BORN on Dec. 18, 1856 in Jaro, Iloilo City, Dr. Graciano Lopez Jaena – the foremost and only Ilonggo hero on the national level – would have been 163 years old today.
He was considered “the first Filipino propagandist” in the struggle for freedom during the oppressive Spanish regime. He founded and edited La Solidaridad, the mouthpiece of the Propaganda Movement in 1882.
Admired for his articulate and critical writing, at the age of 18 Lopez Jaena wrote the satirical story Fray Botod in Jaro, which depicted a fat and lecherous priest. Botod’s false piety “always had the Virgin and God on his lips no matter how unjust and underhanded his acts are.” This incurred the fury of the friars.
He studied Medicine at the University of Santo Tomas but did not finish it due to lack of money. He eventually found his true calling – galvanize the Filipino people into demanding for freedom from colonial Spain. In Madrid, Spain on April 27, 1883 he demanded for freedom in a speech before Spanish officials.
Offered the editorship of a Spanish newspaper in New York, he refused, saying “my brain and my pen belong to the Philippines and not to any foreign country.”
He expressed his love of country with these few words: “Philippines, I salute her with invocation of hope on my lips! The blue sea is her mantle, the most beautiful sky of the world her crown, adorned by resplendent stars. Whoever has not seen her has not seen the loveliest spot on earth.”
Unfortunately, he did not live long enough to see the fruition of his efforts aimed at freeing the Motherland. He died very young of tuberculosis at 39 years and one month on Jan. 20, 1896 in Barcelona, Spain where he was laid to rest by the Sisters of Charity in an unmarked grave at the Cementerio Sud-Oeste.
Lopez Jaena loved his country so much and invested the best years of his young life in it. The Lopez Jaena monument proudly stands at the Lopez Jaena Park – unfortunately still better known as the Jaro Plaza – and assures the perpetuation of his memory for the coming generations.
