MACABEBE, Pampanga—Mayor Annette Flores-Balgan and local historians are aggressively pushing for the inclusion of a native hero on the list of the country’s national heroes.
Since 2010 Balgan, Macabebe, tourism officer Catherine Flores, historians and residents have organized various activities to honor “the brave youth from Macabebe,” Tarik Soliman, who is also called Bambalito.
In 1930 a stone statue of the native hero was installed in front of the Macabebe town hall. Then a public high school in nearby Masantol town that parents built was named after him.
On February 14 Balgan will host various activities to honor the “brave youth from Macabebe.” Earlier, she and the Catipunan da ring Talasalicsic at Talaturang Capampangan Inc. (Catatagan) organized a lecture series on Capampangan Studies to make aware the public of the heroism and martyrdom of the brave youth.
“It’s the single desire of Tarik Soliman to fight for independence and freedom of Macabebe. He was brave, like the people in our town,” Balgan said.
“Tarik Soliman lived a life with principle. If you have the traits of our hero, you will go places in life,” she added.
“A native hero, recently asserted by local historians as the first Filipino leader killed while fighting Spanish colonialism in 1571, has emerged from the margins, his courage honored for four straight years now,” historian and university professor Francis Musni said in a statement.
Bambalito, or the brave youth from Macabebe—the name and description cited in historical documents on the Battle of Bangkusay in Tondo on June 3, 1571—was honored through a series of lectures for the youth and an exhibit about him and this coastal town of Pampanga, Musni added.
June 3 is the proposed date to honor the native hero of Macabebe.
Researcher Ian Alfonso said Macabebe first honored Bambalito in 1934 through a monument dedicated to the “King of Macabebe.”
While Macabebe began organizing activities in his honor in 2010, Bambalito and Magat Salamat had been honored a year earlier in Hagonoy, Bulacan, by virtue of a local ordinance, Alfonso said.
What is different and important this time is that a leading cultural heritage advocate, Robby Tantingco, proposed to drop the name Tarik Soliman and, in the meantime, refer to Bambalito as Bangbal. Some confused him with Rajah Soliman.
“The fact that the name [Tarik Soliman] came from a dubious source, Pedro Paterno, whom [historian] Ambeth Ocampo called the greatest turncoat in Philippine history, pushed the wrong buttons and shifted the debate to the name, not the existence, and certainly not the role in history of ‘the brave youth from Macabebe,’” Tantingco said in a paper presented at the lecture at Saint Nicholas Academy here.
Tantingco said the problem about the identity arose because the hero was identified other than his name.
The Spanish navigator and governor, Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, in a letter to the viceroy of New Spain on August 11, 1572, wrote: “The commander of the heathens lost his life and he was the only one who had obstinately rejected our peace overtures.”
Fray Gaspar de San Agustin, in a document published in 1698, referred to the leader as “the brave youth from Macabebe.”
Martinez de Zuñiga in 1803 described him to be a “general of the indios, who was the king of Macabebe.”
Tantingco said the name Bambalito came up thrice in a fourth document, which was written in 1590, and found in the collection of Don Antonio Graiño and published by Lorenzo Perez in 1933 in a journal.
It said: “Legazpi…sent two Spaniards to see Lacandola, and in his house, they met the Macabebes, among whom was their chief named Bambalito, who swore to make war on the Spaniards and challenged them [to meet] in Navotas.”
Citing a Capampangan scholar’s study of the name, Tantingco said Bangbal must be an apt name for what it stands: a leader, great partner, a hindrance.
The Center for Kapampangan Studies (CKS), various groups and the Macabebe government are working together to update the working text of the legislative measure (a resolution) from Congress to declare more aptly and accurately “the Brave Youth of Macabebe” to belong in his natural place in history, in the national pantheon of heroes enjoying the same distinction as Lapu-Lapu, Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio, Musni said.
The CKS will be more aggressive in its campaign by resorting to the intervention of congressmen, including those from outside Pampanga, he added.
In his speech during the recent 440th founding anniversary of Macabebe, Musni said the people of Pampanga “are not removing “anything from Cebu, and its hero, Lapu-Lapu” by asking the inclusion of “the brave youth from Macabebe” on the list of national heroes.
Musni stressed that the Macabebe native and hero was the first to shed his own blood, and he eventually died trying to defend his people from colonizers.
“The good thing about the efforts of Mayor Balgan, Musni and other historians is that people, not just in Macabebe but in Pampanga and other provinces, are now learning more about the heroism of our ‘brave youth,’” municipal official Con Macalino said.
“[It is a pride] to realize that Macabebe folk, then and now, are, indeed, brave and one of us is being considered a hero,” he added.
Image credits: Leo Villacarlos