A Childhood in Kawit

In which the hero learns the alphabet—Spends time with playmates Miong and Idoy at idyllic Binakayan stream—Recites Balagtas at precocious age—Enrolls at Escuela de Niños—Reads a lot—Recalls Terror of Cavite (also known as Cavite Mutiny)—Records history of family—Mother, a Visayan artist, dies of tuberculosis—Father, dramatist, actor, and fan of Cavite Mutiny’s Padre Burgos, flees Kawit—Uncle, assistant parish priest of San Felipe, brings up abandoned child—Enrolls at Latinidad de Jose Basa—Meets best friends Benigno Santi and Agapito Conchu—Passes time with fruit bats—Alludes to Rizal’s historic Noli—Meets father, in disguise: the Cavite bandit el genio Jote39

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39 A few notes on hero’s paternal grandparents (his maternal ancestors being unaccounted for), not mentioned in the memoir nor gleaned from files in Sevilla, Spain; Valladolid, Spain; and the Departmental Archives of the Basque Pyrenees, Spain—instead, a bountiful harvest comes from family interviews: in Binakayan, Cavite; Quinapundan, Samar; and Vacaville, California; and from telltale gaps in the hero’s account, not to be ignored:

Raymundo’s grandfather, Raymundo Mata Eibarrazeta, was said to be a soldier (half Basque, all bravado) whose ancestors hailed from the Spanish Pyrenees. Storytellers of Kawit, Cavite, narrate that the elder Raymundo had a checkered career in the Spanish militia and retired with his temper intact in the environs of Cavite’s ports, married to a Chinese vendor of lamp oil. True, none of this is corroborated in documents in Sevilla or Valladolid—no mention of one Raymundo Mata Eibarrazeta of Jaca or Kawit occurs in official lists—worse, the memoirist’s Chinese ancestry is completely erased, as usual. For authenticity, we rely on the hero’s recall and the [dubious] accounts of inflammatory Caviteños. (Estrella Espejo, Quezon Institute and Sanatorium, Tacloban, Leyte)