Wenceslao Vinzons, the forgotten hero

There is no doubt that Wenceslao Vinzons was a real hero. But it’s taken years for a book to be written about him. Thanks to the painstaking research and writing skill of Efren M. Yambot, the book , Wenceslao Q. Vinzons: The Hero the Nation Forgot, launched recently at the Executive House in UP-Diliman, tells us the story of the revered son of Indan, Camarines Norte.

As Yambot relates it, Vinzons became “ a storied guerrilla fighter who today deserves a place of honor among our national heroes.” He founded and led the Vinzons Guerrillas, the first ever resistance group to fight the Japanese Imperial Army in the Philippines. (Barrio Laniton, Basud, Camarines Norte was the scene of the first encounter of the Japanese with guerrillas.) The guerrilla movement would later evolve into the Filipino People’s War against the Japanese.

“At its peak, Vinzons Guerrillas,” writes Yambot, “had around 2,800 armed partisans, including Aetas (or Abians) in Camarines Norte, who inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy with their bows and poisoned arrows. Their victories in the field, especially their successful recapture of  Daet and most of the other towns in the province (which they held on for three weeks), must have inspired other guerrilla groups in the islands to ratchet up their struggle, and new ones to organize.

“But after the surrender of USAFFE in Bataan and Corregidor, the enemy was able to pour thousands of additional troops into Camarines Norte, prompting Vinzons to call for the guerrillas to disperse and retreat to their mountain bases.”

Vinzons became one of the most wanted men by the Japanese. He was captured in July 1942 with three of his children and his father; his wife Liwayway was captured separately together with two of their children. The Japanese would eventually kill Vinzons, Liwayway and their two children with her, his father and a sister. Except for those of  the sister’s, their remains are nowhere to be found up to the present.

Yambot writes: “Vinzons, together with thousands of other guerrillas, made the supreme sacrifice to defend the Motherland. Indeed, the liberation of the Filipino people from a most cruel and savage oppressor owed a lot to them, for the liberation was the handiwork of both the guerrillas and the US forces fighting on several fronts. Before the Americans came back in 1944, the Japanese controlled only 12 of the then total of 48 provinces in the country.

“In his message to the Allied troops in the Pacific and the resistance forces upon arrival in Leyte in October 1944, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of Allied forces in the Pacific, paid tribute to the guerrillas and to the Filipino people, thus: ‘I saw a people in one of the most tragic hours of human history, bereft of all reason for hope and without material support, endeavoring, despite the stern realities confronting them, to hold aloft the torch of liberty.’’’

Yambot writes, “It was a fitting tribute to the Philippine guerrilla movement, which the youth leader from a small town in Camarines Norte had begun in December 1941 with his Vinzons Guerrillas.”

The book launch was the latest in a series of activities commemorating the 106th birth anniversary of Vinzons, one of the most outstanding alumni of the University of the Philippines and the Upsilon Sigma Phi fraternity. At the launch, UP President Fred Pascual was the keynote speaker. Earlier, in September, the hometown of the hero of Indan (now called Vinzons), held a five-day celebration led  by Mayor Eleanor F. Segundo, top provincial officials, and the sole surviving child of Vinzons, Mrs. Ranavalona Vinzons-Gaite. In mid-October, Senators Dick Gordon and Francis Pangilinan extolled the patriotism and heroism of Vinzons in the Senate hall as well as sponsored a resolution recognizing the same.

Wenceslao, or Bintao, as he was popularly called, was born in Indan on Sept. 28, 2010. He graduated as valedictorian at the local elementary school. He finished high school in only three years instead of the usual four, graduating as valedictorian of the Camarines Norte High School in Daet. In 1927, he  enrolled at the UP where he would distinguish himself as a youth leader, activist, writer, orator and debater.

At the UP, Bintao joined the Upsilon Sigma Phi, became editor of the Philippine Collegian, and president of the College Editors Guild and  the UP Student Council in which capacity he led a huge demonstration to protest the passage of a bill increasing the lawmakers’ salaries. Yambot writes that this raise such a ruckus among the public that then Senate President Manuel L. Quezon held a dialogue with the students to explain the legislative act.

In 1932, Vinzons won the Quezon gold medal in the annual oratorical contest held by the College of Law.  After graduation in 1933 from the College of Law  he founded the Young Philippines Party which attracted youth leaders, including a number who would become national leaders in the post-war era (Lorenzo Sumulong, Diosdado Macapagal and the dictator Ferdinand Marcos). The party became practically the lone opposition to Quezon’s monolithic Nacionalista Party.

Barely 23 years old, Bintao ran for the 1934 Constitutional Convention and won. Yambot writes, “like a Delphic oracle... (he) foresaw the rise of a dictator who would use the emergency provision in the draft  Constitution to make himself president for life. He vehemently opposed the provision, to no avail.” (Marcos used this provision to try to perpetuate himself in power – my comment.)

In the 1935 election for Commonwealth  president, Vinzons campaigned for Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo who ran against Quezon. The latter won by a landslide, losing only in the provinces of Camarines Norte  and Cavite. Shortly thereafter, Vinzons delivered a fiery speech denouncing election frauds allegedly committed by Quezon’s men. He was later arrested and charged with sedition. He was found guilty and sentenced by the Cavite CFI to four years imprisonment, but was later acquitted by the Court of Appeals after Vinzons mounted a successful defense.

Vinzons was elected governor of Camarines Norte in 1940, and as chief executive of the  province, he organized a citizens army and stressed the importance of food production  (in preparation for the coming war with Japan) – giving seeds to farmers, and lands from the public domain to the landless. Disgusted with the incumbent Nacionalista congressman who, writes Yambot, caused the delay of vital infrastructure projects in the province,  Bintao resigned as governor in late 1941 to run for congressman and won by a landslide. But Congress ceased to exist with the Japanese invasion of the Philippines.

Thus begun the heroic struggle of Vinzons and his guerrillas to risk their lives to liberate their motherland.

*      *      *

Efren Yambot is the author of historical plays, including: Macario Sakay: Kilabot ng Sierra Madre, Bintao: Ang Buhay at Kamatayan ni Wenceslao Q. Vinzons and Heneral Paciano Rizal. He also authored the award-winning teleplay, The Assassination of Gen. Antonio Luna. A former faculty member of the Department of English and Comparative Literature in UP, Yambot wrote essays on Filipino heroes and historic events in a regular column for Who Magazine (a sister publication of the Manila Daily Bulletin) in the early 1980s. He is a past president of the Rotary Club of New Manila East and former director of the Upsilon Sigma Phi Alumni Association.)

Email: [email protected]