How My Brother Leon Brought Home A Wife

(American Colonial Literature)
By Manuel E. Arguilla

She stepped down from the carretela of Ca Celin with a quick, delicate grace. She was lovely. SHe was tall. She looked up to my brother with a smile, and her forehead was on a level with his mouth. 

"You are Baldo," she said and placed her hand lightly on my shoulder. Her nails were long, but they were not painted. She was fragrant like a morning when papayas are in bloom. And a small dimple appeared momently high on her right cheek.  "And this is Labang of whom I have heard so much." She held the wrist of one hand with the other and looked at Labang, and Labang never stopped chewing his cud. He swallowed and brought up to his mouth more cud and the sound of his insides was like a drum. 

I laid a hand on Labang's massive neck and said to her: "You may scratch his forehead now."

She hesitated and I saw that her eyes were on the long, curving horns. But she came and touched Labang's forehead with her long fingers, and Labang never stopped chewing his cud except that his big eyes half closed. And by and by she was scratching his forehead very daintily. 

My brother Leon put down the two trunks on the grassy side of the road. He paid Ca Celin twice the usual fare from the station to the edge of Nagrebcan. Then he was standing beside us, and she turned to him eagerly. I watched Ca Celin, where he stood in front of his horse, and he ran his fingers through its forelock and could not keep his eyes away from her.

"Maria---" my brother Leon said. 

He did not say Maring. He did not say Mayang. I knew then that he had always called her Maria and that to us all she would be Maria; and in my mind I said 'Maria' and it was a beautiful name. 

"Yes, Noel."

Now where did she get that name? I pondered the matter quietly to myself, thinking Father might not like it. But it was only the name of my brother Leon said backward and it sounded much better that way. 

"There is Nagrebcan, Maria," my brother Leon said, gesturing widely toward the west. 

She moved close to him and slipped her arm through his. And after a while she said quietly. 

"You love Nagrebcan, don't you, Noel?"

Ca Celin drove away hi-yi-ing to his horse loudly. At the bend of the camino real where the big duhat tree grew, he rattled the handle of his braided rattan whip against the spokes of the wheel. 

We stood alone on the roadside. 

The sun was in our eyes, for it was dipping into the bright sea. The sky was wide and deep and very blue above us: but along the saw-tooth rim of the Katayaghan hills to the southwest flamed huge masses of clouds. Before us the fields swam in a golden haze through which floated big purple and red and yellow bubbles when I looked at the sinking sun. Labang's white coat, which I had wshed and brushed that morning with coconut husk, glistened like beaten cotton under the lamplight and his horns appeared tipped with fire.

He faced the sun and from his mouth came a call so loud and vibrant that the earth seemed to tremble underfoot. And far away in the middle of the field a cow lowed softly in answer. 

"Hitch him to the cart, Baldo," my brother Leon said, laughing, and she laughed with him a big uncertainly, and I saw that he had put his arm around her shoulders. 

"Why does he make that sound?" she asked. "I have never heard the like of it."

"There is not another like it," my brother Leon said. "I have yet to hear another bull call like Labang. In all the world there is no other bull like him."

She was smiling at him, and I stopped in the act of tying the sinta across Labang's neck to the opposite end of the yoke, because her teeth were very white, her eyes were so full of laughter, and there was the small dimple high up on her right cheek. 

"If you continue to talk about him like that, either I shall fall in love with him or become greatly jealous."

My brother Leon laughed and she laughed and they looked at each other and it seemed to me there was a world of laughter between them and in them. 

I climbed into the cart over the wheel and Labang would have bolted, for he was always like that, but I kept a firm hold on his rope. He was restless and would not stand still, so that my brother Leon had to say "Labang" several times. When he was quiet again, my brother Leon lifted the trunks into the cart, placing the smaller on top. 

She looked down once at her high-heeled shoes, then she gave her left hand to my brother Leon, placed a foot on the hub of the wheel, and in one breath she had swung up into the cart. Oh, the fragrance of her. But Labang was fairly dancing with impatience and it was all I could do to keep him from running away. 

"Give me the rope, Baldo," my brother Leon said. "Maria, sit down on the hay and hold on to anything." Then he put a foot on the left shaft and that instand labang leaped forward. My brother Leon laughed as he drew himself up to the top of the side of the cart and made the slack of the rope hiss above the back of labang. The wind whistled against my cheeks and the rattling of the wheels on the pebbly road echoed in my ears. 

She sat up straight on the bottom of the cart, legs bent togther to one side, her skirts spread over them so that only the toes and heels of her shoes were visible. her eyes were on my brother Leon's back; I saw the wind on her hair. When Labang slowed down, my brother Leon handed to me the rope. I knelt on the straw inside the cart and pulled on the rope until Labang was merely shuffling along, then I made him turn around. 

"What is it you have forgotten now, Baldo?" my brother Leon said. 

I did not say anything but tickled with my fingers the rump of Labang; and away we went---back to where I had unhitched and waited for them. The sun had sunk and down from the wooded sides of the Katayaghan hills shadows were stealing into the fields. High up overhead the sky burned with many slow fires. 

When I sent Labang down the deep cut that would take us to the dry bed of the Waig which could be used as a path to our place during the dry season, my brother Leon laid a hand on my shoulder and said sternly: 

"Who told you to drive through the fields tonight?"

His hand was heavy on my shoulder, but I did not look at him or utter a word until we were on the rocky bottom of the Waig. 

"Baldo, you fool, answer me before I lay the rope of Labang on you. Why do you follow the Wait instead of the camino real?"

His fingers bit into my shoulder. 

"Father, he told me to follow the Waig tonight, Manong."

Swiftly, his hand fell away from my shoulder and he reached for the rope of Labang. Then my brother Leon laughed, and he sat back, and laughing still, he said: 

"And I suppose Father also told you to hitch Labang to the cart and meet us with him instead of with Castano and the calesa."

Without waiting for me to answer, he turned to her and said, "Maria, why do you think Father should do that, now?" He laughed and added, "Have you ever seen so many stars before?"

I looked back and they were sitting side by side, leaning against the trunks, hands clasped across knees. Seemingly, but a man's height above the tops of the steep banks of the Wait, hung the stars. But in the deep gorge the shadows had fallen heavily, and even the white of Labang's coat was merely a dim, grayish blur. Crickets chirped from their homes in the cracks in the banks. The thick, unpleasant smell of dangla bushes and cooling sun-heated earth mingled with the clean, sharp scent of arrais roots exposed to the night air and of the hay inside the cart.

"Look, Noel, yonder is our star!" Deep surprise and gladness were in her voice. Very low in the west, almost touching the ragged edge of the bank, was the star, the biggest and brightest in the sky. 

"I have been looking at it," my brother Leon said. "Do you remember how I would tell you that when you want to see stars you must come to Nagrebcan?"

"Yes, Noel," she said. "Look at it," she murmured, half to herself. "It is so many times bigger and brighter than it was at Ermita beach."

"The air here is clean, free of dust and smoke."

"So it is, Noel," she said, drawing a long breath. 

"Making fun of me, Maria?"

She laughed then and they laughed together and she took my brother Leon's hand and put it against her face. 

I stopped Labang, climbed down, and lighted the lantern that hung from the cart between the wheels. 

"Good boy, Baldo," my brother Leon said as I climbed back into the cart, and my heart sant. 

Now the shadows took fright and did not crowd so near. Clumps of andadasi and arrais flashed into view and quickly disappeared as we passed by. Ahead, the elongated shadow of Labang bobbled up and down and swayed drunkenly from side to side, for the lantern rocked jerkily with the cart. 

"Have we far to go yet, Noel?" she asked. 

"Ask Baldo," my brother Leon said, "we have been neglecting him."

"I am asking you, Baldo," she said. 

Without looking back, I answered, picking my words slowly: 

"Soon we will get out of the Wait and pass into the fields. After the fields is home---Manong."

"So near already."

I did not say anything more because I did not know what to make of the tone of her voice as she said her last words. All the laughter seemed to have gone out of her. I waited for my brother Leon to say something, but he was not saying anything. Suddenly he broke out into song and the song was 'Sky Sown with Stars'---the same that he and Father sang when we cut hay in the fields at night before he went away to study. He must have taught her the song because she joined him, and her voice flowed into his like a gentle stream meeting a stronger one. And each time the wheels encountered a big rock, her voice would catch in her throat, but my brother Leon would sing on, until, laughing softly, she would join him again. 

Then we were climbing out into the fields, and through the spokes of the wheels the light of the lantern mocked the shadows. Labang quickened his steps. The jolting became more frequent and painful as we crossed the low dikes. 

"But it is so very wide here," she said. The light of the stars broke and scattered the darkness so that one could see far on every side, though indistinctly. 

"You miss the houses, and the cars, and the people and the noise, don't you?" My brother Leon stopped singing. 

"Yes, but in a different way. I am glad they are not here."

With difficulty I turned Labang to the left, for he wanted to go straight on. He was breathing hard, but I knew he was more thirsty than tired. In a little while we drope up the grassy side onto the camino real. 

"---you see," my brother Leon was explaining, "the camino real curves around the foot of the Katayaghan hills and passes by our house. We drove through the fields because---but I'll be asking Father as soon as we get home."

"Noel," she said. 

"Yes, Maria."

"I am afraid. He may not like me."

"Does that worry you still, Maria?" my brother Leon said. "From the way you talk, he might be an ogre, for all the world. Except when his leg that was wounded in the Revolution is troubling him, Father is the mildest-tempered, gentlest man I know."

We came to the house of Lacay Julian and I spoke to Labang loudly, but Moning did not come to the window, so I surmised she must be eating with the rest of her family. And I thought of the food being made ready at home and my mouth watered. We met the twins, Urong and Celin, and I said "Hoy!" calling them by name. And they shouted back and asked if my brother Leon and his wife were with me. And my brother Leon shouted to them and then told me to make Labang run; their answers were lost in the noise of the wheels. 

I stopped labang on the road before our house and would have gotten down but my brother Leon took the rope and told me to stay in the cart. He turned Labang into the open gate and we dashed into our yard. I thought we would crash into the camachile tree, but my brother Leon reined in Labang in time. There was light downstairs in the kitchen, and Mother stood in the doorway, and I could see her smiling shyly. My brother Leon was helping Maria over the wheel. The first words that fell from his lips after he had kissed Mother's hand were: 

"Father... where is he?"

"He is in his room upstairs," Mother said, her face becoming serious. "His leg is bothering him again."

I did not hear anything more because I had to go back to the cart to unhitch Labang. But I hardly tied him under the barn when I heard Father calling me. I met my brother Leon going to bring up the trunks. As I passed through the kitchen, there were Mother and my sister Aurelia and Maria and it seemed to me they were crying, all of them. 

There was no light in Father's room. There was no movement. He sat in the big armchair by the western window, and a star shone directly through it. He was smoking, but he removed the roll of tobacco from his mouth when he saw me. He laid it carefully on the windowsill before speaking. 

"Did you meet anybody on the way?" he asked. 

"No, Father," I said. "Nobody passes through the Waig at night."

He reached for his roll of tobacco and hithced himself up in the chair. 

"She is very beautiful, Father."

"Was she afraid of Labang?" My father had not raised his voice, but the room seemed to resound with it. And again I saw her eyes on the long curving horns and the arm of my brother Leon around her shoulders. 

"No, Father, she was not afraid."

"On the way---"

"She looked at the stars, Father. And Manong Leon sang."

"What did he sing?"

"---Sky Sown with Stars... She sang with him."

He was silent again. I could hear the low voices of Mother and my sister Aurelia downstairs. There was also the voice of my brother Leon, and I thought that Father's voice must have been like it when Father was young. He had laid the roll of tobacco on the windowsill once more. I watched the smoke waver faintly upward from the lighted end and vanish slowly into the night outside. 

The door opened and my brother Leon and Maria came in. 

"Have you watered Labang?" Father spoke to me. 

I told him that Labang was resting yet under the barn. 

"It is time you watered him, my son," my father said. 

I looked at Maria and she was lovely. She was tall. Beside my brother Leon, she was tall and very still. Then I went out, and in the darkened hall the fragrance of her was like a morning when papayas are in bloom.

The story is told from the point of view of Baldo, the younger brother of Leon. (The second paragraph gives you the clue.)

Leon is called Noel by his wife, the beautiful Maria. In the story, you'll get the feeling that Baldo makes a distinction between traditional names and modern ones. For example, he takes note that his brother calls his wife "Maria" instead of "Mayang", while Baldo's sister-in-law calls Baldo's brother Noel, which is the reverse of "Leon."

Baldo also wonders if their father will approve of Leon's new nickname.

Anyway, Baldo fetches his brother and Maria, and takes them home. They do not pass through the usual route. Instead, they take a shortcut through a field.

I don't know if symbolism is used in How My Brother Leon Brought Home A Wife. What I felt while reading the story is Manuel Arguilla's great love of Nagrebcan (Bauang, La Union). Arguilla takes the time to note the shape of clouds, the sounds made by the rolling wheels or even the rope near the neck of Labang (the bull), and even the scent of the air.

It's as if Arguilla transports you right there, among Maria and the two brothers. Right there with their father, mother, and sister Aurelia.

Perhaps another title for this short story would be How Manuel Arguilla Brought You To Nagrebcan.

MANUEL ARGUILLA

Manuel Arguilla

Manuel E. Arguilla was born on June 17, 1911 in Nagrebcan, Bauang, La Union to parents Crisanto Arguilla, a farmer, and Margarita Estabillo, a potter.Their mediocre living was not a hindrance for Manuel to attain his dreams especially in literature.

He finished his elementary school in his hometown and his high school in San Fernando where he became the editor-in-chief of his school's newsletter, the La Union Tab. He was also an athlete where he became champion in swimming events he joined.He entered the University of the Philippines where he joined the UP Writers Club and later became the president and the editor of the UP Literary Apprentce. He finished Education in 1933. He married Lydia Villanueva, a fellow artist and writer and lived in Ermita, Manila.Upon graduation, he practive his profession in University of Manila. He later joined the Bureau of Public welfare where he was the editor of Welfare Advocate, the bureau's publication.As a writer, his famous works were compiled in a book entitled How my Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife (And Other Stories) published by Philippine Book Guild in 1940. These stories were written when he was 22-29 years old. This collection of stories won first prize in short story category during the first Commonwealth Literary Contest in 1940.

When the Japanese invaded the country in 1941, Arguilla join the freedom forces of the country and led a division of the Marking's Guerillas. He was captured by the Japanese in 1944 and was imprisoned in Fort Santiago together with his family. His family was later freed but Manuel was sentenced to death. He was executed on October 1944 at age of 33.

Manuel Estabillo Arguilla (1911 – 1944) was an Ilokano writer in English, patriot, and martyr.

He is known for his widely anthologized short story "How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife," the main story in the collection "How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife and Other Short Stories" which won first prize in the Commonwealth Literary Contest in 1940.

Most of Arguilla's stories depict scenes in Barrio Nagrebcan, Bauang, La Union where he was born. His bond with his birthplace, forged by his dealings with the peasant folk of Ilocos, remained strong even after he moved to Manila where he studied at the University of the Philippines where he finished BS Education in 1933 and where he became a member and later the president of the U.P. Writer's Club and editor of the university's Literary Apprentice.

What i love most about Manuel Aeguillas stories depicts scenes on some barrio in Ilocos Sur, because I once leave in Ilocos sur when I was still studying my highschool years. Somewhere in Nangalisan Ilocos Sur, I stayed there for four years.

 He married Lydia Villanueva, another talented writer in English, and they lived in Ermita, Manila. Here, F. Sionil José, another seminal Filipino writer in English, recalls often seeing him in the National Library, which was then in the basement of what is now the National Museum. "you couldn't miss him", Jose describes Arguilla, "because he had this black patch on his cheek, a birthmark or an overgrown mole. He was writing then those famous short stories and essays which I admired." 

Manuel Arguilla, an Ilocano pride. His shown love to the country as a teacher, a writer, and a freedom fighter was a virtue of patriot who offered his talents and life for the country.

He became a creative writing teacher at the University of Manila and later worked at the Bureau of Public Welfare as managing editor of the bureau's publication Welfare Advocate until 1943. He was later appointed to the Board of Censors. He secretly organized a guerrilla intelligence unit against the Japanese.

In October 1944, he was captured, tortured and executed by the Japanese army at Fort Santiago.

Footnote to Youth By: Jose Garcia Villa

Footnote to Youth(1933)

In Jose Garica Villa's Footnote to Youth, he tackles the responsibilities and realities that come with marriage and the family life. In it, he narrates the story of Dodong, wherein we are introduced to Dodong when he is seventeen and seeking to marry his love Teang. He is problematic over how he intends to talk to his father about marrying Teang, going over the possible responses his father would give, and at the same time convincing himself that he is old enough to handle the responsibility.

On his way home, he makes a stop to relieve himself. The ground was broken up into many fresh wounds and fragrant with a sweetish, earthy smell. Many slender soft worms emerged from the furrows and then burrowed again deeper into the soil. The appearance of the worms and the occurrence of one worm crawling over Dodong's foot is of great importance to the story, as it serves as a revealing of Dodong's character and future. A short colorless worm marched blindly towards Dodong's foot and crawled clammily over it. Dodong got tickled and jerked his foot, flinging the worm into the air. Several characteristics attributed to the worm can also be reflected back onto Dodong's story, particularly the fact that the short worm was crawling blindly.

It would be interesting to note, as well, the connection this worm crawling over Dodong's foot has with Jose Garcia Villa's title. A footnote is simply defined as a note at the foot of the page. It is often used to give additional information to the reader regarding certain words or phrases in the text. And yet the author includes no actual footnotes in the story. As such, Jose Garcia Villa is obviously trying to put forth certain themes and messages regarding youth and life through the use of a short story. The message that comes forth to the reader through the reading of the story, then, is what we may refer to as his footnote.

JOSE GARCIA VILLA

Jose Garcia Villa

José Garcia Villa was born in Manila in the Philippines in 1908, a grew up the son of a physician who participated actively in the Revolution of the late 19th century against the Spanish domination of the Philippines. The father, who with the Revolution’s collapse, had become what writer Nick Joaquin has described as “a grim, silent man,” disapproved of his son’s artistic activities. The young Villa grew more and more interested in painting and, as he began medical studies at the University of the Philippines, in writing. As a sophomore in the university, Villa wrote a collection of sexual lyrics,Man Songs, that were so controversial—and successful—that he was expelled from the university for obscenity. An award from the Free Press, however, allowed him to leave home; he emigrated to the United States, studying first at the University of New Mexico, where he edited an avant-garde publication, Clay.

Villa soon moved on to New York City, where he attended Columbia University, and where, except for a brief return to the Philippines in 1937, he would remain for the rest of his life.

In 1933 he published a collection of short stories, Footnote to Youth: Tales of the Philippines and Others. But it was only in 1942, with the publication of his second poetry collection, Have Come, Here Am by Viking Press, that he gained international notoriety. By that time the Philippines, involved in World War II, was basically isolated from the world, and Filipinos discovered this publication only after liberation. Honors and fellowships soon followed, including a Guggenheim grant, the Bollingen Prize, and membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Dame Edith Sitwell had taken up his cause and recommended him as “A poet with a great, even an astonishing, and perfectly original gift.” Villa also corresponded with and ultimately met regularly with the poet E. E. Cummings.

In the preface to his 1949 collection, Volume Two, published by New Directions, Villa explained a new development in his poetics, the placement of commas after every word which the poet argued regulated “the poem’s verbal density and time movement: enabling each word to attain a fuller tonal and sonal value, and the line movement to become more measured.” Thereafter, Villa would be described as “the comma poet.” In 1959 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in literature in his homeland’s Far Eastern University, and he briefly considered returning permanently to the Philippines.

Although Villa had now become a near legendary figure, during his later years he was increasingly isolated from the more traditional literary scenes. Although he regularly haunted Greenwich Village institutions such as the White Horse Tavern, Villa met more commonly with other Filipino writers, and it is only recently that his work as been rediscovered, most notably through the Kaya Press publication of The Anchored Angel.

ose Garcia Villa was a Filipino poet, literary critic, short story writer, and painter. He was awarded the National Artist of the Philippines title for literature in 1973, as well as the Guggenheim Fellowship in creative writing by Conrad Aiken. 

He is known to have introduced the "reversed consonance rime scheme" in writing poetry, as well as the extensive use of punctuation marks—especially commas, which made him known as theComma Poet. He used the penname Doveglion (derived from "Dove, Eagle, Lion"), 

based on the characters he derived from himself. 

Jose Villa also was considered the leader of Filipino "artsakists", a group of writers who believe that art should be "for art's sake" hence the term. He once pronounced that "art is never a means; it is an end in itself. "Jose Garcia Villa - Finest Filipino Poet in English.Villa's tart poetic style was considered too aggressive at that time. In 1929 he published Man Songs, a series of erotic poems, which the administrators in UP found too bold and was even fined Philippine peso for obscenity by the Manila Court of First Instance. In that same year, Villa won Best Story of the Year from Philippine Free Press magazine forMir-I-Nisa.

Villa enrolled at the University of New Mexico, wherein he was one of the founders of Clay, a mimeograph literary magazine.He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree, and pursued post-graduate work at Columbia University.Villa had gradually caught the attention of the country's literary circles, one of the few Asians to do so at that time.

After the publication of Footnote to Youth in 1933, Villa switched from writing prose to poetry, and published only a handful of works until 1942. During the release of Have Come, Am Here in 1942, he introduced a new rhyming scheme called "reversed consonance" wherein, according to Villa: "The last sounded consonants of the last syllable, or the last principal consonant of a word, are reversed for the corresponding rhyme. Thus, a rhyme for near would be run; or rain, green, reign."

In 1949, Villa presented a poetic style he called "comma poems", wherein commas are placed after every word. In the preface of Volume Two, he wrote: "The commas are an integral and essential part of the medium: regulating the poem's verbal density and time movement: enabling each word to attain a fuller tonal value, and the line movement to become more measures."

On February 5, 1997, at the age of 88, Jose was found on a coma in his New York apartment and was rushed to St. Vincent Hospital in the Greenwich area. His death two days later was attributed to "cerebral stroke and multilobar pneumonia". He was buried on February 10 in St. John's Cemetery in New York, wearing a Barong Tagalog.

JOSE VILLA PANGANIBAN

JOSE VILLA PANGANIBAN

 (12 June 1903 – 13 October 1972)

Lexicographer, professor, linguist, poet, playwright, author, lyricist. Jose Villa Panganiban was a prolific writer, with over 1,000 works to his name.

Among his textbooks were Pagsusuring Pambalarila; Panitikan ng Pilipinas; Comparative Semantics of Synonyms and Homonyms in the Philippine Language, and publications such as Diksyunaryong Pilipino-Ingles; Concise English-Pilipino Dictionary; Thought, Language, Feelings; Isip, Wika, Damdamin; a collection of poetry, Mga Butil na Perlas; 101 Tanong at Sagot na Pangwika; 90 Painless Lessons in Pilipino; Tanaga, Haiku, Pantun and many more.

In 1903, Geminiano Panganiban, a lawyer, pharmacist and a non-combatant lieutenant in the Philippine Revolutionary Army, had to surrender to the U.S. Expeditionary Forces in Northern Luzon because his wife, Policarpia Villa, from Caloocan Rizal, a descendant of Emilio Jacinto of the revolution, was pregnant. 

The couple was placed in a concentration camp in what is now Bautista, Pangasinan. There, Jose Villa Panganiban was born on June 12, 1903, five years to the day after Gen. Aguinaldo proclaimed Philippine independence from Spain in 1898. In 1911, JVP’s mother died and in 1917, father and son returned to Geminiano’s hometown in Tanauan, Batangas where the father remarried Fidela Collantes of the prominent Collantes clan.

JVP married his childhood sweetheart, Consuelo Torres from Tanauan, Batangas in 1930. “Cons”, as he fondly called her, co-authored two dictionaries with her husband. Their 42 years of marriage produced 5 children: Jose Jr., Rosamyrna (Carandang), Virgilio, Consuelina (Dominguez) and Ligaya (Gamboa). Panganiban was also a professor at theUniversity of Sto. Tomas, Manuel L. Quezon University & the Philippine Normal College.

Among others, he founded the UST periodical, Varsitarian; was president of the Akademya ng Wikang Pilipino of the UNESCO; member of the Philippine-Japanese Trade Negotiations of 1960 and held many key positions in government and civic organizations. 

JVP received numerous National and International awards and citations for literature, journalism, etc., the earliest international award being the Richard Reid Award for Journalism while on post graduate scholarship at the Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana in 1940. Last year, A Jose Villa Panganiban –Varsitarian Professorial Chair was established by the UST.

Jose Panganiban's way of his love for a national language, both orally and in writing, JVP became a controversial advocate of Pilipino as the “wikang pambansa”. His detractors – mostly elitist Filipinos – called him “Diktador ng Wika”, “High Priest of National Language”, “Emperador ng Wika”, “Czar ng Purismo” and “Frankenstein ng Purismo”. 

On the other hand, his adherents – mostly nationalistic Filipino educators and writers – called him “Bayani ng Wikang Pambansa”. 

JVP was neither a dictator nor a purist.

Jose Panganiban once said, “Multilingualism would be a solution to our linguistic problems. It would erase colonialism... it would eliminate regionalism.. it would create nationalism. In the mutual contact of languages, foreign and local, the most useful form of national language will surface and will become the real PILIPINO.”

But unfortunately, it was not until months after his death that the 1973 Constitution established Pilipino as one of the two official languages of the Philippines – the other being English. 

In 1987, the Constitution stipulated that the National Assembly was to take steps toward the formation of a genuine national language to be called Filipino, which will incorporate elements from the various Philippine languages.

JVP contributed many things on having our own National Languages so we must always remember to love our own language and never forget to improve it.

Dead Stars By: Paz Marquez Benitez

Dead Stars

By: Paz Marquez Benitez

The story revolves around Alfredo Salazar, a bachelor over thirty, and two women: Esperanza, his fiancée of four years, and a young girl from out-of-town named Julia Salas. Everyone takes it for granted that Alfredo will eventually marry Esperanza. But although he is ashamed to admit it, the intensity of his passion for Esperanza has faded and he is attracted to Julia, whom he meets at a dinner party. But he is aware that all his loved ones-including Julia-would disapprove of his failure to honor his understanding with Esperanza. So he and Esperanza get married and have a family. Then, eight years later, he goes on a business trip to the town where Julia, still unmarried, lives. He goes to visit Julia, whom he has never forgotten. But he is surprised to find that he no longer feels attracted to her. He compares the memory of his love for her to dead stars, whose glow is still visible from the earth for years after they are gone.

 Dead Star is a love story about a man named Alfredo Salazar,who has his fiance in the person of Esperanza and they have been engaged for quite some time. Society views them as an ideal couple. Their wedding is about to take place in the near future. Prior to the wedding however, he sees another girl, when he goes with his father to a judge's house. He tries to seek love in her, but she kinda declines. in that way, Alfredo became a little bit confused in his upcoming wedding where he is about to chose between two options; to do what he should do by marrying Esperanza as prescribed by his parents or to do what he wants to do by having Julia Salas, his dream - the dead star in his life.

In the story, dead stars symbolize a dream for something that is nonexistent. The guy loved the girl. She was his dream, his star. He thought there was love there. But like a dead star which is so far away, and whose shine could actually be the leftover traveling light from it, he was a long way from getting the girl, and the love he thought was possible, never was.

PAZ MARQUEZ-BENITEZ

Paz Márquez-Benítez

(1894 - 1983 )

Tall and elegantly attired in full terno, she was a familiar figure on the campus of the pre-war University of the Philippines. She was Paz Marquez Benitez, beloved mentor to the first generation of Filipino writers in English. Inspiring many students who later became literary luminaries, she had an enduring influence on the emergence and development of Philippine literature in English.

Born to the prominent Marquez family of Quezon Province, Marquez Benitez belonged to the first generation of Filipinos trained in the American educational system. She was a member of the first freshman class of the University of the Philippines, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1912. She taught at the University’s English department from 1916 to 1951, acquiring a reputation as an outstanding teacher. Among her students were Loreto Paras Sulit, Paz Latorena, Bienvenido Santos, Manuel Arguilla, S.P. Lopez and National Artist Francisco Arcellana, who later emphatically declared, “She was the mother of us all!”

Among ALIWW’s prized exhibits are the journals of Paz Marquez Benitez, which are inscribed in two hard-bound volumes. The entries, written by hand in both pencil and ink, date from 1924 and extend for an as yet undetermined number of years. Of special interest to literary scholars are her notes on the tentative plot and setting of her short story, “Dead Stars.” This story, first published in 1925 and regularly anthologized since, is considered the first modern short story written in English by a Filipino.

Paz Márquez-Benítez was Born in 1894 in Lucena City, Quezon, Marquez - Benítez authored the first Filipino modernEnglish-language short story, Dead Stars, published in the Philippine Herald in 1925.


Born into the prominent Marquez family of Quezon province, she was among the first generation ofFilipinos trained in the American education system which used English as the medium of instruction.  She graduated high school in Tayabas High School (now, Quezon National High School) and college from the University of the Philippines with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1912.


She was a member of the first freshman class of the University of the Philippines, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1912.


Márquez-Benítez later became a teacher at the University of the Philippines, who taught short-story writing and had become an influential figure to many Filipino writers in the English language, such as Loreto Paras-Sulit, Paz M. Latorena, Arturo Belleza Rotor, Bienvenido N. Santos and Francisco Arcellana. The annually held Paz Marquez-Benitez Lectures in the Philippines honors her memory by focusing on the contribution of Filipino women writers to Philippine Literature in the English language.


For Marquez-Benitez, writing was a life-long occupation. In 1919 she founded "Woman's Home Journal", the first women's magazine in the country.


Also in the same year, she and other six women who were prominent members of Manila's social elites, namely Clara Aragon, Concepcion Aragon, Francisca Tirona Benitez, Carolina Ocampo Palma, Mercedes Rivera, and Socorro Marquez Zaballero, founded the Philippine Women's College (now Philippine Women's University). "Filipino Love Stories", reportedly the first anthology of Philippine stories in English by Filipinos, was compiled in 1928 by Marquez-Benitez from the works of her students.


Two years after graduation, she married UP College of Education Dean Francisco Benítez, with whom she had four children. When her husband died in 1951, she took over as editor of the Philippine Journal of Education at UP. She held the editorial post for over two decades.
In 1995, her daughter, Virginia Benitez-Licuanan wrote her biography, "Paz Marquez-Benitez: One Woman's Life, Letters, and Writings."


Paz Marquez Benitez (1894-1983) only had one more published short story after “Dead Stars.” Nevertheless, she made her mark in Philippine literature because her work is considered the first modern Philippine short story.

Dr. JORGE BOCOBO

Dr. Jorge Bocobo

Dr. Jorge Bocobo was a much travelled man, scholar, lawyer, writer, journalist, religious leader, educator, political scientist and successful college executive. He prepared himself well for any task that awaited him. Into any undertaking, he always put the best of his energies and, to use his own expression, "made the failure of any work which I undertake my own failure, its success my own success."

He was born on October 19, 1886 in Gerona, Tarlac to Don Tranquilino Bocobo y Duenas and Dona Rita Teodora Tabago y Cleofas. Talking about his family, he wrote, "my father's family name was Bocubuc but at the suggestion of the Spanish alferez in Gerona illy father changed it to Bocobo. My father was induced to make the change because people used to tease him and his brothers and sisters as bubuc. " He learned the alphabet from his mother and writing from his father, using as a primer the Cartilla, a paperbound pamphlet containing the Spanish alphabet, a syllabary and some prayers.

His formal education started in Gerona and he had it by apprenticeship as a clerk without salary in the municipal government. He once dreamt to be a doctor but early contact with public and judicial affairs later influenced him to take up law. In 1903 he went to Manila to attend school at Padre Faura Street.

On the initiative of Governor William Howard Taft the Philippine Commission passed Act. No. 854 on August 26, 1903 in order to send 100 Filipino students to the United States for four years of study in American schools. Bocobo and the other pensionados sailed on October 10, 1903 in a Japanese ship Rochilla Maru. The group took special summer classes at Santa Barbara, California before proceeding to their destinations. Bocobo attended Puss High School in San Diego and in September 1904, proceeded to Indiana University to study law. He graduated in June, 1907.

A few days after graduation he left for Manila, arriving there in August 1907. He worked as a law clerk in the Executive Bureau. In the 1910 bar examination he obtained an almost perfect score in Civil Law. A year later he transferred to the College of Law of the University of the Philippines to become an instructor. On September 30 that year he married Felisa de Castro. They were gifted with seven children Elvira, Florante:, Celia, Ariel, Dalisay, Israel and Malaya. In 1914 he was made assistant professor of Civil Law, and associate professor two years later, in July 1917 he was appointed full professor and acting dean of the college. During that span of years, he always insisted on the highest standard of legal training. This greatly contributed to making U.P. the most outstanding law school in the country and the one with the best legal library.

Bocobo helped President Quezon in many ways: from drafting speeches and statements to fighting for Philippine independence as a member of four independence missions to the United States in 1919, 1922, 1923, and 1924.

He dedicated two of his books to the cause of Philippine autonomy - For Freedom and Dignity, which opposed the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Law and General Wood and the Law, a book consisting of articles he had written for the newspapers upholding the stand of President Quezon in the celebrated controversy between Filipino leaders and General Wood. When President Quezon dedicated a day of prayer forPhilippine independence in October 1923. Bocobo wrote the national prayer for the occasion.

In 1930 he was awarded a Doctor of Laws (honoris causal by the University of Southern California. Indiana University did the same in 1951, and so did the University of the Philippines in 1952.

In 1934 Bocobo became the fifth president of the University of the Philippines. He presented the following initial ideas upon his assumption to office: student courtesy, improvement of the teaching method, student guidance, church attendance, reading period before the final examinations and formation of the alumni institute. A moralist and disciplinarian, he urged students to return to the simple but basic virtues. As a result he expelled a student for printing a poem that he deemed immoral and suspended a whole batch of students for violating the dance regulations. He said that "moral and civic education, being the paramount objective of the school, is the most exacting, for it requires that the teacher should not merely dole out knowledge or moral principles, but should inspire the pupils to live up to the principles that we imparted." Dr. Bocobo likewise believed in the importance of education for women. He wrote that "the paramount objectives of women's education, which is that a girl should be raised to be womanly, just as a boy should be taught to be manly ... that she should cultivate her feminine charm ..."

He became the Secretary of Public Instruction in President Manuel L. Quezon's cabinet upon his retirement as U.P. President in 1939. He worked to instill nationalism in the youth, to promote more Filipino sources in education, and the observance of a patriotic calendar whereby historical events were taught and observed in public schools. He asserted that "there is a need of shifting the tendency of your young people from frivolous social gatherings toward serious patriotic commemorations when they may ponder upon the past endeavors." He also believed that "the observance of historical events especially those which led the foundation for the Filipino nation, is an effective way of inculcating nationalism among the children and the youth. While a great deal had been done in recent years along this line in the public schools, still there should be greater emphasis upon patriotism." From 1942 to 1944 he was justice of the Supreme Court and Chairman of the Code Commission frorn 1947 to 1962. He was the principal author of the Civil Code of the Philippines for which work he was given a Presidential Award of merit in 1949 by President Elpidio Quirino.

Following orders of President Quezon to hold office for the Japanese government, he was charged with treason by the Americans on May 17, 1945. He became a political prisoner but was later cleared of the charges and set free.

Bocobo was chosen the Philippine representative at various conferences held abroad, among those were the International Missionary Council in Jerusalem, 1928; Real Academia de Jurisprudencia y Legislacion, Madrid, 1928: World Pacifist Conference, New Delhi, 1949; Prime de las Academia de la Lengua Española, Mexico City, 1951; International Congress on the Administration of Justice and Penal Laws, Madrid, 1953 and others.

He was likewise active in other social and religious activities. Being a Protestant he was active in the YMCA. He was a coordinator and promoter of the Boy Scouts among Protestants. He was the leader of the evangelical union, an organization for the promotion of Protestantism in the Philippines. He was a member of the United States Educational Foundation in the Philippines and a strong advocate of the Community Chest. He was also president of a civic organization of pensionados whose objective was to foster better relations between Filipinos and Americans.

Bocobo was a lucid writer an essayist, and a dramatist. He translated the Noli Me Tangere, and the El Filibusterismo of Rizal into English along with the Code of Kalantiao, the Philippine National Hymn, and the Bonifacio Decalogue. He copied and translated into English Rizal's preface and Professor Fernando Blumentritt's Filipinas. His legal publications included outlines of the laws on property, obligations etc. court decisions from 1924-1944 and others.

He died on July 23, 1965. He led a full life and lived through seven epochs of Philippine history from the Philippine Revolution to the Third Philippine Republic