Under three colonial administrations, Davao, then classified as pueblo, municipality, and later as a city, has only hosted a few busts (as opposed to monuments) honoring foreigners. As far as memory can recall, only the Jones bust at the end of the old Claveria Street named after an American legislator, and Oyanguren’s (at the Museo Dabawenyo) are the most recognizable.
Rep. William Atkinson Jones of Virginia, chairman of the US House Committee on Insular Affairs, was the first lawmaker to introduce a bill fixing the Philippine independence. On August 29, 1916, Jones Law, which created the first fully elected Philippine legislature, was enacted by the US Congress; it also covered the first formal and official declaration of the US federal government’s assurance to grant independence to the country.
Except for national heroes, presidents, founders, and achievers who are memorialized in schools, town halls, and public plazas, the two known Filipino busts of note in Davao City today are those of local hero Datu Mama Bago and National Artist Victorio Edades.
But there’s also a bust in the Millennium Park across Ateneo de Davao University that is neither colonialist nor Filipino. The figure belongs to Dr. Gerungan Saul Samuel Jacob Ratulangi (1890-1949), an Indonesian hero. It was installed in 2017 in remembrance of the city’s sisterhood with Manado City, in North Sulawesi, dating to 1993, the year the BIMP-EAGA (Brunei Indonesia Malaysia Philippines – East ASEAN Growth Area) concept, originally known as ‘The Polygon,’ was launched.
Ratulangi was a key person in the Indonesian independence movement; he fought against Dutch colonialism. Ironically, he earned his higher education in Haarlem, Netherlands, where he completed his doctorate in Physics and Natural Sciences before returning to his motherland to teach sciences to high school students in Yogyakarta.
To propagate his anti-Dutch cause, Ratulangi collaborated with two prominent Indon figures, well-known psychologist Amir and activist-politician Pieter Frederich Dahler, in founding the Indonesian weekly Peninjauan in 1934, using it as a vehicle for his strong anti-colonial sentiments. Years later, he established the Nationale Commentaren, a magazine published in Dutch.
Like many journalists in unstable countries, he was arrested and jailed in 1936 for his anti-colonial views and wrote a book a year later titled ‘Indonesia in the Pacific in 1937,’ which predicted the Japanese invasion of his country. His early exposure as a railroad construction laborer shaped his social outlook, in large part an offshoot of the unequal treatment the Dutch exhibited to Indonesians in terms of wages and employee lodgings.
His pro-Indonesian stance deepened in years to come when he joined the Dutch East Indies Council, where he accused the Dutch colonial administration of biased policies towards the local people. For this, he was again incarcerated in 1941. After the war, he became part of the Preparatory Committee for Indonesian Independence, which readied the transfer of authority from the Japanese occupiers to the Indonesians.
For his pro-independence efforts, he was installed as the first governor of Sulawesi Province in 1945. Still unable to hold his fierce anti-colonist views, he was again detained by the Dutch a year later and banished to Papua for two years. In 1948, for the umpteenth time, he was again under arrest but died six months later due to failing health.
In August 1961, he was posthumously honored with the title of ‘National Hero of Indonesia’ by Sukarno. He also received retrospectively the Bintang Gerilya (1958), the Bintang Mahaputera Adipradana (1960), and the Bintang Satyalancana (1961) awards.
