Andrea Vitan Arce

Background

Andrea Vitan Arce was born on November 30, 1885, in Manila, Philippines. She was the fourth among the six children of Francisco Vitan y Sabalburo and Juana Alcantara.

Education

Andrea Vitan Arce finished the third year of secondary education during the Spanish regime and received further education from the Sampalok Night School, Sampalok Intermediate School, and Teachers' Institute during the American occupation. She rounded up a bit of her knowledge of English from American missionaries whom she taught Tagalog in return for English lessons.

Career

Still under age, Andrea Vitan Arce received her original appointment as a teacher in the Sampalok Intermediate School on February 4, 1901. She also taught for some time in the Manila High School (now the Araullo High School) in 1918. She became acting principal of the Ermita Intermediate School on June 6, 1919, and principal of the Legarda Elementary School on October 1, 1922. She transferred to Tondo Intermediate School on October 5, 1931, and served until she was retired under Act 3050, as amended, effective on June 11, 1933.

Arce's first story in Spanish, El Viajero, appeared in El Renacimiento, and her first in Tagalog, Batang Lansangan, in Muling Pagsilang, sister publications, in 1903. Due to school work, her literary activity suffered and there was a time when she had to stop writing altogether. The stories appeared but were sparsely distributed. Even a visit from Vicente Blasco Ibanez at her school in 1924 did not seem to have aroused her to any creative activity. But she suddenly renewed her interest in 1932 when she wrote La Novela de Sor Maria del Espiritu Santo in Spanish, a work which she herself translated into Tagalog with the title Sa Katahimikan ng Kombento. When she was finally retired from the teaching service, a continuous flow of stories issued from her pen which appeared mostly in Liwayway.

Since Arce lived in a period when the modern Tagalog short story was just beginning to be born, her stories had all the earmarks of the old school: a winding tale without achieving singleness of effect, earnest attempt to drive home a moral, and lack of originality and freshness in the handling of commonplace plots. She left a collection of books in Spanish, English, and Tagalog. She also used a penname Anak Bukid.

Achievements

• Andrea Vitan Arce is considered to be a renowned educator and writer. In 1936, her story Dakilang Kabayanihan was selected as the best story of the year and she received a gold medal from Liwayway. Her story Sa Puntod ng Libingan is considered by many an outstanding one.

Views

Andrea Vitan Arce imbibed a love for Spanish writing from the productions of Fernando Ma. Guerrero and for Tagalog from the works of Lope K. Santos and Faustino Aguilar who took turns to revise her stories. Pedro Aunario and Teodoro M. Kalaw also influenced her.

In 1920, Arce did charitable work for Bilibid Prison, and in 1923 assisted the Manila city board in its annual red cross drive in Sampalok.

Quotations: "I do not write unless there is some definite thing that I intend to bring out. I have observed much of life, and there are some phases of it which I feel I should present in the best way I can."

"Although I write at the promptings of friends, my mind is so full of things to write on that when I do sit down to write, the stories just flow out. I have written so many stories already that I cannot recall now the names of most of them."

"I can't judge my own stories. Sometimes a story that I like very much is not considered very good, and vice versa."

Connections

Andrea Vitan Arce was married to Carmelo Arce. The marriage produced three children, Nieves, Virginia, and Antonio.

Father:

Francisco Vitan y Sabalburo

Francisco Vitan y Sabalburo was educated at San Juan de Letran and was in the employ of the Recollect Order as a clerk and of the Franciscan Order as fiscal in Sampalok for a time. He also was сhief of a barangay in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial period.

Mother:

Juana Alcantara

Juana Alcantara was connected with the government tobacco monopoly administration. Later she engaged herself in the jewelry business.

husband:

Carmelo Arce

References

• Dictionary of Philippine Biography
  1970