Pedro Paterno

Early life and career

Paterno was born on February 17, 1857. He was a "child of privilege in a society of limited opportunities." He was one of 13 children born to Máximo Molo-Agustín-Paterno e Yamzon, a mestizo sangley born to a mestizo sangley father and a china cristiana mother, and his second wife, Carmen de Vera-Ignacio y Pineda, a mestiza mostly of lowland Tagalog descent.

His father Máximo was exiled to Guam (then also part of the Spanish East Indies) for ten years following the 1872 Cavite mutiny, and died on July 26, 1900, leaving behind considerable wealth from his lucrative business ventures.

In 1876, he wrote his first opus entitled Influencia Social del Cristianismo wherein it shows how he consciously located himself in the metropolitan stream of Spanish Culture. It also unveiled the major themes of Paterno's works to come: law of social evolution, value of reason, human perfectibility, and a synthesis of an essentialised "Orient" and "Occident" in Christianity.

In 1893, he was awarded the Order of Isabella the Catholic.

Biak-na-Bato The Filipino negotiators for the Pact of Biak-na-Bato. Seated from left to right: Paterno and Emilio Aguinaldo with five companions.thumb Emilio Aguinaldo and Pedro A. Paterno miniature model at Barasoain Church (in the horse carriage-parade for Aguinaldo's oath-taking as Philippine President on January 23, 1899). At the trial of José Rizal in 1896, it was suggested that Paterno, along with Rizal, had incited the Katipunan because they had both written about pre-Spanish Philippine history. As evidence for their complicity, the Spanish prosecution cited Paterno's earlier work Antigua Civilización as promoting ideas which had "consequences both erroneous and injurious to Spanish sovereignty". Nobody moved against Paterno, however, because he was close to a significant number of Spanish officials, both military and civilian, who could vouch and cover for him. Thus, Paterno, like many others of the Manila elite, distanced himself from the events of the Katipunan revolution. which was an unrecognised secessionist microstate.

In late July 1897, Paterno presented himself to Governor-General Fernando Primo de Rivera, whom he had known while living in Spain, and offered his services as a mediator.

He died of cholera on April 26, 1911.

Legacy and notoriety

Despite Paterno's prominence in the many upheavals that defined the birth of the Philippine nation during his lifetime, Paterno's legacy is largely infamous among Philippine historians and nationalists.

Philippine historian Resil Mojares notes that: History has not been kind to Pedro Paterno. A century ago, he was one of the country's premier intellectuals, blazing trails in Philippine letters. Today he is ignored in many of the fields in which he once held forth with much eminence, real and imagined. No full length biography or extended review of his corpus of writings has been written, and no one reads him today.

Mojares also indicated that his sarcastic and flamboyant attitude, wherein he seeks a high regard in the social hierarchy wherever he goes, invited the criticisms he received.

John Schumacher dismissed Paterno's works as "scholarly" in nature. He remarked that: Paterno's "eccentric and ingenious elucubrations" on Philippine civilization undermined the national cause. "Reconstructing a Filipino past, however glorious in appearance, on false pretences can do nothing to build a sense of national identity, much less offer guidance for the present or the future."

Much of this is attributed to Paterno's penchant for turncoatism, as described by historian Ambeth Ocampo, who sums up his career thus: Remember, Paterno was one of the greatest "balimbing" (turncoat) in history (perhaps he was the original "balimbing" in Philippine political history). He was first on the Spanish side, then when the declaration of independence was made in 1898, he "wormed his way to power" and became president of the Malolos Congress in 1899, then sensing the change in political winds after the establishment of the American colonial government, he became a member of the First Philippine Assembly.

List of works Influencia Social del Cristianismo, 1876 pamphlet Sampaguitas y otras poesías varias, 1880 anthology of poems Ninay, 1885 novel Magdapio, 1903 four-part opera Aurora social, 1910–11 collection of novellas Los ultimos romanticos: en la erupción del Volcán de Taal, 1911

Media portrayals Portrayed by Yul Servo in the film, El Presidente (2012). Portrayed by Leo Martinez in the film, Heneral Luna (2015), and its sequel, Goyo: Ang Batang Heneral (2018). Portrayed by JV Ibesate in the hit musical of Tanghalang Pilipino, Mabining Mandirigma.