This week on February 6, 1964, former President Emilio F. Aguinaldo passed away at the Veterans Memorial Hospital at the age of 94. Aguinaldo was a controversial figure in history who one of my former professors from UP said was cursed by a long life. He tried to regain the presidency but was unsuccessful. Over time, he retained a grandfatherly image, though his issues hounded him until his death.
Since the time of Aguinaldo’s father, the Aguinaldos were already classified as relatively wealthy and held some degree of political power in the town of Kawit. So, While the family name has been associated with Kawit for some time, the Aguinaldos themselves believed that their paternal great-grandfather moved from the Ilocos region to Cavite in the 18th century. By the early 1800s, however, the Aguinaldos had become established in Kawit. There does appear to be some truth to this family lore. While Hagonoy, Bulacan, has the largest number of Aguinaldos in the Philippines, Laoag City and Pasuquin, both in Ilocos Norte, have 3% and 2% of Aguinaldos living there, respectively.
Aguinaldo is a common Filipino and Mexican family name that is a comparatively recent formation from the personal name Aguinaldo. “Aguinaldo” is a Spanish reference to “a Christmas or sometimes a New Year gift.” In some parts of the Hispanic Americas, the word is also associated with “a gift” and “a musical sort of Christmas.” In the Latin Americas, the aguinaldo song is interpreted not only for religious motives, but also to the human (The Christmas joy), it is sung with the support of diverse musical instruments. Though listed in the Catalogo Alfabetico de Apellidos of Claveria’s 1849 surname decree, President Aguinaldo’s family has held their family name pre-Claveria decree. The earliest mention of an Aguinaldo in Cavite was a 1776 list while other old records prior to 1849 in various towns show that the surname Aguinaldo already existed before Claveria’s decree.
His death attracted the attention of the world due to his role in our history and prompted newspapers to write an article or two to pay tribute to him. An interesting news write-up is from Texas:
“Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo died Thursday nearly seven decades after he led barefoot Philippine peasants in war for independence, first against Spain and then the United States. He was 94 and had been nearly blind and unable to walk. Death came after a series of heart attacks at Veterans Memorial Hospital where Aguinaldo had spent most of the last four years. His wife Maria, 82, died at the same hospital last May. Aguinaldo led the Filipino revolt against Spain in 1896 and fought a bloody rebellion against the United States after the Spanish-American War. When the Philippines received independence from the United States on July 4, 1946, he proudly marched down Manila's Dewey Boulevard and ceremoniously removed a black bow tie he had worn for almost half a century as a symbol of mourning for the republic he had founded in 1898. Much of his time in recent years was devoted to helping the survivors of his campaign for independence. Solemn and owlish-eyed, he preserved his military bearing always. He usually wore starched white uniforms with high choker collars. In 1896, armed only with bolo knives and a few shotguns, Aguinaldo's forces jolted the Philippines with the capture of a Spanish garrison at Binakay-an. The rebels' success brought promises from the Spanish to reform their administration.”
Even after the independence of the country, America at that time still saw the Philippines as backward. Consider “barefoot Philippine peasants” and “armed only with bolo knives and a few shotguns”. Of course, many parts of our history, seen from the lens of outsiders before, have been corrected by nationalist historians. It is interesting that descriptors such as the ones mentioned in his obituary above are still out there for many to read and believe to be true.