Apo Ipe Salvador @150
LAST May 26 was the 150th birth anniversary of Felipe Salvador, born in 1870. No, we are not talking about the famous actor, although he responded to the same nickname, Ipe or Ipi (in Kapampangan). In fact, he became known as Apo Ipe. In the time before film stars, Apo Ipe was a celebrity. Loved by the masses and feared by the colonizers, both Spaniards and Americans.
That he doesn’t occupy the same pantheon as Andres Bonifacio, Antonio Luna or Gregorio del Pilar shows our bias against people like him. More than a political leader, he was a religious leader who believed in divine powers (the West refer to it dismissively as belief in “magic”), then was condemned as a “bandit.” But history will show how much influence he had with the people of Central Luzon.
But one should not be surprised. He follows one archetype of the Filipino “bayani,” the one in the olds epics — whose powers came from above. In the Spanish period, many of the leaders of the revolts were babaylanes, male and female. And then you have the visionary Apolinario de la Cruz, aka Hermano Puli. In the Katipunan, you have Papa Isio Cardenas and even those antingantingwielding principalia generals. People failed to notice that this was also the template that former president Corazon Aquino and Jaime Cardinal Sin occupied as “saintly” leaders of the EDSA Revolution. When people started calling Emmanuel “Manny” Pacquiao a hero because of his boxing prowess, historian Mary Jane Rodriguez-Tatel said to wait until Manny becomes not only a politician, but also a preacher. In no time, he was both.
Scholars started taking Apung Ipi’s role in the struggle for freedom seriously when Reynaldo Ileto, with a fresh PhD from Cornell, published his influential work, PasyonandRevolution. But despite the book being voted as one of the 14 most influential books on Southeast Asia, Apung Ipi has not achieved what Hermano Puli did, acclamation as a national hero. Ileto told me in jest that although his work was widely read, people rarely reached Chapter 6, which is solely devoted to the “Pasyon of Felipe Salvador.”
Ileto took passages from Mariano Pilapil’s Pasyong Mahal, widely used and translated in Central Luzon and Southern Tagalog at that time, and juxtaposed it with parts of Felipe Salvador’s history and his own testimony. This illuminated not only a simple telling of what happened in Salvador’s struggle, but the reasons why his life resonated with the people as being similar to what our Blessed Lord said and did.
Following Jesus’ command, Salvador shunned his principalia beginnings in
Baliuag, Bulacan and joined a “kapatiran” known to people as Gabinistas, started in 1887 by Gavino Cortes, a principalia from Sulipan, Apalit, Pampanga and was popular among the ordinary folk. It was both Christian and indigenous in practices. But the Spaniards cracked down on the Gabinistas and banished their leader to Jolo.
In 1894, Salvador regrouped the Gabinistas and they became known as SantaIglesia (Holy Church). Like most kapatiran, they preached that evil will be destroyed by an apocalypse of flood and fire and heaven will usher freedom. Of course, this begins in the purifying of the kalooban from hate and the practice of love of fellowmen, as our ancestors and Jesus taught us.
With suspicions that the Santa Iglesia was part of the 1896 Revolution, the group was attacked in San Luis, Pampanga on Christmas Eve. Apung Ipi lost a thousand souls, but was able to return to Bulacan and was absorbed into the revolution and cradled by their Holy Mountain, Arayat. When the Spaniards executed Cortes on false charges, Salvador led attacks against the Spaniards in Macabebe and Apalit on Feb. 19, 1898. Historian Ian Alfonso wrote in
that this was the only time that the revolution started in Pampanga, known for loyalty to the Spaniards.
President Emilio Aguinaldo saw his following and recognized Salvador as a legitimate commander in the revolutionary government. But the more educated ones looked down on him and some even killed his followers. He cut off ties with the Republic, continued to fight, went to prison, and suffered and sacrificed like Christ. In 1901, he continued fighting the Americans until 1910 when, after an attack in Arayat, he was betrayed like Christ by a Judas and in 1912, was executed for banditry. Newsmen witnessed his last meeting with his family. He was jovial and in high spirits; the next day, he faced death with firm acceptance, just like Christ.
An American investigator said in 1906 that if Salvador dies, his followers would disappear. But did they really? Pampanga, once known for subservience to the Spaniards, became a hotbed of agrarian revolts since then. His believers thought that like Christ, he would never die. Indeed, Felipe Salvador’s spirit lived in the many freedom fighters the Kapampangan people produced afterward.