Heneral Luna and the Gorechos

After watching the much talked film "HENERAL LUNA" , i am posting this selfie pic as i give salute to Gen. Antonio Luna's statue at the town plaza of Luna, La Union. 

 Heneral Luna, directed by Jerrold Tarog and starring John Arcilla, is about General Antonio Luna’s attempts to lead an often-fractured early version of the Philippine Army against a superior American force. Set a few months before his death, the movie explores Luna’s life, his uncompromising nature, and how his unflinching loyalty to his vision of what the Philippine Republic should be led to his downfall.

The film depicts Luna as a deeply uncompromising man, who believes that Filipinos should start to move away from petty regionalism and be united. Towards the end of his life, Antonio Luna declared that the Filipinos’ biggest enemy is not the Spanish or the Americans, but ourselves

 Heneral Luna explores the main character’s faults and use it to define his story. John Arcilla portrays Antonio Luna as a deeply flawed man, and the movie never shies away it. He is abrasive, offensive, arrogantHowever, that arrogance is not just hot air. Luna is a deeply uncompromising man, who believes that Filipinos should start to move away from petty regionalism and be united. The movie masterfully shows both sides of Luna and how each side feeds into the other.

. The area was once called "Namacpacan", which is an Ilocano word meaning “one who feeds".On 18 October 1906, during the terms of Governor Joaquin Luna and Mayor Primitivo Resurrección Novicio, the town was renamed Luna by virtue of Philippine Commission Act No. 1543 to honour the famous Luna brothers: Revolutionary General Antonio and Spoliarium painter Juan; their mother, Doña Laureana Novicio Luna, was a native of Namacpacan. 

On September 22, 1892, Juan Luna killed perhaps one of my ascendants, Juliana Gorricho Pardo de Tavera, the mother of Paz Pardo de Tavera (Juan Luna's wife) , Both of them were killed by Juan Luna due to extreme jealousy, a crime of passion they say. I am still doing my research that Gorricho perhaps is a variation of my surname Gorecho. Juliana gave the lamp to Jose Rizal where the paper of "Mi Ultimo Adios" was found.

Juan Luna Shrine in Badoc, Ilocos Norte

The Juan Luna Shrine in Badoc, Ilocos Norte, is a reconstruction of the two-storey house in which the patriot and foremost Filipino painter was born on October 24, 1857 (The original house burned down in 1861).On September 22, 1892, Juan Luna killed perhaps one of my ascendants, Juliana Gorricho Pardo de Tavera, the mother of Paz Pardo de Tavera (Juan Luna's wife) , Both of them were killed by Juan Luna due to extreme jealousy, a crime of passion they say. I am still doing my research that Gorricho perhaps is a variation of my surname Gorecho. Juliana gave the lamp to Jose Rizal where the paper of "Mi Ultimo Adios" was found.

September 22, 1892, Juan Luna killed his wife Paz and mother in law Juliana Gorricho Pardo de Tavera

 

 

DATELINE: On September 22, 1892, Juan Luna killed perhaps one of my ascendants, Juliana Gorricho Pardo de Tavera, the mother of Paz Pardo de Tavera (Juan Luna's wife) , Both of them were killed by Juan Luna due to extreme jealousy, a crime of passion they say. I am still doing my research that Gorricho perhaps is a variation of my surname Gorecho. Juliana gave the lamp to Jose Rizal where the paper of "Mi Ultimo Adios" was found.

Juliana Gorricho vda. de Pardo de Tavera (seated at the center with baby Andrés Luna y Pardo de Tavera) with María de la Paz Pardo de Tavera y Gorricho de Luna (standing 2nd from the right) and José Rizal (standing 2nd from the left)

 Juan Luna  was a man of violent temper. He suspected his wife of infidelity, and when his wife and mother-in-law locked themselves in a room to escape his anger, he shot them both and killed them.

He was acquitted of his crime of passion, and the assassination of his brother contributed to his death by heart attack at the age of 42 in Hong Kong on his way to join the Revolution in 1899.

In a “crime of passion”, a person commits a crime against a spouse or loved one, or another person, because of anger or heartbreak. When a person becomes very jealous or disappointed, it can produce such strong emotions that he cannot think... rationally and may act on his impulses without thinking about the consequences.the Philippine justice system considers “having acted upon an impulse so powerful as naturally to have produced passion or obfuscation” a circumstance that mitigates criminal liability. Not only that, but Article 247 of the Revised Penal Code expressly provides that if a person catches his spouse in flagrante delicto with another person and kills one or both of them as a consequence, he shall only suffer the penalty of destierro, or exile, and this only to protect him from the vengeance of the relatives of his victims. This provision, which makes the Philippines one of the few jurisdictions which recognize the “crime of passion” defense, is a holdover from the old Spanish Penal Code, which was in force in the Philippines from 1886 to 1930, a revised form of which became the Revised Penal Code of the Philippines.

Juan Luna's The Parisian Life

                   Oil on Canvas, 1892. Juan Luna's The Parisian Life. The image of the French courtesan when reversed has a "geographical likeness" to the mirror-image of the archipelago of the Philippines or it shows the map of the Philippines. The woman has a dark neck and was placed with her head in a window joint resulting to having the effect of a sort of "antenna jutting out" of the head. The dark neck and the window joint line showed that as if the woman was being strangled, conveying the message that the Philippines was under stress.

The Parisian Life is regarded as the last major work Luna did during his post-academic and life in Paris This period in Luna’s career in painting is known as the post-academic or the Parisian period, a time when his style moved away from having “dark colors of the academic palette” and became “increasingly lighter in color and mood”.

             A blogger wrote :  " everything else in the painting  was pointing towards the lady—the attention of two of the three men , the triangulation of the newspaper, the orientation  of the table and chairs, and the brim of the top hat and the corner of a man’s overcoat lying beside the lady. Luna was actually drawing attention to the lady—the motherland—and was quietly asserting the need to acknowledge that its relationship with Spain—its lover, its colonizer—had a degree of abuse and malicious intent, as suggested by the half-drunk mug of beer on the lady’s side of the table and the still-full mug on the lover’s side of the table. Even the newspaper behind the lady’s head, with its name translated into The Cry of Bastille, the French Revolution of a century before, points toward the planning of the Philippines Revolution"

Juan Luna's Spoliarium and the Gorechos

I have to admit, this is my first close encounter (i guess) with a national treasure - the Spoliarium of Juan Luna at the National Musuem. 

‎"Luna's Spoliarium with its bloody carcasses of slave gladiators being dragged away from the arena where they had entertained their Roman oppressors with their lives...stripped to satisfy the lewd contempt of their Roman persecutors with their honor..." Rizal was footnoted in his speech that the Spoliarium, "embodied the essense [sic] of our social, moral and political life: humanity in severe ordeal, humanity unredeemed, reason and idealism in open struggle with prejudice, fanaticism and justice..." (Leon Ma. Guerrero, "The First Filipino" 2007)

The Spoliarium was a building or chamber in the colloseum where the dead bodies of gladiators were taken to be stripped of their armor and weapons prior to the disposal of their bodies. The bodies of the noxii gladiators would first be dragged from the arena sometimes by hooks in their heels, to make this chore easier. Their dead bodies were dragged through the Gate of Death called the Porta Libitinensis, This name derives from Libitina who was the goddess of funerals. The corpses of the gladiators were then taken to the Spoliarium.

 Because of its asymmetrical patterns, it provides a comparison between light and darkness, the horror of dragged corpses against the mourning of a lady, the thin almost skeletal bodies of aged men versus muscular soldiers slaughtered in their prime. With everything pointing to the message : the carnage of human rights violation.

  

                                     Juliana Gorricho vda. de Pardo de Tavera (seated at the center with baby Andrés Luna y Pardo de Tavera) with María de la Paz Pardo de Tavera y Gorricho de Luna (standing 2nd from the right) and José Rizal (standing 2nd from the left)

FYI,Juliana Gorricho Pardo de Tavera, the mother of Paz Pardo de Tavera (Juan Luna's wife) , gave the lamp to Jose Rizal where the paper of "Mi Ultimo Adios" was found. Both of them were killed by Juan Luna due to extreme jealousy, a crime of passion they say. Gorricho perhaps is a variation of my surname Gorecho.

In a “crime of passion”, a person commits a crime against a spouse or loved one, or another person, because of anger or heartbreak. When a person becomes very jealous or disappointed, it can produce such strong emotions that he cannot think... rationally and may act on his impulses without thinking about the consequences.the Philippine justice system considers “having acted upon an impulse so powerful as naturally to have produced passion or obfuscation” a circumstance that mitigates criminal liability. Not only that, but Article 247 of the Revised Penal Code expressly provides that if a person catches his spouse in flagrante delicto with another person and kills one or both of them as a consequence, he shall only suffer the penalty of destierro, or exile, and this only to protect him from the vengeance of the relatives of his victims. This provision, which makes the Philippines one of the few jurisdictions which recognize the “crime of passion” defense, is a holdover from the old Spanish Penal Code, which was in force in the Philippines from 1886 to 1930, a revised form of which became the Revised Penal Code of the Philippines.

In one blog i read, the author wrote on one of the myths of the painting : that Juan Luna used the blood of his wife for the  feisty red ink.  The blog said : 

" Unlike other paintings, Spolarium is not just an ordinary painting. For many years, it is surrounded by different mysteries and controversies…controversies done by no other than the ---painter himself. The main colors of the painting are red and black. Colors that express grief, bravery and death. But there is one thing that makes this painting different from any other painting…. the red paint used by Juan Luna, was said to be the blood of his wife ...Many believed that the red paint on Luna’s painting was indeed the blood of his wife…because the red paint shows more emotion than any other color in the painting. But many said it was not… The truth behind the painting will always remain a mystery… Genius people do paintings. It serves as the mirror of the past…it explains the emotions of the painter…at there will always a secret behind the great paintings that our eyes can see….."