Graciano Lopez Jaena

Today in Philippine History (Philatelic Edition):

DECEMBER 18, 1856

Graciano Lopez Jaena (December 18, 1856 - January 20, 1896), a journalist, orator, and revolutionary, was born in Jaro, Iloilo.

He studied at St. Vincent Ferrer Seminary in Jaro. He tried to enrol at the University of Santo Tomas but was denied admission because the required Bachelor of Arts degree was not offered at the seminary. 

He was appointed as apprentice at the San Juan de Dios Hospital but quit for lack of funds. 

He went back to Jaro to pursue his practice of medicine. 

When he was 18, he wrote “Fray Botod,” a satirical story about a fat priest whose acts were unjust and underhanded. This unpublished story caught the ire of the friars who could not prove that he was the author. 

Lopez Jaena left for Spain in 1879 after receiving death threats for his refusal to testify that there were prisoners who died of natural causes when the real perpetrator of their deaths was the mayor of Pototan. 

In Spain, he studied medicine at the University of Valencia but was not able to finish. 

He joined the Propaganda Movement and founded the La Solidaridad, the newspaper of the Reform Movement whose contributors include Jose Rizal, Marcelo H. del Pilar, Mariano Ponce, Antonio Luna, José Ma. Panganiban and Pedro Paterno. 

Graciano Lopez Jaena died of tuberculosis on January 20, 1896 and was buried a day later in an unmarked grave at the Cementerio del Sub-Oeste of Barcelona. 

(Design, concept, stamps and research: Richard Allan B. Uy) All rights reserved

Photo credit: Graciano Lopez Jaena Foundation