The Aguinaldo house

NOW that Flag Day and Independence Day are over, it would be a good time to visit the Emilio Aguinaldo Shrine in Kawit, Cavite. While this is one of the best maintained national shrines run by the National Historical Institute, it is best to drop by after the place has been spruced up for the annual June 12 celebrations.

I first visited the mansion two decades ago, with college classmate Lisa Ongpin. We drove off from school one afternoon and were met by the curator, Linda Aguinaldo, who was related to Emilio Aguinaldo and thus, not only made us welcome but provided some anecdotes that were not in our history books.

The Aguinaldo house is best known for the so-called "Independence balcony," which is the focus of the annual June 12 program. During our visit, I did not realize that the balcony was not there in 1898 and that Aguinaldo actually waved the flag from a window of the house, which now has a balcony. I also did not realize that the balcony is supported by a great white concrete carabao [water buffalo] that has its tongue sticking out rudely at visitors. Seeing this rude carabao made me feel right at home.

The carabao also figures in one of the oddest pieces of Philippine furniture I have ever seen: Aguinaldo's desk, which has a very elegant Art Deco design but the seat has a backrest with a wooden carabao's head.

While we now acknowledge the carabao as one of our national animals, our textbooks do not tell us that this beast of burden figured prominently in some of the battles of the Filipino-American War. We have seen an illustration in Harper's "History of the War" showing the enemy being attacked by carabaos. The accompanying article said that in campaigns in Luzon, when the enemy was pursuing the Filipinos, carabaos in the field would attack Americans. To explain this behavior, it was suggested that the carabaos were averse to the dark blue and khaki uniforms of the enemy (in the same way that bulls hate red, though we are also told bulls are color blind). One other theory was that the carabaos did not like the smell of Americans or that they were attacked because the carabaos did not like soldiers who were not circumcised.

Whatever the reason, Aguinaldo honored the carabao by putting images of them as decoration throughout the house. Another thing that intrigued me were the numerous secret passages in the house. There were cabinets that could be turned to reveal a hidden passage. The heavy granite kitchen table actually hid a hole that led to what was supposedly an air-raid shelter under the house. While peering into the darkness, I was told that this hole in the kitchen floor led to a long tunnel (or tunnels) that ended up either in the church of Kawit or the parish cemetery. These days the supposed tunnels have been sealed off and we cannot confirm the terminal points.

In Aguinaldo's bedroom, one of the floorboards opened up to reveal a staircase that led to the private one-lane duckpin bowling alley under the house and an adjoining swimming pool. This makes one wonder what kind of person would want or need such a home with numerous escape routes. During the Revolution, Aguinaldo was probably in flight most of the time and this impacted on his personality in such a way that made these secret passages in the home normal for him.

Of course, being a national hero's home, there were a lot of personal items and relics: musty old uniforms, rusty sabers, outdated guns and even his wife's formal "ternos" [native gowns]. There was a display case filled with different military insignia and regalia that had been stolen twice but fortunately returned. One of the odd exhibits was a huge but smooth boulder on which the President reputedly rested after his long and arduous trek from Malolos, Bulacan, to Palanan, Isabela. This historic rock that was once honored by the President's behind is still on display there.

Then there were two small bottles (formerly in a display case in the basement, but now moved to a medicine cabinet on the second floor) containing a small piece of gauze and part of his pickled appendix. We were told that Aguinaldo endured an appendectomy in a government hospital at the turn of the last century. The operation was successful, but after a few days he still complained of pain. There was no way of checking him out internally with the modern instruments we have today so what they did was to open him up again and to their horror and embarrassment they discovered that one of the surgeons had forgotten a towel inside Aguinaldo. (Most doctors I consulted about this lapse said that a towel was better than having a scalpel left in your innards.) To make amends, the Philippine Assembly gave Aguinaldo a pension for life.
If you visit the Aguinaldo Shrine today, ask the tour guide to open the medicine cabinet that is filled with the distinctive blue bottles that once contained the eye solution he used daily. In that cabinet, you will see the two relics of Aguinaldo's appendectomy: part of the towel that was left in him and also his pickled appendix. These may seem like very macabre relics and unimportant, even trivial in the larger context of Philippine history, but they do draw a crowd and make us realize that Aguinaldo is not just a textbook character but was human, too.

Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu.