Andress Bonifacio

                                                               

 

   Andres Bonifacio (1863-1897), a Phillipine revolutionary hero, founded the Katipunan, a secret society which spearheaded the uprising against the Spanish and laid the groundwork for the first Philippine Republic.

Andres Bonifacio was born in Tondo, Manila, on Nov. 30, 1863. He grew up in the slums and knew from practical experience the actual conditions of the class struggle in his society. Orphaned early, he interrupted his primary schooling in order to earn a living as a craftsman and then as clerk-messenger and agent of foreign commercial firms in Manila. Absorbing the teachings of classic rationalism from the works of José Rizal, Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, Eugène Sue's The Wandering Jew,books on the French Revolution, and the lives of the presidents of the United States, Bonifacio acquired an understanding of the dynamics of the sociohistorical process. This led him to join the Liga Filipina, which Rizal organized in 1892 for the purpose of uniting and intensifying the nationalist movement for reforms.
When the Liga was dissolved upon the arrest and banishment of Rizal, Bonifacio formed the Katipunan in 1892 and thus provided the rallying point for the people's agitation for freedom, independence, and equality. The Katipunan patterned its initiation rites after the Masonry, but its ideological principles derived from the French Revolution and can be judged radical in its materialistic-historical orientation. The Katipunan exalted work as the source of all value. It directed attention to the unjust class structure of the colonial system, the increased exploitation of the indigenous population, and consequently the need to affirm the collective strength of the working masses in order to destroy the iniquitous system.

             

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