Benito Soliven: A gallant Filipino

In a fitting tribute to a man who in the span of only 44 years of life, struggled from obscure poverty to the prominence of statesman, legislator, educator, orator, linguist, and war hero, the CAP Family of Companies unveiled recently a bronze statue of the late Benito Soliven. The imposing bronze statue stands in front of CAP’s new building at Burgos Plaza in historic Vigan, Ilocos Sur, where Soliven is looked up to as a role model and inspiration for the youth.

It was a sunshiny morning when the ceremonies began, graced by the most prominent figures in politics, business and the academe in the North, together with members of the Soliven clan. The unveiling and blessing of the statue were followed by laying of floral wreaths by Ilocos Sur Rep. Salacnib Baterina; Gov. Deogracias Savellano; Vigan City Mayor Eva Maria Medina; and CAP chairman Dr. Alejandro Roces.

Officials and guests then proceeded to the blessing of the Soliven Memorabilia Room in the new CAP building, and a program at the auditorium prefaced by welcome remarks by Dr. Alejandro Roces and words of greeting from former Gov. Luis "Chavit" Singson and from Mayor Eva Medina. Guests were then serenaded with the best in Ilocano song by the Benito Soliven Academy Chorale of Santo Domingo town, the honoree’s ancestral birthplace.

Baterina delivered the primary message for the occasion. He recalled with pride that Benito Soliven’s inspiration propelled no less than three of his town mates from Santo Domingo to the halls of Congress. A record not only for the province but even for the entire nation!

Mercy Soliven-David and STAR publisher Maximo Soliven responded on behalf of the family. Other siblings present were Guillermo Soliven and Vic Soliven.

Against all odds

Benito Soliven lost both his father and mother at the tender age of four. He was taken into custody by a severe aunt who treated him like a servant, tending the pigs, chickens and carabaos, beaten now and then. No play, and no leisure. No time for homework.

But the boy did not sulk or blame others. In between chores, he managed to go through the primary grades. Some of his more affluent relatives, the Reyes family, sensing intelligence in the boy, decided to intervene and arranged for his enrollment with the Spanish Jesuits at the Colegio Seminario de Vigan.

To pass the entrance exam, he memorized the entire Spanish grammar book, and so impressed the Jesuits that they accelerated him from fifth to sixth grade.

Benito never looked back. The child is father to the man. He won medals in oratorical contests, and graduated valedictorian in high school. He developed strong bonds of friendship with the Jesuits. He even wanted to become one, but after deep analysis with his confessor Father Buxto S.J., they decided he could best serve God and country as a lawyer.

So off to Manila he went, to the University of the Philippines. Hamstrung by lack of fluency in English he memorized not only the entire English Grammar, but Webster’s International Dictionary as well. While he studied, he taught at the Ateneo Grade School to earn his keep.

The young Benito entered a University-wide essay contest at one time, submitting a piece entitled Rizal as a Scientist. Because there were so many entrants, he never harbored any thought of winning. In fact he was watching a downtown movie while the awards were being given. The flustered contest judges repeatedly called out his name as first prize winner in vain. However, he was glad to later receive the prize money of P100 with which he promptly bought his first typewriter. These were the formative years for the emerging statesman.

Emerging statesman

Benito won the coveted Manuel L. Quezon Gold Medal for oratory in his senior year at the College of Law. It was 1921 and the subject of his speech was war – how French Marshall Foch, commander of the Allied Forces waged it and won it in the face of overwhelming odds. He had no premonition that devastating war would engulf his own nation 20 years later – and that he himself would be fighting for his life on the battlefields of Bataan and the harrowing Death March to Capas.

In the meantime he gained fluency in Latin, Italian, French, and even German, which he acquired at the University of Heidelburg, Rizal’s alma mater.

Benito Soliven took his oath as a lawyer in 1921, the first lawyer of his hometown Santo Domingo. A banquet in his honor was thrown at one of the best eateries in Manila then – Panciteria Antigua in Sta. Cruz. The food was good, the speeches were spicy and the women pretty. There the young lawyer met the girl who would become his future wife – Pelagia Villaflor, also from Santo Domingo. She was barely 11 years old. As was the custom, the guests posed for pictures after dinner. Pelagia’s father first told her not to join, being so young. But through some impulse, Benito asked that she take part, and the photographer promptly consigned her to the carpet in front of the honoree.

The two would not meet again for several years. But destiny brought them together again – in 1925 at the town fiesta where the rising young lawyer was honored for having been chosen to represent the Catholic laity in a pilgrimage to Rome.

As fate would have it, Pelagia was to sing for the occasion. Singer and song so stirred Benito that when he went to congratulate her he never let go, and they danced all night. He wooed her with a passion that could not be denied and they were engaged in 1926. But marriage would have to wait two more years, as Benito already planned to run for Congress while 16-year-old Pelagia, or Peng as she was fondly called, could continue with her schooling.

Benito’s first dramatic bid to enter politics was made in June 1928 – running against Judge Simeon Roxas, an undefeated political veteran. The ward leaders were with Roxas but Soliven went directly to the people. He spoke from the heart, offered solutions with sincerity, telling them what he could do and not do in Congress. He won by a landslide.

That December, Rep. Benito Soliven and Pelagia Villaflor were wed. Speaker Manuel Roxas and Sen. Elpidio Quirino stood as sponsors, among others. Recalling their first meeting almost seven years before at the elegant panciteria where the young lawyer invited the 11-year-old girl to join the photo session, Benito with the vibrant sense of humor so characteristic of him told Peng, "Had I known when we first met that you would become my wife, I would have asked you to sit on my lap, instead of letting the photographer consign you to the carpet at my feet!"

From then on it was an uphill climb forward for Benito Soliven. In 1931, he lost his bid for the Senate but went on to win three other terms that culminated in a grand victory in 1938, when he trounced Elpidio Quirino, then the undisputed political boss of the North.

Man of conscience

Benito was a man of conscience and simple honesty. In 1938, a rift had developed between President Manuel Quezon and Elpidio Quirino, former senator, secretary of the Interior and the most prominent Ilocano politician. Quezon asked Camilo Osias, his able confidant from La Union, to stop around for a possible candidate against Quirino. Osias went to work and a few weeks later endorsed Benito Soliven. But the odds were staggering. Quirino was rich, Soliven poor. Quirino had been senator, secretary of Interior and held the provincial governor to his side, as well as the mayors and most of the influential families of Vigan, the capital. But Osias saw guts, stamina, and sincerity in Soliven. Quezon agreed.

Since their candidate had so little money to campaign with, Quezon gave a blank check to Osias for their bet. Soliven campaigned hard. He went straight to the voters, slept in the barrios, shared simple meals with the rural folk, held dialogues with them in lively caucuses – a campaign style that by-passed the political bosses and avoided expensive machinery and mass meetings.

Soliven’s appeal in homespun Ilocano captivated the hearts and minds of the barrios and the people gave him a resounding victory that captured the nation’s imagination. The press all over the country bannered the event.

Quezon joyously congratulated Soliven for the sweep when Osias brought him to Malacañang. But thinking of the blank check he had given and perhaps concerned that a large sum had been drawn to achieve the landslide, Quezon was grandly surprised when the check was returned to him, still intact and still blank. Since then Quezon knew that he could count on the integrity of Benito.

‘Bishop of Congress’

He served with grace in the National Assembly – consistently voted valedictorian in the number and quality of the bills he authored which were enacted into law. It was he who presented the first bills amending the Constitution for the re-election of the President and providing for the re-establishment of the Senate. It was he who gave birth to landmark Commonwealth Act 628 calling for revision of all sub-standard laws.

He was instrumental in improving the national defense law, and enabling the National Development Company to distribute public lands along both sides of national highways to homesteaders. He sponsored the Basilan land grant to UP, which became a rich source of income and training for his alma mater.

He earned the sobriquet "Bishop of Congress" by battling for social bills to provide wage and medical benefits to labor – rising to defend rights, speaking up to promote truth and denounce wrongs. He created the National Board of Review for Moving Pictures (the pre-cursor to today’s MTRCB), and co-authored the law, which allowed religious instruction in public schools.

So liven also proved to be a man of courage. He was member of the Nacionalista Party, and Manuel Quezon was his leader. In a bid to consolidate power, Quezon and the party adopted a stand to support "block-voting" in the forthcoming elections. Since this would ensure greater chances for re-election – most if not all members of the party supported the move. Not Benito Soliven. He could have kept silent. But he did not. He could have played ball. But he did not, because he sincerely believed that "block-voting" was wrong – wrong for value formation, wrong for the opposition, wrong for democracy. Voting for one party would mean voting for all its candidates, whatever their individual qualifications.

In a gallant speech in the floor of the National Assembly on May 16, 1941, Soliven declared: "I stand against ‘block-voting’ because it embodies a fatal law. It authorizes a mode of voting fundamentally wrong – undemocratic and unconstitutional – a system adopted in Italy as the electoral weapon of dictatorship."

Soliven put up a spirited fight. But the whole party was ranged against him and block voting won solidly. Yet he remained undaunted. He carried the battle from the Assembly to the newspapers, and over radio. It opened the eyes of many, but proved futile in the end. The party was too strong, Quezon too charismatic to overcome. At the Party Convention that September, Soliven’s name was scrapped from the Senatorial lineup, earlier promised him.

Defeat did not dampen his conviction – and in a farewell speech to politics delivered in Vigan in September 1941 he said:

"I hold no regrets for the fight I fought, no rancor against those who stood against me, and no remorse for having defied my own party on this vital issue – for a disciplined party man reserves to himself the right to differ from the majority when that decision conflicts with the paramount interest of the nation. A man first belongs to the people before he belongs to his own party."

War hero

On Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor. Clark Field was also hit over the next few days. War had come to the country. Benito Soliven was a captain in the Reserve of the Philippine Armed Forces. As an assemblyman he need not have enlisted. By then he had loving wife Peng and their 10 young children to care for. It was a painful choice to leave them but like a gallant Filipino he knew he had to go. He told his wife weeping at his feet: "If I do not go now when our country needs all of us, what will my children think of me?" He left praying that a merciful God would help pull the family through.

He served with distinction in Bataan – first with the General Staff of the Philippine Army, later with the office of the Judge Advocate General where he won citations and a field promotion to major. Constant concern for the safety and welfare of others characterized his service on the battlefield. He helped the wounded, shared his rations with ordinary soldiers, and boosted their morale by exemplary thought for others instead of self. Faced with dwindling supplies of food and medicine, he himself contracted the dreaded malaria.

Then came surrender and the Death March to Capas, Tarlac. Pain, hunger, thirst, scorching heat, hundreds falling by the roadside, too weak to go on, Japanese guards bayoneting them. Benito Soliven, ravaged by disease, dragged his emaciated body along while helping those he could. Capas brought no relief, only a prolongation of hell.

Pelagia "Peng" Soliven, dedicated wife to the end, worried sick about Benito’s fate came to Capas to try to see him, again and again, to no avail. The rules were strict. They finally met after several months of trying, and she was able to snuggle in some food and medicines into the camp. Years later, survivors recounted how Major Soliven had given away his food and medicines to others who he thought more in need than himself.

Soliven was finally released on July 17, 1942, wracked with malaria. He never asked for favors while in camp, and knew that as an assemblyman, high officials could have easily interceded for him. Yet he chose to stay as long as he could with the men.

His homecoming was brief. While he spent a few happy days with Peng and the children, malaria soon compelled his confinement in the hospital. The months dragged on until December 1942… the last Christmas he would spend with his loved ones. He sensed the final battle. His suffering wife stood gamely at his side, nursing him as best she could. She did not tell him that during the harrowing days just passed, they lost their youngest child, confined just a few rooms away in the same hospital. The poor mother had cried through the night as she watched her baby die, while she herself burned with fever.

Benito finally passed away in the early dawn of Jan. 10, 1943. He was 44 years old. The family wept and prayed, and gathered to bid painful goodbye – consoled by the knowledge that this man – father, husband, friend, was leaving them the rich legacy of his own life, which had touched so many in such a short span of time.

They were not alone. Hundreds joined the funeral march. A grateful janitor whom Benito had defended in court for free because he was destitute. A teacher, a simple maid, friends high and lowly whose lives he had touched. An old comrade-in-arms in Bataan and Capas paid touching tribute: "Benito helped us – not only by small favors like sharing food and medicine – but also by showing us how to face adversity with guts, no matter how rough the going got. He gave us pride even in defeat."

Finally, there is an interesting postscript to the life of Benito Soliven. Shortly before the start of war, as he prepared to leave politics. Soliven and Manuel Roxas joined together in a plan to launch a new party to challenge the ruling Nacionalistas for the presidency and vice presidency of the fading Commonwealth, and who would take the helm of the new Republic of the Philippines that would emerge with independence. Roxas was to campaign to become president with his running mate – Benito Soliven as vice president. The war intervened. The rest is history.

None of Soliven’s eight living children followed their father into politics, choosing instead to make their mark in the fields of agriculture, banking, business, education and journalism.

Benito Soliven is revered by his fellow Ilocanos as a great man. A first class municipality in the province of Isabela proudly bears his name – Benito Soliven town. Another imposing statue of him stands in the beautiful landscaped plaza of his ancestral hometown of Santo Domingo, Ilocos Sur, facing the highway for all passers-by to see.

Not just Ilocanos, but all Filipinos can be proud of this gallant Filipino – Benito Soliven, truly a "man for all seasons."

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