In 1921, an official holiday to mark the birthday of the Philippine revolutionary supremo Andres Bonifacio was celebrated in the Philippines for the first time; it came a generation after his execution. As labour leader Hermenegildo Cruz was to later recall, the day before the new holiday his school-aged children asked him, “Sino ba iyan si Bonifacio?/ — Who is that [man] Bonifacio?”

The pioneer labour organizer and nationalist writer was stunned. “Wari ako'y natubigan … — I felt like I had been doused.” After he recovered, he began to tell his children about Bonifacio and the Katipunan:

That teaching moment led Cruz to write Kartilyang Makabayan or Patriotic Primer, a revealing catechism (it follows a question-and-answer format) about Bonifacio and the Katipunan “na nagturo at nagakay sa Bayang Pilipino sa Paghihimagsik laban sa kapangyarihang dayo — which taught and guided the Philippine nation in the Revolution against foreign powers,” as the latter half of the volume's kilometric subtitle put it.

The Kartilyang Makabayan is revealing not only for what it suggests about Cruz's own biography (the dig at foreign powers seems to me calculated; Cruz was director of the Bureau of Labour in the American regime at the time he wrote the book), but also and mainly because it catches the evolution of the labour movement's understanding of Rizal a quarter-century after his execution.