SALVADOR V. DEL ROSARIO

(1864)

Fiery Member of the Malolos Congress

A physician, academician, and journalist, Salvador Vivensio del Rosario was born in Manila in 1864. He obtained the degrees of Doctor of Medicine at the University of Santo Tomas in 1888. He was one of the 42 delegates to the 193-member Malolos Congress who were chosen by election, the having been chosen by decree. Together with Marcial Calleja, he represented the province of Albay. He served on the committees on message, internal regulations and style and was during the deliberations on the Constitution, especially the controversial issue of the separation of church and state. He sided with the group led by Antonio Luna, who advocated the establishment of a secular government free appointed free from religious interference.

Del Rosario was appointed one of the professors of the faculty of medicine of the University Cientifico-Literaria de Filipinas, which was created by an act of Congress on October 19, 1898. When the university was opened in Tambobong (now Malabon, Metro Manila) on November 10, 1898, he taught general anatomy. He continued teaching there when it was later relocated to Malolos.

With the renewal of the Filipino’s struggle for liberation during the American occupation, Del Rosario joined the fiercely pro-independence newspaper la independencia as one of its staff writers. Under the pseudonym “Juan Tagalog,” he wrote essays, which reflected his intense nationalistic ideas and sentiments. Together with his brilliant fellow writers, he helped keep alive the fire of independence in the articles published in the paper, thereby provoking the Americans to suppress it. Despite being banned by the American censors, however, copes of the paper still managed to come out under very noses in Manila.

La Independencia had kept moving its place of publications due to the Americans drive to crush the republic. It died a natural death following the assassinations of Antonio Luna in Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija in 1899. Its last place of publications was in Caviling, Tarlac.

It is not clear what happened to Del Rosario after the Filipino-American War.

Annalyn Domol Arcega

(046) 505-3967

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