On October 18, 1941, Carlos V. Ronquillo, a revolutionary chronicler and General Emilio Aguinaldo’s secretary, died.
Raised and grew in the hometown of his father in Kawit, Cavite, Ronquillo became General Emilio Aguinaldo’s secretary and later a crusading journalist after the outbreak of the revolution in 1896.
Ronquillo joined Aguinaldo in Hongkong on December 27, 1897 when the general went on voluntary exile after the truce of Biyak-na-Bato was signed on December 15, 1897. He took advantage of his brief stay in the British Crown Colony to study English.
Appointed major in the revolutionary army upon his return, he became the military aide of General Daniel Tirona, commander of the military expedition to the Cagayan Valley.
He organized his own guerilla unit upon Gen. Aguinaldo’s instruction when Cagayan fell into the hands of the Americans.
However, he was imprisoned for four months in 1900 when the Americans captured him during the skirmish in the Cordillera Mountains.
He was arrested twice again by the Americans, first on April 16, 1903 for his failure to surrender the Filipino flag used by his Cagayan Battalion, and the second time on March 18, the following year for displaying the Filipino flag.
At that time, displaying of the flag was prohibited until 1919 when the Filipino-controlled Philippine Legislature repealed the Flag Law enacted by the Philippine commission.
Proficient in writing in both English and Spanish, Ronquillo had started writing in the Spanish daily, La Verdad (The Truth). Then he became editor of Muling Pagsilang, the Tagalog section of El Renacimiento (The Rebirth), 1905-1910; he also edited the Taliba (The Sentinel), one of the TVT Newspapers (Tribune, Vanguardia, and Taliba) as well as authored several books.
Source: Philippine News Agency archives
(Filed by JR AMIGO/ai/mnm)