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Posted by Oli on Apr 19, '09 10:12 PM for everyone
Where is Francisco Balagtas buried? His grave, it seems to me, is a pilgrimage-worthy site especially given his stature in Philippine literature, but I've never heard it mentioned before, and Google offers almost no clues.

By all indications, Balagtas died on 20 February 1862, at Udyong (now Orion), Bataan, where he had settled down and raised his family sometime in the 1840s. Presumably, he remains buried there. He apparently was involved in local town politics, so he was of sufficient prominence that they would have buried him in a grave of his own. There is a cemetery in Orion, but it is named "Evergreen", so its provenance back to the time of Balagtas is quite doubtful. 

Assuming he was buried in the town's public cemetery, there is little chance that his grave survives, owing to that habit of public cemeteries digging up the dead after 50 or so years and cremating the remains or reburying them in mass graves. (For that reason, you do not see any graves of Filipinos who died before the 1860s or so) There perhaps would be a better chance if he were interred inside a church, but considering his anti-clerical bent, chances are Balagtas would not have consented to be buried in one. 

This would make a great documentary subject. 
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accidentallambofgod wrote on Apr 20, '09
That's an interesting thing to ponder. Sort of goes to show how dodgy we Pinoys have become at preserving our own national heritage, let alone our literary one. I remember one time in high school when I couldn't even do something as basic as figure out a single hint as to the authorship of Ibong Adarna.
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oxar2001law wrote on Apr 20, '09
accidentallambofgod said
Sort of goes to show how dodgy we Pinoys have become at preserving our own national heritage, let alone our literary one.
Quite true, although the job of tracking down accurate records has been hampered by dodgy record-keeping in the past, as well as events such as World War II, which burned a lot of documents (as well as people). I think groups such as the National Historical Institute have been doing as good a job under the circumstances in trying to bring light into those darkened areas of our historical past, but keeping track of our heritage has not seeped as much into the national consciousness as it should.

A bunch of our noted writers (the National Artists) are buried together in one plot at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. (They are among those gravesites photographed here) I don't know how well the public knows of that fact.
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