By Vincent Cabreza
Inquirer
BAGUIO CITY, Philippines — The flag believed by heirs of Emilio Aguinaldo to be that unfurled by the general in Kawit, Cavite, in 1898 still received no respect at Tuesday’s rites marking the 109th Independence Day.
Marching bands accompanying the city government’s Freedom Day parade loudly made their way down Session Road, but only a handful of people paid quiet homage to the tattered relic encased in glass at the Aguinaldo Museum on Happy Glen Loop here.
Emilio Aguinaldo Suntay III, the general’s great grandson, said he was glad that some people still managed to show up. The bad news, he said, was that the flag had only “our lifetime” — or 30-50 more years — to last.
Suntay said technicians and preservation specialists of various facilities, including the Washington-based Smithsonian Institution, earlier warned the family that there was no technology available to restore and preserve the flag at its present state.
He said the decay of the silk fabric had progressed beyond any known method of chemically or physically preserving it.
“Nothing lasts, anyway. And that goes double for fabric,” Suntay said.
Former Baguio representative Honorato Aquino, lawyer of the Aguinaldo heirs, said the family might seek a second opinion from Japanese experts.
Meanwhile, Suntay said, the family would maintain the procedures that scientists had required for preserving the flag, “for as long as it remains intact.”
The family was prepared for the flag’s inevitable decay, Suntay said.
He said this was why he and other family members had commissioned University of the Philippines experts to replicate the flag down to the silk fabric.
The replica was displayed here during the centennial of Philippine Independence in 1998.
The original flag was later framed and secured from the ceiling of the Baguio museum.
The National Historical Institute has yet to authenticate the original flag despite years of probing. But it was responsible for wrapping the fragile relic in a metallic net to keep the fabric from shredding under its own weight.
The city government offered in 2006 to help raise capital to preserve the flag, but Suntay said the Aguinaldo heirs decided to raise the funds themselves.
He said they were raised to follow a principle espoused by US President John F. Kennedy. “It doesn’t matter what the country can do for you, but what you can do for your country — and what we are doing is protecting this symbol,” he said.
Suntay said his grandmother, Cristina Aguinaldo Suntay, started this crusade when she inherited the flag, which the family discovered under the general’s deathbed.
The original flag is distinctive because its sun bears a golden face paler than that in the contemporary flag that Baguio residents waved during Tuesday’s Freedom Day parade.
The section symbolizing peacetime is light blue, in contrast to the dark blue hue in the contemporary flag.
The phrase “Fuerzas Expedicionarias del Norte de Luzon” runs across one side of the flag, and the words “Libertad” and “Justicia” on the other side.
Lack of funds has forced the family to share the original flag’s glass casing with an authentic flag used by General Gregorio del Pilar.
Suntay said the family also managed to preserve a bloodstained flag used by Aguinaldo during the Philippine-Spanish War.
Most of Tuesday’s visitors to the museum belonged to the anthropology class of Danish teacher Lars Kjaerholm, who has been sending students to the Philippines for social immersion activities.
Baguio’s official representatives to the program were officials of the village of Salud Mitra led by village chief Nida Galace.
Suntay said he did not mind the seeming snub of the family’s precious relic.
His niece, Anna Suntay, attributed the low turnout of visitors to Malacañang’s earlier announcement that June 12 was a regular working day.
