50 Fun Facts About Andrés Bonifacio

Andrés Bonifacio is popularly known by what title?

Father of the Philippine Revolution is one of several titles he carries: he is also the Great Plebeian, the man of humble Manila origins who launched the revolt that wealthier reformists had held back from.

In which district of Manila was Bonifacio born in 1863?

Tondo is where he was born on the feast day of Saint Andrew, Manila's patron saint, which is why his parents named him Andrés; the family home stood near the spot where Tutuban railway station was later built.

Which woman fed Bonifacio's Katipuneros from her own rice stores on her farm in the days before the 1896 uprising?

Melchora Aquino, known as Tandang Sora, gave the rebels 100 cavans of rice and her livestock; days later the Spanish arrested her and shipped her to Guam, where she stayed until 1903.

What did Bonifacio make at home with his brothers to sell in Manila's streets and plazas?

Walking canes and paper fans were a family trade, not a sign of destitution: his sister recalled that the business did fairly well, and he also drew advertising posters for Manila firms.

Bonifacio worked as a broker for which British trading firm?

Fleming and Company made him its agent for tar, rattan and other goods; he later left for a German trading house, most likely for better pay.

Which legendary hero's story did Bonifacio rework with Tagalog place names for his amateur theatre troupe?

Bernardo Carpio, in the Tagalog legend, is a hero of superhuman strength held in a mountain cave until he breaks free to liberate the oppressed; in 1895 Bonifacio led Katipunan comrades to those very caves near Montalban.

Which Victor Hugo novel was among the books the self-taught Bonifacio read?

Les Misérables reached him in Spanish translation, one of the books he pored over by lamplight; a friend recalled that he would go without sleep to read.

Which woman, known in the Katipunan as its Lakambini, married Bonifacio in the 1890s?

Gregoria de Jesús, nicknamed Oriang, was 18 when he began courting her; once initiated into the society she took custody of its papers and seals.

Why did the parents of Bonifacio's future wife at first oppose the match?

He was a Freemason, and her father, she wrote, shared the friars' view that Masons were bad men; the couple wed in church to please her parents, then again a week later before the Katipunan.

Bonifacio's first wife, Mónica, died of which disease?

Leprosy killed Mónica, the neighbour who had been his first wife; he later met his future wife through her cousin Teodoro Plata, a fellow founder of the Katipunan.

Bonifacio was a founding member of which reformist organisation set up by Rizal in 1892?

La Liga Filipina collapsed within days when Rizal was arrested and exiled; Bonifacio helped revive it, but the recruits he brought in had lost faith in peaceful reform, and its leaders dissolved it.

What was the Katipunan's first method of recruiting members called?

The triangle system kept each new recruit from knowing anyone but the man who brought him in, but it proved so slow and clumsy that the society dropped it within months for ceremonies that initiated several men at once.

What pseudonym did Bonifacio use inside the Katipunan?

May pag-asa, 'there is hope', is the alias he signed in cipher on the society's papers, and a Katipunan council in Manila's Trozo district later took Maypagasa as its name.

Bonifacio became the Katipunan's third leader after which two men had held the post?

Arellano and Basa were each eased out by Bonifacio himself: he found Deodato Arellano too passive, then fell out with Román Basa over the society's funds and its initiation rites.

Bonifacio set aside his own 'Decalogue' of members' duties in favour of which text by a younger colleague?

The Kartilya was printed and handed to every recruit; Bonifacio judged its wording better than that of his own Decalogue, though the two taught much the same ideals.

What was the name of the Katipunan newspaper, which printed only one issue?

Kalayaan, 'Freedom', came out in March 1896 under a false masthead; a second issue was being prepared when the hunt for the secret press forced its printers to abandon it.

Which pen name did Bonifacio sign to his writing in the Katipunan's newspaper in 1896?

Agapito Bagumbayan signed 'Ang Dapat Mabatid ng mga Tagalog', the essay credited to Bonifacio, which said three centuries of sacrifice for Spain were repaid with treachery; his poem on love of country ran beside it over the initials A.I.B.

Whom did Bonifacio send to Dapitan in 1896 to consult Rizal about starting the revolution?

Pío Valenzuela, a young physician, brought back Rizal's advice to wait; his own account later shifted, from a Rizal who condemned the revolt outright to one who only thought it premature.

Disguised as what did Katipunan rescuers approach Rizal's ship in 1896 to offer him escape?

Sailors is what the rescuers posed as in the veterans' telling; Rizal, waiting to leave for Cuba as an army doctor, turned them down, and by the year's end he had been shot.

The Katipuneros signalled the start of the revolt by tearing up what?

Their cédulas were the identity papers every colonial subject had to carry, so when Bonifacio asked the crowd to rip them up it was a public sign that they no longer accepted Spanish rule.

The provinces that first rose in Bonifacio's 1896 revolt are honoured by which feature of the Philippine flag?

The sun's rays number eight, one for each of those provinces; on the day Bonifacio attacked, the Spanish governor declared a state of war in eight provinces around Manila, from Tarlac down to Batangas.

Bonifacio's first big battle was an attack on a Spanish powder magazine in which town?

San Juan del Monte, now San Juan City, recalls the fight as the Battle of Pinaglabanan; Spanish reinforcements routed the rebels with heavy losses, yet within days the revolt had spread across the provinces around Manila.

What name for the nation appears on the seal and letterhead Bonifacio used as head of the revolution?

Haring Bayang Katagalugan means Sovereign Tagalog Nation, but the Katipunan used 'Tagalog' for everyone born in the archipelago, whatever their island or language.

Bonifacio commissioned a national anthem in 1896 from which composer, who later married his widow?

Julio Nakpil, a piano teacher from Quiapo who had joined the rebels in the hills, wrote his hymn in late 1896; Aguinaldo later chose instead the march by Julián Felipe that became Lupang Hinirang.

In May 1896 Bonifacio met officers of a visiting warship to seek arms and support from which country?

Japan was the Katipunan's great hope for rifles: its delegates gave the cruiser Kongo's officers a letter for the Emperor asking for help, but came away with courtesies and no promise of arms.

Which friend was Bonifacio said to be shielding when a Spanish bullet tore through his collar in late 1896?

Emilio Jacinto was the friend he was protecting in the classic account of the rout near San Mateo; after Bonifacio's death Jacinto fought on in Laguna and refused to serve under Aguinaldo.

Which two rival Katipunan councils divided Cavite's rebels when Bonifacio arrived in late 1896?

Magdiwang and Magdalo were both organised when Bonifacio toured Cavite in April 1896; by the year's end the two councils were at odds over who should govern the province.

Which Cavite leader did Bonifacio twice draw a gun on after being insulted?

Daniel Tirona was suspected of spreading slanders about Bonifacio and then belittled his schooling in public; within three weeks of that second clash, Tirona had surrendered to the Spanish under an amnesty.

To which post was Bonifacio elected, last of all, at the Tejeros Convention?

Director of the Interior was the last post filled; when a delegate sneered that it needed a lawyer, Bonifacio, who was chairing, declared everything the convention had decided null and void.

Which general signed Bonifacio's protest against the Tejeros election, then hours later took his oath in the government it rejected?

Artemio Ricarte signed the protest on the afternoon after the vote and was sworn into the new government that same night; the next day he put in writing that he had taken the oath under pressure.

Which general did Bonifacio's Naic Military Agreement name army chief, weeks before he urged Aguinaldo to execute Bonifacio?

Pío del Pilar signed the pact to unite the army under his own command, went back to Aguinaldo's side within days, and was one of two generals who talked him out of sparing Bonifacio's life.

Bonifacio was wounded and arrested at his camp in barrio Limbon, part of which Cavite town?

Indang's leaders had refused his hungry troops food and told Aguinaldo that Bonifacio had threatened to burn the town, which gave Aguinaldo his grounds for ordering the arrest.

Until the revolution broke out in 1896, Bonifacio earned his living in Manila as what?

Warehouse keeper, or bodeguero, for a German trading house was his post right up to 1896; for all his humble title, he was famously well read.

On what charges were the Bonifacio brothers tried on May 5, 1897?

Sedition and treason against Aguinaldo's new government were the charges; the court was made up of his men, and Bonifacio's appointed defender conceded his guilt and asked only for a lighter penalty.

Aguinaldo at first commuted Bonifacio's death sentence to what lesser penalty?

Deportation, meaning exile under guard, was what Aguinaldo first decreed; two of his generals talked him into restoring the death sentence, and the brothers were never told the reprieve had been withdrawn.

In the mountains of which Cavite town were the Bonifacio brothers executed in May 1897?

Maragondon was the rebels' last stronghold in Cavite, where a court martial had condemned the brothers days before; they were marched out to the hills on the very morning Spanish troops attacked the town.

Bonifacio is credited with a Tagalog translation of which poem by José Rizal?

Mi último adiós was Rizal's farewell, written just before his execution in December 1896; though Rizal had condemned the uprising, the Tagalog version called 'Pahimakas' is credited to Bonifacio, the man who led it.

Which of Bonifacio's brothers was executed alongside him?

Procopio was taken aside and shot first; their brother Ciriaco had already been killed when the camp was stormed twelve days earlier.

Which revolutionary leader wrote that Bonifacio's execution was 'the first victory of personal ambition over true patriotism'?

Apolinario Mabini wrote it in his memoir of the revolution, and he was no outsider: he had been Aguinaldo's chief adviser and the head of his cabinet.

Bonifacio is called "Supremo" as a contraction of which Spanish title?

Presidente Supremo, 'Supreme President', was the Spanish form of his Katipunan title; in his own letters he signed as Pangulo, President, and the clipped 'Supremo' was other people's shorthand.

Bonifacio's monument in Caloocan shows him with a bolo in one hand, but what did sculptor Guillermo Tolentino put in the other?

A revolver: veterans told Tolentino that Bonifacio favoured his gun over a bolo in battle, and one witness recalled him giving his bolo away as 'only cumbersome' while keeping his pistol.

Fort Bonifacio, the army headquarters in Taguig, bore which American president's name before the United States handed it over in 1949?

William McKinley, the president who took the Philippines for the United States, gave the 1901 fort its name; it now honours a man who fought colonial rule, and whose father came from Taguig.

Which historian has long doubted that the bones exhumed in 1918 were really Bonifacio's?

Ambeth Ocampo points out that the brothers were buried together, yet only one set of bones came out of the ground; the remains later vanished, by differing accounts stolen in the 1920s or destroyed in 1945.

Which actor played Bonifacio in the 2014 film biography that won Best Picture at the Metro Manila Film Festival?

Robin Padilla, better known as an action star, led a film that took nine festival prizes including Best Picture, yet few moviegoers went to see it and it earned back only a fraction of its budget.

In Renato Constantino's account, why did American officials pass over Bonifacio as national hero?

He was seen as too radical: Constantino quotes an American historian's summary that Governor Taft's circle preferred Rizal to more militant rivals, then named a province and a day of observance after him.

On what date is Bonifacio Day observed in the Philippines?

November 30 is his birthday, not the day he died: heroes are usually honoured on their death dates, but his came at the hands of fellow revolutionaries, a memory too painful to celebrate.

Which veteran of Bonifacio's Katipunan kept fighting the Americans until 1906 and was hanged by them as a bandit?

Macario Sakay had fought beside Bonifacio in the hills outside Manila in 1896; promised amnesty, he came down in 1906, only to be tried as a bandit and hanged the following year.

Which print-shop worker's disclosure led the Spanish to uncover the Katipunan in August 1896?

Teodoro Patiño worked at the Diario de Manila, whose press was secretly printing Katipunan receipts; in the usual account he told his sister and then a parish priest, and police raided the shop at once.

Why did Bonifacio reject the draft constitution Edilberto Evangelista showed him in late 1896?

It copied a Spanish law, the 1893 Maura decree on town government; Bonifacio reportedly said Filipinos could write a better constitution themselves and that copying Spain would be a disgrace.

Bonifacio argued at Tejeros that the revolutionary government must be what kind of state?

A republic, he argued, was what the Katipunan already was, since every member from its leader down stood for brotherhood and equality; he saw no need for the convention to create a new government.