The Forgotten Dark Tales of Negros

The Secret of Supersonia and the Evil Diablita

Who the hell was Diablita? Why did she commit such terrible crimes? Let’s find out at the end of this story. For every villain, however, there’s always a hero. In this case, a heroine. 

When Jose Gerardo Gaston was killed by an explosion in their porch in Christmas of 1924, he left his fiancée Ma. Ezperanza Lizares grieving so much. They were supposed to be married the next year. Bitter about her loss, she silenced herself in her room and cried and cried and cried until she ran out of tears. She poured all her misery to the sepia photograph of her late grandmother.

“I can’t take this anymore, lola. Evil has once again plagued this land, like those Spanish invaders that you fought along with Aniceto Lacson. Someone killed my dear Gerardo…a woman they call Diablita.”

It went on for months. Ezperanza had been so close to her grandmother who took part in the revolution in 1898. Her grandmother raised her when her parents were managing a business of their family in the nearby province of Iloilo. In 1913, when Ezperanza was only 12 years old, her grandmother Ma. Sonia Lizares passed away from tuberculosis. She left her granddaughter her scapular and her sharp binangon, the memoirs of the war that gave the province temporary freedom until the Americans took over. “The wars will not stop until this land is cleared from foreigners. I leave you these, Ezperanza. One day, you will use them too. One day, you will use them in your own war.”

Hearing the consecutive piling crimes of the notorious masked criminal in town, Ezperanza was roused and became more furious. She tried to forget her melancholy and moved on. She wanted to avenge her beloved Gerardo. She wanted to stop the so-called female devil that was menacing her beloved town.

In August 15, 1925, on the same night that Roman Magbanua was being killed by his kumpadre for a misunderstanding in a cockfight, Ezperanza swore upon his grandma’s picture that she was going to stop the plague. She opened her grandma’s baul and found the clothes she used to wear. She put on the scapular and held the sharp blade proudly. “My war has come, lola. This is my war against the devil.” And to be fair against her enemy, Ezperanza wore her own mask, an old sack with two holes for the eyes.

The lost children were miraculously returned one by one. The prayers of the people were answered.

“I was scared at first, Mama. But she untied me, then we left that dark place.”

“She freed me from Diablita! A woman wearing a dress with a scapular just like lola. She has a binangon…”

“She fought Diablita! I heard them fighting. Then she rescued me.”

The murders were also reduced. Diablita’s efforts resulted to mere attempts. 

“We have a heroine at last!” confirmed Walter Hartman who was saved from the clutches of Diablita. He reported to the public how a masked woman with a sharp blade fought his supposed murderer.

“A heroine disguised as a katipunera!”

“It must be the great Sonia Lizares who fought along with Aniceto Lacson two decades ago. She’s back from the dead! She came back to free us once more from the horror of this wicked monster.”

And so the Talisaynons believed it was the ghost of Ma. Sonia Lizares who was fighting for them. Ezperanza never thought that her grandma was a legend. When the people barged in her house asking questions about her grandmother, she pretended innocent. She showed them her clothes and her scapular untouched in the wooden chest. 

In her dark lair, Diablita was enraged. “Puta! How dare she ruin my plans!” So it seemed that her reign of terror was challenged. The people of Talisay forgotten their fear once more. When she tried to burn the sugar canes in Concepcion, the rumored Masked Katipunera was there and chased her away. The farmers were just in time to stop the fire. When she tried to bomb the newly renovated municipal hall, her nemesis was quick enough to move the explosives out of the building and into the empty field where it killed zero. “Puta! Puta! Puta!” Not to mention her kidnapped children always rescued and returned to their worried parents.