Bonifacio Day - November 30, the Philippines national hero Andress Bonifacio, and the road to 1898

Bonifacio Day on November 30 is a Philippine regular public holiday commemorating Andres Bonifacio (1863 - 1897), founder of the Katipunan secret society and Supremo of the Philippine Revolution of 1896. It is the militant counterpart to Rizal Day (December 30) and one of two December-vicinity days in the Philippine national-hero calendar.

The one-line summary

Philippine regular public holiday on November 30, commemorating the birthday of Andres Bonifacio (1863-1897), founder of the Katipunan and the Supremo of the Philippine Revolution. Fixed-date holiday under Republic Act No. 9492 (2007).

Origin

Andres Bonifacio was born in Manila on November 30, 1863, to a family of mixed Tagalog and Spanish ancestry. His father Santiago died when Andres was young; his mother Monica raised the family in Tondo, Manila. Bonifacio worked as a bodegero (warehouse clerk) and later as a bodega manager, an occupation that gave him literacy in Spanish and exposure to the Philippine reformist press, including Jose Rizal's novels Noli Me Tangere (1887) and El Filibusterismo (1891).

Bonifacio joined the Liga Filipina, the reformist organisation founded by Rizal in 1892. When the Liga was suppressed by Spanish authorities, Bonifacio founded the Katipunan in July 1892 in Balintawak, Caloocan (then part of Manila province), as a more militant organisation. The Katipunan recruited broadly among Tagalog workers, craftsmen, and peasant tenants, and within four years had tens of thousands of members across Luzon and the Visayas.

The Katipunan

The Kataastaasan, Kagalang-galang na Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan (Supreme and Venerable Society of the Children of the Nation) was the first Filipino revolutionary organisation with mass membership. Membership was open to adult male Filipinos; the Katipunan was secret, organised in cells (sanggunian) of three, and recruited through blood-compact ceremonies. Bonifacio served as Supremo (supreme leader); other principal officers included Emilio Jacinto (whom Bonifacio appointed to a high council role) and Andres Bonifacio's wife Gregoria de Jesus, who acted as a courier and treasurer.

The Katipunan published Kalayaan (Freedom), a Tagalog-language revolutionary newspaper, from March 1896. The newspaper's articles set out the organisation's political program: separation from Spain, expulsion of the Augustinian and Recollect friars, equality of all Filipinos regardless of ancestry, and redistribution of land to tenant farmers. The program was remarkable for its explicit class content in a revolution that contemporary Spanish observers framed as a criollo revolt.

The Cry of Pugad Lawin and the revolution of 1896

The Spanish colonial authorities discovered the Katipunan in August 1896, after a Spanish friar acting as a confessor learned of the organisation from a Filipino woman. Bonifacio called a general rendezvous of Katipunan leaders at Pugad Lawin (or Balintawak; the exact site is still debated by Filipino historians) on or about August 23, 1896. The Cry of Pugad Lawin - or, in some accounts, the Cry of Balintawak - is the symbolic opening of the Philippine Revolution. Bonifacio tore a cedula (residence certificate) and exhorted the Katipunan to take up arms.

The first phase of the revolution (August 1896 to March 1897) was led by Bonifacio and the Katipunan generals in the Visayas and Luzon. Emilio Aguinaldo rose to prominence in Cavite after the Battle of Imus (September 1896) and the Battle of Binakayan (November 1896). The conflict among Bonifacio, Aguinaldo, and the Cavite rebels over political leadership and over whether the revolution should be a Tagalog-nationalist or a Philippine-nationalist one became the principal internal struggle of the revolution in late 1896.

Trial and execution, May 1897

Bonifacio was arrested by Aguinaldo's lieutenants in May 1897 at the Tejeros Convention, which had been convened to settle the political question of supreme authority. The Convention had elected Aguinaldo president of a provisional revolutionary government and Bonifacio director of the interior; Bonifacio disputed the election results and was accused by Aguinaldo's faction of sedition and treason.

A military court convened by Aguinaldo in Maragondon, Cavite, found Bonifacio guilty of sedition and sentenced him and his brothers Procopio and Ciriaco to death on May 10, 1897. The execution was carried out in the mountains above Maragondon by Major Lazaro Makapagal's forces. The execution is the principal historical controversy of the revolutionary period: Filipino historians continue to debate whether the trial was legitimate, whether the verdict was political, and whether Aguinaldo should bear responsibility for the deaths.

Historical legacy

Bonifacio has been the principal symbol of the militant wing of the revolution. The Philippine Republic in 1917 formally recognised the site of the Cry as the Bonifacio National Monument in Caloocan; the monument's 8-metre obelisk and 36 figures of Katipunan leaders were erected in 1933 and have been maintained since. The Republic declared November 30 a public holiday for the first time in 1921 under the American colonial Insular Government. The 1955 Bonifacio Memorial in Manila, the 1967 declaration of the centenary of the Cry, and the 2018 proclamation of the Katipunan Day of the Cry of Pugad Lawin all kept the revolutionary reading of Bonifacio central in Philippine civic memory.

In recent decades, Bonifacio has been claimed by multiple political currents. Filipino labour and peasant movements invoke his class-conscious Kalayaan program; Filipino nationalist movements invoke his anti-Spanish militancy; revolutionary socialist movements invoke his suppression of intra-revolutionary conflict and his execution at the hands of a rival faction. The multiple contemporary readings are part of why the holiday generates more political controversy in the Philippines than Rizal Day.

Legal status

Bonifacio Day is a regular Philippine public holiday under Republic Act No. 9492 (2007), which rationalised the country's holiday calendar into regular holidays (full day off, with 200% pay for work) and special non-working holidays (no work, with 130% pay for work). Bonifacio Day falls in the regular category along with Independence Day (June 12), National Heroes Day (last Monday of August), and Christmas and New Year.

How it is observed

Government offices, banks, schools, and most private employers are closed. The National Historical Commission of the Philippines organises a national commemoration at the Bonifacio National Monument in Caloocan on or near November 30, with the President or a senior cabinet member laying a wreath at the obelisk. Schools run lesson units on the Katipunan and the Cry. Cities and provinces stage commemorative programs at local Bonifacio monuments and historical sites.

Where it is contested

Bonifacio Day generates more political controversy than Rizal Day because Bonifacio is claimed by multiple political traditions - the revolutionary left, the Filipino-Chinese community (Bonifacio had a Chinese great-grandfather), and the revolutionary-nationalist tradition - while Rizal is broadly read as a literary and reformist figure of consensus. Most of the controversy concerns the contemporary politics of commemoration, not the historical record.

In other countries

See also the Independence Day brief (the Philippine Independence Day, June 12, also observed in the Philippines), and the Christmas brief for the major Philippine holiday of December 25. The Philippines has one of the world's longest Christmas seasons: in practice, the December cluster of Bonifacio Day (Nov 30), Rizal Day (Dec 30), Christmas (Dec 25), and New Year (Jan 1) forms a continuous six-week observance period that the Catholic liturgical calendar and the civic holiday calendar together frame.

Bonifacio Day by the numbers

Sources

• National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP), Bonifacio Day commemorations: nhcp.gov.ph
• Republic Act No. 9492 (2007), Philippine holiday calendar: officialgazette.gov.ph
• Kalayaan: The Katipunan's revolutionary newspaper (1896), reprinted in Teodoro Agoncillo, The Revolt of the Masses (1956): Penn library