After strangling the newborn Universidad Cientifica y Literaria de Filipinas and the Malolos Republic in its cradle and hounding revolutionary maestros like Artemio Ricarte, the colonialist Yankee regime fabricated an edifice of miseducation to indoctrinate the upcoming batches of Filipinos. United States Army soldiers were the first to teach the Malay inhabitants about the wonders of consumer democracy, ahead of the civilian volunteers like the Thomasites. Like the secretaries of public instruction in the Islands, the first presidents of UP were Americans.

A decade after the ignoble capture of the president of the Malolos Republic and the untimely death of the "Brains of the Revolution," the colonizers claimed that the mission of "the Government of the Philippine Islands, through the University," was to produce "creating scholars, and to do its share in contributing to the advancement of knowledge." [Catalogue of the University of the Philippines for 1910-1911]

Even the students bought this vision statement, dreaming that "the University of the Philippines is going to be the most effective agent in the so-called Filipinization movement in the government service, and ultimately in the construction of a complete real self-government." [Jorge B. Vargas, College Folio, October 1910]

The American Occupation succeeded in cloning bureaucrats and politicians, but it failed to foresee that their UP will produce its anti-thesis.

Manuel L. Quezon, then the Filipino resident commissioner to the United States Congress, wanted a president of the UP who "besides capacity believes in nationalism." [Cablegram from Washington, D.C. to Manila, January 30, 1915] Quezon also wanted "our girls and our boys to be taught that they are Filipinos, that the Philippines is their country and the only country that God has given them; that they must keep it for themselves and for their children; and that they must live for it and die for it if necessary." [The Philippinensian, 1916] He expected the first Filipino president of the UP to "instill in the hearts of his students a very strong spirit of Philippine patriotism both by his example and by his teachings."

The expectation and exhortation were maintained in the second decade of the University. In his inaugural address as UP president, Rafael Palma in 1923 (he served until 1933) intoned: "The essence and reality of Filipinism will be the combination of the best and the greatest in the Orient with the greatest and the best in the Occident...Such should be the national character which the University ought to mould." He later told the UP Convocation of July 27, 1926: "The first thing a young man or woman should study, the first question that he should ask himself is, ‘What is my country?’ Without a knowledge of his country, its history, its government, its institutions, what shall it profit a man to be educated?" [Philippine Social Sciences Review, August 1939]

This was certainly a challenge for there were people like Assoc. Prof. Tom Inglis Moore of the Department of English who told the University Convocation on September 30, 1930 that "Filipino students are mentally childish." For which, he was immediately separated from UP as decreed by the Board of Regents. [Tribune, October 1 and 15, 1930]

Jorge C. Bocobo, the next UP president {1934-1939}, defined in his inaugural address the mission of the UP as to imbue its students "with a deepening sense of stewardship for the (Filipino) people." In another forum, Bocobo emphasized that university education "must above all deepen the sense of consecration, intensify the love of country and harden the moral make-up of the citizens of tomorrow." [Address at the Opening Exercises of the University of the Philippines, June 8, 1936]

These brave words were tested when Fascism engulfed the world in a deadly conflict and the Oriental Hitlerites invaded the Philippines.

Macario Peralta was a graduate of UP College of Law and Philippine Bar topnotcher, a member of UP Vanguard and ROTC commandant. When the Pacific War broke out, he was Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3, 61st Division, Philippine Army. Upon the American capitulation in the Philippines in 1942, he chose to retain the chain of command in the 6th Military District.

Peralta’s unconventional warriors in Central Philippines were known as the Free Panay Force. His Field Order No. 1, dated October 1, 1942, aimed to maintain an indefinite loci of resistance in the Visayas, prevent the exploitation of local natural resources by the enemy, and assist in raising funds for the resistance.

Together with Tomas Valenzuela Confesor, Peralta "made inland Panay practically a liberated area...The Commonwealth government was re-established more completely in each recaptured town with municipal mayors, town councilors, policemen, justices of the peace and public school teachers regularly reporting for duty." [Jose Demandante Doromal. The War in Panay: A Documentary History of the Resistance Movement in Panay during World War II. Manila: The Diamond Historical Publications, 1952]

In the 5th Military District, incumbent Assemblyman and former Governor Wenceslao Quinto Vinzons led the Bicolanos in ambushing Japanese troops at Lanitan Bridge, Camarines Norte on January 1, 1942. The follow-through to this first feat of arms was the liberation of Daet after a three-day assault (April 30-May 3, 1942). In this engagement, Vinzons and his Ex-O, Sergeant Francisco Boayes, commanded a 100-strong combine of USAFFE personnel and volunteers. This force was a hallmark in the Philippine Defense Campaign by freeing a major local government unit three days before the American defeat at Corregidor.

Vinzons was a product of the UP College of Law and he had co-founded the Young Philippines, a "national civic movement...of those who thought and felt and believed in the power of youth to effect the moral and social regeneration of the Filipino nation." This organization had issued a manifesto in 1941, "calling the attention of the people to the dangers of Japanese southward expansion toward the Philippines" and "denounced the territorial ambitions of the Rising Sun." [Arturo M. Tolentino. Voice of Dissent. QC: Phoenix Publishing House, Inc., 1990]

After the war, colleagues paid homage to the martyr. "I knew Wenceslao Q Vinzons in his life. We worked and edited together the student newspaper of the University of the Philippines, where to maintain our editorial independent from faculty dictation, we risked suspension and expulsion. We founded together the Young Philippines in the effort to unite the youth of the land...We were shoulder to shoulder when we vainly resisted the steamroller movement of majority party to amend the Constitution, creating the Senate and allowing Presidential re-election. And even when he was already in the hills fighting the Japanese, we still had some contacts - until he was captured and taken to the garrison, while I was arrested and confined at Fort Santiago." [Arturo M. Tolentino, "If Vinzons Were Alive," radio broadcast on the occasion of Vinzons’ 36th birthday, September 1946; www.arturotolentino.com]

Today, Vinzons Hall stands as the Student Center in UP Diliman, while R.A. 6720 declared September 28 of every year a special non-working holiday in the province of Camarines Norte to commemorate the birth anniversary of Wenceslao Q. Vinzons, Sr., patriot and martyr.