Gemma Cruz Araneta
By Gemma Cruz Araneta
At the sight of the Casa Hacienda, I knew that I had finally and irrevocably arrived in Naic, a municipality of Cavite, 47 kilometers from Manila. Say Naic out loud and hear a plangent moan in the air because it is associated with tragic events that bifurcated our history. No one knows the exact origin of the name, but towns folk say it is that dreadful sound pigs make when frightened.
The Casa Hacienda is the only one of its kind in the entire island of Luzon that has survived the onslaught of time. Constructed in the 1830’s on the 3,000 – hectare Hacienda de San Isidro Labrador acquired by the Dominican Order, it was turned into the Naic Elementary School by the American colonial government, in 1922.
A touch of irony, I thought, because a former parish priest, Fr Modesto de Castro, was the author of the 19thUrbana and Felisa, fictional sisters who exchanged letters about prudery andmodesty.
Today, there is a cast iron marker of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) reminding the reader that on 19 April 1897, Katipunan Supremo Andres Bonifacio and his loyal followers met there to proclaim the “Acta de Naic,” a military agreement that annulled the results of the Tejeros Convention which took place, at another casa hacienda, a month earlier, on 22 March 1897.
According to historians, elections held during the Tejeros Convention were rigged in favor of Emilio Aguinaldo, most of the ballots distributed already had the latter’s name even if he was not physically present at that fateful assembly. After Bonifacio lost the elections, a member of the Magdalo faction further humiliated him by declaring he was unqualified even for the position of Secretary of the Interior. Lamentably, Bonifacio’s strategy to regain power was fraught with danger and resulted in his being accused of treason. Strangely enough, the NHCP plaque does not emphasize the fratricidal;it merely states that after Holy Week, Agulinaldo formed his “Cabinet of Reconciliation” in Casa Hacienda de Naic, a task that was left unfinished during the Tejeros convention.
My host for that visit was Fr. Isagani Aviñante, an erudite secular priest with the gravitas of Fr. Jose Burgos. After I read the plaque, he led me inside and said that Bonifacio and Procopio were imprisoned there before they were brought to Maragondon. He opened a heavy wooden door under a stairway that concealed a smalldank windowless room. The life-size figures of Andres and Procopio Bonifacio, wounded and bloodied, were propped up against the wall of that suffocating bartolina, so life-like and up close, I could not help but shudder.
After visiting the school on the second floor, Fr. Gani and I walked to the church beside the Casa Hacienda to view his current project; he wanted my honest opinion. Oh, no, what could he be doing to this heritage church? I felt a slight chill running down my spine as I have seen how parish priests have defaced heritage churches with well-intentioned but ill-advised beautification. Fr. Gani was overlaying the church floor with a mosaic pattern. I was speechless for a long while because the mosaic pattern was spectacular, virtuosically executed with real marble bits, painstakingly cut by hand, perfectly fitted and grouted; there was nothing cheesy or kitsch.
“It is a Celtic design,” he said. A meaningful one, I thought, the series of intertwined circles, with no beginning or end symbolizes the eternity of the Supreme Being. Fr. Gani must have done a lot of research in his personal library of rare tomes. The mosaic may not be of 19th century vintage like the Church of the Immaculate Conception, but the layering of the old and the new evokes the mystical side of the Faith.
A corner of the church grounds has been converted into a makeshift atelier where dozens of local workers slice slabs of marble and cut hundreds of thousands of minute squares, triangles and circles. Fr. Gani said he intends to store buckets of these pieces for the maintenance of the mosaics. And you should ban stiletto heels, I suggested, under pain of excommunication.
From the choir loft, the mosaic is breathtaking. People aresending their unsolicited contributions, according to Fr. Gani, which can only mean that they approve of the project, are proud of it and they feel it belongs to them. Sooner than later, tours to the Casa Hacienda de Naic will include not only Bonifacio’s tragic bartolina, but also the glorious mosaics of Fr. Aviñante.