by Rose Cruz Churma
This book is a combination of several biographies centered on two families from the province of Pampanga, the Abad-Santos and del Rosario families, and the story of the book’s primary author, Agapito Labalan del Rosario.
Interspersed throughout are family photographs, letters, and various artifacts that support the narratives compiled in the book, where some are based on personal conversations with family members who lived through the times described in the book.
As noted in the foreword: “…it brings to light heretofore unknown details about very important Kapangpangans, among them Vicente Abad-Santos, Agapito Abad-Santos del Rosario and Pedro Abad-Santos…It covers political history in Pampanga, family history, biography, and even cultural history.”
The publication is comprised of two distinct parts.
Book 1 titled “Lost Graves” consists of several biographies with Chapter 2 devoted to Pedro Basco Abad-Santos and written by “guest” author Rosario Cruz Lucero.
The rest of the biographies were written by the primary author, Agapito Labalan del Rosario, while Book 2 “Found Lives” contains the author’s extensive memoir.
This book includes the first full biography of Pedro Abad Santos, founder of the Philippine socialist movement.
Born in 1876 in San Fernando, Pampanga, he was in high school at Letran Manila when his father, Vicente Abad-Santos died in 1893 at the hands of the Spanish guardia civil.
After high school, he obtained his bachelor’s degree from Letran and enrolled at the University of Santo Tomas to study medicine as his father had wished.
Three years after his father’s death, the Katipunan was discovered and by the time the first Philippine Republic was declared in 1898, he was a komandante.
He would be recruited again—this time to fight in the Philippine-American War in 1899.
In 1903, the US colonial government declared a general amnesty to resistance fighters, and Don Perico, as he was called by family and friends, walked out of Old Bilibid and resumed his schooling—but not in medicine.
He witnessed the continued abuse of tenants by the land-owning class and shifted his learning to law.
By nature a free thinker and having experienced his country’s turbulent years as well as the structured style of college life, he designed his own curriculum.
His choice of content was eclectic. He read the subject matter in different languages—the bible in Greek, Das Capital in German, the Daily Worker in English and various law books in Latin, Spanish and Russian.
In his spare time, he published a local paper called La Publicidad.
He passed the Philippine Bar in 1907, four years after he was freed from Old Bilibid, and was appointed Justice of the Peace in San Fernando, Pampanga.
Ironically, during the two years he was a public servant, Don Perico inadvertently found himself being the pillar of a justice system that, by its nature, perpetuated injustice within Pampanga’s economic system.
In 1910, he was elected to the Municipal Council, and now could offer his legal services pro bono to protect the rights of workers and peasants—and the cases comprised a third of his caseload—supported by two-thirds of his clients from friends in high places.
His law office was a nipa hut on the grounds of the Abad-Santos ancestral home—to ensure that his peasant clients were not intimidated to seek his help.
In 1916, he was elected to the Legislature as the representative of Pampanga—the first time that the Philippines had a bicameral national assembly.
During his term in the Legislature, he would support two bills that championed women: divorce on the grounds of not just the wife’s but also the husband’s adultery, and women’s right to vote.
His crusade for equality covered not only race and social class but also gender.
In 1922, he was part of the second Independence Mission to Washington DC—to seek independence for the Philippines. Upon his return home, he also returned to private practice and became the workers’ and peasants’ legal counsel.
Because of his familiarity with the workers’ psyche, he advised them that if they acted individually and separately, they would inevitably be defeated by the state machinery.
He felt that the peasants’ chances of gaining concessions would increase if they could draw strength from one another and use their collective voice to demand their rights.
By 1929, he founded a workers union called Aguman ding Maldang Talapagobra (Kapangpangan for League of Poor Workers) or AMT and encouraged the peasants to be more militant, well-organized, and able to articulate their demands and grievances.
He read widely, especially Marxist books, and chose ideas that could best be applied to local conditions and formed his own indigenous theory of socialism and published his theories in Socialism Today, a monthly journal.
In 1931, the Communist Party (CP) of the Philippines was declared illegal and its leaders were sent to jail. Meanwhile, the AMT evolved into the Socialist Party (SP) and continued the CP’s function of representing the working class—but was more discreet than the CP leadership and avoided jail time.
As the SP established itself politically, its mass base became stronger under the AMT, whose 70,000 members were spread in the contiguous provinces of Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, all the way down south to Batangas.
In the May 5, 1935 edition of The Tribune, his first public activity as a leader of workers and peasants was duly noted. About 3,000 members of the SP marched to San Fernando, Pampanga’s capital to celebrate Labor Day, where he delivered a speech.
Among his party co-founders and loyal cadres were Vivencio Cuyugan, Luis Taruc, Casto Alejandrino and Agapito del Rosario—who were all elected mayors of their respective towns under the SP slate.
By late 1939, the workers gained militancy that a two-week work stoppage in three sugar centrals in Pampanga forced the Philippines’ Labor Department to grant some concessions to the workers.
Labor unions emerged throughout the country and the acknowledged leaders of the most radical and cohesive organizations were Pedro Abad-Santos of Pampanga, Antonio Paquia of Manila and Jose Nava of Iloilo.
With the certainty of a Japanese invasion, the SP and CP had merged into one party despite their differences.
Called the Communist Party of the Philippines or CPP, Pedro Abad-Santos was elected as vice chair. The group’s 5-point agenda had one basic theme—which was preparing against the Japanese invasion.
With the arrival of Japanese forces, the CPP leadership was arrested and Pedro Abad-Santos was once more detained—this time at Fort Santiago.
He was kept in solitary confinement for two years but was released under house arrest for medical treatment. He was eventually brought to Pampanga, at a Hukbalahap (Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon) base headed by Luis Taruc.
Don Perico died on January 15, 1945 of acute ulcer a few months before Liberation.
As his grand nephew concluded in this book, “…since Pedro Abad-Santos, no other leader has emerged in Central Luzon to rival his heroic selflessness.”
This book provides the history of Pampanga and Central Luzon from a privileged front-row seat, from authors who are related to the subjects and have intimate access to relatives who provided primary sources from their memory banks, and from family heirlooms.
Just like the author, we hope more retirees will spend their lucid post-work years writing their memoirs or documenting the lives of forebears—whether they are as accomplished as the subjects of this book or not. All stories need to be told.
ROSE CRUZ CHURMA established Kalamansi Books & Things three decades ago. It has evolved from a mail-order bookstore into an online advocacy with the intent of helping global Pinoys discover their heritage by promoting books of value from the Philippines and those written by Filipinos in the Diaspora. We can be reached at kalamansibooks@gmail.com.
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