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| The Indios Bravos are ready in their Fencing outfits. Photo from the collection of Ambeth R. Ocampo |
About two years ago, I bought a copy of "An Anarchy of Families: State and Family in the Philippines", edited by Alfred W. McCoy. This book was originally published in 1994, and even after almost four decades, what the book represents about political families and dynasties is very much alive today. The featured families in the book may no longer be significant in our times, but numerous replacements and "pretenders" have crowded the scene and made our situation even worse.
In one of the footnotes (page 32), McCoy noted that historian Vicente Rafael describes a photo of Juan Luna, Jose Rizal and Valentin Ventura in fencing attires as an embodiment of 'masculine solidarity': "Posing with their swords planted firmly between their legs, the Indios Bravos display a masculine alternative to what they perceived to be the menacingly androgynous...regime of the Spanish friars. That image of masculine solidarity is further suggested by the barely visible figure of a woman - Paz Pardo de Tavera, Luna's wife - situated in the background, at the margins of the frame, as if to signal the sexual hierarchy that patriotism reinstitutes...[T]his picture has the effect of remapping the body of the colonized subject in ways that peel away from the grid of colonial assumptions."
The Indios Bravos depicted in the photo were taken in 1890 at the Luna residence in Villa Dupont, 28 Rue Pergolese, Paris, France. Luna's wife Paz, can be seen in the left-hand corner of the photo with their son, Andres Manuel, or Luling (almost cropped out of the photo). Paz's mother, Donya Juliana, was bitterly against the marriage of her daughter to Luna.
McCoy added, "In his celebration of masculine liberation, Rafael does not mention that Luna would later use this martial training to beat Paz regularly and skillfully with his cane before shooting her fatally."
Celebrated Filipino painter, Juan Luna de San Pedro y Novicio, was often described as someone who had an artistic temperament, in short, hot-tempered and volatile. Fencing as a sport is considered elitist and for the privileged. The 19th century saw a surge in its popularity. Advocates of it explain its core to camaraderie, discipline, and self-improvement. Rizal's generation of exiles and emigres developed European tastes and embraced Fencing, willingly and enthusiastically.
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| Luna and his wife Paz |
Luna and his in-laws, the Pardo de Taveras, were photo enthusiasts. Trinidad, Paz's eldest brother, accumulated thousands of photos over the years, and these became the basis of the Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera Collection found in the Ateneo de Manila University Rizal Library. Over the years, his descendants entrusted his photo and book collection to Ateneo. As the Pardo de Taveras were a wealthy family, owning a camera became part of their everyday lives.
The Pardo de Taveras wealth became a sour note in Luna's 'masculine' DNA. He resented that his mother-in-law, Donya Juliana Pardo de Tavera y Gorricho, was the one paying for their apartment rent and maybe for most of their household expenses. As Luna is fully reliant on his income as a painter and artist. The family dynamics also became a little more uncomfortable when Luna's younger brother, Antonio, started living with them in 1891 while studying at the Pasteur Institute as a chemist.
Donya Juliana and her sister, Donya Gertrudis, were married to siblings, Felix (pere) and Joaquin Pardo de Tavera. Felix died in the early 1860s, and Joaquin became a surrogate father to his nephews and nieces (Trinidad H., Felix (fils), and Paz). During the 1870s, the family emigrated to Paris because of the exile of Don Joaquin, as he was implicated in the 1872 Cavite Mutiny. He and his wife lived in the Marianas Islands for almost three years before being pardoned.
The Pardo de Taveras lived on the proceeds of their share of the Gorrichos' businesses in Binondo, Escolta, and Cavite, amongst others. Donya Juliana's family in Manila was one of the wealthiest during this time. They said that even though the majority of Gorricho's money was used as capital to fund their lifestyles in Paris over the years, they were still enormously rich decades after they all left the French capital.
Two years after this photo was taken, Luna will kill his wife and mother-in-law in a rage of jealousy and anger. He would be acquitted by the Paris Court in 1893 after being imprisoned during his trial.
Luna, together with his brother Antonio and son, Luling, will leave Paris and retreat back to the Philippines. How ironic that when the Luna brothers arrived in the Philippines, one of the first things that they did was to open the 'Sala de Armas', a fencing school located in Calle Alix (now Legarda Street)in the district of Sampaloc.
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