Background

Sixto de los Angeles was born on August 6, 1875, in San Mateo, Rizal, Philippines, being the second among ten children of Matias de los Angeles and Sixta Manahan.

Education

Sixto de los Angeles must have studied under his father for his younger brother, Servando, did. Then he was sent to the school directed by Mendiola, who was his godfather, where he passed the first three years of secondary education. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree from Colegio de San Juan de Letran in 1890. He got his degree in medicine from the University of Santo Tomas in 1898. His father wanted him to become a lawyer and he did study law for a couple of years much against his will not knowing that he would need a knowledge of law later.

Career

Sixto de los Angeles joined the medical corps of the Revolutionary forces and had his first assignment in Lucena, Tayabas province. At the rupture of Philippine-American relations in February 1899, he was in the suburbs of Manila, for he was ministering to the needs of Filipino soldiers. This service was short-lived, it appears, for on August 15, 1899, he was in his home town finishing El Sabio Convencido, a sainete of one scene in Spanish. Later, he wrote Gahaman sa Pagyaman, a Tagalog zarzuela in 17 parts, which was staged in San Mateo and Mariquina. Then on January 16, 1902, he was appointed president of the board of health of Rizal province, a position he filled until the following year. Subsequently, he served as a physician of San Pablo and San Juan de Dios Hospitals, and the Manila Railroad Company. It was about this time that the Asociacion de Medicos Filipinos was founded, he himself being one the initiators.

In 1912 Angeles was selected by the provincial committee of the Nacionalista Party of Rizal province to run for the Philippine Assembly and he was elected representative for the second district. He was made chairman of the committee on health. While he was head of that group he was responsible for the passage of a number of legislation acts related to the improvement of public health and sanitation: among these were a law to study infant mortality, another one establishing hospitals, public baths and sanatoriums, another law reorganizing the public health service (which also instituted a council of hygiene), and laws regulating the veterinary and dental professions. When the abolition of the death penalty was introduced in the House he supported it, particularly as he did not believe in its total abolition.

On February 26, 1915, Secretary of the Interior Winfred T. Denison recommended the creation of a chair in medical jurisprudence and ethics in the college of medicine of the state university with the end in view of having that department take care of medicolegal cases. The recommendation was approved and on March 31, 1915, Dr de los Angeles was formally appointed professor and head of that department. However, he could assume office only on July 1 at four thousand pesos per annum.

Aside from conducting courses in legal medicine and ethics, the department rendered service in cases required by the city fiscal's office in Manila. By Act 3043 which became effective in 1923, the department could be called upon to investigate the cause of sudden or suspicious death, to make a post-mortem examination, identify skeletons, and make an investigation of cases of delinquent children. These services were highly regarded by both the bench and the bar and the city fiscal of Manila had occasion to acknowledge that the department was useful and of great help to the investigating fiscals in charge of determining whether or not crimes had been committed. Although these services were limited to the city of Manila, expert assistance was extended to the provinces whenever the administration of justice was promoted. In view of the volume of work done by the department, both instructional and practical, Dr. Anastacia Villegas was appointed as an assistant in 1918.

This was followed by the appointment of Dr. Pablo Anzures in the same year. And on January 1, 1918, he was promoted with a salary of seven thousand pesos per annum. In 1937 the Division of Investigation under the Department of Justice was started, and on January 1, 1938, it started to function. This was patterned after the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, United States. In view of his long experience, where was public opinion against the canning out of Dr. de los Angeles, as he was not appointed to direct the new office. It was due to this unmerited act that he tendered his resignation from the government service. After the department was abolished he taught at the Philippine Dental College (now De Ocampo Memorial College), Philippine Law School, College of Oral and Dental Surgery. During the Japanese occupation, he contributed his bit to the cause of the underground by allowing guerillas to reap the produce of his landholding of about 300 hectares in Bautista, Pangasinan province.

His major works include Estudios Sobre Antropologia Criminal en las Islas Filipinas (1919), Legal Medicine (1934), and El Folklore Medico en Filipinas (1935), read at the 10th International Congress on History of Medicine in Spain. For purposes of academic instruction, he prepared a number of outlines. He lectured on many occasions too. As early as 1915 he proposed the teaching of sex in public schools. Before the Agricultural Congress, September 1917, he read a paper on "Economic Importance of Sanitation in Rural Districts", stating that the "fact that our farmers, the one instrumental in the development of our land, live in remote places away from cities where governmental protective influence and supervision hardly reach them, if at all, sufficiently justify the necessity of proper attention to our rural communities."

He described the situation rather faithfully: "The majority of them are small landholders, land-tenants and ordinary laborers without properties. They are at the mercy of land-owners and proprietors; yet they live, work and die apparently content according to their traditional ways and pursuits, unaware that beyond the limited confines of the small world in which they live there lie vast possibilities of individual and social advancement." When the parole system was seriously being considered for incorporation into the penal laws, he endorsed the proposition provided it was not used as the basis of the national penal system, that is, an administration by technical and competent officials, and a study of the cases of individual criminals, their classification and treatment. Infant mortality and population problems disturbed him and he advocated the adoption of eugenic principles "not merely as a necessity but as an obligation to our country and to our posterity as well."

Achievements

• Sixto de los Angeles is considered the Father of Philippine Forensic Medicine. His works can be considered among the treatises of local Filipino scholars who attempted to participate in nation-building by way of scientific knowledge.

Works

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  • Estudios Sobre Antropologia Criminal en las Islas Filipinas 1919

Membership

Sixto de los Angeles was a regent of the University of the Philippines and was president of the Anti-Tuberculosis Society. He was also a member of the Public Welfare Board which was created in 1915 by law for the purpose of looking after public charities and assisting in all ways possible in the work being done along with social service. He was a member of the Colegio Medico-Farmaceutico de Filipinas, Liga Nacional Para la Proteccion de la Primera Infancia, P.I. Medical Association, and Society of Medical Jurisprudence (New York, United States) and associate of the National Research Council of the Philippines.

Connections

Sixto de los Angeles married Juliana Alberto in 1899. The marriage produced eight children, Leonor, Federico, Adelaida, Aranzazu, Alfredo, Josefina, Jaime, and Ramon.

Father:

Matias de los Angeles

Matias de los Angeles (February 28, 1843 - March 1928) was a primary school teacher in San Mateo in 1864-1870 and thereafter established a primary school of his own which became an adjunct of the school in Manila directed by Enrique Mendiola. Then he was elected captain municipal, the position he held in 1893-1894.

Mother:

Sixta Manahan

Sixta Manahan engaged herself in small scale buying and selling, hog and chicken raising, and later she was running a sari-sari store.

Wife:

Juliana Alberto

References

• Dictionary of Philippine Biography
  1970