indiohistorian:

The ignorance of a Filipino congressman this week brought to mind again one of the foremost Filipino geniuses that became part of our history. You’d be surprised that the most notorious of all metro Manila highways was named after him. He was Epifanio de los Santos, and the highway named after him, Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA). The congressman I mentioned proposed to change the name of EDSA to Aquino Avenue without even considering the man behind the name.

Epifanio de los Santos was a great polymath, probably next to Jose Rizal. He was a historian, a collector, a great poet in Spanish, an ethnologist, an avid researcher, a great librarian, member of several prestigious academic circles in Spain, a journalist, a linguist, even a governor, for he served as governor of Nueva Ecija for two terms. He knows several languages (English, Spanish, German, French, etc).

Every Filipino historian would be grateful for this man. Without him, none of us would know in detail Bonifacio’s heroism considering he compiled all the papers (primary sources) on the Philippine Revolution. In fact, he lived through the period, having been the editor and co-founder of the Filipino newspapers advocating for full independence from the United States, namely, La Libertad, El Renacimiento, La Democracia, La Patria and Malaysia (yes, we were supposed to be named Malaysia instead of Philippines if the federal states of Malaya have not taken the name in 1963). His first stint into writing was when he became a staff member of Gen. Antonio Luna and Rafael Palma’s La Independencia.

In the American Period, de los Santos proved to be valuable as he had a knack of collecting antiquities and even the flora and fauna of Nueva Ecija. The American governor-general Leonard Wood (a fierce anti-Filipino and great critic of the ultimate independence of the Philippines and adversary of Quezon and Osmena) was awed by Santos that the former appointed the latter as Director of the Philippine Library and Museum (this was the National Library and the National Museum before they were merged) filling the position from 1925 until his death in 1928. Thanks to Santos, we have in our country’s possession majority of the artworks (paintings/sculptures) of Luna, Hidalgo, Amorsolo and a lot more. His house in Intramuros was also a famous meeting place of Filipino writers and thinkers since his personal library contained the rarest and the best Filipiniana book collection in the world at the time (maybe next to Teodoro Agoncillo’s collection). Drool over historians. His library has the earliest books printed in moveable type published as early as 1602 and a pamphlet printed in 1593!

His genius was not even because of the encyclopedic knowledge he had. It was a heart of a humble scholar in search of truth that the country could stand on. He said:

All of us here are servants of the reading public. I am the head of the servants and I must show that I know better than any of the servants where the materials are found. I want to show that our service here is efficient and that we are really working to serve.

It is unfortunate that the congressman Rene Lopez Relampagos never knew Epifanio de los Santos, or else he would not have the audacity to even change the name. Did this congressman even know that this year is de los Santos’ 140th anniversary?

Epifanio de los Santos had this to say about our history:

“Today’s events are tomorrow’s history, yet events seen by the naked eye lack the depth and breadth of human struggles, triumphs and suffering. Writing history is writing the soul of the past… so that the present generation may learn from past mistakes, be inspired by their ancestor’s sacrifices, and take responsibility for the future.”

Maybe our congress needs another history lesson.

The news regarding the attempt to change EDSA’s name is in this video.