Remembering Don Sergio Osmeña Sr.

Today is the 132nd birth anniversary of that great Cebuano Patriot, Don Sergio Osmeña who was born on Sept.9, 1878, the son of Juaña Osmeña y Suico, older daughter of Doña Paula Osmeña. We have written several articles on Don Sergio Osmeña because one of the things my late father Atty. Jesus “Lindong” Avila bequeath to me was the two-volume biography of Don Sergio Osmeña Sr. authored by the late Vicente Albano Pacis. He wrote that Don Sergio was the greatest Filipinos who ever lived since Dr. Jose Rizal, our national hero.

According to his biography, Don Sergio first appeared in the public eye as a freelance writer who was sent to Luzon by the Revolutionary Junta in Cebu led by General Juan Climaco to try and contact General Emilio Aguinaldo who was then being pursued by the Americans in order to get instructions from Aguinaldo about the war situation with the Americans. Don Sergio was able to deliver that message to Gen. Aguinaldo who, a short time later, was captured by the Americans in Palanan, Isabela Province.

Hence Don Sergio Osmeña appeared at the crossroads of history at a time when the Philippines were shifting from its Spanish colonizers to the new masters, the American colonizers. A few years following the colonization of the Philippines by the Americans, Osmeña’s biographer Vicente Albano Pacis wrote on how Don Sergio was able to understand and communicate with the Americans in English, which in those times, Spanish was still the Lingua Franca of the Philippines. Pacis wrote:

“Could Osmeña read American books? Did he know English? Perhaps fate had had something to do with the fact that, save for those very few who studied abroad like Dr. Rizal, Osmeña was among the very first Filipinos to learn English. He first studied the language under the tutelage of Josephine Bracken, an Irish by blood and birth, and the widow of Dr. Jose Rizal.

After Rizal’s execution by the Spanish Government, Josephine participated briefly in the Revolution against Spain that her husband had largely inspired by his writings. After having detached herself from the Katipunan forces, she was ordered out of the country by the Spanish authorities. She left the Philippines in May 1897 for Hong Kong, where she had lived before coming to the Philippines. There, she met Vicente Abad, a Cebu businessman, who married her and brought her back to the Philippines and to his Cebu home. It was there that for sometime, she gave special lessons in English to Osmeña.

Osmeña did not learn too much of the language from Josephine, it is true, but it was sufficient to enable him to understand simple English, which he could read and re-read, perhaps with a dictionary at his elbow. It was much later, when he became Speaker of the Philippine Assembly and the acknowledged spokesman of the Filipinos and had to deal directly with the American Governor General and other high American officials—particularly after making trips to the United States—that he became proficient in the language.”

My grandfather Don Jose Avila was six years younger than Don Sergio Osmeña Sr. but they were good friends. I can only reckon that this friendship blossomed because my grandpa (who was born out of wedlock by a Spanish Friar Fr. Manuel Rubio Fernandez, Parish Priest of Carcar in 1884) had to be sent to Hong Kong to study in St. Joseph’s College. After school, he came home to Cebu as one of the first Cebuanos to speak English. In fact when he opened his newspaper, the Cebu Advertiser, it was the first English Language newspaper in Cebu, which ended operations when the building where the printing press once stood was bombed by the Americans during the Liberation of Cebu.

Perhaps my grandpa and Don Sergio became close friends because Don Sergio could practice his English with my grandpa who spoke English so fluently and with a British accent because obviously his English professors came from Britain. Perhaps their friendship also blossomed from the fact that the maiden name of the mother of Don Sergio was Suico and eventually Don Jose Avila married Adela Suico Avila. These are indeed stories that we can only surmise because I was only 9 years old when my grandpa died.

But Don Sergio’s feat as the youngest Filipino Speaker of the Philippine Assembly in 1907 at the young age of 29 remains unparalleled until this day. If at all, not many Filipinos, not even Cebuanos, knew or read that on June 19, 1908, Speaker Sergio Osmeña made a historic Declaration of Independence before the Philippine Assembly, something that history has long forgotten. This eventually led to the declaration of Independence given by the Americans on the 4th of July 1946. I will write on this in future articles as this was thoroughly discussed by biographer Vicente Albano Pacis.

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