A homecoming in Tanza

As the nation marks Bonifacio Day today, alumni of Tanza National Comprehensive High School in Tanza, Cavite – the same town where the Katipunan founded by the same hero we’re remembering saw its end – return to their 54-year-old alma mater for a second grand homecoming in four years.

Town Mayor Munding del Rosario (Class ’66) leads orgazers in welcoming fellow alumni who include such big names as former NBI Director and Cavite Governor Epi Velasco; ex-Representative Renato Dragon; renowned lawyer Juan de Zuniga, now Central Bank’s assistant deputy Governor; and Trece Martires City (Cavite) Mayor Jun de Sagun.

Vivian Valencia-Lim, a Philippine Normal College (now Philippine Normal University) magna cum laude in education, UP Graduate School awardee for academic excellence, and founder of International School-Tanza, flew in from Davao for the homecoming. Like her mother, a well-remembered, well-respected teacher in a barrio elementary school, Valencia-Lim has devoted a great part of her life to teaching. A wise businessman will always prefer building a high-end school in Dasmariñas, the Cavite town now known as university country, but the articulate teacher’s daughter was thinking nothing of that nature when she chose her town as venue for yet another International School. "I was thinking like a teacher when I founded IS in Tanza," says she. "I want the children of my town to also have a crack at getting first-class education right in their community."

Among the scores of teachers showing up for their high school reunion today is Dr. Roman Salazar, who had, at the urging of Mayor del Rosario, returned to his alma mater from top education postings elsewhere in Cavite or in other provinces to become the first alumnus of Tanza National Comprehensive High School become its very own principal as well.

And were he still alive, former BIR Deputy Commissioner Atty. Romulo Villa, father of Lenny Villa who was killed in the celebrated Aquila Legis hazing incident, would surely attend as well together with brother Francisco. The Villas, coming from the neighboring town of Gen. Trias, graduated from the same high school where their father, also deceased, served as guidance counselor and adviser of The Clarion, the school paper.

Mayor del Rosario is moving heaven and earth to entice TNCHS graduates to fly home and see how much their town has progressed. He wants them to resettle in Tanza and invest their dollars in his town which is now a first-class municipality. He also wants to raise funds for the construction of an alumni hall inside the school compound.

Though topping the issuance of a national commemorative stamp marking the school’s 50th anniversary as main highlight of its alumni’s first grand reunion in 1999 is a tough act, this year’s homecoming is nonetheless awash in color and music.

First off, the alumni in Hawaiian-inspired attire, after a Mass concelebrated by four priests, will parade around town Mardi Gras-style to the bouncy rhythm of festiive and disco tunes.

The famous band South Border mounts the stage, where the younger of the converging alumni had received their high school diplomas, for a major concert in their honor. In earlier years, the lobby of the two-storey school doubled as stage for its programs. Now, the refurbished building has moved the stage to the back, fronting an oval around which the alumni, under canopies of colorful tents, rub elbows again.

In between the colorful parade and the concert are the partaking of food, playground demonstration by students, batch presentations, raffle draws, parlor games and talent contests, and of course, a barrage of talks and gossips and exchange of memories among former classmates and schoolmates long separated by distance or jobs.

Elementary graduates of Tanza had to travel 25 kilometers to Cavite City in the north if they were enrolled in Cavite High School or much farther out to Indang in the south if they picked Indang Rural High School. To make a high school accessible to their town mates, civic-minded Tanza folk pooled efforts and resources to have their own.

On Nov. 5, 1949, Tanza High School opened in dismal conditions.

However, a P100,000 allocation from the pork barrel of former Sen. Justiniano S. Montano funded the purchase of a school site of 40,000 sq.m. and the construction of a two-storey main building and a standard home economics structure. Tanza High School transferred to this compound on Oct. 27, 1952.

Renamed Tanza National Comprehensive High School in 1966, the year Mayor del Rosario graduated, the school, now funded by the national budget, stands almost complete in terms of facilities and also offers, under the subject technology and home economics, vocational courses like cosmetology, tailoring, baking, dressmaking, automotive, woodworking, animal and vegetable production and others.

Overseas-based alumni flying in today will be returning to the roads they pounded in their formative years – and to a town both rich in history and progress.

Tanza became an organized community in 1752. Six years later in 1760, the administrator of the friar estate built a big residence and a granary beside it, which residents called Estancia or a place for vacation. However, it was only in 1770 that the place was formally founded and named Sta. Cruz de Malabon, being a part then of San Francisco de Malabon now known as Gen. Trias.

Sta. Cruz de Malabon became an independent town in 1910 by virtue of a resolution passed by the municipal council of San Francisco de Malabon in 1909 at the urging of local leaders led by Antero S. Soriano, who went on to become Cavite governor (1912-1919) and then congressman (1925-1929). Owing to the natives’ devotion to the Holy Cross, the new town was called Sta. Cruz de Malabon until 1914 when Act No. 2390, introduced by then Cavite Rep. Florentino Joya (1912-1916), changed the town’s name to Tanza.

Popular belief has it that the name Tanza originated from the word santa (holy).

Tanza earned its place in Philippine history when officials of the Revolutionary Government elected in the Tejeros Convention led by Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo were sworn into office at the convent of Sta. Cruz de Malabon on the night of March 23, 1897, thus launching the prototype of the First Philippine Republic.

Local historians call the oath-taking a "signifying the birth of the Philippine Republic." Former Supreme Court Associate Justice Justo Torres, a native of Tanza, views it as "the end of Andres Bonifacio’s Katipunan." Bonifacio acted as chairman of the Tejeros Convention during which they overlooked him and elected Aguinaldo in absentia. Prof. Torres said Bonifacio "actually presided over the death of the Katipunan which he had helped found on July 7, 1892 in Tondo, Manila."

Today, Tanza, nestled between the rich bounties of the sea and farmlands, has arrived. Mayor del Rosario has successfully parlayed his business wizardry into a deft management of the affairs of the town.

He literally paved the way for facilitating business among farmers and fishermen by prioritizing the construction of a network of concrete roads linking the sea and the ricefields to the market.

To date, Tanza boasts an array of banks to choose from, a number of tertiary hospitals and specialized medical clinics, supermarkets, grocery stores, fine restaurants, and high-standard private schools, the latest addition to which is the International School on Daang Amaya founded by Valencia-Lim

It is said – and this one is spoken in good humor – that Mayor del Rosario has a bias for graduates of his high school, a few of whom now work with him at the town’s municipal hall as his department heads.

And when his trusted secretary, also a TNCHS graduate, summoned all the municipal staff who came from the same high school as their mayor for a photo shoot, they came in numbers good enough to paralyze the municipal offices’ operations should they ever decide to go on a mass leave.

Although schooled in Imus where he went on to become its mayor for 10 years, Cavite Gov. Ayong S. Maliksi has become part of the TNCHS history. While still serving as a congressman of the province, he donated two additional rooms at a time it was in a building frenzy.

Gov. Maliksi hails the growth of the high school into a complete learning institution as "a collaborative effort among the teachers, parents, alumni and the town and provincial officials."

Gov. Maliksi says that courses in cosmetology, baking tailoring, dressmaking, drafting, automotive, woodworking, animal and vegetable production, food service and culinary art, complements and provincial governmment’s prrogram encouraging small and medium entrepreneurships.

The economy of a nation, he says, is only as strong as its entrepreneurs.

He says the long list of achievers in various fields that the Tanza public high school has produced over the years speaks very well of the kind of secondary education it offers.