WHEN MANILA Mayor Alfredo S. Lim puts on his trademark dark glasses he reinforces his no-nonsense ?Dirty Harry? image. It is unfortunate that Lim has been typecast as a crime-buster because it obscures other facets of his personality that need to be better known. Lim, like the late Manila Mayor Antonio Villegas, finds time to commemorate historic events and personalities in the ?distinguished and ever loyal city? of Manila. It is a way to remind citizens of their past and get a glimpse of their mayor in the flesh. I am not an early riser, but I have made the effort to lay wreaths with him and participate in the remembrance of things past that provides an opportunity to meet descendants of heroes and forces me to visit places I would otherwise have ignored.
This morning, we will assemble at Cementerio del Norte (Manila North Cemetery) where many historic personalities rest in peace: American Governor-General Francis Burton Harrison; Presidents Sergio Osme?a, Manuel Roxas and Ramon Magsaysay; heroes, heroines and patriots, like Jose Ma. Basa, Pio del Pilar and Gregoria de Jesus. There are many artists too: Fernando Poe Sr. and Jr., Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, Jose Corazon de Jesus; and National Artists Amado Hernandez, Honorata ?Atang? de la Rama and Juan Nakpil. If London has Highgate Cemetery with Karl Marx and an ambience captured in many Hammer horror movies, if Paris has Pere Lachaise with Balzac, Chopin, Piaf, Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde and the wife, daughter, and mother-in-law of our very own Juan Luna, we have Cementerio del Norte. Ours is more fascinating. It is a necropolis not just for the famous people buried there but the fantastic designs of some tombs are also worth seeing. There is one in the shape of a ship, another an Egyptian pyramid complete with a sphinx.
Today we commemorate one of the greatest Asian figures in the history of boxing. Before Manny Pacquiao and Gabriel ?Flash? Elorde, we had Pancho Villa. I visited the grave of Pancho Villa before and vaguely remember that it was close to that of Tomas Claudio who died in a battlefield in France in 1918, the first Filipino casualty of the World War I.
Due diligence made me look up Pancho Villa to supplement the biographical data outlined in Mayor Lim?s speech. I noted that previous speeches are often cribbed from the four-volume ?Filipinos in History? compiled by the National Historical Commission that often lacks personal details to spice up the narrative. When I Googled ?Pancho Villa? to find a picture of the boxer, the top search results gave me a Mexican revolutionary from Chihuahua with a wide brimmed hat named Jose Doroteo Arango Arambula (1878-1923), whose pseudonym was Francisco Villa or Pancho Villa. The only Philippine connection I could find was that Villa was pursued around 1916 by the legendary US Feneral John J. ?Blackjack? Pershing, who later served in Mindanao, and is best remembered for a plaza that bears his name in downtown Zamboanga.
Pancho Villa is the nom de guerre of the Mexican revolutionary. It is also the pseudonym of the Filipino boxer Francisco Guilledo (1901-1925) who won the World Flyweight Boxing championship in 1923.
According to one source, Guilledo adopted the name ?Pancho Villa? from the Mexican revolutionary as suggested by his American promoter. Another source claims the name came from Guilledo?s Filipino manager, Paquito Villa, who legally adopted the fighter and gave him the nickname ?Pancho.?
Also inscribed in the history of Philippine sports is the name Teofilo Yldefonso. A swimmer from Piddig, Ilocos Norte, he was the first Filipino to win an Olympic medal, having participated and won bronze medals in the 928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam and the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Yldefonso is not a familiar name today, but his breast stroke style was studied and copied in Europe where it was once known as the ?Yldefonso stroke.? Our Olympian may not have brought home gold medals, but he is a footnote in the history of swimming as the ?Father of the Modern Breast Stroke.? We know little about Yldefonso, except that he survived the Bataan Death March and died in the Capas internment camp. His remains were never found.
Manny Pacquiao, our ?Pambansang Kamao,? may be the finest boxer today, but he has yet to be inscribed in the International Boxing Hall of Fame like other Filipino boxing greats Gabriel ?Flash? Elorde (1993) and Pancho Villa (1994).
What makes Villa fascinating was the fact that he only stood at five feet and an inch and weighed not more than 144 pounds, yet he was small but terrible. He was never knocked out in 109 bouts, 92 of which he won, with 24 of these by knock out. Ironically, Villa did not die in the ring. Neither did he die of injuries resulting from boxing. He died of Ludwig?s angina, a throat infection resulting from tooth extraction! One can only speculate how much greater he would have been had he flossed and brushed daily.
When our history is rewritten to include more than heroes and heroines of battle and revolution, when it is peopled with heroes of sports, the arts and literature, it will be a more colorfu
