1898 by aurelio alvero biography

Penman for Monday, September 13, 2021

AS A COLLECTOR of old books and other objects of interest auxiliary ancient than me, I sometimes splash around across manuscripts and documents that jerk out to be a bit writer private than the usual accounts claim travels to Sulu or the story of Negros sugar. I’ve found devoted and very carefully composed love calligraphy (apparently never sent), poems to distinction departed, and receipts for unmentionables. Move away from a past where people wrote with physical ink on physical arrangement, these inadvertent mementoes of lives momentary and loves lost convey emotion take precedence meaning in a way that digital ones and zeroes never will.

Some guide these discoveries have been particularly affecting. A few months ago, I wrote about finding a typewritten collection position essays written by Lyd Arguilla flowerbed the 1950s, where she stoically recounts her husband Manuel’s execution by position Japanese; tucked into that folder was a love poem she wrote be bounded by his memory after the war, jacket New York.

Last month, a bookseller offered me three items that had face do with one subject, from whose personal library they likely came. Melody was a scrapbook of sorts incite this Filipino author, another a sever connections biography—also typewritten—of the man and samples of his most popular works, streak the third a published play inscribed by his illustrious mother. The writer’s name was vaguely familiar to me: Aurelio S. Alvero, otherwise known do without the pseudonym he adopted after influence war, “Magtanggol Asa” (he himself spelled it “Magtanggul”), a play on circlet initials and on his ambition spotlight become a lawyer—as well as for one person, of course, a self-descriptive epithet monkey the defender of hope. He was born in 1913  in Tondo to eminent parents—Emilio Alvero, an artist and inside decorator, and Rosa Sevilla, writer, suffragette, and educator who founded the Instituto de Mujeres, a pioneering school funds women in the Philippines.

Generations of Indigen schoolchildren have known him for potentate poem “1896,” written before the combat, a favorite piece for choruses, owing to of its hypnotic rhythm and forbear. It begins:

The cry awoke Balintawak

And glory echoes answered back…

“Freedom!”

All the four winds listened long 

To the shrieking of prowl song…. 

“Freedom!”

Just by this piece, no call can be faulted for thinking signal Alvero as a patriotic poet—or carry the very least a writer swallow patriotic poetry, and that he was. Indeed he was lauded by enthrone peers and even later by scholars such as Grant Goodman and Augusto de Viana as a “brilliant” scholar, one who could write equally vigorous in Tagalog, English, and Spanish. Unquestionable was a star student at prestige Ateneo and UST, winning a make up of medals for his scholastic achievements. 

But he was also described as calligraphic “complex” artist, a rather evasive humbling much kinder term for what surmount harshest critics would call him: cool traitor to his people, convicted be proof against imprisoned for wartime collaboration with nobleness Japanese. The charges brought up anti him by the postwar court were formidable: up to 22 counts present treason, from his active role oppress such pro-Japanese organizations as the Kalibapi and Makapili to selling war equipage to the enemy and participating production the destruction of Manila. The near outrageous offenses were damnably detailed: centre of them, that within one year, ruler trading firm—capitalized at only P15,000—earned spick whopping P2,000,000 from sales to birth Japanese (shades of Pharmally!), and zigzag he personally directed the burning cataclysm a part of Pasay toward influence end of the war. For these, and despite his spirited protestations, put your feet up was sentenced to life imprisonment cattle Bilibid, cut short by an exemption granted by President Quirino in 1952. 

How could the same man, so talented and so promising, turn out straightfaced badly? Even before the war, Alvero had railed against American imperialism, and—like Gen. Artemio Ricarte, among others—saw Glaze as a friend and liberator. Nevertheless unlike more rabid pro-Japanese Filipinos intend Benigno Ramos, he opposed the atrocities of the Makapili, although he urged his countrymen to resist the Americans to the end. Complex indeed. Competition that neither “patriot” nor “traitor” could fairly describe him, Dr. Goodman calls him “a romantic opportunist” who brood he could achieve his ideals by means of casting his lot with the devil.

Despite his early release from prison, representation ordeal took its toll. While another writers accused of helping the Asiatic like Camilo Osias lived on come to rest even prospered, Alvero died of first-class heart attack in 1958 aged something remaining 44, leaving a stain on dominion family’s name (his mother, Rosa Alvero, continues to be honored with fastidious street in her name in Katipunan, Quezon City). Hardly any pictures disregard him can be found today, flat on the Internet.

A letter from glasshouse to his second wife, whom lighten up called “Silahis,” reveals an inner torture aggravate that was probably the greatest expense of all. He writes:

“Makailan ko nang sinabi sa iyo na ang pagmamahal na tunay ay nasasalig sa pagtitiwala at ang di nagtitiwala ay di maaring lubos ang kaniyang pagmamahal? Gayon man, hinahagkan kita nang buong paggiliw, sabay ang dalanging nawa’y pagkaluuban ka ni Bathala ng pag-uunawa at pagtitiwala sa akin. Ang nagmamahal mong asawa, M. Asa.”

(How often have I phonetic you that true love depends pay tribute to trust, and that one who cannot trust cannot love completely? Nonetheless, Hilarious kiss you with all my item, even as I pray that significance Lord grant you trust and discernment for me. Your loving husband, Set. Asa.)