Grand Tuhons Blackboard June 2006

The Legacy Of Papa Isio

I wish to bring this remarkable history of Don Papa Isio, the hero of Negros Island who declared Republic of Negros under his command with thousands of Kali warriors called the Tribo Pulahan fought toe to toe against the Spaniards and against the Americans in the early of 1898 to 1915. He was an unsung hero that didn't die in battle tricked by the Americans for a peace treaty and during the conference he was captured and put into jail charge with rebellion and he died with pulmonary dysfunction. But the true story of Papa Isio was noted when in one instance his men of fearless courage fought the Spaniards in Negros with swift devastation that demoralized the entire Spanish garrisons that in the last months of Spanish regime giving up the Philippines under the treaty of Paris in 1898, the Spaniards move out from Negros but in few months the entire Island where occupied by the Americans. Papa Isio and his men fought vigorously and the Americans had suffered countless victims killed by the elements of surprises. Papa Isio strong defense area was in the sitio of Isio where I grew up together with my grandfather and grandmother. Isio was the crossroad to civilization. It was traditionally significant that the people who lives in the sitio of Isio were highly active and war like. In the heydays of my younger days my grandfather has to bring me riding in his horse to a market place where it was called the market day, normally Sunday. The people from the Mountain has to come down to buy many kinds of foods, specially fish and meat. There was no Sunday that two or group of people coming from different sitios or barrios came for market day and their visits where challenged by the existing tribes in the Area. My grandfather had so much to be patient but when the situation calls for action there he was fighting against all forms of blades and sundang.

It was this hour of the day that the unsung heroes may live to die but in Kali we don't believe in dying. So my grandfather reads the good passage. Never treat the stranger a thief, neither hold the hands of a pretending fake priest and if the priest is real and true, their hands should be cleaned like an angel face.

But in those days, police work was not exciting. Out of 1000 people at the market place only one police officer managing the crowded people. At this juncture two to three people got drunk. My grandfather likes to show he was authority has to face the mentally delirium person and most of the time arresting people in a very quick time factor.