Amado hernandez contribution

By general consensus, Amado V. Hernandez is the most serviceable Filipino revolutionary artist of the twentieth-century whose poetry, fiction, and plays in Filipino the national language of 80 million Filipinos continue to inspire the popular struggle for national democracy and genuine independence against U. Born in Tondo, Manila, on September 13, , Hernandez began his career in journalism in the twenties when the initial massive Filipino resistance against U.

He became editor of the Manila daily Mabuhay from to In he won the Philippine Commonwealth Award for a nationalist historical epic, Pilipinas; in his collection of mainly traditional poems, Kayumanggi, won a Commonwealth Award. During the Japanese occupation of the Philippines , Hernandez served as an intelligence officer for the underground guerilla resistance, an experience reflected in his major novel of neocolonial dependency and revolt, Mga Ibong Mandaragit.

Amado v hernandez description

After the war, Hernandez assumed the role of public intellectual: he organized the Philippine Newspaper Guild in ; and he spoke out on national issues as an elected councilor of Manila in and It was during his presidency of the Congress of Labor Organizations , the largest federation of militant trade unions in the country, that Hernandez graduated from the romantic reformism of his early years to become a national-democratic militant.

Meanwhile, the establishment of a U. It intensified the feudal landlord exploitation of the peasantry and reinforced the impoverishment of workers and middle strata, leading to the Huk uprising in the late forties and early fifties. Owing to his anti-imperialist work, Hernandez was arrested on January 26, and accused of complicity with the Communist-led uprising.

During the time in which he was imprisoned in various military camps for five years and six months, Hernandez wrote most of the satiric, agitational poems in Isang Dipang Langit and the pedagogical drama, Muntinlupa. From to , Hernandez wrote countless stories under various pseudonyms for the leading weekly, Liwayway ; he also wrote columns for the daily Taliba , and edited the radical newspapers Ang Makabayan and Ang Masa His numerous honors culminated in the Republic Cultural Heritage Award and National Artist Award given posthumously in , a recognition of his life-long service to the cause of liberatory poetics and social justice.

Up to the day March 24, he died, Hernandez was involved as a leading protagonist in mass rallies against imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat-capitalism, for democratic socialism and national independence.