A 360-degree verbal description of the Bonifacio Monument in Caloocan City is posted on the local government’s official website.
There are 21 persons around the column, including the winged angel of peace at the top. Bonifacio occupies, and rightly so, the central or dominant position, with Emilio Jacinto and a flagbearer at his left.
Bonifacio was the brains of the Katipunan, Jacinto was the determined upholder of its principles. The dark beginnings of the glorious epic can be seen directly behind the figures of the priests Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos and Jacinto Zamora tortured on the garrote as sacrifices in the fight for freedom.
On the right side of the shaft, we see the figure of a man extracting some drops of blood from his arm to use as ink in signing his name in the roster of the Katipunan.
On the front left corner of the shaft, we note an “Indio” with his injured wife in his right arm and with his left upraised in protest against the oppression suffered not only by himself and his wife but also by his infant son.
On the opposite side of the column, the story is continued. Here a trussed-up man, dead or dying, decries the cruelties of the rulers. Another man bids good-bye to his wife while holding his baby in his arms and a daughter clinging to him in a pathetic leave-taking.
As I. V. Mallari said, there is adagio, andante and allegro in this sculptural story. We begin to approach the “allegro con forego” with the wounding in a fight, of a bolo-wielding Katipuneros. His son tries to lift him up on his knees. A slain soldier lies prostrate, but that does not impede the furious strides of another defiant boloman crying for revenge as the goes towards the side of the Supremo. A young man in his teens also strides forwards to the left of Bonifacio, with no more than a bolo in his upraised hand.
Bonifacio and Jacinto were willing to pay with their lives for the victory of the Katipunan. An angel of peace hovers over the whole scene. As epilogue to the story, the “call to arms” of Bonifacio, written in the secret Katipunan Code, is engraved below the figure. It runs: “Leader, members, and brothers. This notice is for you. It is most necessary that we stop without delay the nameless cruelties inflicted upon the people of the country who are inside the prisons.”
