the back tracking and retreat from ecumenicism of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is an authoritative high level organization in the Vatican concerned with church law and purity

of doctrine. On 2 March 1981, just seven years after Cardinal Seper's letter, the Congregation retreated from borderline tolerance of Freemasonry. It issued the "Declaration on Catholic Membership in Masonic Associations".35 In this declaration, the letter of 1974 was blamed for giving "rise to erroneous and tendentious interpretations". By this declaration the Congregation was in effect saying that the old rules relating to Freemasonry were back in force.

The Roman Catholic Church presently operates under the new Code of Canon Law which was promulgated in 1983. This new Code revised Canon 2335 of the 1917 Code, and incorporated it into new Canon 1734, which reads as follows:" One who joins an association which plots against the church is to be punished with a just penalty; one who promotes or moderates such an association, however, is to be punished with an interdict."36 As can be seen, no longer does the Canon impose excommunication on Catholic Masons, or even mention Masons directly.

One interesting feature of the 1983 Code is that it appears to differentiate between simple lodge membership, the punishment for which is a "just penalty", and promoting or holding office in such a society, the punishment for which is an "interdict".

An "interdict" is a punishment or vindictive penalty by which the Roman Catholic faithful, remaining in communion with the church, are forbidden certain sacraments and are prohibited from participation in certain sacred acts. It is a censure. Those bound by a personal interdict are forbidden to celebrate or assist at divine services, and are denied ecclesiastical burial.37 It appears, therefore, that where Masonic groups are determined to have plotted against the church, Catholic officers of those lodges will be subject to a stiffer penalty than will regular members who are Catholic.

As a consequence of the new Code of Canon Law and Cardinal Seper's letter, the church was faced with answering the question `since the new Code does not prescribe a punishment for belonging to a Masonic organization, does that mean that the church approves of such membership as long as no plotting against the Roman Catholic Church occurs?' In other words, has there been a rapprochement between Masonry and Roman Catholicism? Numerous persons have, since the promulgation of the new Code of Canon Law in 1983, set out to answer that question. In this author's view, the question has been answered conclusively in the negative.

On 26 November 1983, the same year that the church adopted the new Canon of Church Law, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a statement declaring that "the church's negative position on masonic associations, therefore, remains unaltered, since their principles have always been regarded as irreconcilable with the church's doctrine...Catholics enrolled in masonic associations are involved in serious sin and may not approach holy communion."38

One can see how this new policy statement conflicts with the ecumenical nature of Cardinal Seper's 1974 letter and the changes in Canon Law. Clearly there had been retrograde movement in the church's attitude toward Masonry. The Congregation avoided directly overriding their 1974 statement by drawing a distinction between penal law and morality. They held that what was meant in their 1974 statement was that Catholics could not be excommunicated or otherwise punished for merely being Masons, insofar as the particular Masonic group to which they belonged did not attack the church. However, the Congregation held that it was nonetheless immoral to belong to Masonic groups because Freemasonry was, in their view, antithetical to the teachings and authority of the church. Clearly, the momentum toward a rapprochement between Freemasonry and the church had been lost.

Influenced by the statements of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the reversal of the short lived drift toward ecumenicism, in 1985 the United States Bishops Committee

for Pastoral Research and Practices published a report entitled "Masonry & Naturalistic Religion"39. The Pastoral Research & Practices Committee Report states that while one can no longer be excommunicated for being a Mason, it is none the less sinful to

belong to Masonic organizations. The rationale is that the principles of Masonry are irreconcilable with those of the church. The report goes on to quote a six year study of Masonry by the bishops of Germany and the study of American Masonry by Professor William Whalen.40 The Committee Report quotes those sources as stating that the principles and basic rituals of Masonry embody a naturalistic religion, active participation in which is incompatible with Christian faith and practice. Those who knowingly embrace such principles are "committing serious sin".

As could be predicted, and in line with its history, the American church at large is more tolerant of Freemasonry. Perhaps the attitude of American Catholics and the American church was best expressed in a letter from Bishop Fiorenza of the Houston-Galveston diocese, in which he said:

".... In the historical view, Freemasonry in Europe and Latin America has opposed the Catholic Church and has been

virulent in its anti-clerical attitude. To a great extent, however, this mentality is not typical of Freemasonry in the United States .... There is a concern that certain Freemasonry groups display all the elements of a religion, but forbid the mention of Jesus Christ within the lodge. This, too, is not exemplified in masonic groups in the United States but is found in other parts of the world. Most Masons in this country join for social and business reasons.

In general, there has been no conflict between Freemasonry and the Catholic Church in this country. Both organizations have existed in harmony in the United States...."41

While the apparent tolerance of American Catholics toward Masonry is encouraging, the Vatican and the U.S. Conference of Bishops have made determinative rulings by which American Catholics at large are expected to abide. The final nail in the coffin of any possible near term rapprochement between the Catholic Church and Freemasonry appears to have been a declaration published in the official Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, ".... The faithful who enroll in masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive holy communion.... In an audience... the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II approved and ordered the publication of this declaration..."42 Thus, the present pope is on record opposing Masonic membership for Catholics.

In subsequent editions of the newspaper the holding of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, approved by the pope, has been restated and substantiated. For those of a philosophical bent, the 11 March 1985, L'Osservatore Romano (English language edition) contains an article which argues that Masonry establishes a relativistic symbolic concept of morality unacceptable to Catholicism.43

Thus, and despite the Second Ecumenical Council, the hostile tenor of Roman Catholic Church pronouncements toward Masonry remains unabated, and official church attitudes and law are not meaningfully different from those of previous centuries. The atmosphere and tradition established by long dead European popes and Freemasons continues to haunt American Freemasons. By denying communion to Roman Catholics who are Masons, the church denies obedient Roman Catholics the opportunity to share in the brotherhood of Freemasonry, and Freemasons lose the opportunity to share fraternal bonds with many Roman Catholics.

Gold Surfer

February 11th, 2008, 12:59 AM

harveharve

February 11th, 2008, 12:46 PM

There's an old commercial building here in Cebu whose facade is emblazoned with Masonic Symbols..

Maybe this building was a masonic temple before it became a commercial center. Anyway I'll try to take a photo of it if I have time.

That is Lodge 128's Masonic Temple on Boromeo St. It is still a Temple dude though they rented out the ground floor.

GearX

February 12th, 2008, 08:21 AM

perhaps the most famous yet controversial mason in RP
http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x287/GearX_2007/another/another%202/rizal-1.gif

Lili

February 12th, 2008, 05:04 PM

batang_makulit

February 12th, 2008, 05:32 PM

:banana:Hmmmmmmmmm................... interesting thread

dreamtime07

February 13th, 2008, 07:23 AM

perhaps the most famous yet controversial mason in RP
http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x287/GearX_2007/another/another%202/rizal-1.gif

ngayon lang ako nakakita ng picture ni rizal na ganito ah! full body Shot!!:lol:

icarusrising

February 13th, 2008, 09:16 AM

Share ko lang...

Great Seal secrets revealed!

By MATTHEW LEE,
Associated Press Writer
Tue Feb 12, 4:03 PM ET

Conspiracy theorists take note: The myths surrounding one of America's oldest and most enduring national symbols are about to be debunked ... if you believe the government, that is.

The keepers of the Great Seal of the United States, the familiar emblem on the back of the $1 bill, want you to know what it is not. It is not a sign that Freemasons run the country, it has nothing to do with the occult, and it does not contain clues to a fabulous hidden treasure.

It is rather the nation's stamp of authority, sovereignty and power, gracing our cash and embossing the most important of documents from its home at the State Department, which has held it since the days of Thomas Jefferson, the first secretary of state.

Not that the Seal's symbols — the all-seeing eye, the unfinished pyramid, the Latin phrases, the bald eagle clutching an olive branch and arrows and the number 13 — aren't powerful.

They are, historians say. Yet their meanings have been misidentified, misunderstood and misrepresented almost since the Continental Congress first commissioned the Seal in 1776.

It would be another six years before the original design was approved and another 128 before it evolved into its current form. Along the way, a movement to decipher the Seal's meaning with ancient Egyptian, mystical and otherwise otherworldly explanations has gained currency.

The Internet age has seen an explosion in such conspiracy theories, many which have now been ingrained in public consciousness through the popular "National Treasure" movie franchise that serves up a combination of Masonic lore and historical myths in blockbuster Hollywood fashion.

Among them:

_That the Seal proves the domination of the United States by a powerful, quasi-religious cult. The Ancient Scottish Rite of Freemasonry is a perennial favorite of conspiracy theorists as some Founding Fathers were Masons and the Seal uses several Masonic symbols.

_That the Seal draws on Satanism or polytheistic ritual to promote a universal new world order under which Earth would be ruled by a single omnipotent government.

_That repeated references to 13 — the number of steps in the unfinished pyramid, stars in the constellation over the eagle's head, arrows in the eagle's claw, stripes on the eagle's shield, letters in the phrase "Annuit Coeptis" — demonstrate the power of 13 American families.

_That there are two seals: one in which the eagle's head faces the arrows for times of war and another in which the eagle's head faces the olive branch for times of peace.

All rubbish, according to historians, who say the Seal's symbolism is far less ominous or revelatory than many believe.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Seal's 66th and current custodian, on Tuesday inaugurated a new exhibition to commemorate its 225th birthday and trace the history and evolution of the symbolism.

"This exhibit honoring the Great Seal affirms our continued belief in the values of our founding," she said. "The Great Seal symbolizes the unity, strength and independence of a new nation, the United States of America."

The Seal will remain at the State Department but the interactive exhibit is designed to travel and curators hope it will dispel the rumors and educate Americans about the real meaning of the symbols.

Among the highlights:

_That known Masons like the first U.S. president, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin had no role in designing the final seal, which uses elements of traditional heraldry, such as the unfinished pyramid to symbolize a work in progress, arrows for war and an olive branch for peace. Masons share some of those symbols, but they have never been exclusively the domain of the order.
_That the phrase "Novus Ordo Seculorum" below the Roman numerals for 1776 at the base of the pyramid translates as "A New Order of the Ages" that began with independence and does not imply the United States will be the lynchpin of a sinister "New World Order."

_That the words "Annuit Coeptis" ("Providence favors") and the eye of providence that hovers over the pyramid refer to unexpected interventions of fate that assisted the colonists in creating a new country.

_That the references to 13 refer to the number of colonies that formed the original United States.
"People are just not aware of the complexity and intent of the symbolism and what our Founding Fathers were trying to do with it," said Priscilla Linn, senior curator at the U.S. Diplomacy Center. "The hidden treasure in the Seal is the courage and presence of mind of the people who created it and created these values for the whole country."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080212/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_great_seal_myths&printer=1;_ylt=As.qtg.cNPLJg0e53nlonACWwvIE

GearX

February 13th, 2008, 09:27 AM

deleted....ay naunahan ako ni icarus...:bash:

SUV111

February 14th, 2008, 04:27 AM

http://www.ancom2008.com/images/index_01.jpghttp://www.ancom2008.com/images/index_02.jpghttp://www.ancom2008.com/images/index_03.jpghttp://www.ancom2008.com/images/index_04.jpg

KARI SA BACOLOD!!!
The City of Smiles has opened its doors to the 92nd Annual Communication especially that pre-registration has already kicked-off.
Hosted by the Masonic District RVI-B in association with Negrense 200 Foundation, Inc., the ANCOM 2008 event will be held at the Bacolod Pavilion Hotel, the conference site, on April 23, 24, 25 and 26, 2008.

This year’s theme is “Live Masonically Towards a Better Society!”

Around 3,000 Masons from the district and from other parts of the world are expected to join this significant and memorable event.
In connection with this, pre-convention golf tournament and a raffle will also be held. A brand new Isuzu Alterra awaits the lucky raffle grand prize winner. Tours and other enriching activities will also be included in the itinerary.*
http://www.ancom2008.com/about.html

RhapsodyBrat

February 16th, 2008, 05:43 AM

sosyal ng GLP ha. may pa-Alterra pa.

on the other hand, naghost na ba uli ang Bacolod (Venus Assembly No. 11) ng grand assembly ng Rainbow?

habagat13

April 16th, 2008, 01:16 AM

forgive my ignorance guys, do mason members still go to chuch to attend mass?

Depends, if their religion requires them to go to church, then they go. If its a mosque, then to the mosque they go.

GearX

April 16th, 2008, 08:28 AM

re-post from Iligan City Thread

http://mindanao.com/photoblog/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/iligan-cdo-pics-279.jpg

Here is my friend, Bob from New York, who just got back from visiting Iligan City. Bob told me that this was the best vacation of his life! Glad to hear that, Bob.

http://mindanao.com/photoblog (http://mindanao.com/photoblog/?p=4093)

Mercato

April 16th, 2008, 10:02 AM

It's amazing why the Catholic Church practices HATE towards the Freemasons when Freemasons give shelter to a lot of Catholic children at the Shriner's Hospital for FREE.

I think the Catholic Church has done more damage in this world than the Freemasons from the Inquisition to Hitler.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=524844&page=3

I have to refer to my old post. It is important to emphasise that Pope Clement V already exonerated the Knights Templar & Jacques DeMolay in the 14th century. The Chinon parchment proving the exoneration was hidden for 700 years. The Templars were never heretics & they are the ancestors of the modern FreeMasons.

All that persecution through the centuries had been for naught. It is important to reiterate because most, if not all, of our national heroes were Masons & it will certainly enhance their prestige and reputations.

:)

rover3

April 17th, 2008, 02:24 AM

My lolo was a Mason, belonging to that lodge on San Marcelino Street. Didn't really know about it until LOOOONNNNGGGG after he passed away so I was never able to ask him about it.

But now the long nagging question is: was James Mason really a Mason? :lol:

GearX

April 28th, 2008, 06:22 AM

from Butuan City thread...

http://demolayphilippines.org/templates/demolay_philippines_front_page/images/sampleheader.jpg

12th Order of DeMolay National Convention

12th DANCON at Butuan City: 28 May - 1 June 2008

Congress Theme - "DAAP moving forward for a better DeMolay"

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3133/2435632757_5dc23a2f6b.jpg?v=0

The DeMolay Alumni Association of the Philippines (DAAP) announced recently the 12th DeMolay Alumni DeMolay Congress (12th DANCON) will be held at the Balanghai Convention Center, Butuan City this coming May 28 to June 1, 2008.

Hosting the event is the DAAP of North-Western Mindanao Jurisdiction, with Agusan Valley DeMolay Alumni Chapter # 2 as lead DAAP Chapter in cooperation with Agusan Valley Chapter, Order of DeMolay, Agusan Valley Assembly # 20, Order of the Rainbow for Girls, Orient of Surigao and The Agusan Bodies, A&ASR and Agusan Valley Lodge # 160 F&AM.

The annual congress is held for the purpose of developing comradeship among members of various alumni and as well as active DeMolay Chapters in the Philippines. "As well as improve relationship among the sisters (Rainbows and Job's Daughters) and most especially between the DeMolays and Dad Masons", according to an article in the DeMolay Philippines website.

The congress expects not only DAAP Chapter members, but as well as Senior DeMolays (not DAAP members), but also active members of the Order, sisters from the Rainbows and Job's Daughters and Dad Masons representing various chapters and Lodges all over the Philippines.

For further information, see Congress schedule at The DeMolay Philippines website or click
Butuan National Convention (http://demolayphilippines.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=103&Itemid=136)

kiretoce

June 17th, 2008, 09:21 PM

Do you care if Rizal is in heaven? (http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2008/june/18/yehey/opinion/20080618opi3.html)

Many patriotic Filipino Catholics, who, while being nationalist, also take their faith seriously, love Jose Rizal and his example. They agree that he should be the foremost national hero. They must, I suppose, also wish, as I do, that some definitive finding based on rigorous research and logical analyses, makes it an article of fact, not merely of faith, accepted by historians, Rizalian scholars and the National Historical Institute, that our hero indeed died a fully restored Christian and Roman Catholic.

Did he die a saint because he was in a state of grace when martyred by the Spanish colonial government after a court martial found him guilty of crimes he did not commit?

The author of the book, Rizal Through a Glass Darkly, does not only say Rizal possibly died a saint. A scholar, Fr. Javier de Pedro, a secular Catholic priest incardinated in the Opus Dei prelature, who has been a spiritual director of many, many souls since he was ordained in 1964, states unequivocally: “I am convinced that he received long ago the welcome of the Father to the house of Heaven.”

Rizal Through a Glass Darkly is literally a spiritual biography of Rizal. I have known its author since 1967. He holds a doctorate in industrial engineering from Barcelona’s Escuela de Ingenieros Industriales, which enjoys a reputation for excellence not just in Spain but in the whole of Europe. He also has a doctorate in Canon Law from the University of Navarre, Pamplona, Spain.

Many Filipinos today have a cynical attitude toward the Catholic Church, Christianity and the piety of those who pray. They will readily pooh-pooh Fr. de Pedro’s book, laughing at the mere idea of “a spiritual biography.”

Among serious Christians, however, whether Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant, spiritual biographies are taken seriously. To the genre of spiritual biography belong important additions to Church scholarship and historical literature.

Rizal Through a Glass Darkly is a valuable addition to Philippine historical studies.

Javier de Pedro charts the state of Jose Rizal’s spiritual life, the progress and detours he made in his journey to heaven. We see in this book how the hero’s mind worked about God, religion, the virtues, the Church and the friars, at every stage of Rizal’s life.

The references Fr. de Pedro used are concrete works available for all to examine and verify to test the priest—historian’s correctness, fidelity to the truth, objectivity and—important to Catholics who abide by the teachings of the Church—adherence to the sound doctrine. He used Rizal’s own letters, poems, diaries, essays and the Noli and the Fili. He also used letters written to Rizal by friends, relatives (including his mother) and critics alike. Fr. de Pedro also referred to news items and comments written about Rizal, his trial and his execution and to the testimonies of Rizal’s teachers, confessors and defenders, archival documents in Spain as well as the most popular and well-regarded books that used primary sources about Rizal—by Jose Arcilla, Austin Coates, Horacio de la Costa, Ambeth Ocampo, Rafael Palma, Fidel Villaroel, among others.

In giving his readers a profile of Rizal’s spiritual state through the three decades of his life, Fr. de Pedro does something no other book has done for us Filipinos who have more or less studied his life from earlier available biographies and Rizal-centered histories. Fr. de Pedro’s knowledge of the pastoral care of souls makes us realize for the first time the torments our hero must have suffered and the joys his soul must have enjoyed during events that, in our previous readings and studies, were just historical happenings that triggered some other actions and events that changed our country’s fate.

It will spoil the book for you if I go into detail about the hero’s deepest moral problems. And, Procopio, please don’t be so shallow as to think these have to do with his relations with beautiful women.

One of the things I did not know until I read this book is that, among the things that made Rizal decide that the frailocracia was the one biggest evil in the Philippines, was his misunderstanding of a brief message from his elder brother and mentor Paciano. The message was about an evil deed a Fr. Villafranca was doing to Rizal’s father. Rizal assumed Paciano’s evildoer to be a friar, when in fact Villafranca was a secular priest. This old priest was blackmailing Rizal’s father—threatening to expose the “dark” family secret (which to us today is something to laugh about) that Antonino Lopez, the good husband of Rizal’s sister Narcisa, was in fact the son of Fr. Leoncio Lopez, the parish priest of Calamba whom Rizal knew to as a great man. Rizal modeled El Filibusterismo’s Fr. Florentino on Fr. Leoncio.

portludlow

June 18th, 2008, 06:51 AM

orangejuice

June 19th, 2008, 01:40 PM

Maiba naman tayo, Rizal was executed sa Luneta di ba, nagmumulto kaya sya dun? Or sa Fort Santiago?

kiretoce

June 19th, 2008, 05:59 PM

Do you care if Rizal is in heaven? (2) (http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2008/june/20/yehey/opinion/20080620opi5.html)

Our foremost national hero decided to make it his mission to demonize the friars and the frailocracy as the one mammoth evil that must be fought and dislodged by Filipinos to end injustice, oppression and tyranny.

The anti-friar and blame-the-friars-for-everything outlook was not at all in the mind of that young Rizal who carved an image of the Sacred Heart and wrote prize-winning works honoring the Church, Mother Mary and God. The young Rizal, when he left for Europe without his parents’ knowledge, considered Dominicans of Santo Tomas and Jesuits of the Ateneo among his closest and most respected friends. These had nurtured his intellect and given him religious formation.

His mother also taught him love for the Church, religion and respect for Our Lord and Our Lady the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Teodora Alonzo imprisoned

The Mercados of Calamba (Jose Rizal’s real surname was Mercado) were not only mestizo grandees of Laguna, they were nationally respected. Rizal’s mother, Teodora Alonzo, was the niece of a deputy to the Cortez. She was a rich and educated woman, whose culture was much higher than many a Spaniard’s. But she was imprisoned—on the basis of the ridiculous charged made by the adulterous wife of her cousin, whose marriage Doña Teodora had tried to save, that Teodora had tried to poison her. This injustice of the guardia civil against his mother was festering in Rizal’s heart until he was in Spain. It must have hurt this child between 10 and 11 to know that among those who testified against his mother were the very officials who had benefited from the goodness of Francisco Mercado and Teodora Alonzo Mercado, people who dined often in the Mercado house.

Fr. de Pedro writes: She “was eventually acquitted, but only after suffering a two-and-a-half-year imprisonment. ‘My mother was forced by the mayor to confess to whatever they wanted . . . Weakened, frightened and deceived, she submitted to the will of her enemies.’ The mayor later recanted and begged Doña Teodora’s forgiveness—but only because the case had been raised to the Audiencia de Manila, which served as kind of Supreme Court.

“The second wound was caused by legal prosecution based on pure suspicion of sedition, without sufficient proof. The conspiracy of which [the Noli’s] Ibarra was accused of being the leader is a faint echo of a childhood mystery that was never properly solved. Were Frs. Gomez, Zamora and Burgos the real instigators of the Cavite Mutiny?” writes Fr. Javier de Pedro.

Fr. Burgos was a kind and wise soul who nurtured Paciano Rizal’s mind and talent when he was a student at the University of Sto. Tomas. In fact, Paciano was a student-resident of the house of Fr. Burgos. The young Jose Rizal felt Paciano’s pain and must have imbibed his elder brother’s feelings of revulsion—and rebellion—at the execution of Fr. Burgos.

Influence of the liberals and Masons on Rizal

When Rizal left the Philippines for further studies in Spain, he did not tell his parents because they would not have let him go. They knew that Spain was the hotbed of anti-Church, Masonic activism. His mother especially would have worried that her son would lose his faith in the emerging liberal Europe.

Fr. de Pedro makes it clear that when Rizal arrived in Spain in 1872 that country was politically and ideologically unstable. The memories of La Gloriosa—the 1868 revolution against Queen Isabella—were still fresh. For two years, mutinies and anarchy reigned. In 1870, the Cortes [the parliament] proclaimed that Spain would again be a monarchy. Then the Italian Amadeus of Savoy became king but he fled from what he called an ungovernable people, which gave the opening for a band of radicals and republicans to create the First Spanish Republic which ruled from 1873 to 1874. Socialists, liberals, Catholic liberals and conservatives, monarchists, everybody were trying to be the dominant voice in academe, parliament and the streets.

Rizal changed into the liberal, Masonic-minded person who had written the anti-friar and anti-Church Noli which Fr. de Pedro writes “from a purely theological point of view, [is] the story of a crisis of faith, a faith inadequately rationalized as the denunciation of the abuses of a system.”

The Fili, Fr, de Pedro writes, “is above all the story of a crisis of conscience that moved its author to renounce his original aim of seeking revenge and brought him at least to the threshold of faith.”

Exiled in Dapitan, arrested and tried, Rizal was constantly in the company of Jesuit priests who, by God’s grace, succeeded in bringing him back fully to the Church.

He had signed the retraction, gone to confession thrice and married Josephine Bracken.

Minutes before his execution, Fr. de Pedro writes, Rizal asked Fr. Balaguer, “Would God have forgiven me completely now?” “Yes, my son,” Balaguer answered him. “Then, if I gain plenary indulgence, I could still go to Heaven this same night?” “Yes, my son; prepare yourself well and repeat: Iesu fili David miserere mei; Miserere mei Deus, secundum misericordiam tuam.” Before the firing squad killed him, “Rizal kissed the Sacred Heart image he had carved twenty years before.”

kyle@1008

June 19th, 2008, 06:18 PM

^^ mmm... I don't know, call the heaven registration hotline 1-888-seebookoflife or
send an e-mail to simon_peter23@heavenlymail.divineintervention.com

Asturiano

June 20th, 2008, 12:49 AM

Jose Rizal based on what I read about him was a non-violent man. While he supported the Philippine revolution against Spain, he was at odds with the Katipunan on how to achieve it.

Our current political problems is in need of somebody to rally around. Are we ready to support a non-violent crusader like Rizal or a leader like Andres Bonifacio who has no qualms to use force to affect changes. :)

Rizal has never supported the revolution against Spain, in fact he was against it. He only wanted reform and equal rights for all filipino weather they are indio, mestizo, or chinese. He didn't support the revolution that Bonifacio wage against Spain even though Bonifacio got its inspiration from his novels. He believed that the country is not ready for independence because a large portion of its population were illiterate and that educating them first is the utmost priority that waging a war against the mother country. Rizal argued that even if they achieved full independence the few who are educated will only used their power over the poor. "What good is independence if the the slaves of yestersday will be the tyrants of tomorrow" if you look at the system that we have now. If Rizal was alive today, he would not be suprised in the poor ill managed states that we are now living under. Rizal said that is going to take at least a hindred years or so for the Philippines to be fully ready for independence. Right now, we are under the home rule since 1946. I guest is going to take another forty years for the country to be politically and economically mature.

Maxxclip

June 20th, 2008, 01:44 AM

^^tama ka. :D ni hindi pa nga nagde-debut yung bansa natin so talagang immature pa:)

renell

June 20th, 2008, 04:33 AM

^^tama ka. :D ni hindi pa nga nagde-debut yung bansa natin so talagang immature pa:)

How would you define it? Teenage promiscuity? Underage drinking? All of the above? :lol:

Jose Rizal was definately an interesting pick as our national hero. If I'm not mistaken the Americans had an influence in picking him "for us" as our national hero. They wouldn't have picked someone who fought against them in the Filipino-American War, someone like Miguel Malvar or Gregorio del Pilar. It's somewhat disappointing the ideals of our national hero (that the pen is mightier than the sword) doesn't seem to fit with the Filipino vision of nationalism (or what remains of it).

By the way, did he write only in Spanish?

Maxxclip

June 20th, 2008, 04:58 AM

^^dagdagan mo pa para ng choices para sagot e All of the Above :lol:

overtureph

June 20th, 2008, 07:12 AM

orangejuice

June 20th, 2008, 12:22 PM

well,nasa heaven kaya si rizal???

naalala ko tuloy nung college ako, ung prof namin sa rizal course, tuwing naglelesson sya, feeling nya kausap nya si rizal, his " imaginary " friend!

kiretoce

June 20th, 2008, 03:35 PM

^^ Well, that gives a new spin to "making history come alive!" :lol:

bitoy

June 20th, 2008, 06:23 PM

well,nasa heaven kaya si rizal???

naalala ko tuloy nung college ako, ung prof namin sa rizal course, tuwing naglelesson sya, feeling nya kausap nya si rizal, his " imaginary " friend!

Sa province namin in Bikol, meron mga Rizalistas. They believe that JPR is the reincarnation of Christ and they are both Asians. :)

absinthe_888

June 20th, 2008, 09:48 PM

i took some pictures of JPR's bday celebrations last thurs, you can view them at

http://cogiebaby.multiply.com/photos/album/24/147th_Birthday_of_Gat_Jose_P._Rizal_06.19.08

shamhoy

June 20th, 2008, 11:13 PM

bitoy

June 21st, 2008, 12:58 AM

^^ :lol: Did you really read the article? What's annoying on that? No one is claiming that Rizal is NOT a Filipino.

Asturiano

June 21st, 2008, 02:53 AM

How would you define it? Teenage promiscuity? Underage drinking? All of the above? :lol:

Jose Rizal was definately an interesting pick as our national hero. If I'm not mistaken the Americans had an influence in picking him "for us" as our national hero. They wouldn't have picked someone who fought against them in the Filipino-American War, someone like Miguel Malvar or Gregorio del Pilar. It's somewhat disappointing the ideals of our national hero (that the pen is mightier than the sword) doesn't seem to fit with the Filipino vision of nationalism (or what remains of it).

By the way, did he write only in Spanish?

Your right, The American had a big influence on making Rizal as our national hero. The American commisioner William Howard Taft realized that the Filipino peoples need hero or something they can look up to when the was over. The list of candidates were Rizal, Aguinaldo, and Mabini. Mabini was the most outspoken critique of the American regime in the islands while Aguinaldo was still continued to wage war against them. For this reason, the two who was still alive and resisting American rule was not chosen. In the case of Rizal he was already dead by this time and could not voice his view and since he was killed by the Spaniard the American want to point the blame on Spain and its colonial misruled of the island in order to covered up the thousands of atrocities they committed during the Philippines - American War.

flesh_is_weak

June 21st, 2008, 09:05 AM

i finally convinced myself to finish reading Rizal's travel diary...wow, how are we Filipino commoners supposed to relate to this extravagant globe-trotter?

le Reine

June 21st, 2008, 09:16 AM

i finally convinced myself to finish reading Rizal's travel diary...wow, how are we Filipino commoners supposed to relate to this extravagant globe-trotter?oh diba ang social niya. :lol: ka-rubbing elbows niya nga lang si Senator Stanford nung pumunta siya ng US. :lol:

icarusrising

June 21st, 2008, 09:17 AM

Your right, The American had a big influence on making Rizal as our national hero. The American commisioner William Howard Taft realized that the Filipino peoples need hero or something they can look up to when the was over. The list of candidates were Rizal, Aguinaldo, and Mabini. Mabini was the most outspoken critique of the American regime in the islands while Aguinaldo was still continued to wage war against them. For this reason, the two who was still alive and resisting American rule was not chosen. In the case of Rizal he was already dead by this time and could not voice his view and since he was killed by the Spaniard the American want to point the blame on Spain and its colonial misruled of the island in order to covered up the thousands of atrocities they committed during the Philippines - American War.

It was not difficult to promote Jose Rizal as the national hero. He was already considered a hero by the Filipinos even earlier. He was an inspiration to the Katipuneros.

shamhoy

June 21st, 2008, 09:30 AM

^^ :lol: Did you really read the article? What's annoying on that? No one is claiming that Rizal is NOT a Filipino.

The main gist of the article pertains to Rizal's chinese bloodlines. It is a subtle way of saying that Jose Rizal, the great Malayan, wasnt really as pure a Malayan as he was known to be. Perhaps, we ought to replace him with either Lapu-Lapu or Andres Bonifacio. I have nothing against the Chinese, or those people with Chinese bloodlines. I am sure they are as F*ck up as any other human races in the world. Just leave us, non-Chinese ancestried people, something with which we could be proud of. You can call Kris Aquino your own for all i care :nuts:

bukid

June 21st, 2008, 09:41 AM

^^ but that's the truth, even his maternal bloodline is composed of chinese mestizas and mestizos.

in fact, he has more chinese bloodlines than say malay because the malay bloodlines had already been diluted by the spanish bloodlines on his maternal side.

if i am correct, he was being called a chinese by the spanish court that sentenced him to death.

bitoy

June 21st, 2008, 04:19 PM

The main gist of the article pertains to Rizal's chinese bloodlines. It is a subtle way of saying that Jose Rizal, the great Malayan, wasnt really as pure a Malayan as he was known to be. Perhaps, we ought to replace him with either Lapu-Lapu or Andres Bonifacio. I have nothing against the Chinese, or those people with Chinese bloodlines. I am sure they are as F*ck up as any other human races in the world. Just leave us, non-Chinese ancestried people, something with which we could be proud of. You can call Kris Aquino your own for all i care :nuts:

Wow! what an attitude... :lol: And you call yourself a Filipino? :lol:

Don't worry kiddo, I'm leaving you alone with all your problems in life. :D

portludlow

June 21st, 2008, 08:31 PM

Rizal has never supported the revolution against Spain, in fact he was against it. He only wanted reform and equal rights for all filipino weather they are indio, mestizo, or chinese. He didn't support the revolution that Bonifacio wage against Spain even though Bonifacio got its inspiration from his novels. He believed that the country is not ready for independence because a large portion of its population were illiterate and that educating them first is the utmost priority that waging a war against the mother country. Rizal argued that even if they achieved full independence the few who are educated will only used their power over the poor. "What good is independence if the the slaves of yestersday will be the tyrants of tomorrow" if you look at the system that we have now. If Rizal was alive today, he would not be suprised in the poor ill managed states that we are now living under. Rizal said that is going to take at least a hindred years or so for the Philippines to be fully ready for independence. Right now, we are under the home rule since 1946. I guest is going to take another forty years for the country to be politically and economically mature.

Does this mean he was against independence from Spain? ....or just against violence? Is he under the illusion that Spain will give us independence without a fight? Is he along the mold of Mahatma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela calling for rebellion in a passive way but an uprising just the same?

It will be interesting to know what was on his mind in opposing the katipunan of their plans for an uprising.

Rizal and the Katipuan
http://www.joserizal.ph/kt01.html
On June 21, 1896. Dr. Pio Valenzuela, Bonifacio’s emissary, visited Rizal in Dapitan and informed him of the plan of the Katipunan to launch a revolution. Rizal objected to Bonifacio’s bold project stating that such would be a veritable suicide. Rizal stressed that the Katipunan leaders should do everything possible to prevent premature flow of native blood. Valenzuela, however, warned Rizal that the Revolution will inevitably break out if the Katipunan would be discovered.

Sensing that the revolutionary leaders were dead set on launching their audacious project, Rizal instructed Valenzuela that it would be for the best interests of the Katipunan to get first the support of the rich and influential people of Manila to strengthen their cause. He further suggested that Antonio Luna with his knowledge of military science and tactics, be made to direct the military operations of the Revolution.

Asturiano

June 22nd, 2008, 04:22 PM

Does this mean he was against independence from Spain? ....or just against violence? Is he under the illusion that Spain will give us independence without a fight? Is he along the mold of Mahatma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela calling for rebellion in a passive way but an uprising just the same?

It will be interesting to know what was on his mind in opposing the katipunan of their plans for an uprising.

I guest we can call him both. As i said in the earlier post, Rizal knew that the Philippines is not ready for independence. What he was fighting for and his fellow patriot while in Spain was equality. He and other well educated filipinos wanted Spain to treat the Philippines not as a colony but like her own province and give the Philippines representation in the Spanish Cortes. He also wanted to reform the law of the islands to make them more applicable to all peoples. regardless of races. He also wanted the religious orders whom he despised just like many other Filipinos to have no part in the affair of states like what we know today as separation of church and states. Rizal has never wanted violence for what he was fighting for, but other radicals like Bonifacio who misunderstood his ideal thought that the only way is through violence.

Animo

June 29th, 2008, 09:23 PM

Blooey P. Singson (http://www.mb.com.ph/YTCP20080630128410.html)

With the 'Complete Jose Rizal, NHI and Filipiniana.net deliver Rizal in equal measure, providing a more balanced and accurate impression of both the man and the hero.

Over the years, hundreds of books have been produced about Rizal, ever since the Rizal Bill (Republic Act 1425) was passed in 1956, mandating the inclusion of the study of Rizal’s life and works in school curricula.

Filipino students are just too familiar with the stories of the moth and flame, the rough piña shirt and the missing slipper; Rizal’s education and travels abroad; his novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo; his exile in Dapitan; and his trial and martyrdom at Bagumbayan.

Most Filipinos believe they know everything that there is to be known about Rizal, when the general information is actually just a very small component of the complex picture that is the Philippines’ national hero.

To shed more light on the life and works of Jose Rizal, Filipiniana.net, a digital library of Philippine studies resources, has launched the Complete Jose Rizal online at http://www.filipiniana.net/rizaliana.jsp, conceived in time for the national hero’s 147th birthday.

Online Rizal canon

The Complete Jose Rizal brings a wealth of knowledge on Rizal from both primary and secondary sources – a complete bibliography of all of Rizal’s works and correspondence, including full-text versions of Rizal’s novels, poems, and essays.

"The Complete Jose Rizal is an attempt to create a canon, in the same way that others have put together all of Shakespeare’s works, such as the MIT’s The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (http://shakespeare.mit.edu)," states Gaspar Vibal, founder of Filipiniana.net.

The site is a joint project between the Vibal Foundation and the National Historical Insitutite, itself borne out of the 1961 Jose Rizal National Centennial Commission (JRNCC). Its Escritos de Jose Rizal project published Rizal’s complete literary canon in dozens of volumes, with translations from Spanish into Tagalog and English and many key Filipino languages.

"That effort has never been surpassed, but many of the books published by the JRNCC are no longer distributed or in print, particularly Rizal’s Spanish works," Vibal notes. "The website addresses that rarity and makes the whole canon available for free 24 hours a day, seven days of the week, on the Internet."

Rizal's letters

Central to this voluminous collection are 954 letters written by and to Rizal, who was a prolific and eloquent correspondent.

The Epistolario Rizalino will be fully published in the original Spanish, along with the Tagalog and English translations.

The site also contains an image gallery showcasing over 100 photographs of Rizal and the people closest to him, his artworks, and the places he visited during his travels.

"The site aims to be the definitive repository of all of Rizal’s known cultural output," Vibal adds. "This is why the site’s first publication is the complete bibliography of his correspondence, prose, poetry, and artistic works."

Unlike other websites which contain full-text versions as flat HTML or web files, the contents of The Complete Jose Rizal are fully-indexed and searchable to the ultimate keyword, marrying bibliography (the study of books) with technology, using MySQL, an open-source database, to store and index everything.

"For the letters we are using the masterful bibliographies compiled by Wenceslao Retana and Luis Montillia, while Angel Tiaoqui Hidalgo’s bibliography serves as the basis for the listing of his literary and artistic works" adds Vibal.

A team of librarians and content specialists assign subject headings, keywords, executive summaries and hyperlinks to all the content to facilitate searching and understanding. Users of the site can research a topic, such as the image of Maria Clara in Rizal’s novels, and the search technology easily allows the user to identify all the specific pages in which that search term appears.

"Fortunately for us, technology is the handmaiden to this monumental project. So much open source software is available, and the costs of storage and bandwidth are virtually nil, so technology allows us to fulfill this outsize ambition. We are also buoyed on by the many volunteers around the world who truly love this man and his writings," Vibal says.

The man and the hero

With the Complete Jose Rizal, NHI and Filipiniana.net deliver the man and the hero in equal measure, providing a more balanced and accurate impression of both the man and the hero.

"Rizal has remained an enigma through the ages," Vibal asserts. "Did he support the ideas of the revolution? Did he retract? Was he ever a Catholic? Did he marry? Was he gay? Was he really a heretical free thinker? All of these ageless questions can be answered by reading his works, especially his letters, which are a direct link to his mind and soul. There is also a collection of sketches made by Rizal that are considered ephemera, but reveal the playful and sensitive side of the man."

Teachers, students, and any lover of literature will be continually refreshed by delving into Rizal’s corpus of work.

"Rizal himself preferred to collect the complete works of writers and not just a selection," Vibal points out. "Rizal wrote in April 1888 to Mariano Ponce, ‘I believe that with regard to great men, everything is worthy of study, and that it is very difficult to state absolutely which (works) are better and which are worse’."

The Complete Jose Rizal is part of the Vibal Foundation’s commitment to free learning for all through digital platforms.

"The site is still a work in progress – we plan to include a public graffiti board on the site to invite netizens to react, comment, and annotate our national hero, to copy, paste and remix and match Rizal into their own creative works," concludes Vibal. "It is an ambitious undertaking, and it will take many long years to publish all his cultural works online, but this is a great opportunity for Filipinos to see and appreciate the enormity of Rizal’s contribution to Philippine culture."

Lili

August 4th, 2008, 07:13 AM

Rizal's ‘rags-to-riches’ ancestor from South China

By Wilson Lee Flores
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 11:21:00 06/18/2008

QUANZHOU CITY, China--In the annals of the world's top ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs, immigrant tycoon Don Domingo Lamco (Chinese name: ''Cue Yi-Lam,'' also pronounced ''Ke Yi-Nan'' in Mandarin) of Laguna province, the Philippines will eventually rank high in importance due to the greatness of Dr. Jose Rizal, the Philippine national hero who was his direct heir.

Five Rizal descendants made a historic homecoming to the hero's ancestral village of Siongque (pronounced ''Zhang Guo'' in Mandarin) in Losan district, Jinjiang City, Fujian province, south China last April 2, just three days before the ancient Ching Ming Festival when Chinese people traditionally pay homage to their ancestors.

Agence France Presse (AFP) said 10,000 people gave a grand welcome in Siongque. Many Filipino businessmen now propose the construction of a1.2-hectare Rizal park and museum in Fujian as ''symbols of the enduring friendly relations between the Philippines and China.''

In May 1998, this writer had lunch at the home of Rizal's grandniece Asuncion Lopez-Rizal Bantug and told her it was possible to trace the hero's Chinese roots. In February this year, businessman Manuel O. Chua and this writer successfully verified the roots of Rizal based on South China genealogical records and a 1913 book donated by the late Justice Roman Ozaeta (father of former PCIBank president Antonio Ozaeta) to the Philippine National Library. Authored by the American historian Prof. Austin Craig, the book ''Lineage, Life and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot'' gave the first Philippine verification of Rizal's Chinese roots in the chapter on ''Rizal's Chinese Ancestry. ''

Domingo Lamco had specified Siongque in Manila church records as his home village near Chinchew: ''Siongque Village of Fujian province indeed exists near the historic city of Quanzhou, which is pronounced Chuanchow, meaning ‘City of Spring.’'' The rural areas of Jinjiang (now a city), Lamoa, Hui-Wa, Chio-Sai, An-Khue and others under Quanzhou are the ancestral places of 80 percent of the top Filipino entrepreneurs of Chinese descent.

Rizal's eminent ancestors

Siongque was the rural ''barrio'' where entrepreneur Domingo Lamco was born and educated. He was the 19th generation of the first Cua who settled in Siongque. The Cua clan of south China and Asia trace their origins 3,000 years ago to patriarch Chua Siok-To in the Yellow River basin of central China, in that area now called Henan province. Duke Chua Siok-To was the fifth son of the political genius who founded the Chou Dynasty and his eldest brother later became the king. This era was before the rise of a unified China under first Emperor Chin Shih Huang-Ti.

Descendants of Chua (also pronounced ''Tsai'' in Mandarin or ''Choy'' in Cantonese) include some of the world's richest billionaires according to Forbes magazine-- Taiwanese Tsai Wan-Lin of Cathay Life Group and Indonesian 'Tobacco King' Rachman Halim (Chua To-Hing) of the Gudang Garam Group. Another clan member was the late Philippine 'Sugar King' and philanthropist Antonio Roxas-Chua. Another heir of patriarch Chua Siok-To started the clan of Cua (pronounced ''Ke'' in Mandarin, also spelled as ''Qua'' or ''Koa,'' of which Domingo Lamco and Dr. Jose Rizal were direct male descendants). Lamco was the founder of the entrepreneurial Mercado clan in Laguna and the great-great-grandfather of Dr. Jose Rizal.

From March 31 to April 7, this writer accompanied and acted as interpreter in South China to the five Rizal heirs--businessman Antonio ''Noni'' Lopez-Rizal Bantug Jr., Leandro Bantug Jr. (whose father Dinky owns a top furniture firm and the MBA basketball team Manila Metrostars), Raul Jose Rizal Tan, Ricardo Consunji III and Ditas O. Consunji. Noni's 78-year-old mother Asuncion is the granddaughter of Rizal's elder sister Narcisa and author of two important Rizal biographies.

Lamco’s Village

The five Rizal heirs were accompanied by 200 Cua-Chua clan members from the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan and China in the sentimental journey to the village of Domingo Lamco. The entire 5,000-population of Siongque Village and thousands of others from nearby villages lined all the streets for a grand welcome. There were nonstop firecracker blasts, the local school was closed, red banners filled the walls saying ''Welcome Home, heirs of Domingo Lamco and Jose Rizal from the Philippines,'' a thousand small children in red waved flower bouquets, and ancient rites were held in two village temples. It was a welcome befitting an emperor.

Noni Bantug delivered a speech expressing hope that the memory of Rizal's Chinese heritage would strengthen Philippine-China relations. Stanford-educated Ricardo ''Bombit'' Consunji III (Chinese name: Cua Yeng-Liong), with Philbank director Francis Chua's help in drafting his speech in fluent Mandarin, impressed the audience by speaking about his ''lolo'' Jose Rizal. Rizal himself was fluent in the Chinese language and researched Chinese historical data referring to pre-colonial Philippines to debunk Spanish claims that the country had no early culture.

Bicolano trader Melanio Cua Fernando said: ''Our village had never seen such a grand celebration, not since 1948 when Bicolano tycoon Qua Chee Gan, another son of this village, returned to Siongque to donate the local school.'' In the pre-war era years to the pre-martial law 1970s, immigrant Qua Chee Gan was the ''rags-to-riches'' trader who became Philippine ''Copra King.'' Based in Tabaco, Albay, Qua vigorously pushed Philippine copra exports and was also a leading philanthropist.

Qua was so well respected for his ''shinyung'' or trustworthiness that company drafts with his signatures were considered then more valuable than cash by traders in the Bicol region and Quezon province. One of his agency managers based in Daet, Camarines Norte was the late Fernando S. Vinzons Sr., top Bicolano businessman and father of former BIR Commissioner Liwayway Vinzons Chato.

Merchant, mayors, martyr

Domingo Lamco was a fearless entrepreneur who ensured not only the survival of his descendants, but also their socio-political leadership as highly educated ilustrados. Lamco achieved business success despite cruel odds, since the Spaniards persecuted the Chinese and Chinese mestizos, unfairly requiring them to pay higher taxes and even at times massacring them.

Persecutions toughened the Chinese traders, forcing them to become resilient and resourceful. Baptized in the Catholic church of Manila's Parian Chinese ghetto in June 1697 at age 35, Domingo Lamco later moved to Biñan, Laguna, here he prospered and became a leader of the Chinese community. To free his heirs from the Spanish regime's anti-Chinese racist policies, Lamco gave his clan the new surname ''Mercado'' (meaning ''market'' in Spanish) so that his heirs would not forget their Chinese merchant roots.

Rizal's ancestors were survivors of the Spanish colonial regime's racism and despotism. Domingo Lamco wed Inez de la Roza, daughter of the successful immigrant trader from Chuanchow named Agustin Chinco. Lamco's son Francisco Mercado and grandson Juan Mercado married Chinese mestizos; both served as distinguished mayors of Biñan for a total of five terms.

Juan's wife Cirila Alejandra was the daughter of an immigrant trader and Domingo Lamco's baptismal godson Siong-co. By the time of Rizal's father, their branch of the wealthy clan moved to Calamba, built the first stone house in the whole town, owned the first piano, the first carriage, owned a flour mill, a dye factory, increased landholdings and sent their children to the best schools. Jose Rizal Mercado had to change the family surname again before entering Manila's Ateneo to avoid Spanish persecution since his elder brother Paciano Mercado was close to the martyred Filipino priest, Jose Burgos. Rizal himself died a martyr in 1896 at age 35, becoming a hero whose powerful ideas and moral courage helped liberate the Filipino nation from Spanish oppression.

It is fitting that much of Asia now honors the immigrant trader Don Domingo Lamco of Laguna. His ''rags-to-riches'' career may not yet be as well-known as those of immigrant billionaires Li Ka-Shing of Hong Kong, Liem Sioe-Liong (Sudono Salim) of Indonesia, prewar ''Rubber King'' Tan Kah-Kee of Singapore, John Gokongwei Jr., Tan Yu or Henry Sy of the Philippines, or even that of 19th century empire-builder Jose Cojuangco I of Tarlac, but Don Domingo Lamco's legacy of courage and excellence embodied by his heir Dr. Jose Rizal has immeasurably enriched Philippine national life.

April 26, 1999 - Inquirer Internet Edition

Copyright 2008 INQUIRER.net. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://globalnation.inquirer.net/features/features/view/20080618-143357/Rizals-rags-to-riches-ancestor-from-South-China

This is annoying. Jose Rizal is FILIPINO. He is not Chinese. Why do these people always claim everything. :nuts:

Some more info for you from the National Historical Institute website.

http://www.nhi.gov.ph//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=40

Rizal’s Paternal Lineage
by Ma. Cielito G. Reyno

Rizal’s paternal lineage can be traced back to the village of Sionque in Chin-Chew (or Chang-chow) district in Fujian, southern China, near the prosperous and ancient trading port of Zaiton. Among his earliest identifiable ancestors were Siang-co and Zun-nio who gave birth to a son who later acquired the name Lam-co, which in English means, “Lam, Esquire”. Lam-co migrated to the Philippines sometime during the late 1600s.

In 1697, at the age of 35, Lam-co was baptized at the San Gabriel Church in the predominantly Chinese community of Binondo. He adopted “Domingo” his baptismal day, as his first name. He married a Chinese mestiza said to be half his age named Ines de la Rosa, who belonged to an entrepreneurial family in Binondo. Ines was the daughter of Agustin Chin-co and Jacinta Rafaela, a Chinese mestiza resident of the Parian.

With the rigid social stratification prevailing at that time, it was evident that Lam-co did not come from the ranks of coolies, the class of migrant menial workers from China. Through his association with two Spanish friars, Fr. Francisco Marquez, authority on Chinese grammar, and Fr. Juan Caballero, he was invited to settle in the Dominican estate of San Isidro Labrador in Biñan, Laguna. Lam-co was said to have been instrumental in the building of the irrigation works known as Tubigan, which made the area where it was situated the richest part of the estate. He and his family lived in the estate along with fellow immigrants from Chin-chew, China.

Lam-co and Ines de la Rosa had a son born in 1731. They named him Francisco Mercado, believed as a gesture of gratitude to another friar of the same name, and also after a Spanish mestizo friar renowned for his botanical studies. The surname “Mercado”, which means “market” in Spanish, was quite appropriate, too, since many ethnic Chinese were merchants, and many having adopted the same surname.

In 1771, Francisco Mercado married Bernarda Monica, a native of the nearby hacienda of San Pedro Tunasan, then, like Biñan, was populated by many Chinese migrants, or Chinese mestizos. They had two sons named Juan and Clemente. For a short period, he settled his family at the hacienda of San Juan Bautista in Calamba. However, hostility towards the Chinese immigrants as well as natives of Chinese descent- a backlash from the British invasion of Manila in 1762, during which the local Chinese supported the British against the Spaniards- forced Francisco Mercado to return his family to Biñan.

Francisco Mercado owned the largest herd of carabaos in Biñan. He was active in local politics. He was elected as the town’s capitan del pueblo around 1783. Popular and good-natured, he often stood as godfather during baptisms and weddings, as Biñan’s church records revealed. He died in 1801.

His son, Juan Mercado married Cirila Alejandra, a daughter of one of Domingo Lam-co’s godsons, and who hailed from Tubigan. The couple had 13 children. They lived in large house made of stone in the center of Biñan. (One of his children, Francisco Engracio, born in Biñan sometime in April 1818 was the father of Jose Rizal).

Like his father, Juan Mercado also served as the town’s capitan del pueblo in 1808, 1813, and 1823. On many occasions, “Capitan Juan”, as his town mates referred to him, was the hermano mayor in religious and social affairs. Like his wife, he was benevolent and hardworking. His status earned him the privilege of electing the Philippine representative to the Spanish parliament in 1812.

He died when his son, Francisco Engracio, was only eight years old.

With his sisters and brothers, Francisco Engracio helped his widowed mother in managing the family’s business. He married Teodora Alonso Realonda de Quintos, a daughter of one of Manila’s most distinguished families in 1848.

Sometime after 1849, in compliance with Governor Claveria’s decree ordering Filipinos to adopt Spanish surnames (to facilitate documentation, for, many Filipino families shared the same family name such as “De La Cruz”, etc.)-- Francisco Engracio Mercado added added “Rizal” to the family surname, from the Spanish word “ricial”, which connotes a green field or pasture.

Francisco moved his family to Calamba, where he farmed lands leased from the Dominican friars, growing sugar cane, rice and indigo. He also started a mixed orchard engaged in trade, raised poultry, in all of which he was assisted by his wife Teodora. In time, Franciso’s family became one of the wealthiest in Calamba.

Lili

August 4th, 2008, 07:17 AM

Rizal the Futurist
by Dr. Pablo S. Trillana II on the 103rd Anniversary of the Martyrdom of Dr. Jose Rizal (1999)

"Protean is the word that comes to mind when we speak of the Filipino national hero Dr. Jose Rizal. Novelist, poet, teacher, linguist, ophthalmologist, sportsman, sculptor, essayist,thinker. He was all of the above. But there is one aspect of Rizal's brilliance that is seldom discussed -- Rizal as a futurist. Rizal was always years ahead of his time."

Now that we are closing the door on one millennium and opening the door to the next, there could not be a more propitious time to dwell on this great man's prophetic insights.

Even before holism was adopted as a paradigm for the modern world, Rizal had already applied the theory to his school in Dapitan, where he strove to teach the "whole man". In addition to offering formal academic subjects, he taught his pupils boxing, swimming, fencing, agriculture, and the need for community services. As an important part of their education, he took them on venturesome excursions to test their mettle in real situations. For he believed it was in the unpredictable world where intelligence was needed most.

As a statesman without portfolio, his vision of the Filipino nation and his precepts for its guidance are as fresh today as they were a hundred years ago. In Noli Me Tangere, his first novel, Rizal warned Spanish authorities of the blood bath their colonial policy, or lack of policy, would lead to. In Noll's sequel, El Filibusterismo, he predicted the coming of a revolution while hinting, in the same breath, that the revolution would fail because the Filipinos lacked the arms and organization to see it through.

In his most prescient essay, Filipinas Dentro de Gen Anos, written in 1889, he foretold that Spain and the Philippines would eventually become equal independent partners in the world of geopolitics, that the United States, after appropriating the Philippines for herself, would emerge as a new colonial power in Asia.

One might say that the predictions found in Noli and Fill were merely insights of an alert observer since they were based on the apparent worsening conditions of Spanish colonial rule in the country. But the predictions in Filipinas Dentro de Gen Anos is proof of a complex intellect. We must remember that at the time Rizal wrote the essay, the Revolution of 1896, which would lead to the creation of a Philippine Republic, independent of and equal to Spain, was more than six years away. And America's presence in Asia would not happen until the turn of the nineteenth century, long after he was dead.

Rizal foresaw the strengths and weaknesses of the Philippine nation today as it stands on the brink of a new and exciting world. Like a chastising father, he warned us, through the words of Padre Florentino in El Filibusterismo, that we will never have a successful state or bayan, until we also have a successful nation or bansa. There is a world of difference between the two. While statehood provides the infrastructure of government, it is nationhood that creates the temper of governance. What Rizal saw as an ideal nation-state was embodied in La Liga Filipina, yet another one of the hero's scenarios for the future. Organized on the basis of regional and district councils, La Liga Filipina was envisioned to unite the archipelago into one compact, vigorous, and homogenous body. Members were pledged to mutual assistance in the face of every want and necessity, to provide defense against injustice, to encourage education, agriculture, and commerce, and to study and apply reforms. In short, La Liga was a vision of a moral community in which all of the people worked together for the common good, for a better future.

That vision, upon which La Liga was founded, is as vital today as it was 100 years ago. Rizal, through his writings and his deeds, has given us a blueprint for our future. But what we do with it is up to us.

To this day, we are trying to attain Rizal's ideal of a mutual-aid society. The question is, are we trying hard enough? It is true that we have made great strides in many aspects of national life. But it is also true that all too often we lack the collective spirit to act as one in order to serve the good of all.

I'm not saying we are unconcerned as a people. Far from it. We can look back to two revolutions - the Revolution of 1896 and the EDSA Revolution of 1986 - to remind ourselves of what we can do and be, when we unite as a people with a common purpose. Should we ever forget, we need only to summon Rizal who wrote, "Very probably the Philippines will defend with indescribable ardor the liberty she has bought at the cost of so much blood and sacrifice. With the new men that will spring from her bosom and the remembrance of the past, she will perhaps enter openly the wide road of progress."

If, as Rizal suggests, the past holds the contours of the future, this nation has indeed a lot of solid ground on which to build the just, caring, and progressive society of the future.

Just as Rizal knew then, we must know now that we can move forward only if we work together, combining our energies toward a common goal and finding direction from the lessons of the past. Let the compass of history guide us into the next one thousand years.

Source: NHI Archives

Porknight

August 4th, 2008, 10:35 AM

Well I just watched the movie about Jose Rizal and read some internet articles so I don't really know much about him and you would probably know a lot more than me.

But what filipino really learned from him today that we can be proud of ? Would Jose Rizal be proud of us ? Did we really learn something from him?

He was against the church's blindness and we are now probably influenced more than any country by the church hypocrisy , probably the Taliban were worst when they were in charge in Afghanistan but now they are gone (or supposed to).

He was saying to love your past and roots, but we are not really doing it ,we are not protecting enough our monuments and landmarks , we are not promoting enough filipino culture in the country and outside and the world see us as frustrated Yankee imitators ?

Porknight

August 4th, 2008, 10:48 AM

i finally convinced myself to finish reading Rizal's travel diary...wow, how are we Filipino commoners supposed to relate to this extravagant globe-trotter?
Well he was a Spanish citizen and a doctor and writer remember from the province of the Isle Filipina part of the Spanish Empire.

IndioBravo

August 4th, 2008, 10:30 PM

Asturiano

August 5th, 2008, 02:37 AM

^^During Rizal's time the term Filipinos were reserved for the insulares.We were called "indians".But Rizal started using the term filipino in his poems and even started to refer to himself as one.T'was such a big deal that time to be called filipino.

Your exactly right. The term Filipino during the Spanish period were only refer to pure Spanish blood born in the Philippines. In Spanish American Colonies they were called Criollos. The term Peninsulares were only referred to Spanish Immigrant living in the colonies like the Philippines. When Rizal was alive he was referred to as Indio or Indian not Filipino. The term Filipino were used by the elites revolutionary against Spain to claimed the Identify that the Spanish denied to them for so long.

Classification of etnicity during Spanish times
Peninsulares or Insulares - Spanish living in the Philippines mostly government officials, priest, soldiers and immigrants from Spain.
Filipino - Children of early Spanish colonizer or Penisulares born in the Philippines.
Mestizo Espanol- son or daughter of Spanish Father and Indio Mother or vice versa.
Mestizo Chino- Chinese father with an Indian mother vice versa.

habagatcentral1

August 5th, 2008, 02:42 AM

Does anyone here knows the biographies of Rizal as written by Retana, Coates, Maria Guerrero and Craig? Thanks! :)

Mr. Sandman

August 5th, 2008, 06:31 AM

Your exactly right. The term Filipino during the Spanish period were only refer to pure Spanish blood born in the Philippines. In Spanish American Colonies they were called Criollos. The term Peninsulares were only referred to Spanish Immigrant living in the colonies like the Philippines. When Rizal was alive he was referred to as Indio or Indian not Filipino. The term Filipino were used by the elites revolutionary against Spain to claimed the Identify that the Spanish denied to them for so long.In that same era, another more "PC" term for indios was naturales.

IndioBravo

August 5th, 2008, 11:07 PM

Does anyone here knows the biographies of Rizal as written by Retana, Coates, Maria Guerrero and Craig? Thanks! :)

yes,I've read Coates's.My Brit friend has borrowed it.She thinks it's a very sad story.Well what do you know,after a 100 years, our countries story hasn't changed much.:ohno:

habagatcentral1

August 6th, 2008, 01:25 AM

^^ Its making me nosebleed...Making a critique for these 5 biographies (now include Constantino) and one of them is written in Spanish, the Vida y Ecritos by Wenceslao Emilio Retana.

IndioBravo

August 7th, 2008, 11:08 PM

habagatcentral1

August 9th, 2008, 04:45 PM

Retana's is an interesting one because he didn't like Pepe in the first place.I don't know if he liked him in the end,but I think Retana was jolted by this Indio's courage under fire.I learned also that Pepe was suppose to fight Retana in a duel.(nalaman yatang asintado si Pepe,umurong ang kastila!:lol:)

Yun nga eh...Retana was furious over Rizal. He was pro-Spain and pro-friar before Pepe's death. After Lolo Pepe's death, he never wrote within 6 years ata and started to befriend Rizal's friends afterwards. I wonder what made him "convert" from pro-friar anti-Rizal to anti-friar pro-Rizal?

IndioBravo

August 9th, 2008, 09:32 PM

IndioBravo

August 9th, 2008, 09:39 PM

Paano ka ba naman di bibilib ke Pepe,eh babarilin na lang normal pa rin ang pulso at gusto pa nakaharap!:)ASTIG:banana:

habagatcentral1

August 9th, 2008, 11:56 PM

Coates book showed Rizal as a reformist which Retana in my opinion (because he looked down on Indios anyway),did not or refused to understand.After Pepe was shot in Luneta he realized he was in the wrong side:).For me,it was like he wanted to make amends but it was too late.Nakonsensya siguro ang kastila.:bash:
:lol: O baka naman minumulto sya ni Lolo Pepe, hehe!! :lol:
But that period of time was too long...and he was reformed...He even praises the Pinoy's work...

Anyway, I still have 4 biographies to read to make a critique and I have still until Thursday to finish this all up :nuts:, kakabaliw but true. :D Good thing I've read Maria Guerrero's version back at college.

IndioBravo

August 10th, 2008, 08:07 PM

Happy reading Igan,are you on a course or something?I'm reading Fili right now.So far,think I'm ecsatic already.Rizal's dark side is showing even in the first chapter.Galit na talaga ang Indio!:)

habagatcentral1

August 11th, 2008, 01:28 AM

^^ Si Simoun? Hehe!! Parang ako sya noon. :nuts: :lol: Yes, I'm taking up graduate studies and one of them is make a critique of 5 biographies/biographers of Rizal.

IndioBravo

August 19th, 2008, 10:03 PM

The reason why Rizal and a few other pinoys asked for a duel against Retana was because of his articles suggesting that filipinas are easy to get women.This infuriated the pinoys so much hence the"hamunan".How many times they tried to instigate the duel but Retana did not bite.One time while Retana was dancing,Antonio Luna took his girl away and shouted at Retana but to no avail.Reminds me of the Teri Hatcher incident,noon pa lang, pag may sinabing masama sa atin,ibang usapan na yon.!:)

red_jasper

September 9th, 2008, 04:41 PM

Four nat’l artists collaborate for Urdaneta monument (http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/2008/09/08/four-nat%E2%80%99l-artists-collaborate-for-urdaneta-monument/)

URDANETA CITY–Four national artists have been commissioned for a collaborative work on the monument of Padre Andres de Urdaneta, the Spanish Augustinian friar after whom the city was named.

Mayor Amadeo Perez Jr., who last week escorted the creative team for a site inspection, said the city is honored for their participation in the project, jointly financed by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), the city government and the Urdaneta Foundation.

The Urdaneta monument, according to the NCCA, will be a collaborative masterpiece of artists Napoleon Abueva, Abdulmari Asia Imao, Ildefonso P. Santos and Dr. Alejandro Roces. Another national artist, Ben Cabrera, may contribute a mural to the plaza where the statue will be built.

Here for the site visit were Abueva himself, Imao’s son, and Horace Dimanlig from the office of Santos.

NCCA Executive Director Cecille Guidote Alvarez said joint plans of the Philippine government and the city of Ordizia in Spain, Urdaneta's hometown, are currently being laid out for the commemoration and unveiling ceremonies in December, in time for Urdaneta City’s fiesta celebration.

President Gloria Arroyo earlier issued Proclamation 1423 to form a committee that will do further research work on Fr. Urdaneta.

Padre Urdaneta, born on Nov. 30, 1498, was known as an outstanding navigation commander and was part of the expedition team lead by Don Miguel Lopez de Legazpi.

Urdaneta arrived in Cebu in 1565 and directed the Christianization of the province, including the building of the Basilica del Santo Niño, a popular landark.

After spending sometime in the islands, Legazpi decided to stay and sent Urdaneta back to Spain to find a better return route and obtain help in running the Philippine colony.

Urdaneta, after a tumultuous journey, succeeded in finding an alternative route now known as the 'Urdaneta Route', which was used for the next 250 years by the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade.
Urdaneta City is the only place in the world known to have been named after the priest.

^^ incidentally, national artist for sculpture Isabelo Napoleon Abueva (http://www.mindanaotimes.com.ph/story.php?id=21704), who is 78 years old, suffered a mild stroke and was rushed to the Davao Doctors Hospital on Thursday where he is still confined... :ohno:

le Reine

September 9th, 2008, 04:48 PM

^^OMG. I hope he will be OK soon.

icarusrising

September 10th, 2008, 03:34 AM

Unprecedented exposure for Amorsolo paintings (http://www.philstar.com/index.php?Opinion&p=49&type=2&sec=25&aid=20080909164)
SUNDRY STROKES By Rosalinda L. Orosa
Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Fernando C. Amorsolo who, through eight decades produced over 10,000 paintings, sketches and drawings, and whose masterpieces are “true reflections of the Filipino soul”, will be given unprecedented exposure by seven of Metro Manila’s biggest museums which will take turns exhibiting his works.

The rare honor is richly deserved. Regarded a national treasure and an artistic legend, Amorsolo, four days after his death, was posthumously conferred the country’s very first National Artist Award in 1972.

According to the Ayala Museum curator, Amorsolo became known as the “painter of the Philippine sunlight” because of his talent for capturing the brilliance and shimmer of the Philippine sun on his subjects, a talent which modern painter Fernando Zobel de Ayala duly recognized.

The curator continues: “More than having captured the sun, Amorsolo painted the glow from within — Filipino values, character and soul. Many of his portraits of women in the countryside and in his studio are fine examples of this.

“While many of his pre-war (American) period dalagang bukid types were tangible expressions of the prevailing sentiments of the country’s optimism and hope-filled visions his numerous post-war variations of the subject showed concern for the local market’s growing demands. The Ayala exhibition ‘Amorsolo’s Maidens Concealed and Revealed’ from Oct. 23 to March 8, 2009 will survey Amorsolo’s rendering of women as a means of following his career, and will draw attention to his maidens from the American period and his studies of nudes from the post-war years as a tribute to his brilliance.”

The GSIS Museum's ‘Rituals and Amorsolo’, from Oct. 2 to Dec. 20, “underlines how rituals reflect values, beliefs, and shared knowledge, how it brings about interactions among people, places and objects, how it expresses the core of social identity of communities, how it fortifies social structures and institutions, and perpetuates social values. Portrayals include baptisms, praying the Angelus, a family’s walk to Sunday mass.”

The Lopez Memorial Museum’s ‘Tell Tale: The Artist as Storyteller, Amorsolo as Co-Author’, from Sept. 24 to April 4, 2009, is illustrative of Amorsolo’s generation of artists, of how Amorsolo became subject to the workings of image-making industries central to the crafting of fictions — about what it was to be a citizen, to be learned/civilized, to be devout, to be Filipino in the transitional junctures of Spanish-American rule. Beyond looking at illustrations as potboilers, the exhibit hopes to look at how artists such as Amorsolo may have brought other layers of meaning upon texts primarily intended as didactic instruments.”

The Metropolitan Museum’s ‘Philippine Staple: The Land, the Harvest, the Maestro’ will display a harvest field of rice-related pieces and outstanding landscapes.”

At the National Museum’s ‘Master Copy’ from Sept. 25 to Jan. 15, 2009, the drawings transfigure into portraits that imagine the national self and the imperialist other, the Filipino and the American, a President like Manuel Roxas or a Gov. Gen. like Francis Burton Harrison, an elegant American lady or a nameless Katipunan revolutionary immortalized in oil after their stint in sketches.”

The Jorge B. Vargas Museum’s ‘Amorsolo: His Contemporaries and Pictures of the War, Capturing Anxieties’, from Sept. 23 to Nov. 16, will feature the works of Amorsolo and his contemporaries spanning the Second World War (1941-1945) until the immediate postwar years (1946-1947), family and official portraits commissioned by Vargas, and genre paintings. Works by peers — Manansala, Saguil, Miranda and Castañeda — will also be showcased.

Yuchengco Museum’s ‘Mukang Tsinoy’ from Oct. 1 to Jan. 17, 2009, will exhibit paintings commissioned by Tsinoy families.

Speakers at the Pen press conference on “His Art, Our Heart” were Evelyn Lim Forbes, Doris Magsaysay Ho, Cristina Estrada who represented the exhibition beneficiary CRIBS, the artist’s daughter Sylvia Amorsolo Lazo, Tony Maughan and Jaime Laya.

red_jasper

September 23rd, 2008, 05:32 PM

http://www.malaya.com.ph/sep24/images/liv1.jpg

Selected illustrations by the young Fernando Amorsolo from 1909 to 1924 go on exhibit in Tell-tale: The Artist as Storyteller, Amorsolo as Co-author, the Lopez Museum’s unique contribution to the Amorsolo Retrospective project.

The national artist for the fine arts had collaborated with early 20th century writers-Tagalog novelists Iñigo Regalado and Severino Reyes, editor Lope K. Santos and writer-educator Camilo O. Osias. In this exhibit, the readers would recognize both the texts and its accompanying illustrations as creating certain narratives-critical or sympathetic, given the politics of the writers.

Amorsolo illustrated the first Tagalog novel of Regalado Madaling Araw (1909) and likewise rendered drawings in the cover of Liwayway magazines where Regalado served as editor. Amorsolo’s illustration for Reyes’ first Tagalog novel Parusa ng Diyos (1911) were collaborations with the author and with other artists-Irineo Miranda and N. Reyes–done when he was a student. Osias’ Philippine Readers (1924) used in the primary grades were illustrated by Amorsolo, bringing to life the stories of virtues and examples of good and proper behavior.

Behavior in the urban setting is shown in the comic strip Ganito Pala sa Maynila, a popular comic strip during the American occupation of the Philippines written by Santos and illustrated by Amorsolo. The comic strip, serialized in the satirical magazine Bagong Lipang Kalabaw magazine from 1922 to 1924, was the second to have been published in the Philippines, the first being Kiko at Angge published in sister magazine Telembang a few months ahead.

Manila society of the early 1920s was unreservedly portrayed in the comic strip and became a topic of conversation in many social circles. The success of the story lies in the vivid portrayal of the social ills of Manila and the moral lessons from the simple but sincere provinciano who was innocently caught in the gay and troubling society of his times.

The Amorsolo retrospective aims to take another look at the country’s first National Artist, Fernando Amorsolo, through a four-monthmulti-venue exhibition of his finest works. The exhibit at the Lopez Museum will open today and will run until April 4, 2009.

The Lopez Museum is located at the ground floor of Benpres Bldg., Exchange Road, Pasig City. Museum days and hours are from 8 a.m/-5 p.m. from Mondays to Saturdays.

Source (http://www.malaya.com.ph/sep24/livi1.htm)

habagat13

October 11th, 2008, 08:18 AM

My lolo was a Mason, belonging to that lodge on San Marcelino Street. Didn't really know about it until LOOOONNNNGGGG after he passed away so I was never able to ask him about it.

Thats the Grand Lodge of the Philippines

kiretoce

December 12th, 2008, 09:56 PM

Pinoy art in all its magnificence (http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=66836)

A number of outstanding painters trace their roots to Philippines. Manila's promising painters are now engaged in experimentation and frequently apply unusual techniques in their works. Installation, videography and collage are important features in their works. Some works are rich conceptually and convey diverse messages to art lovers. Conceptual art, sometimes called "Idea Art," is where ideas or concepts are the most important aspect.

During my recent visit to Manila, I closely observed a number of installations, which are remarkable and technique-oriented. Technique, in some cases, seems to be more significant than subject or theme in these paintings. The paintings' themes range from contemporary life to the socio-political and economical life in Manila. However nature and picturesque landscapes are lacking in the works of many promising painters.

Philippines was under Spanish rule for around 350 years. The Philippines was part of the last colonies of Spain, until the Spanish-American war in 1898. The first generation of Filipinos, born in the 20th century, produced a number of gifted painters. During that time, subject was more significant than medium or technique. The themes were mainly landscape, portrait, social injustice, urban and rural life in Philippines. The National Museum of the Philippines is famous for its spacious and roomy atmosphere where one building contains the works of Filipino master painters; the other is devoted to the works of promising and budding contemporary painters.

Fernando Amorsolo was one of the most important artists in the history of Pinoy art. He was distinguished for portraits, landscapes and the portrayal of traditional Filipino customs, culture, carnivals and occupations. He was known for his craftsmanship and mastery in the use of light. His drawings, paintings, etchings are on display at the National Museum of the Philippines. Amorsolo was an incessant sketch artist, often drawing at his home, parks, and in the countryside. He drew attention from many strata of society, ranging from farmers to city-dwellers. He was the first national artist of Philippines.

Another celebrated Filipino painter was Juan Luna in the late 19th century. He demonstrated his artistic prowess at an early age and underwent higher studies in Italy. He then settled in Paris. His famous piece, "The Spoliarium," made him immortal in the history of Pinoy art. The primary concern of his paintings was to reflect the life and times of his day. He was romantic and optimistic, and this was clearly expressed in his paintings, which depicted fearless human figures and their bold movements.

Vicente Silva Manansala was a Filipino cubist painter and illustrator. He developed transparent cubism, wherein the delicate tones, shapes, and patterns of figures and environment were masterfully placed on his canvas. His canvas was colourful, vibrant and very translucent.

Jose Joya was another Filipino abstract artist and his contribution to modern Pinoy art is commendable. Joya was simultaneously a printmaker and mixed media artist. He pioneered abstract expressionism in the Philippines. In his lifetime, he was known for his vigorous compositions and accomplished techniques.

Philippines' art scene is now replete with various techniques, innovative styles, thoughtful themes and diverse contemporary issues. The young painters are now most influenced by European artists.

kiretoce

April 6th, 2009, 06:15 AM

The artist is finally home (http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/?page=goodLife2_april4_2009)

Baguio is not a place where one would expect to find an art museum but the four-story Bencab Museum, which was built by National Artist Ben Cabrera, is the summer capital’s new must-see destination.

Built on the artist’s Km. 6 Asin Road property, the museum houses Cabrera’s permanent collection of his show. It is also a venue for art shows and exhibitions and is committed to the promotion of the arts and the preservation, conservation, and protection of the environment.

The structure overlooks Bencab’s farm and garden, where he grows vegetables and herbs, strawberries, sweet potatoes, coffee, and ornamental plants.

Cabrera says the museum took two years to build but it is something that he has always wanted. His works spanning four decades are displayed at the museum.

The museum is a project of the BenCab Art Foundation, a non-stock, non-profit organization that supports the arts and environment. It is in Tadiangan, Tuba, Benguet, a 15-minute drive from Baguio’s downtown.

The Maestro Gallery displays works by Jose Joya, Cesar Legaspi, Arturo Luz, Anita Magsaysay-Ho, Juvenal Sanso, Fernando Zobel and other masters.

The Erotica Gallery houses paintings, drawings, and sculptures of a more sensual and erotic nature while the Cordillera Gallery has bulol or rice granary gods, furniture, and kitchen implements and weapons used by the ancient tribes.

The Indigo Gallery is for exhibitions and art shows while Sepia Gallery and Larawan Hall offers function rooms for workshops and seminars. Patio Salvador is an open terrace used for receptions and sculpture shows. For Philippine vintage maps, prints, photographs, and postcards, the Print Gallery is the place to go.

Cabrera first established a name for himself by exhibiting across the globe before finally settling down in Baguio.

Bencab has painted a wide variety of subjects mostly dealing with social issues relevant to Filipinos.

In Sabel, he shows the madwoman who roamed the streets of his childhood in Malabon, where he was the youngest of nine children. He also depicted the women and men who fought against the Spaniards and the people of the Cordilleras.

Despite the artist’s many achievements and there are many, one of his proudest moments in helping in the conceptualization and building of Tam-awan Village, which its Web site says “uniquely blends indigenous aesthetics and exquisite Ifugao craftsmanship with an artist’s concept for a village adapting the Baguio setting.”

The village is a refuge for local artists who desire a nurturing environment in which to develop their talents and a community and for those who are looking for a harmonious fusion of art, culture, environment, and history.

kiretoce

May 22nd, 2009, 10:53 PM

National Artists honored at "Dangal ng Lahi" exhibit (http://mindanaotimes.com.ph/?p=911)

“Dangal ng Lahi: The National Artists of the Philippines,” a special exhibit on the 57 Filipinos who made significant contribution to the development of Philippine Arts in the field of music, dance, theater, visual arts, literature, film, broadcast arts, and architecture and allied arts, is one of the highlights of the National Heritage Month celebration which opened last May 19 at the Marco Polo Hotel Davao.

The exhibit features the country’s National Artists, recipients of the Gawad Pambansang Alagad ng Sining, individuals whose achievements were measured in terms of their artistic vision, unusual insight, creativity and imagination, technical proficiency of the highest order in expressing the Filipino culture and traditions, history, way of life and aspirations.

The opening ceremony held in the hotel’s Sulawesi room commenced with the welcome address by Marco Polo Davao Senior Vice-President Francis Ledesma, followed by the project overview by Mary Ann Montemayor, chairperson of the Southern Philippines Tourism Council.

The program’s Guest of Honor was no less than Virgilio S. Almario, National Artist for Literature. Almario, also known for his pen name “Rio Alma”, is a poet, literary historian, critic, translator, editor, teacher, and cultural manager who revived and reinvented traditional Filipino poetic forms, even as he championed modernist poetics.

A recipient of numerous awards such as several Palanca Awards, two grand prizes from the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Makata ng Taon of the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino, the TOYM for literature, and the Southeast Asia Write Award of Bangkok, Alamario shared his literary exploits across the country in his speech and revealed how the beauty of the places, such as Davao, inspired him in his writings.
Later in the program, writer, educator and multi-awarded artist, Davao’s very own Aida Rivera-Ford, gave a remarkable tribute to National Artist Victorio Edades. Edades introduced modern ideas into the Philippine art scene and managed to destroy the conventions of domestic art and got rid of the clichéd ideology which he believed have stunted the development of Philippine art. Through his determination to stand by his ideology, he became a bridge between the past and the present. His famous works include the The Sketch (National Museum Collection), The Builders (CCP Collection), The Artist and the Model, Portrait of the Professor, Japanese Girl, Mother and Daughter, among many others.

Pangasinan-born Edades retired in Davao City with his family and taught for a time at the Philippine Women’s College. He later resumed his career as an artist, inspiring many up-and-coming Mindanaoan artists, until his death on March 7, 1985.
Another Davaoeño artist was also given honored during the ceremony – Ang Kiukok, National Artist for Visual Arts who excelled in expressionistic works of high visual impact. This Davao-born artist first attained prominence in the Philippine art scene in the 1960s with his distinct style that fused influences from cubism, surrealism and expressionism. Some classified his style as “figurative expressionism” which conveyed noticeable violence in his imagery, a factor that slighted the commercial viability of his works until the 1980s. His works favored subjects such as fighting cocks, rabid dogs, and people enraptured by rage or bound in chains. When asked why there was so much anger in his works, he replied, “why not? Open your eyes. Look around you. So much anger, sorrow, ugliness, and madness.”
Even after his death in 2005, his works turned out not only as critical favorites, but commercially popular as well as it was reported that he and fellow National Artist Fernando Amorsolo were the most widely bidded after Filipino painters in auctions around the world.

Other National Artists featured in the photo exhibit are Pablo S. Antonio, Leandro V. Locsin, Juan F. Nakpil, and Ildefonso P. Santos for Architecture; Francisca Reyes- Aquino, Leonor Orosa-Goquingco, Ramon Obusan, and Lucrecia Reyes-Urtula for Dance; Lino Brocka, Ishmael Bernal, Gerardo “Gerry” De Leon, Ronald Allan K. Poe (Fernando Poe, Jr), and Eddie S. Romero for Cinema; Carlos Quirino for Historical Literature; Napoleon V. Abueva, Cesar Legaspi, Vicente S. Manansala, Hernando R. Ocampo, Benedicto R. Cabrera, Abdulmari Asia Imao, Fernando C. Amorsolo, Carlos “Botong” V. Francisco, Arturo R. Luz, J. Elizalde Navarro, Guillermo Estrella Tolentino, and Jose T. Joya for Visual Arts; Antonino R. Buenaventura, Ernani Joson Cuenco, Jovita Fuentes, Jose Maceda, Lucio D. San Pedro, Levi Celerio, Felipe Padilla De Leon, Lucresia R. Kasilag, Antonio J. Molina, and Andrea O. Veneracion for Music; Francisco Arcellana, N.V.M. Gonzales, Nick Joaquin, F. Sionil Jose, Jose Garcia Villa, Edith L. Tiempo, Virgilio S. Almario, Amado V. Hernandez, Carlos P. Romulo, Alejandro R. Roces, and Bienvenido Lumbera for Literature; Daisy Avellana, Honorata “Atang” Dela Rama, Rolando S. Tinio, Salvador F. Bernal, Lamberto V. Avellana, Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero, and Severino Montano for Theater and Film; and Ramon Valera for Fashion Design.

The objective of the National Heritage Month celebration is to create consciousness, respect and love for the legacies of Filipino cultural history, and to promote increased awareness to more Filipinos, especially the younger generations, to appreciate the rich Filipino art and culture and take pride in being a Filipino. The exhibit will run until 24 May 2009.

Dakpa ang akong tiil

June 3rd, 2009, 11:13 AM

Filipino Singers: Champions of the World

1972 1st Tokyo Music Festival
Best Performer Pilita Corrales

1976 World Popular Music Festival
OutstandingPerformance Celeste Legaspi

1977 Tokyo Song Festival
Gold Prize Didith Reyes

1979 Seoul Popular Song Festival
Best Performer Freddie Aguilar

1979 4th Asia Song Festival
Grand Prize Dulce Amor

1983 Asia Song Festival
Best Performer Leo Valdez

1985 Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union
Best Performer Ivy Violan

1988 Asia Pacific Singing Contest
Grand Prize Ivy Violan & Dulce
Best Singer Ivy Violan

1989 International Star Search
Junior Vocalist Grand Champion Josephine Banig Roberto

1989 Asia Pacific Singing Contest
Grand Prize Regine Velasquez

1990 Yamaha World Band Explosion in Japan
Best Vocalist Arnel Pineda

1990 Mermaid International Children’s Song Festival
Grand Prize Donna Cruz & Timothy Villegas

1990 Asian Song Festival: Song for Children
Grand Prize Shiela Mae Buban

1991 Midnight Sun Song Festival
Grand Prize Ivy Violan

1991 Panasonic Osaka, Japan Laser Karaoke Contest
Best Interpreter Ima Castro

1991 YAMAHA Voice of Asia
Grand Prize Maribeth Pascua

1992 Voice of Asia
Grand Prize Geneva Cruz

1992 Golden Stag International Song Festival in Romania
Best Interpretation of a Romanian Song Rachel Alejandro

1993 ASEAN Song Festival
Best Interpreter Samantha Chavez

1993 1st International Guam Music Festival
Best Vocal Group The Company
Best Female Vocal Solo Ella Mae Saison
Best Male Vocal Solo Chad Borja

1994 Midnight Sun Song Festival
Grand Prize Samantha Chavez

1995 Tokyo Music Festival
Grand Prize Smokey Mountain

1996 1st Asia Song Festival
Best Interpreter Ima Castro

1997 2nd Asia Song Festival
Best Interpreter Jaya

1997 European de Chant Choral Competition Tours, France
Grand Prize UP Madrigal Singers

1998 3rd Asia Song Festival
Best Interpreter Lani Misalucha

1999 4th Asia Song Festival
Best Interpreter Dessa

2001 6th Asia Song Festival
Best Interpreter Regine Velasquez
2001 Voice of Asia
Grand Prize Ladine Roxas

2004 International Star Search
Junior Vocalist Grand Champion Mark Mejia

2005 WCOPA
Senior Grand Champion of the World Jed Madela

2006 Denmark Idol
Grand Champion Christian Mendoza

2006 London International Vocal Jazz Competition
Grand Prize Mon David

2006 9th Shanghai Asian Music Festival
Gold Prize Maria Donna

2006 Florilege de Tours Choral Competition
Grand Prize UP Madrigal Singers

2007 WCOPA
Junior Grand Champion of the World Aria Clemente

2007 ASEAN Ikon
Grand Prize – Solo Vina Morales
Grand Prize – Band KJwan

2007 19th European Grand Prix for Choral Singing: Arezzo, Italy
Grand Prize UP Madrigal Singers
First Prize UP Madrigal Singers

2008 Austria: Musicale De Show
Grand Prize Vincent Bueno

2008 International Nile Song Festival for Children : Cairo, Egypt
Grand Prize Michael Adornado

2008 Chile Festival Vina Del Mar
Vocalist: Gold Arnel Pineda

2008 WCOPA
Junior Grand Champion of the World Catherine Loria

OtAkAw

June 4th, 2009, 04:40 PM

^^Ang dame ah. If only we had something in Asia that is as prolific (and consistent) as Eurovision, for sure multiple winner na ang Pilipinas.

kiretoce

June 5th, 2009, 06:34 AM

^^ Eurovsion is just one big continental "Idol" competition. None of the stuff but all of the fluff.

TheAvenger

July 20th, 2009, 12:43 AM

A tribute to the classic art of Fernando Amorsolo

P5HXqQR1LM4

dvbaicrviser

July 29th, 2009, 01:04 PM

WTF! National Artist si Carlo J. Caparas? Ano 'to, lokohan! :ohno:

[dx]

July 29th, 2009, 02:45 PM

Arroyo names 7 National Artists for ‘09 (http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view/20090729-217787/Arroyo-names-7-National-Artists-for-09)
By TJ Burgonio
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 14:40:00 07/29/2009

Filed Under: Awards and Prizes, Arts and Culture and Entertainment

MANILA, Philippines – President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has named seven National Artists for this year, including one of her advisers and pioneers in fashion design and local comic books, Malacañang said.

This years Order of National Artists roster, according to Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, include: National Commission on Culture and the Arts executive director Cecille Guidote Alvarez for theater; Manuel Urbano, also known as Manuel Conde, for film and broadcast arts (posthumous); Lazaro Francisco, literature (posthumous); Federico Aguilar Alcuaz, visual arts, painting, sculpture and mixed media; Magno Jose Carlo Caparas, visual arts and film; Francisco “Bobby” Mañoza, architecture; and Jose “Pitoy” Moreno, fashion design.

* * *

Here's a commentary:

A Questionable Victory (http://gerry.alanguilan.com/archives/1648)
by Gerry Alanguilan

By now, you have probably heard that Carlo J. Caparas won the National Artist Award for Visual Art and Film. See the news report here (http://services.inquirer.net/mobile/09/07/29/html_output/xmlhtml/20090729-217787-xml.html).

I strongly protest this victory for the reasons I shall enumerate below.

1. Carlo J. Caparas is not qualified to win for Visual Art. I’m not sure if President GMA was aware when she gave this award, but Carlo J. Caparas is not an illustrator. For every single story he has written *another* artist worked with him to draw his story. Panday? It was illustrated by Steve Gan. Pieta? Also illustrated by Steve Gan. Anak ng Lupa? Illustrated by Nestor Malgapo. Bakekang? Illustrated by Mar Santana. Totoy Bato? The modern incarnation was drawn by Tor Infante. Kroko? It was illustrated by Hal Santiago. For every single published story that he wrote, another artist collaborated with him.

This is the most important question. How can someone who does not draw his stories, specially his most successful ones, ever win an award for Visual Art?

At the very least, this award should be shared with the numerous artists Carlo has worked with in the decades he has been in comics. For that is the nature of comics. It is a collaborative medium as Carlo himself has said many times.

2. Other artists are vastly more qualified. Namely, Francisco V. Coching (who should have won this award many years ago) and Larry Alcala. It is worth noting that both these comics creators both write and draw their own stories. They are complete comics artists in the way Carlo J. Caparas is not. Additionally, they have a far more significant body of work behind them.

Coching and Alcala not qualified because they are dead? Not true. Please refer to the National Artists of the Philippines Guidelines here (http://www.ncca.gov.ph/about-ncca/org-awards/org-awards-national-artist-guidelines.php).

3. Carlo J. Caparas winning for Film is ridiculous. This is a purely personal opinion, but I think his movies are terrible. They lack any intellectual substance, and they more often than not, appeal to the lowest common denominator.

One such film, Rizal Alih, was a painful experience for me. Convinced of the quality of this film through the plugging of its stars (I was young and naive) I watched it. It was absolutely horrible.

Let me give you an example. In one scene, a TV news report is being simulated on screen. The Jessica Soho look-alike is holding a microphone as she reports to the audience what is happening. So how come you can see her cameraman standing behind her looking stupid?

Directorial brilliance at its best.

I have lodged a protest with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts about this matter through their website.

I believe that this decision cannot be reversed, so what’s the point or protesting at all? Simple. I cannot sit here and do nothing and say nothing as this insult is perpetrated upon me as a proud Filipino comic book artist. I cannot let this go without making noise about it, and by God, I will make noise.

dvbaicrviser

July 29th, 2009, 02:59 PM

richard24

July 30th, 2009, 04:07 AM

from jim paredes' twitter: Carlo J. Caparas, the king of cheap massacre movies is now a National Artists . There goes the neighborhood.

:)

TeslaCoil

July 30th, 2009, 04:17 AM

Puno ng kabobohan ang mga ginawa niyang pelikula. Walang pinag-iba na nanonood ka ng 'Walang Tulugan' ni German Moreno sa kababawan. Wala na, kahit sino na lang, baka sa susunod si Kuya Germs na mismo ang sumunod na national artist. :bash:

Kuya Germs has produced some of the finest artists of today. He may not deserve a national artist award but some of this discoveries should in the near future.

demented_pigeon

July 31st, 2009, 07:14 AM

;40474708']Arroyo names 7 National Artists for ‘09 (http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view/20090729-217787/Arroyo-names-7-National-Artists-for-09)
By TJ Burgonio
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 14:40:00 07/29/2009* * *

Here's a commentary:

A Questionable Victory (http://gerry.alanguilan.com/archives/1648)
by Gerry Alanguilan

By now, you have probably heard that Carlo J. Caparas won the National Artist Award for Visual Art and Film. See the news report here (http://services.inquirer.net/mobile/09/07/29/html_output/xmlhtml/20090729-217787-xml.html).

I strongly protest this victory for the reasons I shall enumerate below.

1. Carlo J. Caparas is not qualified to win for Visual Art. I’m not sure if President GMA was aware when she gave this award, but Carlo J. Caparas is not an illustrator. For every single story he has written *another* artist worked with him to draw his story. Panday? It was illustrated by Steve Gan. Pieta? Also illustrated by Steve Gan. Anak ng Lupa? Illustrated by Nestor Malgapo. Bakekang? Illustrated by Mar Santana. Totoy Bato? The modern incarnation was drawn by Tor Infante. Kroko? It was illustrated by Hal Santiago. For every single published story that he wrote, another artist collaborated with him.

wtf? So cartoonists can't be artists? Let me see, isn't Neil Gaiman considered a sentinel in the graphic novel industry but he doesn't make the panels himself?
screw those critics. Just because Carlo J. Caparas doesn't cater to some snobby hip and elite market doesn't mean he isn't an artists. The huge contribution his work has done for Pinoy masa pop culture should have been given recognition a looong time ago. As far as I'm concerned, graphic artists should be recognized for what they are, artists.

I doubt that the criticism was for the reason that Caparas isn't deserving. It is more of the fact that the mainstream in the art scene has never recognized cartoonists as artists.

dinabaw

July 31st, 2009, 08:18 AM

^^ yung gumawa na Kenkoy naging National Artist ba?

Wonderboy

July 31st, 2009, 02:17 PM

Yung mga movie ni Carlo Caparas 'di ba yung laging may "God Save Us," "Lord Have Mercy"? And he became a national artist? Gross. Even that Cecile Alvarez who's the chair of NCCA and presidential adviser of Gloria on culture doesn't deserve it.

jongbasco

August 3rd, 2009, 01:10 PM

wtf? So cartoonists can't be artists? Let me see, isn't Neil Gaiman considered a sentinel in the graphic novel industry but he doesn't make the panels himself?
screw those critics. Just because Carlo J. Caparas doesn't cater to some snobby hip and elite market doesn't mean he isn't an artists. The huge contribution his work has done for Pinoy masa pop culture should have been given recognition a looong time ago. As far as I'm concerned, graphic artists should be recognized for what they are, artists.

I doubt that the criticism was for the reason that Caparas isn't deserving. It is more of the fact that the mainstream in the art scene has never recognized cartoonists as artists.

Don't even go there. Please don't make this about classes.

Wonderboy

August 4th, 2009, 12:30 PM

Carlo Caparas isn't not even a cartoonist. He lets someone draw/illustrate his ideas. Apart from this, huge bulk of his work especially on the later part of his career was devoted to making massacre films.

Cartoonists like Larry Alcala should be on the list. Other "masa" or "artists accessible to Pinoy mainstream" like Dolphy or Nora Aunor should be nominated as National Artist.

Lino Brocka and Ishmael Bernal's films (who are also National Artists) are accessible to everyone, "masa" included. Even the themes of their movies specifically reflects the dilemma of a lowly blue collared Pinoy worker or a hopeless Pinoy living in a slum.

Pinoy_ako

August 5th, 2009, 10:54 AM

^^
Nagdedefend pa nga na may karapatan daw siyang maging National Artist. Dagdag pa, pinagpawisan daw niya iyong mga peliculang ginawa niya at wag daw puro elitista lamang ang inominate. Ginawa pang issue ang estado sa buhay gayong hindi naman itong mga sinasabi niya ang batayan sa pagpili sa pagiging National Artist kundi ang kanilang craft.

Alang-alang sa mga National Artist na magbibigay sa ating mga Pilipino ng karangalan dahil sa kanilang mga akda na maaaring itapat sa mga akda ng mga dayuhan, alang-alang sa mga National Artist na may katangi-tanging mga obra, di ko kayang matawag na National Artist si Caparas dahil maraming mga direktor, buhay man o patay na may mas magagaling na obra kaysa sa kaniya.

The award may be conferred upon him, but not the honor that goes with it.

Manila-X

August 6th, 2009, 05:54 AM

dvbaicrviser

August 6th, 2009, 11:52 AM

http://www.spot.ph/2009/08/01/carlo-j-all-the-way/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDzMNhAT5fI

http://www.spot.ph/files/2009/08/carloj_lourd-article.jpg

"But I must reserve a special place in my heart for The Cory Quirino Kidnap (2003), which is so transcendentally bad it approaches the territory of genius. Ara Mina plays the famous socialite. Here the supposed North Forbes diction smokes like hell: “Yes, I wuz keeeednap!” Memorable scenes: slow motion shot of Ara a la shampoo commercial, and when she turns her head to face the camera she becomes…. the real Cory Quirino. Plus, the ending: the rescue sequence where the heavens part to the grandiose rhythms of Handel’s Messiah. With special effects that seemed to have been made with laundry chemicals and discount-store crayola."

By Lourd Ernest de Veyra | Published: August 1, 2009

eonynx

August 6th, 2009, 02:51 PM

at best, caparas is an astute and prolific film maker who knows the pulse of the masa. but to consider his cinematic oeuvre as art, i'm sorry but i really have my doubts with that! the vandalized portrayal and endorsement by pres. arroyo says it all. his works are popcorn movies.

again, at best, he can be recognized in other levels in relation to his work. but bestowing to him the national artist award would surely create protests-as they are right now-from people who are true artists and from people who support genuine art.

Ang_Bantayanon

August 7th, 2009, 03:49 AM

Maxxclip

August 7th, 2009, 04:07 AM

Wonderboy

August 7th, 2009, 07:38 AM

May protest rally ngayong hapon sa CCP ramp ng 2 P.M. Sana makahabol yung mga nais ipaglaban ang sagrado at nirerespeto na Parangal para sa Pambansang alagad ng Sining.

eonynx

August 10th, 2009, 12:55 PM

Palace to angry artists: Bring it on
(The Philippine Star) Updated August 10, 2009 12:00 AM

MANILA, Philippines - Malacañang urged yesterday protesting artists to question President Arroyo’s appointment of this year’s National Artists before the Supreme Court.

Press Secretary Cerge Remonde said the Palace respects the protests as long as they are done within the law.

“It appears that every time there are (National Artist) awards, those not chosen create noise,” he said.

“Now if they want to bring that issue to the SC, that is also well and good. It is definitely their right to bring the case to court and we welcome that.

“We welcome if they bring the case to court so that once and for all this issue will be settled legally.”

However, Remonde said the protesting artists must not question the process of selecting the awardees and their qualifications.

“Maybe these people (critics) have friends who they want to be given the title so they malign the latest awardees,” he said.

Executive Order 436 that established the Honors Code of the Philippines empowers the President to decide whom to bestow various state awards, Remonde said.

A group led by National Artist for Literature Bienvenido Lumbera reportedly plans to ask the SC to stop the conferment of the title National Artist to seven awardees.

‘Alvarez appointment illegal’

Sen. Francis Pangilinan said the appointment of Cecile Guidote-Alvarez as National Artist is illegal and must be recalled.

“She is prohibited by express provision of law from competing for awards considering that she is an incumbent commissioner,” he said.

“They cite an executive order to defend the appointment, but an EO can never amend a specific provision of the law. There is clearly a conflict of interest in this case—a wrong that a specific provision of the law precisely seeks to prevent.”

Pangilinan said the artists have a valid case.

“If Malacañang insists on this illegal act, then the artist community should bring the matter to court on a petition for prohibition,” he said,

On the other hand, Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago said Alvarez and film director-writer Carlo J. Caparas, whose appointment has also been opposed, should just decline the National Artist award out of delicadeza.

“It seems there are valid reasons to the objections, not just that maybe they are jealous or so,” she said.

“But the President has announced it. It’s a slap on their faces if these are recalled. So it is up to them, if they will accept or decline it. (I think) They should just decline it on their own.” — Paolo Romero, Christina Mendez

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=494741&publicationSubCategoryId=63

--------------------------------

the black colored highlighted portion of the news article just shows how out of touch the perceptions of the palace regarding this matter. it's not that the artists-critics have friends that they want to include in this year's national artist awards. the point being, conferring the title of national artist to the concerned persons is really questionalble in terms of being deserving or not!

bitoy

August 10th, 2009, 07:46 PM

^^ Palace to angry artists: Bring it on

Naghamon na naman ang palasyo. :lol:

The appointee(s) in question by the critics can decline the awards, but that would be a slap in the face of GMA and the Awards Committee.

newgabskii

August 11th, 2009, 05:41 AM

i believe all the awarded artists deserve their respective titles its just that people ("critics") are too objective to inclued their personal bets for national artist awards.

eonynx

August 11th, 2009, 05:43 AM

^^or rather you mean to say, too subjective. these critics that you are alluding too are the very same "true" artists whose lives are dedicated to the propagation of art.

newgabskii

August 11th, 2009, 05:46 AM

pati ba naman "Gawad Pambansang Alagad Ng Sining" ay pinatay na rin ng pinoy:lol:

R.I.P.:D

http://anythingwhatevs.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/national-artist-tomb.jpg?w=466&h=604

Why Carlo Caparas shouldn’t be a National Artist (http://anythingwhatevs.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/why-carlo-caparas-shouldnt-be-a-national-artist/)

i dont agree with all these...
every artist's masterpiece is a unique work of art and is the product of the mind. i vote for carlo caparas.
if you compare the king of comedy to the king of comics they are obviously different in terms of "spelling" and genre. i pity abs-cbn for influencing people the wrong way.

eonynx

August 11th, 2009, 05:49 AM

^^if you call caparas an artist, i respect you opinion no matter how i disagree with it. but i doubt if he will be considered one by our so-called "true" artists.

Planning Democracy

August 12th, 2009, 02:58 AM

^^

What about Cecille Guidotti Alvarez' achievements? What has she done? She along with Caparas was one of those who were "inserted" as National Artists.

Hmm, I wonder if the selection committee even knew that Caparas wasn't the one who drew his comics? Maybe Mother Lily should be included in the list next year. :lol: Wow, you can be a national artist just because you are famous...

manila_eye

August 12th, 2009, 07:13 AM

i dont agree with all these...
every artist's masterpiece is a unique work of art and is the product of the mind. i vote for carlo caparas.
if you compare the king of comedy to the king of comics they are obviously different in terms of "spelling" and genre. i pity abs-cbn for influencing people the wrong way.

Art is subjective but the thing is there are more people deserving than he is. Of course, ones work could be good or not depending on one's perspective. Caparas was given the award based on his films and it was done not following the proper procedure. His name was inserted. If it was done in accordance to the process then no one should protesting by now.

Maxxclip

August 12th, 2009, 07:24 AM

sa isang lugar sa Divisoria:D

"Hayaan na natin sa kanya ang damit na yan! Maano ba't ibabalik din niya iyan."

"E bakit ba?"

"E kung hindi ba sya marunong magbasa, paano ba magkakasya yung damit sa kanya gayung small sya e XL yung kinuha nya."

jcombalicer

August 12th, 2009, 07:25 AM

.

Larry Alcala is the King of Comics. not Carlo Caparas

.

bukid

August 13th, 2009, 04:24 PM

Delusions

By Conrado de Quiros
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:54:00 08/12/2009

This one got swept aside by events this last couple of weeks but is too important to let pass. That is the elevation of Carlo Caparas and Cecile Guidote to national artists, a thing that has the other national artists up in arms.

My take on it is this: I don’t buy the distinction between “artist” and “entertainer.” Nothing prevents the artist from being an entertainer and nothing prevents the entertainer from being an artist. Preferably, the two should go together. Art that is disdainful of audience ends up being more hoity-toity than artistic, or ends up being more a pain in the ass than a joy to the soul.

I myself have never thought of entertainment as something that “whiles the time away” or “diverts.” I’ve always thought of entertainment as something that uses time well or gets to the point. Or gets the point. From an artistic point of view, that’s entertainment.

I do buy however the distinction between commercial and artistic. The artistic adds to the sum of human wisdom, or our understanding of the human predicament. The commercial panders to the lowest common denominator, and adds nothing to, or even subtracts from, the sum of human knowledge. That is my answer to Caparas’s supporters’ charge that his detractors are merely being elitist. I myself have no problems with Caparas being an entertainer. But I have problems with him being a commercial entertainer and not an artistic one.

As accomplishment goes, he will have to fall in line behind Mars Ravelo, Nestor Redondo and the other komiks greats. And their own claims to being national artists will be in serious dispute.

The distinction between an artistic entertainer and a commercial one is easily seen by comparing Lino Brocka and Carlo Caparas. I still remember something Brocka told a group of us sometime before he died. His first line of defense, he said, were his maids. If his maids didn’t like what he did, he would change it. Only when they were satisfied would he be satisfied. You can’t get more masa than that.

But he didn’t stop there. He made sure too that his maids got something they hadn’t seen before. Something new, something different, something better. He made sure his maids went away not just delighted about what they saw but asking questions about what they saw.

Brocka did melodramas, but he sculpted full-blooded characters out of them. Caparas did komiks, and made komiks out of characters. Artistry has nothing to do with whether your material is “hi-class” or “wa-class.” It has everything to do with what you do with it.

Guidote’s case is easier. Of course she helped build the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA), of course she, in the words of her defenders, “showed lifetime dedication . . . in leading the movement for national theater and its development to forge our cultural identity and preserve our heritage.” That is a reason only for theater to be grateful to her, that is not a reason for her to become a national artist. The National Artist Award is given to artistry, not to patronage. If it weren’t so, then Imelda Marcos should be proclaimed National Artist, having built the CCP and been a great benefactor to Cecile Licad. Organizing, however it is done indefatigably, resolutely and even heroically as in times of death and fascist rule, is admirable and deserving of honor. That honor is not the National Artist Award.

Now, for the more extrinsic issues, which are in fact the more important issues here.

At the very least, the way Caparas and Guidote have been named national artists is tasteless. Guidote says that though she is the executive director of the National Council on Culture and the Arts, the body that oversees the grant of the award, she had nothing to do with the selection process. What can one say? The GMA virus must be more contagious than A-(H1N1). Guidote’s patron has nothing to do with the Ombudsman either, or shouldn’t, but see if Merceditas Gutierrez will not nominate her saint. As to Caparas, his legend lies only in the way he helped GMA pull down the house Ang Panday built during the last elections.

That brings us to the heart of the matter, which is Malacañang fiddling with art. I have a special fondness for art and artists, and that I truly mind. If there’s an urgent and compelling need for Malacañang to have nothing to do with the appointment of the justices of the Supreme Court, there’s an even more urgent and compelling need for Malacañang to have nothing to do with the appointment of national artists. I don’t know that the appointment of justices should be left to lawyers alone. But I do know that the appointment of national artists should be left to artists alone.

Malacañang has no business decreeing artists. The spectacle I see is that of Josef Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev visiting art museums in the former Soviet Union and proclaiming which things there are art and which are not, a presumption as vast as the Urals. Given in particular that they were as much a gift to art as FDR was to the marathon. The notion of Arroyo doing the same, when her palate is limited only to wine and caviar and steak costing $20,000, leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Expense is not a sign of art, or of taste.

I don’t know which is worse, Imelda explicitly claiming to be the handmaiden of the true, good and beautiful, which are the hallmarks of art, or Arroyo implicitly doing so. Imelda at least had the external trappings of beauty, even if her and her husband’s rule was uglier than the portrait of Dorian Gray. Arroyo doesn’t even have that. Her own rule has become only, well, the artistic representation of all that is not true, good and beautiful. For her to decree who should be national artists is for her to decree who should be national heroes.

That’s not just a Carlo Caparas fantasy, that’s a delusion.

Planning Democracy

August 15th, 2009, 06:12 AM

^^

Good one Quiros!

Now I know Guidotte-Alvarez is not even an artist! :ohno: This would become a precedent which will now open the door to Imelda being proclaimed a national artist as well! You don't deserve it Alvarez, give it back.

That whole Alvarez clan sucks, the husband, the wife, the son, I don't why they're so pathetic. I remember the Alvarez son in the news being beaten up by bystanders in EDSA because he was beating up his girlfriend!

"...Imelda at least had the external trappings of beauty, even if her and her husband’s rule was uglier than the portrait of Dorian Gray. Arroyo doesn’t even have that..." :lol: Heck, at least she has perky boobs! :lol:

bukid

August 16th, 2009, 05:37 AM

puede pala makuha sa mga kasabwat na national artist kuno ang supporta para sa campaign fund ng pangulo dahil may 100,000 pala kada buwan ang mga national artist kaya ang kailangan mo lang gawin ay tulungan ang pangulo sa kanyang mga ads pagkaptapos babayaran ka nalang sa paghihirang sayo bilang national artist kaya duda ako baka may inilibre si carlo noon na kailangan bayaran ni GMA sa pamamagitan ng national artist award ma ibinigay niya kay carlo. nakakapangduda lang ang mga ganyang gawain.

dvbaicrviser

August 16th, 2009, 08:24 AM

MORATO:
Give me a Caparas to hang beside my Picasso

By Jerry E. Esplanada
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:28:00 08/16/2009

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20090816-220513/Give-me-a-Caparas-to-hang-beside-my-Picasso

MANILA, Philippines—Former censors chief Manuel Morato would rather own a Carlo J. Caparas artwork than a Cesar Legaspi painting.

“Carlo is a damn good painter and artist. I have quite a few of his works. His is an inborn talent, unlike [Cesar Legaspi] who studied it all,” said Morato, reacting to singer Celeste Legaspi who said that naming Caparas National Artist for Visual Arts was “an insult to the memory” of her late father Cesar Legaspi, who was bestowed the same title in 1990.

“I don’t even have any of [Cesar] Legaspi’s works in my collection. I got rid of them. Same with the works of Bencab and Arturo Luz. I won’t hang their works in my collection and desecrate the works of Goya, Van Gogh, Toulouse Lautrec, Picasso and other old masters that I own,” Morato said.

Legaspi also got the ire of 63-year-old nutritionist Paciencia “Paz” Caparas-Aguilar, when the singer told reporters that Caparas did not deserve the award, as he does not even know how to draw or paint.

Aguilar is the sister of Caparas, komiks king and film director, recently named National Artist for Visual Arts and Film by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

“That is not only a lie, that is an insult to our family,” Aguilar said in Filipino. “As a young boy, Carlo was already helping the family with his drawings.”

Pasig native

Caparas, a glass factory worker and later, a security guard before becoming a komiks novelist, is the seventh of nine children of the late Salvador and Florentina Caparas, both Pasig natives.

For their “below-the-belt” tirades, Legaspi and other critics like actor Leo Martinez and singer Jim Paredes, are “not welcome” in Barangay Ugong, Pasig.

“As far as we are concerned, they are persona non grata,” Aguilar said in Filipino.

Top achiever

Other Barangay Ugong folk have rallied behind Caparas, the community’s “top achiever.”

Barangay chair Engracio Santiago recalled: “During our primary school days (in the 1960s) at Ugong Elementary School (now Francisco Legaspi Memorial School), many students ran to Carlo for their drawings, as well as the teachers who needed help in drawing their instructional materials.”

Eufrocinia Cruz, 79, a retired Ugong Elementary School teacher, confirmed this. “Carlo draws well. That’s common knowledge not only at Ugong Elementary School but in the entire community,” she said.

A Caparas family friend, Virginia Macapuro, said the komiks writer “apparently got his artistic talent from his father, an optician who’s also good in drawing. I should know. Our families stayed in the same house during the Japanese occupation.”

‘Lumbera watches porno films’

Morato, now a director of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), also lambasted other critics of his friend Caparas, like Imee Marcos and National Artists F. Sionil Jose, Virgilio Almario and Bienvenido Lumbera.

Almario “tried to promote the national language, which in truth and in fact, Carlo Caparas succeeded more in spreading in his komiks 10 times over … Lumbera loves watching porno films at UP Film Center,” said Morato in a text message to the Inquirer.

Almario and Lumbera have vowed not to wear their National Artist medallions until President Arroyo recalls the title she conferred on Caparas and Cecile Alvarez, executive director of the National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCCA), which oversees the grant of the award together with the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP).

Morato, a staunch ally of Ms Arroyo, said the controversy over National Artists named by Malacañang showed that “so much falsehood, insincerity and hypocrisy have infected our culture.”

“They think too much of themselves. They should stop outsmarting each other, much less act like jurors to judge those coming after them. While they destroy others, they destroy themselves in the process. Detractors of duly selected awardees this year only managed to cheapen themselves and brought themselves to public scrutiny as well that they, too, are not deserving of the honors they received from the Palace,” he said.

Other supporters

Dante Jimenez, head of the nongovernment Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC), also took up the cudgels for Caparas.

“It’s sad some people are belittling his contributions to the justice system in the country, particularly his so-called ‘massacre films’ in the 1980s which helped a lot in making the public aware about the prevalence of heinous crimes,” Jimenez said.

He added, “What Carlo’s critics are doing is so unfair and unjust to us victims of crimes. Where were they when we needed them most?”

Caparas also got expressions of support from boxing hero Manny Pacquiao, Senators Ramon Revilla Jr. and Jinggoy Estrada, Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino chair Joe Lad Santos, and Polytechnic University of the Philippines president Dante Guevarra.

Why not Dolphy?

Contacted by phone, Leo Martinez, who heads the Film Academy of the Philippines (FAP), insisted that comedian Dolphy and director Celso Ad. Castillo deserved to be named National Artists, not Caparas.

“The issue here is the quality of a person’s body of works, not his highest grossing films,” Martinez said.

Last week, he and Paredes, along with some National Artists, went to Congress to seek its help in blocking the naming of Caparas and three others as National Artists in Proclamation Nos. 1823 and 1829. Ms Arroyo signed the proclamations on July 6.

‘Last say’

NCCA Chair Vilma Labrador asserted in a TV interview that the President had the “last say” in naming the awardees.

The names forwarded by NCCA and CCP to the Palace were “only recommendatory, not mandatory,” said Labrador, who is also Department of Education undersecretary.

-Ibang klase naman talaga ang mga katwiran ng mga disipulo ni Caparas lalo na ni Morato. Ano na naman kaya ang sagot ni Tita Midz sa kanya diyan. :lol:

kurapica

August 16th, 2009, 12:31 PM

gosh as if morato is not watching gay porns.

le Reine

August 16th, 2009, 01:22 PM

I kinda felt weird because I never thought watching porn now is also an issue... :lol:

kalbongdad

August 17th, 2009, 10:28 AM

well....kidding aside... i truly believe that caparas deserves the honor....his komiks alone....has done wonders in spreading the filipino language where others have failed...we know that the guy caparas ay may dating may sariling mundo....that is how artists are....malalim...

ANG HINDI KO LANG MAINTINDIHAN AY KUNG BAKIT NASAMA ITONG SI CECILLE GUIDOTE ALVAREZ..ANO BA ANG NAGAWA NYA SA THEATRE DAW?....AY SUS PURONG INA...HEAD PA NG NCCA NI HINDI KO MA APPRECIATE ANG MGA PROGRAMA NITO SA CHANNEL FOUR NA WALANG KATORYA-TORYA...BUTI PA NUNG PANAHON NI IMELDIFIC NAMAYAGPAG ANG PINOY MUSIC...NGAYON MERON BA KAYONG ALAM NA NAMAYAGPAG...SI ALVAREZ LANG SIGURO....PURONG INA TALAGA....KUNG AKO MAY KAHIHIYAN HINDI KO TATANGGAPIN YAN...:bash:...sori po tumaas bp ko..:lol: hilo ako :nuts:

amigo32

August 18th, 2009, 12:35 PM

eonynx

August 18th, 2009, 12:39 PM

MORATO:
Give me a Caparas to hang beside my Picasso

[/B]

caparas' works are worthy to be hanged/displayed beside the works of picasso? think again morato.

dvbaicrviser

August 18th, 2009, 01:15 PM

caparas' works are worthy to be hanged/displayed beside the works of picasso? think again morato.

Okey lang sakin kung ulo mismo ni Caparas at ni Morato ang itabi sa Picasso. :bash:

Migan

August 19th, 2009, 12:32 PM

The United Architects of the Philippines through its National Board of Directors issued a Statement of Support for Architect Francisco "Bobby" T. Manosa, fuap in the decision to grant him the National Artist Award in the field of Architecture.
source:http://www.united-architects.org/headliners_view.php?id=385

The PDF (http://uapconex.web.officelive.com/Documents/Statement%20of%20Support%20re%20Arch%20Francisco%20Mañosa.pdf) file containing the statement of support

The petitioners said President Arroyo committed "grave abuse of discretion” when it added the names of Guidote-Alvarez, Caparas, Mañosa, and Moreno to the final list submitted by Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) and the National Commission on Cultural and the Arts (NCCA).
source:http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/entertainment/08/19/09/sc-asked-stop-awards-caparas-et-al

i don't understand why they are also questioning bobby manosa's eligibility, because as far as i know, that guy has been promoting filipino since i was a baby. i seriously doubt it is because of lack of talent. i am even surprised that despite his age and all his accomplishments, he still hasn't received that award yet... is it really because of technicalities and politics?

but i'm sure the real masters know who they are and what they have contributed to the filipino culture - national artist or what not.... same goes for the amateurs.

dvbaicrviser

August 19th, 2009, 02:00 PM

Pagdating kay Manosa, dito na ako papalag. Huwag naman idamay si Manosa, kahit si Pitoy, sa kapalpakan ng pagpili doon sa dalawa. Hindi matatawaran ang nagawa nitong dalawa sa larangan nila.

eonynx

August 19th, 2009, 03:29 PM

^^even if caparas and guidote will receive those awards and given the title "national artists", they would never merit the respect and recognition of most, if not all, true artists. awards are awards and titles are titles. but if the universal recognition and honor don't go with those awards and titles, the medallions' and/or trophys' weights stop in their physical measurements.

bukid

August 20th, 2009, 12:07 PM

^^ very true! it is still best if you get the respect of your fellow artists. that would have been one's greatest achievement.

jpdm

August 20th, 2009, 02:20 PM

Wonderboy

August 20th, 2009, 02:56 PM

I read on the papers that the concerned artists who filed a case in court does not question the eligibility of the their fellow artists per se (i.e. Mañosa, Moreno), they are questioning the process by which the "national artists" were named.

There is a strict selection that is followed and the case filed questions the legitimacy of "inserting" four names in the final list and erasing other names that went through a thorough and strict selection procedure.

TeslaCoil

August 20th, 2009, 05:26 PM

Pagdating kay Manosa, dito na ako papalag. Huwag naman idamay si Manosa, kahit si Pitoy, sa kapalpakan ng pagpili doon sa dalawa. Hindi matatawaran ang nagawa nitong dalawa sa larangan nila.

Their names were inserted just like the other two. It did not follow the process so I guess dapat sila rin to be really fair.

dessertfox

August 20th, 2009, 05:27 PM

It is really sad that almost anything in the Philippines has been politically motivated, divisive and even socially partisan. Just like Van Gogh who died neglected, even those masters of his time thought his works as junks, only after he died a pauper soon realized the value of his arts. So with Cory in Politics she’s not perfect after all and here we are missing her presence. I am sure if the four named artist die today all will be hallelujahs. Even if the petitioner succeeds in blocking the title, it is only adding more drama to their values as National Artist.

I am happy for these new national artist enjoying it while they are still alive, they are all worthy of these anyway. For me Caparas is almost a complete inborn artist you could name. So with Guidote whose lives her life with arts even in time of her cancer battle. Manoza who is so consistent with his style and thus became my idol in architecture and who will forget Pitoy with his breakthroughs in fashion designs.

Thanks that they are still alive to contribute more to our society.

Miguel

August 21st, 2009, 02:45 AM

Much has been said about the National Artist fiasco as certain personalities were controversially added by the President but what has been long overlooked is the discriminating selection process for the National Artists of the Philippines over the years. The selection has most of the time been a close knit connection of who's who on a certain geographic location. A cursory look on the list of National Artists would reveal that majority of these notables were mostly from Luzon and most have affiliations to the highly esteemed universities in Manila. The scope for the pool of nominees were limited unto who's making the impact on this urban community.

In Literature, is there a National Artist who specialized in Hiligaynon? None. In Bisaya? None. In Waray? None. How about those nightingales who sang romantic Cebuano songs? None. Were these artists long forgotten or just been totally ignored by Manila based art lovers/critics?

If I am not mistaken, of all those 64 National Artists only 5 have hailed from the South; Napoleon Abueva-Bohol, Leandro Locsin-Bacolod, Abdulmaria Asia Imao-Sulu, Edith Tiempo and Eddie Romero who are both from Dumaguete. The first 3 were schooled in Manila universities which makes only the last 2 as being locally educated. Eddie Romero made his impact on cinema in Manila and that makes Edith Tiempo as the only provincial based artist were she honed would-be writers at the first and oldest creative writing workshop of the country which she and her late husband Edilberto Tiempo had created.

I am not alluding that these National Artists are not deserving as they rightfully are but what I'm trying to point out is that there is a flaw in selecting the National Artists for a long time now, way before this Carlo Caparas fiasco, and it has been going on unnoticed or maybe just fall to deaf ears. I don't believe that this style of selecting will change in the coming years. These provincial based artists will still be again neglected and their contribution to the arts and culture will be lost in history books and be long forgotten by the future generation.

amendercabal2

August 21st, 2009, 03:31 AM

I am happy for these new national artist enjoying it while they are still alive, they are all worthy of these anyway. For me Caparas is almost a complete inborn artist you could name. So with Guidote whose lives her life with arts even in time of her cancer battle. Manoza who is so consistent with his style and thus became my idol in architecture and who will forget Pitoy with his breakthroughs in fashion designs.

Thanks that they are still alive to contribute more to our society.

expect more massacre movies to come!!!

worst form of imperialism

VIVA VISAYA!!!

Mercato

August 21st, 2009, 04:15 AM

^^^^ Hala! Kamong duruha nahiunsa na mo mga dodong! :lol: Basi'g init na pod ni's mata pastilan... :lol:

In Literature, is there a National Artist who specialized in Hiligaynon? None. In Bisaya? None. In Waray? None. Whilst I agree with everything you said, just some minor points... for political correctness :D:D Bisaya? as used in that sentence should be Cebuano?. Since Bisaya is a term encompassing all 3 groups. thanks thanks...
.
.
.
Digo te lo diga, pero... VIVAN LAS VISAYAS!!! ARRIBA ANDELE! :lol:

Sleepwalker

August 21st, 2009, 04:29 AM

These provincial based artists will still be again neglected and their contribution to the arts and culture will be lost in history books and be long forgotten by the future generation.

It is sad and difficult, but let's accept it...We are just second class citizens of this country. Everything that is in Manila (for some point, including the whole of Luzon) is automatic called NATIONAL. All other efforts outside of Manila are called REGIONALISTIC.

Philippine National Railway for Luzon, yet, Mindanao Railways for Mindanao...Hahahahha... Funny, but true.

Maxxclip

August 21st, 2009, 04:33 AM

^^:lol::rofl:

Sleepwalker

August 21st, 2009, 04:38 AM

^^Yes, that's right...We should laugh about it... :lol:

Miguel

August 21st, 2009, 04:47 AM

^^^^ Hala! Kamong duruha nahiunsa na mo mga dodong! :lol: Basi'g init na pod ni's mata pastilan... :lol:
Whilst I agree with everything you said, just some minor points... for political correctness :D:D Bisaya? as used in that sentence should be Cebuano?. Since Bisaya is a term encompassing all 3 groups. thanks thanks...
.
.
.
Digo te lo diga, pero... VIVAN LAS VISAYAS!!! ARRIBA ANDELE! :lol:

Not really, I am from Dumaguete but we don't call our language as Cebuano, Visayan dialect I may say or simply Binisaya. Though somewhat similar but there are differences. Cebuano as used in Cebu have thicker accent, words are shorten like "wa" for "wala" and "uwan" for "ulan", while some words are not in Cebuano like "pachada" and "silong". As we are closer to Mindanao, there are some words from that island that have been part in our vocabulary. To simplify, I might say that Cebuano and Binisaya are 2 close cousins.

jpdm

August 21st, 2009, 05:18 AM

It is sad and difficult, but let's accept it...We are just second class citizens of this country. Everything that is in Manila (for some point, including the whole of Luzon) is automatic called NATIONAL. All other efforts outside of Manila are called REGIONALISTIC.

Philippine National Railway for Luzon, yet, Mindanao Railways for Mindanao...Hahahahha... Funny, but true.

Hindi naman siguro.

Particularly in business, Visayan businessmen are now considered as national champions or industry champions and definitely well-known.

The Gokongwei of JG Summit, Aboitiz of Union Bank , the owners Mang Inasal, Bayo RTW, Penshoppe/Oxygen RTW fame and now Mindanao based Phoenix Petroleum are just some of the few examples of how the Visayan and Mindanaon investors have already curved a niche in Philippine business.

The Visayan inasal chicken is very popular right here in my province, Cavite.

Hopefully, more artist from VIsayas and Mindanao should be given recognition.

By the way, I love those Ilonggo AUVs, Aklan's pina and Cebuano guitars-all world class products that should be patronized and exported overseas!

Mercato

August 21st, 2009, 05:30 AM

Not really, I am from Dumaguete but we don't call our language as Cebuano, Visayan dialect I may say or simply Binisaya. Though somewhat similar but there are differences. Cebuano as used in Cebu have thicker accent, words are shorten like "wa" for "wala" and "uwan" for "ulan", while some words are not in Cebuano like "pachada" and "silong". As we are closer to Mindanao, there are some words from that island that have been part in our vocabulary. To simplify, I might say that Cebuano and Binisaya are 2 close cousins. I know there are variations, but it all seems so small to me coz I understand it fully. :) ... Point is, we cebuanos/ binisaya/ sugbuanon/ sinugbuanon should take great pains to differentiate between the term "Binisaya" from that of the bigger word "Bisaya" to avoid confusion and misunderstanding. For political correctness, that's all... :colgate:It is sad and difficult, but let's accept it...We are just second class citizens of this country. Everything that is in Manila (for some point, including the whole of Luzon) is automatic called NATIONAL. All other efforts outside of Manila are called REGIONALISTIC.

Philippine National Railway for Luzon, yet, Mindanao Railways for Mindanao...Hahahahha... Funny, but true. But we dont have enough room for a Visayan National Railway... why don't we build instead a Visayan Turbojet Ferry. You know, like those Turbojets servicing Hongkong, Macau and Shenzhen... :colgate:

mao rong

August 21st, 2009, 10:04 AM

KulasKusgan

August 24th, 2009, 06:04 PM

KulasKusgan

August 24th, 2009, 06:26 PM

If I am not mistaken, of all those 64 National Artists only 5 have hailed from the South; Napoleon Abueva-Bohol, Leandro Locsin-Bacolod, Abdulmaria Asia Imao-Sulu, Edith Tiempo and Eddie Romero who are both from Dumaguete. The first 3 were schooled in Manila universities which makes only the last 2 as being locally educated. Eddie Romero made his impact on cinema in Manila and that makes Edith Tiempo as the only provincial based artist were she honed would-be writers at the first and oldest creative writing workshop of the country which she and her late husband Edilberto Tiempo had created.

2001 National Artist for Visual Arts Ang Kiukok is from Davao.

http://niederngasse.altervista.org/crucifixion9.jpg

http://www.gowanusbooks.com/Fish.jpg

eonynx

August 25th, 2009, 05:19 AM

^^i doubt if caparas' works are worthy to be placed beside this one. how much more morato's contention that they be placed beside the works of picasso..sigh

manila_eye

August 25th, 2009, 06:09 AM

Mars Ravelo kin: ‘Caparas took Komiks King tag from our dad’ (http://www.gmanews.tv/story/170471/mars-ravelo-kin-caparas-took-komiks-king-tag-from-our-dad)
JOSEPH HOLANDES UBALDE, GMANews.TV
08/22/2009 | 09:49 PM

http://www.gmanews.tv/webpics/infotech/spot_darna.jpg

The children of Darna creator Mars Ravelo have accused National Artist nominee Carlo J. Caparas of "grabbing" the "Komiks King" title from their father.

"Through dubious press releases, Carlo Caparas proclaimed himself the Komiks King," read a statement sent by Ravelo’s daughter, Rita dela Cruz on behalf of her siblings, "A title which, we know Caparas very well knows, belongs to Mars Ravelo."

GMANews.TV tried to get Caparas’s side on the issue, but his wife, Donna Villa, said in a phone interview on Saturday that she and her husband were "already tired of defending themselves" in the media.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s choice of Caparas as this year's National Artist for film and visual arts stirred up the hornet’s nest among artists. Caparas's critics claim that the "’90s massacre film" director has bypassed more notable Komiks legends like Ravelo.

Caparas shot to fame in the late '70s after his komiks character Panday (Blacksmith) was adapted to film. The lead role was played by Fernando Poe Jr. In the '90s, he directed massacre and pito-pito films (movies shot in seven days) that were popular in those days.

More recently, Caparas has been aiming higher. He is engaged in talks to do a film about the EDSA Revolution of 1986 and has expressed interest in filming Pres. Arroyo's biopic. [See: Film director wants Gina Alajar to play Arroyo]

According to Ravelo's children, Caparas is a pretender to the throne of "komiks king."

"(He) can never represent… artists (like) Tony Velasquez, Larry Alcala, Francisco Coching and our father (who) are komiks legends not as a result of a grand design but because of hard work, extraordinary talent and true passion for komiks. Caparas represents something else," the statement added.

Aside from the superheroine Darna, Ravelo also created Filipino classic komiks characters such as Dyesebel, Captain Barbell, Lastikman, and Varga, among others.

Most of Ravelo’s creations have either been adapted to film or television over the past 50 years.

The Ravelos said they were forced to speak up after TV host Manoling Morato defended Caparas's inclusion on the elite list.

Morato reportedly said in a television interview that Caparas deserved to be hailed as a National Artist for reviving the dead komiks industry and crossing over to the big screen.

The former chair of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) defended his friend anew and said that Caparas was able to pen 800 graphic novels while Ravelo only managed to create 10.

“Nanalo na bang Best Director si Mars Ravelo? Hindi pa kaya wala siyang karapatan. Mas malawak ang nagawa ni Carlo kaysa kanya (Did Mars Ravelo win a Best Director award? He has not, so he has no right. Carlo has had a wider body of work than Ravelo)," Morato reportedly said.

Ravelo’s children did not let Morato get away with the statement.

“Mamang Manoling, dahil po ba sa eight hundred na komiks novels na isinulat ni Caparas kaya siya nanalo sa category ng visual arts? Sayang kung nakapagsulat pa pala ng limangdaang kuwento ang tatay namin ay puwede na rin siyang manalo," they said.

(Because he wrote 800 komiks novels, does it mean Caparas deserved to win in the visual arts category, Mr. Manoling? It’s such a shame! If our dad had only written 500 stories then he should’ve won too.)

Ravelo’s children also corrected Manoling: "Mga pito lang po ang naisulat ni Mars Ravelo na nobela sa bawat taon ng 50 years niyang career sa komiks (Mars Ravelo only wrote seven novels in his 50-year career in comics)."

"At nasaksihan po namin kung paano trinabaho ng ama namin ang mga nobelang
iyon. Ika nga po, ang gabi ay ginawa niyang araw. Tulog lang po ang pahinga. Kasi
po kahit nasa kubeta siya, at kahit habang kumakain siya, nag-iisip pa rin
siya ng kuwento. Tapos si Mang Carlo ay nakuha pang makapag-direct ng mga
pelikula. Wow!," they added.

(And we witnessed how he worked in those novels. As the saying goes, he turned the nights into days. He only rested in his sleep. Because even in the bathroom and when he eats, he still thinks of story ideas. Then, Mr. Carlo still had the strength to direct films. Wow!)

’I never said that’

But in a phone interview with GMANews.TV on Saturday, Morato denied pitting Ravelo against his friend Caparas.

"I don’t even know Ravelo. Who is he?" Morato said.

According to him, he only said in the interview that he did not know any of Ravelo’s works.

"I’m not even familiar with these komiks people," he said adding that he could even give a copy of the interview to Ravelo’s family.

But when GMANews.TV asked Morato who deserved the National Artist award more, he said: “Si Carlo J. Caparas ang nagbuhay ng komiks. Patay na ‘yun eh. (Only Carlo J. Caparas revived komiks. It was already dead)."

“Eh ilan ba ang ginawa ni Mr. Ravelo na Komiks, sampu? Eh si Carlo J. Caparas, 800 (And how many komiks did Mr. Ravelo make, 10? Carlo J. Caparas made 800)," - GMANews.TV

Wonderboy

August 25th, 2009, 07:13 AM

Halata namang binayaran si Manoling Morato. Magkano kaya binibigay sa kanya ni GMA?

eonynx

August 25th, 2009, 07:29 AM

^^morato wants to reduce the issue to a tyranny of numbers. if we follow that logic, well then, shakespeare wrote only 36 plays. just because 800 is a higher number doesnt make one an artist. quantity may spell commercial succes but that doesn't necessarily qualify one to be conferred the title "national artist".

because if this is the case, then we might as well conferr the title "national artist" to movie producers who produced/co-produced so many films (artistic or not). the very logic of their stand betrays their commodity-like view of this issue.

dvbaicrviser

August 25th, 2009, 11:41 AM

Saang kategorya ba talaga siya nanalo, sa Visual Arts ba o sa Film? Sa dalawang kategoryang ito, parehong di siya papasa, lalo na sa Film. Si Manosa at Pitoy lang talaga ang nagiging biktima sa kontobersyang ito, deserving naman ang dalawang ito kaya lang nahihila nung dalawang huwad.

Wala na tayong magagawa kay Manoling, ganyan na talaga iyan kahit noong nakaupo pa sa MTRCB yan.

Wonderboy

August 25th, 2009, 02:38 PM

PCSO Chairwoman este Chairman pa rin ba si Manoling? Naalala ko nung bata ako may palabas na "Ang pangarap kong jackpot." Si Manay Manoling ang producer tapos ang director si Carlo Caparas. Ang consistent na scene dun tuwing may mananalo, yung background music parati yung soundtrack ng Jurassic Park tapos slow motion at naka-focus dun sa nanalo. Tapos National Artist? Langya.

c6josh

August 26th, 2009, 06:18 AM

SC stops National Artists award
By REY G. PANALIGAN
August 25, 2009, 4:55pm

The Supreme Court Tuesday stopped the Office of the President from conferring the title of Order of National Artist, from disbursing cash rewards, and from holding ceremonies for seven persons chosen National Artists for 2009 by the Palace last month.

In a full court resolution containing a status quo ante order, the SC granted the petition filed by several national artists, university deans and professors, and private individuals challenging the proclamation of four persons as national artists.

The petitioners were against the bestowing of National Artist titles to Cecille Guidote-Alvarez for theater, Carlos Caparas for visual arts, Jose “Pitoy” Moreno for fashion design, and Francisco Manosa for architecture.

Secretary to the Cabinet Silvestre Bello III said Malacanang will respect the SC decision and will submit its comments to the Office of the Solicitor General.

Likewise affected by the SC’s status quo ante order was the proclamation of Manuel Conde (posthumous) for film and broadcast arts, Lazaro Francisco (posthumous) for literature, and Federico Aguilar Alcuaz for visual arts.

Since the proclamation of Conde, Francisco, and Alcuaz was not challenged, the conferment of title on them has to wait for the final resolution of the case against the four others.

On top of a thorough review of the processes involved in the selection of national artists, the SC is also expected to look into the dropping of Dr. Ramon Santos from the final list of those recommended by the boards of the Cultural Center of the Philippines and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts for the prestigious title.

The respondents in the petition – Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, the Department of Budget and Management, the CCP, the NCCA, Caparas, Alvarez, Moreno and Manosa – were given 10 days to comment on the petition.

Sources said that after the submission of the comment, the SC would decide whether or not to hear oral arguments on the issues raised in both the petition and the comment of the respondents.

Among the petitioners were National Artists Virgilio Almario (literature), Bienvenido Lumbera (literature) Benedicto Cabrera (visual arts, painting) Napoleon Abueva (visual arts, sculpture), and Arturo Luz (painting and sculpture).

Joined by university deans, professors and private individuals, the petition stated that President Arroyo committed a grave abuse of discretion when she disregarded the results of the rigorous selection process and inserted the names of Alvarez, Moreno, Caparas, and Manosa in the shortlist submitted by the NCCA and the CCP boards for proclamation as 2009 Order of National Artists.

The petitioners said the President violated the constitutional provision on equal protection when she included Alvarez although the latter was not nominated and subjected to screening process by the National Artist Award Experts Panel.

“The exercise of discretion which violates the equal protection clause results in a void act. Thus, the President’s act of naming respondent Alvarez to the list of ‘National Artists’ for 2009 is null and void for being discriminatory and in violation of the equal protection guarantee,” the petition said.

They pointed out that Alvarez’s inclusion in the shortlist is “clearly illegal and unethical” because of her disqualification as incumbent executive director of the NCAA and also the President’s adviser on culture and arts.

“What is notable is that she even sat as a member of the Final Deliberation Panel. This makes her inclusion in the final list all the more irregular and patently illegal,” the petitioners added.

According to the petition, from the original 87 nominees – including respondents Caparas, Manosa and Moreno – the list was shortened to 32, with Caparas and Manosa’s names removed and with Moreno’s name still in the list.

It stated that on May 6, 2009, the final deliberation was conducted by the CCP and NCCA boards and from the 13 remaining nominees, four names were submitted to the President: Conde, Santos, Francisco and Alcuaz.

But the petition stated that on July 29, 2009, Ermita announced that the Order of the National Artists
would be conferred on seven persons: three from the final list submitted by CCP and NCCA minus
Santos, and including Caparas, Moreno, Manosa and Alvarez.

The petition stated that Ermita’s announcement did not include an explanation why Santos was dropped from the final list and did not state the justification for the inclusion of Caparas, Moreno, Manosa and Alvarez.

“For the President to cavalierly disregard the collective judgment of the CCP and NCCA Boards and substitute her own judgment without a clear indication of the reasons and bases therefore is an unacceptable and manifestly grave abuse of discretion,” the petitioners told the SC.

“Private respondents (Caparas, Moreno, Manosa, and Alvarez) were added by the President in grave abuse of discretion. Their inclusion in the list of National Artists will irretrievably taint the Order of National Artists as being one that is subject to politics and will diminish the prestige of the rank and title of the National Artists who are alive and active,” they added.

Wonderboy

August 26th, 2009, 01:27 PM

Got this from UP Yahoogroups:

SIGN THE PETITION for Resignation of Alvarez and Labrador
Posted by: "mentalcolony" mentalcolony@gmail.com mentalcolony
Tue Aug 25, 2009 12:39 am (PDT)

PLEASE Click the link below for the PETITION TO THE NCCA BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS On the Acceptance of Resignation of NCCA Executive Director Cecile Guidote Alvarez and Removal from Office of NCCA Chairman Vilma Labrador

http://www.petitiononline.com/artista/petition.html

Please disseminate.

mentalcolony

http://www.neworldisorder.tk

eonynx

August 26th, 2009, 02:35 PM

^^thanks for the link @wonderboy! i've already included myself in the petition.

Miguel

August 27th, 2009, 02:34 AM

I know there are variations, but it all seems so small to me coz I understand it fully. :) ... Point is, we cebuanos/ binisaya/ sugbuanon/ sinugbuanon should take great pains to differentiate between the term "Binisaya" from that of the bigger word "Bisaya" to avoid confusion and misunderstanding. For political correctness, that's all... :colgate:

the "bisaya" term is closely associated with cebuano but in reality it is a term or description for all visayan languages or dialects...under bisaya we have the hiligaynons, cebuano, waray, etc...with regards naman naman to cebuano being spoken differently in other areas variations na yun but still na fall pa rin sa cebuano

i'm not going to belabour on this as this is not the right forum. this would be my last take on the language issue no matter what will the replies be as it will be veering away from the main topic. all i can point is one has to immerse on a locality to fully understand its language and culture.

whoever started to coin that the language "cebuano" is a term that is politically correct, i would raise my questions into it as to what makes it correct and the others incorrect. my take, if generations of dumaguetenos call it "binisaya" would it make these generations wrong in naming it as it is?

language is a complex invention and sometimes one could get lost in its translation. those from other regions are apprehensive in calling it "bisaya" as they belong also to the same group geographically but others are apprehensive also in calling it "cebuano" as they are not associated to that island. if what has been the tradition of calling it then let it be afterall it could be just the same dog on a different collar.

Miguel

August 30th, 2009, 02:41 AM

here is an edited snippet for the guidelines on the selection of National Artists

The National Artists of the Philippines
Guidelines

The Order of National Artists (Orden ng Gawad Pambansang Alagad ng Sining) is the highest national recognition given to Filipino individuals who have made significant contributions to the development of Philippine arts; namely, Music, Dance, Theater, Visual Arts, Literature, Film and Broadcast Arts, and Architecture and Allied Arts. The order is jointly administered by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) and conferred by the President of the Philippines upon recommendation by both institutions.

The Order of National Artists is one of the Honors of the Philippines that embodies the nation’s highest ideals in humanism and aesthetic expression through the distinct achievements of individual citizens. While the Republic bestows due recognition to these singular achievements, it in turn honors its own cultural heritage, whose enrichment these achievements have significantly effected, enhanced, and given direction.

These achievements are measured in terms of their vision, unusual insight, creativity and imagination, technical proficiency of the highest order in expressing Filipino culture and traditions, history, way of life, and aspirations.

1. BACKGROUND......

2. OBJECTIVES

The Order of National Artists aims to recognize:

a. Filipino artists who have made significant contributions to the cultural heritage of the country.
b. Filipino artistic accomplishment at its highest level and to promote creative expression as significant to the development of a national cultural identity.
c. Filipino artists who have dedicated their lives to their works to forge new paths and directions for future generations of Filipino artists.

3. HONORS AND PRIVILEGES.......

4. CRITERIA FOR SELECTION

The Order of National Artists shall be given to:

a. Living artists who are Filipino citizens at the time of nomination, as well as those who died after the establishment of the award in 1972 but were Filipino citizens at the time of their death;

b. Artists who through the content and form of their works have contributed in building a Filipino sense of nationhood;

c. Artists who have pioneered in a mode of creative expression or style, thus, earning distinction and making an impact on succeeding generations of artists;

d. Artists who have created a substantial and significant body of works and/or consistently displayed excellence in the practice of their art form thus enriching artistic expression or style; and

e. Artists who enjoy broad acceptance through:

- prestigious national and/or international recognition, such as the Gawad CCP Para sa Sining, CCP Thirteen Artists Award and NCCA Alab ng Haraya;
- critical acclaim and/or reviews of their works;
- respect and esteem from peers.

5. NOMINATION PROCEDURE

Candidates may be nominated under one or more of the following categories:
a. Dance – choreography, direction and/or performance;

b. Music – composition, direction, and/or performance;

c. Theater – direction, performance and/or production design;

d. Visual Arts – painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, installation art, mixed media works, illustration, graphic arts, performance art and/or imaging;

e. Literature – poetry, fiction, essay, playwriting, journalism and/or literary criticism;

f. Film and Broadcast Arts – direction, writing, production design, cinematography, editing, camera work, and/or performance; and

g. Architecture, Design and Allied Arts – architecture design, interior design, industrial arts design, landscape architecture and fashion design.

Miguel

August 30th, 2009, 04:42 AM

As what I have pointed out on my earlier post that out of the 64 National Artists only 6 (as corrected) have hailed from the South. These are Napoleon Abueva-Bohol, Leandro Locsin-Bacolod, Ang Kiukok-Davao, Abdulmaria Asia Imao-Sulu, Eddie Romero and Edith Tiempo-Dumaguete. Majority of these National Artists have come from Luzon and mostly are associated with the highly respected universities in Manila. Of those 6 Southern artists, the first 4 were being schooled in Manila universities which makes the last 2 as were the only locally educated. Romero made his impact on cinema in Manila which makes Tiempo as the only provincial based artist.

Again, I am not alluding that these artists are not deserving as they really are but what I want to highlight is the selection process. Much disparity on the geographical area and is not because of the lack of talent but because less effort had been made to search those deserving Southern artists. The pool has been limited to who's who in making impacts at the Greater Manila Area, such close knit connections.

The committee in-charge for the selection of National Artists has been howling vehement protests against the addition of less deserving others due to a Presidential decree but has not given itself a personal check. For decades, it has been searching for "National" Artists but has not look enough beyond its realms. By the word itself, "National" should include the whole Philippines.

As part of their guidelines:

Artists who enjoy broad acceptance through:

- prestigious national and/or international recognition, such as the Gawad CCP Para sa Sining, CCP Thirteen Artists Award and NCCA Alab ng Haraya;
- critical acclaim and/or reviews of their works;
- respect and esteem from peers.

This is what I presume to be the flaw in the guidelines as it has become a circle of critics/friends. Outside of the circle and you have less chance. Makes me wonder if Dolphy is within that circle.

The Forgotten Ones

I am sure there are lots of deserving artists out there, these are some of provincial based artists I could think of.

1. Ben Zubiri (1911-1969) - Cebuano composer, actor, and media personality. He had a role in the movie Bertoldo-Balodoy, which was the first Cebuano film that was ever released and also was a comedian in radio dramas as well as offering advice on the program Purico Amateur Hour. His greatest contribution though is being a composer for Bisaya/Cebuano songs which are timeless classics that even now are still being enthusiastically sang by younger generations. Songs such as Matud Nila, Ikaduhang Bathala, Katulog Na Inday, Nganong Mipakita Ka, Tuhoi, Mitu-o Ako, Ang Gugmang Gibati Ko, and the ever jolly Pasayawa ko Day. Matud Nila has said to be the cultural anthem for Cebuanos (search in YouTube to hear these songs).

2. Gilopez Kabayao (1929 - ) - World class violinist. Hailed from Fabrica, Negros Occidental. As a child prodigy, he studied at the Silliman University School of Music and later honed his skills at the finest music schools in New York such as the New York College of Music. He was able to make waves in Europe such as Paris and Vienna with highly acclaimed performances like in Musikvereinssaal (Grand Hall) which he received eight curtain calls. He was also invited to play in different Asian countries but his greatest legacy is sharing classical music to Filipinos. First to the expats in Guam and Hawaii and then to the people in the barrios which allowed him to be awarded as one of the Ten Oustanding Young Men of the Philippines in 1961 and the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1972. BIOGRAPHY (http://www.rmaf.org.ph/Awardees/Biography/BiographyKabayaoGil.htm)

3. Ramon Muzones - Hiligaynon writer. Born in Ilo-ilo. From 1938 to 1973, he wrote a total of 51 novels mostly in Hiligaynon. A very prolific writer whose output is more than the other National Artists can produced. His novels reflect the socioeconomic and political changes of Ilo-ilo's society at his time. Adjudged as the Most Oustanding Hiligaynon Writer of the Century by the NCCA in 1998. NOVELS (http://books.google.com/books?id=v8Xk_10M4icC&pg=PA120&lpg=PA120&dq=hiligaynon+writer&source=bl&ots=4qGNiQWo75&sig=3HcdbGKP7dUDXuHRTc7RaBYEhIY&hl=en&ei=ceCZSrzzCYiysgOkg4mAAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2#v=onepage&q=hiligaynon%20writer&f=false)

mao rong

August 30th, 2009, 01:03 PM

i'm not going to belabour on this as this is not the right forum. this would be my last take on the language issue no matter what will the replies be as it will be veering away from the main topic. all i can point is one has to immerse on a locality to fully understand its language and culture.

whoever started to coin that the language "cebuano" is a term that is politically correct, i would raise my questions into it as to what makes it correct and the others incorrect. my take, if generations of dumaguetenos call it "binisaya" would it make these generations wrong in naming it as it is?

language is a complex invention and sometimes one could get lost in its translation. those from other regions are apprehensive in calling it "bisaya" as they belong also to the same group geographically but others are apprehensive also in calling it "cebuano" as they are not associated to that island. if what has been the tradition of calling it then let it be afterall it could be just the same dog on a different collar.

^^like what i have said binisaya or bisaya is a general term encompassing all visayan dialects.they are grouped accordingly and under those groups are variations...like for example in region 8, the waray dialects has so many variations but still as a group termed as Waray.just like cebuano has variations not only in the visayas but in mindanao also...some using cebuano who are not from cebu are apprehensive in calling it as such for fear of loosing their indentiy...anyway my only point is to take things in their proper perspectives...you may try reading books about languages or i think there is a thread for that...and yes its just the same dog on a different collar...there there.

amendercabal2

August 31st, 2009, 04:15 AM

visaya is not synonymous with cebuano

cebuano belongs to the language group known as visaya

mao rong

August 31st, 2009, 12:39 PM

This is OT...

The issues on the use of the word ‘Bisaya’
BRIDGING THE GAP
Henry Funtecha, Ph.D.

When the Spaniards arrived in the Visayas in the 1520s (Magellan expedition) and the 1560s (Legaspi expedition), they widely used the term “Pintados” to refer to the inhabitants. Pintados means the “painted ones” due to the fact that the Bisayans were fond of decorating their bodies with tattoos, both men and women. Not fully understanding what tattoos were, the Spaniards thought the Bisayans indeed painted their bodies with artistic designs. The women had fine and intricate tattoos in their arms and their legs while the men, depending upon their exploits and contributions to the community, had tattoos all over their bodies. In some cases, especially for the brave and courageous ones who had proven their valor in battle, tattoos even covered their faces. The tattoo designs of men were generally of bold geometric patterns or representations of animals. It must be pointed out though that tattooing was not the monopoly of the Bisayans.

Early Spanish writers reported that natives of Albay, Camarines, Catanduanes, and the mountainous sections of northern Luzon also practiced it.

The question now is, at what point of time did the Spaniards begin to refer to the people of the Visayas as “Vizaya” or “Bisaya”? This is still a gray area with regards to the history of the Visayas but, looking at Spanish documents written by the late 1500s and early 1600s, the Spaniards had already shifted to the name “Vizaya” and were already referring to the central islands as “Las Islas de Visayas”. All indications point to the possibility that the name “Bisaya” was already in use prior to the coming of the Spaniards. What probably happened was that the early Spaniards were not yet familiar with the people and the places when they were just new in the country. So, for a while, they used the term “Pintados” but eventually shifted to the word “Vizaya” or “Bisaya” after they had already settled down in the area.

Another important consideration in trying to establish the usage of Bisaya in referring to the people is the fact that the Atis or Negritos of Panay have always been calling the lowlanders as “mga Bisaya”. In addition, there are lots of things in Panay referred to by the people as “bisaya”, like “bisaya nga manok, bisaya nga luy-a, bisaya nga kamatis, bisaya nga ahos, bisaya nga talong, bisaya nga pantat, and many more. The use of the term “Bisaya” is not just confined to local flora and fauna but is also used to refer to traditional processes like “bisaya nga pagpamulong” (use of herbal medicine) and “binisaya nga pamaagi”. Even using Hiligaynon and Kinaray-a in speaking is called “binisaya nga panghambal”. Is it possible also that “Bisaya” means native or local?

The other major issue pertains to the usage of the term “Bisaya” by the Cebuanos. They have expropriated the term as a designation exclusively for the Cebuanos and their language, with the exclusion of the other groups of Bisaya. To the Cebuanos, the other inhabitants of the Visayas are not Bisaya but as Ilonggos in Panay and Negros, Bol-anon in Bohol, and Waray in Samar and Northern Leyte. It is time for scholars and academicians to correct this misconception. The inhabitants of the Visayas are all Bisaya for this has been established as a fact by history.

The Spaniards recognized majority of the inhabitants of the Visayas as one race, except the Atis or Negritos. They generally described the Bisaya as of medium stature, having black hair and dark skin or kayumanggi. Some individual Spanish friars differed from these general characterization and referred to natives in a particular island as being taller, lighter in complexion, brave and more muscular than others, but these were subjective comments which reflected their value judgments and the fact that the Spaniards themselves varied greatly in stature and complexion, as well as physical traits.

The descriptions of the skin pigmentation of the Bisaya by the Spaniards in the 16th century were often contradictory (Scott 1995). The first natives the Spaniards observed were those from Homonhon, Limasawa, and Butuan, and were described by the colonizers as being of medium height and dark-skinned (Ibid).

Fr. Francisco Alcina, on the other hand, said that he did not think that the Bisayans were really that dark, though almost, and that the natives of Leyte and Samar were lighter than those in Davao (Alcina 1668). Alonso Mentrida, however, described the Bisaya “mailum” as a color a bit darker than kayumanggi, though not black like the Ati. From Cebu, Juan de la Isla reported that the natives were darker than the Indios of Mexico (Mentrida 1841).

Of course, it must be borne in mind that, as it is today, the Bisaya and the rest of the Filipinos are not at all of the same shade nor were they all necessarily darker than the Spaniards. In any case, before the development of a colonial mentality, the Bisaya themselves were not impressed by the pale color of the colonizers. In other words, they did not attach a premium on white skin and other features associated with the Caucasian race. The Spaniards were not even perceived as maputi or white, but as “mapuraw”, natural or undyed - meaning, untattooed. And to the Bisaya, because the Spaniards were not into the practice of chewing betel nut, the most distinctive character of these foreigners was their white teeth, a feature shared with animals like dogs, monkeys and pigs.

Source: The News Today (http://www.thenewstoday.info/2009/08/28/the.issues.on.the.use.of.the.word.bisaya.html)

mao rong

August 31st, 2009, 12:40 PM

visaya is not synonymous with cebuano

cebuano belongs to the language group known as visaya

^^exactly...sorry for the OT guys...last na ito

c6josh

September 1st, 2009, 10:20 AM

3 senators back Pitoy Moreno as nat’l artist

By Christine Avendaño
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 18:54:00 08/31/2009

Filed Under: Fashion, Awards and Prizes

MANILA, Philippines — Three senators got together to express their support for National Artist awardee, fashion designer Pitoy Moreno.

In a joint statement, Senators Joker Arroyo, Richard Gordon and Francis Pangilinan said Moreno ``richly deserve(d)'' the recognition.

“His body of work in fashion design and artistic execution is exquisitely married to the promotion of the Filipino culture that is astonishingly rich. Thus, he has won national and international acclaim even as his trademark designs meet standards that transcend a particular class and culture.

“Indeed, by Pitoy’s compleat mastery of artistic design and execution, his work is a celebration of the richness of our common culture and by his pioneering effort in promoting Philippine fashion, he made us a proud and grateful nation,'' the statement said.

The statement was issued days after the Supreme Court ordered the postponement of the conferment rites for the seven National Artist awardees after a group of artists and civil sector organizations questioned the choices of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

But even if the conferment rites were postponed, officials of the National Commission for the Culture and the Arts said that the seven awardees could lay claim to the title of National Artist because President Arroyo had already signed the proclamation order.

Proclaimed as National Artists were theater stalwart Cecile Guidote-Alvarez, filmmakers Manuel Urbano and Carlo Magno Jose J. Caparas, visual artist Federico Aguilar Alcuaz, novelist Lazaro Francisco, architect Francisco “Bobby'' Manosa and Moreno.

Alvarez, Caparas, Manosa and Moreno were not on the original shortlist and were added as a prerogative of the President.

c6josh

September 1st, 2009, 10:24 AM

Pitoy Moreno deserved to be a national artist, he has done a lot for our country in terms of promoting the Phillippines through his creations.

Henz

September 2nd, 2009, 11:56 AM

i'm not going to belabour on this as this is not the right forum. this would be my last take on the language issue no matter what will the replies be as it will be veering away from the main topic. all i can point is one has to immerse on a locality to fully understand its language and culture.

whoever started to coin that the language "cebuano" is a term that is politically correct, i would raise my questions into it as to what makes it correct and the others incorrect. my take, if generations of dumaguetenos call it "binisaya" would it make these generations wrong in naming it as it is?

language is a complex invention and sometimes one could get lost in its translation. those from other regions are apprehensive in calling it "bisaya" as they belong also to the same group geographically but others are apprehensive also in calling it "cebuano" as they are not associated to that island. if what has been the tradition of calling it then let it be afterall it could be just the same dog on a different collar.

hay.. naku.. you are just making things complicated.. Its just like saying "Filipino" na whether we like it or not is actually "Tagalog" and we have to accept that......hehehe

And also, my take on the National Artist issue.. i dont actually know the others.. but i know Carlo Caparas..... IMO, is a second or third rate artist whose works are dubious of quality and even "allegedly" originality is a National Artist.. is a National Disgrace...

Now, ang pakapalan ng mukha which is popularized by the Arroyos, had trickled down to the National Arts... Ewan ko lang..

dvbaicrviser

September 2nd, 2009, 12:09 PM

Napanood ko yung PROfiles ni Cheche Lazaro tungkol kay Carlo Caparas, ang linaw ng pagkakalahad kung bakit hindi siya dapat kasali sa listahan. Ipinakita pa yung mga sketches niya, aba, malakas ang laban ni Tita Cory as National Artist for Visual Arts kung ikukumpara sa gawa ni Caparas. Huwag na nating isama ang Film, dahil mas masarap pang panoorin ang mga gawa ni Joey Gosengfiao.

Deserving talaga sina Pitoy at Manosa. Sana isunod na nila si Mang Ben sa fashion at Gabby Formoso sa architecture.

Miguel

September 3rd, 2009, 06:24 AM

^^like what i have said binisaya or bisaya is a general term encompassing all visayan dialects.they are grouped accordingly and under those groups are variations...like for example in region 8, the waray dialects has so many variations but still as a group termed as Waray.just like cebuano has variations not only in the visayas but in mindanao also...some using cebuano who are not from cebu are apprehensive in calling it as such for fear of loosing their indentiy...anyway my only point is to take things in their proper perspectives...you may try reading books about languages or i think there is a thread for that...and yes its just the same dog on a different collar...there there.

hay.. naku.. you are just making things complicated.. Its just like saying "Filipino" na whether we like it or not is actually "Tagalog" and we have to accept that......hehehe

And also, my take on the National Artist issue.. i dont actually know the others.. but i know Carlo Caparas..... IMO, is a second or third rate artist whose works are dubious of quality and even "allegedly" originality is a National Artist.. is a National Disgrace...

Now, ang pakapalan ng mukha which is popularized by the Arroyos, had trickled down to the National Arts... Ewan ko lang..

Again, I would no longer tackle language issue as it would be veering away from the main topic. I have copied your quote and posted it at the Language thread or kindly check this REPLY. (http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=42297562&postcount=637)

j.r.

September 14th, 2009, 11:56 PM

carlo caparas is prolific... but...

c6josh

September 17th, 2009, 09:35 AM

National Artist award is final – SolGen
By REY G. PANALIGAN
September 16, 2009, 4:57pm
MB

The Office of the President (OP) declared Wednesday that the conferment of the rank and title of the Order of National Artist on seven persons is final and can no longer be overturned by the courts, not even the Supreme Court (SC).

In a comment filed by Solicitor General Agnes Devanadera, the SC was told that the award of the Order of National Artist is an exclusive prerogative of the President and with the issuance of seven proclamations on national artists, there is no other action necessary to consummate the
awards.

Thus, Devanadera said, the subsequent presentation of the gold medallion and citation to the awardees is a mere formality which has no bearing at all on the conferred status. She asked the SC to dismiss the petition challenging the conferment of the awards to four persons.

The solicitor general pointed out that on July 6, 2009, President Arroyo issued Proclamation Nos. 1823, 1824, 1825, 1826, 1827, 1828, and 1829 declaring Manuel Conde (posthumus, Film and Broadcast), Lazaro Francisco (posthumus, Literature), Federico Aguilar Alcuaz (Visual Arts), Cecilia Guidote-Alvarez (Theater), Carlo J. Caparas (Visual Arts and Film), Francisco Manosa (Architecture), and Jose “Pitoy” Moreno (Fashion Design) as national artists, respectively.

Devanadera cited the case of the late action star Fernando Poe Jr., whose proclamation as a national artist by the President was not followed by a ceremonial presentation of gold medallion and citation because his family had refused to accept the same.

But, she said, Poe remains in the official roster of national artists.

The Concerned Artists of the Philippines had earlier challenged the legality of the President’s proclamation of Caparas, Moreno, Manosa, and Alvarez as national artists.

Among those who filed the petition were National Artists Virgilio Almario (literature), Bienvenido Lumbera (literature) Benedicto Cabrera (visual arts, Painting) Napoleon Abueva (Visual Arts, Sculpture), and Arturo Luz (Painting and Sculpture).

Joined by university deans, professors, and private individuals, the petition stated that President Arroyo committed a grave abuse of discretion when she disregarded the results of the rigorous selection process and inserted the names of Alvarez, Moreno, Caparas, and Manosa in the shortlist submitted by the National Commission on Culture and Arts (NCCA) and the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) boards for proclamation as 2009 Order of National Artists.

The petitioners said the President violated the constitutional provision on equal protection when she included Alvarez’s name in the shortlist although the latter was not nominated and subjected to screening process by the National Artist Award Experts Panel.

Miguel

September 19th, 2009, 02:55 AM

The selection for the National Artists of the Philippines has been Manilacentric. An issue that has been less talked about or might not have been talked at all. It has been off the radar screen for so many years now. An error graver than the Carlo Caparas controversy as scores of artists from the South could be forgotten by future generations and might just end up as mere specks in history. There are a lot of geniuses in the South whose works and contributions have inspired countless humanities but whose persona has not hugged much limelight compared to its Northern counterparts. What I am just advocating here is an equal opportunity to be recognized on which the selection committee should not limit its scope within its realms but to extend througout the archipelago. A thorough research would surely reveal viable candidates. Among the FORGOTTENS here are two geniuses in the field of music.

The Forgotten Ones

http://www.rmaf.org.ph/Awardees/ImgAwardees/ImgKabayaoGil.jpg (http://www.rmaf.org.ph/Awardees/Biography/BiographyKabayaoGil.htm)
GILOPEZ KABAYAO
(click image to read his BIOGRAPHY)

Hailed from Fabrica, Negros Occidental. As a child prodigy, he studied at the Silliman University School of Music and later honed his skills at the finest music schools in New York such as the New York College of Music.

He was able to make waves in Europe such as Paris and Vienna with highly acclaimed performances like in Musikvereinssaal (Grand Hall) which he received eight curtain calls. He was also invited to play in different Asian countries but his greatest legacy is sharing classical music to Filipinos.

First to the expats in Guam and Hawaii and then to the people in the barrios which allowed him to be awarded as one of the Ten Oustanding Young Men of the Philippines in 1961 and the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1972. The only missing feather on his cap is the National Artist.

His children have now shared his legacy as they too have travelled all over the country and abroad to share classical music to Filipinos all over the world and showcasing true Filipino talents to foreigners.

6sxCC3G1vKU
Kabayao Family Story

y_WGEt9O-ng
Performing Bayan Ko

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Powerful Classical Performance

E8mdg0ZqNR0
Gilopez Kabayao

***************

Ben "Karpo" Zubiri
(1911-1969)
Cebuano composer, actor, and media personality

For many Cebuanos, Iyo Karpo is a household name. A stage, movie and radio personality, his real name is Ben Zubiri . He had a role in the movie Bertoldo-Balodoy, which was the first Cebuano film that was ever released and also was a comedian in radio dramas as well as offering advice on the program Purico Amateur Hour.

His greatest contribution though is being a composer for Bisaya songs which are timeless classics that even now are still being enthusiastically sang by younger generations. Songs such as Matud Nila, Ikaduhang Bathala, Katulog Na Inday, Nganong Mipakita Ka, Tuhoi, Mitu-o Ako, Ang Gugmang Gibati Ko, and the ever jolly Pasayawa ko Day. Matud Nila has said to be the cultural anthem for Cebuanos.

As a child, he displayed musical abilities, delighting family and friends with dances and songs, and performing at school programs at the San Nicholas Elementary School where he studied. He soon joined singing contests and became so enamored with the stage that he forsook going to college.

Before the outbreak of the Second World War, he was already making a name for himself, appearing on stage and on screen. He starred in the first Cebuano “talkie”, Bertoldo-Balodoy. After the war, he continued to appear in the movies but also cultivated a large following as a radio personality. He worked at KZRC as a comedian for radio plays and offered counsel on matters of the heart and home on the program Purico Amateur Hour.

Iyo Karpo composed and wrote songs. It was in 1941 that he recorded his famous composition, Matud Nila (They Say). The song became popular until after the war.

With its haunting melody and romantic idealism. Matud Nila achieved the status of an “immortal Cebuano song.” The opening lines of the song are typical of the traditional harana (serenade), the plaint of a humble lover, conscious of social censure, who offers the gift of a love “more precious than gold.”

Matud nila ako dili angay
Nga magmanggad sa imong gugma,
Matud nila ikaw dili malipay
Kay wa akoy bahandi nga kanimo igasa;
Gugmang putli mao day pasalig,
Maoy bahanding labaw sa bulawan…

(They say I am not worthy
To yearn for your love,
They say you will not be happy
For I have no wealth to offer you;
A pure love is my only troth,
A wealth more precious then gold….)

zk2BO2i09_c
Matud Nila sang by Pilita Corales

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Pasayawa Ko Day
(also as popular as Matud Nila)

RxXEct-_S3c
Ang Gugmang Gibati Ko

dinabaw

October 16th, 2009, 07:46 AM

no doubt Ben "Bones" Banez will be a National Artist, kilalang kilala ito ni @Paulkrps :cheers:

Mindanaoan Artist in Lexicon of Surrealism

http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/5034/benbanez666screaming.jpg

Published on 15 October 2009 by Blogie in Global Mindanaoans • Visited 61 times, 25 today •

At a time when Manila is rocked by controversies surrounding the questionable declaration of some personalities as National Artists, a Davao-born art talent quietly carved a niche among history’s greatest surrealists. His stuttering childlike speech, incompatible with his towering 6-foot height, sometimes amuses people. But today, Bienvenido Banez, Jr., towers all the more for achievements uncommon among Filipino artists.

Diagnosed with mild learning disability during childhood, Ben’s focus of attention has always been his art. Rightly so. In 2002, he won first place in the Asian Fellowship Painting Competition of the prestigious Vermont Studio Center launched from Vermont, USA. Last year, in New York City, where he based himself after his Vermont fellowship, he was the only Filipino among the more than seventy international, surreal visual artists featured in the grandest-ever birth anniversary celebration of John Milton and what is considered as the greatest English poem, his Paradise Lost (see photo).
666 Screaming by Ben Banez

666 Screaming by Ben Banez

Earlier, in 2004, the president and executive director of Williamsburg Art & Historical Center in Brooklyn, NYC, while viewing Ben’s painting, commented to a fashion photographer that Banez is the “greatest living surrealist from the Philippines.” This comment from contemporary Surrealism’s prime mover, Terrance Lindall, himself the organizer of Milton’s biggest birthday bash, may have been trivially said. But today it is qualified by another achievement in Banez’s career: his name, profile, and sample work recently are published in a German edition of “The International Encyclopedia of Fantastic, Surrealist, Symbolist, & Visionary Artists” or Lexikon Surreal for short. Thus, Bienvenido Bones Banez, again the only Filipino in the inventory, now appears along with Surrealism greats such as Salvador Dali, Ernst Fuchs, Keith Wigdor, and Jon Beinart to name a few, in the same book.

In page 35 of Lexikon Surreal, Banez’s work, “666 Screaming,” appears in full color (photo); while in page 44 his profile is printed in German. Translated into English, it reads:

BANEZ JR. BIENVENIDO BONES

(Davao City, Mindanao, Philippines, 1962- ) Filipino visionary, male, lives and works in the USA. Studied in the Ford Academy of the Arts in Davao City, Island of Mindanao; associate professor in the Philippine Women’s College-Davao. 2002 winner in the Asian Fellowship Painting Competition of the Vermont Studio Center, Vermont, USA., and has lived since in the USA.

If greatness also means winning an international art fellowship, the admiration of a globally-distinguished artist organizer, and being genus among a roster of historical figures and international achievers, then, this Mindanaoan artist has at least cut himself a slice of the surreal pie.

Banez’s art is expression of belief in Evil gaining dominion over the Earth. Injustice, inequity, conflicts, wars, environmental destruction, and human suffering—all these, manifestations of the rule of Evil—a perception old as Judaeo-Christian doomsday prophets and feasted upon by the human mind ancient to modern.

What makes Banez a paradox among surrealists is his depiction of hellish conditions not as murky depths, but psychedelic sceneries where spectra of colors enthrall viewers. Figures—human, geometric or biomorphic curiosities—lose tactility and become translucent images and luminosities swirling, shimmering, or disintegrating in a world bereft of gravity.

Marvelous colors, resembling jewelry and precious stones, at closer look turn out to be viral, cellular infections, acid-chemical concentrates, or spreading volcanic lava, eating up human figures, corrupting techno systems, and contaminating the cosmos—the artist’s vision of bio-chemical warfare, pandemics, and natural catastrophe combined to destroy the Establishment. Neonlike brushstrokes snake through his canvases—flowing traffic that entangle on physical perversions and gets jammed on a plexus of human agony nestled on infernal flame.

Esthetically mesmerizing the colors are in a Banez canvas, the portrayed perversion and misery of humankind are as morbid and offensive to good taste. Apparently, the artist captures the viewer with chromatic wonder; then, in succeeding moments, pounces on his cognitive faculties with horrors of the wages of sin. This visual irony fits well with Surrealism as originally defined by spokesperson Andre Breton: Beauty must be convulsive, or nothing! This context, Banez earned his ticket to the theater of the absurd where Hieronymus Bosch and company once sat and dreamed.

It is notable that Banez, despite his psychedelic colors, is no drug abuser. His recent works indicate he evolved from common representational surrealism into surreal abstraction, his figures and images losing physical and material volume, reduced to astral constituency, something only the very rare eye of contemplation could see.

Achieving surrealism by abstraction is not common turf of surrealists down history. This is what Banez should look forward to and discover the other half of man’s nature created not to languish in murky infernal depths. It does not set him apart from his fellow Filipinos but pulls them up as artists universal as any other race.
* * *

Lexikon Surreal is authored by Gerhard Habarta. Measuring 9 x 6.75 inches, it is printed hardcover, with ribbon. It contains 1,122 artist biographies from 69 countries in 464 pages, with 950 black and white and 458 color reproductions.
For more information visit www.lexikon-surreal.com.

Mindanao Bloggers (http://www.mindanaobloggers.com/2009/10/15/mindanaoan-artist-in-lexicon-of-surrealism/)

http://img129.imageshack.us/img129/7598/cache1348434950.jpg (http://img129.imageshack.us/i/cache1348434950.jpg/)

http://www.lexikon-surreal.com/

kiretoce

October 25th, 2009, 05:36 AM

No way, Jose: NHI on bid to exhume Rizal skull (http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20091025-232104/NHI-on-bid-to-exhume-Rizal-skull-No-way-Jose)

A group of doctors wants to exhume the skull of the national hero, Jose Rizal, so that they can “study and find out why he’s so smart.”

But Ambeth Ocampo, chairman of the National Historical Institute, will have none of it.

“They can wait for my replacement [at the NHI] in 2010,” said Ocampo, the historian and authority on Rizal who is also a columnist of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

He did not identify the doctors’ group which petitioned the NHI, the agency tasked with conserving and preserving the country’s historical legacy, to exhume Rizal’s remains.

“They came to see me, requesting permission to exhume Rizal’s skull from his monument at the Luneta. I asked them, what are you going to do with it? They said they wanted to study it, supposedly for science purposes. I told them to make do with the picture of his skull,” Ocampo recalled.

He said the doctors planned to drill a hole on top of the skull and fill it with mongo beans.

Measure volume of beans

“When full, they plan to transfer the mongo beans to a beaker and measure its volume,” he said.

“That will supposedly tell us the size of Rizal’s cranial wall. Then we will know why he was so smart,” said Ocampo in a lecture on best teaching practices at the University of Makati sponsored by the Metrobank Foundation’s Network of Outstanding Teachers and Educators (Noted).

Not the first time

Noted groups the 286 awardees of the Metrobank Foundation’s Search for Outstanding Teachers of the past 25 years. Ocampo, who teaches a Rizal course at the Ateneo de Manila University and the University of the Philippines-Diliman, was one of the 10 awardees in 2006.

That was not the first time that people have tried to exhume Rizal’s remains.

In a November 1987 essay in the Daily Globe newspaper, “Leave Rizal’s Pieces in Peace,” Ocampo wrote about a “move to pressure the NHI into exhuming the remains of Rizal to have them treated.”

“The NHI answered, ‘What for?’ and argued that since Rizal’s remains are not on display as relics, they don’t need treatment. To be candid about it, why don’t we just leave the pieces in peace?” the historian wrote.

The essay, reprinted in Ocampo’s bestselling book, “Rizal Without the Overcoat,” won him a National Book Award for Essay from the Manila Critics Circle.

It’s a grave

Most visitors to the Rizal Park at the Luneta probably do not know that the national hero’s remains are “interred permanently” under his monument.

“When you have your picture taken at the monument, remember it is not a monument, it’s a grave,” Ocampo told his audience of mostly public schoolteachers.

According to Ocampo, in 1898, three years after Rizal’s execution at Bagumbayan (now the Luneta), his family was finally allowed to take the hero’s remains from the Paco Cemetery where they had been interred to their home in Binondo.

Mother’s love

He said there was even a picture of Rizal’s mother, Teodora Alonso, kissing the skull of her son.

“It may sound very strange to us today, but that’s how much she loved her son,” he said.

The only part of Rizal’s body that is not buried under the Luneta monument is his backbone, said Ocampo.

Supposedly a piece of Rizal’s bone where the bullet hit him at his execution on Dec. 30, 1896, it is on display at the Rizal Shrine in Fort Santiago.

The historian noted that unlike other dead people who only get visits on November 1, Rizal’s monument at the Luneta and the piece of bone from his vertebra can be viewed anytime.

Most visited grave

Staff members of the National Parks Development Committee (NPDC), which oversees Rizal Park operations, agree.

With more than 5.5 million park visitors a year, the Rizal monument is “undoubtedly the most visited grave in the country,” said NPDC chief Salome Habal and Federico Edos, who heads the arts and culture division.

The 14-meter-tall memorial, designed by Swiss sculptor Richard Kissling, was completed in 1913, 17 years after Rizal’s death.

According to Edos, the 53-hectare park “has always been in the itinerary of foreign tourists in their Manila city tour. The number of visitors increases by 2 to 4 percent annually.”

Aside from the monument and its honor guards, park attractions include the light and sound presentation of the “Martyrdom of Dr. Jose Rizal,” staged on the exact spot where Rizal was shot by an eight-man squad of Filipino riflemen from the 70th Infantry Regiment of the Spanish colonial army. The site is about 100 meters north of the monument.

Eternal flame

“If only we had more funds, we could re-install the eternal flame that used to occupy a small space behind the monument,” said an NPDC employee.

The flame was installed for a brief period in 1990 during the incumbency of tourism undersecretary and NPDC executive director Narzalina Lim.

The NPDC, which also maintains the Paco Park and the Pook ni Maria Makiling in Laguna, has a budget of P172.7 million this year, P103.4 million and P49.3 million of which go to salaries and park maintenance, respectively.

Parks budget cut

Next year, the NPDC will get only P124.06 million, a decrease of P48.6 million.

Despite the flame’s 19-year absence, however, Rizal will always be remembered for his martyrdom that inspired Filipinos in their epic fight for freedom.

“Rizal taught us what it’s like to be a Filipino. There was no Filipino until Rizal designed it for us. That is why he is the father of the nation,” said Ocampo.

But the historian laments that Filipinos study Rizal as a hero when he should be studied as a man.

Filipinos should “see him as a human person because it is only in Rizal’s humanity that you can see the secret of his greatness. If you see what he is like, you’ll see a human person inside the hero and you’ll see the Filipino capacity for greatness,” Ocampo said.

OtAkAw

October 25th, 2009, 08:10 AM

^^I ain't no medical expert so here goes my query... Does the skull per se have anything to do with intelligence??!

kiretoce

October 25th, 2009, 08:51 AM

^^ I don't think skull size has any correlation with one's level of intelligence.

Ang_Bantayanon

October 25th, 2009, 02:30 PM

I don't see any reason why these doctors would need to study Rizal's intelligence. That's simply preposterous because we already know that he is intelligent and that he's been dead a century ago.

Why don't they study how to help make present-day Filipinos more intelligent i.e. more discerning and tactful instead.. so that our people would be more discerning on who to vote next elections and be more tactful in everyday life. Poor Filipinos, for example, would just vote for any candidate who could give them the fast buck and don't really think about the outcome of their action. They also blame fate (or even God) for their poverty and low station in life when most of the time, they could have opted to use their brains and brawn to uplift themselves. Hay, what mentality!

le Reine

October 26th, 2009, 05:11 AM

It is funny how they want to drill and then fill up Rizal's skull with mongo seeds just to determine the volume of his brain. That in itself is already void of any form of intelligence. And they call themselves scientists?

kiretoce

December 5th, 2009, 05:30 AM

Andres Bonifacio and bad imaging (http://www.thenewstoday.info/2009/12/04/andres.bonifacio.and.bad.imaging.html)

Andres Bonifacio has been a victim of bad Public Relations from the time Filipinos argued as to who would make the better national hero between him and Rizal. Andres Bonifacio has been unfairly labeled as the “de facto national hero of the Philippines”. Bonifacio’s “de facto” heroism loosely translates to “hero in practice but not necessarily obtained by law” (just like PGMA’s first term from Erap’s point of view).

It’s understandable that Filipinos would gravitate towards Dr. Jose Rizal who is more accomplished, multi talented, cultured, well-mannered, fashionable and can woo women in several languages (despite his 4’11 to 5’1 frame). Rizal is media savvy and endowed with diplomatic finesse. Bonifacio on the other hand was always unfairly portrayed as the impulsive revolutionary who wants the systematic hacking of Spaniards and the nationwide bloodshed to commence A.S.A.P. Such savage hot-headedness with the rudimentary qualities of the masa to match made Bonifacio the war freak, cedula-tearing “jologs” he is portrayed to be.

But it is not to say that Bonifacio was not presentable himself. In fact, the only known photo of Andres Bonifacio is one where he dons a coat, decent enough to wear to a prom. Those monuments and drawings of him waving a bolo and clad in an open-chested camisa chino (underwear in modern fashion really) and rolled up pants are quite demeaning and inaccurate as these are lazy ways to establish contrast between Bonifacio and the “hipper” and well bred revolutionaries Rizal, Aguinaldo, Mabini et al.

It may be because many historians fixated on Bonifacio’s humble beginnings as an ambulant vendor from Tondo who sold fans and canes to support 5 siblings orphaned at very young ages. Little did old Filipinos know that just a century later, having “Tondo” and “market vendor” on one’s resume are election essentials that modern day politicians desperately try to establish connections with shanty central if only to rub elbows with the great unwashed.

I think many historians also failed to highlight the fact that Bonifacio was self-educated and could speak and write in Spanish despite completing only four basic education years. Emilio Aguinaldo with his seven school years was barely able to speak Spanish. Bonifacio was a fast learner.

During his spare time Bonifacio read the very same reading list that Rizal fumbled on such as the French revolution, The Presidents of the United States, The Penal Code and Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Miserables’ (highly recommended best seller by Rizal himself, a must-read for aspiring national heroes). Bonifacio’s local reading list of course included great literary works “El Filibusterismo” and “Noli Me Tangere” by Jose Rizal whom he really idolized. Bonifacio never thought Rizal was lame. In fact he had concurred with the great doctor for him to launch his armed revolt against Spain only to be advised to do so using less barbaric methods.

Also by writing about Andres Bonifacio in the context of Rizal’s monumental, global and romantic achievements historians have unintentionally made Bonifacio pale in comparison as a leader and reduced him to a mere maker of bad judgment calls.

History books implied that Bonifacio established his Katipunan movement due to his growing impatience over the “slow boil” reform strategy pushed by his more restrained, pen wielding “kaberks” who relied on diaries to hurt Spain. It was this same stubborn quality of Bonifacio that irked ex-friend and first Philippine President-elect Emilio Aguindaldo whose win Bonifacio contested as courtesy of rigged ballots.

Election history really repeats itself and as early as a century ago, the Philippines was destined to have hotly contested presidencies and election-related violence such as salvaging. If all historical accounts are to be believed, Bonifacio is the first widely publicized summary “executionee” by a powerful political force who didn’t want to be accused of cheating in the polls.

Unlike our other heroes who were really reformists who just wanted Spaniards to treat Filipinos “a little nicer” Bonifacio was ready to wage a revolution whose goal is to intall a new, independent nation. This is perhaps why this radical, non compromising man is endeared to militant groups, left leaning individuals and other contemporary angst-driven propagandists such as coup plotters. All these add (unfortunately) to our rouge hero’s “bad press”.

And one more thing—- Andres Bonifacio seldom took a bolo to war. He had his own pistol which he preferred using because he really knew better.

TheAvenger

March 6th, 2010, 05:56 AM

http://i828.photobucket.com/albums/zz203/crisostomosantos33/luna_small.jpg

Batbat ang nakaraan ng mga kuwento ng pagtataksil ng mga tao sa kanilang sinumpaang pag-ibig – sa bayan man o sa kasintahan.

Ganito ang kuwento ng trahedyang pag-ibig ni Antonio Luna, dakilang heneral ng Digmaang Pilipino-Amerikano, matinitk na taktisyan at tahasang anti-Amerikano. Dahil bukod sa pinatay siya mismo ng kapwa Pilipinong mga sundalo, ipinagkanulo din ng naging kasintahan ni Luna ang tiwalang ipinagkaloob sa kanya ng heneral.

Metanoya

Sa unang bahagi ng himagsikan laban sa mga Espanyol, hindi lumahok si Luna sa Katipunan. Wala siyang tiwala na kaya nang magsulong ng isang armadong rebolusyon ang mga Pilipinong walang pag-aaral at walang pagsasanay sa digmaan. Kinundena pa niya ang rebolusyon at hinikayat ang mga nag-alsa na sumuko sa mga Espanyol.

Ngunit nang ipatapon siya ng mga kolonyalista sa Espanya dahil miyembro raw siya ng Katipunan, nagbago ang pagtingin niya sa rebolusyon. Isinumpa niya ang lahat ng kanyang nasabi o ginawa laban sa Katipunan. At lumahok na siya sa ikalawang bahagi ng himagsikan.

Nang itatag ang Kongreso ng Malolos noong Setyembre 1898, hinirang ni Aguinaldo si Luna bilang isa sa mga kumisyuner. Ngunit nahati ang Kongreso sa paksiyong nagtaguyod ng agad na kalayaan at pakikidigma laban sa bantang kolonyalismong Amerikano, at sa mga ilustradong nakipagsabwatan sa bagong mga mananakop na nagpoprotekta sa kanilang kapangyarihan sa ekonomiya at pulitika. Dahil sa paninindigan ni Luna laban sa mga Amerikano, pinag-initan siya ng mga lider ng Malolos. Kasama rito sina Aguinaldo, Felipe Buencamino, at Pedro Paterno, na nais makipagkasundo sa mga mananakop.

Nawawalang Anak

Ngunit bukod sa panunuligsa sa mga konserbatibo’t mapagkanulo, maraming historyador ang nagsasabi na may iba pang kuwento ang pamamalagi ni Heneral Luna sa Malolos noong 1899.

Nasa Malolos ang dating tinitirhang mansiyon ng mga Cojuangco. Pagbukas ng Kongreso ng Malolos, sinasabing nakitira sa mga Cojuangco ang ilang prominenteng lider ng gobyerno, kabilang na si Luna. Dito nagsimula ang kuwento umano ng pag-iibigan nina Luna at Ysidra Cojuangco, matriyarka ng angkang Cojuangco sa Paniqui, Tarlac.

Nagbunga, diumano, ng isang anak ang pag-iibigan nina Luna at Cojuangco.

Ayon sa pananaliksik ni Hilarion Henares, dating propesor at kolumnista, nilisan ng mga Cojuangco ang Malolos patungong Paniqui, Tarlac upang makatakas sa kahihiyang dulot ng pagkabuntis diumano ni Ysidra na walang kilalang asawa.

Ang naturang “anak sa pagkakasala,” ay nabuhay at ipinaampon daw sa kapatid ni Ysidra na si Melecio. Ayon pa kay Henares, marami ang ebidensiya na si Antonio Cojuangco Sr., lolo sa tuhod ni Tonyboy Cojuangco (asawa ng artistang si Gretchen Barretto), ang siyang nawawalang “anak sa pagkakasala” ng dalawang magkasintahan.

Nawawalang Pera

Sa huling taon ng buhay ni Heneral Luna, ipinatago diumano niya sa kasintahang si Ysidra ang mga kayamanan ng rebolusyonaryong gobyerno. Ayon sa historyador na si Alfredo Saulo:

The convoy of carts loaded with a huge amount of Spanish gold and silver coins seized from local treasuries in the Ilocos region, leading this convoy through forested areas up to the final destination in Paniqui, Tarlac, in the house of Ysidra Cojuangco, girlfriend of General Antonio Luna.
Nang paslangin si Luna noong Hunyo 5, 1899 sa Cabanatuan, sa utos diumano ni Heneral Aguinaldo, naiwan kay Ysidra ang mga ginto ng rebolusyon. At dahil hindi hayagan ang relasyon ng magkasintahan, hindi alam ng karamihan sa mga lider kung saan o kanino iniwan ni Luna ang mga ginto.

Hindi na isinauli ni Ysidra ang mga ginto.

Malaki ang ebidensiya, ayon kay Henares, na ang mga gintong ipinatago ni Luna kay Ysidra ang dahilan ng biglang pagyaman diumano ng mga Cojuangco. Matagal na ring alam ng mga viejas familias sa Gitnang Luzon na sa rebolusyonaryong gobyerno ni Aguinaldo at ng Katipunan nanggaling ang kayamanan ng pamilyang Cojuangco.

Upang itago raw ang tunay na pinagmulan ng kanilang yaman, sinasabing ipinabura ng pamilyang Cojuangco ang lahat ng rekord na maaaring magpatotoo na anak nga ni Heneral si Antonio Sr. Nawawala ang kanyang mga rekord ng pagkabuhay sa mga simbahan ng Malolos at Paniqui, at maging sa Ateneo de Manila, kung saan siya nag-aral.

Kung paniniwalaan ang historyador na si Dr. Vivencio Jose, pataksil na ipinapatay ni Aguinaldo si Luna. Maingay at delikado kasi siyang katunggali hindi lamang para sa kapangyarihan ni Aguinaldo, kundi ng mismong mga mananakop na Amerikano. Isang malaking kawalan sa mga nakikidigmang Pilipino ang pagkamatay ni Luna. Malaking kataksilan din ang di pagsauli diumano ng kasintahang si Ysidra ng mga gintong malaki pa sana ang maitutulong sa rebolusyon.

Kataksilan at kasinungalingan diumano ang naging pundasyon ng kayamanan ng mga Cojuangco, tulad din ng kataksilan at kasinungalingan na naging pundasyon ng Republika ni Aguinaldo.

Sanggunian:

Agoncillo, Teodoro. “Antonio Luna: The hero who never won a battle.” sa Weekend, 8 Hunyo 1993.

Henares, Hilarion Jr. “Antonio Luna’s Missing Descendant.” sa Smart File 14-15, 1993.

Jose Vivencio R. “The Rise and Fall of Antonio Luna.” Quezon City, UP, 1972.

Some of Henares’ claims can also be read here and here.

http://krguda.wordpress.com/category/history/

red_jasper

March 21st, 2010, 04:21 AM

141st Cavite Day (http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/248777/141st-cavite-day)
By ANTHONY GIRON
March 21, 2010, 10:13am

KAWIT – Cavite is celebrating the 141st birth anniversary of General Emilio F. Aguinaldo on March 22 with simple ceremonies at the Aguinaldo Shrine in this town.

Malacañang declared Monday as a special non-working day in Cavite. The declaration was contained in Proclamation 2024 that was signed by Executive Secretary Leandro R. Mendoza last March 18.

Aguinaldo was the first and youngest president of the country and one of those who led the Philippine revolution against Spain and the Philippine-American War that resisted the American occupation.

History writers tagged Aguinaldo, known as “Heneral Miong,” as "Caesar of the Philippines," “The Arm of Divine Providence," and "Liberator of the Filipino People."

Aguinaldo is the seventh of eight children of Carlos Aguinaldo and Trinidad Famy He was born on March 22, 1869 in Cavite Viejo (now Kawit).

manileño

April 19th, 2011, 04:10 AM

Just thought i'd start a thread here to drum up some interest in the upcoming 150th Birth Anniversary of Dr. Jose Rizal with the theme "Rizal: Haligi ng Bayan." It'll be great to hear other news and developments with regards to this national event as well as discussions on the legacy of the most awesome filipino, and Pinoy Pride in general. :)

http://pinoyworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Rizal-@-150-Rizal-Haligi-ng-Bayan.jpg

President Aquino and VP Binay unveil the Rizal@150 logo
http://www.usnewslasvegas.com/show_image_NpAdvSinglePhoto.php?filename=/2011/01/pnoy-114-luneta-4jpg.jpg&cat=17&pid=18980&cache=false

Proposed 150-peso commemorative bill with Dr. Jose Rizal for his 150th anniversary.
http://www.baybayin.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/jose-rizal-150.jpg

Links:
http://www.facebook.com/rizal150
http://www.facebook.com/rizal150to150

manileño

April 19th, 2011, 04:12 AM

Rizal tops real heroes’ list
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 04:40:00 04/09/2011

MANILA, Philippines—Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio and President Benigno Aquino III’s parents—Ninoy and Cory—top the list of names considered as “genuine heroes” by Filipinos, according to a survey by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) released yesterday.

The First Quarter 2011 Social Weather Survey, conducted from March 4 to 7, asked 1,200 respondents nationwide, “Who are the persons whom you consider a genuine Filipino hero? You can name up to five persons.”

The SWS did not provide a list of names to prompt the respondents.

Rizal, the country’s national hero, garnered 75 percent of the responses while Bonifacio came next with 34 percent.

Ninoy and Cory got 20 percent and 14 percent, respectively.

Marcos in top 10

Rounding up the top 10 are Apolinario Mabini (14 percent), Emilio Aguinaldo (11 percent), Ferdinand Marcos (5.1 percent), Ramon Magsaysay (4.3 percent), Manuel Quezon (3.8 percent) and Lapu-Lapu (3.7 percent).

Almost making it to the top 10 were Melchora Aquino (3.2 percent) and Marcelo del Pilar (3.0 percent).

President Aquino was mentioned by 2.9 percent of the respondents, beating Emilio Jacinto (2.8 percent) and world boxing champion, Rep. Manny Pacquiao (2.6 percent).

Also mentioned in the list were Gabriela Silang (2.6 percent), Gregorio del Pilar (2.2 percent), Juan Luna (1.9 percent) and Manuel Roxas (1.8 percent).

The living

Former President Joseph Estrada was mentioned by 1.8 percent of the respondents, followed by Diosdado Macapagal (1.6 percent) and Fernando Poe Jr. (1.6 percent).

Of the names, only President Aquino, Pacquiao and Estrada are alive.

Fifteen percent consisted of names with less than 1.5 percent of responses. Three percent had no one in mind, while another three percent did not give any answer.

The majority in all areas named Rizal as a genuine hero: 79 percent in both Luzon outside Metro Manila and the Visayas, 74 percent in Metro Manila and 68 percent in Mindanao.

Andres Bonifacio consistently came second with 47 percent in Metro Manila, 35 percent in the Visayas, 34 percent in Luzon outside Metro Manila and 25 percent in Mindanao.

Most cited

SWS noted that Ninoy was third most cited in Metro Manila (33 percent), Visayas (20 percent) and Luzon outside Manila (18 percent), while Cory was third most cited in Mindanao (19 percent).

Across socioeconomic classes, Rizal came first with 79 percent in class E, 75 percent in class D and 70 percent in class ABC.

Bonifacio and Ninoy tied for second in class ABC, both obtaining 23 percent.

Meanwhile, Bonifacio was second most cited in class D (35 percent) and class E (32 percent).

Ninoy was third most cited in class D (22 percent) and class E (12 percent), while Mabini was third most cited in class ABC (20 percent).

SWS used face-to-face interviews for the noncommissioned survey, which has an error margin of plus-or-minus 3 percentage points.

manileño

April 19th, 2011, 04:14 AM

Luneta gets facelift in time for Rizal's 150th birthday
abs-cbnNEWS.com
Posted at 04/03/2011 7:04 PM

MANILA, Philippines - The National Parks Development Committee (NPDC) is not sitting idly by as Jose Rizal's 150th birthday draws near.

In preparation for the late national hero's birthday celebration, the NPDC has been refurbishing the Luneta Park (also called Rizal Park) by sprucing up its gardens, repainting its statues and adding new facilities.

As early as December last year, the committee installed closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras and started playing children's songs at the park's new Children's Playground, which took 30 days to complete with the help of the Tourism Department headed by Secretary Alberto Lim.

"I call it the 'shock treatment.' People come here and are surprised at how beautiful and clean Rizal Park has become," NPDC executive director Juliet Villegas said in a statement.

With the help of volunteers and support from the private sector, NPDC looks to complete Luneta Park's facelift ahead of its 2016 deadline.

Among the committee's plans are the addition of a free Wi-Fi zone, repair of the park's underground drainage system, and possible underground parking spaces and passages to ease the volume of vehicles.

Another treasure set to be revived is a drinking fountain donated by the town of Heidelberg in Germany, where Rizal wrote the last chapter of his masterpiece novel Noli Me Tangere. The fountain will serve as the centerpiece of a planned Noli Me Tangere garden.

By 2012, the NPDC, the Tourism Department and several other historical organizations hopes to renovate the Rizal monument and launch the park's relief map, as well as come up with a Rizal Heritage Trail that tourists may follow all over the country.

"People are so eager to have a beautiful park like this as an alternative to the malls. It it our goal along with the NPDC for them to feel that the Rizal Park is a citizens' park, a park for all," Lim said.

He continued, "We hope to transform Rizal Park into a world-class urban park where Filipinos and visitors can rediscover history and heritage amidst the fresh air from the famed Manila bay."

Luneta Park, formerly Bagumbayan, is the same spot where Rizal was executed by firing squad on December 30, 1986 for opposing Spanish colonialism mainly through his literary works.

Several groups have been preparing for the celebration of Rizal's birthday. Among them are the Philippine Center for Gifted Education (PCGE), which recently launched a search for 35 young Filipinos who can "commit their lives" to the ideals of the country's national hero.

Rizal is known for his statement, "Ang kabataan ang pag-asa ng bayan" (The youth is the hope of our nation).

Rizal Award, call for entries

IN commemoration of the 150th birth anniversary of Jose Rizal, the public is invited to submit nominations for the Rizal Award. This is awarded to individuals, as well as organizations which, in more ways than one, create activities, projects, and various efforts to preserve the life and works of our national hero, Dr. Jose P. Rizal.

Nominations may be sent through snail mail, or e-mail from March 15, 2011 to August 15, 2011 to Rizal Awards Committee National Historical Commission of the Philippines, T.M. Kalaw Street, Ermita, Manila, e-mail address: rizalawards@nhcp.ph

ELIGIBILITY

1. The Rizal Award shall be bestowed upon individuals, Filipinos and foreigners, and upon societies, institutions, or other organizations that have rendered outstanding work in:
A.Stimulating and encouraging works towards the Rizalian concept of love of country and fulfilment of our duties of citizenship;
B. Achieving meritorious individual achievement in the various professions, or promoting , teaching and disseminating the same through proven competence leading to the general benefit of the individual, community, and the country at large in the light of Rizal’s teaching and way of life; or
C.Promoting and encouraging civic and citizenship responsibility as model citizens –incorruptible patriots with the virtue of resisting temptations and misuse of wealth, influence, rank, or power.

2. The Rizal Award shall be divided into two (2) categories:
A.The Individual Award – shall be awarded to individuals, Filipinos or foreigners, who qualify under Item 1 hereof.
B.The Institutional Award – shall be awarded to societies, institutions, or other organizations which qualify therefore under Item 1 hereof.

3. The Rizal Award may be bestowed posthumously upon any person entitled thereto, in which case the same shall be received by his/her legal heirs; if there is no legal heir, by his/her nearest of kin; and if there be no legal heir or nearest of kin, by any person designated by the NHCP to receive the award on behalf of the deceased.

4. The number of recipients of Rizal Awards shall be:
A. For Individual Category – TEN (10) Filipinos and THREE (3) foreigners; and
B. For Institutional Category – TEN (10) recipients.

5. Call for nominations shall be on March 15, 2011 to August 15, 2011.

6. The following shall not be considered for the Rizal Awards:
A. Elected and appointed officials of the government;
B. Heads and members of the Board of GOCCs and GFIs;
C. Members of the Rizal@150 Executive Committee; and
D. Officials and employees of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines

NOMINATION PROCEDURES

All nominations must be received at the National Historical Commission of the Philippines or via e-mail by August 15, 2011.

Nominations must be submitted in Filipino or English and must include:

1.Name of person or organization nominated

2.Title and address of person or organization nominated

3.A Proposed Citation for person or organization nominated (50-words limit)

4.Explanation of accomplishment of person or organization nominated (500-word limit) including:
•When were accomplishments made?
•Why, specifically, do you believe the accomplishments merit the Rizal Award?

5. At least 4 reference letters. Reference letters shall be considered confidential. Names and addresses of references should be suggested by the nominator.

6. Nominator information
• Name, mailing address, phone number, fax number and e-mail address

There must be sufficient documentation to support further investigation. Attachments shall not exceed twenty-five (25) pages. All nominations and supporting documents should be mailed on the address and contact details given above.
For other inquiries, you may contact Ms. Carminda Arevalo of the Research, Publications and Heraldry Division of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines at 523-1037 or visit their website at www.nhi.gov.ph

kevinb

April 19th, 2011, 04:24 AM

Proposed 150-peso commemorative bill with Dr. Jose Rizal for his 150th anniversary.
http://www.baybayin.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/jose-rizal-150.jpg
[/CENTER]

Links:
http://www.facebook.com/rizal150
http://www.facebook.com/rizal150to150

This is nice to have Rizal on a bill, not just on a coin. If this pushes through, who then will be on the one peso coin? Also, I find the design too crowded, especially the lower left corner of the front side of the bill.

diz

April 19th, 2011, 04:54 AM

^^ He can grace both.

In U.S. dollars, George Washington is on the $1 bill and 25c coin. Lincoln: 1c and $5. Thomas Jefferson 5c and $2.

Nabartek

April 19th, 2011, 04:55 AM

^^ I still think the government should bring back that six-sided coin! LOL

and the square one!

circle = so boring

richard24

April 19th, 2011, 04:59 AM

that 150 bill looks awesome. can't wait to get my hands on one of those. :)

amigo32

April 19th, 2011, 05:42 AM

akala ko pera ng Saudi dahil doon sa weird looking characters sa taas:D alibata pala:rofl:

Nabartek

April 19th, 2011, 05:51 AM

^^ lol baybayin is more related to sanskrit than arabic :lol:

omnislash

April 19th, 2011, 06:40 AM

akala ko pera ng Saudi dahil doon sa weird looking characters sa taas:D alibata pala:rofl:

I just want to correct you..
alibata is a misnomer. the only correct name for this abugida/alpha-syllbary is BAYBAYIN :)

^^ lol baybayin is more related to sanskrit than arabic :lol:

I don't think there is a Sanskrit script(but there is Sanskrit language)
there are different hypotheses that say Baybayin could have been derived from the Kawi script(the one found in the Laguna Copperplate Inscription/LCI), from ancient Malayan scripts, from the Assamese script, ancient script of Sulawesi, or the Cham script of Champa(Southern Vietnam and SE Cambodia)

http://www.baybayin.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/jose-rizal-150.jpg

Ang ganda. lalo na yung likod. yung may baybayin at yung Angono petroglyphs(ilan lang ang petroglyphs dito sa SEA afaik)

buti naman nagkaroon na ng puwesto si Rizal sa ating mga perang papel. :banana:

pero pakitingin, yung mga marunong gumamit ng baybayin diyan.
diba mali yung baybay ng Republika ng Pilipinas sa harap?
parang "reHUblika ng HIliHInas? o mali lang talaga yung tingin ko?

manileño

April 19th, 2011, 09:10 AM

now, why was this moved here mods? :D but anyway, i wasnt actually sure where to create this thread, cos the history and heritage aspect of it makes it appropriate for this Heritage section too, but then since it's also a current national event that will be held this year, i thought it was more suited in the News and Events subforum.:)

^^ He can grace both.

In U.S. dollars, George Washington is on the $1 bill and 25c coin. Lincoln: 1c and $5. Thomas Jefferson 5c and $2.

true but as a commemorative banknote, it would only be issued in limited quantities and so Rizal will remain in the Piso coin. :D

kevinb

April 19th, 2011, 09:52 AM

Ang ganda. lalo na yung likod. yung may baybayin at yung Angono petroglyphs(ilan lang ang petroglyphs dito sa SEA afaik)

I've read somewhere that the Angono petroglyphs are the largest petroglyph etched in a clearing, not a cave, in SEA. It's also the oldest here in the region.

manileño

April 19th, 2011, 10:52 AM

Here's how the world is preparing for the Sesquicentennial..

New Rizal monument in Rome for 150th birthday
GMA News - Apr 15 03:40am

To mark the 150th birth anniversary of national hero Jose Rizal, Philippine diplomats in Rome announced plans for a new monument for him this year.

Philippine Ambassador to the Vatican Mercedes Tuason announced the plan following a commemorative program to mark Rizal Day at the Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome.

"Ambassador Tuason announced to the group that a new and bigger monument of Jose Rizal will be constructed in Rome, in time for the 150th birth anniversary of the national hero on June 19, 2011," the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines said on its news site Saturday.

Josephine Bantug, a relative of Rizal through the family line of Rizal's sister Narcisa, is assisting Ambassador Tuason on this project, the CBCP added.

Philippine Ambassador to Italy Romeo Manalo, embassy staff and members of the Tuason and Fores clans from Manila also attended the ceremonies.

Rizal had mentioned the Marian basilica in his letter to Blumentritt during his visit to Rome on June 27, 1887.

After the mass, the group offered flowers before the Rizal monument at Piazzale Manila.

In his message, Ambassador Manalo recalled stories about the martyrdom of Rizal as narrated by his grandfather who witnessed the execution in Bagumbayan.

The program concluded with the reading of Jose Rizal’s last poem “Mi Ultimo Adios" by the participants.

Themed “Rizal: Haligi ng Bayan" (Rizal: Pillar of the Nation), the Rizal Day celebration served as an occasion for Filipinos in Rome to remember not only Rizal’s heroic role in Philippine nation-building but also his visit to Rome which seemed to have had an unusually deep impact on the future national hero.

The CBCP cited a letter Rizal wrote that he "should like to stay here until the last moment. I will give up visiting the other cities. If I had one more year, I would spend it all here… Ancient Rome allures me exceedingly."

PHL eyes putting up Rizal Center in Czech Republic
04/18/2011 | 09:31 AM

Philippine officials are considering setting up a center for national hero Dr. Jose Rizal in the area where he stayed in the Czech Republic in the 1800s.

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said Ambassador Evelyn Garcia broached the idea after visiting Litomerice City, where Rizal's good friend Professor Ferdinand Blumentritt used to reside.

"(Garcia) broached a proposal by the Ayala Foundation to put up a Centro Rizal, which among others will house a collection of Filipiniana books including those dedicated to Dr. Rizal, which (Litomerice Mayor Ladislav) Chlupac found to be very interesting," said the DFA.

"She also cited the possibility of developing Rizal tourism packages to boost tourism between the Philippines and the Czech Republic," the DFA added.

Chlupac happens to be a member of the Knights of Rizal Litomerice Chapter, the DFA noted.

Garcia's visit to Litomerice was her first trip outside of Prague, after her presentation of credentials to President Vaclav Klaus earlier this week.

Rizal and Blumentritt's friendship

During her meeting with Chlupac, she thanked him for his efforts in helping preserve the memory of the friendship between Rizal and Blumentritt in Litomerice.

"For his part, Mayor Chlupac thanked Ambassador Garcia for her visit. He likewise promised to maintain the close friendship between Litomerice and the Embassy," the DFA said.

Chlupac accompanied Garcia in offering flowers at the busts of Rizal and Blumentritt. A tour of the Rizal-Blumentritt Bastion then followed.

Rizal, together with Dr. Maximo Viola, visited the place in 1887 when it was still a town in Bohemia, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Sister cities

Many Filipinos visit Litomerice which has sister city agreements with Calamba and Dapitan in the Philippines, where Rizal used to live.

Litomerice hosts the Parkany Jose Rizala (Jose Rizal Park) and two other sites where the busts of Rizal and Blumentritt are displayed.

It is also the site of the Rizal-Blumentritt Bastion, which was established in April 2009.

The bastion contains a collection of memorabilia commemorating the friendship between the two men and a number of Philippine cultural items.

It is scheduled to host a Filipiniana exhibition this June.

Barcelona honors Rizal’s memory with prison cell named after him
By Faye P. Velasco
Positive News Media - Apr 17 04:15am

MANILA, April 17 (PNA) -- The room in a military fortress in Barcelona, Spain where Philippine national hero Dr. José Rizal was once imprisoned by Spanish authorities is now a place which honors his name and memory.

The recent inauguration of the “Sala José Rizal" room at the Montjuic Castle in Barcelona is part of a whole range of activities being undertaken by the Department of Foreign Affairs, including its Embassies and Consulates General around the world, on the occasion of the 150th birth anniversary of the Philippine national hero in June 2011.

Philippine Ambassador to Spain Carlos C. Salinas said that Montjuic Castle used to represent Rizal's loss of his freedom but from now on, the castle would be a place honoring his memory and libertarian ideals.

On October 6, 1896, Dr. Rizal was imprisoned at the Montjuic Castle by Spanish authorities after he had been arrested while on his way to Cuba, where Rizal was volunteering for a medical mission.

From the Montjuic Castle, he was subsequently brought to a ship bound for Manila, where Rizal faced trial and eventual martyrdom.

The ambassador also affirmed that it was especially significant for Filipinos in Catalonia that Rizal's name was standing side by side with such an important local figure as Lluís Companys, and added that had if not for the lessons imbibed during his stay in Spain, Rizal might not have been able to fully propagate his vision and ideas.

Salinas thanked the Barcelona city government and the local Filipino community, represented by Filipino parish priest Fr. Avelino Sapida, for supporting the Philippine Consulate General in Barcelona in realizing this project.

The Montjuic Castle is a fortress atop a hill in Barcelona, which many years ago served as a military prison.

Among local Catalans, the Montjuic Castle is particularly remembered as site where important Catalan dissidents or free thinkers were detained and executed. Among these were Francesc Ferrer Guárdia, who was executed in 1909 while working to modernize and secularize the Catalan educational system.

Montjuic Castle was also the site of the October 15, 1940 execution of the former leader of the Catalan local government, Lluís Companys, who had fought the Franco regime and whose name continues to resonate among Catalans as perhaps the most symbolic historical figure for Catalan nationalist aspirations.