A Question of heroes : essays in criticism on ten key figures of Philippines history by Filipiniana Online

•

ABOUT THE BOOK

There were two distinct but simultaneous reuo/utions in 1896, linked only by the Katipunan. The first revolt was the Manileiios' and it lasted a week; the second , '"'rlViteno,' and it ItlSted five years. ~

It,.

do we mean when we speak of lished RelJoiution' f But (rom a

v, there was only one--and it was ocio '" though he tried to ride it. the NUl thrown off almost at once.) This

larger view compels us to see the entire period from the Propaganda MOlJement to the Philippine.American War as a single euent: the RelJo/ution of the J/ustrados. The larger view is what the author, National, Artist Nick Joaquin, proffers in these essays, available as a book for the first time ~nce their publication in the Philippines Free Press in the 1960s, and slightly revised (or this edition. His princip81 focus is on the last three decades of the 19tb century which he sees as 'the climax of our hlstory', the period of the 'Flowering of the Frupino'. With a fascinating thoroughness, t'e author explores a number of issues some of which have been ignored by history books: the Creole beginnings of the 1896 revolution which he frankly calls 'premature' and 'inopportune'; the seminal role of Father Pedro Pelaez, mentor of the 'accidental hero' Father Jose Burgos; the egotism of Lopez.Jaena; the 'gilded soil' whence sprang the Propaganda Movement; Aguinaldo's rejection of what the author sees as a chance to spare Filipinos the break in ",,1t\lT'" whi"h the American intrusion 1 'ut, etc. He sees in Tirad .rne expression of the tayoin â&#x20AC;˘ !IT'lIit ""hich, as cavitismo, felled in whom Mabini-no "'~~ lie' to be sure but 'our first modern man' in his distaste for Congress and inclination towards the charismatic strongman-might have found a Bonaparte. Along with the author's recent "Culture as History", a genUy polemical inquiry into the character of the Filipinos' national culture, these essays constitute perhaps the most coherent picture of the revolutionary heritage most Filipinos claim for themselves today.

A 9UESTION OF HEROES ESSAYS IN CRITICISM ON TEN

KEY FIGURES OF PHILIPPINE

HISTORY~......

(~BY

NICK JOAQUIN l'

A YALA MUSEUM LIBRARY

AYALA MUSEUM MAKATI. METRO MANILA 1977

q /5/ All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission from the publisher except for brief passages which may be quoted by a reviewer in a magazine or newspaper. Copyright Cl 1977 and published by

FILIPINAS FOUNDATION, INC. MSE Bldg., Ayala Avenue, Makati Metro Manila t

Member, PAPI, Published under

PCPM Certificate of Registration No. SP 855路A

First Printing: November, 1977

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The essays in this book originally appeared in the Philippines Free Press during the 1960s. The photographs were reproduced Crom the collections of the Ayala Museum, Burgos House,

Ayala Museum in Vigan, the National Library, the National Historical Institute and the Sevilla-Francia Family.

Book design by

HILARIO S. FRANCIA

Printed by OBI Printing Services San Juan, Metro Manila Republic of the Philippines

CONTENTS

JOSE BURGOS How "Filipino" Was Burgos?

!IARCHO 1\

PILAR

Whence Came The Propaganda?

GRACIANO LOPEZ-HENA What Signified The Expatriates?

JOSE RIZAL Anatomy Of The Anti-Hero 51 Why Was The Rizal Hero A Creole?

ANDRI:S BONIFACIO The Eve Of St. Bartholcinew Why Fell The Supremo?

75 85

EMILIO AGUINALDO Our Second Greatest Anti-Hero 103 Where Did Aguinaldo Fail? 120

APOLINARIO IIABINI Mabini The Mystery 133 How Sublime The Paralytic ? 145

ANTONIO LUNA Would Luna Have Been A Strong Man?

155

GREGORIO DEL PILAR Was The Hero Of Tirad A Hatchetman?

181

ARTEMIO RICARTE When Stopped The Revolution?

203

•

How "Filipino" Was Burgos?

The martyr as hero by acci路 dent is a recurring irony in our history. It's the irony of Pater in Marius the Epicurean, where the hero, II pagan Roman, mistaken in II raid on the Christians for one of them, is killed along with them and presumably gets honored as II Christian martyr which, through the baptism by blood, he may indeed be, however tentative his maybe to the Faith. The Rizal accused of involvement in the Revolution is either guilty, in which case he is II true marty r who died for what he believed in ; or he is innocent, in which case he is an accidental hero. The latter is his ironical case. He died for what he did not believe in; for what, in tact, he had so totally rejected that, when arrested , he was on his way to aid the Spanish army

against the revolution in Cuba. In like manner, the Burgos executed for involvement in the Cavile Mutiny of 1872 is, if innocent, a hero by accident, even if we argue that the charges against him were merely an excuse to liquidate him for his ideas. Except Cor that irrelevant mutiny, it's possible that Burgos, whatever his ideas, would not now be a name to us - in the same way that Rizal, but Cor his fortuitous killing, might today be, not our national hero, but rather the man of his generation we execrate the most, because, when history called, he ran away to side with anti-history. The accidental quality of heroism. is even more marked in Burgos's companion martyrs. Mariano Gomez was appa路 rently the most prominent figure of the three. A Creole like Bur-

gos and of the Manila gentility. he could also pride himself on his samurai blood; and the epithets used for him - "all of a piece" and "born to battle" and "virile" - indicate a man of action in this man of the cloth. He had been militant not only in the fight of the native clergy against the friars but also in agrarian reform and, in 1822, he had launched the campaign to win amnesty for aggrieved Cavite peasants turned fugitive and dissident in the hills. But after the fiasco of the Novales revolt and the return to power of the reo actionaries, Gomez, "like other illustrious Filipinos, retired from public life, disheartened to discern the status quo that seemed to be the design of the future." Gomez's actual period were the liberal days at the beginning or the 19th century. By 1872

JOSE BURGOS

he had long been out of the arena (he was, after all, already 85) and the irony is that what had lost nerve was to be made to pay belatedly for the audacities of youth. Gomez won martyr-

dom, not when he was practi· cally courting it by bucking the Establishment, but when, disillusioned, he had given up the fight and resigned himself to the status quo. The irony is total in the case of Jacinto Zamora. Though of the movement pressed by the young Gomez and continued by Burgos, Zamora does not seem to have been a militant. The little known of him does establish gambling as his great passion; and the frivolous letter that doomed him spoke o~ "bullets" and "gunpowder" when it jok. ingly meant gambling funds. Of all OUf heroes, Zamora is the most accidental ; he may be said to have died for a joke. Where Burgos was angry young man and Gomez defeated age, Zamora was salt of the earth, the holy joe who's a regular guy, still frisky at 35, with a liking for fiesta and tertulia, for cockpit and the male uproar of a card table. The lover of chance died by chance. Even the wanant for his arrest was a joker; it was made out for a Jose Zamora, said to be an ener· getic foe of authority; but who got picked up and then sent to the garrote was poor innocent fun·loving Padre Jacinto Zamora. The baptism by blood, how· ever accidental or mistaken, that won for him the title of hero and martyr was, more importantly. the sacrament that gave a people a name. Filipino, before 1872, had meant the Creole - that is, the Spanish mestizo. The popular emotion stirre<i up by the death of "the three Filipino priests" already carried a sense of nation: of the Philippines as a community

FATHERS MARIANO GOMEZ, JACINTO ZAMORA AND JOSE BURGOS

of the native· born, irrespective of race. After 1872, both Rizal and Burgos are Filipinos, though one is a Chinese mestizo and the other a Creole. But how "Filipino" was Bur· gos? The son of an army lieutenant, at a time when the commands were monopolized by the Spa. nish of blood, he was born in Vigan, on February 9, 1837, and had for godfather at baptism no less than the provincial governor

of lIocos Sur, Don Jose Maria Calderon. The age of the lawyer had dawned in the Philippines and the young Jose was intended for the law; but at Letran, to his parents' indignation, the boy opted [or the cloth. What's signi· ficant is tha! he chose none of the friar orden; (which would have been Ol'Cn ~o him as a Creole) but the secular priest· hood. Burgos, whether con· sciously or not, was following a modem trend in the Church.

HOW "FILIPINO" WAS BURGOS?

The modernity that arrived in the Philippines with the Basco administration (1778.87) showed in the official sphere with the tobacco monopoly. our first real internal revenue; in culture with the appearance of a Creole literatUrc impudent with French ideas; in society with a climber class angling for patents of nobility; in the military with the regearing of troops once meant for conquest into a national army; in commerce with the open ing of free ports and the local establishment of foreign businC5S rirms; and i'l the Church with the conversion. of the old friar missions into a ~stem of secular parishes - which 1{Ieans that, for churchmen, the way of adva ncement no longer ran \hrough the friar orders, already 1n decline, but through the expanding secular priesthood. Some ,of the country's fattest beneficeS - the Antipolo shrine, for insta~ce were already in the hands Of the seculars; and the system of tran t-

ing such plums to the topnotcher in competitive exams for the position explains why ambitious talent, like a Burgos, shou ld find the Church as worthy a challenge, career-wise, as the law. However, when Burgos was ordained, in the mid路1860s, the secu lar priesthood was find ing its growth blocked by a new zeal in the old declining cullure. Spengler has noted such cramping juxtapositions of an old culture refusing to die and a new cui路 ture struggling to be born_ Thus lay the dead weight of the classical culture on nascent Christianity; and thus squatted Byzantium on the first green shoots of Islam. In the Philippines, but for a quirk of history. medievalism would have faded away with the friar orders as a native secular priesthood grew in strength. And the fact that such talented Creoles as a Pedro Pelaez and a Burgos should be joining the secular clergy shows that it had grown not only in strength

EL REAL COLEGIO De LETR AN IN THe OLD DAYS

but in prestige. When the secularization movement began, in the 1780s, with the expulsion of the Jesuits, the sneers at the quality of the native priesthood may have been justified because of the scandalous haste to ordain natives to fill up the vacated parishes. But by the 19th century such sneers were purely malice and prejudice, since the native clergy had to prove ability in the competitive exams for the parishes. In the previous century, it could be claimed that there were "hardly six Spaniards or Spanish mestizos in the diocesan clergy of the islands"; but by the 19th century the pictu re had changed. A Padre Gomez is sending funds to Madrid for propaganda in defense of the Philippine clergy_ A Padre Pelaez has taken over the Cathedral of Manila and is invoking the Council of Trent against the friar parish squatters. And a Padre Burgos co-heads a reform committee and is organ i-

AN OLO路TIME LETRANISTA

JOSE BURGOS

zing student power against the university. (Even wh ile still in Letran, the you ng Burgos was said to have started a student riot, in which blood was shed, when the school authorities tried to impose their own candidate after the students had elected another as class president.) What all th is means is that, in the Church, as elsewhere in Philippine society, a native leader class had emerged, spearheaded by the Creoles. Up to then, the Creoles had stuck to army and bureaucracy, forming a kind of warlord or samurai class. But with the advent o( modern times, they branched out into pursuits once disdained by the hidalgo: into farming, ranching, business and the priesthood. The falhers of Pelaez and Burgos were respectively a govetnment official and an army officer; the sons, as modernizing churc~men, already refuse a colonial func tion. They, as "Filipinos, V as Hijos del Pais, or "Sons of the Country," and not the Spanish friars (already here placed in the position of foreigners), would have a right to the Church in the Philippines were it no longer regarded as just another colonial post. As the friars were quick to see, the idea of separatism, of the Philipp ines as a nation, is already implicit in this argument that what's Philippine should belong to Filip inos. And the Creoles' idea of Filipino as limited to their class cou ld not but burst its limits when the nationalist fight was carried into the Church, since the presence there of a large Indio clergy practically forced the Creole militants, when they spoke of the righ ts oC the native clergy, to mean both Indio and Creole. Burgos thus began as a "Fili路 pino" in its narrowest sense: the

Creole class. When he became a priest, his campaign against the friars wide ned the meaning oC Filip ino to include all the nativeborn clergy, but it still meant a privileged minority : the Creole plus the cleric class. However, once granted that Filipino cou ld mean the Indio too, Curthe r escalation of the term's meaning became inevitable, especially since Burgos's campaign was taking him into the field of politics, where he had to ally himself with mixed groups. Who would have followed him if he were identified solely with the interests of his class, or if this fight of his were merely a "civil war" between two kinds of Spaniards? The student group he led, for instance, included such nonCreoles as Felipe Buencamino and Rizal's brother Paciano. That they became his passiollate disciples shows that Burgos - and, by inference, the Creole class had, in this st.ruggle, risen above selfish class interests and were, by this same struggle, tra nsformed from "Filipino" in the

class sense into Filipinos in the patriot meaning of the word. If Burgos at the start only wanted to win a fe w rights for his class, what he won in the end was something greater: a namt: for a people, now his people. What we must bear in m ind is that the meaning of Filip ino did no t appear in a fl ash, whether in 1872 or in 1896, but had been evolving long before either year. If the story be true that Burgos once stripped an Indio priest of benefices for being insolent to a Spanish friar, then this would prove that Burgos himself had to undergo development as a Filipino, had to outgrow class loyalties and race prejudices before he could become the champ ion no longer of a class but of a people . Whether or not he became that in the end, there was a belief that he had - and it doomed him. The testimonies at his trial have one refrain: Burgos instigated the mutiny because he wanted to become a "Rey indio' or a "President of the Republic." Perjuries, cer-

UNIVERSIT Y SQUARE: PL A ZA OE STO. TOMAS

HOW "FILIPINO" WAS BURGOS?

tainly; but they wouldn't have been thought of unless thought credible. And the superstition would place Burgos in t he line of Creole pretenders to power, midway between Novales, who wanted to become Emperor of the Philippines, and Antonio Luna, who might have captured the Revolution in the style of a Bonaparte. Creole insurgency, astir since the last decades of the 18th century, were the local birth pangs of the modem era and. were it not frostrated, might have meant the birth of a nation. But the very factors that seemed to favor its success - a liberal climate bred by Enlightenment ideas; a period of prosperity in the islands; the impact of a Europe brought suddenly near by the Suez Canal; and the rise of a e1ass that thought itsel\ capable of and jUstified in 'flesting leadership from the oli:t friar orders - were to thwart t~is cultural revolution. The Enlillhtenment that brought on the F~ench Revolution was also to bring

on the revolts that lost America to Spain. Spanish greed was thus shifted (0 the Philippines, a greed further attracted by the gleam of prosperity in the islands, its coming now eased by the Suez Canal. This new breed of Peninsular, opportunist rather than heroic, was what coUided with the rising Philippine middle class; and unfortunately this was a class div ided, between the liberal ideas it professed then and coneem over its property and privileges. In the Novales revolt, for instance, the Creoles were protecting their position as the country's officer caste. It's in the fight to secularize the parishes that Creole insurgency comes closest to becom ing a nationalist movement, a national revolution; and it's also here that the old and new cultures are seen clearest in connict. Said Father Pelaez in midcentury: "The Philippines today is on the road of prosperity. Approaching for it at last is its time to begin tasting of the fascinating

THE CATHEORAL OF MAN ILA IN LATE 19th CEN TURV

table of modern civilization. The boy who turns adolescent shows in the sight of all his vigor and grace and gives proof of the different useful skills he has acquired. His parents gloat over him and others envy him so great a happines5 and such well-founded expectations." Now set beside this what the head of the Philippine Jesuits, Father Pedro Beltran, said he spoke in warning to Burgos: " I reiterated to him that these questions (over friar路held parishes) were purely canonical and ecclesiastical and had their own proper judges and courts. To hurl the m into the pu blic arena, and especially by way of newspapers of marked antireligious tendencies, was to debase them and to give them a deliberate political accent and color. Desist, I said to him, because you may otherwise be pushed into worse ways; and even supposing you have enough strength to retreat, you may not be able to prevent a doubly criminal hand from writing your name on a banner brandished by the deluded and the seditious. If you do not desist, I beg you not to knock again on our door." SinL~ the Jesuits were supposed to be the most advanced of the orders in the Philippines, the fact that they, too, like the friars, saw the movement embodied by Burgos as debased, anti.religious, political, deluded and seditious, reveals the extreme of reaction in the culture from which Burgos was fighting to free the Philippine Church. The Jesuits, too, had become "friars," and friars not in the heroic sense of the 17th century but in the unhappy 19th-century guise of anachronisms which, barred from America and abolished in Spain, sought to re-. establish in the Philippines a

JOSE BURGOS

cloistered world made safe by censorship from the Corets abolishi ng them everywhere else. It was the modern world knocking when a Philippine Jesuit bade Burgos "not to knock again on our door ,"

Like the Creoles, the Jesuits were rent between the enlighten. ment they would profess and the interests they would protect and their interests had become identified with those of the friar orders. A national church that is, a church controlled by a native clergy - had been developing in the Philippines since the time of An~, or almost a century before the time of Burgos. (The royal decree, in 1774, ordering the secularization of the Philippine Church 'antedated by a full century the martyrdom or Burgos.) If secularization started out as a fl op, it- later made enough headway to put the Philippine heartland - the Tagalog and Pampango pro}'in. ces, or, more specifically, the See of Man ila - under the control of the native clergy. But th is modern trend was blocked by a reaction to historical events. The loss of America and the suppress· ion of monasteries in Spain in· te nsified the influx of friars into the Philippines; and these friars were of the new opportunist b~d of Peninsular, terrified moreover and enraged by the reo volutions that were ousting them. Before the opening of the Suez Canal, the hardships of the long voyage to the Philippines had served as filter: volunteers for service in the Philippines, whether soldier or missionary, came here in a spirit of sacrifice. They were consciously empire. builders and subconsciously seekers of martyrdom. The Phil· ippines was th us guaranteed a high quality of peninsular immi·

grant. But the Suez Canal brought us the fortune hunters, exemplified by the gigolos who came here to marry native heiresses, like the Spanish hus· band of Dona Victorina de De Espadana and the Spanish suitor of Maria Clara. It was such gigo· los and gigolettes that elevated the top Creole families of the Philippines to their present status as peninsular clans, or Espano· les, though what glitter their names now have is nothing com· pared to the radiance they had as part of the Creole insurgency that generated the Revolutio n. Our history, like Father Mariano Gomez, is all of a piece and the Katipunan has roo ts in the salas of a Rocha, a Zobel, a Regidor, a Pardo de Tavera - as may be proved by the Katipunan invoca· tion: Gom·Bur·Za. In the religious sphere, the gigolos were the latter.day friars who tried to turn back the clock by returning the See of Manila to mission territory, so they could live off it like a gigolo husband off his native·heiress wife. Cast out from everywhere else, even from their own country, they can hardly be blamed for looking on the Phil· ippines as a living, or for fiercel y defending tha t living. Only such "stomach" friars were available in that age when talent no longer automatically went to the reli· gious orders. Even the premier friar order in our history, the Augustin ians, could now only send us its second· best; what real talent the Spanish Augustinians could recruit went to Spain's Colegio del Escorial , which was placed under Augustinian care early in the 19th century. For the fr iar rabble flocking into the Philippines, positions had to be found - and openings were created by dispossessing the native clergy of the parishes

they occupied. It was a backward step for the Philippine Church and the situation was aggravated by the return to the Philippines, in 1859, of the Jesuits, who reo claimed the Mindanao parishes they had held before their expul. sion. Though the native clergy still held only a fract ion of the total number of the country's parishes, they were at least al· read y in possession of the pre· mier archdiocese, the See of Ma· nila - but it was the richest pa· rishes of this See that, in 1861 , a royal decree allocated to the Re· collets, to compensate them for the Mindanao parishes they had given back to the Jesuits. This also explains why the Jesuits were to make common cause with the friar orders in this squabble over parish-grabbing. T he fight was bitterest over the Antipolo shrine and the rich Bulacan parish of San Rafael. Both had long been in the hands of the native clergy. When the Antipolo curacy be· came vacant, Father Pelaez, act· ing head of the See, appointed another Filipino to the shrine. The appointment was protested by the Recollets, who claimed that Antipolo was theirs by vir· tue of the 1861 edict. They won their protest and the native clergy lost "the pearl of the Philippine curacies." The San Rafael parish became vacant in 1868 and was submitted to competition. But the exams, for which 17 Filipino priests had qualified, were called off when the Recollets again claimed that the parish had been adjudicated to them. This time it was the native clergy that protested. When they lost the case, still another major parish slipped ou t of their hands. In a continuing pattern they lost the parishes they held in Zambales, Bataan and Pampanga, until the om inous

HOW "FILIPINO" WAS BURGOS?

murmur rose among them that they might get more justice from the Americans or the English, if these should seize the Philippines, than from the Spaniards. Such was the state of the Philippine clergy when Burgos became the exam iner of parish priests for the See of Manila and adva nced the sarcastic suggestion that the hiars should at least learn Tagalog first before usurping Tagalog parishes from the native clergy. Here, it's no longer a Creole speaking, nor was it just a Creole who took up from where Pelaez and Gomez had len ocr -->, the Cight Cor the rights of Filipift{' priests. This campaign of BUrgos was evidently noisy enough to be heard in Madrid. When General,Carlos Ma路 ria de la Torre arrived in the Phil路 ippines to become its most liberal governor, he is said to have hailed Burgos, on the~ filst meeting, as "the great FiliP,ino." And the banquet that followed ~unded with the cry of Viva Filipinll$ para los Filipinos! In his speech, Burgos demanded not

only justice for native priests but the cooperation of all for the good of "the Mother Country" and he was obviously not refer路 ring to Spain. This was on July 12, 1869, which ushered in a period of reform that, alas, did not quite last three years. When the liberals collapsed in Spain, reaction returned to power and De la Torre was recalled. The fate of Burgos, for being "the great Filipino," was sealed.

Plot And Passion

T he mystery which, as Rizal noted, shrouds the trial of Burgos and his co-accused , leaves the crime with which they were charged itself a m~tery. And not only their "crime" but also the historical event that was allegedly the body of the crime.

MA,lACA,jQA,NG IN THE TIME OF OE LA TORRE

Was there a mutiny in the Cavile fort of San Felipe on the night of January 20, 1872? AI; uprisings go, this Cavile Mutiny - if it was a mutiny could not be more minor: a riot instantly suppressed, no more than an overnight disturbance. Yet its repercussions and the effect it had on our history are so great as to place it on the same level of importance with the uprising of '96. Both the Propaganda and the Revolution held '72 in great honor; and when friars (ell prisoners to the Revolution in Cavite, the memory of '72 was still so vivid, 25 years after the event, that what Aguinaldo's men most wanted to learn from the captive friars was What Really Happened In Fort San Felipe. The importance of '72 can be seen just in its errect on one person: Rizal, though he was only ten years old at the time. But because his brother, Paciano Mercado, was a disciple of Burgos, '72 meant for Rizal the childhood trauma of a change of name - from Mercado to Rizal - and the wound was obviously still festering when, years laler, he defiantly dedicaled his second novel to the martyred priests. Which prompts a question. If he was so obsessed with '72 - and there are numerous references to the event in both his novels - why was it his second, not his first, novel that he dedicated to its memory? Was it because associating the first with '72 might call attention to the fact that the Noli Me Tangere is a reading of the BUrgos case? For the Noli can be read as a detective story, in which Rizal offers an explanation for the mystery of '72. The hero or the Noli is a young Creole who antagonizes the friars with his liberal ideas.

JOSE BURGOS

'6 The friars destroy him by paying a group to stage an uprising that uses his name as rallying cry. Was the Cavile Mutiny a friarstaged plot intended, through the use of Burgos's name, to destroy him'? And was this stratagem thought workable because there

had

been

previous manifest·

ations, insurgent in character, which Burgos was suspected of having masterminded - and probably did? A manifesto sent to Spain protesting the downgrading of the Philippine clergy bore the name of Antonio Regidor; but the friars smelled the n.and of Burgos in it and loudly said so.

Likewise,

the

~ropaganda

waged in Madrid newspapers in reply to the friars' vilification campaign against the native clergy was obviously another machination of Burgos.

The increasing restiveness of the students at Santo Tomas could also be laid at his door. As the university was where Pehiez may have turned the young Burgos into his militant disciple, so there, too, was where Burgos in turn found disciples for a militancy already transcending the clerical dispute and becoming dangerously nationalist. A stu· dents' movement in November, 1870, was denounced as a motin, or riot, though all the students did was form a committee to demand the reorganization of the curricula and of the university itself. As though that were not shocking enough, this students' committee also identified itself with the cause of assimilation that is, autonomy for the Philippines as, no longer a colony, but a Spanish province. In the committee, which was headed by Felipe Buencamino, were Pacia· no Mercado and such names as Sanciangco, Mapa, Soriano, Tj-

sOn and Alejandrino. The demonstration of the students led to the arrest of Buencamino and the persecution of provincial families unlucky enough to have sons enrolled in the university. The link with Burgos was ob· vious. Burgos was one of the organizers of the Committee of Reformers, which campaigned for more liberal laws and was composed of two sections: laymen and clerics. In the lay group, headed by Joaquin Pardo de Ta· vera, such figures as the Regidor brothers, Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista (who was to write the Kawit Act of Independence), Jose Roxas, Manuel Genato, Jose Basa, Maximo Paterno, Angel Garchitorena and Mamerto Nati· vidad represented not only all phases of Philippine li~e, from agriculture, business and industry to scholarship and the professions, but also the growing solidarity among the native-born, whether Creole, Chinese mestizo or Indio. The cleric section headed by Burgos included Gomez and Zamora and spoke of "restoring" the rights of the native clergy and the liberties of Filipinos in general. This reform committee, "wish· ing to extend its doctrines to all the social classes, penetrated the University of Santo Tomas" (in the words of Manuel Artigas) with the result that a student· power group, the Juventud Esco· lar Liberal (or Liberal Student Youth), was formed there, the group that manned the cam· pus "riot" of 1870. In this, the students were fol· lowing the example of their elders. Demonstrations had be· come the thing, both during the liberal administration of Carlos Maria de la Torre and the reo actionary period that followed under Izquierdo. On the arrival

of De la Torre in the Philippines, Burgos and Pardo de Tavera had led a manifestation at the Plaza de Santa Potenciana, on July 12, 1869 - the manifest· ation in which the cry raised was Villa Filipinos para los Fili· pinos! Among the demonstrators were Jose Icaza of the Real Audiencia, Jacobo Zobel of the Ayuntamiento, Andres Nieto of the landed gentry, and such

ANTONIO REGIOOR

businessmen as Ignacio Rocha, Manuel Genato and Maximo Paterno. Another demonstration by the liberals, to commemorate the triumph of the revolution in Spain, had for stage no less than the Palace of Malacaiiang; and what most shocked the friaT$ and conservatives, already so enraged that De la Torre should surround himself with fi/ibuste· ros, was the sash worn by a colonel's wife, a sash that bore the inscription Long Live The SOl.le· reign People!

HOW "FILIPINO" WAS BURGOS?

But what really stunned the reactionaries was the demonstration that occurred when the remains of Anda, which had rested for a century in the Cathedral of Manila, were transferred to the chapel of the Franciscan tertiaries, because the Cathedral had collapsed in the great earthquake of 1863, burying Father Pelaez in its ruins. Anda was a hero to Filipinos because he was an enemy of the friars and had established what was practically an independent Philippine government during the British invasion; when he died, abandoned and execrated by the Spaniards, he had only natives, "who loved him,'''to keep watch round his deathbed and to close his eyes. On the day of th transfer of his remains, a multitude, as if by secret agreement, assembled along the route Of the procession, dressed in mou,\"in g, and showered the bier with perfumes, flowers and wreaths. During the ceremonies in the church of San Agustin (which was serving as provisional cathedral) a young Filipino priest emerged hom his group and, to general astonishment, approached the catafalque and laid on the bier a laurel wreath on the ribbon of which were the words: The Secular Clergy of the Philippines to Don Simon de Anda y Salazar. He was followed to the catafalque by a young Filipino student who likewise offered a crown of flowers to the mortal remains of Don Simon. And after him came a crowd of gobemadorcillos, or town mayors, to pay homage to the bier. Since none of these salutations was on the program, they must have been part of a secretly prepared demonstration; and there was a search for its organizer. Nobody would blab,

but rumor pointed to Burgos as the mastermind of this strange drama in which the native clergy, the native youth and the native orficialdom acted as one. From accounts of the incident, one gathers that it was provoked by two things: one, the ban on the entry of Spanish newspapers (where the native clergy was conducting a spirited defense of its worth and its rights) and, two, the written pledge of adherence and loyalty to Spain exacted from Burgos by the Archbishop of Manila, Gregorio Martinez, with whom Burgos was at odds. One argument he had with Archbishop Martinez shows the trend of Burgos's thought. The archbishop had accused him of maintaining that the host for the Eucharist could as validly be made of rice flour as of wheat. "Your Grace will pardon me," replied Burgos, "but what I say is true. Thus we were taurht in school and thus say the textbooks." Irritated, the archbishop deplored the speed with which a little learning went to the heads of Filipino priests. "I had never thought," retorted BUrgos, "that learning was a crime." And when the archbi路 shop offered him a glass of sherry, he declined with a sar路 casm: "We Filipino priests would be contented with a sip of justice and tranquility." The differences between the two arose from the reluctance of Burgos, as examiner of parish priests, to permit the assignment to parishes of friars newly arrived from Spain and his insistence on the prior right of the native secular clergy to such assignments. One reply of his to the archbishop on these two points gives

us the feel of the tart side of his tongue: "With regard to my having intervened in such a way as to make (the newly arrived friars) feel that they were being deterred from occupying the posts assigned to them by your lordship, I can affirm with an abso路 lutely clear conscience that such an allegation is completely false. I merely made the observation that, since (the friars) were not familiar with the dialects of the parishes where they are supposed to officiate, which is in fact the case, it was, in my opinion, not merely advisable but proper that they should begin as coadjutors in said parishes and that until they had acquired some knowledge of those dialects, they should allow the Filipino priests now stationed there to continue as pastors. They could assume their appointed posts as soon as they are in a position to make themselves understood by the people, who are, unfortunately, rude and even illiterate; and this delay would at the same time give the Filipino clerics the opportunity to make proper arrangements in the parishes to which they are being tranSferred, a courtesy to which their length of service in the Church would seem to entitle them. "With reference to my recommendation of Fathers Allera and Camuning to the vacant parishes of Nagcarlang and Orion, I must with due respect remind your illustrious lordship that these fathers not only possess the qualifications required by Holy Mother Church for these vacancies, but that they have, in the opinion of the members of the archdiocesan board of examiners, successfully passed the examinations for the doctorate in moral theology. "The fathers (obviously friars)

JOSE BURGOS

whom your illustrious lordship has been pleased to send to the said parishes of Nagcarlang and Orion are, in my opinion, not qualified for them. These are parishes in which large numbers of the people are quite ignorant; and the fact that the said Cathers possess estates in the territory may lead to disturbances of various kinds for which I would regret giving any direct occasion. A further and not less important

consideration

that

these

fathers have not, in the examination given them, performed in such a way as. to deserve, in my opinion, a passing grade. "I must make clear, Your Reverence, that I have always held that, since we are all equal in God's sight, the Filipinos deserve better treatment in thE: Church, though always in conformity with their merits. Any injustice done to them touches me to the quick, although I harbor no prejudices one way or the other. The course I have always followed is to giVe merit its due, without much caring where this course may lead me." Quite a hoot at His Grace! However, Archbishop Martinez (he would later refuse to unfrock Burgos, Gomez and Zamora, and would order the tolling of churchbells during thei r execution) was a fair man. He did see the side of the Philippine clergy; in fact, he espoused it in a letter he sent to Madrid in 1870, when he warned the Court that the continuing decrease in positions available to Filipino priests might drive them to insurgency: "A veritable scandal for this country, this deprivation of the secular clergy. Is there no fear of exasperating them? Have they not suffered enough? Who can swear that their old loyalty to Spain will not turn into violent

hatred? Some have long been able to believe that there was only racial and professional rivalry between the sons of the country and thi! friars, but now they should beware the suppression of the secular clergy. Who has not noticed the consequent change in their ideas and temper when they refer to those who despoil them? Many native priests have said that they wou ld welcome the Americans or the Germans as their liberators, if these should seize the Philippines in a war with Spain. Very great, therefore, is the danger, because these pastors have more influence with the faithful than the Peninsulars. Besides, the accusations hurled against their conduct have never been proven." Having defended the Filipinos, however, the archbishop decided that the Filipinos, especially in the person of the controversial Father Burgos, should justify his defense of them by pledging unequivocal loyalty to Spain, since the archbishop, too, was under attack by the reactionaries, who claimed that, by taking the side of the native clergy, he was encouraging treachery and sedition. Burgos was, therefore, summoned to the archbishop's palace and asked to sign a pledge of adherence and loyalty to Spain. The Filipino priest hesitated; then he not only signed the pledge but took it upon himself to gather 300 other signatures to the pledge. When the document was later used against him, it was read, not as a pledge of loyalty, but as a proof of conspiracy, the manifesto of revolutionaries; and the 300 signatories would Cind themselves hounded as traitors and subversives. For Burgos himself, the pledge he gave availed him nothing, if

he gave it in the hope that he could thus pursue reform with no further questioning of his mo路 t ives and his politics. His enemies continued to see his every move as that of a fjJjbustero. And Archbishop Martinez could not feel as free to defend a Filipino thus suspected once the counterrevolution had triumphed in Spain and De la Torre was recalled. His successor, General Rafael Izquierdo, vowed to rule with cross in one hand and sword in the other; and he made good his word, with the help of the reactionaries smarting from what they had suffered during the brief period of liberal ascendancy. Burgos was, of course, a prime target of their fury; the man had to be toppled from his key position a$ synodal exammer. Luciano de la Rosa, who "compiled" the Burgos apocrypha La Loba Negra, offers a version of this beginning of Burgos's fall: "The result of all this was the removal of Father Burgos as synodal examiner. 'You must vacate the position,' said the archbishop, 'and right now I order your indictment." To which Father Burgos replied: 'Since your grace anticipates the facts, right now I offer my resignation.' Burgos went home very tranquil, very serene. To a parishioner who met him at the door and wished to kiss his ring, Father Burgos said: 'Don't do that until justice has been done me. From now on I am just your friend, not the presbyter Father Burgos.' " The Call of BUrgos and the Ca'lite Mutiny climax a vital development in our history : the change in peninsular attitude toward the Philippine Creole. Before the 19th century the Creole had been taken for grant-

HOW "FILIPINO" WAS BURGOS?

ed as the natural defender of Spanish power in the Philippines. But when Creole you th tu rned insurgent at the beginning of the century and allied iWlr with the liberal cause, the Peninsulars ceased to make any distinction between Creole and Indio; both were potentially subversive, and the Creole doubly so, because he could provide the educated leadership necessary for a successful revolt (The traveler Jagor noted that an 1823 uprising led by two Creoles almost ended disastrously for Spain and that the Cavite Mutiny of '72, "under Creole direction," was evidently fe lt to be more serious than all previous uprisings.) Distrust of the Creol~ led to their replacement by Peninsulars in key positions of the tate. The notorious example wa5, the arriyal in 1822 of a new g~vernor颅 general with "something u1,lheard of before": a numerous cadre of officers and sergeants to take

over the commands immemorially held by Creoles. (This proyoked the Novales revolt.) Distrust of the Creoles was one reason the secularization trend was reversed with the assignment of friars to replace the native clergy in the parishes because the native clergy was under Creole influence. And distrust of the Creoles forced the repeal of privileges possessed by the military as a Creole establishment - like the exemption from tribute and forced labor enjoyed by marines detailed to the navy yard of Cavite. The sudden N!peal, under Izquierdo, of this particular privilege was the immediate cause of the Cavite Mutiny. On the night of January 20, 1872, a group of mari nes in Cavite led by a Sergeant Lamadrid, mistaking the fireworks of the "Sampaloc fiesta" for the signal of a general uprising, seized the Fort of San Felipe, slew the

FORT SAN FELIPE IN CAV ITE

ofricers that resisted, and held the fort for a night. But daybreak brough t dismay to the mutineers when the troops in Cavite refused to join the rebellion and when from Manila came, not the expected allies, but four shiploads of infantry under General Felipe Cinoves y Espinar. These troops put the fort under siege, mowed down a parley group the mutineers sent out under a flag of truce, and then stormed into the fort, putting the mutineers to the sword. Among the first to fall was Sergeant Lamadrid. One mystery was the presence of a Spanish friar inside the fort. As soon as news of the up路 rising reached Manila, a reign of terror began; and on the night of January 21 Burgos was arrest路 ed, along with Father Gomez (who was then curate of Bacoor), Joaquin Pardo de Tavera, Anto路 nio Regidor, Enrique Paraiso, Pio and Jose Basa, Maximo Paterno, Crisanto Reyes, Ramon Maurente, and the parish priest of Sta. Cruz church. In the next few days, more laymen and priests were to be taken to Fort Santiago. In the Noli, Rizal reCN!ates the panic of those days, when even the markets closed, native soldiers were disanned and replaced by Spanish troops, and French, English, American and Italian war vessels gathered in Manila Bay, like vultures awaiting the final spasm. For this the government was to blame, with its hysterical claim that the mutiny was part of an extensiye well-plotted conspiracy. To this day the question reo mains: was the Cavite happening indeed more a "well-plotted conspiracy" than a mutiny? And if so, who plotted it? Sergeant Lamadrid was killed before he could explain why he mistook the fiesta firewolics for the sig-

.lOSE BURGOS

nal of a revolution or why he expected the arrival of allies from Manila. Another man who might have cleared up the mystery was Francisco Saldua, the mutineer who turned Judas and de· nounced Burgos as the master· mind of the plot. But it seems that during the trial Saldua was not even made available to the defense. And he was silenced forever when, on February 17, 1872, he climbed the scaffold along with the three priests he had doomed. Yet the eagerness with which he scanned the distance, as though expecting the arrival of a reprieve, could mean that he believ d all this to be just a comedy too and that he would, at the last moment, be excluded from the exocutions. But he perished along "th his victims, carrying his seere with him. What really happened in C vite in 1872?

Passion And Death

' I : e trial of Burgos may have been kept such a mystery be· cause it revealed so much in the very effort not to reveal any· thing. This contradiction colors with melodrama what we know of the proceedings (principally from Artigas, though how he got hold of transcripts of the testi· monies is itself a mystery). We learn, for instance, that the be· trayer turned state witness, Francisco Saldua, was a great· grandson of Charlotte Corday, who assassinated Marat. Was Sal· dua himself a kind of hired assas-

sin? It was said that he bore a striking resem blance to Burgos and had been seen, wearing the cape of a synodal examiner, in Cavite on those occasions when the mutiny was supposedly being plotted. Saldua testified at the trial that, as a member of the conspi. racy, he had three times deli· vered messages to Father Jacin· to Zamora, who had then hur· ried to Burgos's lodgings. Saldua declared that he had been told by Sergeant Lamadrid and one of the Basa brothers that "the government oC Father Burgos" would bring in the fleet of the United States to assist a revolu· tion which Ramon Maurente, who would become its field mar· shal, was financing with 50,000 pesos. The conspirators, accord· ing to Saldua, met at the home of a certain Lorenzana. Other mutineers caugHt alive may have been simply repeating at the trial what they were told before they mutinied. One cor· poral said he was told that, should the uprising succeed, the president of the republic would be the parish priest oC St. Peter, whose name he did not know. (Burgos was parish priest of the Cathedral oC Manila, which, as parish , was known as St. Peter's. His co-curate at the Cathedral was Zamora.) Another cor· poral testified that he had heard from his fellows that the president would be "the native curate of S1. Peter." The mailman of the marines related how, in Manila, he had met with a sergeant and two corporals Crom Cavite, who had told him that many sergeants, both of the marines and of the army, had joined the plot, in which was also involved Father Burgos and the curate of Bacoor (Gomez) and that the aim of the revolt was to proclaim a republic with Burgos

as president. One witness claimed to have received two anonymous letters announcing the outbreak of an insurrection in Cayite and Manila, and the presidency of Burgos. A member of the troops that quelled the mutiny reported that, upon questioning, a captured marine revealed that the aim of the insurrection was to kill all Spaniards and "set up an Indio king, and this would be Father Burgos." This chorus of the military was swelled by a chorus from laymen. A certain Enrique Genato testified that, at secret meetings of Father Burgos with Marcelo H. del Pilar, Regidor, Rafael Labra, Antonio Rojas and others, they spoke of "clerics, wars, insurrections and rebellions. I I One woman, Marina Chua Kimpo, claimed she had heard the conspirators speak of a general massacre of Spaniards and the naming of Lamadrid as governor or captain-general; that they swore their oaths in Latin, their hands upon daggers, and wrote them down in red ink. A Fray Norvel declared that a faction of Tagalogs led by Creoles was inciting the people to rise up against the government of Spain; that they distributed subversive pamphlets and he had seen Burgos passing the pam· phlets; and that all this had been revealed to him by Saldua. But Burgos's landlady testiried that he was a peaceful man, devout to the Virgin, and with no liking for gossip. Others might talk of guns and cannons and cry Puera oficiales, canal/Wi, enuidiosos, ma/uados! or Viua Filipinos libre, independiente! But Father Burgos would advise them to seek reforms without a spilling or blood or the recourse to yiolence. Burgos's counsel, Captain Fon·

HOW "FILIPINO" WAS BURGOS?

tiviel, moved to dismiss the case for lack of evidence. The petition was sent to the governor·general, who rejected it and ordered the court-martial continued. Defense then moved that Saldua be called to the stand. The court claimed that Saldua was too ill to appear ; evidently he was in the hands of the Recollet5. But if he thought that, with his "expose," he had earned a sinecure, he was to be grimly surprised. When sentence was pro· nounced after a most summary trial (defense was given only 24 hours to file its brief) poor Saldua was among those found guilty of conspiring against the state, to procl~ a republic, and one of the four condemned to the garrote, the o..thers being Burgos, Gomez and Zamora_ After pronouncement of sen· tence, the court bade t~e arch· bishop of Manila to proceed with the "canonical degradation" or the three priests, but Archbishop Martinez retorted that not enough evidence of their guilt ha~ been offered at their trial to justify their unfrocking_ Just how much the archbishop knew is another mystery. Lu· ciano de la Rosa contends that it was the archbishop who tried to convince Governor-General h:quierdo that the three priests were guilty, offering as evidence the subversive pamphlets passed around before the mutiny, but it turned out that the governorgeneral knew that those pamphlets had been printed in an orphanage run by the archdiocese of Manila and manned by friars. Was the "mutiny," then, a conspiracy - a plot not by BUrgos but against him? That Saldua, though he turned state witness, was nevertheless execut· ed leads to the suspicion that he had to be silenced. And there

was talk that, after the voiding of the exemption from tribute enjoyed by the marines in Cavi· te, a friar moved among them urging them not to pay the tribute but to defy the government. The mutiny occuned on the eve of the day when the tribute was to be collected, over the protests of two top marine officials, who, curiously enough, bore the names of McCrohon and Butler. Artigas offers the testimonies of two friars captured in Cavite by Aguinaldo's troops in 1897. One of them, Fr_ Agapito Echegoyen, a Recollet, said he anived in the Philippines four months after the mutiny and learned from a fellow friar what really happened. The heads of the friar orders had held a conference on how to get rid of Burgos and other leaders of ~e native clergy and had decided to implicate them 'in a seditious plot_ To this end, a Franciscan friar disguised as a secular priest was sent, with a lot of money, to Cavite, where he pretended to be Father Burgos. He fo mented a mutiny, then negotiated with Saldua to denounce Burgos as the instigator of the uprising. Afterwards, the heads of the friar orders used a large bribe "una {ue,te suma de dinero"to convince the governor.general that Burgos should be arrested, tried and condemned. The other friar captive, Antonio Piernavieja, an Augustinian, also spoke of a conference of the Augustinian, Recollet, Dominican and Franciscan provincials on a petition of the secular clergy for the return to them of parishes taken over by the friars. Since BUrgos was suspected of masterminding the petition, the heads of the friar orders plotted to destroy him by making him appear anti-Spanish_ A

certain Fray Claudio del Arceo, disguised as Father Burgos, went to Cavite to spread the idea of an uprising. When the mutiny had been suppressed, the Criars exerted pressure on the governorgeneral through his secretary and a lady with great influence on him , moreover topping the pressure with a gift in metal consisting of 40,000 pesos. ''There are persons in Manila who speak of meetings held in Malacaiiang and a box of gold doubloons carried there." But Archbishop Martinez, upon hearing of the plot, was so enraged he wrote the governor-general that never would he, as archbishop, countenance, and rather did he protest, the vile and infamous defamation of the accused priests. Was Rizal, then, right? Was the plot he invented for the Noli the same plot invented to destroy Burgos? The irony is that it destroyed Burgos only physically. He might not have become a rallying cry for revolution, as he became for the Katipun an, or a national hero, as he is for us today, but for his execution. Heroism does not guarantee one's recognition as hero. The labors of a Pelaez were likewise dangerous and heroic, but Pelaez is not even a name to us. Similarly, the accident of not having been executed on a scaffold or killed on a battlefield explains why so heroic a figure as Ricarte is not a national hero, and why even Aguinaldo, from the 1900s to the 19505, was regarded as more villain than patriot. Because the death of Burgos the Creole was not only his birth as hero but the full emergence of the idea of the Filipino, his enemies defeated themselves in their very hour of triumph_ Ir there is a date in our history we can designate as

JOSE BURGOS

the beginning of a nationalist consciousness, it was the morning of February 17, 1872, when the people - country folk and city folk, peon and ilustrado, Creole and Indio - spontaneously assembled en masse at the Luneta to turn what should have been a warning into an event, into a triumphal celeb路 ration so ominous the Spaniards fled in terror behind the walls of Intramuros. It was already a nation that hailed the three priests as "our parents" and the people that chose those words must have known what they proclaimed. On the way to the scaffold, Saldua smiled with confidence, the aged Gomez was erect with dignity, Burgos wep\ "like a child," and the unstable, Zamora moved in the separate peace he had made, having lost his \..mind. When arrested, Zamora had. protested that when he went to Cavite it was to play cards; that on January 13 he was at the house of the gobernadorcillo of Sampaloc; on January 20, at the convent of Quiapo with friends; and on January 21, at the cockpit. When his house was searched, nothing incriminating was found except a note: "Big gathering. Come without fail. The comrades will come well prouided with bullets and gunpowder." Alas, the jesting reference to gambling funds as bullets and gunpowder (in the idiom of card players) had brought Zamora to the scaffold. No wonder he went mad. His only crime was that, as a curate of the Cathedral, he was Burgos's colleague. When his turn came at the garrote, Zamora climbed up without a word, sat down and, not knowing what was happening, did not know when he was killed. Gomez had preceded him,

and Gomez, who, before all this, had already known the fullness of disillusion, needed no chaplain to bid him be resigned. Gomez had long resigned himself to everything that could happen in life and it's this resignation that makes his last words so poignant: "I know very well that no leaf on a tree may stir save at the will of the Creator; since he asks that 1 die in this place, his holy will be done." But Burgos was angry young man to the last, crying out against injustice. "I am innocent!" he protested. "So was Jesus Christ," he was told; and only then did he cease his resistance. When the executioner knelt before him to beg for forgiveness, he said: "My son, I forgive you. Do your duty." At that moment the great multitude at the Luneta fell ~o their knees and in chorus intoned the litany for the dying, which takes longer than the minute a garrote needs to break a man's neck.

Death And Transfiguration

1 : e tragedy of Burgos is the modern one of rising expectations. His predecessors in clerical militancy, Gomez and Pelaez, could remember a time the early 1800s - when a takeover by the native clergy seemed inevitable, being in the spirit of an era that had brought the liberal revolution even to Spain. Pelaez all but reached the throne of the See of Manila. But the way of advancement that had been widening, Burgos was to

see blocked. The frustration was so violent because of the impetus of his ambition and the speed of his advance. It was a headlong career from the start. He was still to be ordained when he competed for a parish and won it, though he could not take possession because he was still not a priest! When he did be路 coml<! a priest, his first parish was , right off, the Cathedral of Manila. He was at 30 a doctor of theology, a doctor of canon law; and he became a power figure as the synodal examiner of the primate See of the country. Talent so vigorously ambi路 tious is heading for the top; and even if Burgos never craved the episcopal throne, the mere thought that it was not available to him would be intolerable, especially in the light of the argument that, were the Philippine Church not colonial, Filipinos would head it. But it was almost always a friar that occu路 pied the throne of the See of Manila. Should we, therefore, read between the lines of Burgos's campaign? Was it more than town conventos that he would make exclusive to the native clergy? If the friars were not to squat on parishes, would that not mean that they should also vacate the room at the top? In seeking to exclude them from the See of Manila, was Burgos aiming to secularize not on ly the See but the Seat as well? This need not mean that he wanted the archbishop's throne fOJ himself but only that his kind of ambition could not bear the thought that any limits or barriers had been fixed for it. But his fate was already numbered in the year of his birth, 1837, which was when the liberal struggle in Spain ended in defeat with the promulgation of a constitution that withdrew, from

HOW "FILIPINO" WAS BURGOS?

TIiE DEATH OF BURGOS AS REPRESENTEO 0"1 TIiE 80"llfACIO MO"lUMENT

",OSE BURGOS

both the Spaniards and their colonies, the democratic rights won duri ng the liberal period. For the Philippines, 1837 meant the end of Philipp ine representation in the Spanish Corles and the pretension to provincial autonomy which that implied. If the rep resentatives the colony sent to the Cortes in the early 1800s were not yet Filipinos in our sense of the word, they were already so in a sense that Spanish reactionaries quickly spotted as da ngerous. This alarm would result, during the years of Burgos's growth, in the effort to stifle the era of rising expectations; and the d windling of opportun ities open to "the sons of the country," 'whether in army, State or Chul'1(h, would provoke the insu rgency of Burgos's generation, for whom 1837 was a battle cry, in the 'ilamor for the "restoration" o( the rights and liberties lost in that year. More importantly, the struggle and the reprisals it brought on would generate the idea of the Filipino, through the violent fusion of societies that had hither· to thought themselves distinct from one another. A disciple of Burgos, Gregorio Sanciangco, defined the de· velopment as early as 1881: "In the revolt of Novales, himself a Creole, sergeants, corporals and troops from the Sangley, native and Creole classes participated together, as well as civilians from the same three classes. In the revolt of Cuesta, also of the Creole class, people from the other classes joined together in his cause, which involved even pure-blooded Peninsular$ established in Nueva Ecija. Likewise, in the students' riot (of 1870) the three classes are indiscriminately mixed, the aile· ged J.Ilastermind being a mestizo.

In the Cavite insurrection, both the true authors - sergeants, corporals and troops - and their confederates were indistin· guishably composed of Creoles, mestizos and natives. And in the prosecutions of 1874, not only members of the three class· es of Filipinos were indicted but also Peninsulars. What wonder, then, that F ilipinos should unite and fuse, despite the class conditions that distinguish them, since after all they are all sons of the Philippines, born in the same land, under one sun and clime, and nourished by the same air?" And a similar observation is mad e by the Frenchman, Edmund Plauchut, who wrote an account of the Cavite Mutiny and its after· math of wholesale deportations: "These mass convictions by court·martial of Creoles. mestizos and natives were a very great mis· take. Up to then, the different Philippine races had lived in dis· trust of one another; but in their common fate they learned the solidarity of their interests. Future generations will be able to say that the old differences must completely disappear so that they can be one in accord and someday ably fight the common enemy - that is, the colonial mast.cr. " Plauchut was wrong; the Penin· su lars had made no mistake - for the post-mutiny executions and deportations crippled the nation at the very momen~ when it had become dangerously united, by removing from the scene the very people (Burgos, the Basas, the Regidors) who might have pro· vided protestant leadership, and by so thoroughly terrorizing those allowed to stay that, when the rebels of '96 came along, the Philippine middle class, a burnt child, recoiled in terror from the new fire. It's said that, but for '72, Rizal might have been a con·

formist. The reverse is true. He was such a compromiser precisely because his class had learned its lesson in the post-mutiny tenor. But for the fiasco of '72, Rizal might have been a bolder revolu · tionary than he was. To call Burgos "the Precursor of Rizal" is, therefore, questionable, principally because it seems to place Burgos outside or before the mainstream of our history when, actually, he is a central figure to it, standing between the Creole insurgency that generated nationalist consciousness and the Revolution that was the result of that consciousness. If Burgos is linked to the first through the figures of Gomez and Pelaez, he is linked to the second through such disciples of his as Paciano Rizal, Ambrosio Rianzares and Marcelo H. del Pilar. The Katipu, nan explicitly recognized the con· tinuity by enshrining Gom·Bur· Za and turning the Creoles' prime fighting words, "Hijos del Pais," into its own militant Anak ng Ba· y~.

It would be more correct to call Rizal "the Successor of Bur· gos." Rizal continued Burgos in his effort to seek reforms within the law, in his dislike of violent upheaval, in his concern to lib· erate the masses through educa· tion , and in his private endeavor to ennoble the term Filipino by proving in himself what the Fili· pino was capable of. The two men are kin even in their Cate: both died implicated in the kind of violence they deplored. If Rizal went back to the prehispanic ages to make his European ideas Philippine, Burgos also used the Philippine earth to flavor his propaganda; and one aspect of his that should engage the Philippine Church of today is, tantalizingly, as the priest who championed the Eucharist of Rice.

Whence Came The Propaganda?

Word, as in Scriptures, was in the beginning. But when was the beginning? Whence sprang the Word that created the Nation? Was the Propaganda or the '80s and '90s the beginning? Was it the Word? This is the usual view. And Del Pilar, LOpez.Jaena and Rizal are accepted as the creators of the nationalist movement, as the "first Filipinos." But were they starting or continuing a movement? Were they not, ra路 ther, crowning a tradition? Was the Propaganda limited to the final two decades of the last century, or did it antedate the first issue of La Solidaridad, the first edition of Noli Me Tangere, the first pamphlets of Del Pilar? This is not to confuse the Propaganda with the series of native revolts that extend right back to the days of the Conquista. What our history enshrines as the Pro-

paganda is a definite sophisticated movement, conducted with pen and word, seeking reform, preaching enlightenment, spreading nationalist ideas. But this movement is older and larger than the Propaganda we know, for this movement goes back farther than 1880, when Del Pilar began his propagandist activities. We show we are aware of this by accepting Burgos as a "pre路 cursor" of the propagandists and revolutionaries. Did the Propa. ganda then begin around the 1870s? Does the Word spring up with Burgos? But even as we ponder the question, behind Burgos rises the mysterious figure of Father Pelaez, already, before 1872, a propagandist, and in the 1880 sense of the term. Burgos was his disciple. Therefore Burgos, too, is already in mid-stream. The Propaganda goes back still

farther, to Father Pelaez, and beyond. And as we push back, the bumbling detectives of history, we begin to comprehend the course of the movement - a movement that has had its ups and downs, its fl oods and pauses, its recoils and deviations, but which yet remains, th rou ghout its career, instantly identifiable, all its branches traceable to a more or less definite source. Whence came the Propaganda? Tentatively, one would trace it back to the last decade of the 18th century, to the group of Creole writers who first imported to the islands the ideas of the Enlightenment and the French Re路 volution: Manuel Zumalde, Luis Rodriguez Varela, Jose Javier de Torres and (but he comes later) Pedro Pelaez. Like the writers of the succeeding fin-de路siecle, these pioneer propagandists were anti-

MARCELO H. DEL PILAR

28 friar and anti-Peninsular but advocated, as did their successors, not separation from Spain but assimilation, not revolt but reform. And the reforms they de-

manded are familiar: secularization of the parishes; no friars; hispanization of the country; better schools; more participation in the government; representation in the Cortes. The ideas of the later Propaganda are already here in embryo and would need merely development and intensification. In Luis Rodriguez Varela, especially - the "Conde Filipino" - there is so much linkage to the later propagandists that he it is who can most truly be called the precursor of Philippine national路 ism. If this initial phase of the Propaganda has a climax it's the publication in 1809 of Rodriguez Varela's Proclama historial- the first book, noted Spaniari:l.s, in which a Philippine Creole stYled himself a Filipino. Philippine Creoles were referred to in Spain and America as Filipinos, but they themselves called each other Spaniards and were thus designated in official documents. Rodriguez Varela was the first to call himself a Filipino - and in print yet! - and the first to use that term in a nationalistic spirit. The movement he and his colleagues launched seems to have been effective enough to put the friars on the defensive. By the beginning of the 19th century the friars were already publishing gratuitous apologias to justify their presence in the Philippines; and in their replies to Rodriguez Varela appear the first really vicious reflections on the character of the Indio. But what explains the emerg路 ence of a propaganda movement at the end of the 18th century? The most obvious reason is the French Revolution. Since the

Philippines then belonged to the European world it was inevitable that the ideas of the Encyclopedia would sooner or later reach the islands and that the colony would be shaken by the cata路 clysm in Europe. Rodriguez Varela and Andres Bonifacio, though a century apart, were moved by the same tide. There was, however, a more immediate local reason: an economic boom in the islands. The common belief is that Philippine insurgency was are-

PEDRO PELAEZ

action to misery. The economic facts indicate the reverse. An insurgent intellectual movement appeared precisely during an era of peace, progress and prosperity; and those three P's generated a fourth: the Propaganda. For the last decades of the 18th century saw the start of a boom period in the country greater than that during the early days of the Galleon trade (when the friar chroniclers were describing Manila as "the Tyre and Sidon of the Orient"). From the last part of the 18th century through most of the 19th, the Philippines was an Af-

fluent SOciety: we were even exporting rice. Indeed, if the insurgency was a reaction to misery, then the Revolution should have exploded in, say, Samar or Leyte, the most miser路 able areas in the country then as now. But, no, the Revolution exploded precisely in the country's most affluent region: the Tagalog and Pampango provinces. It's easy to see why. People become less and less wiUing to swallow slights as they become more and more wealthy and cultured. A Rizal born in a mansion and educated in Europe is not going to kowtow to some ignorant small-town curate. The Negro revolution explod. ed in the United States not when the Negro was the very bottom of society but only now that he is on the rise. And conversely, the racism of his masters became intensest when the supposedly inferior Negro began going to college, becoming a professional, moving to stylish suburbs, and proving he could do anything the white man does. The same thing happened in the Philippines. As the economic boom poured wealth into Indio hands, the Indio turned into a senor, an ilustrado, an equal of the Spaniard; and the shabbier Spaniards there[ore had to insist on the inferiority of the Indio at a time when the Indio was proving himself equal or even superior to the Spaniard. Commerce and culture are supposed to be antipathetic; actually the latter is child to the former (the quality of the art of an Athens or a Venice is in proportion to the quantity of its trade) and the Propaganda in the Philippines, which was a cultural movement, owed its vitality to an age of commercial expansion. This golden age that crowns the Spanish effort spans a cen-

WHENCE CAME THE PROPAGANDA?

RIZAL, DEL PILAR AND MARIANO PONCE

tury: from 1785, when the Real Compania de Filipinas started setting economic forces in mo· tion, to the 1880s, when the cui· tural fiowering of those forces became evident in a Del Pilar, a Rizal, a Juan Luna, a Mabini. The chief value of the Real Com· pania was as stimulant to new in· dustries - for example, silk, cot· ton, spices, indigo, and the man· ufacture of textiles and dyes. By the first half of the 19th cen· tury the various regions were en· joying simultaneous booms in their respective crops: tobacco

and indigo in the IJocos, rice in the Central Plain, sugar in Pam· panga, copra in Laguna, coffee in Batangas, copra and abaca in Bi· colandia, sugar in the Visayas. The rapid swell of the boom may be seen in the indigo trade. This industry started (rom scratch in the mid·1780s, fostered by an Augustinian friar and a Manila merchant. By 1786 it was shipping 140 quintals of indigo (a quintal is 100 kilos) to Spain; only two years later the shipments had doubled. Sugar was being exported at

the rate of 30,000 piculs in the 1780s; shipments rose to 146,661 piculs in the 1840s, had quad. rupled by mid·century. Hemp ex· ports swelled from 83,790 piculs in 1840 to 412,502 piculs in 1858. In 1859 Iloilo shipped 9,344 piculs of sugar abroad and 77,488 piculs to Manila. A de· cade later Iloilo sugar was being shipped at the rate of 170,000 piculs abroad and 80,000 picuis to Manila. In 1857 the Pangasi. nan port of Sual sent 225 ship. loads of rice to Manila and exported 12 shiploads of rice to mainland Asia. Three years later Sua! was exporting 60 shiploads of rice to the mainland and send· ing 172 shiploads to Manila staggering figures to our day of rice shortages! The local economy had changed radically - from entre· pot, when we were merely ship· ping, on the Galleons, other countries' products, to producer and exporter of our own goods. And there was already an aware· ness that the agricultural boom should not result in a colonial economy. The culture of silk and cotton, for instance, was fostered to insure raw materials for the newly established textile factories, so we would be export· ing not raw but finished products. Within the first three decades of the 19th century the value of Philippine exports jumped from P500,OOO to P2,674,220, and the country's populatio n doubled. No wonder the alarmed friarsalarmed because they saw their day ending - execrated the new rich of this golden age, both Creo· Ie and IndiO, as "besfias corgtuias de oro" - animals loaded with gold. For wealth bred insolence, the insolence of grandeur. From these times date those grand houses we now fight to preserve, and those magnificent churches

which graphed a town's progress by the continuous elevation of their facades. The new rich of Batangas were said to wash their hands in golden basins and to shod their feet in golden slippers studded with diamonds. In Manila, the women of the arrabal of 8ta. Cruz took to wearing a fortune in jewels whenever they marched in the October proccession of their patroness. And now came dons from Spain to marry heiresses in the Philippines. RizaI catches the social picture in his novels: Dona Victorina mar· ried to a Peninsular; Maria Clara courted by ano~er. And a 5imoun corrupting society with fabulous gems. The Philippines had, after all, turned into the fabled Indies the conquistador sought. Whence came the Propaganda? From gilded soil. Haciendas rose and spread as the Creole, no longer dependent on the Galleons, turned to\ the land, to produce for export; and with economic independence came the craving for political power. There were heroic forerunners to invoke: Espeleta, who occupied the two highest positions in the country and defied the Peninsulars to unseat him; and Anda, who held the country against the British, with no help from Spain, and founded a virtually independent govern· ment. As the economic boom drew more and more fortunehunters from Spain the Philip· pine Creole bristled with resent· ment. The Propaganda was about to erupt. And toward the end of the 18th century the first insurgent voices were heard. Manuel Zumalde penned La Bascoana, a blistering attack on GovernorGeneral Basco. Jose Javier de Torres, a secular priest, issued a "Collection of 50 Satires." And in 1790 commenced the writing

MARCEW H. DEL PILAR

career of Luis Rodriguez Varela, who proudly styled himself not only a Filipino but a Conde Filipino!

From The Conde ...

H e was born in Manila on February 13, 1768, and was sent to study in France, where he fell under the influence of the Encyclopedists. On his return to the Philippines he was appointed regidor perpetuo (permanent councilman) and al{erez real of the Ayuntamiento de Manila. Despite his French ideas he does not seem to have been a radical as a young man. On the accession to the Spanish throne of Carlos IV, Rodriguez Varela organized the state celebration in Manila, during which he recited his verses. They were ridiculed by Spaniards as inept. Two years later, in 1792, the young Creole could spit back at the PeninsulaIS; he had been made a knight of the Order of Carlos m, the only Philippine Creole to be admitted to that order, which demands patents of nobility. In 1795 the climber almost reached a room at the top: the court gazette of Madrid announced that he was being made a count. Though the royal urder for this was never issued, Rodri· guez Varela from then on always used the title of Conde Filipino. At the two extremes of the Propaganda movement stands a snob - Rodriguez Varela at the beginning, and Pedro Paterno (who also aspired to becoming a count or duke or scmething) at the other end. But behind the snobbery is a common desire to exalt the race and to put the

Filipino on equal (ooting with the Spaniard. The propaganda activities of Rodriguez Varela begin all of a sudden in 1799, when he published a series of three books: Ano Dorado, Siglo flustrado, and Fin de la centuria - all dealing with the libertarian ideas of the Enlightenment and all ana· thema to the friars. He was on the side of the French Revolu· tion until its capture by Bonaparte, against whom he wrote Procfama historial (1809), which called on "Filipinos" to unite and prepare for a possible clash with the forces of the Emperor. The book was passed by the state censor with the notation that it was a "testimony oC the author's patriotic zeal." In 1810 he was commissioned by the City of Manila to compose the instructions to Ventura de los Reyes, who was to represent the Philippines in the Spanish Cortes. These Instructions are Rodriguez Varela's most serious work, for they embody the plan of reforms then advocated by the propagandists. In the Instructions, he asked for the opening of free schools for the poor (to be lun not by the friars but by the Esculapian Brothers) and the establishment of colleges of pharmacy, mathematics and navigation. He asked for more Spanish immigration, but on a selective basis, and (in a secret codicil) advised that Chinese immigrants be limited to agriculturists. Most significant of all, he asked that marliages between Spanish males and native girls be encouraged, by providing the couples with state aid. He may have thought this the quickest way to hispanize the islands and increase the power of the Creole class. At the time of the Instructions he seems to have been governor of some province and to

WHENCE CAME THE PROPAGANDA?

THE ZOBEL BOTICA I N 19TH CENTURV INTRAMUROS

be already engaged in poVtical activities not favorable to the government. In 1813 he published Glorias de Espaiia y Filipinos and Pamaso Filipino, the latter a collection of his verses. In the prologue to this collection he defended the new liberal constitution of Spain and proclaimed his profusely nationalistic political ideas. This drew an attack from the friars on the abilities of the Indio, who had been granted equal rights by the new constitu· tion. Rodriguez Varela replied with Discurso Apologetico, in defense of the Filipino. A short while later, he - and several of his fellow propagandists - were removed from government office. However, he persisted in his activities, helping to set up, in 1820, the Sociedad Economica de Amigos del Pais, which did its bit in swelling the economic boom. But the forces of reaction returned to power and in

1823 Rodriguez Varela and a group of insurgent Creoles were deported to Spain as subversives. The effect of this on Rodriguez Varela presaged the sad fate of the Creole revolution. In Spain he renounced his radical ideas, indited a most reactionary poem to a duke, and urged the Absolute King to send more friars to the Philippines. This gained him a pardon and the right to reo turn to his native land, where he died. But his end was not entirely ignominious. Though he had held high office (he had also been comgidor and captain of Tondo) it was found at his death that he was penniless, with no hacienda to leave to his sons. He had managed to stay honest in a time of rampant opportunism. The movement he started was carried on du ring the middle de· cades of the century by the most prominent Creole families of the country: the Palmeros, Zobels,

Pardo de Taveras, Garchitorenas and Regidors; and produced a second key figure in Father Plehiez, the man who might have pushed through the seculariza· tion of the clergy but for an earthquake. Pedro Pelaez was born on June 29, 1812, in La Laguna, of a Spanish father and a native mother. His father was alcalde· mayor, or governor, of Laguna. Orphaned when young, he was granted a scholarship by the University of Santo Tomas, where he distinguished himself as a brilliant theologian. After being ordained priest, he taught philosophy at the Colegio de San Jose; then became a canon of the Manila Cathedral. He was one of the founders of the Sociedad Economica de Amigos Jel Pais, along with Rodriguez Varela, which should indicate the trend of the canon's thought. On the death of the archbi· ship of Manila, Pelaez was elected ecclesiastical vicar and thus held episcopal powers during the first years of the 1860s. He came out openly in favor of secularization and became the idol of the native clergy. To push the cause, Pelaez composed the Documenlos, a brief against the friars' right to occupy parishes. The ex· tent of his fame and of the propaganda movement in the 1860s may be gauged by the fact that Documenlos was published in Madrid, at the expense of the ca· non's admirers. Pelaez argued that, by church law , the friars were occupying Philippine parish. es illegally; and since he had transferred the struggle to legal ground, and had canon law and the decrees of the Council of Trent behind him, he might have won that battle - fighting as he was from a position of power - but for an act of God. On June 3, 1863, during the great Corpus

MARCELO H. DEL PILAR

Christi earthquake, Father Pelaez, the man who could have been the second Filipino archbishop of Manila, perished when his cathedral came tumbling down over his head. One can imagine the friars chuckling that the Creole upstart had invited the wrath of God. He left two bulky manusscripts; his Sermones (which his admirers in Spain published in 1864) and a dissertation on "Canonical and Theological Problems. "

His best legacy is, of course, BUrgos - and the "separatist plot" of 1872 which more or less ended the O,(eole revolution.

It's melancholy ponder the aftermath. The I!-~on of that movement was the administration of Governor.Gen~al Carlos de la Torre (1869.71) when the liberals were in such high gear they seem to have launched their own "religious persecution" of clerical partisans. But after the execution of Burgos, the Creole movement simply collapsed. (ilne reason for this was the wholesale deportation of liberals; but even those who escaped this fate like the Zobels and Palmeros apparently lost their militancy. The Pardo de Taveras and the Regidors have an even sadder end路 ing, in the style set by Rodriguez Varela. The Pardo de Taveras are represented in the 1860s by Joaquin, a fiscal of the Audiencia, councilman of Manila, and a liberal: he organized the welcome for De La Torre. Implicated in the Cavite revolt, he was exiled to the Marianas. This seems to have broken his spirit. When he was pardoned two years later, Joaquin Pardo de Tavera reo nounced politics and retreated to Paris. The next generation of his family was represented by Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, who began by building up native pride with

GOVERNOR-GENERAL CARLOS DE LA TORRE

his studies on Philippine pre-his. tory. But when the Revolution broke out he opted to remain faithful to Spain - though he was faithful only in his fashion. First he joined the Spanish army; then he joined Malolos; then he joined the Americans - until finally he seems to have been on nobody's side at all. As for the Regidors, they showed even less staying power. The family was founded by Cristobal Regidor, who, in 1808,

introduced smallpox vaccination in the Philippines. Two of his descendants, Manuel and Antonio Maria, figure in the propaganda movement. Manuel Regidor. frankly a radical. founded the Correa de Espana (1868-70) to advocate the secularization of the Church in the Philippines. DUling a liberal moment in Spain he was appointed to the Consultative Committee for Reforms in the Philippines, where he proposed "audacious radicalisms."

WHENCE CAME THE PROPAGANDA?

He sought to defend the 1872 exiles to the Marianas, was elected to the Cortes (for a Puerto Rican seat) but saw the Cortes dissolved before he could propose more radical isms. When we next hear of him he's stiU in Spain, lobbying against a Hong Kong bank with a branch in Manila. The other Regidor, Antonio Maria, was a lawyer. a member of the Audiencia, fiscal of an army court, councilman of Manila, and inspector of municipal schools. (This should give an idea of the government positions the Creoles did not want wrested from them by the Peninsulars.) Accused in the Cavite revolt,~tonio Maria Regidor was exiled to Guam, escaped from there on an American whaling ship. Whit{' the Revolution broke oul he was all for it. But when he returnect, to his native land in 1907 he was all for American dominion, and p:ublic opinion turned savagely ~nst him. Broken-hearted, he fle~ to Europe. Even in the literary field the Creole record is depressing. The writing group of the 17905 had seemed to herald the birth of a literature; but the final nower of that movement, a century later, is Manuel Lorenzo D'Ayot, whom Spaniards found "atavistic," because he wrote moromoros, which were never staged. lie, too, left the Philippines in a huff, swearing never to return. The primal drama of the Propaganda may thus be divided into three acts: an initial phase dominated by Rodriguez Varela; a second phase represented by Father Pelaez; and a third culmi路 nation in Burgos, which should have ended in armed revolt, but for the Creole's hamletian qualms. There's an interlude of uneasy quiet, during which Rizal and the other heroes of '96 are growing up. When the Pro pagan-

da we know appears, the scene has shilted from the Philippines to Spain, and the leading role has passed from Creole to Indio. Yet this is not quite accurate. For in Marcelo H. del Pilar the two strains have become one. ... To Pllridel

n Del Pilar there's aconfiuence of the two streams of the Propaganda, as the very name of his newspaper, So/idaridod, attests. There can now be no talk of Creole and Indio, only of Filipinos; and in his own person Del Pilar carries the synthesis. A Spanish b/J./'ba ce"ada decorates a m~ in whose veins runs the blood of the old Tagalog nobility. Born into the gentry, he moves as confidently in the cockpit. He alone of the propagandists possesses both Tagalog and Spanish, (ar surpassing Rizal in his mastery of both tongues. Rizal is still arguing about the Filipino's competence; Del Pilar has already accepted that as fact. It was this easy selfconfidence that made Filipinos in Spain prefer, as leader, the unsell-conscious Del Pilar to the preachy, rather puritanical Rizal. Del Pilar's hegira to Spain in 1888 marks a turning point: the Propaganda has shifted battlefield, from Manila to Madrid; and the shift is an advance. The earlier movement was local. But as the age of arfiuence unroUed the Filipino got the nerve to appeal to higher and higher authority. The local friar lost value as intermediary. Why go to him when one could appeal directly to the provincial of his order in Manila? Or why appeal to the prOvincial

when one could go straight to the archbishop? Or why bother with the clerics at all when one could see the Governor-General? For the new rich wielded enough power to unlock the higher doors. The Peninsulars could not but notice that wealthy hacenderos who came to Manila were received with respect and treated with honor by the heads of the great British and American commercial houses in the city. In 1887, Bmondo govemadorcillos smarting from a social slight marched to the Palace and got the Governor-General to reaffirm their right, at public functions, to be seated in the place of honor. Del Pilar, after spurring the principalia of Bulacan to petition the Governor-General to oust the friars, tops the enormity by sending a similar petition to the Queen路Regent herself! And the career of the Propaganda from 1888 on is a lobbying in Madrid to force action by Court, Cabinet and Cortes. How effective was the lobbying? Del Pilar seems to have turned pessimistic toward the end and to have leaned toward the more radical ideas of the Katipunan. But the peSSimism is explicahle as despair not over the value of the Propaganda but over the means to keep it going. He argued that LaSolidaridod should not be discontinued even if a revolution broke out, since the Philippines would then have all the more need for a voice in Madrid. In other words, he saw revolution not as a rupture with Spain but as a sort of club with which to make Madrid listen and act. But how successful was the Propaganda? Could it have achieved its aims by campaigning - with the Word alone, not

MARCELO H. DEL PILAR

La Solidaridad

THE PROPAGANDA ORGAN

the Sword? Was the Revolution unnecessary? Rizal certainly thought ¥>: he called the Revolution "absurd and inopportune." Mabini and his group certainly thought so: they rejected the Katipunan and set up the Cuerpo de Compromi. sarios, which was committed to raising funds to continue the Propaganda. Would they have done so if they thought the Propaganda futile? But what justified their faith? The fact that the Propaganda had reached the very throne in Madrid is already an indication of its success. It had enlisted the sympathies of prominent Spanish politicians like Morayta, Azcarraga and Rafael Maria de Labra. And it could claim credit for tangible tokens of reform - the

Maura Law, for instance, which reorganized municipal governments in the Philippines and laid down regulations for electionsj the various tariff refonnsj and the introduction of the Civil, Penal, Criminal and Commercial Codes to replace the Laws of the

Indies under which the islands had been ruled for three centuries. Normal schools (the present Assumption Convent began as one) were being opened to train native teachers in Spanish - the reply to the propagandists' de· mand for assimilation, hispani· zation and popular education. (The gradUates of these nonnal schools were to become the first teachers in the Americans' public schools.) All these changes augured an inevitable general reform. Even the most vexing problem of all - secularization and the friars - could have had only one solution, for the temper in Madrid was increasingly anticlerical. Time and the times were on the side of the Propaganda. But if it was succeeding, why did it lack for funds? Its very success could explain this. As reforms began to trickle in, the rich folk in the Philip.

pines may have believed that the battle was already won and lost interest in the campaign. Re· member: the Propaganda was be· ing financed by the wealthy, and by the wealthy during a time of boom, when the usual feeling is: Don't rock the boat! A second reason is dishonesty: funds intended for the Propagan. da were em bezzled, and this further dampened the desire to con· tribute. But the third reason is the golden age itself. The gilded soil whence came the Propaganda suffered a slight blight toward the end of the century. By be· coming a producer and exporter, the Philippines had entered the global economy and become sub· ject to its shocks. Our currency, for instance, was silver; and when the Americans began working the Nevada and Colorado silver mines in the 18705, the va1ue of silver

THE CHURCH IN PlARIDEL. BULACAN

...

. ••• \ •. ~ • !

1111111 ' • "

WHENCE CAME TIlE PROPAGANDA?

MADRID'S PUERTA DEL SOL DURING THE PROPAGANDA ERA

THE RAMBLAS 1111 BARCELONA IN DEl PILAR'S TIME

MARCELO H. DEL PILAR

THE ICING"SPALACE AND THE PLAZA DE ORIENTE IN MADRID IN THE 1880.

dropped, as did the value of our money, resulting in a mild inflation. Moreover, in the l880s. there was a series of great typhoons, earthquakes and plagues. The kadang-kadang appeared, and ruined corree in Batangas, coconuts in the Tagalog region. These calamities did not immediately affect the boom, but the 18905 were not as prosperous as, say. the 1850s. As a result. Philippine capitalists, faced by their first "depression," be-

came less eager to finance patriot-

ic causes, like the Propaganda. Economics explains its rise and economics explains its crisis. And the dip on the economic graph

during the 1890s hastened the Revolution.

Nevertheless the picture of poor Del Pilar dying of hunger in a garret is not a symbolic picture

of the Propaganda in 1896. The Propaganda did not die then. Quezon and the resident com路 missioners were but continuing

the Propaganda Movement. It had merely shifted battlerield again, this time from Madrid to Washington, but it was still lobbying for the Filipino. If the Propaganda goes back beyond 1880 on the one hand, it continues, on the other hand, beyond 1896; and the postwar na路 tionalist movement of the 1950s was its latest phase - with the battle being fought again where the Conde Filipino began it: on native soil.

What Signified The Expatriates?

Iree

decades, the last three of the 19th century, each offering a climactic date in our history, are themselves the climax of our history. The year 1896 alone cannot stand for that climax because it cannot be disconnected from the two preceding decades, the 18705 and the 1880s, which were not less, if indeed not more, important than the 1890s. Together these three decades form one movement, a single moment, integral and indivisible, which could be captioned: The Flowering of the Filipino. The Creole libertarian movement that climaxed with the Cavite Mutiny of '72 is linked by younger brothers or sons (Rizal, the Pardo de Taveras) to the Filipino expatriates in Europe in the '80s, whose propaganda movement had for

climax the appearance of the Noli Me Tangere and the publication of La Solidaridad; and the expatriates are in turn linked by ilustrados turned revolutionaries (like Edilberto Evangelista) to the Revolution of '96. There's a continuity even in the cast, the dramatis personae, of these three decades, the inter· relation of which can be seen in the way the events of '96 involved even those who did not care to be involved, so that the uprisings of Bonifacio and Agui· naldo were to result in the execu· tion, imprisonment or exile, not so much of Katipuneros or insurrectos, as of the erstwhile ex· patriates of the '80s. If they did not bear the brunt of battle, they bore the brunt of martyrdom. Indeed, neither they nor their elder relatives of '72 can be said to be innocent just because they

were not with the Katipunan or the Revolution, since these were the logical, the inevitable outcome of the nationalist move· ments of the '70s and the '80s. The continuity becomes obvious in '98, wherein recur names common to all three decades. For example: a Pardo de Tavera was involved in '72, involved with the expatriates, and in· volved in the Malolos of '98. Rizal showed awareness of this coherence. In a famed passage from the '80s, he looks back to the '70s and forward to the '90s: "Without 1872, there would not now be any Plaridel, or Jae· na, OT Sancianco, nor would the valiant and generous Filipino colonies in Europe exist. Without 1872, Rizal would now be a Jesuit and, instead of writing the Noli Me Tangere, would

GRACIANO LOPEZ-JAENA

have written the contrary. . .. The day on which they lay their hands on us, the day on which they inflict martyrdom on our innocent families for our fault, farewell, pro-friar government - and perhaps, farewell. Spanish government!" The tragedy of '72 indeed precipitated the exodus that was to take the Filipino out to the world, the encounter that geared him to revolution. If the mass deportations that followed '72 on the one hand broke the spirit of the Philippine middle class (especially t"e Creole class, which may from that time be said to have abdicated leadership), on the ot her hand it liberated that spirit bX scattering the exiled militants abroad. Some, like the Taveras, settled in Paris; others, like the Regidors, in Madrid and Lond~m; so that there were already nuclei of expatriates in those cities when the "younger brothers of '72" arrived in Europe in the 18~Os, to take over the guerrilla outposts manned by the older exiles during the years when the post'72 terror was silencing the resistance in the Philippines. The expatriates of the '80s therefore signified three things: the convalescence of the Philippine middle class after the crisis of '72; the rise in it of a new, non-Creole leadership; and the emergence of the Filipino into the modern world. Behind all this was money, the wave of prosperity spilling over from the last decades of the 18th century, when the Philippines was busy exporting rice, indigo, sugar, abaca, copra, coffee, tobacco and textiles. That this boom at first created chierIy Creole fortunes explains Creole stir and insurgency during the first three quarters of the 19th century. That the boom was now

creating private fortunes among the Indio and Chinese-mestizo bourgeoisie became manifest from mid-century on. From this period date the grand houses of Vigan, the fabled elegance of Lipa, the ornate facades of once-austere town churches like those of Morong and Taal, the great haciendas of Pampanga, Bicol and Iloilo. lIongo sugar and Bicol abaca became

PEOROPATERNO

exportable at this time and prompted the appearance in Manila of two mighty American commercial houses: Russell Sturgis & Company and Peel Hubell & Company, which were not merely trade firms but banking establishments offering advances to hacenderos, an indication of how healthy native credit was. Another indication that money had become dynamic - not inert gold but potential enterprise - was the introduction of paper money in 1852. Five years later Manila had a mint for Philippine coinage, to replace the old Mexican pesos. The original name of the Quiapo market, La Quinta (summer

villa), commemorates these days when the native new-rich were filling the north side of the Pasig, then still rustic, with their country houses. By the 18805 this affluence was swelling a two-way traffic across the Suez Canal: the sons of the Spanish middle class were coming to the Philippines in hunt of native heiresses; while the sons of the Philippine middle class were going to Spain to study and, in many cases, to marry there. Even with Spain brought closer by the Suez Canal, there had previously been little traveling to the peninsula by Filipinos, except only the Creoles, and of them only a trickle; but the '80s bring on an exodus, a veritable "brain drain," the quality of which was already announced by the two men who formed its vanguard, Pedro Paterno and Gregorio Sancianco, both of the Sino-Indio new rich that were to take over leadership from the Creole. But where Paterno embodies the orchidaceous spirit of the bourgeois on the rise, Sancianco represents the hard practical common sense from which that spirit sprang. Paterno, a son of '72 (his father was deported to the Marianas after the Cavite Mutiny), was already long resident in Madrid when the '80s began. He had studied law there, would marry a Spanish lady, kept a literary salon and, in 1880, published a slim volume of verse, Sampaguitas. He followed this with a novel, Ninay, and a study of Philippine pre-history. He was a dandy, a snob, a social climber, and something of a charlatan, but he broke ground for his younger paisanos, who, when they started arriving in Madrid in large numbers, found, in Don Pedro's salon, a ready-made entree into Spanish literary,

WHAT SIGNIFIED THE EXPATRlATES?

political and polite society If the Philippine presence in Europe announced by Sampaguilas seemed to smack of the preciosities of the aesthete, Gregorio Sancianco, also in Spain for his law, was to correct the impression with his EI Progreso

It:

,r!

,.,'" (JJ

GIIEGORIOSANCIANCO

. 'J

~ 0::(

-J c:(

c:(

de Filipinas, a hard-headed book published in Madrid in 1881. Here, in the very first manifesto of the new propaganda, the ilustrado already belied the charge of a later age that his class saw insurgency only in terms of privileges for itself (like representation in the Cortes) and not in terms of agrarian and economic reform to overhaul an entire society. Sancianco is without emotional invective; if he objects to such things as the tribute and friar dominance and graft in the government, it's for a very practical reason: they are bad for business, they obstruct progress. He wants roads, bridges, railroads, public works in general,

to promote agriculture and increase production. He wants the Philippine educational system secularized to make it more ef· ficient in uplitting the masses. He wants the burden of taxation shifted from the have·nots to the haves and he bids his own class, the propertied class, to realize that the very modem taxes he proposes (property, industrial and commercial taxes) must be willingly accepted because necessary for progress. Sancianco was the first to explain the "indolence of the Filipino" as the common tao's reo action to centuries of exploitation - "not only by Peninsulares but also by Filipinos." Therefore, it the Philippines was to progress, the lao must be rescued from his exploiters; relieved of his tax load; made capable, through education, of technology ; made capable, through public works and liberal laws, of economic mobility. Gregorio Sancianco is the epiphany that starts the Propaganda. We do wrong to contain that movement in the triumvirate of Rizal, Del Pilar and Lopez Jaena. Sancianco should precede them all because his book enunciated all the themes that they developed, although, unfortunately, without his clinical unemotional approach. Between Paterno the Romantic, with his sentimental nostalgia for the Philippine scene and the Philippine past, and Sancianco the Victorian, with his belief in inevitable progress, the expatriates of the '80s were to oscillate in spirit, though perhaps Don Pedro, however laughed at fo r his pretensions to scholarship, was the headier influence. The coach he drove arou nd in carried a coat of arms: two bolos crossed under a salakot; and he styled himself a Maginoo in

Madrid. This was also laughed at; but it's evident that such stylish flamboyance was more to the taste of the young romantics than the prudery and preachiness of a Rizal, in whom there was much of Sancianco's earnest Victorianism. Prudery and preaching and the importance of being earnest were what the expatriates would escape, even if not consciously. When the young Jose A1ejandrino first arrived in Barcelona he was shocked to indignation by the wild dances he saw at the theater; it's a delicious picture of Philippine innocence abroad. And when Rizal and Del Pilar, both small·town boys, turned up their noses at the great cities of Madrid and Barcelona, the humor is of the American provincial in New York saying he wouldn't live there if the y gave him the place. The humor would change soon enough, if not for Rizal, then for his rowdier countrymen, Quickly turned cosmopolitan by cafe and tertulia, casino and cabaret. If shocked at first by what seemed to be a wantonness in Spanish women, they were presently chanting a different refrain: Las chulas! Las churas! Las churas!" At least one clubhouse of the Filipinos was to fall under police suspicion for the wild dances there and Rizal had to admonish Paterno and the other rich Filipinos resident in Madrid not to allow gambling in their houses. This expatriate period of ours has much in common with a similar movement in American his· tory: the exodus of young Arne· ricans during the 19205 to Paris, where American culture, thitherto puritan and provincial, was to be radically modernized; for the expatriates in Paris were to have profound effects by long distance on the country they left behind, besides producing a semi-

GRACIANO LOPEz.JAENA

A CHUl~Y LUNA

nal hoard of writing. Similarl y,

the Filipino expatriates of the '80s, while embodying a noonticle of Filipino creativity (i.t was the time of the Rizal novrus and the Luna canvases), have a~alue apa rt from what they produced. They are culture heroes in the

sense that they burst open a culture thitherto cloistered and insular. It wasn't really the Suez Canal that opened us up to the world; it was these young expatriates that did the job, abroad, even by merely chasing chulas, or living it up at the cafes, or playing the bohemian in European garrets. In a Maugham novel, the hero , after a sojourn as would 路i)e artist in Paris, is asked by his guardian what he has to show for his bohemian years; and the boy replies that he has learned one or two important things - for example, that shadows are not black but colored. The guardian thinks that the boy is being mocking, but the answer was not frivolous. The boy meant that he had extended and refined his sensibility - therefore, had shaped his own special conscience. Riz,_1 de路 plored the many wastrels among

RIZAL WITH PAISANOS IN EUROPE

his fellow expatriates, Filipinos merely running wild in Spain, and there does seem to have been a lot of waste of talent among them. The romantic disease, consumption , felled many of them young. Yet.. in the long run, nothing can be said to have been wasted, for even the worst wastrel was, in his own way, forging in the smithy of his sou l the uncreated conscience of a race, which seems to be best forged in exile, as the Jewish spirit was by the waters of Babylon. Ours was mostly formed in the Madrid of the 'SOs, the Babylon of a merry Captivity. Both place and time favored the nationalist temper. Barcelona, where the Propaganda was organized, might make a good preparatory school for Filipinos, because of the active Catalan separatist movement, but Madrid was the truer insurgent city. For one thing, here were gathered expatriates from Cuba, a Spanish colony already in the process of revolution, and association with the Cubans would infect the Filipinos with radical ideas. For another thing, Mad路 rid itself had a tradition of street barricades and popular fronts.

Coming from a country where it was a crime to speak ill of Church and monarchy , the Filipinos could not but pop eyes to find themselves among Spaniards who were openly and vehemently anti-court and anticlerical, who deplored their country as the most backward in Europe. This was, for Filipinos then, as valuable a disenchantment as the routing of American arms by the Japanese was for the Filipinos of the 1940s. On the other hand, the government in Madrid, by seeming to be so accessible and responsive to Filipino pressure, aroused the hope that propaganda in the Peninsula could effect reforms in the Philippines. This hope explains the vivacity of the expatriate 'SOs. The decade was the last years of Alfonso XII as king, the first years of his mother as queen regent; and both were directed by an able prime minister, Antonio Canovas del Castillo, who was then trying to establish a two-party parliamentary system. It was therefore a liberal moment for Spain; and in the republican politico Miguel Morayta the Fil路 ipinos found a devoted champion of their Spanish lobby.

WHAT SIGNIFIED THE EXPATRIATES?

Their initial high spirits are recaptured in a memoir by one of them, Dominador Gomez: "It was already a mania, this political propaganda. Plaridel and, together with him, all of us spoke, wrote, pushed, schemed, and sometimes even turned our· selves into diplomats and Teno· rios. We suffered from an incura· ble patriotic madness. We were an avalanche. We formed a de· vastating epidemic of catechists. We implored God in heaven and the Spaniards on earth. The con· genial character of the Spanish people, so pr.one to enthusiasm and recklessness, received with true sympathy tlje effervescence of those young h.usaders want· ing the liberty of tbeir country; and the Spanish, m~ and women, high and low, glorying in being Filipinistas, cheere.,d us on,

ALFONSO X II OF SPAIN

gave us their aid, firmly siding with our lofty ideals of redemp· tion and independence. We were

A GROUP OF FILIPINOS IN SPAIN SIiOW OFF "';'"

indisciplined troops, a most act· ive politico·social anay without a writ of organization, without rules nor regulations, having for sole compass our burning love for the Philippines and for code our thorough social education as purest gentlemen, without fault or flaw." Quite an order! But Gomez can glance from the Madrid head· quarters of the Propaganda "Atocha 43. basilica and cata· comb of so many hapless Filipi. nos" - to jollier addresses, like those of the chulas, the girls from such Madrid "low" barrios as Chamberi and Lavapies. ''The students among us did more or less well in our studies, interrupted a thousand times by the irresistible delights of the sweet, sweet temptations of Mad· rid. No t for nothing are the Mad·

STVLE AND GARBD

GRACIANO LOPEz.JAENA

rileiias called kittens, nice lovely kittens, with an excess of grace and salt - and they scratch!" There's a similar piropo from Lopez Jaena: "Oh, how the chulas painted by Luna are chulas up to there! So what if they drug; so what if they rip and rend. Veritable chulas are they of veritable Lavapies with all their wit, their grace and their strut. For chulas, Luna. So said a great political personage well-versed in art, when speaking of the chufas created by Luna. From his palette sprang those chuias that have to be seen tfl be admired."

The Springtime Or Exodus

B " t th, Fihpioo,

th~h",

paid back the conquistador by effecting their own Philippine conquest of Spain were able to do so because they, too, had garbo, a sense of style that Dominador Gomez recalls with gusto: "We reached every place: high class; middle class, low class now in the {rac of the aristocrat, now in the jacket of the bour· geois, now in the blouse of the worker. The expensive furcoat alternated with the dashing torero's cape; and by this constant social and political mixing we Filipinos made ourselves very popular in Madrid. All doors opened to us; none was closed to us. Never in our long association with the Spanish in Madrid did we see a shade of disdain or a hint of coldness." Rizal, playing it perverse as usual, claimed to despise Madrid and its people, especially the

lower classes, reserving his admiration only for the new-rich middle class. "The most beautiful thing about Madrid," said he, "is the bourgeoisie." It was educated, frank, dignified, hospitable, chivalrous, "a bit aristocratic in its tastes," but staunch ly republican: it mocked curates and priests. The new-rich class might be somewhat ridiculous because it tried to hide "the newness of its escutcheons, forged the day before yesterday," but it was the bridge between the bourgeoisie and the old aristocracy. The hero may unconsciously have been defining the role of his own class in the Philippines. As for the masses of Madrid that produced such dazzling chulas, Rizal's contempt for them was savage: "The true Madrileiio is disappearing from day to day: there is nothing left but the common people, the canaille to be found in the mud and hovels of Madrid. Every time I think of this society I imagine the common people as dung ground." Yet from this "dung ground" sprang patriots: the majos and chulas that rose against Bonaparte and would soon rise again to throw out the Bourbons. His· torically, Rizal was unfortunate in his admirations; the Germans he loved for their science were to use that science in two world wars and the slaughter of a race; the Japanese he loved for their industry were to use that industry in a try to enslave Asia; and the Spanish bourgeoisie he preferred to thj3 canaille of Madrid were to end up marching behind Franco. Happily, not all the expatriates were snobs like Rizal. More catholic of taste, they found the world of the "mud and hovels," of the barrios bajos of Madrid, no less to their liking than the

DOMINAOOR GOMEZ

great world of the salons. Rizal might rant like a common scold at his countrymen's wasting their time on games and society - ''To gamble, there's no need to leave the Philippines!" - but the expatriates couldn't see why a talent for fun should be dishonored, especially when there was talent enough for serious pursuits. Was a newspaper article need· ed? The task could be entrusted to an Eduardo de Lete, a Lopez Jaena, a Salvador Vivencio del Rosario. Or was it a scientific paper that was called for? Either Antonio Luna or Julio Llorente cou ld be depended on. A pro· nouncement on art, an illustration, a critique of a new show? There was Juan Luna, or Melecio Figueroa, or Vicente Francisco to do the job. "And if there was need to assemble the divinest cluster of enchanting girls," winks Dominador Gomez, "the order was given to the prime experts in the feminine line - to a To· mas Arejola, an Antonio de Asis, a Francisco Liongson, a Baldomero Roxas, a Vicente Ilustre, a Kanoy Apacible, a Doro Santos, a Tinoy Rodriguez - who carried out the commission so marvelously that proverbial became the garbo and grace of the supremely beautiful ladies re-

WHAT SIGNIFIED THE EXPATRIATES?

FRANCISCO LIONGSON

JOSE MA. PANGANIBAN

MANUEl ARTIGAS

gularly gathered to enhance the uproarious fiestas o!\ the Philippine colony in Madrid~' The expatriate creedi according to Gomez, was to mix the useful with the sweet, business with pleasure. "In this holy crusade, even our countrywomen, with the courage of their convictions, helped us along, being as fervent as illuminati. ... Not only among us men was carried on this pro· patria labor but also among the beautiful daughters of Eve, who backed with the exultation and fervor of heroines the defense of our Creed." Those with dogmatic ideas about Maria Clara may be startled to learn that, long before the time of pensionada and braindrain nurse, Maria Clara was already exploring the wicked capitals of the world. The expatriates in Madrid counted a Roces girl in their company: a Filipino woman painter, Pelagia Mendoza, was touring Europe in the '80s; and Juan Luna fell in love with Paz Pardo de. Tavera (sister of Felix and Trinidad) on the boulevards of Paris. Their nicknames in Madrid

still reecho the young mirth of the expatriates. Alejandrino was Miki; Bernaoe Bustamante, El Cardenal; Rafael Acuna, ~pu/it; Moises Salvador, EI Exquisito; Brigido Morada, Pusit; Lalro Oimayuga, EI Marques de Marahuit; Telesforo Sucgang, LaboLobo; Isidoro de Santos, El Joven Telemaco; Eduardo de Lete, Kachila; Francisco Liongson, EI Bello Poco; Melchor Veloso, EI Petronio Ma/ayo; Flaviano Cord de Cruz, So Kapipirma Lomang! ArlstOn Bautista Lim possessed the best anting-onting against female resistance; Santiago Carillo was a wizard at tris-siete; Manuel Artigas hunted rare books at flea markets; Eugenio Blanco was the mirror of gentlemen; Za· carias Robles excelled as playboy; and the colony had Manuel de Iriarte for its "ambassador," Julio Llorente for its grave "judge." The expatriate surnames reveal a meeting of tribes, a nation in the making: Malvar, Nieto, So· riano, Panganiban, Ledesma, Roxas, Tuason, Simico, De los San· tos, Panlilio, Ortigas, Singian, Valdez, Rodriguez, Rianzares, Abreu, Abella, Limjap, Poblete,

Corominas, Araullo, Marasigan, Arlegui, Mapa, Camacho, Lukban, Kunanan, Vidal, Yangco, Zobel. If the colony was '98 in prospect, one particular expatriate, Graciano Lopez Jaena, can stand for the colony in general, though he carried its bohemian tendencies so far, far out he ended up an outsider not only to the colony but also to our history. When he died a consumptive in '96, in Barcelona, he could no longer be claimed for the Propaganda. He had washed his hands of it; he had made a separate peace; he had resigned as Fili· pino, and vanished into the luna· tic fringe of Spanish politics. Lopez Jaena was our very first hippie and beatnik - and he died outside the Philippine com · munity.

The Summer Of Exile

"W-en a monument to Lbpez Jaena was unveiled in his na-

GRACIANO LOPEZ...IAENA

tive Iloilo, one of his fo rmer colleagues, Jose AJejandrino, had to bite off a smile to see the Bongo hero represented as a neat, even elegant person attired in "rigurasa elique/a." A1ejandrino felt that nothing could be more improper tha n to represent LOpez Jaena in tract because, alive, L0pez Jaena was "untidiness in person," always dirty, disheveled and slovenly - and his manner of life matched his appearance. Still , it can be said that he was a dandy like Pedro Paterno turned inside out. The two men had much in common. Both were upstarts and climbers moving outside their own society but never quite getting inside the other

society

they

preferred.

One

dreamed of becoming a Spanish grandee; the other, of becoming

a Spanish politico. Both would attract attention by their c1pthes, one as dandy, the other as' slob. And both were somewhat ?f a charlatan. Aleiandrino recalls that Lopez Jaena was always citing Danton, Marat and Robespierre, "who were his heroes, although 1 believe he had never even read the history of the French IU!volution." A born politician, his life was one long speech after another and the speeches were mostly extemporaneous because he cou ldn 't be troubled to prepare or research for them and made up his "facts" as he rattled along. When he did this during a lecture at the Ateneo de Barcelona his embarrassed countrymen tried to make him stop, but in vain. AIterwards he shrugged : "If what I said was not true, none of those present could refute me because .they were as ignorant on the subject as 1 am!" Yet he charmed and moved his aud iences "through something inexplicable," says Alejandrino - and we, too, rereading the few speeches that have survived from the

hundreds, maybe thousands, that he spouted, can only wonder why, repelled by the empty rhetoric and the floridity. Only a politician could be so eloquent on matters he knew nothing about; and Lopez Jaena prefigured the breed that has ruined his country with talk, talk, talk - the talk that nevertheless charms an d moves au d路lences .. as ignorant on the subject. "

What got LOpez Jaena across was his egotism. Such a "natural" wonder was he that anything coming from him must be per se wonderfu1 iso what need to study or take pains? Rizal lamented that Lopez Jaena did not cultivate his great talent. Orated Graciano: "On the shoulders of slaves should not rest a doctor's cape." The Rizal retort was that Lopez Jaena used the "grandilo-

JUAN L U NA ANO PAISANOS IN HIS PAAIS STUOIO

WHAT BIGNIFIED THE EXPATRIATES?

quent phrase to justify your lazi路 ness." But how could Lopez Jaena see it as laziness? The world revolved around him; the world owed him a living. Was he in filthy stinking rags? It was but natural that someone should buy him a new suit, and just as natural that he should pawn the suit and go back to his rags. As editor of LA. So/idoridad, he was supported by contributions from his paisan06 in Madrid as well as in the Philippines, and was thus assured lodging, meals, clothing and pocket money; he accepted these priYiieges of his position but not its te6ponsibilities and had to be entreated to do the work he was paid for. Upon getting up in the mornmg, he would

repair not to the orrice but to a cafe, where he would stay "as long as he had money to spend, or somebody had money to spend on him." There his paisanos would seek him out, offering to pay for his drinks if he would write his articles. Between one cup of wine and the next, sheets of paper would be placed before him, which, says Atejandrino, "he filled up with surprising ease." The "surprising ease" cou Id suggest that, as writer, LOpez Jaena was as much a hack as he was an orator. However embarrassed by his manners (at banquets he wiped his face with his napkin; was once seen eating sardines in pub. lie with his fingers and wiping

" the oil off on his clothes) his pai路 sanes could enjoy him as a "most original and picturesque type," a true bohemian, said Alejandrino, "in the style of Verlaine." What did embarrass was the cowardice he displayed during his brief trip to Manita in 1891; no sooner had he arrived and secured for him路 self a monthly pension from the propaganda committee there than he was scurrying away again in terror, plainly showing no sto路 mach for the daring and defiance that he could so glibly urge on his countrymen from the safety of a cafe table in Spain. And his angry defection from the Propa. ganda when funds for himself were no longer forthcoming indicates that his patriotic labors

~""".GG', "'N',. PAROO DE TAVERA AND RIZAl IN FROLIC

.s were not entirely disinterested. Partly. at least, he had used the movement to freeload and to make a name for himself in Spanish politics, the world where he yearned to become a personage. LOpez Jaena it was who opened the expatriate '80s. He arrived in Spain in 1880, after an erratic career at home. He had studied for the cloth, worked as a nurse, practised as a quack doctor in his hometown of JaIO, then took to writing for a reformist Manila paper and had to flee the Philippines. In Spain, he found a home in Valencia with the family of a former governor of Negros. He

enrolled in medicine at the University of Valencia and showed promise but was too unstable of character, though already in his mid.20s, to stick to his studies. An itch for politics tool(o him to Madrid, where he was presently mingling with republican ~ringe groups. Rizal was keen when he quipped that he couldn't tell whether Lopez Jaena went into politics so he could orate or went into writing so he could become a politico. At any rate, the propagandist activity of the founder of La Solidaridad can be read merely as a preparation for the career as politico that he never achieved. "Before a Filipino and an Indio, I am a Spaniard," said LOpez Jaena early in his career; and though he became more Filipinista for a time, it can be argued that he died according to his original dictum. His last years make a highly unpleasant picture. He had been offered a monthly pension by the Manila Comite de Propaganda on the promise that he would write regularly (or La Solidaridad, but he did so only for four months on his return to Spain in 1891, stopped altogether when the pension stopped coming, and he abandoned the

GRACIANO LOPEz..IAENA

Filipino movement. Then its de· fector became the Propaganda's bitter enemy, and bitterest against poor Marcelo H. del Pilar, who had been left to carry on La Soli· daridad practically by himself. Said LOpez Jaena of Del Pilar: "We must unite to overthrow these patrioteros who exploit patriotism for their own profit." This Crom a man who deserted the Propaganda when it no longer meant money for himself! It must have been a relief to his paisanos when, from bitter hostility, his attitude lapsed into a complete indifference to Philippine affairs. As the '80s ended Lopez Jaena became concerned only with Lopez Jaena. In '89 he had thought of emigrating to America; his countrymen passed the hat around to buy him passage; the Madrid government promised him a free ticket to Cuba; he was all set to go, though Rizal begged him to return to the Phil· ippines instead, even if this meant being killed as a martyr to his ideas. The flight to Cuba didn't go through and Lopez-Jaena returned not to Philippine I-Iut to Spanish politics. A republican party offered to put him up as one of its Barcelona candidates for a seat in the Cortes and he had the cheek to ask his coun· trymen to finance a newspaper that could help advance his cam· paign and the political interests of his party. The Filipinos had the good sense to refuse to be used. The letter where he explains to Rizal why he wanted to run could be Lopez Jaena's Act of Secession: "Certainly, if I want to become a deputy in Spain, it is to satisfy personal ambitions, nothing more. I make no claim to give (thereby) rights and liber· ties to the Philippines. She must win them with her blood, and

our independence also. "If I want to become a deputy, it is with the object of being able to say with pride that a Filipino has been elected by the Kastilas themselves in a Spanish district. ''This is my personal, purely personal, ambition. Therefore I desire that you urge the Filipi. nos there to help me in some way, to see if 1 can succeed in becoming a deputy and can say proudly to my envious enemies that the time I have spent in Spain has not been in vain, that I was not profligate nor dissolute, as they have spread the report, but a man who has won with his own efforts the post which I shall occupy, if I have good fortune, in the Cortes." But the Filipinos he desired to help him satisfy his personal, his purely personal, vanity and vindictiveness, he was at the same time lambasting for being SO timorous, he who could last only four days in the Philippines and shook with terror every time he recalled his escape from there. But once safely back in Spain, how he would berate the people oC his country Cor being "dead with Cear in the presence of the friar"! LOpez Jaena was a small frail man, with a stutter, with a marked hick accent. His candidacy didn't go through either. He continued to write for the papers during the early '90s but what he wrote proclaimed an obsession with Spanish aCCairs, no interest in Philippine matters. He edited, very briefly, another paper in Barcelona, but it was purely a party organ, purely Spanish poli. tical propaganda, and the one item it ever carried on the Phil· ippines heaped abuse on the Pro· paganda, La Solidaridad, Philippine masonry, and all those working for the Philippine cause who "do not know how to sacrifice

WHAT SIGNIFIED THE EXPATRIATES?

MONUMENT TO ALFONSO XII IN EL RETIRO. THE PARK IN MAORID

LA GRAN V IA IN MAORID. A DOWNTOWN OF THEATERS AND CAFES

GRACIANO LOPEZ-.1AENA

THE EXPATRIATES IN SPA IN DURING THE DAVS OF WINE ANO ROSES

themselves for their ideals and to struggle for them." Those he abused could smile at these brave words from a man who had proved himself a coward. Yo u can '/ go home again. That would be the kindest ex· planation for the decay in Lopez Jaena after his one and only at· tempt to return home. After the fearful experience he broke with his country. By the time he died the alienation was so complete we can hardly claim him as Fili· pino, this ragged consumptive making like a Spanish anarchist. The mayor of Madrid took pity on him and put him on the pay· roll as a municipal inspector or something, but, as usual, Lopez Jaena couldn't last on the job. He drifted back to Barcelona, where he had had his proudest moment, founding the periodical

he couldn't last on either, and in Barcelona he died, at 40, in utter misery. By that time the expatriates had become a Jost generation, re nt by the feud between Rizal and Del Pilar, dispersing from a Madrid no longer as sweet as be· fore, or, having made a private peace, going home. The spring. time was over. Disillusion among its backers in the homeland and rumors of graft in the handling of funds had led to the with· drawal of support for the Propa. ganda. The rise of Japan as a military power during the early l890s shifted patriot eyes from Madrid to Tokyo as the more effective site for Philippine protest. Rizal had already sounded the knelt for the Propaganda: "If our countrymen place

their hopes in us here in Europe they are certainly mistaken. The help we can give them is our liues in our country. The error all make in thinking we can help here. far away, is a great mistake indeed. The medicine must be brought near to the sick man. " I believe that La Solidaridad is no longer our battleground; we now have to deal with a new struggle. The struggle is no longer in Madrid. All of it is lost time," That was in 1891; the revolutionary decade had begun. Ap. proaching for the disenchanted expatriates was the wint£!r of homecoming. "All of a sudden," as Domina· dor Gomez recalls, "came an end to the beautiful days of roses and the white nights of the thorny patriotic apostolate." The '80s were over.

Anatomy Of The Anti-Hero

Two views of RizaJ that scan the man behind the monument

Point my picture truly like me, IJnd not flatter me at all, but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, "rid euerything as you see me. -

OLIVER CROMWELL

are clearly beaded for controversy. A startling anatomy of the hero is offered in ''The First Filipino" by Leon Maria Guerrero and in "Rizal From Within" by Ante Rad aic. The Guerrero hook, in English, is a biography in the modern manner, where t he details are massed not for their scholarly but their emotional vaiue, and the delineatio n is by nanative, crafted, progressive and dramatic like a novel, and just as readable, though t he style is hardly Guerrero at his felicitous best. The Radaic piece, in Spanish, is a psychoanalysis of Rizat, with em phasis on his formative years, and has clinical fascination, though rather prolix and turgid in the writing, its special quality evident in its sources, which

range, not from Retana to Blu· mentritt, as one would expect in a Rizal study, but from Rilke and Dostoevsky to Proust and Joyce! Tbe Guenero opus is magnum. It's a massive tome (over 500 pages), has 24 pages of bibliogra· phical references, was unanimous.. Iy awarded the first prize in the biography contest during the Ri· ~al centennial. It was published by the National Heroes Commis· sion, has so far been received by what one editor calls "a conspi. racy of silence," but can be ex· pected to find its way to the top of t he Rizal shelf and into every debate over the hero's personal· ity. The Radaic study is basically an extended essay, and a tenta· tive one; the author subtitled it "An Introduction To A Study Of Rizal's Inferiority Complex." It's

JOSE RIZAL

barely 70 pages long, and is still in manuscript, awaiting translator and publisher. It begins with an exp06ition of Adler's theories, concludes with a letter of Kafka to his father. Radaic, a Yugoslavian exile, finished his study in late 1963, just before his tragic death. For epigraph, Guerrero uses the words of Cromwell quoted above and two lines from Othello: Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate Nor set down aught in Malice. Radaic's epigraph is from Alfred Adler: ''To be human is to feel inferior and to aspire to situations of superiority." Guerrero sees Rizal iiS the first man to use the term Filipino in its present sense, and he stresses the role in the Revolution which "was, in a sense, made in Spain" - of RizaJ's c1ass\ ~he propertied bourgeoisie and ~\the ilustrado though they, and Rtzal especially, might seem to condemn it. Guerrero paints a cruel picture of Rizal sitting comfortably in a ship's cabin, sailing off to EUrope in September, 1896, while Bonifacio and his Katipuneros were being driven back to the hills of Balara and the Propagandists crowded Fort Santiago: "Rizal was vexed because he had heard that he was being blamed for the disturbances in Manila." Rizal's trial, says Guerrero, presents us with a dilemma. Rizal passionately defended himself from the charge that he was involved in or even sympathized with the Revolution - hardly an attitude we would honor him for. "Was he innocent or guilty?" asks Guerrero. "U innocent, then why is he a hero? U guilty, how can he be a martyr?" Guerrero accepts the retraction as genuine: ''That is a matter for handwriting experts, and the

RIZAL THE SCHooLBOV

weight of expert opinion IS In favor of authenticity_It is nonsense to say that the retraction does not prove Rizal's conversion; the language of the document is unmistakable. It is a truism that the recantation of his religious errors did not involve the repudiation of his political aims. We may also accept that he was not too fervent a Mason. In fact Rizal himself stated that he had ceased being a Mason in 1891. Why should it be so strange then for Rizal to 'abhor' Masonry as a society when he had in fact already left it four years before? One whose sympathies are not engaged on either

side must face the authenticity of the instrument of retraction, on the one hand, and, on the other, the admitted failure of the intellectual assault on Rizal's position, and can only wonder what it was that happened to the decided rationalist who had promised to kneel and pray for the grace of faith." For Radaic, Rizal is "a mystery still to be revealed," a sphinx who, even in the impulsive confessions of his youth, already knew what not to tell - which is why, says Radaic, not everything has yet been said about Rizal, including, perhaps, the most important facts: "While gazing at pictures of that giant of small and delicate body, many Filipinos must have felt as 1 did when I first came to know about him, a few years ago, in Europe - that behind the wellbuttoned Crock coat was hidden a deep and delicate human problem." Radaic suspects that Rizal suffered from complexes of inferiority (he terms them "complejos de Riza{") and that these arose from a belief that he was physically defective. It's necessary, says Radaic, to do for Rizal what Socrates did for philosophy, bringing it down from heaven to earth, not to degrade it but to understand it better. It's curious, but both Leon Maria Guerrero and Ante Radaic, in their personal circumstances, approximate certain aspects of Rizal, so that one feels, at times, that they are reading themselves into him. When Radaic, for instance, dwells on Rizal's obsession with physical deficiency, one cannot but remember that Radaic, too, was obsessed with physical deformity. being crippled: he had lost a foot in an escape from a concentration camp. Guerrero, a descendant of ilus-

ANATOMY OF TIlE ANTI-HERO

RIZAl THE . .,,,,,) , , .

trados, was bred by the :\teneo and a home steeped in the old Filipino.spanish traditions, and is thus perfectly at home in the mind of Riza!' He has lived long abroad, has a cosmopolitan outlook, and is at the same time a nationalist whose moth wings got rather burned in that Asia-forthe-Asians flame. Radaic, on the other hand, fled from his homeland, which groaned under a tyranny, and became that archetype of modern man: the displaced person, the stateless individual, which, to a certain extent, Rizal also was. when he rejeeted the Spanish friar's concept of the Philippine state as "a double allegiance to Spain and Church." In Madrid, at the university, from the Filipino girl who became his wife, Radaic heard of Rizal and immediately felt a rapport with the Philippine hero. He became an ardent student of Rizal, did a thesis on him ("Rizil: Romantieo-Realista"), and came to the

THE MUSEUM OF THE ATENEO IN INTRAMUAOS

Philippines to marry, and to become a countryman of his hero. He had just finished "Rizal Por Adentro" that night in January when he climbed to the roof of the main building of Santo Tomas and jumped off. Because Guerrero and Radaic seem, at certain points, to be reading themselves into Rizal, to read their respective studies of him is to see the hero through the prism of Guerrero's cosmopolitan intellect and the dark glass of Ante Radaic's tragic sense of life.

Guerrero's Rizal

For Guerrero, Rizal is "the very embodiment of the intelligentsia and the petite bourgeoisie":

"One gathers from Rizal's own account of his boyhood that he was brought up in circumstances that even in the Philippines of our day would be considered privileged. Rizal's father became one of the town's wealthiest men, the first to build a stone house and buy another, keep a carriage, own a library, and send his children to school in Manila. Jose himself bad an aya, that is to say, a nanny or personal servant, although he had five elder sisters who, in less affluent circumstances, could have been expected to look after him. His father engaged a private tutor for him. Later, he would study in private schools, go to the university, finish his courses abroad. It was the classic method for producing a middle-class intellectual, and it does much to explain the puzzling absence of any real social consciousness in Rizal's apostolate so many years after Marx's Manifesto or, for that matter, Leo XIII's Rerum Nova路

.JOSE RIZAL

rum. Rizal's nationalism was essentially rationalist, anti-racist, anti-clerical - political rather than social or economic." Guerrero surmises that, even if born a peasant and in penury. Rizal would still have made his mark: "His character, in a different environment, with a diffe-

rent experience of the world, might have made him another

"Congressman Rizal, and a congressman dedicated to making exposures, at that!" This ambition of Riza] must have been wellknown among the i1ustrados; one of their plans to spring him from jail in 1896 was to get him elected to the Cortes; the governor-general would then have been forced to release him so he could go to Spain and attend

RIZAL WITH FELLOW STUDENTS IN MANILA BOARDING HOUSE

Bonifacio." But, reared in bourgeois ease, Rizal became a bour· geois idealist, putting his faith in reason and the liberal dog. mas of the inevitability of pro· gress, like any proper Victorian, and preferring reform to revolu· tion, and "revolution from above" to "revolution from be· low." What he wanted to be what he might have been if the policy of the ilustrados had pre· vailed - was representative for the Philippines in the Spanish parliament. Reported Governor Carnicero from Dapitan in 1892: "One of Rizal's ambitions is to become Deputy for the Philip· pines, for, once in the Cortes, he says that he could expose what· ever happens in the islands." And Guerrero's laughing comment is:

parliament. As the Philippine represent· ative in Madrid, says Guerrero, Rizal would have worked for the expulsion of the friars, the sale of their estates to the new mid· die class, the establishment of a certain measure of self·govern. ment in the islands and more na· tive participation in it; and this would have resulted in an alter· nation in power between con· servatives and liberals, this politi· cal activity being, however, limit· ed to the educated and the propertied. In other words, the two political parties would have represented only one social class; the bourgeoisie. If this is really what Rizal envisioned, then his dream has come to pass, for the two political parties that alter-

nate in power today are limited to the educated and the propertied and actually represent only the middle class. Yet there was a Bonifacio latent in Rizal, according to Guerrero, who calls him "the reluctant revolutionary.tt EI Filibusterismo in 1891 shows the hero divided. Observes Guerrero: " 'Assimilation' has been rejected as a vain hope. 'Separatism,' or in plainer words, inde· pendence, has been advocated almost openly. Rizal in the FiU is no longer the loyal reformer; he is the 'subversive' separatist, making so little effort of concealment that he arrogantly announ· ces his purpose in the very title of his novel, which means 'subversion.' No solution except independence! But how is it to be achieved? At this point Rizal hesitates and draws back. The last chapters of the Fili are heavily corrected, and it may not have been due only to Rizal's desperate need to cut down his novel to match Ventura's money. The thought of revolution in real life may have called up too many 'bloody apparitions.' " So, Father Florentino is made to deny in the final apostrophe of the novel that freedom must be won at the point of the sword: "What is the use of independence if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow?" "What" , asks Guerrero , "are we to conclude from this? In Rizal's mind the Filipinos of his generation were not yet ready for revolution because they were not yet ready for independence, and they were not ready for in· dependence because they were still unworthy of it." The Hamlet split in Rizal be· tween the will to act and the tendency to scruple preceded the flagrant schizophrenia of El Pili·

ANATOMY OF mE ANTI-HERO

busterismo. In 1887 he was saying that "peaceful struggle will always tum out to be a futile dream because Spain will never learn the lesson of her former colonies in South America." That was the Bonifacio in Rizal speaking. But Rizal the man of property quickly added: "In the present circumstances, we do not desire a separation from Spain;

RIZAL IN BERLIN. 1889

all that we ask is more attention, better edUcation, a higher quality of government officials, one or two representatives in parliament, and more security for ourselves and our fortunes." Four months later, he turned 26, and both sides of him wrote: "I have no desire to take part in conspiracies which seem to me premature and risky in the extreme. But if the government drives us to it, if there remains no other hope than to seek our ruin in war, then I too shall advocate violent means." That sounds like a rinal state· ment: it was not. The following year, 1888, while one side of him was crying, "It is too late; the Filipinos have already lost the hopes they placed in Spain!"

another side was murmuring that the happiness of the Philippines must be obtained by "noble and just means" and that "if to make my country happy I had to act vilely, I would refuse to do so." Comments Guerrero: "We think of Rizal as a mild and gentle reformer who shrank from the thought of separation from Spain, most of all a violent revolution; it would seem that he appeared to his contemporaries, especially after the puhlication of the open· Iy subversive Fili, as a wild rire. brand, as demagogic as LopezJaena. " The question is: Who saw Rizal plain? Guerrero wickedly relates that when firebrand Lopez.Jaena thought of migrating to Cuba, Rizal opined that LOpez.Jaena should return to the Phili~pines and "let himself be killed il sup· port of his ideas." Home went Lopez.Jaena, bravely declaring himself "resigned to everything, ready to fight if necessary, ready to die if need be." But after only four days in Manila he left in a hurry, fearing he would " land in Bilibid or the Marianas." And Rizal himself, who had called Cuba "an empty shell," would, when the Revolution broke out in the Philippines, enlist for Cuban servo ice, laying himself open to the the charge that, by offering to serve the Spanish go~~rnment in Cuba, he was nOl: only trying to flee from the struggle in his own country but was. making clear on which side of the struggle he stood. Says Guerrero: "There can be no argument that he was against Bonifacio's Revolution. Not only had he offered his 'unconditional' services to help suppress it but he had indited a manifesto condemn· ing the Revolution." He called the idea of revolution "highly absurd." The condemnatory rna·

nifesto was gratuitous; it was not made to influence the court, he had been offering to make it even before be was. arrested. But the court was alert; it noted that Rizal condemned Bonifacio's Re· volution but not Bonifacio's aim of independence for the Philippmes. "Rizal," says Guerrero, "believed in the gradual and natural evolution of the Filipino Nation in the course of years and fore· saw the international develop. ments that would make eventual independence an inevitable conclusion on which metropolis and colony would peaceably agree." In short, in the life·long duel between Rizal the subversive and Rizal the progressive, the latter won in the end. He had flirted, in his fiction, with revolution; but when faced hy the fact of it, he called it absurd and retreat· ed to Reason,Reform,Evolution, Inevitable Progress, and all the other Victorian catchwords. The malicious could say that his was the retreat of a man with property to lose. Guerrero says that Rizal was "a nationalist who did not recognize his Nation when it suddenly rose before him, a bloody apparition in arms." But it was he who, as the First Filipino, had most created the idea of that nation. "Throughout the centuries," says Guerrero, "one tribe after another took up arms, against the miSSIOnary friars or for them, in protest against a wine tax or against forced lahor, in the name of the old gods or in the name of the new Spanish Consti. tution. Whether the revolt was long-lived like Dagohoy's, which lasted 85 years, or as short-lived as Novales's, who 'was outlawed at midnight, proclaimed emperor at two o'clock in the morning, and shot at five in the evening, I natives - allies, converts, merce-

naries - fought against natives and kept the archipelago Spanish and Christian. Malongprociaimed himself king of Pangasinan; Almazan, king of the Ilokanos, and Apolinario de la Cruz, king of Tagaiogs. No one proclaimed himself a Filipino." What Guerrero misses here is that the Filipino forces sent to subdue Malong the Pangasinense or Almazan the I1ocano or De la Cruz the Tagalog were fighting (whatever the Spaniards may have intended) to keep the Filipino one. They were proclaiming themselves Filipino, and not merely Pangasinense or Ilocano or Tagalog, as the American northerner sent to subdue the American southerner in the Civil War proclaimed the oneness of the American. The Filipino allies, converts, merc.enaries sent against the Filipino rebel may have kept the archipelago Spanish and Christian, but they also kept it from falling apart again into the numberless tribes it used to be, prevented the return of separate kingdoms for Pangasinenses, Ilocanos and Tagalogs. The paradox is cruel, but Rizal could proclaim him路 self a Filipino only because Da路 gohoy failed, and Novales and Malong and Almazan and De la Cruz. Their success could have meant the end of the idea of the Filipino. But each failure was one more stone added to the construction of the nation. When Rizal arose, the Philippines had been Spanish and Christian long enough to feel itself ready to be something else. The preliminary mold was necessary (as our present difficulties with the "cultural minorities" indicate) but now the matrix could be broken, the womb abandoned. "It was Rizal," says Guerrero, "who taught his countryman

JOSE RIZAL

RIZAL THE MATURE MAN

that they could be something else, Filipinos who were members of a Filipino Nation. He was the first who sought to 'unite the whole archipelago' and envisioned a 'compact and homogeneous society' of all the old tribal communities from Batanes to the Sulu Sea, based on common interests and 'mutual protection' rather than on the Spanish friar's theory of double aile路

giance to Spain and Church. "He would arouse a consciousness of national unity, of a common grievance and common fate. He would work through his writings, overleaping the old barriers of sea and mountain and native dialect, from Vigan to Dapitan. Without this new middle class of which he was the exemplar, now national by grace of school, the printing press, and

ANATOMY OF THE ANTI·HERO

newly discovered interests in common, the Kabite Revolution of 1896 might not have had greater significance than that of 1872. Instead, what might have been only one more peasant reo volution, what might have been a Tagalog uprising to be crushed as before with levies from Pampanga or the I1okos or the Bisayas, was transforlned into the revolu· tion of a new nation. It was Ri· zal who would persuade the principa/es, and with them , and sometimes through them, the peasants and the artisans that they were all equaUy 'Filipinos,' and in so doing would justify the opportunities of his privileged birth."

Radaic's Rizal

Victorian hero is one's ultimate picture of Guerrero's "First Filipino." Ante Radaic's "Rizal From Within" is, on the other hand, modern man - an· xious, nervous, insecure, ill at ease in his world, ridden with complexes, and afflicted with feelings of inferiority and im· potence. The key image is of the child Rizal, as described by his sisters Narcisa and Maria to Asuncion LOpez Bantug: "Jose was a very tiny child . And his head grew disproportionately. When he began to walk by himself he often fell, his head being too heavy for his frail body. Because of this, he needed an aya to look after h-~- " Radaic believes that Rizal was aggrieved by his puny physique. Whether the hero was really smaller than ~ormal , the signifi.

RIZAL 1l SELF-f'OR TR A IT

cant thing is that he thought he was, during the impressionable years of youth. In his Memorias de un estudiante, written before he was 20, references to his size recur obsessively: "The son of the teacher was a few years older than I and exceeded me in stature .. .. After (beating him in a fight) r gained fame among my classmates, possibly because of my smallness .... I did not dare descend into the river because it was too deep for one my si7.e .... At rirst (the rather at thc Ateneo) did not want to admit me, perhaps be· cause of my feehle frame and scant height .... Though I was 13 going on 14, I was still very small. " Other people are seen in relation to his height. His teacher in Bman is "a tall man"; his professor in Manila is "a man of lofty stature"; and, most poignantly of all, the young man presumed to be a suitor of Segunda Katigbak, Rizal's first inamorata, is "un hombre alto. " There's evidence that Rizal had reason to be self-conscious about his physique. His brother Paciano decided against enrolling Jose as a boarder at the Aleneo

because (this is tram Mrs. Ban· tug's account) "he was timid and small for his age." And Father Pastells of the Ateneo wrote that Rizal failed to be elected presi· dent of the college sodality be· cause of his "small stature." His sisters recalled that he insisted on joining games - like the popular game of "giants" - tor which he was too weak and small: " He grew up pathetically con· scious ot his short stature and fragile body, he made great effort to stretch himself out in his games, and he was continually begging his father to help him grow. His little body did not permit him to compete with boys his age but stronger than he; so he withdrew into himself. Never· theless, the tiny lad went on craving to become big and strong. He persisted in playing the game of 'giants.' His Uncle Manuel, seeing the boy's avidity for advice on body building and pitying his eager envy of tougher boys, took him under his care. A strong man full of vitality, he sought to part the boy from his books and to satisfy his craving to develop his body. He made the boy skip, jump, run; and though this was at first hard for the frail boy, he had so strong a will and such anxiety to improve himself that, at last, the will won over the flesh. He became lighter and quicker of movement, and his physique more lively, more robust, more vigorous, although it didn't grow any bigger." Comments Radaic: "Truly, the mystery of the body is great. It's as if every man canied within himself an ideal or invisible image of the body, of his body; and looking in the mirror, compares what he sees there, the visible image that confronts him, with the invisible image he hopes to see mysteriously reflected there. Feelings of interiority aI-

JOSE RIZAL

most always arise not from a confrontation of the I with the non-l hut from our confrontation with the interior image we carry of ourselves. We measure ourselves, not against anything

outside the sphere of the I, hut against our own selves, 01, rather, the ideal of ourselves we propose to realize. " RizaJ, as adolescent, had in his mind a clear and vexing image of his puny stature, an image not yet repressed into the sub-

RIZAL'S MOTHER

conscIOus; and it's not difficult to understand the marks and imprints his little body stamped on his spiritual character. Nature, as whimsical as fortune and as rarely just, had created this little body as hovel for the spiritual beauty of a child whose ailing soul felt itself to be an exile from a world infinitely purer. Because of an excess of spirit, RizaI saw his body as inadeqUate, and this, in turn, influenced his complex psychological structure." Radaic's point is that Rizal's career was an effort to reduce the discrepancy between the interior image he carried of himself and the image he saw in the mir-

ror. The discrepancy produced both an inferiority complex (Rizal withdrawing into himself and his books because he could not compete with tougher boys) and the determination to excel (Rizal fighting the bigger boy and taking up body building and fencing). That he already carried, as a child, an image of himself as a great man is demonstrated by a childhood incident.

cal value, and should be recorded for posterity. But, side by side with this image of greatness, was the actual image of the boy who felt himself to be stunted, who was haunted by a sense of inadequacy. In the honid outside world of Biiian and Manila he ached aloud for the refuge of the home in CaIamba, the bosom of his mother; and one can theorize

THE RIZAL HOUSE IN CALAMBA

One day, while the young Ri路 zal was modeling a figure of Na路 poleon (another dwarf boy who went forth to make himself a big man) his sisters teased him, apparently on his diminutiveness. Cried the child to his sisters: "You can laugh at me, make mock of me; but wait till I grow bigger. When I die, people will keep pictures and statues of me!" Radaic also notes that Rizal's writing an autobiography in his teens, though no really extraordinary events marked his boyhood, is significant. The adolescent already felt that even the most humdrum happenings of his youth would have future histori路

that he would later turn these childhood refuges into intellectual ones: the safe home in Calamba would become the untroubled paradise of the pre-hispanic archipelago; the bosom of the mother would become the sweet warmth of the Mother Country. In the Canto de Maria Clara, in fact, mother and Mother Country are indistinguishable figures. The nostalgia of Rizal, says Radaic, was a fear of the world: "Well may Rizal have exclaimed with Sartre: 'I am condemned to be free.' In the moments when the young Rizal had to show a certain responsibility,

ANATOMY OF THE ANTI·HERO

an obligatory independence; in those moments when he had per· force to face the world, the world inspired him with veritable terror, a terror we would call cosmic." Radaic quotes the passage in the Memorias where Rizal des· cribes his last night at the Ateneo: "At the thought that I would have to leave that refuge of peace, I fell into profound melancholy. When I went to the dormitory and realized this would be the last night I would pass in my peaceful alcove because, as I was told, the worJd waited for me, I had a cruel foreboding. The moon that shone mournfully seemed to be telllvg me that, at daybreak, another life awaited me. I could not sleell until one o'clock. Morning came and I dressed; I prayed with \ervor in the chapel and commended my life to the Virgin, that sh~might proted me while I tr~ this world that inspired me with such terror . . . . At the critical mo· ments of my life I have ahyays acted against my will, obeying other ends and powerful doubts." Alongside this and similar passages expressing terror, hesi· taney, and a nostalgia that "makes me see the past as fair, the present as sad," Radaic places Miguel de Unamuno'sjudg· menl of Rizal: "Rizal, the bold dreamer, strikes me as weak of will and irresolute for action and life. His withdrawal, his timidity. proved a hundred times, his timorous· ness, are no more than facets of his Hamlet disposition. To have been a practical revolutionary he would have needed the simple mentality of an Andres Bonifacio. He was, I think, a faint-heart and a dubitator." One remembers that the English meaning of filibuster is to delay; and El Filibusterismo

may more aptly be read, not as an act of subversion. as Guerrero says, but as an acting out of Hamlet's delay. But Radaic's (and Unamuno's) judgment of Rizal as fearful of the world of reality fits in with Guerrero's theory that Rizal was devoid of any real sodal consciousness and feared to face, in the end, the fact of revolution. His condemn· ation or the Revolution as "ab· surd" has an uncanny echo in the "theater of the absurd" with which modern existentialists condemn what they deem the crazy violence of contemporary life. Radaic, whose study of Ri· zal is spiked with quotations from the existentialists, from Kierkegaard to Kafka to Sartre, would seem to be placing Rizal in that company ~ the modern man aghast at the world ~e has made. Rizal, knowingly qr un· knowingly, created a Nation and a Revolution, hut did not, as Guerrero says, or would not, recognize them when they rose before him, terrifying bloody apparitions. So, modern man, confidently believing in the inevi· table benefits of science and education and progress, is at a loss to explain how such benefi· cial things could have produced the dreadful world in which he nervously awaits an insane doom. Would Rizal, who so admired the Germans and the Japanese for their dedication to science, com· merce, education and progress, have recognized the Germany of Belsen and Dachau, the Japan of the Death March? Yet these bloody apparitions were shaped by the very virtues he admired. The analogous question would be: Would we have been able to predict the later multitudi· nous Rizal from the timorous lad who wrote the Memorias? Radaic thinks that the writing of the memoirs, in the certainty

that they would he read by pos· terity, was "already the begin. ning of deformation": "Whether instinctive or con· scious, it was an effort to mask important and intimate facts.

.,"

SEGUNOA ",ATlG8AI(

His mind was enormously im· pressionable and given to self· analysis and introversion. With such a mind, he could appraise, hyperbolically, his weak nature and small physique, active fac· tors in the formation of his very complex character. His physical inferiority complex, exacerbated by psychological influences, can be detected in numberless man· ners of expression, both direct and indirect ~ when he speaks of his smallness, of the tallness of others, of his yearnings and nos· talgia for the past, of his insecu· rity and tragic doubts of the fu· ture, of his boldness and his desire to rise above himself, and

J OSE RIZAL

other protestations that seem distinct from fear." But what are the "intimate facts" that the young Rizal

would "mask"? Radaic opines that one of the most important of them is sexual inadequacy, and he takes for test case R izal's first amorous affair: "el {enameno Katigbak," as Radaic calls it. The usual interpretation of this affair, says Radaic, is that the YO,ung lover knew how to behave with the strictest decorum and delicacy toward a girl already engaged. Radaic smells a rat. He notes tha...t it's Rizal who, when he first\ meets Segunda Katigbak, presumes that "the tall man" with her is her novia. Rizal is attracted to the girl, whom he described as "smallish" (bajita). He plays chess with the man he keeps calling her nouio and loses. "From time to time she looked at me and I blushed." He vindicates himself, after losing at the chessboard, by displaying his intellect, when the talk at the gathering turns to "novels and other literary things." In later meetings, Segunda makes it indubitably clear that she's interested in Rizal. He feels flattered, he professes to be unworthy of any woman's love, and he persists in taking it for granted that she is soon to be married, though she herself puts his suppositions in doubt. "But I'm not getting married!" she tells him pointblank, and in tears. "I forbade," he says, "my heart to love, because I knew she was engaged . But I told myself: Perhaps she really loves me? Perhaps her feel ings for her fiance are but the affections of childhood when her heart had not yet opened her breast to true love?" One perhaps followed another; she waited, giving one proof after another of her feelings for him; but he told himself he

LEONOR VALENZUELA

would make no declaration until he had seen "greater proofs" of her affection. Just what he expected the poor girl to do to prove her love is so vague it's indecent; in other love affairs it's usually the other side t hat's supposed to furn ish the "greater proofs." There's no Question that, whether she was really engaged to be married or not, la Katigbak would have eagerly forsworn previous vows and given herself to him. But he persisted in his Hamlet hesitations, doubts and questions, until one suspects he was manufacturing excuses - protesting that, although she had conquered his heart, his heart refused to surrender! Observes Radaic: "Despite the certainty that he was loved, he went on maintaining a Hamlet disposition, which strikes us as that of a faint-heart tryi ng to hide an incapacity to face the fleshly demands that love brings_ In his manner of love, more than in his manner of speech, each man reveals himself. But it 'was final ly impossible for Rizal to go on with his deceptions

and dou bts, and he had to adm it, after seeking ever fresher proofs of affection, that Katig bak loved him truly . He felt no relief over th is, for the intensity of love, which he considered a height unattainable by his poor energies, was to him an intolerable tyranny troubling his nigh ts and his sleep. The more sure he was that Katigbak loved him, the more nervous he became." R izal saw the girl's love for him as "a yoke" - "un yugo que ya va imponiendo sobre mi. " F inally, the poor girl gave up. She returned to her home town, to marry her "tall man." Rizal, in Calamba, on horseback, watched her ride past in a carriage. She smiled at him and waved a handkerchief as she rode out of his life forever, leaving he says, "a horrible void." Immediately after, he says, he visited on two successive nights a girl in Calamba who was white of skin and seductive of eye, but discontinued the visits at the order of his father. This confession, says Radaic, may be no more than a desire to clothe, for future readers of his Memorias, the nakedness of the fai lure of his first attempt to love. His later affairs of the heart followed the same pattern of vacillation and invented impediment. He made Leonor Rivera wait eleven years, then cried that she had betrayed him by preferring an Englishman. He considered Nellie Boustead "worthy" enough to be loved by him, but feared she might think he was after her money. Much has been made of the number of women in his life, but the very number is suspicious, hinting at emotional deficiency and the inability to sustain a relationship. ''The popular myth," says Guerrero, "is that Rizal could never love wo-

ANATOMY OF THE ANTI· HERO

THE OTHER LEONOR, LA RIVERA, THAT RIZAL FLEO

man, he had given his whole heart to his country. In any case, no woman was worthy of the hero; he had a higher fate ." And noting that Rizal does not come

out too well from his love affairs, Guerrero reflect.!; that "not even the appealing theory that he was 'married to his country' can wholly satisfy."

Radaic traces the generally un· satisfactory air of these love af· fairs to Rizal's feeling of insecu· rity: "In few fields of human con· duct do complexes of inferiority play so great a role as in the field of love, especially in the activities called sexual. Young men unsure of themselves find sexual timidity the most difficult to overcome. There's no complex of inferiority that does not imply a feeling of sexual deficiency, and one of the common results of this is the 'attitude of vacilla· tion' so ably described by Adler. "Rizal, despite his efforts to overcome his complexes and free himself from the anxieties caused by his small stature - expe· riences as painful for him as they were beneficial to his country was to go on being a great neuro· tic, with all the consequences that a pathogenic memory pro-duces. With the years, the feel· ings of inferiority would oppress him less, but he would not be able to keep from reviewing t hem continually, afflicted by the memory of his sufferings. In the struggle he had received grievous wounds that were slow to scar. And though he might at last succeed in repIessing all such memories from his consciousness, the psychic build of his character would by then carry an indelible stamp, infused by a sense of physical inferiority, which was to impel him to evasive actions, as in his later love affairs." With the words "as they were beneficial to his country," Radaie comes to t he meat of his argument, which is that the wounds that clippled Rizal in spirit were responsible for his greatness. Guerrero's view is that Rizal was brought up in privileged circumstances, enjoying "the opportunities of his privileged birth." He rose because, given his advan·

JOSE RIZAL

(' -.

.,-

, I

THE JAPANESE Love

tages, it was but natural for him to rise. Radaic sees it different: Rizal was underprivileged, was born heavily handicapped. He rose because of his efforts to overcome his disadvantages, and his rise was unnatural and agonized. Given a choice, Rizal might well have been willing to trade rank and fortune for a normal man's ability to accept the world and adjust himself to it. The young Rizal's dedication to athletics was an attempt to make himself normal. He did not quite succeed, to our good fortune. The mature Rizal's determination to excel in as many fields of endeavor as possible - science, art, medicine, literature - was a compensation for his feeble physique; he would show the world he was as capable, as tall, as the next man. He proved he was very much taller, by rising above himself. If there had been no need to

do so, if he had been of norma1 height and with normal capacities, he might have led a normal life, might have accepted the world as he found it and adjusted himself to it_ And the nation would have lost a hero. RizaJ's career illustrates the challenge-and-response theory of progress. RizaJ soared because his every response overshot the challenge. With each achievement, whether in science or letters or scholarship, he added one more cubit to his stature, until he need no longer decry himself as small. Even in that most intimate incapacity that Radaic speaks of, Rizal managed to achieve a measure of success. His last emotional involvement, with Josephine Bracken, is no longer just an affair but is a mature relationship, a marriage. Says Radaic; "The fights Riza1 mentions in his Memorias, with boys bigger

THE IRISH WIFE

THE SPANISH LOVE

than he, against whom he thrust his little body as though to assure himself and show others he was not so weak, are but compulsions to compensate for his inferior build, as if he would thus attain the physical height nature had denied him. His fights express his complexes, are an aspect of his timorousness, a timorousness turned inside out. ''Tormented by eternal feelings of inferiority, Rizal made a career of ascension. The struggle between his complexes and his ever more ambitious I lifted this extraordinary man to the supreme heights of perfection and human endeavor. His career is that of the lesser sons in the fairy tales, who work wonders and win princesses. A Rizal well formed of body might never have found in himself the force needed to raise himself so high for the sake of his country."

Why Was The Rizal Hero A Creole?

The

Rizal novels, morbid of matter but so comic in man. ner, defy canonization. The Bible of the race won't toe today's line on the race. Like the Hebrew scriptures, from which its priestly editors vainly t ried to purge a mass of polytheistic myth, the Riza l novels contain elements our stricter sensibilities would purge away. The figure of Maria Clara, for instance, continues to scandal· ize us. Why did Riza! choose for hero ine a mestiza of shameful conCtlption? The reply of the 1930s was that Maria Clara was no hero ine to Riza) but an object of satire - a theory that wreaks havoc on the meaning of satire, besides being refuted by the text of the nove ls, which reveals a Rizal enraptured by his heroine. Today's iconoclasts have got around the dilemma by simply

rejecting Maria Clara. Rizal may have been, at least during the writing, taken in by her; we are not. Whether she was a heroine to him or not, she is no heroine to us; and all the folk notions of Malia Clara as an ideal or as a symbol of the Mother Country, must be discarded. Thus would we purify Rizal. Said Riza l of his heroine: "Poor girl, with your heart play gross hands that know not of its delicate fibers." But hav ing disposed of his out· rageous heroine, we are still confronted by his equally impossible hero, impossible because he of· fends our racial pride. Wh y should the hero of the Great Filipino Noyel be, not an Indio Fili· pino, but a Spanish "Filipino:' with the quotes expressing our misgivings? For Juan Crisostomo Ibarra belonged to that class

which alone bore the name Fili· pino in those days but from which we would withhold the name Filipino today, though most of the Philippine Creoles (and the Rizal hero isan example) had more natiYe than Spanish blood. A Creole class in the pure sense of the term never existed in the Philippines. The Spanish didn't come here in such numbers as to establish a large enough commu· nity that could intermarry within itself and keep the blood pure. What were their most numerous progeny - the fri3rs' bastards inevitably vanished into the na· tive mass within a generation. But even the Sp;mi1Uds who did establish families could keep them Creole for, at the most, three generations. The excep. t ions aTe rarc. The Rochas (Mala· canang used to be their manor)

JOSE RJZAL

/-I'.)

THE FIRST NOVE

are probably the most durable, dating back some two centuries; the Teuses have endured about a century and a half but have sunk into obscurity; the Elizaldes (of very mixed blood) go back only a century. or some four generations. The commoner process was followed by such families as the Legardas and the Aranetas, which now seem purely native principaiia but began as Creol!!. This process was arrested and reversed by the great tribe that may be called the Ayala in general, though it includes the Sorianos, Zobels, Melians and Roxases. By the time of the Revolution, this Creole tribe was already headed by an Indio, Don Pedro Roxas, and seemed on its way to becoming as "native" as the Legardas and Aranetas; hut succeeding generations restored the tribe to Creole status with heavy infusions of European blood. 'Tis said that the sons of the tribe are sent to Europe as soon as

they reach puberty and are not allowed to come home until they have married "correctly" abroad. Up to around midway of the 19th century, however, the Philippine Creoles had no such scruples about blood purity and were distinguished as a class apart, as "Filipinos," not so much by the amount of Spanishblood in their veins as by their culture, position and wealth. So, a friar's bastard by a peasant girl might look completely Spanish but would have no status as a Creole, while a man like Ibarra, already two mixed marriages away from a Spanish grandfather, would still be a Creole because a landowner and gentleman. He was an Ibarra far more than he was a Magsalin - and there's significance in his Indio surname, which means to pour, to transfer, to translate, for Ibarra was inÂˇ deed a translation into Asia of Europe, or, possibly, the other way around. The question is: Why did Rizal make this "translated Filipino" his hero? Was Rizal trying to identify with the Creole? Are the illustrators right who give the tall, OON PEDRO ROXAS

7"'; , .F.-t.

~I.'" - ........ '

ilr-

' I" I,,, ===;;' :' 0;<-' â&#x20AC;˘

1--, .... .. ...,.., , ... ~

THE BITTER SEOUEL

hairy, high-nosed and red.cheeked Ibarra the smaller, smoother features of Rizal? A great writer is always writing about his times, even when he seems to be Writing about something else; and Rizal's novels are historical parables, though we have never quite related them to their particular period. We know the novels are subversive, that they are about revolution, but we assume that Rizal meant the Revolution of 1896, to which he was looking forward as a prophet; and we are therefore dumbfounded that Rizal, when the Revolution came, chose to disown it and to enlist on the side of Spain. We secretly suspect a failure of nerve in the man who had so vigorously prophesied that Revolution. But was Rizal prophesying? Might he not have been talking about another revolution altogether, a revolution he was more sympathetic to? The novels were, after all, written about a decade before 1896; and we know that the events that most influenced Rizal, that must have shaped those novels, were the events

WHY WAS TIlE RIZAL HERO A CREOLE?

with which he g芦!W up, that impelled a change in name, the translation from Mercardo to Rizal - and from the Philippines to Europe. The clue is in the dedication to EI Filibustedsmo: ''To the memory of the priests, Don Mariano Gomez, Don Jose Burgos and Don Jacinto Zamora, executed on the gibbetof Bagum. bayan on February 28, 1872." Throughout the years he was growing up, Rizal was aware that a revolution was going on in his country, a revolution inspired at fint by the Pfrson, then by the memory of Bll1gos the Creole, and in which the ~eople most involved belonged ~ the Creole class, for the Propaganda may be said to have begun, iltthe 1850s, with Father Pelaez, as a Creole campaign against the Peninsulars. Rizal also knew that Sp~n was overthrown in America by the various uprisings of the C~oles there (Bolivar, San Martin,lturbide) - that is, by the class that had the edUcation, money, talent and prestige to conduct a revolt

with success. (The revolutions or the Indios would come later, as with Juarez in Mexico.) During Rizal's youth, it looked as if what had happened in America would happen in the Philippines: the Creoles were restive, were rising, were apparently headed for an open clash with the Penin路 sulars. So, when Rizal wrote his novels, he was writing about an actual movement, and writing to animate it. He was not looking forward to 1896; he was looking back to 1872 and all its subsequent repercussions. He was chronicling the Creole revolution in the Philippines.

The Creole

For 200 years - through the 17th and 18th centuries - the Philippine Creoles were Filipino in the sense that their lives

A BAll 1111 MALACAIIIAIIIG 1111 THE 18000

" were entirely devoted to the service of the country: to expanding or consolidating the national frontiers and to protecting them. Their great labor, their achievement, was keeping the Philippines intact through two centuries when, it may be said, there was not a single day that the islands were not under threat of invasion: by the Chinese, the Japanese, the British, the Dutch. For two centuries the country was under constant siege. The Dutch Wars, for instance - a crucial period in our history lasted fifty years. A single slip in the vigilance and our history would have been different; there would be, to stress a point now invisihle to us, no Philippines at all: we would be a province today of Indonesia and nobody would be arguing about what a Filipino is. During those 200 years the Creole faltered only once, very briefly, with the British invasion, but he quickly recovered balance. The conquering Americans of the 1900s would sneer at Spa路 nish empire in the Philippines as inept, against all the evidence of history; for if the prime duty of a mother country to a colony is to protect it from invasion, then we'll have to admit that Spain, in its almost 400 years in the islands, acquitted itself with honor, especially when we remember that within fifty years after the Amer路 ican occupation, the Philippines fell, and fell unprotected, to an invader, while the Americans looked the other way, toward Europe. Another point; the Tagalogs and Pampangos who fought with the Creoles to defend the islands during those centuries of sie;:e, we now sneer at as "mercenaries" - but is it mercenary to fight for one's country? The labor of defense was so exhaUsting it partly explains why

there are no really old Creole families in the Philippines. For his pains, the Creole might be rewarded with an encomienda, which did not mean possessing the land entrusted to his care but merely gave him the right to collect the tribute there for the space of two generations: his own lifetime and that of his heir. The head tribute was at first eight reates (or a peso), was later increased to ten reales, then reduced to four. In return, the encomendero pledged himself, like a feudal lord, to the defense of the folk under his care (which meant being ready at any moment to be called to military service anywhere in the country) and also to their religious instruction; but he was forbidde n to stay within his encomienda or even to sleep two consecutive nights there, to prevent him from turning into a little local tyhmt. The encomienda system lasted but briefly ; and the Philipl?ine Creole depended more for subsistence on the Galleon trade and on mining. He worked the iron mines of Antipolo when the Philippines still had a cannon foundry industry and, later, the gold mines of Paracale. As a gentleman, manual labor was forbidden him ; he could enter only the Army, the Church and the Government. The Creoles formed our first secular clergy, our first civil service. Only late in Spanish times, with the relaxation of the restrictions on land-owning, did the Creole turn to agriculture, dedicating himself to sugar culture in Negros and Pampanga, to abaca culture in Bicolandia, to cattle culture in the various rancherias in the North. All this time the Creole - and the Philippine colony in general - lived in isolation from Spain, and the neglect fostered the autonomous spirit. The Creole was a

J OSE RI ZAL

"Filipino," not a Spaniard. He controlled the government; Madrid was represented only by the governor-general, who was so detested as a "foreigner" he had to make an accounting of his stewardship before he could reo turn to Madrid. The voyage from Europe to the Philippines was so long and so expensive and the mortality among passengers so high that only the hardiest of Spaniards reached the islands, and once here they had to cast in their lot with the country forever, since a return trip was next to impossible. The immigrating Spaniard, therefore, broke with Spain forever when he came to the Philippines. If we further consider that many of those who came here were Basques and Catahins - that is, folk with a tradition of rebelliousness against the Madrid government - the temper of the Philippine Creole becomes evident. Rizal made his Ibarra the descendant of a Basque. With the revolt of Spanish America and the opening of the Suez Canal, Madrid came closer to Manila; and the quicker cheaper voyage now brought to the Philippines, as Rizal's Teniente Guevara observed, "10 mas perdido de fa peninsula. " These peninsular parasites, however, considered themselves several cuts above the "Filipino" -- that is, the Creole - and began to crowd him out of Army, Church and Government. The war be路 tween Creole and Peninsu lar had begun. This was during the first three quarters or so of the 19th cen路 tury, when a practically autonomous commonwealth found itself becoming a Spanish colony in the strict sense of the world. T he previous centuries of Spain in the Philippines had been years of Christianization, unification and development, but only the

final century, the 19th, was a period of hispanization; and how effective it was is displayed by the fact that within less than a century the hispanization campaign had produced Rizal and the ilustrados, men so steeped in Spanish and European culture t hey seemed to have a thousand years of that culture beh ind them. The campaign to hispanize the islands was intensifying when the Revolution broke out: the government was opening normal schools for the training of native teachers to spread Spa. nish throughout the population. Meanwhile, the Philippine Creole was rising, stirred into insurgence by the example of a Mexican Creole of the Manila garrison. The Novales revolt in the 1820s planted the idea of separatism. When Mexico, having successfully revolted, seceded from Spain, the treaty between the two countries permitted the two imperial provinces that were formerly ruled through Mexico, to choose between join ing Mexico or remaining with Spain. The Philippines thus got the chance to break away from Spain in 1821, for the Philippines was one of these two imperial provinces dependent on Mexico, the other being Guatemala, wh ich then comprised most of Central Arne路 rica. Guatemala opted to join Me路 xico, but the Philippine government - or its Spanish governorgeneral anyway - chose to keep the islands under Spain. However, the revolt of the Mexican Creole captain Novales - who was proclaimed "emperor of the Philippines" one day and executed on the cathedral square of Manila the next day - shows that there was a segment of Creole opinion in the Philippines that favored joining the Mexicans in their independence. Local Creoles had heard that, in Mexico, a Creole

WHY WAS THE RIZAL HERO A CREOLE?

M.... RCELO OE AZC .... RR .... G ....

(Iturbide) had been proclaimed "emperor," aft~ a revolution that had, for one, of its aims, equality between Spaniards and Creoles. ,_ The current of mutinous opinion swelled and, two decades after the Novales revolt, erupted mysteriously in the Co~iracy of the Palmeros, an affair that involved a Creole family so prominent (it was related to the Azcarragas) all records of what appears to have been a coup attempt have been suppressed though the Rizal student should perk his ears here, for a family close to the rulen of the state it's trying to undermine suggests the figure of Simoun, the sinister eminence behind the governor路 general. A decade later, in the 1850s, the Creole revolution becomes manifest in Father Pelaez, canon of the Manila Cathedral, who started the propaganda for the Filipinization of the clergy. Pela. ez perished in the Cathedral during the great earthquake of 1863, but he left a disciple who would carry on his work: Jose Burgos. With Burgos, we are already in Rizal country. He and his mentor Pelaez - like Rizal himself were what might be C3Ued "even-

tualists": they bf.lieved that, with sufficient propaganda, reforms could be won eventually, autonomy could be gained eventually, and the hated Pen insulars could be ejected without firing a shot. Burgos is the Creole of the 1870s, resurgent iI not yet insurgent: a Liberal in the manner of Governor-General De la Torn; and already conscious of himself as a Filipino distinct from the Spaniard. His counterpart in the secular sphere is Antonio Regidor (implicated in the same Motin de Cavite that cost Burgos's lile), who replied to the Peninsular's disdain of the "Filipino" by showing, in his own penon, that a Filipino could be more cultured than a Peninsular. It was in this spirit that the Philippine Creoles would vaunt that a Filipino, Ezpeleta, had risen to the dignity of Bishop and that another Filipino, Azem-Tala, had become a government minister in Madrid. The fate of Burgos (the ganote) and of Regidor (exile) put an end to the idea of eventualism. The Cnoles that come after mostly educated on the Continent and affiliated with the Ma路 sonic Order - are already frankly filibusteros - that is, subvenives - and their greatest spokesman is Marcelo H. del Pilar, the Creole who undoubtedly possessed the most brilliant mutery of Spanish a Filipino ever wielded but whose talent got deadened by journalistic deadlines. But the extremest development of the Cnole as filibustero was Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, a man who came to loathe both the Malsy lind the Spaniard in himself so intensely he became the tint of the sajonistas and, as a member of the Philippine Commission of the 1900s, fought for the implantation of English in the Philippines, in a virulent desire

to uproot all traces of Spanish culture from the islands. For good or evil, Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, whom we hardly remem_ ber, was one of the deciders of our fate. The Rizal novels probe these two phases of the Creole revolu. tion. In the Noli Me Tangere, we are still in the epoch of Pelaez and BUrgos, the eventualists; and Ibana, who believes that education and propaganda will eventually create a climate of reform, follows the fate of Burgos even to the point of being, like Burgos, implicated in an uprising he knows nothing about. But in EI Filibusterismo, we are already in the period of Del Pilar and Pardo de Tavera; and the sinister Simoun, white-Imked and long_ bearded, is no longer a propagandist but a corrupter, and craves not only the fall of Spanish rule but the failure of the hispaniza. tion movement.

Ibun

L e family of Rizal's hero traces the evolution from Spa. TRINID ... O ' ... RDO DE T ...VER ....

niard to Creole to Filipino. The great-grandfather still bears the original Basque name, Eiharramendia, which his descendants abbreviate to Iharra. Don Pedro Eibarramenclia is a Manila busi· nessman; when his warehouse burns down he accuses his bookkeeper of having started the fire and thus ruins not only the hapless bookkeeper but all his descendants, the last of whom is the tragic Elias. Don Pedro is a fearful figure, with his deep-sunken eyes, cavernous voice, and "laughter without sound," and has apparently bee~ in the country a long time, for lil\ speaks Tagalog well. lie suddenly appears in San Diego, is fascinated by a piece of deep woods in which are thermal waters, and buys up the woods with textiles, jewels and some coin. Then he vanishes as suddenly as he has come. Later, hfs rot· ting corpse is found hanging on a balite tree in the woods. Terrified, those who sold him the woods throw his jewels into the river and his textiles into the fire. The woods where he hanged himself become haunted. A few months later, his son Saturnino appears in San Diego, clain,s the property, settles in the village (where still roam deer and boar) and starts an indigo farm. Don Saturnino is as gloomy as his father: taciturn, violent, at times cruel, but very active and indu~trious; and he transforms San Diego from "a miserable heap of huts" into a thriving town that attracts new settlers and the Chinese. In these two initial generations of Ibarras, contemporaneous with the early 1800s, we see the Creole turning. after two centuries of constant warfare, from arms to plow, from battlefield to farm and shop. Don Pedro and Don Saturnino have the gloom of the frustrated, of warriors born

J OSE RIZAL

too late for kn ight-errantry and forced into grubbier tasks. One goes into business and ends up a suicide; the other turns into a frontiersman, bringing the qualities of a soldier - violence, cruellY, vigor and zeal - to the development of a farm at the edge of the jungle. Rizal is fair: he sees thc latter·day Creole as engaged in another conquista, this time of the soil. As long as the Creole was merely defending the land as empire, the land was his but he was not the land's. But when he began to work the land himself, he became possessed by what, (ormerly, he had merely possessed. The change shows in the th ird-generation Ibarra, Don Rafael, the hero's fa ther, who is already graduating from Creole to Filipino. Don Rafael outrages the Pen insulars because, though of Spanish blood, he wears the native cami· sa. lie is loved by his tenants; he sends his only son to study in Switzerland; he has been in· fluenced by the Liberalism of the 1860s. lIe subscribes to Mad rid newspapers and keeps a picture of an "cxecuted priest." What gets him in to trouble is almost too blu nt a projection of the clash between Creole and Penin· sular. The Peninsular in this case exemplifies the worst of the Spaniards that poured into the Phil· ippines with the opening of the Suez Canal: he is illiterate but has been made a tax collector, and the natives laugh at him. When he punishes a child who's mocking him, he is knocked down by Don Rafael, breaks his head on a stone and dies. Don Rafael is thrown into jail, where he rots. When his son returns from Europe the old man has died in jail. The fou rth-generation Ibarra, Juan CrisOstomo, has a proper Victorian's faith in education,

IBA RRA

science, propaganda and the excellences of Europe. He has inherited a quarrel with the Peninsulars that he does not care to pursue, being a civilized man. He has also, but unknow ingly, inherited a quarrel with the Indios. wh ich provides the Noli Me Ton· gere with its sardonic humor; for Ibarra's life is thrice saved by Elias, who, it turns out, is a victim of the Ibarras, a victim of the Creole. Rizal was mak ing an ironic comment on the alliance between Creole and Indio; yet he makes Elias die to save Ibarra the Creole; and it's Ibarra, not Elias, who be<:omes the revolutionary. He is forced to become one, though all he wanted to do was elevate the masses by educating them. At times he even sounds

WHY WAS TIlE RIZAL HERO A CREOLE?

like a reactionary: "To keep the Philippines, it's necessary that the friars stay; and in the union with Spain lies the welfare of our country." Rizal repeats the Creole·vsPeninsular theme by making Ibarra's rival for Maria Clara a Peninsular: the newcomer Linares. And when tragedy befalls him, Ibarra the Creole rinds the Peninsular society of Manila ranged against him and decrying him precisely because of his Spanish blood. "It always has to be the Creoles!" say the Peninsulars upon hearing of Ibarra's supposed uprising. "No Indio would understand revolution!" In the accurst woods where his Spanish ancestor han ed himself, the embittered Ibarra ceases to be a naive Edmond Dantes and becomes a malevolent Montecris-

to.

Simoun

Revenge was sweet, how. ever, for the Montecristo of Dumas. The Simoun of Rizal is unhappy even in revenge. He is one of the darkest creations of literature, a man who believes salvation can come only from total corruption. " I have inflamed greed," he says. " Injustices and abuses have multiplied. I have fomented crime, and acts of cruelty, so that the people may become inured to the idea of death. I have maintained terror so that, fleeing from it, they may seize any solution. I have paralyzed commerce so that the coun try, impoverished and reduced to misery, may have nothing more

to fear. I have spurred ambition, to ruin the treasury; and not content with all this, to arouse a popular uprising, I have hurt the nation in its rawest nerve, by making the vulture itself insult the very carcass that feeds it!" Simoun is beyond any wish for reform, or autonomy. or reo presentation in the Cortes. " I need your help," he tells Basilio, "to make the youth reo sist these insane cravings for his· panization, for assimilation, for equality of rights. Instead of aspiring to be a province, aspire to be a nation. . .so that not by right, nor custom, nor Ian· guage, may the Spaniard feel at home here, nor be regarded by the people as a native, but always as an invader, as an alien." And he offers Basilio "your death or your future; wittj the government or with us: with your oppressors or with ),our country"; warning the boy i that whoever "declares himself nEjUtral exposes himself to the fury of both sides" - the most poignant line in the novel; though Rizal, when the moment of choice came, did not exactly dedlie himself neutral. But Basilio, even when final ly converted to the revolution, shrinks from Simoun's command to exterminate not only the counter·revolution but all who refUGe to rise up in arms; "All! All ! Indios, mestizos, Chinese, Spaniards. All whom you lind without courage, with· out spirit. It is necessary to renew the race! Coward fathers can only beget slave children. What? You tremble? You fear to sow death? What is to be destroyed? An evil, a misery. Would you call that to destroy? I would call it to create, to produce, to nourish, to give life!" Unlike Montecristo, Simoun fails. Dying, he flees to the house

SIMOUN

beside the Pacific where lives Father Florentino, and through Father Florentino, Rizal seems to an nul what he has been saying so passionately, during the novel, through Simoun. What had sounded like a savage SlJeering at reform becomes a celebration of, reforms, of spiritual self·renewal. Salvation cannot come from corruption; garbage produces only toadstools. In Dumas, the last words had been: Wait and hope. In Rizal, the last words are~ Suf· fer and toil. And the jewels with which Simoun had" thought to fuel the holocaust, Father Fiorentino hurls into the ocean, there to wait until II time "when men need you for II holy and high purpose." This final chapter is beautiful

JOSE RIZAL

';:X'~

-- '-..~7l

•

=--.-

., ,

,. tr ,. . -

. ~.

, .',

•

MARIA CLARA

WHY WAS THE RlZAL HRRO A C'ltWLI!f

THE ST • ..lAMES faCADE OF FORT SANTIAGO

but unsatisfactory. The Nolj Me Tangere had mocked the Daivete of the reformist, the futility of collaboration; EI Filibu6teriJmQ should, therefore, hate unequivo. cally justified revolution - bu& it takes back in the final chapter what it pushed forward in the preceding ones. What had happened? The Creole revolution had flopped. A few decades before, Sinibai· do de Mas had predicted Uae im· passe: "Among the whites born. in the colony, there arise locaJ interests opposed to those of the mother country and whtch end by arousing the desin! for independence. A Filipino Spaniard may be called a Spaniard but he has never ~n to Spain and has neither fr iends nor relatives there. lie has spent his infancy in the Philippines; there he haa enjoyed the games o( childhood and

known his rirst. Io,es; there be h.. domidled his soul. The Phil· ippines is hiB native land. But the Filipinos (that is, the Creoles) are continually snubbed. Their reo senment wben a boat Crom Cj· diz arrives in Manila with alcaldes maJores or military and finance oUiClftl iii so obvio\ls one must does one', eyes and even at times one', ears to avoid noUeinl it. "However, much .. the Spanisk officiall may Alppo.e the Filipi. DO Spania'ds to be dil!oyai and desperate, i& WIS not posIible tor me to believe that it would ever oceur to them to rile up and ann the natives (because the Creoles are) much lea loved than the Europeans by the Indios, with. out the support of the friars, without capital, and too weak a minority to subdue the more the :aoo,OOO rich, active and in· teli&ut Chinese mestizos and tile three and a hal£ million na· tm.. In case or a break, the Spa·

nish population rooted in the country stands to lose most; the Europeans can return to Spain, but the Filipino Spaniards will be uprooted, lose all and have to search for another homeland. Yet can these individuals in ques· tion be deemed stupid and blind if they favor separation from Spain when we repeatedly read in the history of popular up· risings that the most eminent men believe they can guide are· volution according to their plans, Ilfte'l: suspecting for a moment that they will rail victims of the revolting masses that they incite to revolt?" That indeed was what more or lea happened. As the insurgent Creoles were joined by the rising native ilustrados, initiative passed from one to the other; and the Creole lot cold feet with the thought of what might happen to bim if the Indio should rise up in ann&. For the Creole might think

~OSE

RIZAL

•

l.;iiij·'. •

-> -

. .. ••

•

THE EXECUTION OF RIZAL ON THE LUNETA

his insurgence the revolt of Filipinos against the Peninsulars; but to the Indio, it was merely a quarrel between one set of Spaniards and another set of Spaniards. And while the two sets qu arreled , the Indio snatched back his land. So, in Europe, while king ana bishop squabbled, t he bourgeoisie slipped through and seized power. But the abort ive Creole revolution did create a climate of subversion; to that extent, Simoun had succeeded. There's a clear line of development fr om 1872 to 1896, as we acknowledge by accepting Burgos as a national hero. But what happened in America did not happen here. An actual Creole revolt did not break out ; the Indio beat the Creole to the draw; and when the hour of reckoning came the

Creole sided with the hated Peninsulars - though he later somewhat redeemed himself by joining the second phase of the Revolution, the war against the Americans. When that, too, collapsed, the Creole returned to the side of the imperialist: the Partido Federalista was the Creole party. The failure of that party removed the Creole from the mainstream of the national life though, ironically, the very failure led to the realization of the old Creole dream: it was a Quezon that took possession of Malacaiiang. The modern descendants of the Creoles have had no one fate. The very rich ones, who were, in the 1870s, becoming more and more Filipino have, today, become more and more Spanish. The poorer ones have had, as Si-

nibaldo de Mas predicted, to search for a new homeland, Australia being the current goal of their exodus. Others, as a modern Creole observes, emigrate to San Lorenzo Village: "Go to the Rizal Theater any night and you'd think you were in a foreign country." But there's another segment that seems to be reviving what might be called the Spirit of '72 and which may be studied in an Emmanuel Pelaez or a Manuel Manahan, tentative Hamletish figUres that baffle us with their scruples, their militancies, their enigmatic "honor." Are they Ibarra or Simoun? Are they resuming an unfinished revolution of their own, the revolt of the Creole? The jewels of Simoun wait in the sea. Or are they surfacing at last?

The Eve Of St. Bartholomew

t. Bartholomew the Apostle was, according to the Gospels,

from Cana oC Galilee and, according to tradition, the first preach路 er of the Faith in Arabia and "In-

dia," meaning the Near East, where he is supposed to have suffered a particularly atrocious form of torture: he was skinned alive and then beheaded. For this reason, his images carry a large sharp knife, the instrument of his martyrdom. The religious wars in Europe were to associate him with another borror: the massacre of the Huguenots in Paris in 1572, on an August 24, which is St. Bartholomew's Day. The saint with the knife is the patron of Malabon town, where he has, through the centuries, like all our patron saints, acquired a Filipino look. He carries a native boJo, for one thing, and o n his feast day t he main street

of Malabon becomes two dense rows of impromptu stores where one may buy blades of every size and kind, from small balisongs, to kitchen knives and farm bolos, to enonnous butcher's cleavers. Through this chilling display of cutlery rides the bolo-wielding saint, his martyr's robe of crimson the very mood of the month, for August, in Philippine folk culture, is a red month, the amok month, the month of mad heat and madder typhoons and knifesharp tempers. In the old days, Filipino mothers feared to send thei r children to school on an August first that feU on a Friday_ The month was believed to be ominous enough without having to start on an ominous day, too. These folk beliefs provide the August epiphanies of the Katipunan with the atmosphere of saga and oracle. A school of thought

insists that the KKK proclaimed the 1896 revolt on the eve of St_ Bartholomew, August 23, and the bolo-wielder of Malabon certainly aided the bolo uprising: Katipuneros from the provinces found it that much easier to pass through the Spanish lines and congregate in Balintawak because they had the excuse of being on their way to attend the fiesta of San Bartolome de Malabon. When the Katipunan was exposed, on August 19, the government threw a cordon around Manila, sealing all exits. On the same day, Bonifacio issued a call to a general meeting in Balintawak of Katipu nan chieftains, to discuss the situation. By August 21, some 500 Katipuneros were gathered in Balintawak. The general meeting had been scheduled for August 24. We have no precise knowledge of when OJ where

ANDRES BONIFACIO

MALABON TOWN AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

the meeting that proclaimed the Revolution took plac~. In this, too, the Katipunqn of Manila has the wild vagueness of myth and prophecy.

In 1911, or 15 years after the event, a monument to the heroes of '96 was unveiled in Ballntawak, and this monument both expressed and produced the tradition that the revolt had started on that spot, with the "Cry of Balintawak," on August 26, 1896. This belief must have sprung very soon after the Revolution - or why would the monument have been built there? And the monument served to strengthen the belief until it became accepted as historical fact. Six years later, in 1917, another monument was set up about

three blocks from the Balintawak monument, in a neighboring barrio now variously called Kang. kong, Kaingin and Samson. This second marker - an obelisque topped by a native jar - express· es another tradition: that the Re· volution started on August 23. Says the Tagalog inscription: "On this site, the Most Venerable and Exalted Association of the

Sons of the People decided to reo volt, on the 23rd of August, 1896 (Sa pooh na ito ipinosiyo ng K.K.K.M.A.N.B. ang Paghihimagsih noong iko 23 ng Agosto ng 1896)." The site was the yard of the house of Katipunero Apolonio Samson and has long been reo garded as the place where Bonifacio and his men tore up their cedulas. This act of defiance was not, it seems, originally regarded as the historic cry. The picture we get is of the Katipuneros assembling in Samson's yard on April 23, fleeing from there when surprised by the Guardia Civil on August 25, then regrouping in Balintawak on August 26 to sound the cry for a general uprising and an attack on Manila. But three days later, on August 29, we find them attacking the garrison in San Juan town instead. Moreover, all these dates, save possibly the last one, are doubtful. In this matter of dates, too, there's a telling difference between the Katipunan of Manila and the Revolution in Cavite. The dates of Cavite have a firm

SAN BARTOLOME DE MALA BON

usable certainty; June 12, is the pre-eminent example, but Zapote, !mus, Binakayan, Tejeros and Maragondon, likewise have the clarity of events unfolding in the full light of history, as though the protagonists, while carefully recording each date, already knew it was historic. But the Katipunan of Manila has no dates for the same reason that myth and legend have no dates: because it moved on the level of folklore, not yet of history. To the mass of the Katipuneros, historic time had no meaning and no importance. Whatever happened didn't happen on a precise date but only in a once-upon·a· time, in ilia tempore. Modern man is Faustian and obsessed with definite when's and where's; he has a sense of history. Folklo· ric man lives by the moon and the seasons; what ceases to happen sinks at once into a past de-

THE EVE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW

void of chronology, where the reo cent, the ancient and the mythi. cal exist together, undifferentiat· ,d. How else explain that within a decade the dates of the Katipu· nan could no longer be ascer· tained? Two dates are given for the founding of the society. We will probably never know for sure when and where Bonifacio and his men uttered the cry of revolt. The dates of the first skirmishes are also fluid. Our concern to discover the exact correet dates characterizes us; the Katipuneros' unconcern for such trivial details characterizes them. To a bard's audience, it's the hero, the tale, the feat that matters. When you start asking when and where, you have passed from folklore to history. But when history has to ask those questions for pre.h~tory, which can't even see the point of the questions, the result is utter confusion, as in this mat· ter of the dates of the Kati~u.

""'.In 1916, Osmeila, opening the first Philippine Assembly, paid homage to the gallant patriots who tore their personal cedulas and waved their bolos "on that fateful day of August 26, 1896." Aguinaldo was of the opinion that the cry of revolt and the first battle were simultaneous, on August 29, in the attack on San Juan. In the early 19208, when Teo· doro Kalaw started research for his Revoluci6n Filipino, he was apparently already unable to locate exact dates, for he had to content himself with a once· upon·a·time statement: "The Re· volution began in Balintawak in the last week of August 1896." On the other hand Leandro H. Fernandez's Philipppine Revo/u· tion, which appeared in 1926, only a year after Kalaw's book,

offered a whole new set of dates; August 17 for the general meet· ing of the Katipunan chieftains in Caloocan, August 20 for the cry of Balintawak, August 23 and 26 for the first skirmishes, and August 30 for the battle of San Juan. The surviving leaders of the Katipunan were not of much help either. Santiago Alvarez wrote in 1927 that the Katipune· ros assembled on the farm of Tandang Sora in Bahay Toro on August 23 and there held a gen· eral meeting on August 24, a meeting that culminated with the decision to revolt and the cry of "Mabuhay ang anak ng bayan!" On August 25, the Guardia Civil arrived and dashed with the Ka· tipuneros in the general region of the three barrios of Kangkong, Balintawak and Bahay ~oro. Thus, if we are to believe Alvarez, the deeision to revolt was made on August 24, with the "Cry of Bahay Toro." In 1932, Guillermo Masangkay testified that the tradition of the "Cry of Balintawak" was conect, that it had taken place on August 26, and that the site was more or less where the 1911 monument stands. The memoirs of Dr. Pio Valen· zuela, pUblished in 1948, offered still another version, another cry: "the Cry of Pugad Lawin." According to Valenzuela, the meet· ing of the Katipunan chieftains was held , not in Balintawak, not in the yard of Apolonio Samson in Kangkong (anyway, who wants a "Cry of Kangkong"!) and not on the farm of Tandang Sora either, but in Pugad Lawin, in the yard of Juan Ramos Aqui· no, a son of Tandang Sora. The meeting, said Valenzuela, took place on August 23 and ended with the tearing of cedulas and the cry of "Mabuhay ang Fili· pinas! Mabuhay ang Katipunan!"

(

THE 9AlINTAWAK MOf<lUM£NT

Though these three Katipunan leaders wrote long alter the event, they claimed that their testimo· nies were based on notes they had set down during or soon after the Revolution; but the one actually contemporary account of the August events comes from the other side of the story, the Guardia Civil , in a report made by an officer on October 28, 1896. The report states that Bo· nifacio and 200 men assembled in Balintawak on August 23 and were attacked by the Guardia Civil on August 24 ; that they reo assembled in Balintawak on August 25 for a big meeting duro ing which Bonifacio's call for a revolution was approved by an overwhelming majority. As you can see, the Guardia Civil report closely sustains the Balintawak tradition. In 1956, there finally appeared an attempt, a masterly one, to put the events of August 1896 into some sort of lOgical se·

ANDRES BONIFACIO

quenee. In his Revolt of the Masses, Teodoro Agoncillo mapped out the movements of the Katipunan thus: an assembling in BaJintawak Crom August 19 to 21; a transfer to the nearby banio of Kangkong on the afternoon of August 21; a march to the farm of Juan Ramos Aquino in Pugad Lawin on August 22; a third transfer to the farm of Tandang Sora in the vicinity of Pasong Tamo on August 24; a retreat to Balara on the same day; and the march on San Juan on August

30. According to Agoncillo, the cry of revolt was raised in Pugad Lawin on August 23: "Only one mlm protested against the plan of revolt at such an early date, and it was Bonifacio's own brother-in-law, Teodo10 Plata. But he was overruled ... Bonifacio then announc8(d the decision and, standing on improvised platform, shouted: '<BrotheIS, it was agreed to continue with the plan of revolt. My brothers, do you swear to repudiate the government that oppresses us?' And the rebels, shouting as one man, replied: 'Yes sir!' 'That being the case,' Bonifacio added, 'bring out your cedulas and tear them to pieces to symbolize our determination to take up arms!' There was a rustle of papers and in a minute the yard was littered with torn cedulas. Amidst this ceremony, the rebels, with tearstained eyes, shouted: 'Long live the Philippines! Long live the Katipunan!' " Agoncillo's reconstruction of August 1896 places in doubt the validity of three monuments as historical markers: the 1911 Salintawak monument as a marker of the cry of revolt, the 1917 obelisque in Kangkong as a marker of the site where the decision to revolt was made and the cedulas were torn up and the

TANOANG SORA

1954 monument in Pasong Tamo as a marker of the first encounter between the Katipunan and the Guardia Civil, an encounter that Agoncillo places on August 25 but which the Pasong Tamo monument places on August 26. Two local celebrations also become erroneous in the light of Agoncillo's researches: the Balintawak celebration of the Cry on August 26, and the San Juan celebration of the first battle on August 29. However, Agoncillo's version has in tum been questioned,

THE CEOULA OF THE 18901

chiefly by the U.P. department of history: "All that he has done is to accept the version of Valenzuela without question. He has not told his readers why he considers the testimony of Valenzuela more reliable and more authoritative than that of any of the other contemporary witnesses." Replied Agoncillo: "Dr. Valenzuela was close to Bonifacio, he was with the Supremo during the tumultuous days after the discovery of the Katipunan, and he wrote his memoirs in the 1920s. On the other hand, Santiago Alvarez, cited by my critics, was not with the rebels during the critical hours of the Katipunan, but in Cavite. How, then, could he have known from first-hand knowledge when the Cry took place? Then, again, General Aguinaldo did not believe that the traditional Cry ever took place on August 26, 1896 ... Why did I give weight to the testimony of General Aguinaldo when the fact is he was not with the rebels at the time? Because his own man and representative to the Katipunan assembly, Domingo OrculJo, was with the rebels and reported back to Agui路 naldo what actually transpired. As to Masankay's testimony, I did not give much weight to his early testimony because while in 1932 he said that the Cry took place on August 26, 1896, he nullified this in 1947, in the course of an interview, when he said that the Cry took place on August 24, 1896. There are, therefore, two reliable testimonies in favor of August 23, 1896, as the correct date of the Cry. I accepted August 23 and implied in my book that the Cry meant the moment the rebels tore up their cedulas to pieces." Agoncillo's "two reliable testimonies" were, presumably,

THE EVE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW

THE CAlOOCAN CHURCH

those of Aguinaldo and Valen· zuela. But Professor Nicolas Zafra was to point ou~that Aguinaldo believed that the Cry was uttered in San Juan del ~onte, before the first battle; and as for Valenzuela, he had given other versions of the event - ~ut to the Spanish authorities, possibly under torture, as Agoncillo retorted. One difficulty is that the participants in the event didn't know they were uttering the "Cry of Balintawak," or whatever it prOperly is. That phrase was coined at a time when historical sub· titling was becoming fashionable: the "Brains of the Katipunan," the "Sublime Paralytic," etc. To ask a Katipunero about the "Cry of Balintawak" is, therefore, like asking an Englishman of Queen Anne's time about the "Augustan Age of English letters." We are looking for an idea we ourselves created. Confronted by the many different places offered as the site of the Cry and by the many diffe rent versions of what was supposed to have been shouted, we may, in despair or cyni· cism, run to the other extreme and declare that there was no "Cry of Balintawak" at all and that the belief about it was created when the phrase was

coined.. But the evidence is irresistible that there was, not one definite cry, but a general clamor, a chorus of rebellion, a public demonstration of defiance so dramatic it lingered in folk memory and begot the Balinta· wak tradition, the Balintawak monument, as well as the "Cry of Balintawak" phrase. To become so memorable, the demonstration must have been pop· ular, in the sense that it was beheld and acclaimed by other than the participants. And here we reach the heart of the matter. Agoncillo says that when he interviewed Dr. Pio Valenzuela, the old man exclaimed: "Mga loko ba kam;ng magsisigawan sa Balintawak nQ kitang-kita sa Ca/oocan (Were we fools to be shouting in Balintawak when that place could be seen so easily [rom Caloocan)?" The Guardia Civil were in Caloocan; Balintawak was an exposed place at the time, clearly visible from the hill that's Calooean. So, argues Agoncillo, the Katipuneros could not have raised the Cry in Balintawak, if only for reasons of safety; "Would Bonifacio or anyone in his position, endowed with a keen intelligence, be so rash as to hold a mammoth meeting and to shout at a place so conspicuous and so near Kaloocan, when the Spanish authorities were waiting for the opportune moment to pounce upon the rebels'!" Pugad Lawin, on the other hand, says Agoncillo, is a far more secluded place and, there· fore, a more logical site than Balintawak. But this point of AgoncilJo's and Valenzuela's can be disputed. In the first place, Caloocan town itself suddenly filled. up with a mammoth crowd dUring those days, and the mammoth crowd did not, apparently, alarm the

PINAGlABANAN MONUMENT

authorities. Alter the exposure of the Katipunan in Manila, great numbers of Katipuneros fled from the city and took refuge in Caloocan. The old folk there reo call that every house, every yard, even every tree suddenly teemed with refugees that August of 1896, and that the strangers aroused no suspicion because Caloocan, too, like Malabon, was celebrating its fiesta, the fiesta of St. Roch, which Caloocan used to observe during the third week of August. (Maybe we should look with a kinder eye on our town fiestas, considering the use· ful role they played in the Revolution!) In the second place, if Balintawak was too conspicuous a spot to be chosen by an intelligent man for a mammoth meeting, why did Bonifacio choose that site at all? His August 19 sum· mons to the Katipunan chief· tai ns bade them assemble in Halintawak. And how was it that they could stay there from

August 19 to 21 (if we accept Agoncillo's version), their numbers meanwhile swell ing to over a thousa nd? In the third place, if secrecy was needed for the meeting itself, then the site of the marker in Kangkong begins to look valid. We can imagine the Katipuneros, as their numbers swelled, deciding to move to the more hidden barrio of Ka ngkong, on ly a short walk away from Balintawak. Even today, despite the proximity or the highway, the site of Apolonio Samson's house is lonely, ob~ure, isolated, and vcry hard to find. It's in an "interior" reached by no street; you have to u.~e a footpath. And the place itself is pure, provincial countryside: giant thiclj:·boughed mango and tamarind and santol trees keep guard ove[ the marker, which is always in shado , and one guesses that this was deep woods in the old days. W\thin that sylvan gloom, the Katipuneros could well have assembled on the eve of 81. Bartholomew without fear of being seen. Having torn up their cedulas and decided on a revolt, they then emerged from the dark woods to proclaim their decision in public, in the "exposed" barrio Balintawak. (What was that Toyn· bee said about the withdrawal· and-return pattern in history?) For if this Cry of the Katipu· nan was an act of defiance, then it had to be made, not in secret places like Kangkong or Pugad Lawin, but in a manifest site, a theater of epiphany; and Valenzuela's and Agoncillo's contention that it would have been stupid of the Katipuneros to be shouting in so conspicuous a site as Balintawak misses the point of the act, of the epiphany, completely. If you're going to make an act of defiance against somebody,

ANDRES BONIFACIO

BATTALION FLAGS OF THE A N AK NO BAYAN

you don't sneak into a closet and there whisper your defiance to the walls. You faee your adversary and defy him, where he can see and hear you, tho ugh you may take care to be a couple of steps away from the reach of his [ist. Moreover, all the versions of the August events point to one con· clusion: that Bonifacio was bent on getting the Katipuneros to commit themselves to revolution. One might even say that fo r Bonifacio the exposure of the Katipunan was not a bad but a good thing: the time of temporizing was ended, the time of action had been forced on the Katipu· nan, whether it was ready or not, whether it had enough men and arms or not. In all the versions, we see Bonifacio tryi ng to wh ip

up the Katipuneros to a point where they wou ld spontaneously declare themselves ready to fight. He tore up his cedula, they fol· lowed suit. That was one way of getting them to commit themselves to rebellion, one way of leading them to a point where there would be no more turning back. But the tearing up of the cedulas, whether done in Kangkong or Pugad Lawin, still did not commit the Katipuneros completely, because it was done in secret. To get them fully committed to the cause of revolt, they must be made to repeat their defiance in public. Could this not have been the reason for the "Cry of Balintawak."? In that case, Bonifacio, far from feari ng that he and his men

THE EVE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW

might be noticed by the authori· ties in Caloocan, may have deli· berately chosen Balintawak tor that very purpose: to dety the government, to challenge the government, to bring on an act· ual encounter with the govern· ment. Once his men had struck agai nst the troops of the govern· ment, there would indeed be no turning back for the Katipunan. So, the first encounter with government troops, which tradi· tion places on the same day as and right after the Cry, becomes the logical result of th at cry of revolt, as the Cry itself is the 10' gical result of, but not the same thing as, the mutilation of the ceo dulas. What we get is a th ree·act dra· rna in three connec~d places: the tearing up of the cedulas in Kangkong, the Cry in Balinta· wak, the first fighting in Pasong T!-I E BON IFACIO MONUM ENT ON TI-IE CAlOOCAN fl OTONOI!. Tamo. Tradition is thus seen to have offered a more supple and was in Ramos' place in nearby coherent account of what hap· Up, this time in Pugad Lawin, pened in August 1896 than any Pugad Lawin that Bonifacio where there 's now only a wood. openly re pudiated on August 23, that has subsequently been given. en sign proclaim ing it as the site The Balintawak trad ition, how· 1896, Spanish authority and that where the Katipuneros tore up ever, seems to be on the way out, his fell ow Katipuneros tore up their cedulas. The U.P. has com. though it was the first one in. their cedulas with the cry : 'Long mitted itself to placing a perma. The Philippine Historical Assolive the Philippines! Long live the nent marker on the site. Katip unan!' ciation has requested the conec· One wonders if it would not " It we, therefore, are to conti· be wiser and safer, if a change tion of "a historical error in the nue commemorating the first annual observance of the first has to be made, just to call the Katipunan's cry of revolt the manifestation of defiance" of the ", open manifestation of defiance to the regime existing at the time Revolution: 'Cry of Caloocan" ? All the places of the Philippine Revolution, it mentioned as the possible site ''This event has been heretowould be proper to do so on Balintawak, Kangkong, Pugad fore observed on August 26th of August 23rd ot each year and each year for the last six decades Lawin and Bahay Toro - were, call it the 'Cry of Pugad Lawin as the 'Cry of Balintawak,' be· after all, once part of old Caloo· (Hawk's Nest).' " can . cause on that day in 1896 a Span. ish contingent reported they had This is substantially the Agon· The " Cry of Calooean" would cillo version. Since Ago ncillo clas hed with Katipuneros in Pa· at least return glory to where the song Tamo, Balintawak; actually himself has said that his recon· glory belongs, to the town of Ca· the skirmish too k place the day struction is "speculative" and loocan, the town that was the before in the vicinity of the based mainly on the word of one birthplace of the Revolution, but home of Tandang Sora whither man, Dr. Valenzuela, it seems which has had its most his toric the rebels had gathered after rather imprudent to advocate places chopped away from it by their initial meeting a few days changing the "Cry of Balintawak" a blade madder than 51. Bartho· earlier at the yard of Tandang lomew's. to the "Cry 'of Pugad Lawin." Sora's son, Juan A. Ramos. It Still another monument may go

ANDRES BONIFACIO

Why Fell The Supremo?

]" lustrado means, literally, lillu· ruinated, and implies, as in me· dieval Europe, an esoteric group (for example, the illuminati) lift· ed above the mass of the people by a special intelligence. Even in our day of mass culture, illumi· nati exist: we have kept the legend of the mad scientist, who is our equivalent of the mad saint. Nevertheless, we can no longer comprehend a time when anybody who had gone beyond book lore and folklore was reo garded as more than just a wise man, was deemed to be reading the world in the light of a supernatural illumination, and was feared as a sorcerer. The early philosopher-scientists of medieval Europe - Roger Bacon, Petrus PeregrinllS, Albert Magnus were popularly believed to be magicians and to have had trafFic with the Devil; they were seers

and sorcerers who could read the seerets of the earth and divine the future, and they gave rise to the Faust legend. This tradition of the sage as seer haunts our use of the term ilustrado, for t,he ilustrado arose among us when the Philippines was emerging from its own Middle Ages. Rizal was a prophet not only in his own country but even to his own family, who saw him as a dreamer of dreams foretelling the future. To the common folk his skill in the sciences indicated possession of magical powers; and this view of Rizal as magus survives in the cult of that strange sect in Laguna which worships him as a kind of super· natural being: the god of Mount Makiling. A similar mysterious light envelops, in popular mythology, the figures of Burgos, Mabi· ni, Aglipay and Aguinaldo. Iloca-

no peasants used to say of Bishop Aglipay that he had only to put his hands to his head to make his white hair turn black; and there's a legend in Kawit that the General tamed the cafre that haunted the Kawit seashore and put it to guarding the bridge beside his house. The Filipino ilustrado, who represented the highest reach of the rising bourgeoisie of the 19th century, may thus be said to have worn the conic cap of the sorcerer; and the Revolution can be told as the tale of the Sorcerer's Apprentice. Of the various embroiderings of that tale, one version has the sorcerer laying out the ingredients for a mighty experiment and then going to sleep until the propitious time for his brew, having bidden his apprentice to keep the caldron boiling; but while he slept the

ANDRES BONlF ACIO

apprentice decided to brew the ingredients himself, tossed them all into the caldron, and began stirring the mixture, whereupon there was a terrific explosion; and the sorcerer awoke to find his cave on fire, and rushed to the caldron to save what he could of his brew, but in vain, because the time for it had not yet come. Of the many comments made on the Revolution, that is the one that is never dared made: that it was premature, that it was untimely, that the hour for it, as the ilustrados had been saying all along, had not Xet struck. Even from just the practical point of view, the Revolution was inopportune because it cost the lives of the very men who could have made a true Filipino nation work: Rizal, and a whole host.. of the most brilliant minds of th~coun. try, as well as Bonifacio, the sorcerer's apprentice, himsel\" It must be granted that Bonifacio could well have seen the time as propitious, with Cuba in revolt and the home government

in Spain in the confused coils of a regency and on the brink of war; but RizaJ, who had a cooler eye, cast it not across the sea at Spain but across the street at his own countrymen and judged them not yet ready to revolt. History has vindicated him. Being premature, the Revolution proved abortive. We boast that ours was the first revolution in Asia; we fail to add that the other revolutions, though they came later, were more successful, presumably because the time was ripe for them. The Americans didn't really interrupt our revolution; it had already flopped before Dewey steamed into Manila Bay; and but for Dewey, Aguinaldo and his colleagues might have spent the rest of their lives in exile, frittering away the time in one vain conspiracy after another, or being used, as Ricarte was used, by some power that coveted the Philippines. That explosion in the sorcerer's cave delayed instead of hastening the sorcerer's work; for the Filipino ilustrado had a revolution in

progress that got stymied by Bonifacio's explosion. The fashionable view of the Revolution today is that it was a proletarian uprising that the bourgeois "captured." At first it was said that the capture was effected at the Malolos Congress, some two years after the Revolution started. The date has apparently been advanced, since it's now being said that the capture was made at the Tejeros Conven路 tion, six months after Balinta路 wak. We may expect some future theorist to advance the date still further and declare that the capture was accomplished right in Balintawak. All this sounds like an egghead effort to make Marxist boots out of Philippine bakY'路 What's evident is that, soon after the Revolution started, there was a power struggle in Cavite between Manilenos and Cavi路 tenos. The question to ask is: Who captured which? Was it the Cavitenos who, driven from their province by the Spanish forces, fled to Manila and there tried to

CAVITE TROOPS IN NOVELETA BEING FIREO ON BY SPANISH BATTERIES IN DALAHICAN

THE EVE OF ST. BARTHOWMEW

take over the successful revolution of the Manileiios? Or was it the Manileiios who fled to Cavite and the re tried to capture the successrul revol ution of the Cavi· teiios? And the geography of the struggle is answe r enough. What becomes clearer all the time is that there were two dis· tinct but simultaneous revolu· tions in 1896. Both had the same impetus, the Katipunan, but that was the only link between them, and it was dissolved within six months. The first revolt, the Manileiios', actually lasted only a week, the last. week of August, 1896. It ended, to all intents and purposes, with the failure to seize the powder house in San Juan. and the failure to enter Ma· nila, or at least put it lh~der siege. The second revolt, the Caviteiios', lasted about five years, frpm the last week of August, 1896, to Aguinaldo's capture in Paia,\an in 1901. When we speak of\. the "Unfinished Revolution," , we should ask: Which one? The one Bonifacio failed to finish, or ~he one the Americans at first backed

and then t racked down to the wilds of Palanan? But fr')m a larger view there was only one revolution in 1896 - and it was not Bonifacio's, though he tried to ride it. (He got thrown off al most at once.) T his larger view compels us to see the entire period from the Propaganda Movement to the Phil ippine.American War as a single event: the Revolutio n of the llustrados. Those much·maligned folk are now pictured as timorous, selfseeking and too finicky to be anything but ineffectual angels. But they were the angel (to use the word in its show business sense) of the Revolution, because tbey provided it with its capital of ideas and ideals. It's not true that they we re anti·revolution, or would have preferred a gradual evolution into nationhoodi but it's true that they wanted a revo· lution that didn't requ ird the firing of a single shot - anti the idea is not as preposterous as it sounds, since history has shown it's possible. We have only to

look over our shoulder at Austra· lia, which revolted against the mother country and became a nation without waging war. The Filipino ilustrados were propounding in the 1800s what Gandhi would preach half a century later in a purer form. They themselves conducted thei r revolution mostly on paper; and who will say that their paper war was timorous, self-seeking, fi· nicky and ineffective? We now say that Rizal's novels created the conscience of a race. The writings of Burgos, Del Pilar and Lopez Jaena so inflamed the national temper a revolution of some sort became inevitable. If the Katipunan could speak of restoring a prehispanic paradise, it was because of research done by the ilustrados and propagated by them to revive national pride. Bonifacio, their ardent student and apprentice, followed their words so closely it's even said he took the idea of storming the powder house in San Juan and then advancing down Sta. Mesa into Manila from EI FilibusCeris-

THE FRONTLINES OF THE CAVITE REVO LUTION ACROSS THE NOVELETA 8RIOGE

as mo, where Simoun had a similar plan of entering Manila by way of 8ta. Mesa. Using only their pens, the ilus-

trados created a situation that made it impossible for the old order to continue in the Philippines; sooner or later, it must fall. Even when they advocated full incorporation into the Spanish state, they did so knowing

that this, too, would sooner or later result in separatism and full nationhood; for the Philippines as a Spanish province would en· joy a more autonomous govern· ment, more liberties, more access to progressive ideas, more opportunities for education; and these things would in turn so elevate

and unite and strengthen the people they must finally break away and stand on their own. It was only a matter of time. The Propaganda had opened the eyes of the people, was educating them, would push them to assert the right to self-determination. The Sorcerer had assembled aU the ingredients, was iust waiting for the ripe time to set the brew a·boiling. Then the Appren· tice blew up the cave with his explosion. The Katipunan Revolution in Manila was that power· ful but brief explosion. In the Cavite Revolution, the Sorcerer is back at work, is trying to save what he can of his brew, and al· most succeeding. But into the picture now enters another sorcerer, a foreign one of more potent magic, to wrest away the wand of the Ilustrado, who can no longer fin ish his work, having become iust a creature of the foreign sorcerer. So, our hope lies with the Apprentice, who went back to serving his appren· ticeship, but is on the way to be· coming a magus himself. That is why, in spite of that bungled explosion, we honor Bonifacio and look forward to, not

ANDRES BONIFACIO

back at, him, becuse he is, for us, the masses that are now. in the words of a contemporary ilustIado, serving out their apprenticeship. The first explosion was premature and abortive, and we call it the "Unfinished Revolution." The next explosion should be more illuminating. BONIFAC IO'S STANDARD.

The Caldron Of The Sorcerer

The Katipunan was of Manila, but the Revolution was of Caviteo After the cry of revolt in August, 1896, and the Battle of San Juan, the Katipunan fades away into the hills of Balala, and the Revolution emerges in Caviteo The greatest drama in our history was to have had Manila ror its stage but didn't. Its placenames are all provincial: Imus, Binakayan, Tejeros, Maragondon, Biak-na-Bato, Kawit and Malolos. What was conceived in the city never saw the city. Manila's Katipunan fai led in the Battle of San Juan - failed to take the city, failed to take the suburbs, failed to become an army. But the Revolution in Cavite had a baptism of triumph. Only a couple of days after the San Juan fiasco, the first three towns in Cavite to revolt - San Francisco de Malabon (now General Trias), Noveleta and Kawitwere in the hands of the rebels. And these rebels belonged, from the start, not to one army, the Katipunan, but to two: the Magdiwang and the Magdalo. The daughter councils of the Katipunan had completely outgrown their parent. Bonifacio's Katipunan was never more than a band of guerrile-

ros, disorganized and inerfectual - swooping down from the hills to sack a town, only to be driven out the next day. But before the end of '96, the Revolution in Cavite had taken almost the entire province and had turned in into a formal front. Bonifacio's men, bottled up in Balara, were awed to hear that the Caviteiios had built a system of trenches and fortifications. had an organized army led by generals, had a hierarchy of officers in uniform. The telling fact here is that Spain's military attempts to crush the rebellion were directed, not against the Katipuneros in the Balara hills, but against the insurrectos in Cavite. No great armies were sent against Bonifacio; the Spanish expeditionary troops were hurled against Aguinaldo. Bypassed and ignored, Bonifacio gravitated toward the heart of the revolt: it drew him; he could not draw it to himselC. When he went to Cavite in December, 1896, it was ostensibly to mediate between the Magdiwang and the Magdalo, and he felt flattered that his authority as Supremo was still recognized in Cavite; though the truth is, only one faction, the Magdiwang, had invited him to mediate. But the moment he set foot in Cavite, already free land, he realized he had no authority at all there. He spotted in Imus an ofricer he believed responsible for the San Juan fias-

WHY FELL THE SUPREMO?

but when he ordered the officer arrested, nobody obeyed him. To the Caviteiios, even the Supremo, the founder of the Katipunan, was but an outsider, was but one more in the stream of refugees from Manila for whom the Caviteiios of the time coined a contemptuous term: "alsa balutan." The outsiders were suspected of having come to Cavite merely to save their skins; but having saved their skins, they would now capture the victorious Revolution of the Caviteiios, the uprising in Manila having flopped. If there was anything in which the Magdiwang 3{ld the Magdalo were united, it w~ in this hostility to outsiders. Tl,le refrain in the meetings between the two camps was ever "We, the rebels of Cavite," or simply "We of Ca· vite"; and the refrain voiced the Caviteiios' refusal to hav,\ their war directed, orthemselvesJuled, by people "from other pueblos." The officials of the first rc~olu tionary government elected in Tejeros were all Caviteiios, save for Ricarte (who was, however, CO;

AGUINALDO'S STANOARD

though born in the nocos, considered a Caviteiio because he had long resided in the province and had married there) and Bonifacio - and the objection to Bonifacio's election as secretary of the interior was, as one Cavi· teiio put it at the convention, that "we have in our province a lawyer, Jose del Rosario," more apt for the post. Bonifacio thought the ¥ap;diwang his ally; but when it came to choosing between Bonifacio and Cavite, the Magdiwang chose Cavite. The convention in Tejeros, though Magdiwang.packed, discarded the Supremo, an outsider, in favor of Aguinaldo, the Caviteiio, though Aguinaldo be·

longed to the hated faction of the Magdalo. And when BoniCacio had fallen, the Magdiwang made no move to save him. The revolutionaries had closed ranks behind Aguinaldo, and the price of unity was Bonifacio's blood. That's the kindest explanation for the fact that Bonifacio's own men turned against him, testified against him, and allowed him to be killed. As in Shakespeare, the tragedy was of the hero's making. Though already only a SUpremo in name when he went to Cavite, Bonifacio could still have become, in reality, the leader of the Revolution by proving himself forceful enough and politic enough to unite the feuding factions. Instead, he played one against the other. Though the Magdalo had not invited him to mediate, it seems to have been willing enough to wait and see what the Supremo could do; and there was, conse· quently, during that December of 1896 - the moment when unity could have meant the triumph of the Revolution - a

OEFENSE EARrHWORKS OF THE CAVlTE REVOLUTION IN 1896

•

- --

•

---

ANDRES BONIFACIO

chance (or him to win over the Magdala jUst by showing he had no other desire but to fuse the rival armies in Cavite into a single force against the government's crumbling troops. Instead, he antagonized the Magdala by acting, when he arrived in Cavite, "like a king." In Cavite, he could have accomplished what he failed to do in San Juan: lead the Revolution into Manila. But to be able to lead the Caviteiios, he had to fire

them with an enthusiasm largel than their local pride, and to symbolize this larger spirit himseJr by rising above both the Magdiwang and the Magdala. Instead, he became as pettily factional as they were. He was already suspect to the Caviteiios in general because he was an outsider, and to the Magdala in particular because he was related, through his wife, to the chiertain of the Magdiwang; and he should, therefore, have been

exquisite in his carefulness not to lean toward anyone faction, to quench the suspicion that he had come, not as a disinterested mediator, but as an interested meddler scheming to make Cavite's success his own. Instead, in the fatal Imus Assembly, he openly snubbed the Magdalo, operuy fa路 vored the Magdiwang. The riCt he should have healed, he Ient into a chasm. And into the chasm he had created, he himself felL Five months after Imus, he lay dead on a hillside in Maragondon.

EMIUOJACINTO, BONIFACIO'S RIGHT-HAND MAN

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

our heroes. Andres Boni路 facio has had, like an uncouth guest at a swanky party, the most trouble getting seated at the table of honor - if all that talk about his being "downgraded" has any meaning. The ilustrados are partly blamed for this; but the fact is, it was an ilustrado group, headed by Don Fernando Maria Guerrero of E/ Renacimiento, that started the Bonifacio cult back in the early 1900s, when the Supremo was all but . forgotten, and Aguinaldo and Ri路 zal were getting all the attention. The argument that he was "downgraded" in American days because he was a revolutionary doesn't hold water. Didn't Aguinaldo lead a revolution; aren't Rizal's WTitings dangerous and inflammatory? Or maybe we were being snobbish and couldn't stomach Bonifacio because he was lowhorn. But we had no trouble placing Mabini the peasant, though Mabini's origins were miserable.

WHY FELL THE SUPREMO?

Since Bonifacio's place in our pantheon is now secure, it's time we faced up to the leasons we have not been so ready to exult over him as over Rizal - and the reasons go back to racial memory, back to the attitudes of the men who knew Bonifacio. He was not channing, he was not likeable; he had a rough temper; he was impatient, rash and domineering, he had the insecurity of the poor, the touchiness of the upstart. Pio Valenzuela is said to have described him as "algo despota" rather despotic. There's the story that when a brother-in-law he had appointed minister of war demurred on th~und that he knew nothing of mllj.tary science, Bonifacio screamed. "Do as you're told, because I'll shoot you if you don't!" Such stories may be apocryphal, but they indicate the contemporary view of him. Not apocryphal at all are the stories of his behavior in Cavite, which turned Cavitefio feeling against him and ultimately led to his killing. Freud has a theory that Jews bear a burden of guilt because they murdered their leader Moses, a man reputed to have had a violent temper and domineering ways. Isn't it possible that our ambivalent attitude toward Bonifacio - a reluctance to "accept" him at the same time that we insist he should be placed higher than or equal with Rizal- a product of similar racial guilt feelings? Bonifacio, like Moses, undertook to lead his people out of Egypt into the Promised Land; but, unable to bear his temper and his harshness, we did away with him; and haven't we borne a feeling of guilt in regard to Bonifacio ever since? He is such an uncomfortable hero. About Rizal we can say righteously: ''The Spaniards. they killed him." But about Bonifacio, we cannot be so

smug. We know who killed him. It was our hands that pulled the trigger, our hands that swung the blade. It was we who decreed, on that mountain in Maragondon, that he was not to finish the Revolution. We don't call him martyr - because who was the butcher? The man who fell in Maragondon was so much of his native city that, when uprooted from its streets by the Revolution, virtue seemed to have gone out

of him: he lost authority and direction. The Bonifacio in Cavite is a displaced person, a being out of its element, a lost wraith blowing this way and that. Happier then to dwell on the Bonifacio of Manila, on the boy born in the city on the day of its patron saint, Andrew the Apostle, whose name he was given. He was of Tondo, born in Tutuban, on a street that's now the railroad station's plaza. There were six children in the

OEOOATO ARELLANO. THE FIRST SUPREMO OF THE KKK

family, four boys and two girls; the mother died soon after the birth of the younger girl. Andres studied under Maestro Guillermo Osmeiia; early acquired a command of Spanish and fine penmanship When he was 14, his Cather died. He became the head of the family. and he supported it by making and peddling paper fans and bamboo canes. On the side, he drew ads for business firms. His fiISt outside job seems to have been as bodeguero for a mosaic tile factory in Sta. Mesa, owned by the Preysler family. The Spanish patrona, Dona Elvi-

ra Preysler. is said to have recalled later that the young Bonifacio was a voracious reader; she noticed that he had a book propped open in rron\ of him even while he was eating lunch. Sometimes he would approach her and ask what this WO~ 0' that phrase meant. She ruse found that he took careful ote of how she, a Spanish-born laoy, spoke. Once he asked her why she pronounced it virtu when it was written ujrlud; she explained that the Spanish-born omitted terminal d's. It was more colloquial and smart to say uste than usted. Her young learner was clearly the poor little boy with an eye for that room on the top. In a freer society. he might have replayed the Horatio Alger story and ended up a successful indus· trialist with a penchant for dropping his d's. In the Philippines of the last half of the 19th century, he found his drive to rise blocked; and the frustration may explain the souring of temper, the rage to pull down a society in which he could not climb. Of the books listed as his favorite reading when young, the significant one is not Dumas or Sue but "Lives of the Presidents of the United

ANDRES BONIFACIO

States." In America, a poor boy could become president; in the Philippines, a poor boy could fee l he was condemned to be a bodeguero all his life. Bonifacio showed his drive to rise by ceasing to be a bodeguero. He wasn't out of his teens yet when he became an escribiente, or clerk, for Fleming and Co. Presently, he was something even more exalted: a sales agent for Fressel and Co. He dabbled in dramatics (it was fashionable to be an aficionado of the teatro) and read the latest French novels as well as those daring writings of the Propagandists (they were becoming the rage among the educ· ated classes). In the style of the young bucks of the period, he joined the Masons. Every Filipino who went to Europe to study came back a member of some Spanish lodge or other - but that was an ultimate distinction that the sales agent of Fressel and Co. could not hope for. The Bonifacio of this period eyes us coolly and stylishly from the only authentic photo we have of him, taken, it is said, on his second wedding; and it jars with our picture of him as the Great Proletarian, in camisachino and kundiman trousers. This wedding-day Bonifacio is certainly groomed to the ears. The hair is slick; the brow is polished; and he looks resplendent in wing collar, cravat, vest and morning coat - a very dandy. It's as if the poor boy from Tondo were show· ing all those rich boys in Binon· do and 5ta. Cruz that he, too, knew how the best people dressed. Ironic that the best· known Bonifacio portrait mocks the tag we have put on him. By 1892, the Fressel agent had become prominent enough to join the gatherings of the i1ustrados. When Rizal founded the Liga, Bonifacio was present, was

elected treasurer of a society In which, according to IWtana, only the well-to-do or the cultured ("las clases acomodadas (} ilustra· das") could become members. The Liga never really functioned. Three days after it was organized, RizaJ was arrested and banished to Dapitan. The following night - July 7, 1892, a Thursday Bonifacio joined the smaJl ilus· trado group that, at No. 64 Azcarraga, founded the Kati· punan.

The Apprentice's Explosion

izal's faJl was the decisive moment in Bonifacio's life. Up to that moment, we have seen the poor boy from 'fondo striving to rise, and rising, until he found himself in dazzling com· pany, side by side, in fact, with his idol, the illustrious Dr. RizaJ. The fall of his idol could not but disillusion him. If so rich and learned and famous a man as RizaJ was helpless against society, what chance had a poor devil like Bonifacio? From Madrid, Del Pilar had been urging the formation or a group composed not of the wellto-do and the cultured but the poor and ignorant; and the Katipunan followed Del Pilar's idea of organizing the masses for reo volt. Yet through the next two years, 1892.93, Bonifacio kept a foot in both worlds: the world to which he had aspired and risen, and the world from which he came. On the one hand, he strove to keep aJive the ilustrados' Liga, which was supposed to work for peaceful reforms; and on the other hand, he was propa·

WHY FELL THE SUPREMO?

gating the Katip unan as a proletarian society geared for violent upheaval. But he was still so tentative about all this he could during those years still carry on a leisurely courtship. He had married young; his first wife had died a leper. When pushing 30, he fe ll in love with an 1S-yearold girl, in Caloocan, Gregoria de Jesus. He wooed her [or a year; in March, 1893 , he married her twice: in church and before the Katipunan. During this period, the Katipunan was, in the words of one historian, Manuel Artigas y Cuerva, "asleep.. .so as not to preju· dice the Liga Filipina, which was still being propagated." Two things may have dedded Bonifa· cio to break finally with the world of the well-to-do and cast in his lot with his own k~d. One was the rapid, amazing s'(eli in Katipunan ranks (14,000 ","em. bers in the Manila area alone) and the otber was bourgeois disapproval of the secret society, In a group like the Liga, Bonifacio could never be more than a second ranker, a hustler, the chap to send out to solicit funds, because he did that so well: the perfect agent. But in the Katipunan, he was, at last, at the top, number one, head of a mammoth organization, with vast powers, setting up and deposing officials. The break with the ilustrados is dramatized in the story of how he walked out of the Masonic lodge to which he belonged. The story goes that the lodge, which counted with both Spanish and Filipino members, alarmed by rumors that it was being identified with seditious elements, convoked a junta blanca, or informal session, to clear itself of the charge and take a stand against any separatist or revolutionary movement. In the middle of the discussion, which was, of course,

in Spanish, Bonifacio is said to have sprung up and roared, in Tagalog: "lyan ba lang ang poguusapan nalin? At kakasti-kaslila pa kayo! Diyan na kayo! (Is that all we're going to talk about? And in Spanish yet! Good-bye!)" And he clapped on his hat and walked out. From the last part of 1893, the Katipunan stood alone, having severed all links with the Liga and freemaso nry. Bonifacio had said good-bye to the world in which a poor boy couldn't become president. If he had been dazzled by it once, he was now bitter against it. Here begins his hate·the-rich campaign, that ra· the r sinister plot to implicate in the schemes of the Katipunan the rich folk who had snubbed the society. Bonifacio had approached the wealthy Don fran. cisco Roxas, and the don had snapped that he didn't care to listen to "to n ~erias." Bonifacio had approached Antonio Luna, and that suave cosmopoli~ had

said no with a quip: "u Napoleon was Napoleon, it was be· cause he had heart, intelligence and, above all, money." All these rich folk who said no to the Katipunan got their names listed down as active or passive members and contributors to the cause, and landed in jail and the torture chambers when the revolt exploded and the Katipu nan pa· pers fell into the hand of the authorities. Bonifacio did spare his idol Rizal, though Rizal also said no; but Rizal's name was al· ready so involved in the Katipunan he might just as well have been among those falsely listed as adherents; and the hero was destroyed by the very society that revered him as its spiritual caudillo and honorary president. Rizal and company had said no to the Katipunan , no to the Revolution, because, as they kept saying, the time was not ripe, the people were not ready, and there wasn't enough arms or funds or leaders.

THE HOUSE ON A2CARRAGAo WHERE THE KKK WAoS FOUNDED

They were still saying that when their sorcerer's caldron blew up in their faces, and in the face of the apprentice too. Within a week, Bonifacio's Revolution, the revolt o( the proletariat, had collapsed. He was a good agent, an excellent organizer, hut he just wasn't a military leader. Perhaps, if the Revolution had been fought out on the streets of Manila, at street barricades, he might have done better. He knew the terrain, he knew the people, and they would have been fighting on home ground. But out in the wilds of Calaocan, and even more in Cavite, Bonifacio was on strange ground. a city boy trying to impose himself on provincial folk. The Bonifacio of Manila ends with the fiasco of San Juan. !read. ership had already passe;d from his hands when, late in 1896, he, too , made his way to Oavite. Group after group of his men had been melting away from his ranks and were later found enlisted in the armies of Cavite, where the Revolution of the Bourgeois was having far more success. In the struggle there between Manila and Cavite, the last word belongs to a Caviteno, Santiago A1varez, at the convention in Tejeros, where the two revolutions had their climactic confrontation: "If you wish to establish any other kind of government more suited to your fancy , retire to your province and conquer territory from the Spanish government as we have done here, and establish there whatever government you like, and no on~ will interfere with you. We Cavitenos do nol need anyone of your caliber as an instructor." Rather a crushing answer to modern theories that the Cavitenos or the ilustrados or the bourgeois "captured" the Revolution

ANDRES BONIFACIO

of Bonifacio and the proletariat, and that the government established by Cavite's triumphant Revolution should have been this or that or the other and not what it actually was. The A1varez retort moreover proves that, even then, the Cavitenos already knew that their Revolution was a completely original and autonomous movement, different and distinct from the Bonifacio uprising, if only because that uprising was such a flop. By failing to " conquer territory from the Spanish government," the Manila proletariat failed to gain the right to establish a government "more suited to their fancy." Nothing was captured from them because they had captured nothing in the first place.

Imus To Maragondon

The rive months from Imus to Maragondon were the five acts of the hero's tragedy. The first act ends with the ImusAssembly, where the Magdalo made a most significant observation: that the Katipunan had become superfluous. This was the first avowal of the fact that the Katipunan of Manila and the Revolution of Cavite were two different things, and that the latter was independent of the former. But Bonifacio had yet to learn the distinction, and he had, as chieftain and co-founder of the Katipunan, automatically taken the presiding chair at the Imus Assembly, to the mingled bafflement, scorn and amusement of the Magdalo, who saw him merely as an outsider, an a/sa ba/utan, the Manila chidtain whose uprising had so dismally failed. In Magdiwang territory, he had heard himself hailed as "the ruler of the Philippines," and though, like Caesar, he had refused the crown, he seems to have accepted the title. Ambition

INITIATION Of APPLICANTS FOR KKK MEMBERSHIP

WHY FELL THE SUPREMO?

and arrogance were read into his actions, and it must be said that he went out of his way to offend the people he should have conciliated. Act two displays the failure of Bonifacio's mission. Having aggravated instead of mending the breach between two factions, he must take the blame for the demoralization in both camps, for the presence of the belligerent outsider in Magdiwang ranks led to panicky rumors: that he was an agent of the government, that he was a tool of the friars, that he had come to make money and to subvert the ~evolution in Cavite_ With both camps hysterically suspicious of ~he other, it sometimes happenea that neither would go to the other's help in the field, and the result. was that the government troops began to advance in Cavite. By March, they were threatening lmus. Act three is the Tejeros~on vention, the archetype of P~ilip. pine polls, for in this, our first election, all the familiar ingre· dients already appear: the body· guard, the drawn gun, the ballots prepared by one hand, the vio· lent protests, the attempt to annul the voters' will. Though Bo· nifacio's Magdiwang dominated the convention, tbe Supremo lost. The Magdiwang elected its lead· ers into office but cbose Aguinaldo of the Magdala for their pres· ident. In a way, Bonifacio had united the two factions just by pushing tbe idea that he, an outsider, should head the revolution· ary government in Cavite. The two factions fused against him, and the government they formed supplanted the Katipunan. The Supremo had fallen . He left the convention hall crying that the election, over which he himself bad presided, was irregular and invalid. Act four finds the hero plung-

ing to his doom. He separates himself from the Cavite revolt, rejects Aguinaldo's plea for cooperation, issues an order for the recruiting - by force, if neces· sary - of a rival revolutionary army, defies Aguinaldo's authority by arresting Magdalo officers and declaring void Aguinaldo's appointments - all this at a time when the Revolution in Cavi te was being pushed back by government troops_ In Naic, he was surprised by Aguinaldo himself in the act of plotting with Mariano Noliel and Pio del Pilar, two generals of Aguinaldo's army. Bonifacio and his two brothers fled from Naic and tried to make their way to Batangas, whe re a rival government had been set up for him to head . Aguinaldo ordered his arrest. On April 27, 1897, the three Bonifacio brotbers were captured. in lnaangj Ciriaco was killed during the skir· mish, Andres and ProcopiO were taken to Naic for trial. Act five, the trial and execution of Andres Bonifacio, begins

in Naic and ends in Maragondon, for Naic fe ll to tbe Spanish forces during the trial and Aguinaldo had to move his government to Maragondon. On May 6, the court-martial found Andres and Procopio Bonifacio guilty of trying to overthrow the government and asked for the death penalty. Instead of confirming the pro· posed penalty, Aguinaldo changed it to "indefinite banishment," which amo unted to an order of pardon, but was persuaded. by a group - which included exhenchmen and fe llow conspirators of Bonifacio - to withdraw the order of pardon and allow the execution of the prisoners. On the morning of May 10, 1897, while tbe Spanish forces were advancing on Maragondon, Bonifa· cio and his brother were taken up to the mountains and shot. His death has been used against Aguinaldo, but Aguinaldo comes off admirably in this case. Whether tbe later Aguinaldo was as power·drunk as Mabini charged, the early Aguinaldo cer-

THE CHURCH IN TONOO. BIRTHPLACE OF BONIFACIO

tainly was not, but rather showed himseJr to be forbearing and magnanimous, and obsessed not with personal glory but with the success of the Revolution. He was a mere bystander though already a famous general at the Imus Assem bly, when the newlyarrived Bonifacio took the pre· siding chair as though it were his by right; and from that moment Aguinaldo knew he could not support the presumptuous Mani· leno as the leader of the Revolution. Yet Aguinaldo did not see himself as the leader, considering himself not educated enough. He had his own candidate: Editberto Evangelista, the European.

educated engineer w~o had built the forti fications of the Revol ution in Cavite. It's tantalizing to ponder that, but for an enemy bul et, the leader of the Revolution might have been, neither Bonifac)O nor Aguinaldo, but Evangelista, who com bined the qualities of the man of thought and the man of action. Would the Revoilltion have had a different history if it had been directed by a technical man like Evangelista rather than a soldier like Aguinaldo who was himself doubtful of his intellectual competence, or a thinker like Mabini whose intellect lay captive in a crippled body? But a bullet felled Evangelista in the Battle of Zapote, on February 16, 1897; and after that, there was no longer any doubt that Aguinaldo would become caud illo. Yet he became president th rough no political exertion of his own. When elected by the Tejeros Convention, he was not even in the convention hall; while Bonifacio was battling with the electors, Aguinaldo was battling the enemy at the front. Summoned to take his oath as president, he refused to leave his post. It was explained to him

ANDRES BONIFACIO

that his election could mean the unification of the Magdiwang and the Magdalo. He replied bitterly that unity had come too late ; unity in December, 1896, might have brough t the Revolution to the enemy 's strongholds; disunity had brought the enemy to the citadels of the Revolution. Having agreed to assume thp presidency, his first concern was to try to placate the raging Bonifacio; his peace overtures were rebuffed. Nowhere was Aguinaldo's magnanimity more manifest than on the day he surprised Bonifacio plotting with Generals Mariano Noriel and Pio del Pilar to set up a counter-revolutionary army. Nobody would have blamed Aguinaldo if he had had the three men shot on the spot (his men surrounded the place); yet Aguinaldo allowed Bonifacio to escape, and all he did to Generals Noriel and Del Pilar was order them to re turn to their posts. He still did not issue any order for Bonifacio's arrest; only when the plot in Batangas became notolious and the [Ieerng Bonifacio, headed for Batangas, made mock of the revolutionary government, by declaring its acts null and void. did Aguinaldo finally decide that the Revolution was not to be destroyed from within by the man who was its parent but had become its grimmest foe. Bonifa· cio had to be removed, if the Re· volution against Spain was not to degenerate into a sq uabble between Bonifacio's men and Aguinaldo's. But to the end Aguinaldo hesi· tated to punish his adversary. No one can acc use him of vind ictiveness. The death penalty was instantly comm uted, the order of pardon released; and his act . . seems even more ImpreSSive when one notes that the very men who had, only the month before, been plotting with Boni-

facio - Generals Noriel and Del Pilar - were now the loudest in protesting the pardon and in clamoring for Bonifacio'sexecution, as though they would wash away their sin with the blood of the man who had led them to sin . So, the Ka tipu nan of Manila perished in Cavite, where it had found itself a stranger, an outsider, a superflui ty and an obstruction.

Death In The Morning

E yewitness accounts of the Revolution disappoint because they usually give a stark resume of the events that leaves out the details. We never know what the people were wearing, what the weather was, what the scene looked like. A fasc inating exception are the unpublished memoirs of Re· volutionary Veteran Castor de Jesus, first cousin of Bonifacio's wife Gregoria. Veterano de Jesus was among the first recruits of the Katipunan, followed the Supremo to Cavite, was in Mara· gondon during the trial and execution of the Bonifacio bro· thers; and his memoirs, set down soon after the Revolution, in Tagalog, pack detail so densely that scene after scene is recreated for the reader. According to the memoirs, the Supremo left for Cavite early in December, at five in the afternoon, carrying with him for ex· penses only 27 pesos. Accompa· nying him were his wife, who was pregnant, his secretary Emilio Jacinto, and a few others, all of them on horseback. Left in command of the Katipunan head-

WHY FELL THE SUPREMO?

quarters at the Real de Balara was Julio Nakpil, segundo supremo. Before he rode away, Bonifacio spoke to his men: "Brothers, r must leave you because duty calls, but r feel sad to be separated from you, since we have been together in suffering from the start. If I leave you well, I hope to find you well on my return, like harmonious brothers with one mother. I shall not stay there long; I merely wish to gratify t Ilr brothers who are inviting me." De Jesus notes .hat the sky darkened as the Supremo rode away, and that the men left behind felt meJancholy: "We worried, as thoug'h conscious of some mishap threa~ning to berail them on their trip," Bonifacio and his party entered Cavite through ZaP.Qte, had to stop in Bacood because his wife had suffered a miscarriage. To Bacood, to welcome the Suo premo to liberated land, 'went

GREGORIA OE JESUS

Generals Daniel Tirona, Artemio Ricarte, Mariano and Santiago Alvarez, and Crispulo and Baldomero Aguinaldo. The Supremo was taken to San Francisco de Malabon, where he was me t by a church procession headed by the parish priest, who was a Tirona, and who sang a Te Deum mass in his honor, though he was a Mason. Castor de Jesus, who had been left behind in Balara, presently made the perilous journey to Ca· vite, too, not only to visit the Suo premo but to see for himself the trenches and fortifications the Manila Katipuneros had heard so much about. He noticed that troops originally with the Manila Katipunan were now in Cavite, having joined the armies there, and that the Caviteiios referred to such outsiders as "alsa balutan." A fellow outsider told him: ''That's how they call us who come here - alse balutan - and what they mean is that we have come here only to save our lives; and they have reason to say so, for many of us there are now here." De Jesus found the Supremo in San Francisco de Malabon; though at war the town was gaily preparing to celebrate its fiesta as usual. Castor de Jesus most keenly sensed that this was free land when he saw four friars caged in the town jail. But all was not well with the Supremo; he talked of returning to the Real de Bala· ra and muttered that he would rather die than see regionalism reigning in the land. When De Jesus next visited Ca· vite, the Supremo was already in flight. De Jesus joined the flight and was captured along with the Bonifacios. His memoirs give an intimate account of the last day in Mara· gondon. On May 9, Bonifacio's wife suddenly realized that it was

her birthday and began to weep as she recalled how her parents never let the day pass without a celebration. Bonifacio, who was feverish from his wounds (he had been wounded during his cap· ture), tried to console his wife: "Alas, you tied yourself to a troubled life!" She hastened to assure him that she was not la· menting her lot: "It had always been my dream to find as my companion in life a man with a golden love for rreedom and for our country. It seems that the fortune you dream of is the fortune you get. And if now these moments of misfortune come to us, what shall we do? They come to us from the Lord." According to the memoirs, Colonel Lazaro Makapagal, accompanied by Jose Zulueta, came that night to the house where Bonifacio was kept, and announced that he had orders to fetch the prisoner. The prisoner had to face a brief hearing LJut would be returned at once. His wife protested that he had been in pain all night and she begged for bandages with which to dress his wounds, which had begun to fester. The colonel explained that his soldiers had brought a hammock in which to carry the prisoner. Because Bonifacio was taken away in the night, a belief arose that he had been executed at midnight. Col. MakapagaJ's account is that he fetched Andres and Procopio Bonifario on the morning of May 10, with orders to take them up to Mount Tala and there open and lead to them the sealed letter he had been given. DUring a rest in the ascent, Bonifacio, who had beeen carried up in a hammock, begged Makapagal to open and read the letter, ~hough they had not yet reached Mount Tala. Makapagal consented; the letter was an order to shoot the

ANDRES BONIFACIO

prisoners, in accordance with the sentence imposed by the courtmartial, the order of pardon having been withdrawn by Agui. naldo. According to Makapagal, Bonifacio crawled on his knees toward him, £lung out his arms and begged to be forgiven. Shots rang out; Procopio, who had been led away some distance, had been executed. Bonifacio found the strength to stagger up to his feet and to flee toward a promontory encircled by a stream. The soldiers caught up with him near the stream and shot him there. Then they buried him on the promontory.

Bonifacislas object to this story and argue that- a man of Bonifacio's character "'{Quid never have crawled on his knees to beg for his life. What happened in the Maragondon mountains that morning of May 10, 1897, will probably never be ascertained since no other eyewitness account has appeared to corroborate or disprove Makapagal's statement. The Supremo was not yet 34 when he died, only eight months after his Katipunan rose in revolt.

Apprentice Versus Sorcerer

T o the popular mind, Bonifacio always means the Bonifacio of the first period, from Tondo to San Juan: the father of the Katipunan, the initiator of the revolt. The Bonifacio of the second period, the anticlimactic Bonifacio in Cavite, hardly exists for us, save as a shadowy figUre whose end is a mystery; most people still have a vague idea that

he was killed so that leadership might be seized from him. But in the struggle between him and Aguinaldo, it was Bonifacio who was trying to seize power. Lead· ership already belonged to Aguinaldo, first by popular acclaim, because of his victories in the field, and then by official act, in the Tejeros Convention. Bonifacio's tragedy was that he assumed, when he came to Cavite, that he was the leader of the Revolution there too. When he fonnd he was not, he tried to seize leadership, first by using the Magdiwang against the Mag. dalo, and then by using the Da· tangueiios against the Cavitenos. The first effort almost wrecked the Revolution; the second effort cost him his life. In Manila, his aim had always been to unite the people; but in Cavite his ago grieved, resentrul policy became ever to divide, divide, divide. The fatal error that Bonifacio made in assuming that his Kati· punan and the Revolution in Ca· vite were one and the same thing is still being made today. A theory currently in vogue is that the Philippine Revolution was a proletarian movement that was, when already successful, captured by the middle class. It's an ingenious reading of history, but demonstrably wide of the mark. The Revolution sprang from the Katipunan - but what the Katipunan was, the Revolution was not. The Katipunan was plebeian and it railed at once as an uprising; the Revolution was bourgeois from the start and it succeeded up to a point. No question at all that the Ka· tipunan was proletarian, that Bo· nifacio, Jacinto and the other Sons of the People were proletarian, and that their uprising in the outskirts of Manila was, therefore, a proletarian movement, a revolt of the masses. But the

same terms can be applied to the Revolution in Cavite only if the revolt there was of the peasants. Were Edilberto Evangelista, AItemio Ricarte, Jose del Rosario, Emilio Riego de Dibs, the Triases, the Thonas, the Alvarezes and the Aguinaldos peasants? Yet it was men such as these who organized the Katipunan in Cavite a Katipunan that must, therefore, have been very different in tone, temper and style from the society in Manila - and it was this Cavite movement of engineers, lawyers, schoolmasters, poets, town mayors, businessmen and small landowners that became the Revolution. What need had the burghers to capture a revolution they themselves had launched? On the contrary, it was the Manila proletariat, in the person of Bonifacio in Cavite, which tried to capture the successful revolution of the bourgeois, its own having flopped. When we say that the Revolution had, in its initial phase, no support from the middle class, what we're actually referring to is the very wealthy class, the upper middle-class, the aristocracy. But the Revolution itself, the successful Revolution of Cavite, was middle class, was of the petite bourgeoisie, which is, after all, what has pre~minently been regarded as the middle class since Flaubert undressed it for our scorn. Wedged between aristocracy and proletariat, sometimes longing to rise, ottener fearing to fal l, this class for which the epithet is smail - small businessman, small landowner, small pro· fessionaJ - has been much reviled, but from it have ever come the intellectuals, the mists, the technicians, the innovators - and the rebels, for the class that's mocked for its prudence regularly produces iconoclasts. Snubbed by those above and nervously

WHY FELL THE SUPREMO?

snubbing those below - that's the history of the shabby-genteel;

and it's the history of the first put of the Philippine Revolution,

a bourgeois manifestation. It's in this light that the drop-

A COURT RECORO SIGNEO BV BONIFACIO OURING HIS TRIAl.

100 ping of Bonifacio in Cavite should be read. He felt himself a stranger in Cavite, and quite rightly; to the movement there he was a foreign body that had to be expelled. He was simply out of place among the bourgeois. He was self-taught, they were school~ucated, and could, from their own ranks, assemble an entire government, as they did in Tejeros, having enough legal, technical and military talent. He thought of revolution in terms of motherland and patriotism and liberty and sacrifice and courage; they thought of it in terms of trenches, fortifications, guns, funds and generals. The difference in outlook had been expressed even before the Revolution, by Riza~ and the ilustrados, in the reasons they gave for not wanting a revolution. If the masses rose in revolt, they would be but a mob, disorganized and ineffectual; a revolution could not succeed without educated leaders and arms. We now laugh at those qualms; we mock Rizal and the ilustrados for their excessive prudence; and we claim that Bonifacio proved all the learned men wrong by hacking down the might of Spain with no arms save bolos. But the glaring evidence of 1896 is that Rizal and the ilustrados were proved right, absolutely right, by the event. The last part of 1896 was a kind of laboratory in which two experiments were being conducted at the same time to test the correctness of the ilustrados' warrung. On one side, in the environs of Manila, was a revolt of the mass路 es, a movement of bolos. It was very heroic, picturesque and dramatic - but it got nowhere. It failed in San Juan, it failed in San Mateo, it failed in Balala; and similar bolo movements it in-

ANDRES BONIFACIO

THE POPULAR IMAGE OF THE GREAT PROLETARIAN

spired in nearby provinCes as quickly crumbled. The Katipunan depended chiefly on numbers, gauged success by the multitudes that flocked to its stand路 ard; but these multitudes didn't harden into an army and dismally proved that, with all the zeal in the world, you can't win a war with bolos. If the Katipunan uprising, so swiftly checked, had been all there was to 1896, it wouldn't be a special year in our history; the uprising would be but one more on the long list of our abortive revolts against Spain,

and Bonifacio but another name to place beside Diego Silang's and Francisco Dagohoy's. But simultaneous with the Ka路 tipunan uprising outside Manila was the Revolution in Cavite, which had educated leaders who knew just what to do. In every town where they rose, the first places seized were always the courthouse and the garrison, and both places always yielded stocks of arms. The rebels thus had, from the start, arms with which to face the troops sent against them, and got more arms by de-

101

WHY FELL THE SUPREMO?

BONIFACIO'S BROTHER PROCOPIO. WHO DIED WITH HIM

feating the troops. Trenches and fortifications were then built, a hierarchy of orricers was established, and Cavite thus had an organized army within four months after the first outbreak of rebellion in August, 1896. Within that period - during which Bonifacio's men were still brandishing bolos in futile hit-and-run raids on the towns around the Balara hills - the Cavitefios had gained control of their province, were carrying the war outside its borders, were already talking of organizing a government, but never

lost sight of the fact that, as the ilustrados had said, a war could be won only with an organized army, trained leaders, and arms. Arms were seized , bought, hoarded, and jealously nursed. (Two charges against Bonifacio were that he appropriated government guns and tried to induce soldiers to join him bringing their arms.) Aguinaldo was willing even to interrupt the war, just so he could get a chance to buy more anns: the reason behind the Pact of Biak-na-Bato_ What we see, then, in 1896 are

two parallel but distinct movements, two rebellions that could not be more unlike each other. One was plebeian, instinctive, and in vain; the other, bourgeois, sophisticated, and effective. The first never even got close to its objective - the attack on and capture of Manila - and frittered away the rest of the year captive and impotent in the Balara hills. The second enjoyed one triumph after another, amassed territory, and pushed forward, not only in the field of battle but also of politics, advancing from the Convention in Tejeros to the ~pub足 lie in Kawit to the Congress in Malolos. Since this revolution was, from the first moment, controlled by the bourgeois, its ideas and ideals were necessarily those of the men who directed it; and it's perverse to accuse those men - or, rather, the class to which they belonged - of "betraying" the ideals of the Katipunan. These men did not "capture" the Katipunan; they very pointedly abolished it. If the Revolution ended up bourgeois, it was because it started as bourgeois in the first place, was bourgeois from the first battle of San francisco de Malabon and right through the Congress in Malolos, which was the inevitable, the logical result of this movement of professionals and landowners. The Manila Katipunan could be captured and its ideals betrayed only if its uprising had been successful, had become the Revolution, in which case it would have had the right to impose its ideas on the entire country, the burghers in Cavile included_ But the Katipunan uprising floundered; Cavile's Revolution flourished - and how can the defeated impose themselves on the victorious? That, in fact, was what Bonifacio tried to do in Cavite, and what he was

AN DRES BO NIFACIO

102

THE HI L L OF MARAGONOON WHERE BONIFACIO PERISHED

not allowed to do. The Congress in Malolos could have been of the proletariat only if the revolt of the masses, Bonifacio's re. volt, had succeeded. It didn't; the Revolution of the Bourgeois did. So, the Malolos Congress was of the bourgeois. From this point of view, the Katipunan was a fai lure, Bonifacio was a failure. Nobody betrayed him or his revolution; he destroyed both it and himself. For the pity of it is that, when he went to Cavite, he could have got the means to make his revolution succeed. Behind him in Balara and Montalban and Marikina was a rabble whose bolos had been proved futi le; but in Cavite stood an organization - a professional army (the soldiers were sometimes paid) and the technical talent he was so sorely in need of. With tact and a show of modesty, he could have won over this organization and used it to establish the supremacy of the Katipu nan. His name still had magic in Cavite; emi nent gentleme n like Edilberto Evangelista

humbly stood in the reception comm ittee to welcome the labor· er from Tondo. But by choosing to give an impression of arrogance, "as though he were a king," he kindled the prejudices against him and stiffened cl,1n and class opposition to his lead· ership. In the (irst place, he should not have assumed that he was the Supremo of the Cavitenos, if o nly because his military record could not bear comparison with theirs. If his armies had taken, say. the whole province of Mo· rong and were still holding it at the time he went to Cavite, he might have strutted there with reason. But since he had won no ground wo rth the winning and what troops he had still hid in the h ills, his lordly man ner could not but make him a figure of fun in the eyes of the Cavitenos, who naturally began to circulate malicious stories about the fiasco in San Juan . But perhaps he could not help the arrogance, for our poor An· dres was a Manileno. From time

immemorial, the Manila boy who goes to the provinces has felt himself a king compared to the rustics, though he may, back in the city, have but a hovel for a home. The Man ileno's innate sense of superiority may explain Bonifacio's behavior in Cavite, a behavior that had disastrous consequences, for it intensified Caviteno clannishness. In the end, Bonifacio found himself left ou t, as an outside r, even by the clan he had espoused. Ma nileno pride had crashed against provincial togetherness. He was an outsider in an even deeper sense, fo r in Cavite he fo und himself in the midst of a class to which he d id not belong. A little modesty, a li ttle humility might have wo n him its sympathy, might have persuaded the burghers to overlook his low ori· gins and lack of education; but as he provoked provincial clannishness, so he provoked bourgeois snobbery and, by seeming to be pushing and presumptuous, anta· gonized people into regarding him as an upstart. The cl imax here was the gibe in Tejeros that maddened him almost to the point of killing, a gibe that implied a man as ignorant and lowborn as he had no place in a government of the educated and the genteel. T he incident - which led to his declari ng the Teieros election invalid and to his defiance of the government and to his death - floodlights the Cavi· tenos' awareness of the differ· ence in social level between their Revolution and Bonifac io's Katipunan. Snobbery was one of the kill· ers of the Supremo; but it and the other fo rces that dest royed him, he himsel f had provoked. The death in Maragondon was a true tragedy, because the tragedy sprang irresistibl y (rom the chao racter of the hero.

Our Second Greatest Anti-Hero

Himself speaking, the General defines his background: provincial, petite bourgeoisie, landed gentry, small enterprise, conservative and official. The vara de mando, or stalf of authority, resided with the family. The Cather had risen from

clerk to banister, was mayor of Kawit lor so many terms his reelections produced a ritual cry:

''The Lord has risen again," Though of suspect sympathies during the Cavite Mutiny of '72, he was on the best of terms with the friars, or, at least, with the

Recollet administrators of the Kawit parish. When he died, he lay in state in the town church, on a catafalque three tiers high, and eight priests escorted his bier to the grave. In the Aguinaldo memoirs (Mga Gunita ng Himagsikan; the English translation, Memoirs of

the Revolution, is by Luz Colendrino-Bucu) the General could, in extreme old age, still look back with affection to the Recol· let curll, Fr. Toribio Bunel, the "close friend of my father" who had ordered that magnificent fu · neral grlltis et IImore. An exam· pie of how harmonious the rela· tions were between the State, as represented. by the Aguinaldos, and the Church, as represented by the Recollets, in the tiny or· derly world of Kawit. Of those who started the Revolution, its chieftain had the least call to do

"'.The seventh of eight children

and the youngest boy, the Gen· eral announced two tendencies from the womb: a tendency to "martyrdom" and to timidity. The mother began labor on a Passion Friday (or Viernes de Dolores) but three days later,

on Holy Monday, the child was still reluctant to join the world. The rather had to explode a giant firecracker to make the shy child jump out. Violent force was therefore responsible for the General's birthday on March 22,

1869. The saints (or the day were Deogracias (Thanks to God) and Bienvenido (Welcome) but the father decided that neither name suited the situation and chose a humbler ma rty r's name, Emilio, for the difficult boy. The Gen· eral would think himself "des· tined for martyrdom" because he was born on the saddest week of the year and carried a martyr's name: "Maybe that's why from child· hood my life has been full of suf· fering and sorrow and hardly was any bliss ever mine in life." But like giant firecrackers, es·

EMILIO AGUINALDO

106

THE GENERAL'S ft!.,OTHEA

pecially for one who describes himself as a timid child, are the two other names he took \ Colon (his name as a Mason; af~r the hothead adventurer Columbus) and Magdala (his name in the Katipunanj after the wanton who became the Magdalen), as well as the name he gave his trading boat: San Bartolome. In Philippine folklore, St. Bartholomew stands for violence, because he wears blood-red, brandishes a bolo, and is feasted in August. (If you need knives, all kinds of knives, from butcher to balisong, you can buy them at the August fair of St. Bartholomew in Malabon, which served the KatipunelOS as a pretext for traveling during the Au gust o f '96,)

The revolt of '72 figures in the General's childhood as a martyrcomplex item. The reign of terror in Cavite sent everybody fleeing from the towns_ In the panic of flight the three-year-old boy got dumped in a thicket by a frantic cousin and was later found there hoarse from squalling, being bitten by ants_ He had just recovered from smallpox,

which had almost killed him; now his sickness worsened again. ''This happening is one more proof of my being a martyr." And the finding in the thicket recalls the finding of another liberator, Moses, in the bulrushes. "They say that from childhood I was extremely meek and shy (lubhang kimi at mahiyain) and such was I until I grew up and acquired sense." Did the meekness, the timidity come, as he thought, from the kabaitan impressed on him by his parents? He adds a significant detaU: he was considered the ugliest in the family. But he does not confess to any self-consciousness, as Rizal did, about a defect that the two men shared: both were very small of stature. The smallness was to impel Rizal to tower in intellect; the young Aguinaldo was not similarly driven. He was sent to study in Manila but failed in the school he was sent to, a private school in Binondo. He was put in Letran but had to be taken out and placed under tutors. He was returned to Letran but rejoiced that a cholera epidemic enabled him to go home to Kawit and

abandon schooling for good, when he was only 13. The first President of the Philippines was a school dropout. He says he was teased and vexed by his classmates but does not say what about. His shortness? his shyness? his homeliness? his homesickness? For, all the time in Manila, he ached for the home in Kawit, where they prayed the rosary every night, the trisagio every morning, and people pointed to the gobernadorcillo's boy as the "Little Captain." Whatever it be that gave the young Aguinaldo such a dislike for learning, it was fatal to our history. The most unheroic statement in his memoirs is that one about not having a liking for learning because he believed what was being said then: "It's bad to be learned; you're either hanged or exiled." To a true heroic spirit, that would have been a gauntlet to pick up, recklessly and defiantly; learning wou ld have been imperative pre路 cisely because it was so dangerous. But the Aguinaldo who cites that saying to justify himself young for not doing his lessons and going instead to the Paseo de

THE PUENTE COLGANTE OVER THE PASIG IN MANILA

101

OUR SECOND GREATEST ANTI·HERO

Magallanes to watch the ships coming in and going out "Though lazy in my studies, I acquired a little interest in Geography" - is still speaking as a petite bourgeois: careful, cautious, prudent, politic, safe. If books meant having to risk your skin, the hell with books. But his lack of culture was, at a crucial moment of the Revolution, to embarrass his relations with his

own class. Had he been, like Bonifacio, from the lower orders, the lack of education would not have been emba;\assing; and what learning he haa. picked up would Bonifacio, a have been, as cause for admiration, considering the circumstances. But Aguinaldo was a country gel\tleman, the son of a gobemadorcillo, the boy pointed out in public as the "Liule Captain" He w~ of the gentry but had wilfully not developed himself to meet the gentry standards of that time and he was to feel guilty about this when forced to deal with the great world outside Kawit. Had he remained simply of Kawit - a country squire, a small·town mayor, a small merchant - his deficiencies would not have mattered; but when catapulted onto the national - nay, the international - stage, his own guilty consciousness of those deficien· cies was bound to result in a most equivocal attitude towards his intellectual betters: a mixture of deference, awe, resentment, suspiciousness and hostility. In this, there's a vivid parallel with Magsaysay. Magsaysay, too, was of the country landed gentry but did not, for lack of education, mea· sure up to gentry standards. In an American-oriented society, Magsaysay could barely speak English; in a European-oriented cultu re, Aguinaldo could barely

"in

EOILOERTO eVANGELISTA

speak Spanish. Magsaysar, con· scious of his deficiencies~ began by deferring to intellectuals like Laurel and Recto, but once he had gained status as the pet of the master race - that is, the Americans - he turned against the native intellectual commu· nity, including Laurel and Recto. Aguinaldo, conscious of his defi· ciencies, began by deferring to the ilustrados, principally in the person of Edilberto Evangelista, whom he wanted elected presi. dent at Tejeros; but when, after Biak.na·Bato, he became the pet of the Americans, he turned hostile to the ilustrado class. principally in the person of An· tonio Lunl. The evolution in both cases is obvious: an inferiority complex is having its revenge on what it felt inferior to before gaining status. Magsaysay could think of Laurel and Recto: "I can and did - become President; can they?" Aguinaldo could think of Luna and company: "When I was almost winning the war in Cayi· te, where were they?" What thought itself inferior now feels

itself superior and in a position to annihilate its embarrassment. The post.'53 Laurel and Recto are "contemporaries" of the as· sassinated Luna. Aguinaldo could feel comfortable only with intel· lectuals from a lower cI:w - that is, a c1:w he could feel superior to - like Mabini, who was in a reverse situation: of the educated class culturally but not of it eco· nomically, and therefore as un· comfortable as Aguinaldo before the authentic Senor llustrado. And therefore as resentful of it. (Mabini, t('o, blocked Luna, though with less reason, since Mabini, too, had snubbed the '96 revolt.) Unhero ic of intellect, the General was moreover anti-heroic in spirit. This is not to say that he lacked courage; what he lacked was boldness. He reads a warning against, not a challenge to, audacity in the story of the moth and the flame - which he cites in his memoirs without in· dicating any awareness that Rizal had drawn a very different be· hest from that story. Speaking of the fiasco of the August '96 up· rising in CaloGean, he says he thought then that the Katipune· ros under Bonifacio, should they fight without arms, would only be like the moth that dares the blaze of a flame: "Mahahalulad lamang sa gamu·gamoog sumasa· gupa sa ningas ng apoy. " On the one hand, Aguinaldo is here in complete agreement with the ilustrados, who, from Rizal down, counselled with bourgeois prudence against rising up with· out arms. To the enlightened, a pr udent revolution was not a contradiction in terms. However, the Bonifacio fiasco proved that bourgeois prudence had been right all along. Aguinaldo was to learn from that fiasco; he himself would not rise until armed; the first thing to do was get arms.

108

"My group agreed that we had to devise a ploy to enable us, when we rose, to have arms with which to fight the enemy~' Aguinaldo was not going to be, like Bonifacio, a rashling moth. And this bourgeois good sense explains why the bourgeois uprising in Cavite was initially successful, in contrast to the instant flop of the proletarian uprising in Caloocan. Aguinaldo, to repeat, here acted in the spirit of his class. But, on the other hand, he was not as large as the spirit of his class; he had only its prudence, not its poetry. and prudence can carry a movement only so far. Then you will hll'{c to have imagination, even the\rashling imagination of the moth. Rizal, too, was bourgeois, but because there was a poet in him he could read the moth-and路flame sto,," differently. For Aguinaldo, th~ flame signified only danger, whioh one must not dare like a silly ~oth. But for Rizal, the flame meant the lure of the bright, the beauti路 ful, the splendid, the gloriOus; and how wonderful of the moth to feel the attraction of glory, though this be to its death. The poetry in Rizal contradicted his prudence; there was no such contradiction to complicate and enlarge the Aguinaldo character. The crucial point of his careerand of our history - must be read as his reading of the mothand-name story. Down the Camino Real he rushed, during the summer of '98, until he reached the very gates of Manila and victory was his for the taking. But the city blazed before him like a name - not the bright, beautiful, splendid flame of glory, but only the flame of danger that a good bourgeois doesn't dare like a moth. So he retreated from the blaze of that flam e. And bourgeois prudence lost us the Revolution.

EMILIO AGUINALDO

AGUINALOO AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

The amazing thing is, not only that these qualities of his manhood are already present in his youth, but that even in old age he still displays them as he recalls, for his memoirs, what unhappily happened, and telling it like it was. He was all of a piece, mi General, and one winces as he trots out, in old age, the cliche prudencies that shaped his youth: Bad To Be Learned, You'll Be Hanged; and Don't Be Like The Moth In The Flame; and (in a whole rush in Chapter II) Res-

peet Your Elders, Be Thrifty, Get AJong With Others, and Pray The Rosary Every Night. Yet he seems to have realized early that being very careful and getting along with the world and not making enemies and aU that kabaitan didn't bring happiness. He fell in love with a girl but her mother objected. He desisted. He fell in love with another girl and his mother objected. Again he desisted. But not without a whimper: "I asked myself if I was really destined for martyr-

OUR SECOND GREATEST ANTI-HERO

AGUINALDO'S SEAL

dom even in love." The self.pity is natul,ll enough in a young man, but sounds strange when recorded 'fithout irony by an old man remembering, still telling it like it was, as though nothing had happened in between to change him. The Municipal Captain

The reluctant scholar who went home to Kawit during the cholera of '82 had another excuse for leaving school: his father had died, the family was hard·up for a time, he had to help his mother run their panocha factory. Then he bought a paraw and went into trade, taking Ka· wit salt and bolos to Mindoro and the Visayas and bringing back rattan, wax, fiber, tan bark and other forest products. He branched out into cattle, started a ranch with 16 cows. All these ventures prospered. Of one voy-

age on the San Bartolome he remembers jumping into the sea to subdue a stuhborn hooked fish and discovering that he had fought and killed a huge shark. At 17, to evade conscription into the army, he accepted an ap· pointment as cabeza de barangay, though the chief duty of the office - to collect taxes meant having to pay for those who couldn't. He had been cabeza for eight years when elected town head. This was the position of gobernadorcillo that the Mau· ra Reform had retitled capitan municipal. An Aguinaldo (his brother Crispuio) was the outgo· ing and last gobernadorcillo: and an Ae:uinaldo as well was the first capitan municipal, in the person of the 26-year-old Emilio, who was sworn into office on New Year's Day, 1895. ~ the vara de manda passed from brother to brother, "he was very happy, I was very sad and tearful; I don't know why - still like a child!" But that very night he was secreUy initiated as a Mason and, under the name Colon (because of his sailor years on the San Barl%mi?), became a member of the Pilar Loge in Imus. He says he joined the Masons because he had been stirred by the writings of LOpez.Jaena, Del Pilar and Rizal; but one doubts he was that well read. There was a snob quality to Masonry then; if you were a personage you were assumed to be a Mason; and it was as capitan municipal that Aguinaldo qualified for membership in the prime club of the ilustrados. In fact, that New Year's Day of '95 bring!; out the snob in the General. He notes that he was sworn into office by "the Most Reverend Fidel de Bias, ex-provincial of the Recollets," and he spent the day hobnobbing with friar dignitaries and the "magino-

109 ong principales" of the town. Towards midnight he is with another select crowd, being sworn into Masonry by a Castaneda, an Espinosa, a Paredes, a Padre Severo Buenaventura, and thus becoming part of the local ilustrado community. Aguinaldo could get along with both of the two worlds of his day, with the friars and the anti·friar. His was a politics of convenience. When he became town head, Kawit was divided into two factions, the Aguinaldos and the Tironas, and the first thing he did was win over to his side the Tirona leader, to the annoyance of his own fam ily. But by annulling the opposition he could "fully expect that my administration would be tranqui1." Still, the man who, at 26, thought himself "tike a child" was becoming a bit more complex. He protests too much when he discourses on the risk he took when he turned Mason. It may have been risky but it was, for his class, the thing to do then; and Aguinaldo, as a rising young man with means, would have looked queer had he not joined. "We were able to get in almost everybody who had the means to become a Mason." More daring was his decision to join the Katipunan, because here he was acting against his own prudent character, almost acting like the gamu·gamo he disapproved of. From the sequence of narrative in the memoirs, one could infer that he joined the Katipunan because he was dissatisfied with Masonry: not everybody like people without means? could join it. One day he is visited by a childhood friend, Santiago Alvarez, "the son of the municipal captain of Noveleta." Aguinaldo tries to persuade Alvarez to join the Masons and learns that Alvarez has a similar

EMILIO AGUINALDO

110

mISSIOn: he wants Aguinaldo to join the Katipunan. Alvarez reo

marks that the popular secret society is headed by a man whose wife is an Alvarez relative.

Aguinaldo becomes eager to join - "because this really was what I was already looking for," It is arranged that Alvarez is to accompany Aguinaldo to Manila the following Sunday, to help him join the Katipunan.

That Sunday finds the two friends taking a boat from Cavite to Manila.

"First we went to the telephone office where Director Jacinto Lumbreras lived, on the corner of San Jacinto and Gandara. There they entertained me and passed the time. At seven o'clock that March evening, 1895,

they put me on a cruesa and blindfolded me, so that I didn't know where we were going. Then

they told me to alight and put me through a gruelling test, almost like the severe teSting done in Masonry. When I had successfully passed the initiation I was given the name Magdala. I had then already turned 26." Afterward he found out that he had been initiated in the house of Bonifacio himself, on Calle Clavel, Binondo. "There I first met Andres Bonifacio and happily did we hit it off." But why had a country squire joined a revolutionary proleta. rian movement? Aguinaldo's motives seem to have been completely disinterested; he had no grievances of his own against the regime to make him want a revolution and what grievances he quotes are those of his class in general: like friar persecution "even of non-Masons." Nor can it be said that he was trying to identify with the masses, since, as it turned out, the Katipunan in Cavite was not to be a proletarian or peasant movement. In

Manila, the society was of the proletariat; but in the provinces, and especially in Cavite, the Katipunan was of the landed gentry, the petite bourgeoisie. Santiago Alvarez was a municipal captain's son; and the first convert that Aguinaldo brought into the Katipunan was Candido Tria Tirana, the rival Kawit landowner. "In my own home and family," says the General, "there were only two things that made me nervous, in regard to these movements of Masonry and the Katipunan. One was my brother Crispulo, who was veritably profriar; and the other was my mother, who went to church, confessed and received communion almost every day." He was able to persuade his mother to keep his forbidden affiliations secret, even f~om her confessor; and he continued to be so esteemed and trusted by the convento that the friar cura made him a secret agent, with the mission of ferreting out Ma· sons. An incident of this period shows the difference in policy between Aguinaldo and BonifaCIO.

Aguinaldo had gone to Manila to renew the license of the San Bartolome, at the port authority. The licensing officer not only refused to renew Aguinaldo's per· mit but aJso berated him. AguinaJdo swaJlowed the slights, refused to be provoked. Bonifacio heard of the incident and at once ordered Aguinaldo to chaJlenge the officer to .. a duel to the death." To make sure that AguinaJdo obeyed, a skilled fencer, Jose Dizon, was sent to him, to act as his second. "Although I did not want to obey this order of the Supremo," sighs AguinaJdo, "since I did not regard the incident as serious, nevertheless, for the sake of our good relations,

I yielded to his wish." Happily, the officer, when challenged, apologized - "and we came to an understanding." AguinaJdo caJls this "good luck." The disappointed Bonifacio undoubtedly thought different.

The Double Agent

The following New Year's Day was again memorable for the capitan rnunicipaJ. He was wed· ded to Hilaria del Rosario on January 1, 1896. She was 18 and from Imus. He was pushing 27 and remarks that his marriage gladdened the parish priest: now the cura would have no competition when he made the rounds of the girls. But it's to be noted that, at a time when people married young, Aguinaldo married late. He mentions two other girls who had caught his fancy; in both cases he had been easily dissuaded from pressing suit. The im· pression is that he was his mother's boy while she lived. The timid lover had however become a daredevil as KKK secret agent. He had brought the Supremo himself to Kawit, to establish the Magdalo Council; and while panic fed on the news of arrests and deportations, Aguinaldo hustled for recruits: new Masons, new Katipuneros. "We did the induction even in shacks, saltbeds and fishponds, even in my boat, the San Bartolome, to keep it secret from the enemy." These activities seem to have made him less mild and discreet, less ready to swallow insults. A Guardia Civil officer who inso· lently tried to make Aguinaldo

111

OUR SECOND CREATESI' ANTI-HERO

fetch him a rig got rebutred by the affronted municipal captain. The officer complained to the provincial commander and Aguinaldo was summoned but was able to justify himself. When the matter was brought up during a secret conference of the Cavite friars and the army, Aguinaldo was defended by the Kawit cura, Fr. Fidel de Bias, who declared that Aguinaldo was not an enemy but rather an ally - "and this he could vouch fo r because r was his companion day and night." Those at the conference were thus convinced that they had nothing to fear from the Kawit town head. It was certainly a sly life he was leading as double agent - or, as he puts it, "Capitan Municipal sa ara, \Katipunan sa gabi." On May 9, 1896, Bonifacio summoned all Katipunll(' town leaders to a general m~ing in Pateros. The Katipunerol, pretending to be Antipolo pilgrims, assembled at the foot of the Puente Colgante in Quiapo and from there rode up the Pa<;ig in eight bancas. Aguinaldo had come with two other Magdala delegates and he remembers that trip as being as joyous a<; though it were really just a May time jaunt. "Merriment, as we raced bancas, shouted and booed one another, reigned on the river." They picnicked in Mandaluyong, supped in Pasig, were up with the dawn and back in the boats, pre. tending to be bound for Antipo10. But when they reached Pateros they tied the bancas together and held their meeting in the middle of the Gabet River, with Bonifacio presiding from the center boat. At this meeting it was decided, first, that no revolt was to be launched until the expected arms had arrived from Japan; and second, that an emissary was to be

PIOV .... lEI'4ZUElA

sent to the banished Rizal in Dapitan - "to find out how he felt about a revolt: whether it should be started already, or not yet." Aguinaldo says that the assembly vehemently debated this question until it becam1 clear that the majority were' against continuing the (project of a) revolt, for lack of arms" - which may indicate that the provincial, or gentry, delegates, who were in the majority, had outvoted the more impatient Manila proletariat; and that the Dapitan mission was really to ask Rizal, as honorary president of the Katipunan, to arbitrate the dispute. Dr. Pio Valenzuela was chosen emissary and Aguinaldo offered one of the Kawit delegates, aptly named Raymundo Mala, to play the role of eye patient that Valenzuela was taking to be treated by Rizal. A few weeks later the missioners returned with Rizal's answer: "Would that you calmed down; and do not involve me in any plot of revolution." Our greatest anti-hero had snubbed the Katipunan, had rejected history. "All who heard the news were

taken aback, from our Supremo Andres Bonifacio down to almost every member of the Katipunan. Many were not pleased with that answer from our great and eminent hero, Dr. Jose Rizal." Meanwhile, '96 was coming to a boil. There had been that mysterious secret conference of the Cavite Recollets and the army in June; and word spread that there would be a mass arrest in Kawit of Masons and their sympathizers on the eve of the town fiesta. Aguinaldo instructed the town policemen, most of whom he had lured into the Katipunan, to block any effort to arrest people, even if they had to disarm the Guardia Civil. And what if the Guardia Civil should fight back? Replied Aguinaldo; "The skill of a man begins with strategy." And he was as good as his word. Having heard that the signal for the arrests was to be the lighting of fireworks, he postponed the fireworks. No arrests were made. And Aguinaldo crowned the fiesta of "our miraculous S1. Mary Magdalen" by inducting into the Katipunan his most distinguished guests. That was on July 22. Barely a month later the Katipunan was exposed; but this, says Aguinaldo, and the ensuing panic did not stop him from indUcting more members into the society. Rather did he speed up the indUctions, swearing in recruits day and night - and right in the town hall! On August 22 he received a message from the Supremo: there was to be an important meeting on August 24, in Balintawak, where Bonifacio and his men had fled . As camouflage for the Magdala delegate, Aguinaldo sent along his pro-friar brother Crispulo; and the pretext for the trip was the fiesta of St. Bartho-

112

EMILIO AGUINALDO

lomew in Malabon. Once in Malabon, the Magdalo delegate slipped away to attend the meet路 ing in Balintawak. He returned to Kawit with a most startling ("kagulat.gulat'1 announcement from the Supremo: the Bonifacio forces would attack Manila on August 29. "We imagined," says Aguinal. do, "the myriad perils they would face in defying the government when they had no weapons to use. But our delegate reported that a veritable multitude had as路

sembled there, ready to attack Manila, though they had no arms, except bolos, daggers and spears." There's a snag Ii~e in the me路 moirs. Aguinaldo says that the attack was to begin when the lights on the Luneta were turned off; he later assumes the attack

has flopped because the Luneta lights stayed on all that night. But if the Luneta lights were at that time kept on all night, how could their extinguishing be a signal for an attack? Maybe the point here is that the Manila Katipuneros were to attack Manila and then make known that they had entered it by turning off the Luneta lights, which could be the signal for the provincial Katipuneros to join the battle. This would explain why Aguinaldo, on the night of August 29, a Satwday night, gathered his policemen and took them to Kawit's Marulas Bridge, from where they could see the lights on the Luneta. They stayed there all night, but the blaze across the bay did not black out. The moth had not put out the flame.

Sunday dawned; Aguinaldo went home to sleep, was roused by a commotion over bandits, rushed out again carrying "only my sinambartolome (bolo of St. Bartholomew) and my vara de mando." It turned out that the bandits, too, were a false alarm. Then came the news that the Bonifacio troops in Caloocan and Manila had been routed by the Guardia Civil. Thus, like moth in flame, ended, no sooner than it had started, the Revolt of the Masses. Aguinaldo was sure of one thing: if he rose, it would not be like Bonifacio. And his showing up of the Supremo was to happen sooner than Magdalo had expected. Monday, August 31, began with Aguinaldo failing in his ruse

TH" , "AN"H EXPEDITIONARY FORCES. OR CAZADORES, OF 1896

113

OUR SECOND GREATEST ANTI-HERO

to secure arms from the fort in Cavite; but by afternoon he had seized Kawit, he was in com路 mand in Kawit, and he was issuing a resounding manifesto calling on the municipal captains of Bacoor, Imus, Carmona, Dasmarinas, Silang, Amadeo, indang, Mendez, Alfonso, Bailen, Magallanes, Ternate, Naic and Tanu to join him in revolt. "Here in Cavite Viejo we have wrested their arms from the Guardia Civil; in San Francisco de Malabon they were surprised, they have sunendered; and the provincial headquarters of the Guardia Civil in. Noveleta is wholly in our hands.', Aguinaldo had $"hifted the Kawit mayorshi p to Candido Tria Tirona and had assumed a new title: Flag Lieutenant of the Re-

volutionary Anny. "Buhay, Lakas, at Pagkakaisa!"

was the cry he raised. The bourgeois Revolution of Cavite had begun.

The Double Event

Two were the UprtSlngs in 1896 - the failed Bonifacio attempt in Manila on August 29; and the successful Aguinaldo coup in Kawi t on August 31 and these two ev~nts were distinct from each other. The practice is to slur over the distinction, to ignore the gap be-

tween them (which seems trivial, being only a matter of days) and to read the two uprisings as a single event. In the overall view, they were: both were actions of the liberation movement; and in this sense we can say that the Bonifacio and Aguinaldo events were one, but only in the same manner that we see the Bonifacio uprising to be one as well with the Diego Silang revolt and the Cavite Mutiny. Such large general路 ities are valid in oratory, but not for the historian. Unless he dis路 criminates, picks out distinctions, he is writing allegory. In the two '96 events, their sequence in time, the briefness of the time gap, deceives, by making it appear that one action followed on the other, as its reo suit or continuation.

TROOf'S OF TH E INSU RGENT ARMY ORGAN IZEO BY AGUINALDO

114

Even those who will grant that the Bonifacio fiasco was definitive, the end of the particular phase associated with the Supremo, will then argue that nevertheless it was the spark that ignited the Revolution in Cavite, Bulacan, and the other Tagalog and Pampango provinces. Here, again, the evidence refutes the contention - and no more clearly than in the testimony of the Katipunan in Bula-

can. The Bu!akenos, too, had been bidden to rise up in arms as soon

as Bonifacio, on August 29, had stormed Manila. Some 300 Bulacan Katipuneros 8,athered to at· tack the garrison in San Nicolas town. Before they 'could move, the news arrived of Bonifacio's failure. The Bulakeii06 immediately disbanded and returned to their homes, "with disi\lusion in the heart." Far from i~iting any revolution , the fiasco ~rved to dampen all idea of insurgency; the Bulakeiios made no further effort to rise up in arms - until they heard of Aguinaldo's success in Cavite. That was the spark which started the revolt in Bulacan. And it explains why the Revolution in Bulacan was oriented to Kawit, not to the futile Mon· taiban highlands where the de· Ceated Bonifacio sat impotent, bypassed and left behind by history. Nor can the Kawit triumphs be ascribed to the Manila fiasco. Rather was Aguinaldo steeled in his determination not to act like the Supremo, not to behave like a silly moth drawn to the flame. We can grasp the distinction between his action and that oC Bonifacio just by asking ourselves: If there had been no Aguinaldo, if the Caviteiios had , disheartened, like the Bulakeiios, not risen up in revolt, would Bonifa· cio 100m as large in our history?

EMILIO AGUINALDO

After the fiasco of Pinaglabanan, the Supremo was reduced to hitand·run raids from his Montalban hideout - and these would have been suppressed soon enough. The '96 Bonifacio uprising would then have been just another of the unsuccessful revolts in our history and, because so brief, less important than the Silang or Dagohoy revolt. Bonifacio looms important only because we trace the Cavite triumphs back to him and the Katipunan. But how far did the Katipunan serve Aguinaldo and account for his triumphs? Again it must be stressed that there was a difference in compo· sition between the Manila and the provincial councils, and that the Katipunan in Cavite was a bourgeois-controlled enterprise. Moreover, even before tlJe expo· sure of the society in Manila, there had been little contact between Bonifacio and Aguinaldo, because of the increasing danger of communication, so that the Magdalo Council had been acting independently of Tondo, had more or less become an independ· ent organization. Even dUring the May '96 conCerence in Pateros of all the councils, the dispute on whether a revolt was to be launched at once or not already betrayed a cleavage between the provincial gentry and the Manila proletariat. And when Bonifacio decides to revolt, the announcement is received by Aguinaldo as "kagu/at-gu/at," a further indica· tion of the sympathy gap. When Bonifacio flops, Aguinaldo has only pity for the defeated - and that contemptuous comparison with the garnu-garno. His memoirs record no reaction to the fiasco that can be interpreted as an indignant resolve to avenge it, though there's a line about pushing what the Supremo had started. Otherwise, Aguinal-

do and his group were concerned only in devising a ploy that would "enable us, when we rose, to have arms with which to fight the enemy." And on Monday, August 31, three days after the Supremo's Saturday fiasco, Aguinaldo was coolly pursuing his own idea of how to start a revolt. His plan was to request the fort in Cavite for a detachment of marine infantry, on the pretext that Kawit was in danger from bandit attacks. Once the detachment was in Kawit, it would be stripped of its arms and the Magdala would rise in revolt. On the morning of August 31, Aguinal· do went to Cavite, was received by the provincial governor, but learned that all the Cavite marines, except one company, had been ordered sent to Manila by the governor-general. "Then give us even a hundred guns," pleaded Aguinaldo. He was told that all available arms had likewise been sent to Manila. During the interview, a message arrived for the governor: martial law had been declared by Governor-General Blanco in Mani la, Bulacan, Pam· panga, Tarlac, Nueva Ecija, Lagu· na, Batangas and Cavite. Aguinaldo hurriedly left. Though he returned to Kawit without troops or arms, he had learned something valuable: the fort in Cavite was practically un· manned and would have no troops to send should the province revolt. So, before leaving Cavite town, Aguinaldo instructed the Katipuneros there, one of whom was the jail warden, to use the prisoners to seize the fort from the single marine company holding it. Fatal to the Revolu· tion that these instructions were not carried out, for the Spaniards continued to have a port in Cavite and a fort from which to bombard Kawit and the coast. Aguinaldo reached Kawit at

OUR SECOND GREATESf ANTI-HERO

two o'clock that afternoon of August 31. He was in an exalted condition and recalls that he tipped the boatmen who ferried him home five pesos. Curiously enough, he dutifully dropped in at the convento first, to notify Fr. Fidel de BIas that he had not been given troops and that martial law had been declared - but that was the last chore he was to perform as an agent and official of the old government. After· wards he conferred with two Magdalo councilors, Candido Tria Tirona and Santiago Dano, and they deciPed to go on with the plan to revolt. Aguinaldo insisted on one thing: there was to

overthrowing empire, erecting the Tagalog nag, dragging down the Spanism emblem." His own authority as capitan mUnicipal had ended and he proposed Tirona as the head of a new, free town government. Himself, the people willing, would be the Teniente Abanderado (or nag lieu· tenant) of the army to be orga· nized. Let those willing to join the army raise their hands. "or the thousands there at that mo· ment, all the men raised their hands, and even the women." So, right there and then, Aguinaldo made his pick of the volunteers and organized his "little army." That night, his cousin Baldo-

sPANISH TROOPS BOMBARDING CAVITE VIEJO

be no killing. After all, the Guar-

dia Civil had only a three-man contingent in town. By three o'clock, the three soldiers had been overpowered and disarmed and the friar cura had Cled, leaving behind in the convento 1,100 pesos in gold, 800 in silver. These formed the initial funds of the Revolution. By five o'clock, Aguinaldo was proclaiming to a multitude at the town hall the "end of friar and Spanish rule." And of the term Filipino as well. '"The uprising carried out today, Monday, August 31, is a miracle of heaven,

mera Aguinaldo, president of the Magdalo, was sent to take Imus; while Aguinaldo set out for Binakayan, in the hope of trapping the marine unit that could not be directly engaged in its powder magazine, Both these attempts failed and Aguinaldo returned to Kawit that same night but slept at the convento, not wanting to go home and see his family. "I did not even let them know I was back, to avoid distress and anguish." The fatalist "martyr" in him had taken over again and he fell that he would die in three days, or three weeks, or three

115

months. He had little sleep that night; by dawn of September I, he was organizing a second attack on Imus. This was the first real offensive of the Revolution. The "little army" that marched on Imus numbered 600; was armed with bolos, nine old police guns, three Remingtons and a borrowed hunting pistol; was led by a Flag Lieutenant without a flag; but had its spirits kept up by a brass band, which Aguinaldo had ordered to play a lively march, Lcz Bcz/cz/lcz de Joro. He had not lost his childhood shyness and would not look up as people crowded at windows to watch the Revolution marching by "uparlg huwag makasira pa ng loob ko." By the time they reached the bridge to Imus, his troops had swelled to some 2,000. Then he was told that the Guardia Civil in Imus had en· trenched themselves in the church belfry. How attack an entrenched enemy? "This was the first time I had to learn by myself what's called military strategy." He distributed his troops among three positions: north, south, and center, himself with the center troops, facing the convento, on which all the troops were to converge. ''Then 1 asked the band to stop playing." The three forces then began moving on the target. Once they had it surrounded, Aguinaldo bade the bugler sound the advance. "And at the same time 1 cried Sisid!" They stormed the convento but found it empty, save for a Filipino priest, who told them that the friars and the Guardia Civil had escaped to the Casa Hacienda. Enemy fire from this estale house cost the attackers many lives, but again Aguinaldo resorted to strategy. Beside the estate house was a palay bodega, which he ordered set on rire, to

116

smoke the enemy out. The trick worked: friar and soldier carne stumbling out, choking, their hands up. Aguinaldo did not even wait to see the end of the action; he knew Tmus was already his. No sooner had Imus fallen than word came of a government

force advancing on Cavite by way of Las Pinas. Manila evident路 ly still thought the rebellion minor, for this 拢irst force sent to quell it consisted of only a hundred troops under Brigadier General Ernesto de Aguirre, supported by cavalry. Aguinaldo rushed about 500 men, to Baeoor, to block the enemy at Zapote Bridge. But the nine guns of the defenders could not stop the enemy advance; the Magdala troops were routed; and Aguinaldo had to play dead on the the battlefield to escape capture. Aguirre entered Bacoar; then, Cor some reason, retreated to Manila. Had he pressed on to Imus, he could have crushed the Revolution on its third day, September 2. By returning first to Manila for reinfo rcements, Aguirre gave Aguinaldo time to entrench himself in 1m us, demolish the bridge leading to it, and organize a defense with a thousand men. When Aguirre reappeared with 500 troops he was stopped at the Imus bridge. Suddenly, Aguinaldo appeared on the enemy's side of the river, firing on theenemy's flank. Undetected, he had forded the torrent with a picked company and had caught the foe by surprise. The government troops scattered, sought to flee through the ricefields, got trapped in the mud and were there hacked to death by the Magdalo bolo troops. Aguirre fled, dropping his fine Toledo sword, which Aguinaldo found and made his. Engraved on the blade was the year

EMILIO AGUINALDO

it was forged, 1869. ''The year of my birth - and now this sable de mando (sabre of command) had fallen to me. So, from then on, I carried that sabre in all my batties." The Magdalo also picked up 30 Remingtons plus ammunition. During September, Kawit was under bombardment from the Cavite fort and Aguinaldo transferred his government to Imus. This first revolutionary government had Baldomero for president, Candido Tria Tirona for war secretary, and portfolios (or finance, natural resources, agricultu re and justice. Aguinaldo had upped his title to Jefe Abanderado (Flag Lieutenant General). A munitions factory was set up in Imus (church bells were smelted into cannon) and trenches were dug from the Sacoor beach through Zapote and Silang and up to the Batangas-Laguna boun-

d"".

Repeatedly repulsed at Zapote, the government then tried to pierce Cavite by way of Batangas, using troops recalled from the Mindanao garrisons, but September ended and October passed with the rebel province still undented. On November 9, the government launched an all-out offensive on several fronts: from Calamba and Talisay towards Silang; from the Cavite fort towards Kawit; and from the bay (this sea action was supported by three warships and three gunboats) towards Bacoor, Noveleta, Rosario, San Francisco de Malabon and Sinakayan. Aguinaldo rushed to the Laguna-Batangas boundary, thinking the invasion would come from there. Actually, the government troops came in from the sea, landed in Binakayan, crashed. through the Magdala defense, then marched on Kawit. But Aguinaldo had hurried back to defend his town.

Two things helped. him: the inaccurate enemy naval fire, and the excellent trenches built by Edilberto Evangelista, who had joined the revolt early in November. The enemy failed to penetrate these trenches, never reached Kawit, and retreated in disorder the next day, November 10, leaving behind 200 guns and 15 cart: loads of its dead. It had been a bloody battle and had cost the life of Aguinaldo's closest associate, Candido Tria Tirana. But: "When the smoke of battle had cleared, God revealed that all Cavite had been liberated from Spain." The Revolution of '96 had reached its noon. Into free land streamed people from outside - from Manila, Pasay and the Morong towns "thousands of them, men and women, young and old, carrying their possessions, hurrying to place themselves under the little Republic of Cavite." One exodus from bondage to Sion - that of the Malibay townspeople - was led by the Malibay municipal captain and the Malibay folk brought with them into Cavite their town band, the ornaments and standards of their town church, and even the image of their town patron, St. Roch.ln{erretque deos Latio. Though the "little RepUblic" was ringed with government troops, to seal it in, Aguinaldo had, by the end of December, begun to thrust out, was already raiding Pateros and Taguig. Why did this noontide of '96 decline into the stalemate of '971 One reason was external: the poorly equipped Aguinaldo could not long sustain, all by himself, the resistance against the government's superior force, especially after the expeditionary troops from Spain (the cazodores so bruited in our history) began

117

OUR SECOND GREATEST ANTI-H ERO

arriving in quantity_ But the other reasons were intestine: the bitter feud between the Magdalo and the Magdiwang; and most hapless of all, the division wrough t by the coming of Bonifacio. Wit h the success of the revolt, Cavite became divided into north and south - with the south controlled by the Magdiwang Coun· cil, the north by the Magdalo. If Magdalo was of the Aguinaldos, the Magdiwang was of the Alva-

Francisco de Malabon, was seized from the Guardia Civil on the morning of August 31. After that initial action, the Magdiwang may be said to have rested on its laurels. Any chronicle of the '96 revolt will have to consist mostly of Aguinaldo's campaigns. Says Aguinaldo: "The leaders of the Magdiwang Council were lucky, because from the outbreak of the revolt until April, 1897, only once did they face battle. It was a great

•

SPANISH A RTI LLERY CAPTUREQ ElY INSURGENTS

rez clan, of which Bonifacio was an in-law, and this clan must have rued that it was through Alvarez sponsorship that Aguinaldo entered the Katipunan and was th us enabled to establish a rival faction. The Magdiwang was actually the first to rise up in arms, though only by a few hours; what became its capital, San

victory they gained when they engaged a large Spanish force at the site called Dalahikan, Novele· ta, on November 9, 1896. Aside from that, no other battle did they fight ... unlike the Magdalo Council, which had a battle to fight almost every day and was ever in danger." The implication is that the Magdiwang sat 0>1 its hands be·

cause it knew that, if it joined in a resistance of which Agui naldo was chieftain, the credit for every triumph wo uld go to the Magdalo, not the Magdiwang. When the Magdiwang finally decided to cooperate, in the summer of 1897, Aguinaldo could bitterl y say, and with reason, that it was too late, since the government was already winning in Cavite. Had the Magdiwang joined forces with the Magdalo during the noo ntide of victory in '96 , before the arrival of the cazadores, the Revolution migh t have been pushed beyond Cavite, towards Manila, and the govern· ment would have been put on the defensive. The troops that ringed the province would then have had to be dispersed along a larger periphery; this would have relieved the pressure on Cavite and could have enabled Aguinaldo to join forces with the Revolution in Bulacan, Pampanga and the other Tagalog and Pampango provmces. But what did the Magdiwang do? It brought Bonifacio into Ca· vite. This must be regarded as a most malicious stroke. Agu inal· do's success could not be refu t· ed, but he himself could be downgraded, by bringing in an outsider, who just happened to be related to the Magdiwang, to overshadow him - for Bonifacio, though futile since Pinaglabanan, still had some prestige as the head of the Katipunan. So the Supremo is brought to Cavite, ostensibly to mediate the feud between the two Cavite factions (though at the instance only of the Magdiwang); actually to be used to sabotage the Magdalo effort and stop the rise of Aguinaldo. Bonifacio is elected hari (or king) of the Magdiwang. Says Aguinaldo: "The Magdiwang Council that became headed by Supremo An-

118

dres Bonifacio had a monarchical ("maka-haTi") tendency, since its head was titled Haring Bayan and his associates in government were called ministers. They chose the name Magdiwang (to celebrate) because they loved beautiful and pompous titles. On the other

hand, the Magdalo Council had a republican quality, though it was a revolutionary government. We used the name Magdala (to assist) in the sense of going to the aid of the Motherland." Bonifacio arrived in Cavite on the first of December and, far from mediating between Magda10 and Magdiwang, immediately placed himself de(initely on the Magdiwang side. Though there was a war to fight, ~ and the Magdiwang were mor interested in politics - and in cap uring the Revolution in Cavite, which Aguinaldo seemed to be w~ning. Towards the end of December the Manila newspapers repbrted that 40,000 Spanish troops were arriving in February and would be thrown into Cavite. The Revolution had less than two months in which to prepare to meet that massive force. Aguinaldo hurried to San Francisco de Malabon, conferred with the Haring Bayan, and proposed the consolidation of at least some of the Magdi·

EMILIO AGUINA LDO

wang forces with those of the Magdalo. According to Aguinaldo, Bonifac io's answer was: "I regret, Capitan Don Emilio, that 1 must reject your request, because we are in danger here too, should the Spaniards invade the seacoast and battle us here!" That "cold answer," says Aguinaldo, made him retort: "Supremo, in the almost four months that we have been fight· ing the Spaniards here in Cavite, not once have the Spanish forces bothered this region of the sea· coast! " Nevertheless, the Magdalo de· cided to invite the rival faction to a general meeting on the morn· ing of December 28, to discuss the Magdalo proposal to unite the two factions, so that there would be one army under one discipline, and then to ~old an dection, so that the war effort could be pushed by a single set of officials. The Magdiwang agreed to the meeting, then arrived in Imus on the afternoon, not the morning, of December 28 and proceeded to take over the meeting as though they had called it. Boni· facio sat himself at the head of the table, invited only his own men to sit with him. Aguinaldo

remained on the floor with the delegates. When the Magdalo pro· posed the formation of a revolu· tionary govern ment, the Magdi· wang argued that there was no need to do so because such a government, the Katipunan, al· ready existed. However, if a new government had to be formed, Bonifacio should automatically head it, since without him there would have been no Revolution. To this, Edilberto Evangelista and Baldomero Aguinaldo object· ed. The Revolution was not of the Katipunan alone, rather did it spring from the popular wilL Most of those fighting the war were not Katipuneros; they had joined, not the Katipunan, but the cause of the Revolution. The meeting failed, no elec· tion was held, Cavite remained divided - the Revolution was doomed. Aguinaldo, by not asserting himse]( at the Imus conference (he had wanted Evangelista elect· ed president), played anti·heroand thus delivered himself to a host of future dilemmas, includ· ing the need to eliminate Boni· facio. After the failure in Imus in '96, the Aguinaldo course already points to the anti·climax of Biakna·Bato; as after the failure to take Manila in '98, his direction

INSURGENT FORTIFICATIONS IN CAVITE IN 1896

119

OUR SECOND GREATEST ANTI·HERO

is already towards the anti· climax of Palanan. Twice in his life, this anti·hero was caught up in a heroic move. ment - first, the taking of Cavite during the last quarter of '96; and second, the advance along the Camino Rea l towards Manila in the summer of '98. Both move· ments fell short of the goal; both movements ended in retreat. Aguinaldo was not equal to the

challenge. Rizal, too, was anti·hero; he resisted heroism. He spurned the Katipunan, he rejected the Revo· lution. When it broke out he sought to escape it, by offering to serve Spain in Cuba. Even when arrested, he was still offer· ing to help stop the Revolution, by writing a ma nifesto asking his countrymen to lay down their arms and submit. If Rizal be great nevertheless,

so is Aguinaldo. Other peoples have for heroes the standard warriors of legend, champions of unequivocal quali· ties. But we seem to have fore· stal!ed the reaction to the stand· ard type of hero. In this sense, we are a very modern people, with a highly existentialist turn of mind: what are the two greatest heroes of our history were both anti·heroic.

THE CAVE IN BIAK-NA·BATO THAT SERVED AGUINALDO AS HIOE-OUT

Where Did Aguinaldo Fail?

alolos as the nalion united, in September, 1898, was augured five months before by the remarkable scene in Singapore that brought together the four Philippine racial classes that had separately powered the Revolution. To a Singapore pub called the Mansion River came, on April 24. 1898, to confer with the American consul, four Philippine exiles representing the four communities of an emerging nation. Emilio Aguinaldo represented the mestizo sang!eYj Isidoro de Santos of Tondo, the mestizo espanol; Jose Leiba of Batangas, the Creole; and Gregorio del Pilar, the Tagalog. That this four should speak as one to the American consul bespoke the identity the Filipino had finally achieved, a national

identity that Malolos would express in September, when the four blood groups these four men had transcended would again speak as one, this time to the world. The Singapore meeting was prompted by the recent declaration of war between Spain and the United States. Said U.S. Consu l-General E. Spenser Pratt to the Filipinos: "Now is the time for you to rise. Ally yourselves with America and you will surely defeat the Spaniards!" And he assured them that his country no more cared to grab the Philippines than Cuba, from which the Americans had solemnly sworn to withdraw as soon as the Spaniards there had been driven away. However, Mr. Pratt was careful not to put down in writing any of his promises to the Filipinos.

Aguinaldo and his companions had come incognito to Singapore. On leaving Hong Kong they had let it be known that they were on their way to France; in Spain, they were believed to be somewhere "on the boulevards of Paris." Actually Aguinaldo was on immoral ground. He was breaking the Pact of Biak-na-Bato by conspiring to resume what he had promised - and been paid - not to continue. But the Americans who were pushing him into breaking the pact were themselves unwilling to enter into a formal written pact with him - naturally enough, since they who bade him break his word could hardly be expected to esteem his word, though he was pitifully eager to accept theirs. White, on the one hand, break路 ing faith, he was, on the other

121

WHERE DID AGUINALDO FAIL?

hand, betraying too much faith; and in this double guilt lay his failure. He failed because he was a provincial thrust upon the global stage and forced to deal with the cunning. This was the period when Henry James was so exer· cised about "American innocence," but the Americans who made a tool of Aguinaldo - Con· suls Pratt and Wildman, Commo· dore Dewey, Generals Merritt and Greene - were about as in· nocent as Fagin or Machiavelli. Though this was also the Amer· icans' first emergence on the world stage, they brought to it the experience of a continental war and of a laree and complex frontier; but poor Aguinaldo was equipped only with his small experience of a small world. He was of the petite bour· geoisie and everything in his life had been on a small scale: small landowner, small merchant, small town official, small guerrilla lead· er. In this, of course, he was typi· cally Philippine; but the small· ness was aggravated by a lack of imagination. Someone has said that it's almost always fatal not to be a poet. The petite bour· geoisie has produced most of the

world's poets and artists; but Aguinaldo was of the basic prose of his class. He was a gen· tleman in both senses of the word, refined of manner, avene to violence; and he had courage. (The American officer who cap· tured him in Palanan was no admirer of the Filipino as soldier but did grant that Aguinaldo, cool as could be when captured, had guts.) But his mind was pa· rochial, only a bit advanced from the barangay mentality, and he had not stayed in school long enough to have even the little Latin and less Greek that might have expanded his horizons. In his old age, he confessed to never having read Rizal. The hayseed was still in this country squire's hair when he had to face the Colossus of the North and the hayseed included an awe of titles. In his autobiography it's never just Primo de Rivera but Hang Gob~rnador G~n~roJ at Capitan Gen~roi ng PiiipinClS, Don Fernando Primo de Riuera, Marques de &trella. " This bourgeois snobbery, which really indicated humility in the man, was a failing in the statesman. One American sneered that, in Malolos, Aguinaldo was more

concerned about "what cane to carry and what breastplate to wear"; and it's possible that he didn't fully grasp what was in· volved in the argument on whether he should wear the title of President or Dictator. How could such a man not be staggered at being approached by the Consuls of the United States or being addressed as "Your Ex· cellency" by American officers who were veterans of the Civil War, the Indian Wars and the Russo-Turkish Campaign? Brought back to Cavite by the Americans, he resumed the revolt and, with little help from them, pushed it to the very point of victory, victory here meaning (as it must in every Philippine war) the taking of Manila. The mo· mentous point here was not the June 12 Kawit proclamation but the transfer in July of Aguinal· do's headquarters to Bacoor, within sight or Manila. In a month he had advanced along the old Camino Real from Cavite port to the very gates of the capital city. A June 12 wire from Dewey no· tified Washington that Aguinaldo already had Manila encircled and was punishing it without cease. Wrote an American soldier on

AGUINALDO'S ARMY AWAITS HIM IN MALOLOS ON SEPTEMBER 13. 1898

122

EMILIO AGUINALDO

the scene, Jesse George, who had no love for the Filipino general: "By the middle of July Aguinaldo had all the Spanish forts and positions about Manila captured, the Spaniards driven into the outer defenses of the city, his coils drawn tightly about it, and had moved his headquarters and the seat of his government up to Bacoar, within eight miles of the city. Thousands of prisoners, arms and ammunition had fallen into his hands and outside of Manila the whole country had risen in revolt against Spain," Aguinaldo's lines extended all around the city, from where the Camino Real enteted Malate in front of Fort San Antonio Abad, through Singaiong all'd 8ta. Mesa, and up to Tondo, wh'ich the revolu tionary forces prachcally occupied. Aguinaldo had already accomplished what Bonifa~io intended but failed to do: 'fvest the city and lay it under sieg'f. The breath-taking thing about this is that Aguinaldo had done it on his own. Dewey kept to the bay; American land troops did not arrive until the end of June, did not fonn a complete army until the end of July, and were

inactive until August because they were not allowed any posi· tions save several hundred yards from the insurgents' frontlines. Before their land troops arrived, the Americans had indeed been nervous lest Aguinaldo jump the gun on them and take Manila by himself; but they were sustained by the thought that he wouldn't dare do that because he lacked artillery. Yet this lack alone could not have detained Aguinaldo. American correspondent F. D. Millet was then observing that the insurgents had "accom· plished wonders in forcing the enemy to retire to their inner line of defenses" though they were "practically without artil· lery." And the tremendous mo· mentum of their successive victories could well have carried the revolutionary armies right over the top of Fort San -j\ntonio Abad and over the very walls of Manila. After all, the entire Cavi· te campaign in 1896, and espe· cially the Battle of Binakayan, had already proved that Aguinaldo could win without artillery. Yet, with "his coils drawn tightly about it," from mid-June to mid..July, Aguinaldo refrained

from the final squeeze that might have given him the nation's capital city, before the Americans could land a single soldier on Philippine soil. His position would then have been impregnable; he would have been talking to Commodore Dewey and to Generals Anderson, Merritt and Greene from the eminence of a fait accompli. The Manifest Des-tiny would have been his, not theirs. Victory for the Revolution was his for the daring - but he hesitated. And lost. Why, why, why did he delay? That suspense from mid..June to mid..July 1898 was the crucial moment in our history. It could have united us all behind Aguinaldo; yes, even those of us who were already talking of American annexation would have been stunned to silence hy the prodigy of an Aguinaldo speaking from the Ayuntamiento de Manila, an Aguinaldo enthroned in Malaca· nang. A single act of Aguinaldo could have startled us into a nation, as that action of Dewey on Manila Bay had electrified his country into a world power. For that moment of our history Aguinaldo was our history.

AGUINALDO ARRIVES IN MALOLOS ON SEPTEMBER 14, 1898

123

WHERE DID AGUlNALDO FAlL?

Is this our tragedy then: that at the climactic moment of our national life our destiny was in the hands of a small man with little imagination? What stopped Aguinaldo from taking Manila when he stood already at its tottering gates? Was it bourgeois prudence de. feating personal courage? Reck路 less indeed to hurl flesh-and-bone against artillery, especially for onc of a race and social class in which a dislike of audacity is instinctive. Or was it the native timorousness of the big enterprise? Here was a onetime small-town mayor charged with th~conquest of the imperial city of the conquistadors, the Tyre and Sidon of gaileon days, the New erusalem of the friar-adventurers. The very magnitude of the challenge could well have cowed a pl'ovinciai mind, for Manila to the PlVvinces has immemorially stood (or might and majesty. A more dynamic man might have read poetry into the very sacrilege involved in assaulting so revered a city; but there was no poet in Aguinaldo, only a rustic reaching out for the metropolis and wanting somebody else to share the awful responsibility with him. Or was it snobbery that stayed him? It must have been flattering to be implored by a Commodore Dewey to hold his fire until American troops had arrived, so that Filipinos and Americans could enter the city together. In 1961, Aguinaldo told a group headed by Salvador de Madariaga that it was Dewey who begged him not to attack Manila until the arrival of the troops from California - "para poder compartir la victoria," Dewey's words according to Aguinaldo. This shows that Aguinaldo intended to take Manila, thought himself able and ready to do so, but was stalled.

Only when too late did he have the sense to ask why, when "the Spaniards were then at the mercy of the rebels," more American troops kept pouring in. By then the chance for greatness had passed. Too much delay had sicklied resolution and an en路 terprise of great pith and moment had lost the name of action. Because Aguinaldo hesitated, or allowed himself to be stalled, it was the Americans who seized the chance, with an audacious trick. The Americans meant to advance into Manilaalong the coast, so they could be protected by the guns of their fleet in the bay,

but they were shut orr from all approaches to the city by Aguinaldo's frontlines - and the insurgents wouldn't budge from their trenches. If there was to be any advance into the city, they would do the advancing Cirst who had kept the city under siege for two months. Aguinaldo therefore had not only the Spaniards but also the Americans trapped. The Americans could not break through into Malate unless they fired at the insurgents - and retaliation would have been swift. All Cavite, from which the American troops were moving down towards Manila, was in Aguinaldo's hands. The American prob.

MALOLOS AS THE INSURGENT CAPlrAL IN t898

124

EMILIO AGUINALDO

lem was how to displace the insurgent troops on the Camino Real without having to battle them. Otherwise, the Americans would have to resign themselves to merely accompanying the Filipinos in the taking of Manila; and President McKinley had already told the U.S. congress that, in Manila, a "divided victory is not permissible." Comportir fa

victoria was merely Dewey hooey. "On the afternoon of July 28," narrates F. D. Millet, "General

opening up the prospect of an alliance. This General Greene accomplished very cleverly, dealing with the natives exactly in accordance with their own methods." Since this American officer and gentleman called Greene used deceit, one can only conclude that the "natives" referred to were Americans, for American

Greene received a verbal message from General Merritt suggesting that he juggle the insurgents out of part of their lines, always on his own responsibility and without committing in any way the commanding general to any recognition of the native leaders or

AGUINALDO IN FRAC. ASPRESIDEN T OF THE MALOLOS REPUBLIC

â&#x20AC;˘

WHERE DID AGUINALDO FAlL?

MENU CARD FOR THE BANOUET IN MAlOlOS ON SEPTEMBER 29, 1898

INAUGURATION OF THE MAlOLOS CONGRESS AT BARASOAIN CHURCH

125

126

EMILIO AGUINALDO

were now warning themselves against "opening up the prospect of an alliance." They who sat on their asses while the Filipinos fought their way to the very gates of Manila would now get

GENERAL NORIEL

dealings with Filipinos, right back to their consuls' negotiations with Aguinaldo abroad\ were smelly with deceit. They ~ho, in Singapore, urged Aguinali\.0 to " ally yourselves with Ame~ica"

rid of the insurgents because a "divided victory" in Manila was "not permissible." And having duped the Filipinos with deceit after deceit, they would now add insult to injury by calling Filipinos deceitful. Millet describes Greene's hoax with appreciation. Greene sent for General Noriel, who com路 manded the Philippine corces along the bay. in Badaran and Pasay. After an interchange of courtesies, Greene "called attention to the fact that, at the point directly opposite the Spanish fort, San Antonio Abad, the strongest position of the enemy lines, there was no artillery in place except an obsolete ship's gun which, although of large

AGUINALOO'SHEAOOUARTERS IN BACOOR IN 1898

caJiber, was absolutely ineffective." Nonel agreed that his posi. tion needed heavier guns. ''Then GeneraJ Greene proceeded to explain how much more it would be to the advantage of the besieging parties if the fine batteries of modern guns which were lying idle in Camp Dewey (the American base in Cavite) should be posted there, which would be promptly done if the insurgents gave permission to occupy the left of the line for about four hundred yards east of the shore and across the Camino ReaJ." At eight in the morning of the following day, July 29, the Amer路 icans occupied what had been a vital Philippine position - and Aguinaldo had lost Manila. Gloats Millet: "The insurgents were thus beaten at their own game, and our front was established exactly where we wished it without antagonizing our neighbors and without committing ourselves to anything except to defend the position we had occupied." What the Filipinos had been beaten at was the Americans' old army game. NorieI, like his chief. was guilty of too ingenuous a faith in the word of the Americans, had not sniffed for a rat in Greene's trap. He did tell Greene he would have to consult AguinaJdo before evacuating his position and had sent a messenger to Bacoor. The messenger returned at two in the morning with AguinaJdo's answer: Greene should make a formal request for the trenches in writing. But to do so would be to recognize AguinaJdo as an ally and his troops as indeed part of the "besieging parties." Greene turned to outright dishonesty. He promised to submit the formal written request as soon as the Filipinos had vacated the trenches and the Americans had

127

WHERE DID AGUINALDO FAIL?

moved in. Incredibly enough, Aguinaldo consented. Greene moved his troops forward into the vacated positions in Baclaran and Pasay, then forgot all about the formal written request. AJI's fair in love and war, but we were not supposed to be at war with the Americans. NOTiel burst into tears upon seeing the American

COAT路OF路ARMS OF 1898

rlag hoisted over what had been an insurgent advance position, but his troops had no power now to reclaim what they should never have retreated from. This was the turning point of the Battle of Manila. From here on, it would be the Americans advancing, and only the Americans. Aguinaldo, with his own consent, had been dislodged, outflanked, doublecrossed, bypassed, left behind, kicked out of the Camino Real. The Camino Real that audacity could have made the Revolution's highway to victory, naivete turned into a dead end. Aguinaldo had been given three chances. One was the chance to take Manila by storm before the Americans could land an army. He failed to seize that chance. Another was the chance to stick to his lines and thus not give the Americans any opening, so that they would be forced to

follow the Filipinos into Manila. He bungled that advantage by succumbing to Greene's trick, thus opening the way to the exclusive American occupation of Manila on August 13. 189B. But these two chances that

Aguinaldo fumbled were preceded by a primary one which might have meant a more natural continuity in Philippine history_ Much has been made of the secret agreement between the Spaniards and the Americans to exclude

AGUINALOO AS CAUOILLO OF THE REVOLUTION

EMILIO AGUINALDO

128

AguinaJdo from the taking of Manila. What's not equally stressed is that a chance to make

a similar arrangement with the Spaniards

which

would

have

brought the insurgents and the Spaniards into an alliance against the Americans, was offered much earlier to Aguinaldo. When he rejected it, he rejected an escape from increasing entrapment by

horses; and even such redoubtable figures of the 1896 uprising as Ricarte, Pio del Pilar, Mariano Trias and Emiliano Riego de Dios declared themselves on the side of the government. Vital Fite, whose sympathetic

General Blanco, Polavieja and Primo de Rivera had only accomplished what Augusti later accomplished, the Revolution would have died right there in the woods of Balintawak." But the situation changed

DON FERNANDO PRIMO DE RIVERA

the Americans as well as an opportunity to expiate his double guilt of having broken faith with Spain while putting too much faith in America.

The Shut Door

Pima de Rivera, who engin. eered the Pact of Biak-na-Bato,

said of that broken pact: "There it waits for someone stupider or smarter than I: let my successor repair it as best he

can," His successor as governor-general of the Philippines was Basilio Agusti y Davila, who assumed office on April 10, 1898, and seemed earnest in instituting reforms. His policy of attraction resulted in the fonning of militia units composed of amnestied insu rgents, on whom military ranks were conferred. He organized a Philippine Consultative Assembly of 20 representatives of all the social classes, including former insurgents. Such was his success in reuniting the country that, when war with the United States loomed overhead, volunteer groups, already drilled into troops by their own officers, offered themselves to the government; the provinces outdid each other in donations of funds and

contemporary account of the Revolution Aguinaldo admired, spoke for the liberals in Spain when he said: "If Governors-

again with the news that Aguinaldo had returned to the country, backed by American arms. Augusti lost no time in trying

WHERE OlD AGUINALDO FAlL?

to win Aguinaldo over to the Spanish side. On May 23, Felipe Buencamino, who headed one of the volunteer armies committed to the government, was sent to contact the newly arrived Agui路 naldo and to persuade him to abandon the Americans and ally himself with the government. Buencamino argued that, with so many insurgent leaders now in the loyalist militia, a renewed in路 surrection might lead to civil war. Since this was but an informal feeler, Buencamino carried no official written authority for his mission, which Aguinaldo spurned. He had. Buencamino arrested and thrown to jail. By any ethical ibndard, Aguinaldo was in the wrong. He had accepted money from the government swearing not to rE$ume the insurre<:tion; but he had net only

129 come back to revolt again but had come back as the ally of a foreign invader and was thus doubly a traitor. (A mild parallel would be Ricarte's return in the company of the Jap invaders.) Yet the government, instead of threatening to hang him as renegade and traitor, or demanding the retu rn of the pact money, would overlook his double treachery, wooed his favor and entreated him to return to its side. He responded to this remarkable magnanimity of the government by arresting and jailing its emissary, Buencamino, on no charge at all save the suspicion that he was a "stooge of the friars." However, Buencamino's prepos路 terous fate had its desired efCe<:t: the other militia leaders in Cavite came rushing to Aguinaldo to protest their allegiance to him.

So completely had he entrusted himself to the Americans that he rashly shut out all negotiations with the government, instead of exploring that avenue as a possible alternative, should the American route prove a snare, or the advantages, by keeping himself open to both sides, of playing one against the other. The American generals, when they arrived, might not have treated him so shabbily had he previously indicated that he was quite capable of abandoning the American side and allying himself with the Spaniards. But Aguinaldo, thought nominally a traitor, was not treacherous. His candor was his rum. The very next day after the Buencamino millsion, May 24, he issued a decree that slammed the door in the government's face:

AMERICAN T ROOPS L AND IN CAVITE IN MI D路YEAR OF 18911

130

EMILIO AGUINALDO

"Since war is soon to start, and since this Dictatorial Government I lead has learned that the Spanish government is preparing to send us an emiS$tlry to confer on the possibility of reaching an agreement with us, and since I

am resolved not to entertain any message of this sort, having noted that nothing came out of it the other time because the Spanish government had not fulfilled its promises.. .I decree the following: "Article 1. Any emissary who enters this territory to parley but does not show the flag of truce required by international law or, though showing i~ lacks the cre.. dentials to prove his character, shall be deemed a spy and shot. "Article 2. Filipino!; who agree to become such emissaries shall be deemed traitors to their

...

country and shall be punished by being suspended by the neck for two hours on a plaza, with a placard proclaiming them traitors to their country." Apparently, the government had intended to follow up Buencamino's informal feeler with a mission more official in nature, to discuss the terms of an alliance between the insurgents and the government, with Aguinaldo in a far better bargaining position than at Biak-na-Bato. It was cer路 tainly not for him to complain that nothing had come out of the agreement there because the Spanish government had not fulfilled its promises, when he himself had never intended to keep his word and, in fact, at the very moment he was giving it, was already plotting to break it. Undaunted by Aguinaldo's de-

cree and Buencamino's mishap, Augusti continued his policy of attraction. He convoked the Philippine Conswtative Assembly and announced that he was ready to grant the reforms it demanded. "Autonomy" was no longer a dangerous word; in open circulation, in fact, were handbills that cried Villa la Autonomia! On May 31, Pedro Paterno declared in a manifesto that the "evil days of Spanish colonization" were over and that "Spain has understood we are already of age and require reforms in our territory such as the formation of the Philippine militia, which gives us the force of arms, and the Assembly, which gives us the power of speech, participation in the higher public employments, and the ability to control the peacefw development and pro-

WHERE DID AGUINALDO FAlL?

gress of society." To top it all, Paterno announced that, accord· ing to Augusti, Spain would grant an autonomous govern· ment to the Philippines. Paterno therefore called on his country· men to help "our old ally Spain" against the Americans, who would "absorb us and reward our treachery to Spain by betraying us, making us slaves and imposing upon us all the evils of a new colonization." The promises of autonomy and reform were obviously aimed, on the one hand, to keep the native militia loyal and, on the other hand, to attract Aguinaldo back to the side "of our old ally Spain." But Aguinaldo'sjust comment was that all thi!\ came pretty late. His camp rebutted the promises by sneering at¥'aterno, whom it rather unfairly branded a failure as the arbitrator of the Biak-na-Bato truce, for how was poor Paterno to blame if ~i. naldo had never meant to keep that truce? The counter manifes· to of the Aguinaldo camp is far more painful reading today than the manifesto it mocked. COMMODORE DEWEY

131

Paterno, declared the counter manifesto, had committed "an injustice in imputing to the North Americans the intention of taking possession of these Islands .. .for besides having no grounds on which to make such an a1lega. tion against a nation distinguished for its humanity like the Federal Republic, there is the fact that its own constitution prohibits the absorption of territory out· side America." Aguinaldo seems to have been fated to rehearse in his person, within the space of a few months, the entire course, from extreme trust to extreme disillusion, of the Philippines' American experience. Barely two months after that counter manifesto, he (or, more probably, Mabini) was penning an ironic letter to an American consul who had described the "benefits" for the Philippines of being absorbed by the United States. Replied Aguinaldo: "You say that all this and yet more will result from annexing ourselves to your people ... But why should we say it? Will my people believe it?" And Aguinaldo observed that his people were beginning to have "unworthy suspicions" about American motives in the Philippines. In this letter, the Americans who were "a nation distinguished for its humanity" only two months before had become "the cold and calculating... sons of the North." The irony should have been wielded earlier, for the Americans had all the time been giving "grounds" for "unworthy suspicions" - for example, their consuls' reluctance to promise Agui· naldo anything in writing, and Dewey's failure to provide him with any arms except "some Mauser rifles and an old smoothbore gun that had been abandoned by the Spaniards" and which Dewey wouldn't even tow

across the bay for Aguinaldo, rather strange conduct towards an "ally." When the American generals arrived, they passed Ba· coor every day on their way to or from camp and frontlines but they made it a point not to call on Aguinaldo. The difference between the two sides in their treatment of Aguinaldo is striking. The Span. iards were leaning over back· wards in their efforts to attract him and their promises grew not only in number but in definiteness: autonomy, reform, decentraliZation, local representation, a General Government of the Phil· ippines. All the things that the Propaganda had fought for were now, it seemed, ours for the taking. On the other hand, the Americans had stopped promis· ing anything at all; were grow· ing vaguer and vaguer, more cold and calculating; were, in fact, one might say, no longer on speaking terms with Aguinaldo. Yet it was to the increasingly hostile Americans that he clUng; it was the increasingly propitia· tory Spaniards that he spurned. GENERAL MERRITT

EMILIO AGUINALDO

132

He had some 80,000 troops at his command; the Spaniards had some 15,000 in Manila, about 20,000 more in the rest of the country. An alliance between him and the government before the Americans could land an army (as seems to have been Augusti's objective) would have bottled up Dewey in Manila Bay and made his victorious armada impotent. The combined insurgent-government troops could have repulsed any attempt to land the arriving American troops. With neither, Manila nor any part of the country in American hands, the PhilipPines would not have entered at all in the negotiations at the end of HJe war. We would have been spareCl the transfer to American hands, the shock of a new colonization, th'e break in our culture. , The situation in 1898 had changed too radically from that of 1897 to allow any demur that an Aguinaldo alliance with the government would have merely been another Biak-na-Bato. He had only nuisance value at Biakna.Bato; but in 1898 he would have had the upper hand in any dealing with the government, since it was he who was being wooed, he who had the power to lead the country against the Americans. After the war, a defeated Spain would not have had the will, much less the wish, to trifle with the last of its colonies. The autonomy promised us would have had to be very real indeed. And the line of our history would have been continuous: from the Propaganda, through the Revolution, to autonomyand, eventually, inevitably, independence. Aguinaldo had the chance to bring to a triumphant fulfillment both the Propaganda and the Revolution, but he rejected the

chance. Repulsed, the Spaniards then turned, instead, to the Americans and the result was the strange secret alliance between the two foes which gave Manila to the Americans for the price of a mock battle. Aguinaldo, who had the city almost in his grasp, was left out. He was warned by the Americans that his troops would be under fire should they try to enter the city. When Manila fell to the Americans on August 13, 1898, the Revolution , too, had failen, Aguinaldo had failed. Everything that follows, even Malolos, could be called anticlimactic - had there been any climax. The tra路 gedy can be read as geography: first, that blitz along the Camino Real all the way down Cavite to the very gates of Manila; and then, after August 13, instead of the expected advance into the city, a retreat from it, the withdrawal to Malolos, first stop in the long flight of a Republic that, unloosed from center, would drift Carther and farther away from it, until it found itself up In the pagan wilds. The saddest u.s. PRESIDENT MCKINLEY

sigh about the Malolos Congress is that it should not have been in Malolos. The unity there could not last because it lacked gravity. Aguinaldo never achieved the climax of his career. If his failure was great, so was his punishment. Instead of being honored as a living hero, he was to be but a walking anticlimax for the rest of his life - until his rehabilitation in the 19505, his apotheosis just before he died. But this final mercy came late in a long life when he vaguely lurked in the attic of the national consciousness: a Black Legend in the 19005, a reputed stooge of the Americans in the 1920s, a failed politician in the 19305, a Jap mouthpiece during the war - all this latter part of his life is letdown and postlude. One recalls the cruel saying common in prewar days: that Aguinaldo should have died on the battlefield, then he might have been a hero. Most ironic of all was his fate as the idol of a snob cult, for in the faded parlors where gathered to mourn a lost elegance those who, even like him, fou nd themselves left behind by the times and alienated from the new culture, mi General became the symbol of the very world he had fought to destroy. But at least, in those old parlors, lived, not the fossil of the ignominious days, but the young Caudillo who had stood at the gates of Manila. He had been but eight miles from victory, but eight short miles Crom greatness. Aguinaldo was history during that epic march from Cavite port to Kawit to Bacoor, each move bringing him closer to the prize. From Bacoor, there was only one direction for him, iC he was to triumph. But the man who retreated instead to Malolos was already, alas, the fugitive of Pala"~.

Mabini The Mystery

fiowering of law immediately preceded the Revolution. That event had had a long line of harbingers, the earliest being t he folk artists - builders, painters,

sculptors, wood carvers, ikon路 makers - who stamped the country,trom the llocos to Zam路 boanga, with a look of oneness. When the country had achieved a style of culture, the writers and propagandists arose to proclaim its oneness. Then, on the very eve of the Revolution, as though fate were indeed preparing the country (or government, a galaxy of great lawyers appeared, Mabini, who became a lawyer in 1893, was but the kee nest of a group that would, in early American times, invest law with t he prestige it still inordinately enjoys among us. Says Rafael Palma of Mabini's class: "Never in the memory of the University (Santo

Tomas) had so many vigorous minds and such well-equipped talent been gathered together in a single hall." The group included a future mayor of Manila, two future judges, two future assemblymen, a future provincial governor, and several future abogados de campanilla. But of that "brilliant nucleus of talented youth," Mabini "stood out like a star of the first magnitude." The group would have assured the First Republic of a sufficient su pply of legal talent; it did impress the Americans, when civil government was re-established , with the number of legal-minded F ili pinos available for governmental positions. Epifanio de los Santos has noted another stroke of provi路 dence in that class of 1893 that produced Mabi ni, the future prime minister and foreign sec-

retary of the First Republic: "It must have been most use路 ful to him that among the subjects of the University should figure that of Interna tional Law, public and private, something which, until the uprising of '96, would seem to have no relevance to the practice of the law profession in the islands. An unexpected turn of events, developing from 1897 but principally in 1899, justified the existence of that subject, an eventuality the Spaniards themselves could not have suspected . But for this circumstance, it's quite sure that neither Mabini nor any other of those d irectly involved in that ephemeral government ( the First Republic) would have found themselves prepared for the grave responsibilities they had to face." The Filipino had advanced from folk 3ft to literature and

136

APOLINARIO MABINI

propaganda and then, just before the Revolution, to law. And (rom law it was hut a step to selfgovernment. The lawyer was represented in the Revolution by Mabini; and as if to make unquestionable our mastery of that most subtle and urbane of the professions, there's no European schooling or sojourn to which Mabini's accomplishments may be attributed. Europe had been a necessary catalyst for the generation of Ri· zal. By the time of Mabini, the Filipino intellectual had advanced beyond the need for enJightenment abroad. Compassion has, in our times, been expressed for Mabini because he could not at·

ford a European education, along with the gratuitous observation that he might have become even greater if he had studied in some German university instead of having to make do with backward local schools. But the very point of Mabini's accomplishment is that all his schooling, all his training, was done right here in his own country. The argument of Rizal's generation was that Filipinos were not yet ready for self-government because they had too little education and could not aspire for more in their own country. The evidence of Mabini's generation was that it could handle the affairs of gov· ernment with only the education

it had acquired locally. It no longer needed Europe; it had imbibed all it needed of Europe. That is the cultural meaning of the break with Spain. Mabini proved that, without having to go to Europe to learn, he could find his way deftly through the intricacies of civil law and rise to the heights of intemationallaw. His was a legal mind. He was interested in law as an idea, as an ideal, but not as a profession. He was never what we would call a practising lawyer. Though he joined the Guild of Lawyers after graduation, he continued to work in the office of a notary public, set up no office of his own. But law was his life, his

THE ORIGINAL UNIVERSlDAD DE STO. TOMAS IN INTRAMUROS

•

... ,. ... , - .. - · ,Jl·"

- _

:..\.L.r-

137

MABINI THE MYSTERY

true love, and whenever he appears in our history he is arguing a question of legality. He urged the surrender at Biakna-bato but afterwards questioned its legality because "there was bad faith on both sides_" He was for the resumption of the Revolution hut questioned the legality of the Declaration in Rawit because he felt that one man, a dictator, could not proclaim a nation's freedom in the name of its people; only the people themselves could do that; and he did not rest until the Kawit act had been ratified by the representatives of the pe.ople in the provinces controlled by the revolutionary armies. He was for con-

stitutional government but questioned the legality of the Malolos Constitution because, in his opinion, the Congress in Malolos was merely a consultative, not a legislative, hody. He willingly stepped aside as prime minister to give way to Paterno but questioned the legality of the Paterno cabinet on the ground that its avowed policy - to seek an auto-nomous government under the Americans - violated the Constitution. He even saw the struggle between Aguinaldo and General Luna as a question of legality: Luna's aspiration to topple the Paterno cabinet and replace it with one headed by himself was legal - "una aspiracion legal y

correeta" - whereas Aguinaldo's resentment of it endangered the rule of law by undermining military discipline_ Mabini launched into his biggest fight after the Revolution, and again it was a battle over legality_In letter after letter, article after article, he sought to prove that the American occupation of the Philippines was illegal. He built up his case too well; it cost him his life; for he was deported to Guam, where bad food and prison conditions further weakened his already frail health. He died within three months after he was released_ But to the end we see his lawyer's mind splitting legal hairs.

REVOLUTIONARIES HOVER BEHIND PATERNO AND AGUINALDO AT BIAK_NA路BATO

138

He had asked for permission to return to the Philippines but was told he could not do so unless he took the oath of allegiance to the United States. He asked if he could return to the Philippines first and then take the oath. The answer was no. Worried that he might have been misunderstood, he hastened to explain that his request was not a "quibbling with my pen" to avoid taking the oath. He had wanted to return to the Philippines first to see for himself if the people had really accepted the government under the Americans_ If they had, then it was a legal government - and he could take the oath of al· legiance. But he wanted to see for himself first if the circumstances "justified" his taking the oath - "so that I may not be taken for a flippant man with no regard for his word." The picture we get is of a mind at once scrupulous and intricate, sharp and elusive. It is not, perhaps, a great intellect. He calls himself a man of letters but he shows no interest in literature or the arts, or in any other field outside law. His mind is of a single dazzling facet, not the multi· faceted marvel that distin· guished the men of the generation just before him:' Rizal, Del Pilar, the Luna brothers. Though born a peasant, he had no interest in agriculture. Though in· volved in a war, he did not bother to understand military strategy. As a writer, his style is alter· nately plain and convoluted, but its qualities are legal rather than literary. He concentrates on pole. mic and abstraction; is not, one feels, really interested in people. He sees hbtory as a series of prob· lems confronting men, not as men confronting problems. In his Memorias. he remembers all the legal problems of the Revolutio'n

APOLINARJO MABINI

but not a single dramatic scene. He can write about such a por· tentous event as the June 12 act in Kawit without actually telling what happened, only whether it was wise or rash, but not if it was moving. He allows himself few flights of fancy. The closest he gets to being lyrical is in the True Decalogue, which might have been written by a Man of Reason

of the 18th century, Mabini's spiritual century. What we have, finally, in the post·Revolution Mabini, is a law· yer endlessly, tirelessly arguing a case. And that is his greatness. For the case he seemed to have lost then, he is winning today. It was inevitable that, having rediscovered June 12 and Agui· naldo, we should now be redisco·

THE MALO LOS CONSTITUTION SERIALIZED IN THE PRESS

HERALDO FILIPINO . ...""'- - ........ .... .........,_ ..... -. ---"1---"'... ..."",-----........ ' ....10'..' .,.,

lIUIU II-Ullin IUlUU

...... ,-

~.-

PMO~M(I

-.- ..

DIIlECCION Y "DMltlISTII"CION

...""...... _ ...T ... -.lo • • _ ..... _

e- w 6•. 1..,....~ 61-.

I. . .

. . A~O ... O .

... ".

CONSTITUCION POLlTICA (""

........

)

_wt

pres;. ka ....... n6 ... lputnop ,..n, .....,. 60·

AI\. 12. An, I~ID ,"I."I .... pi " " " don•• n,n, llOl"itlico 'I i.,todh.n1 .......... , I.nli .. loT .... hindi ... bObo ~ kundl m.lopot ""I pon.hona Pleh P.... id..,l. TlrUu, IX

UioJ. ..

".01_ 5«"'",. »,.~

G"I, ... ,·••.

A>1 13 /J.~Uk.""'n onl eon ../o no .. Go· ......... nonl ;,.on. P~onl s.c,tIorio· h.11 nonl .... nfA n""l N. tocioo Ed,.nj.,.,. (II. 1.1',;0. (~). Ih.;,.d,. Goo· 'n. .t /J.,i .... In. I,,,,,,*, polbl .... () ). Com""i· ..-... (,).t 010, .. p"~"'" (~); It At",ull"n,

P_." " ca"',..

n..........

Indullri. 01 Con><tcio A<t. 7' !.oM! n"" ,ut.. ~ .po .. ,a no", Pro· ,"10 a ... H.""b!'oco .. polt"pod ... nl kom toponll0rilwo"r popinnoh'" ... m.tn "'''I ......... _rio. A.. k.ut ..... di ... tuell, n.... hboPlhf dl m.I~'.po.d 01 ....... n. ... ~. n. M,n''''p no ........"" ........._ '''I ..h.1 "'''' Smetorioo n,ol Gob;omo ~kol • boOaI paUtico",. ,...ili. Gob .. , ... ~ ....., ~ .. konilA', ipo.lWoqol no.m1n , ...

,0"

itII.,

..........

"'fl'

KobtroPuluo ..... Proc:oJ.NoIoI' .. _

_ ....

. ..

~.....

~'.A

..,. ., oiTaaI

.....

dba"' .....

......... : ; ....

1&..

- ......- '''''.0''-.,'' ..,... ~ ....

=_"~'::::o_

n,nr P..-.onl

...... n ..

~o~i!t .

A~ 16. Sobl,', 'Ion!&n .." n... k.po ....· ..hin "'.......... bIe•• OT hir><l1 ... ~bCI ... ..... in.,",llo hndl ip>lp""", hint'" "'''I k ........· 1I'pie><n.. nles. •

hI.,

T'TUIA X

r'lroI .. pod" i.d/,Ool

(I).

A" A"~ k, ..... ,orib ... onacIiPol ...... lOY"... pon,,"''' "'.. No6lI>............. hl"'~ l'n'low,~ no u .. , ..I • ............... n,.nunl '-;001. 'T .. ,m ... "'... koI ...., ,.....

I"bun,b I" ,;nl ",",nil' c.ld, .. ... poIol.uri<! .. t.ooo.I I\<""bh.". no i""'1 iba ItmoD, ... P •• wi. 'fOII II P>JU~4ibo'''M ....... _I ...... Ionlin bbo""n, lil.k .............. 10,... Bo .... rodi_ iIo'y ""' ' . . .. h.1 ....,nfO k' .. nl ..... _ " at

pi"'"

n'.

m~'

nol..

""10_ 11. t1in41 ...... -.... "*' .nl ""'... R.p. _ _ to-. j""""'"

"'"'I'P"~

<1_

k.n."h>n .1 ' ........ H.... _ntoo _ _ .. let k"", blndl Io-r-. A<t 111. A!If po. . .~ ..... pooJ.<

'- ........

....... -.. ........ :-=·.....:::0 ...... _ u,,_.

'" ... " '." ....t>,:. -

....

...'" If. bIco_

......... n,n, Goblo................ u_ h.nt 1!flop,1 .. koni!t . , ""n.tn ......

""1:_" ......,

l...pol n.... CorI. 80_ .. _

.....,. lllboooloo .. _

J"""''' .. _

...........

"y-.

...-.... -. ._._.,.... ....... . _.....-,,_ .,...... ...........,---_ ,0.., ",IIoIOTO ." ,. ",,,,,pollOk., 01Il00 "'''f

T< . . ~ .. _

- .~

, ... ,

,.~~.,

,.~

. _, ....... _ , : ~

139

MABIN1 THE MYSTERY

vering Mabini; though it's doubtful that the current interest in him will fetch him completely from the shadows, for those shadows are part of his element. There is a mystery about him. The sharp-eyed, sharp路tongued cripple moves behind veils, be路 hind curtains. He was one of the most voluminous writers of the Revolution, we know almost everything about him as an offi路 cial; but we know almost nothing about him as a man. We know he was sick; we do not even know why he was sick. The older generation clams up when the talk turns to Mabini the person. Even as a public figure, he never seems completely onstagej he always seems to be standing behind somebody else. As a young propagandist, he was behind the figure of his pr~tor, Numeriano Adriano. DurilU{ the Revolution, he was behin~ the figure of Aguinaldo. He was not a leader but rather a power behind the throne. Even after he and his cabinet have fallen, we still sense him hovering behind Aguinaldo, like the Mind en路 croaching on the Will. It has been claimed that many pronouncements of Aguinaldo's were actually Mabini's issued under Aguinaldo's signature. O! our heroes, Mabini was the sphinx - a verbose one, but a sphinx nevertheless; and he may have carried his secret with him to the grave_

ive attitude toward the world did not become notably subjective even when sickness should have forced him in on himself. We do not have here a young man full of sweetness and light whom a cruel fate turns into a serious thinker. He was already gray of hue even before his crippling. A classmate of his has said that, as a young student, Mabini "never displayed the gaiety and joviality characteristic of the students of those times." Even as a youth, he already showed no

T,le logical explanation for the aura of mystery around Mabini would be his sickness, which is, superficially, the most mysterious thing about him. The trouble is that there is no evidence the sickness wrought any decisive change in him. If he was a sober, austere, undemonstrative, singleminded, rather remote, rather dry person after his incapacitation, he was obviously all that even before it. His coolly object-

AN AGUINAll>OlANO MABINIII ANTI-AMERICAN MANIFESTO

OTRO IWIIFIESTO DEL sa PRESIDENTE

_-_ __ . _-. . .. --. ...

___ '"

..... --~ .........

~_""'LU . "'--

Mind On Will

------

140

APOlJNARIO MABINI

1,.k,.1.-

1'.~_4.

t ...;:

l~'

~.J.......

~II

interest in human relationships, moved apart from his classmates, formed no real friendships. The only tie he formed duri~g this period was with Adriano. who was an older man. After his accident, he suddenly took interest in his fonner classmates, but only because he wanted to make use of them. One astonished classmate who had long disappeared into a provincial farm found himself summoned to Manila, to the house on Nagtahan, from which, he says, he emerged "completely transformed," no longer believing that the destiny of the Philippines was wedded to that of Spain and eager to offer himself to the reform movement Mabini had described in "such convincing, such hypnotic terms." His classmates at the university also noticed that Mahini never fell in love, never even indulged in a nirtation. His youthful continence may have been dictated by his poverty: he never had enough money for books or room rent, let alone girls; but even when he oecame more af-

rl- _.....~..

.... _ ...... J.....

II'_r 11.;:.-, ..,__

~ f-.

. -•• .."hl..

, ..... _ _ ;,

t"l~t..... (...-.,_ 1-..... ,(... \"-",

_Ca ... _

..... t~ ...... - · ~J

•.. 1-

1- , - ....~ . '- --.. .... _'-, j L.

.~.

.~.(.".-

• .x-_

,..;<...

'.,

• .<.... .,

.- r ' - .-

)

•

~_.L-..J-...

""I'''-~

.I_r_

, ... - t " - ..

___ 4..,",".

-/--_.

"', r

. .,...

FACSIMILE Of A LETTER FROM MABINI TO AGUINA L DO

fluent, after his graduation, he sought and fanned no attachments. Love was never a factor in his life. Nor can it be said that poverty was the factor, that the facts of poverty were what shaped his

character. were what drained the juices from his heart. He does not seem to have been very embittered by it. Poverty was a dreadful inconvenience: that was all; but then, he was a man of frugal wants. We know he was

141

MABINI THE MYSTERY

poor, we do not feel he W(b poor: no man could have been more detached from the circumstances of his life. And it's doubtful that he would have been very much differ.e nt if he had been born rich. We automatically think of Bonifacio as proletarian, of Rizal as gentry; but we do not think of Mabini as a peasant at alL Despite his concern over the agrarian problem, despite his amazing awareness ' of the class struggle lurking just under the surface of the Revolution, he was himself a man of no class, belonging neither to the peasants nor to the ilustrados, and siding as often with one as with the other. When the Liga Filipina split into moderates and radicals ~ or, rather, into the haves who had so milch to proted and the havenots who had but their chains to lose - Mabini firm ly chose to side with the propertied senores against Bonifacio's proletariat because Bonifacio's revolt-minded faction was "tainted with illegality." But when the Malolos Congress was divided over the question of whether power should reside in a parliament do-

minated by the rich or in a president backed by a peasant army, Mabini stood with Aguinaldo against the ilustrados - again because he saw the attempt of the Congress to locate power as "illegal. " In short, Mabini was a man entire to himself, remarkably selfcontained, looking out - and down - on the wracked world from his tower of pure law. Not friendship nor love nor class kinship ever bled him of emotion. And since this was already his temperament before he fell sick, his sickness wo uld seem to have no relevance to his life. It was an accident, nothing more. We can ignore it, it has no importance, since it wrought no transformation in Mabini, apparently had no effect on him. But, then, we may be looking for the wrong thing. We seek a transformation when the effect - the desired effect -of the sickness may have been, precisely, no transformation at all. What Mabini could have been after was the preservation of his detachment, of that inner solitude untroubled by friendship, love, clan loyalties, or any sort of emotional involvement. And the time when he fell ill-between 1895 and 1896 - was precisely the time when his precious detachment was in greatest danger of being swept away. Poverty had hitherto served to protect him from friendship and love, but now he had a well-paying job: there was no longer any excuse for not going out into the world of men and women. Obscurity and his low birth had hitherto served to protect him from society, but he had been graduated from the university with signal honors, he was gaining fame as a lawyer and, most of all, he had plunged into the reform movement, which coul~ mean

being enmeshed in the sort of relationships he did not care for. Sooner or later, he would have to emerge from behind the back of Adriano and strike out as a leader on his own. But that, precisely, was what he did not want to be: a leader. There is no parallel here with Rizal. Rizal, a more robust chao racter, shunned involvement too, but because he knew he did not have the qualities of leadership. Mabini did, and he knew he did; but he was the type who could lead only as pure mind, not as will. He had the intellectual equipment; he did not have the emotional power. He could project his mind, make Mind en路 croach on Will - but on somebody else's will. Recall that classmate of his who emerged from the house on Nagtahan "completely transformed," offering himself to Mabini for whatever task the reform movement might demand. That was how Mabini wanted to operate: as pure mind. He was not a true leader but a natural "power behind the throne." But the only way he could work as pure mind was to rid himself of his body, to be "without foot," as he himself said. The trend of events of 1895-96 was, however, pushing him toward a more physical role in the reform movement than as a proselytizer of youth and a mentor of neophytes. And at the very time when it seemed he would be called to act with mind and body and feet, he fell sick, became paralyzed, turned into a cripple. And from that crippling emerged "the Brains of the Revolution," the man who shaped the Republic from a hammock. Was not that what he had wanted all along? His constant, mock-pathetic references to his

142

APOU NARIO MABINI

infirmity sound very much as if they came from a man who did protest too much. His sickness deprived him of nothing he really wanted and served as a shield between him and emotional entanglements, as poverty and obscurity had previously done. It saved him from being shot along with his mentor Adriano and all the other "moderates" who had thought to save their skins by ciisengaging thern;elves (rom Bonifacio, only to lind too late that their prudence was their doom But Mabini the Mind survived, because he had lost his feet. It will be argued that this theory is tenable only if it can be shown that Mabini's disability sprang Crom a willed sickness, not a fortuitous one, as seems to be the case. But it can be argued in turn that what nappens to a man is very much like that man - is, in fact, the man himselL Psychologists seek in every

accident some lurking intention, however dim; nothing in liCe is really fortuitous. Anyway, the thing to do is examine the various explanations that have been offered for Mabini's mysterious sickness.

Riddle In Myth

The most prevalent legend has Mabini falling sick because of an act of gallantry - in the polite, not impolite, sense of the word. A Frenchwoman's horse had escaped from the stables during a tremendous stonn and Mabini had run out to catch the horse for the Frenchwoman. Some say that he fell sick because he

THE MABINI HOUSE IN NAGTAHAN

got soaked to the bone; others say that, besides getting soaking wet, he had fallen from the horse while ridi ng it back to the stables. The trouble with this legend is that none of Mabini's biographers have cared to cite it, not even Palma, who knew Mabini person· ally - which indicates that the legend's veracity is not beyond doubt. Another more pertinent legend - pertinent to the theory given above - has it that Mabini's disability was a recurrence of a childhood sickness. The young Mabini had his first formal schooling in the poblaci6n of Tanauan and, according to the legend, he daily hiked the dis· tance from his isolated barrio to the town proper, getting burned by the sun and chilled by the rains., and falling many a time, for Tanauan is rugged mountain country. Moreover, the boy, physically fastidious, had the habit of talting a bath whenever he came home from school, however tired or hot or drenched with sweat he might be. For th is rea· son or the other, he contracted an illness that might have been infantile paralysis. He recovered; but, between 1895 and 1896, when Mabini found himself increasingly exposed to the world of men and women, the ailment mysteriously returned, leaving him paralyzed. There is material here to make a psychologist's nostrils dilate - but, again, the legend is unsubstantiated, though we do have this hint, from contemporary folklore, that there may have been an element of volition, however subconscious, in Mabini's crippling. The third legend was delicately alluded to by Palma and bean out Aldous Huxley's contention that a man can develop one fa· culty to extraordinary propor· tions only at the peril of leaving

14'

MABINI THE MYSTERY

his other faculties in a vestigiaJ Corm. PaJma's aJlusion hints at this: that Mabini developed his mind at the expense of his body, and that the body took its revenge by betraying Mabini, who was a giant in matters of law but a baby in matters of sex. (One is surprised, in the portraits of Ma· bini in his later 30s, to see a man who has been through two wars, has been involved in a govern· ment during its most agonizing crises. and has been ill most of his life, looking so youngish and unmarked.) The commoll gist of this third

legend is that Mabini was the vic· tim of a trap known in the cur· rent vernacular as pikot. He had a friend he sometimes visited, and during these visits he came to know the friend's sister, whll was much younger than Mabini, then around 30. On one such visit, a storm broke out and Ma· bini was persuaded to stay the night in the house. In the middle of the night, he discovered that he had been trapped, not only by the girl and her parents, but by his own vengeful body, which had yielded him up to passion. Horrified, he jumped out a win·

dow and fled through the cold rain. The fall from the window had maimed him and he was under treatment for about a year. Then, in January, 1896, he developed paraJysis. Like the other two legends, this third one is but rumor and hearsay, though it has the merit of having been mentioned, in print or talk, by at least two men who knew Mabini, who studied his life and wrote about it. All these legends have two things in common: rain and a raJ!. The third one is the most complex and detailed, and makes aJlegoric

A GROU P OF REVOLUTIONARIES DEPORTEO TO GUAM IN 1901

APOLINARIO MABINl

144

sense. If Mabini's body did betray him, we can understand why he should want to punish it all his life, by turning it impotent. The man of reason and rectitude may have literally been paralyzed with horror at what he had done. But the tragedy, by annulling his body, left him all intellect, as he may have wished to be. On the 98th birthday of the Sublime Paralytic, a monument by Tolentino was unveiled at the Department of Foreign Mfairs in honor of the first State Secretary of the Philippines, the man who conducted armistice negotiations with the Americans. who advoca~d trade relations with the British even while the Revolution was going on, and who sought to elevate the cause of the Revolution to the very halls of the Vatican. The Mind was in fine form. but it failed. Aguinaldo's Ministro del Exterior couldn't get anybody in the world to recognize the First Re· public. And the man who, to a certain extent, made Aguinaldo would end up disillusioned by what he had created. Said Mabini in the end: "The Revolution failed be· cause it was badly directed, be· cause its leader won his post not with praiseworthy but with blameworthy acts, because in· stead of employing the most use· ful men of the nation he jealous· ly discarded them. Believing that the advance of the people was no more than his own personal advance, he did not rate men according to their ability, character and patriotism but according to the degree of friendship or kin· ship binding him to them; and wanting to have favorites willing to sacrifice themselves for him, he showed himself lenient to their faults. Because he disdained the people, he could not but fall like an idol of wax melting in the

heat of adversity. May we never forget such a terrible lesson learned at the cost of unspeakable sufferings!" Though this is Mabini close to emotionalism, never was his de-

tachment so manifest. The Mind that had possessed and used the Will had withdrawn, and was now watching, with cold eyes, the discarded, diseased body dissolving "like an idol of wax. I I

THE MABINI MONUMENT IN HIS NATIVE TANAUAN

How Sublime The Paralytic?

The war against the Americans was the first the Philippines Cought as a national community. The 1896 Revolution had failed to win the support of the Creoles, or the native principalia, or even of the nationalists. It was repudiated by Rizal, denounced by Antonio Luna, rejected by Mabini. It was clUTied aut mainly by the proletariat of Manila and the landed gentry of Cavite and it was confined to the eight Tagalog and Pampango provinces. The other provinces not only did not join but eagerly helped in suppressing the revolt, oversubscribing their quotas when the government called for volunteers against the Tagalog rebels. Aguinaldo at Biak-na-Bato thought to speak for a nation but was, alas, speak. ing of a country banded against

him, for the first phase of the Revolution failed largely thlOugh

the efforts of the IIocos, Bicol and Visayan provinces. Only two years later the pic· ture had changed. Aguinaldo at Maloios, with the Gringo at the gate, has the entire nation massed behind him. All the segments of Philippine socie· ty, from clergy to peasant, have gravitated round the Caudillo to present one face to the invader. Malolos synthesizes a society, a culture, a history, a nation, Here, come togethe r at last, after 300 years of movement towards this point, stand the Creole (Calderon, Pardo de Tavera) and the princi· palia (Paterno, the Aranetas, the Legardas) and the ilustrado (Ma· bini, LUna, the Guerreros), stand· ing side by side with native clergy and peasantry. It is as if, with the American intrusion, the diverse elements of Philippine s0ciety, hitherto so strange to one

another, had suddenly realized what they had in common - vis· a·vis the alien presence. It is a tremendous picture, and a tragic one. For a moment, the nation had form, had unity but only for a moment. A few months later, the clergy has been alienated, the rich and the learned are fleeing to American·held grounci, the generals are falling on each other. As Mabini north in a hammock he notes that even the people are turning away from the Revolution, preferring "to submit themselves to the conquerors. and being joined in this by many of the revolution· aries. " What had happened? Why was not the unity sustained - a unity which, though it might not have stopped the Americans. might have come down to us in the form or a suppler state, a tighter

nees

APOLlNARIO MASINI

146

community? For Philippine society cracked apart into hostile classes at Malolos, and we are still trying to mend the fissures. Why did it crack up? In retrospect, Mabini blamed Aguinaldo: Aguinaldo, "an idol of wax," had equated the advance of the people with his own personal advance. Mabini blamed the rich folk of Manila: they had m~rely wanted to "protect their own persons and interests." Mabini blamed the army: both officers and men had "lacked virtue." But is Mabini himself without blame? If he was, as Rec.to put it, the "intellectual architect of the Revolution," should he 'not answer

does not answer the question, for Mabini, if he were a true leader, would have known how to show the haves in what manner their selfish interests coincided with the larger aims of the Revolution. One aim of the Revolution was to transfer the national wealth back to Filipino hands, which might become impossible if the Spaniard were merely replaced by the Gringo. In fact, the rich folk of Manila must have been aware of this. Their orientation was toward Latin-Am~rican events and they knew perfectly well what had happened in those Central American and Caribbean countries into which the Gringo had carried his carpetbag. They had come to believe that their sal-

for the faulty structure? From June, 1898, to May, 1899, he was the power behind the throne, the "hlack cabinet" of Aguinaldo, the real authority in the government: is not command responsibility therefore his? He began with a state in which all the classes of society had voluntarily united; when he was through, that consensus was in shambles_ Can he escape reproach? He knew that the Revolution could succeed only if Philippine society was united and he spoke constantly of the need for unity. But was he himself a force for unity or for division? The argument that at Malolos the propertied class was merely trying to protect its interests

A F1ESTA IN 8ARASOAIN FOR AGUINALDO AND TWO AMERICAN LADIES

--.

., "I' .to •• . " o. . . .

., ••

i!' .. ........ r

0 O·

:t1

f '

, •

~•

HOW SUBLIME THE PARALYTIC?

vation lay in the success of the Republic and the expulsion of the invader. And this must have been why they were so eager to join Malolos - until they found that there might be no protection there either. When Paterno took over, it was too late; the harm had been done; the rich

had got a big scare and were now ready to believe that the Creoles were right in fearing to ann the masses. And so began the exodus of the wealthy from Malolos back to American·held Manila, because they now knew they had nothing to gain and everything to lose should the Revolution

'" Precious support had

succeed. been lost for the Republic. Ir the loss had been counter· balanced by a gain in the support of the masses, the alienation of the rich would have been justi· fied; and the Revolution would have become, in its last phase, as in its first. a proletarian move-

AGUINAlOO AT THE OPENING OF THE MALO lOS CONGRESS

• • • • • • • • • • • • W· • • • • • • • • • •• ,

148

ment. But in a country like the Philippines, prestige is a force; and what the rich and influential spurn, the poor won't touch either - as poor Mabini learned when he saw the common folk, too, turning away from the Revolution, after it had heen abandoned by the glitter folk {rom Manila. SUperficially. Malolos can he viewed as a struggle between two camps to "capture" Aguinaldo. In one camp were Paterno, Calderon and the wealthy Manilenos. In the other were Mahini, Luna and the peasant army. What Paterno represented isciearenough: property rights. But what did Mabini represent? Though horn a peasant, he can hardly\be said to represent the peasantry\ He had as great a distrust of it as any Creole; he believed in the leadership of an intellectual elite; he didn't think that any Juan, Pedro or Pablo could handle the portfolio of foreign affairs; he wanted an Arellano or a Pardo de Tavera. When he could no longer turn to clergy or gentry or Creole or ilustrado, having antagonized all of them, he began to identify himself more and more with "the people," but he was a man with little emotional need for people. Ultimately, we have to grant that he was moved by noble abstractions: " reason and justice" in the first phase ; "independence" in the second. But he failed to give flesh to these abstractions. They remained cold thoughts in his legal mind. What were the common folk to make of "reason and justice"? Or of arguments for independence from a man who had to be borne hither and thither? And so the people preferred "to submit themselves to the conquerors." Mabini could not lead them. And yet, in a sense, Mabini and Luna, though both ilustrados

APOLINARIO MASINI

who had rejected the Katipunan, were the last Katipuneros. They wanted to make a clean sweep of the existing society and start all over again, with only the basic mass. In this respect, they were, in the end, the true revolutionarIes. "Routine," said Mabini, "is the very antithesis of revolution."

The "Black Cabinet"

various theories about this or that social class trying to "capture" the Revolution miss one point: that all these social classes which achieved solidarity at Malolos had at one time or another attempted revolution and could regard Malolos as the fruit of their frustrated or abort路 ive efforts and the triumphant Revolution as the result of what they had started.

CAYETANO ARELLANO

149

HOW SUBLIME THE PARALYTIC?

The right of the native secular clergy to possess the Church in the Philippines had started the Propaganda Movement. The fight of the Creoles to wrest the government in Manila from the Peninsulars had started the trend toward autonomy, secession, independence. The fight of the native principaiia for reforms had started an awareness of the Philippines as a nation. And the brief unsuccessful uprising of the Manila proletariat in August, 1896, had started the idea of a national war of independence, which itself was not. None of these groups, not even the Katipuneros, could claim Malolos as its own particular product. The Katipunan would not have been but for the Propaganda; nor the Propaganda but for the insurgencies of the clergy, the Creole and the rising middle class. Malolos was therefore a collective creation, truly of the People - as long as the term was not narrowed to mean merely proletariat or peasantry or masses. All the social classes, (11/ of them having failed in their individual revolts, were being given another chance at revolution, but this time as a collective effort. A true leader would have labored to keep it that way; and in justice to Aguinaldo it must be said that, when he had partly broken away from Mabini's domination, he did make an effort to pull back what was dropping ofr. That was one reason for the Paterno cabinet. But by that time, to repeat, it was too late: the unity of faith had cracked. And the paralysis was moving up from limb to heart. The theory today is that M.bini had a more sophisticated view of the Revolution than his fellows, that he saw it as a class wu. If this be true, then Mabini's profound insight, though it makes

him relevant to our times, made him rata] to the movement he directed during its most crucial phase, because he would have been fighting a class war when he should have been fighting a war of independence. But how accurate was his insight? The bourgeois advocates of a unicameral congress in Malolos argued that a single chamber sufficed to represent the totality of Philippine society because there were nodivisions among the class路

es. They may have been naive, or they may have had sinister motives for wanting to limit congress to one house (to limit membership or control to their class) but they surely would not have advanced the reason they gave if there were notorious social ani路 mosities in the country at the time. Furthermore, the single chamber perfectly expresses the spirit of the moment: all the social classes assembled as one body, under one roof, speaking

PEORO PATERNO

APOLlNARJO MABINI

150

with one voice. And if agrarian unrest did throb just under the surface, who knows what therapy comradeship in arms might have wrought if the Revolution had been pushed as a collective effort of all the classes, with peasant and landlord, rustic and gentleman fighting side by side? Closeness in war might have resulted in mutual sympathy after the war, and in a peaceful effort to

solve each other's problems. When the haves abandoned the Revolution, they abandoned the country to a future of social strife, which was, in fact, what Mabini had already started by antagonizing the ~ddle class. Mabini's objectIons to the Malolos Congress ar explicable on the ground of his obsession with legality. but they show him to be a confused and most unrealistic statesman. He objected

that the delegates were mostly of the ilustrado or upper class when he himself believed that the mass路 es must be led by the elite of society. He objected that many of the delegates had not actually been elected by the people (having been appointed by Aguinaldo - that is, presumably, by Mabini) when he was, at the same time, arguing that the forms of government were impossible to observe properly during a time of war. In Kawit, he had objected to the June 12 Act of Independence on the ground that a military dictator could not speak for the people; in Malolos, he wanted the military dictator, not a congress, to speak for the people. In the often incomprehensible debate in Malolos over whether power should reside in the President or in Congress, one begins

TRINIDAD PARDO DE TAVERA

to suspect that this time Mabini was not interested in the law, he was interested in power. He did not want a powerful congress not so much because the President might become a tool of the bourgeoisie as because Mabini might no longer have the President for his tool. With the throne would go the power behind the throne. (Aguinaldo was somewhere quoted as complaining that Mabini, jealous as a woman, wanted the President all to himself.) It was Mabini who wanted Arellano and Pardo de Tavera for the foreign office; they accepted, then suddenly resigned shortly afterwards, saying that they could not agree with Aguinaldo. But it was Mabini they could not agree with. And Calderon would remark that to differ with Mabini was to be considered an "enemy of the Revolution." Calderon wanted a Congress and a Constitution powerful enough to curb the excesses of the army, excesses that were alienating the country folk. There would be sneering afterwards at the impotence of a Constitution the author of which (Calderon) had to flee for his life from the threats of a revolutionary general (Malvar). But this was precisely the sort of thing that Calderon feared would happen unless the army was placed under a strong law, a law the strength of which Mabini vitiated with his insistence that it was a military dictator, and the military chiefs, who could best curb the army. Apparently, Mabini later realized his mistake. In retrospect - and so much of the man's sublimity is in his retrospects! - he allowed that the Revolution had failed partly because of the abuses of the army. But the Revolution failed when Congress and Constitution had long ceased to function and power rested solely on

151

HOW SUBLIME THE PARAL YTIC?

the military dictator and the military chiefs in whom Mabini had reposed his faith. It's curious, but in his campaign for an absolute military dictatorship, this frail invalid, this champion of law and republicanism, verged on Caesarism. (The story goes that on being appointed to the Supreme Court his first query was what division of the army he would have under him.) Had events been otherwise, he might have found a Bonaparte in Luna. It has been said that the Philippine Revolution was "anti·history." It broke out when impe· rialism was at its noontide when Victoria had been proc· laimed empress 01\ India, when Hawaii was asking to be annexed as a territory, when Ep'pt, Bor· neo and the Sudan were begging for colonial masters. That was

the current of history at the turn of the century, but the Philippine Revolution ran counter to this current - because it was follow· ing an older current, the one released. by the French Revolution. Like a pebble thrown into a pool and creating ever widening circles. that revolution had spread first all over Europe, then allover Spanish America, and had final ly reached the Philippines. In fact, one Mexican scholar, Don Rafael Bernal, calls the Philippine Revolution "the last of the Hispano· American wars of independence." We belonged to that world then and were shaken by its tides. Similarly, Malolos was "antihistory." All previous democratic revolutions sought to bring the executive under the control of the legislative. The English revolution, for example, finally reduced the king to a figurehead;

BENITO L EGARDA

the American and French revolutions eliminated the king alto· gether; and revolutions patterned after these three models seek the predominance of a parliament or congress elected by and representing the people. But the struggle in Malolos was for the predominance of the executive over the legislative; and though the bourgeoisie seemed to have triumphed with the Malolos Congress (as in England, America and France) the actual victor was the President, who emerged a dictator, as Mahini had wanted. This was against the trend of history in tho::;e times, but not against the trend of history in our times, which has seen the emergence of the executive as the superior force (De Gaulle in France, Kennedy and Johnson in the U.S.) over the legislative. In this respect, Mabini was our first modern man. He showed little faith in congress and leaned toward the era of the strongman, of the charismatic leader backed by the army and the masses.

A Brown Robespierre?

One student of Philippine history sees Mabini as "the Robespierre of the Philippine Revolution"; and there do seem to be parallels between the two fervent Rousscauists. "The government of the revolution is the despotism of freedom against tyranny," said Robespierre. And there's an echo of this in Mabini's "A revolution is always just, if it tries to destroy a government that is foreign and an usurper."

APOLINARIO MABINI

152

THE MABIN I OF THE POST路REVOLU TI ON ERA

But did Mabini extend this Ofdenanza to mean any government with interests foreign to those of the masses and which

usurps power that should belong only to the people? Was he in Malolos already fight ing a counter-revolution against a possible

tyranny of the "clase ilustroda y rica de Manila"? He seems to have believed that unless this was

done. a second bloody revolu路

153

HOW SUBLIME THE PARALYTIC?

tion would have to be fought, this time of the poor against the rich. The rich me n in Malolos certainly feared the power of the army and wanted it checked. From the modern viewpoint, they were right. Who today will argue that the army should ever be supreme over congress, even during a time of war? Washingto n had fought his revolution believing he was acting under the orders of congress, with powers it had given to him and which he must return to it. But Mabini, in· voking the exigencies of war, and apparently U)lafraid that the means might shape the end, wanted the army to be supreme, in the person of a military dictator uncontrolled by congress. He thought this necessary, to intimidate the bourge'oisie, who were merely trying to "protect their own persons and interests." But did he think th~ folk joined the Revolution _ ~~ , have their persons ravished and their property sacked? That they joined for selfish reasons should have been taken for granted by Mabini, who was always har ping on "the instinct of self·preservation." His concern should have been how to use the middle class and its selfish interests to advance the cause of the Revolution. Mabini said that it was the instinct of self-preservation that made a people abandon a cause that has fai led to serve them and serves only a special group. He was thinking of the masses; didn't he see that his role applied equally to the middle class and that, by his own dictum, the middle class was justified in abandoni ng a cause that had failed to serve it and was serving only Mabini's special group? For in Maiolo$, Mabini was fighting against Congress, against the government, against the law itself. His cabinet fell because of his

FELIPE CALDERON

machinations to prevent Congo ress from convening as ordered by the Constitution. Nor is the imputation of bour· geois selfishness wholly just. Those folk must have been moved just as strongly by patriot· ic feelings and democratic impul· ses. In the particular episode that struck terror in the hearts of the middle class - the spectacle of poor Calderon fleeing for his life from a Malvar enraged by Calde· ron's criticisms of the army -the irony is that Calderon was not a particularly ric h man and had little to protect or lose. The assumption then is that Calderon and his colleagues did not want the army to be sup reme in the

quite disinterested belief that any despotism is necessarily evil, even the "despotism of freedom." And the Calderon-Malvar episode presaged a possible Tenor. The tragic thing about the fall of Ma10100 is not that the rich d.nd learned abandoned it and went over to the American side but that they Celt compelled to do so - by the "instinct of self·preservation. " Mabini's inabil ity to keep the unity in Malolos sprang from the tactlessness that grows with power. When he proclaimed his moral code he was not content to call it a decalogue: it was the True Decalogue. This naturally antagonized the clergy, who

APOUNARIO MASINI

GENERAL MIGUEL MALVAR

pointed out that Mabini was asserting that the decaJogue handed down on Sinai was a false one. Though he sought to assuage the clergy - he did not, for example, want the question of state-church separation brought up because it might alienate certain groups supporting the Revolution - he was, in his own person, the most effective alienator of those groups. The clergy and the devout could hardly wish to continue supporting a cause increasingly identified with a freeth inker and anti-clerical . So, the clergy, too, fell away from Malolos. Mabini failed not only to keep the unity but to utilize the resources that were at hand. Washington used the Catholics, the In-

dians, the French - everything that could advance the cause of the American Revolution. But Mabini could not even improvise. The Republic badly needed trained soldiers; yet it had a trained army, unused, on its hands, for of its 9,000 Spanish prisoners some 6,000 were soldiers. To have attracted these soldiers to the revolutionary ranks, now that the Spaniards and Filipinos had a common enemy, the Gringo, would have been a stroke of genius. Nor is the idea fantastic. Numerous Spanish officersTones Bugallon, for instance did pass from the Spanish to the Philippine side, to fight the Americans. A true leader in need of troops would instantly have

thought of that captive army and devoted himselr to capturing its sympathies. But Mabini used the prisoners merely as a pawn in the game to entrap the Americans into establishing relations with the Republic: a futile endeavor. And when he sought the recogni路 tion of the Republic by foreign nations he failed, partly because of foreign disapproval of his refusal to release those prisonersprisoners who could have been useful to the Republic, instead of embanassing it. What Mabini in Malolos needed was, not a moral decalogue, but Arnang Rodriguez's very practical tip: "Politics is addition." In the end, with clergy, Creole, ilustrado and gentry fallen away from the Republic, only the people remained; and Mabini then declared, as Cesar Majul puts it, "that his decisions and values were those of the people." This was the apotheosis: Mabini as the People, Mabini as the Republic, Mabini as the Revolution. Alas, he would find that even the people had fallen away too. It seemed that their decisions and values were, after all, not his. The Revolution had ended completely paralyzed, having lost all use of its limbs. And so we come to the juridical Mabini of the last days, sternly pronouncing judgment, as the paralysis crept up from limb to heart, on the tragedy of the Revolution. The gentry was to blame, the clergy was to blame, the ilustrados were to blame, Congress was to blame, the Constitution was to blame, the generals were to blame, the troops were to blame ~ and most of all, Aguinaldo was to blame, for being such an idol of wax. Everybody was to blame. Except Mabini.

. ...:. . .

• •••• "·" "0

â&#x20AC;˘

Would Luna Have Been A Strongman?

f character is destiny, then Antonio Luna was his violent fate. But the dictum has been qualified by those who believe that a man's fate is not determined only by what he is, because: 1 am I plus my circumstances. This would be the truer reading of Antonio Luna's unhappy chemistry. He was a man whose brutal temper aroused against him a so-

ciety that prized pakikisama. He was a professional scientist suddenly obliged to lead an army of amateurs. He was a soldier trying to win a war and thwarted at every turn by those on whom he should have been able to depend. He was a nationalist at a time when the new nation he would save was already disintegrating. And he was the igno red champion of a bourgeoisie divided against itself.

For a chemist , Lu na was grossly inse nsitive to the materials and substances, and the reactions among them, t hat composed a society; but he had t he chemist's appetite, if not for analysis, then for synthesis, for form. A madly frustrated man in the end, it was to an older form he returned, to remold a dissolving Republic. Anarchy sh redded the revolut ionary troops and, to reintegrate them round a core, Luna would place in their midst a harder older army, the native army trained by Spain in the days when the F'ilipino soldier was still in form, in [ine form. Indeed, Luna's career is not so much revolutionary as conservatory _ The Revolution of '96, he had rejected and denounced; but when the Gringo loomed sinister, Luna leapt to the field, to repel the invader. In this, he was conti-

nuing the labor of three centuries to conseroe what had been given fonn, the form we call Philippine, against the eHort of Dutchman, Englishman, Ch inese corsair and MalO pirate to annul that fonn. Nor was the threat only from outside. The numberless revolts in our history can also be read as a resistance to form: we resisted becoming "Philippine" or "FiliÂˇ pino"; we would revert to petty kingdom, tribe, clan, barangay. Our deepest impulse has ever been not to integrate but to disÂˇ integrate; we seem to have a fear of form, especially of great form. The Philippine town that becomes big, rich and powerful does not glory in having acbieved fonn but automatically wills its annulment hy splitting into two or three smaller municipalities. It's this old native impulse to reo vert to a smaller conditi on that

ANTONIO LUNA

158

was at the root of what we call the crisis of the Republic, the Malolos Republic. The Revolution had been in form, in fine form, from the 1896 uprising in Kawit to the campaigns of 1898, which garri路 soned the entire country. from the Docos to the Visayas, with Tagalog and Pampango troops. The apogee was the rainy season of 1898, when Aguinaldo stood before the gates of Manila, With one stroke he could have united the nation, by taking Manila. But: character is destiny; and Aguinaldo being a small man was incapable of the large act. When he retreated to Malolos, what al路 ways happens in OUt history was happening again: form was disintegrating; greatness was reverting to a smaller condition. What was almost a national movement now shrank into a mere clan feat, the exclusive property of Kawit. For tbe crisis of the Republic stemmed from what the non-Cavitenos fumed against as Aguinaldo's cavitismo. The idea of the Revolution, of the Republic, had dwindled into something as small as the Kawit clan - or, worse, Mabini's private jealousies. Confronted by the figure of Luna, Mabini darkly warned (oh, he would change his mind later, as usual) and Aguinaldo, "con su puno y fetra," would write all the generals who had been with him in Cavite not to forget the days of '96 and not to fail him in this moment of "imminent peril." This was not the President of the Philippines invoking the nation but only a clan leader summoning the clansmen. Not Luna alone beheld his fate when, on arriving in Cabanatllan on the day of his killing, he was met by a Kawit man. The argument that Luna had to be liquidated to preserve unity is so ironic because it was Luna

who was trying to achieve unity. It was he who clung to the large idea of nation when Aguinaldo had reverted to the small idea of clan. The telling picture here is the presidential residence in Cabanatuan, ringed around with Kawit troops, as though that were alien ground where the President could trust none but kin. In Cabanatuan, the form that had been growing from Kawit to Malolos had been annulled; and the killing of Luna is symbolic. That killing also illuminates the role of his class in the RevQlution. The theory that has become fashionable today is that the Republic was betrayed by the middle class, the bourgeoisie, the close ilustrada y rica. But who is this middle class that is supposed to have sold the Republic down the river to the Americans? Is it Buencamino the autonomista, or is it that son of his who fell in defending the Republic? Is it Legarda the quisling, or is it the austere A1ejandrino doggedly following a lost cause? Is it a man like Cayetano Arellano who feared even autonomy and would have the Philippines completely under American control, or is it Gregorio del Pilar at Paso de Tirad? Is it Paterno at the bargaining table, or is it a good bourgeois like Luna exploding at the mere thought of bargaining with the Americans? Luna can be said to have died because he opposed a pro-American faction in his class; but who, then, in this struggle, is the "middle class"; Luna or his foes? Why shouldn't it be just as valid to claim that the bourgeoisie, in the person of Luna, ignored its own interests when it batted for independence? But that statement, like its opposite, !\imply cannot be made for the simple reason that no

single person or group can stand for the Philippine middle class at that particular moment of our history. No collective act, intent or policy can be attributed to it because it was divided against itself - and that was our tragedy. Had all the members of his class rallied behind Luna, given him the support he needed, he might have saved the Republic; but the bourgeoisie was rent into factions. Whatever the causes of the division - Aguinaldo's nullity, Mabini's neuroticism - the fact is that, if there was a faction of the middle class that saw no hope in resisting the Americans, there was another, larger faction of that class determined to prosecute the resistance. There was a faction, yes, so pessimistic of native ability it would put the country under a strongman not a native strongman like Luna but a foreign one, almost any foreign one. But to identify this faction - the Aranetas, Arellanos, Pardo de Taveras, Legardas and Buencaminos - with the entire middle class would be as preposterous as to argue that the Philippine masses betrayed the Revolution because the Macabebes went over en masse to the American side. The picture now painted is of a popular struggle waged by a people's army that faltered when abandoned by the middle class. But what are the facts? One has only to glance at the names of its officers to see that the war of '98 was a bourgeois enterprise. Far from abandoning it, the middle class was practically alone in the end in pushing the cause of the Republic, even when all hope for it was Gone. Who abandoned the Republic - the Major Torres Bugallon who fell in the Battle of La Lorna? the Colonel Benito Natividad who fought the Battle of Bag-

159

WOULD LUNA HAVE BEEN A STRONGMAN?

bag? the Colonel Francisco Roman who perished with Luna in Cabanatuan? FlOm Del Pilar at Tirad to Colonel Simeon Villa (father of poet Jose Garcia Villa) at Palanan to the unsummdered Malvar in Batangas to the Ricarte of the 1900s, the diehards of the Revolution are bourgeois figures. And it's the middle class we find left in the end because it was the middle class that had been with the movement throughout its doomed career_ The brilliant general in the battles of Bulacan was Don Venanelo Concepcion_ The young officer who commanded Aguinaldo's rearguard in the retreat to Bontoc was ~ieutenant Colonel Jose Joven, WJlO belonged to "una familia Ii~ajuda" (a noble family) of BacOior. Under Luna's command were men like Francisco Roman and Pepito Leyba, who belonged, says Alejandrino, "to distinguished and rich families (but) did not hesitate to abandon home, family and wealth to consecrate themselves to the cause of our independence, for which they gave even their lives." In Aguinaldo's retinue during the Central Luzon campaign was a young major named Manuel Luis Quezon_ And such other names as Tinio, Bernal, Arguelles, Hizon, Aquino, Mascardo, Villamor, Liongson, etc., are testimony enough that the middle class provided not only the head but the muscles for the resistance. Yet this class that engined the Cause is now accused of having snubbed it. General Jose Aiejandrino, who was among the first to accuse the "rich and educated class" of having failed the Revolution, was also the first to contradict his statement. In his account of his 1899 embassy to General Otis, he unwittingly revealed the composition of the revolutionary

command when he named the two aides he took with him to Manila: Lieutenant Colonel Ramon Soriano, who "belonged to one of the best families of Manila," and Major Evaristo Ortiz, a Creole who had traveled around the world, spoke English and German, and had left a raillOad position to figh t under Aguinaldo. In one breath A1ejandrino claims that the "popular masses _ . _carried on the Revolution without the help and even against the opposition of the rich and educated class," and in the next breath he contradicts that, too. Luna, says he, showed himself to be an organizer of the first cal路 ibre when he summoned all the Filipino ex-officers who hac! served under Spain, so that in a week "we had the satisfaction of

seeing three well.disciplined battalions under the command of genuine officers like Kahanding, Cavestany, Manalang, Yago, Elveiia, Obin and others." Outside these battalions and such companies as the Tinio Brigade, the popular mass of the anny was, for Aiejandrino a hordo - mere horde, rabble, inchoate mass needing leadership to give it form. A1ejandrino cannot be accused of having an aristocratic mind; but a savage note creeps into his voice as he repeats the word horda: how this horda had deserted en masse, and that horda had run away from battle, and another horda had to be encouraged "with pleas and threats and, at times, with the whip, those who were within my reach." Are these the "popular masses" who "carried on the Revolution without the help and

THE RESTOR EO LUNA HOUSE IN BAOOC.ILOCOS NORTE

ANTONIO LUNA

160

even against the opposition of the rich and educated class" this horda that Alejandrino says had to be whipped to fight? Savage certainly is the sarcasm when he observes that those of the hordo who survived from Caloocan to Samban "remained alive thanks to the fleetness of their

feet." After the Battle of Mangatarem, the troops under his command simply dissolved. "Of the celebrated horda, a gTeat part

was scattered and these decided not to continue with the hardships of the campaign. I never heard anything about them any more." And when he encounters a genuine people's army - the Guardia de Honor in Pangasinan - he learns to his horror that it's not carrying on the Revolution, it is against the Revolution. Those "fanatics" killed pOOl dear Pepita Leyba and many other officers of the Republic. Like Mabini, who, as he fled

GENERAL JOSE ALEJANDRINO

northward, saw the people turning away from the Republic, A1ejandrino, too, saw his "popular masses" abandoning the lost cause. Yet, again like Mabini, what he saw apparently did not influence what he thought; and he could later argue that it was the middle class who abandoned the Republic, though he himself, left alone in Mangatarem but still determined to continue, is the best proof against his argument. Certainly he can hardly keep his temper when he speaks of the horda that "decided not to continue with the hardships" or when he dwells on the Macabebes. He had been consulted by Luna on the advisability of razing the town of Macabebe; A1ejandrino had advised against it. "Later on, when, sick and almost without soldiers, I found myself continuously pursued and attacked by the Macabebe scouts, I regretted I did not support the bloody idea of their extermina· tion. I would have been spared all these Macabebes who had declared war against us (the Repub· Iic) without quarter. It is true that many of them paid with their lives for their crime of lese po/ria; but what importance could the death of a few Macabebes have in the course of events when not even the death of all of them would have troubled in the least the hearts of those who hired them?" If it be valid to picture the Philippine middle class of the late 1890s as the Legardas and Aranetas who junked the Repub· lie and fled to the Yanqui flesh· pots, then a counter picture should also be valid: the picture of the Republic at bay in Palanan. There it was the middle class, in the persons of Drs. Villa and Barcelona, that remained to defend the Republic; and it was the popular masses, in the per·

161

WOULD LUNA HA VB BEEN A STRONGMAN?

sons of the Macabebe peasants turned mercenaries, which, with treachery and for money, deli· vered the Republic into American hands. Yet the Macabebes connote not sedition but the failure to provide the masses with the leadership that would have made them useful to the cause. Luna tried, and was liquidated. Aguinaldo stuck to his private anny of clansmen and cronies. And it was the Americans who knew how to take the unused masses, give them form as trained troops, and lead them - against their own government. The masses are mere horda until..given Corm and direction; and it', to our grief that it was the Americans who provided what was needed. Says Alejandrino: "I mused more than once that

<0'"

",""OM'.",,,,, ,~,,u,,,

the death oC Luna was the greatest blow our cause had received. If Luna had lived and had been able to carry out his plans, I would not be in the mountains of Mangatarem with the impossible mission of safeguarding and defending the arsenal, as this would have been installed already in some safe place in the Mountain Province; and the some 600 men who constituted my column would not have been an· nihilated so easily and in such a short time, because, with them organized into guerrillas in the mountainous regions in accordance with the Luna plan, the Americans would have had to undertake a costly and dirricult campaign to make them surrender or to annihilate them." The "Luna plan" should prove beyond question that the hapless

'''',"",0 BV

REVO~UTIONARIES

general had no other intent but to continue the war, harass the Americans, drive out the invader. We can see the rightness of his plans and also that he could never have had the chance to carry them out, because he lacked precisely the quality that his enemies pretended to see in him: ambitiousness. Only ambition could have saved a man like Luna, forcing him to control his temper, sweeten his approach, suck up to the mighty, hide his thoughts, conti· nually improve his public rela· tions, and practise all those niceties of pakikisama that come so naturally to those lusting for a room at the top. But the reckless way in which Luna antagonized people, especially people in position, proclaims that here was a man with no thought of hoisting himself up to any top, whose exclusive concern was to get a job done. No climber would have been so inept a politician. Would Luna have been a strong· man? Alas, no. It might have been better for us had he been that ambitious. But he was no Caesar, no Bonaparte. He was a patriot with a single obsession: to resist the invader, to expel the Americans. It was the obsession of a conservator, and what Luna would conserve was the form of the status quo. Those of his class who blocked him were stupid: he was their best champion, our equivalent of General Lee. And what he championed was the local bourgeois dream of the good life: a prepping at Letran or Ateneo, a career at the University, a sojourn abroad, a return to the ancestral hacienda and a loyal peasantry, and positions of honor in Church, State and Army, but this time with no fear of being displaced by some haughty Peninsular.

162

It was the old Creole dream of

"independence." And didn't Luna consider himself a Creole?

The Character

I e Lunas were a mestizo family from Badoc, I1ocos Norte; but the general was a Manileno, having been born in Binando, on

October 29, 1868. He was the youngest in a brood of seven, all of whom were mus~a1, most of whom married whites or near路

whites. A Pardo de Tavera was painter Juan Luna's w{fe, the wife he caught in adultery and slew, of which crime he was abo solved by a French court, not so much because of the unwritten law that justified it as because the French judges regarded him as coming from a semi-barbaric country. To Antonio, who himself reo mained a bachelor. an absolution on such grounds must have seemed worse than a conviction, since it identified the Lunas with the "semi-barbaric" mass of their country when they belonged to the elite. If there was so little of the climber, of the opportunist. in Luna, it may have been because he saw no reason to rise in the world. in the Philippine world. who was already on top of it. As a member of the Creole class. he held a position in the government. The protestation of loyalty to Spain he wrote when the Revolution broke out was a Creole declaration of faith. Even when he ioined the Revolution, his associates remained Creoles, from the Torres Bugallon he carried off dying from the battle-

ANTONIO LUNA

field to the Paco Roman who feU at his side in Cabanatuan . Luna might have been a Bonaparte had he come from lower down in society or had thought himself because of some defect (like Bona路 parte's smallness) to be inferior in any way. But not only his cir路 cumstances but his abilities proclaimed him to be a superior man indeed. Studying him, one is again struck by the natural versatility of the men of that culture. We do wrong to think this unique in Rizal; the quality was richest in him but was common to his contemporaries. The enigma is how a culture supposedly so oppressive could have produced men of such varied talent that they seem protean, these manifold app roximations of the Renaissance ideal of the universal man. Compared to them, the ilustrados produced by the American era look smaller, narrower, more specialized, more provincial. In Luna, the talent is not only

diverse but precocious. At 15, he is gradUati ng from the Ateneo with highest honors as a bachelor of arts. At 19, on his second year in pharmacy at Santo T omas, he wins a prize for a scien tific paper : Dos cuerpos imporlanles de fa quimica. At 21, he is in Spain, studying phannacy in Barcelona; he would later tackle medicine in Madrid. At the same time that he is writing critical essays for La Solidaridad unde r the pen name of T aga-I!og (apparently he never thought of himself as an Ilocano) he is contributing technical papers to scientific journals. He gains fame as an excellent fencer and sharp. shooter; is an accomplished musician, especially as a gu ita rist; publishes a book of Impressions; would later teach himself military science. Yet it seems that the diamond was already seen to be marred by a flaw of character common to the Luna brothers: a hot temper, a tendency to violence. a lack of

TH E HOTE L DE ORIEN T E I N WEALTH Y BIN ON D O

...

168

WOULD LUNA HAVE BEEN A STRONGMAN?

lUN .... 路S "SALA DE ARMAS." OR FENCING SCHOOL

pokikisamo. Of som'e. imbroglio

in which the brotheri were involved, Rizal would snort impatiently: "Casas de los Lum,.!" According to Aiejandrino, th,e Filipino community in Spain gave Luna the nickname of Cafre. When writings of his critical of

Spanish customs drew insulting answer.; Crom a Barcelona editor named Mir Deas, Luna renamed the editor Mier Das (or fh its), challenged him to a duel aJ).d, on being rebutfed, sought him out and spat on his face_ But before the spitting incident (which still

failed to provoke Senor Mier Das) Alcjandrino had already chased after Luna, who had gone off, brandishing a rattan cane and wearing a ferocious face, to look for the editor, though he didn't know what the editor looked like. But: 'I am looking for, and will mangle, anybody who looks like Mir Deas to me," explained Luna_ Later, during the Revolution, he would display a similar impatience with ve nting his rage on the right targets. In May, 1894, Luna returned to the Philippines, having been commissioned by the government to undertake bacteriological studies of native contagious diseases. He was still in his 205 when appointed chemist of the municipal laboratory of Manila, after besting in the competitive exams for the post such worthies as Antonio Casanovas and Leon Maria Guerrero. Among the projects he accomplished as municipal chemist was an analysis of the Sibul mineral waters. By

THE BINONDO BRIDGE AND CHURCH AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

". 1898 he was the director of the municipal laboratory . When Aleiandrino came back from Europe an engineer, he and Luna resumed their bohemian camaraderie; mutual friends urged Alejandrino to tell Luna about a plan of RizaJ. Rizal wanted Luna to join the Katipunan "as an intermediary between the rich and educated class and the masses that formed the bulk of the society's membership." Luna refused, and threw back at Rizal an old Rizal excuse: a revolution would be premature. Apparently, however, Luna knew a lot about what was going on in the Katipunan - and the Katipunan likewise knew a lot about Antonio Luna"When the society was exposed and Luna was in danger of being implicated, his temper as usual got the better of him. " It appears in official documents," says A1ejandrino, '/that in this period Luna committed the greatest error of his life in de· nouncing the existence of the Katipunan and in revealing, duro ing his imprisonment after the outbreak of the rebellion, the names of his friends affiliated with the society. Later, however, he explained to me that, with the physical and moral tortures he suffered during his imprison. ment and on the assurance given him by the Spaniards that he had been squealed on by his friends, who had denounced him as an accomplice in the rebellion, his violent character had made him lose his better judgement. And having fallen for the scheme woven by the Spaniards, he had declared that those who de· nounced him were more guilty than he." The question here is who first infonned on whom, and this does not refer to the Spanish scheme. Was Luna's name among

ANTONIO LUNA

pirates. Armed with a recommendation from Felipe Agoncillo, Luna presented himself to Agui· naldo in Cavite toward the end of July, 1898; was appointed brigadier·general and director of war in September, was made full general two months later. He had brought home with him the tomes on military science he had been studying. "Above all," observes Alejandrino, "he brought with him a desire to atone for his past mistakes."

The Circumstances

EDIL9ERTO EVANGELISTA

those the Katipunan deliberately planteri to avenge itself on ilus· trados who had disdained to sup· port it? With this stratagem, the Katipunan had further divided a middle class already SO demoral· ized by the terror of '72. At any rate, by informing on others, Luna saved his neck. He was exiled to Spain in 1897 and shut up in the model prison of Madrid, but was soon freed through the intercession of a Spanish government official. He lingered in Madrid and turned to the study of military tactics and field fortifications, then traveled around Europe. News of the coming of the Americans to Mani· la Bay and their annihilation of the Spanish fleet there brought Luna back in a hurry, to perform the role that had been instinctive in the Creole for three centuries: the defense of the form of the Philippines from a foreign dis· rupter. He had at once correctly placed the Gringo as belonging on the long list that began with Limahong and the Elizabethan

The immediate collision between the C;;vite veterans of '96 and such "new" revolutionaries as Luna and Alejandrino reveals how small the idea of the Revolution had become after the loss of Manila, which the Americans occupied two weeks after Luna joined the revolutionary army. From that moment, which marked its failure to rise to a great challenge, the Revolution was doomed to diminution. The Revolution of '96 had shown greatness in knowing how to use a brilliant engineer like Edilberto Evangelista; the Revolution of '98 showed pettiness in rejecting the engineering plans of Luna and Alejandrino. And the rejection of those plans made certain our quick defeat at the hands or the Americans. Luna and Alejandrino knew that war with the Americans was inevitable, they wanted to prepare for that war in the same way that the Americans were al· ready preparing for it, by bring· ing in more and more troops, by

165

WOULD LUNA HAVE BEEN A STRONGMAN?

stocking up on quartermasters. But the loss of Manila seemed to have paralyzed Aguinaldo, and Mabini was more interested in politics. Instead of that Congress in Malolos what we should have had during those last months of '98 was a war council, but the govemment was headed by two paralytics. Luna and A1ejandrino were given commissions but nothing to do; Alejandrino sighed to see "the state of inaction to which we were being doomed" when their technical knowledge and skill could have been u.sed most fruitfully. It was only as a "spe-

cia! favor" that they were per路 mitted to study the terrain where they predicted the war would chiefly be fought: the areas along the Manila路Dagupan railway. Their prediction was to be proved correct. Then Luna and Alejan路 drino, after exploring the ground of Malabon and Caloocan, decided that the native line of defense should be the stretch of ground from Caloocan to Novaliches, and that along this line strong trenches should be built. They reported their findings to the general of the Philippine forces in Malabon and asked for his help in building the projected

fortifications. "The general listened to us with indifference," says A1ejandrino, "and .sensing very little enthusiasm on his part we decided to win to our side the other chiefs. Our surprise was very great indeed when one who ap路 peared to us as the most competent of them replied that he and his soldiers would not like to fight in trenches - behind parapets - and that they preferred to fight with unprotected breast." To A1ejandrino, this was not courage but ignorance dangerously exalted; but no effort of his and Luna could convince the

LUNA AS MEMBER OF THE EOITOAIAL STAFF OF "LA INOEPENOENCIA"

166

ANTONIO LUNA

patriots that even war needed science, especially if the adversary was a highly advanced na路 tion well-versed in the science of war. Thus rebuffed, Luna and Alejandrino returned to Cavite and tried to get a hearing from tht! higher.ups there; but "in Cavite the same ideas predomina. ted" - that is, fighting with un路 protected breast - and LUna, disheartened, went to Manila and put out a newspaper. The man whom we now exalt as our greatest military genuis, when he should have been organizing the country for the coming war, had to spend that time editing a newspaper! The Revolution had indeed reo trogressed, all the wB.{ back to the romantic futility of the Bat路 tle of San Juan. The difference between Bonifacio and Aguinaldo had been annulled. Bonifacio, sneering at the i1ustrado claim that war needed arms, money, engineers and trained troops, had, alas, in a single day, proved the i1ustrados right, only too

right, with the fiasco of San Juan. The instant failure of the Revolution in Manila proved what didn't need proving: that a war cannot be won with bolos, bare fists and unprotected breast, or with romantic notions of heroism. Very different was the Revolution of the Cavite gentry. Here the emphasis was on the acquisition of arms, the gathering of funds, the organization of an anny, the building of trenches and fortifications, the science of war - which explains why one small province could right an empire to a draw. His use of the brilliant engineer Evangelista shows how large and sophisticated the Aguinaldo of this period was. That was in '96. In '98 the picture has changed. Now he has not just one Evangelista but a whole galaxy of brilliant professionals, like Luna and Alejandrino; but because they are not of Cavite or '96, he disdains them, distrusts them, frustrates them, and would get rid of them. The Revolution had dwindled to the

Aguinaldo clan. And Aguinaldo himself had regressed to a primi路 tive patriot thinking he could face such a power as the United States of America with unprotected breast. At a time when the invader was securing his positions and maneuvering to extend them, nothing better to do could be found for a man like Luna except apply his talent for strategy to such inanities as outwitting through a ruse the pro-Church faction in the Malolos Congress. The Filipinos fiddled while the enemy prepared to set their house on fire. Luna was himself aware that what he was doing in the Congress was mere riddling; he lamented, according to Alejandrino, his "inefficacy." And this must have been even more frustrating because he saw what had to be done, and spoke out, and was not heeded. He was for attacking the Americans before more of their reinforcements arrived. This was also the course of action that should have been fol-

THE BRIOGE OF SAN JUAN OEL MONTE WHERE THE GRINGO WAR BEGAN

WOULD LUNA HAVE BEEN A STRONGMAN?

lowed in regards to Manila; but Aguinaldo was to make the same mistake twice. "If the opinion of Luna had been adopted," says Alejandrino, "the hostilities would have opened under condi· tions more favorable to us, because, at least, we would not have been caught unprepared." As did happen when hostilities commenced, on February 4, 1899. The Americans, as Luna and Alejandrino had foreseen, at once tried to take Caloocan, to open up the way to the north. If, before the outbreak of war, a line of defense from Caloocan to Novaliches had Peen dug, fortined and manned, as Luna and Alejandrino had proposed, the Republic could hav\ contained the first American thrust and dc· layed indefinitely, witli grievous results to the enemy, th\general American advance. ., But Luna and Alejandrino were not heeded; no trenches were built; the Americans ~ired; the Republic was caught by su r-

prise. Then Luna was hastily made chief of operations and set to building those trenches of his. But it was too late, too late even to improvise. Caloocan fell in a week.

Director And Warlords

Drector of War in the full sense, Luna, though he wore the title, never was. From the start the intent was to constrict him. Nevertheless, he had been able to accomplish something even during the wasted months between his appointment in September, 1898, and the outbreak yf war with the Americans in Feliruary, 1899. And what he accomplished, or tried to accomplish, shows up the impotence of the Mabini Cabinet, from which one would

FRONTlINES OF T H E U.s. T ROOPS IN 1899

167

have expected these efforts to in· tegrate the nation, util~e all its resou rces in a time of crisis. Mabini antagonized vital elements of the middle class and thus lost them to the cause and hastened the disintegration of the Republic. But Luna attracted to the cause vital elements of his class; and if the resistance lasted so long it was because of the trained soldiers that Luna brought into the fight: officers from the old Creole anny like Colonels Mayor, Sityar and Queri; Com· mandants Torres Bugallon, Blar· doni, Bedel and Hernando; and Captains Cerezo, Leysan, Traver· zo and Zuoza. The Spanish ring of their names already tells what Luna accomplished through his personal influence, and how much more he could have accomplished had he been given a free hand. He would surely have been capable even of such an audacity as converting into troops for the Republic its Spanish prisoners of war, who could have been persuaded to join the fight against what had become a common foe: the Americans. It's bold ideas like that which should have come from Mabini, but the man was completely without imagination. The Republic badly needed trained troops. In the Philippines were the remains of an army with a tradition of three centuries of warfare behind it. Nobody but Luna thought of using the old municipal and parish systems in the way the Spaniards organized them during war: as quartermasters, lookouts, communications. The Republic had clan troops, not a national anny. Luna thought of using the Creole officers as instructors in a military school wh ich could have been the start of a national army. Malolos approved the idea, then let it languish. Mabini was always c-omplain-

168

ANTONIO LUNA

ing about the lack or discipline in the uoops but could think of no remedy except a military dictatorship. Luna saw the problem of discipline as a lack of the feeling of solidarity and the first thing he did about it, an inspired act, was put all the troops into one uniform, a uniform designed by his painter brother Juan Luna. Before that, according to Aleianurino, the troops wore "uniforms chosen according to the indivi· dual caprice of their commanders, who, in tum, carried any insignia that suited their personal taste or con,venience." Luna knew that to achieve a disciplined army, a national army, he had first to abolish clan distinctions and the caprices of the warlords. For what Luna found himself

GENERAL OTIS

having to direct was not an army but armies, the private annies of provinciaJ warlords. Says AIejandrino: "Our anny had a regional organization. Each province orga· nized brigades and regiments under the command of generaJs and chiefs who were native sons or the province. This regionaJ or· ganization greatly impaired the unity and solidarity of the anny, because most of the generals at least those who were under Luna - did not want to recog· nize any other authority except their own and that of the Cap· tain General (Aguinaldo). They did not care to submit to the or· ders of the Chief of Operations (Luna) and the government (Aguinaldo and Mabinil did not

THE TROOPS OF GENERAL ARTHUR MACARTHUR ADVANCING NORTH FROM MANIL-".

169

WOULD LUNA HAVE BEEN A STRONGMAN?

feelaufficiently strong to impose discipline upon the recalcitrant generals. Some of them believed that the mere fact that they had organized their brigades and anned them with guns taken from the Spaniards was sufficient reason for them to treat such brio gades as their own private arm·

. "

'''.Alejandrino tells of two war· lords quarreling right in front of Aguinaldo's office in Malolos "with the knowledge of the President himself." Another warlord who had "distinguished himself for his immorality" publicly shouted, when threatened with discipline, that he had earned his lank with bullet and blade and only bullets could take it away from him.

By a significant association of ideas. Alejandrino follows these horror stories of abusive warlords with a lament that the "enlightened class that came to MalolOl to fill honorific positions" later fled to "the protection of the American army," What man in his senses, let alone an "enlightened" one, would put his trust in private gangster armies? The "rich and educated" might have been willing to sink money in a national anny but surely cannot be blamed if they hesitated to finance the abuses of the war· lords, especially since the govern· ment (Aguinaldo and Mabini) "did not feel sufficiently strong to impose discipline on the recal· citrant generals," A1ejandrino ra. calls that, during the Battle of

Caloocan, a general and a colonel "from two neighboring provinces" deserted alter the first fighting, "taking along with them a large number of their men to their respective provinces," Are these the troops the "rich and educated" ue reviled for not putting their money on? On the other hand, the "rich and educated" are to be reviled for failing to see that Luna was trying to organize the warlords, the Creoles, the trained troops, the clan troops, the gentry, the horda, and even non·military skilled labor into a force any· body would place his money on, Alejandrino, when he needed rna· sons for the building of earth· works, was stunned by how quickly Luna could assemble a

THE FIGHTING IN SOUTH MANILA TO OISLODGE PHILIPPINE irROOPS FROM PACO ANO STA, ANA

ANTONIO LUNA

170

4t /,

.1 . l

.... 0:'[,;1'"

J~"

.f'_

•

<) \ ,

... 1

c. . . .

•

," ((h

LUNA'SSEAL

.' I

\'.:i .'

I Jt

...

I ~<

./#;

." t...w_ whole troop of th m. Before the outbreak of war, t.una had OIdered an inventory of the guns at the Republic's disposal (they came to about 20,000), p{oposed the creation of a series of arsenals, turned the Department of War into a center of information that kept the government ab~ast with the situation of the diCferent army corps scattered in the provinces. In December, 1898, he was on

, I"

•( I

,vl!id.<. :I

the point of urging an attack on

the Americans, because the Americans had seized some Philippineheld blockhouses. He was for using the incident to precipitate war with the Americans when the Americans were, in his opinion, 8tiU defeatable. But the Americans, knowing they were defeatable then, decided, after a parley, to return the blockhouses - most unhappily for us, because the decision encouraged optimism about American intentions. The Americans could be reasoned with, had no greedy designs on the country, would not make war on us. So, provinciat troops that had been concentrated around Manila were sent back to the provinces. The renewed optimism explains why the war caught us by

FACSIMILE OF A LUNA LETTER OF APPOINTMENT

surprise. When the shooting began, few of the chiefs were at their posts; most of them, including Luna, were attending a conference in Pampanga. "The government," says Alejandrino, "had suspected nothing. . . and had not given orders to be on the alert. Moreover, Luna did not then have the command of the lines. " What's incredible is that not even the outbreak of war served to stop the factionalism in the @"?vernment and the army. Luna

rushed to Malolos to confer with Aguinaldo and was given command of the lines in Caloocan. But this order, says Aiejandrino, "was ambiguous, as was true of atl orders emanating from Matolos, in such a manner that this command (given to Luna) resulted in being atmost nominal only." In other words, the clan troops that were really fighting only for Aguinaldo or their respective warlords, were not absolutely obliged to recognize Luna as their commander.

WOULD LUNA HAVE BEEN A STRONGMAN?

The "army" thus remained disorganized, each unit practically autonomous; and either Aguinaldo or Mabini sought, with those "ambiguous" orders, to keep it that way rather than risk the emergence of somebody strong enough to imposed discipline and knit all those troops into a national army. One young '96 general, probably Gregorio del Pilar, chose to show his devotion to Aguinaldo by "not bothering even to present himself to General Luna" and by spending "days and nights in fiestas and dances" while Luna was trying to hold Caloocan. This young general's C(Jvi/ismo had its counterpart in the other clan troops, notably in the spirit of that gen-

eral and that colonel who, after the first fighting, felt perfectly free to take themselves and their men out of the war and hurry back home. In the face of such disorder and indiscipline, LUna, says Alejandrino, tried to contain himself and restrain his temper. "Nevertheless, at times his temper overrode his will power and made him maltreat by word and by deed the chiefs and officers who had distinguished themselves most by their cowardice. This caused complaints against him to rain into Malolos, complaints that unfortunately were heeded, thereby producing more laxity in the already meager discipline in the army, and straining relations

between him and the office of the captain general." As a result, Luna was to depend more and more on the Creole officers he had attracted to the cause of the Republic. Captain Roman Soriano would distinguish himself in the Battle of Maypajo Bridge, where the firing was so intense their guns scorched the hands of the de路 tenders. Colonel Queri would be made chief of staff and would haul in volunteers from Manila. Torres Bugalion would fall fighting in the Battle of La Lorna. And a commando unit under Rosendo Simon de Pajarillo would penetrate American-held Manila and battle the enemy to the last bullet on Azcarraga Street. Says

THE AMERICANS ENTER A MAI.OI.OS A8ANOO\llEO BY THE REPVBLlC

ANTONIO LUNA

172

TORRES

'U"A<"(~N

Alejandrino; "If instead of 40 or 50 of such volunteers there ad

been 2,000 or 3,000, as Luna wanted, the course of events would have changed." After the fall of CaJoocan, Luna would Older that all the soldiers who had served in the Spanish army in the Ilocos were to enlist in the army of the Republic and that all the Filipino officers who had served under Spain were to present themselves to his headquarters. From this material he would create "three well-disciplined battalions" led by "genuine officers. ,. And it was these troops from the old Creole army that came closest to being a national """y. The significance of that escaped the middle class then and still escapes us now. What Luna was on the point of bringing off was the Creole revolution that had flopped so many times hefore - that had f1oppe'd with Rodriguez Varela, with NovaIes, with the PaImeros. with the Cavi路

te mutineers of '72 - but which Luna had revived by "capturing" the old Creole army. In a sense, therefore. this part of the Revo路 lution was a class war, not in the sense of a conflict between haves and have-nots, but in the sense of an elite (as in the American Revolution) becoming the champion of something greater than it路 self. In the confrontation with Aguinaldo, it was Luna who stood for the idea of nation, it was Aguinaldo who stood for the return to clan; and in the confrontation with his enemies in his own class, it was Luna who stood for independence, it was his bourgeois foes who stood for the return to colonialism. They were blind. They thought to keep their privileges by bringing in the Americans to protect them. But they could have kept their power, without having to knuckle down to the Americans, if they had backed Luna.

A COMPANY OF PHILIPPINE TROOPS ORIGINALLY IN THE SPANISH SERVICE

173

WOULD LUNA HAVE BEEN A STRONGMAN?

That tragic conservative was crushed between two forces, both regressive.

The Road To Cabanatuan

I n Caloocan, Luna led three companies against the Americans and misled the Americans into thinking the Republic was more prepared for defense than it was. When Calooean fell, the coun· terattack that Lu.,na ordered was in line with the tactics he had in mind from the stah: delay the American advance an, make it as costly as possible. The ~ne of de· fense from Caloocan tc\ Novali· ches that he and Alejandrino had proposed, the scattering of arsenals along the Manila·Dagupan

railway line, the plan to retreat to the Mountain Province and there reorganize the troops for guerrilla warfare, all had the same aim: to make the Amer· icans bleed at every step of the way from Manila to Dagupan and to prolong the war until a third power (most probably Japan) in· tervened or the great drain on manpower and resources should make the American people so sick of the war they would de· mand a stop to it. Since Caloocan was the gate· way to the north, what the Americans had burst open, the Republic had to ram shut again. Luna's counterattack would have the troops of Generals Llarena, Garcia and Hizon converging on the town from three points when the American forces would be divided, because, at the l same time, Manila would be attacked by Luna's troops from the north, by General Licerio Geronimo

GENERAL TINIO

from the east, and by Generals Pio del Pilar and Miguel Malvar

GENERAL MASCARDO REVIEWS PHILIPPINE TROOPS IN CALUMPIT

•

174

ANTONIO LUNA

{rom the south. It was a brilliant plan, but Luna got no backing from Malo.. los. He needed disciplined troops and had heard that the Tinio Bri· gade in northern Luzon was not only well-organized but was itch· ing to fight in the Manila area. So Luna asked "with insistence" that the Tinio Brigade be placed under his command. All he got from Malolos were "evasive answers." When the counterattack was underway. Luna, to relieve the exhausted Pampango troops, ordered into La Lorna the Kawit Companies under Captain Janolino, known as Pedrong Kastila. Janolino reCused to fight, declaring that he had been instructed to take orders only from Aguinaldo. Because of this calli· tismo, La Lorna was not taken

and the whole counterattack col· lapsed. An enraged Luna ordered the Kawit Companies to the rear and disarmed them. Within a week they had been reinstated and reanned by Aguinaldo in Malolos. Even Mabini was shocked that insubordination in the front-lines should thus go unpunished. But when a disgusted Luna sent in his resignation as chief of operations, Aguinaldo refused to accept it. Aguinaldo seems to have toyed with the idea of offering Luna the position of assistant secretary of war, possibly to placate him. Mabini opposed the idea. If Luna was "unfit to command an army" he was even more unfit to hold office because he was a "despot." Mabini reminded Aguinaldo that, from the beginning, he, Mabini, had been saying that Luna knew

nothing about organizing and running the Department of War. "He is learned as a chemist and has a little understanding of trenches but he has no interest in politics and the laws." There were complaints about his abuses - how he had executed a Chi· nese without trial, how he had published a decree threatening with the firing squad all those who disobeyed his orders, and how he had made that decree cover the province of Pampanga, where he had no jurisdiction. Ma· bini expressed surprise that an educated man like Luna did not even know the limits of his authority. "It would be better if he was replaced," said Mabini to Aguinaldo. The anti·Luna campaign had started. Mabini had received an anonymous letter from "Un

PHILIPPINE TROOPS ON A BALLAST·TRAIN IN MONCADA. TARLAC

175

WOULD LUNA HAVE BEEN A STRONGMAN?

Americano" urging that Luna be expelled because he was a "wellpaid" spy of the Spaniards whose mission was to take Aguinaldo prisoner_ "Do not forget," said the anonymous writer, "that Luna was an informer and that through his denunciations were executed Rizal, N. Adriano, Franco, and many others." Aguinaldo, too, was being warned against Luna: a party being fonned by Luna would put him up to replace Aguinaldo as president. Had the Kawit clan been alarmed by the nature of the Creole army Luna was reassembling? In the camp of the pro-American senores, the antipathy to Luna sprang from his\ i!lsistence that no peace offers 'trom the Americans be entertained unless

the Americans first recognized the independence of the Repub路 lie. When the Paterno Cabinet seemed to favor the grant of autonomy promised by the Americans Luna singled out Felipe Buencamino as the worst of the autonomistas and, in one confrontation, called Buencamino a traitor, slapped him and knocked him down. Buencamino is said to have shouted that Luna would pay dearly for the slap. When Paterno fonned a commission to confer with the Americans, Luna ordered the arrest of Paterno and other members of his cabinet. Luna's point was that, after the way the Americans had behaved in the Philippines, no promise of theirs could be trusted, especially if made on the condition that Filipinos laid down their arms. Said Luna: "Our arms are our

only defense. Once we yield them we are at the mercy of our conquerors and will have no recourse but to accp.pt their conditions." Unhappily, the cause of independence suffered by being iden路 tified with Luna's violent manner, though it must be said that that the man had been driven half路mad by the frustrations he had been suffering in trying to do his job. Still, the arrests he made, the executions he ordered, though they may have been, as Alejandrino says, "whole~ome examples," terrified many as too harsh a way of imposing discipline. Once, vexed to see a military transport train crowded with families of the troops, he seized a whip and drove out all the women and children on the train. In Malolos, spotting a com-

A TRAIN Of THE MANILA路OAGUPAN RAILROAD DURING THE WAR OF '99

ANTONIO LUNA

176

pany of presidential guards who had shown insubordination, he personally disarmed them. From this company would later come his assassins. Because he prescribed only one punishment, death, for non.compliance with his series of official orders, he earned the nickname of General Article One. During the crucial Battle of Bagbag, he had left the front in a fury to discipline General Tomas Mascardo, who, like Janolino in Caloocan, had refused to recog· nize Luna's authority. If Luna acted wildly in leaving the front, the provocation was certainly great. Reinforcements were needed in Caiumpit; but Mascardo, headquartered in Gua~a but reportedly attending the town fiesta of Arayat, had repeatedly ignored Luna's telegraphed orders to send reinforcements. lI'ascar. do was a veteran of '96 ana was taking no orders except ~om Aguinaldo. As in Caloocan, it was cavitismo that lost the fight to the foe in the Battle of Bagbag, whether we ascribe the defeat to Luna's impulsive departure or Marcardo's defiance. With that battle lost, the fall of Malolos became certain. The government fled to Nueva Ecija, the army retreated to Sto. Tomas in Pampanga. Not only the retreat but the Mascardo incident, which inflamed feeling in the Ka· wit clan, brought Luna closer to his fate. He could now, with rea· son, be feared as a potential strongman who would bend even the patriots of '96 to his will. No less than the secretary of war, Baldomero Aguinaldo, now questioned the legality of Luna's ap· pointment as chief of operations.

The End In Cabanatuan

the Battle of Bagbag, Luna finally had an anny - 7,000 veteran and disciplined troops which had expertly disputed the territory inch by inch; and it was this seasoned army he meant to keep for his projected guerrilla warfare in the northern highlands. Only token opposition was of· fered to the enemy in Apalit and Sto. Tomas, though Luna was hit in the waist in the Battle of Sto. Tomas. But a belt of mad money he wore deflected the bullet and saved his life. He took his staff to Pangasi· nan, established the Department of War in Bayambang, and pre· pared to transfer the army to the Mountain Province. Luna may have been acting on his own. Mter the Battle of Bagbag he had approached Mabini and asked him to convince Aguinaldo that the time had come to shift to the guerrilla system. Mabini promised to do what he could but didn't keep his promise. His excuse is that his cabinet fell soon after - but one can read here the general policy of the government on Luna: whatever Luna wanted, Luna mustn't get. Alejandrino speaks of a cannon which the troops had been able to lug from Olongapo over the Zambales mountains to Malolos, but which, when Luna asked for it in Calumpit, a distance of a few kilometers by railroad, he was not given, on the pretext that it was impossible to move the cannon that far. "This," says Alejandrino, "gives an idea of how things were being handled in Malolos." Luna's activities in Bayambang during that May time, the fourth month of the war, could have been misunderstood by his ene-

mies as a preparation to ditch the Republic, capture the anny, and start a war of his own. Officers of his were in Benguet picking a site for headquarters. Soldier pri· soners had likewise been sent up to the highlands to plant camote and other food crops for guerrilla subsistence. Luna had command· eered the rice harvests in several Pangasinan towns and was stock· ing up the rice in the mountains. There, too, had he ordered the transfer of the arsenals, along with the collection of church bells he had seized for use in the manufacture of munitions. Wasn't he turning the Moun· tain Province into a Luna for· tress? ~ Previous incidents had already alarmed Aguinaldo. There was Luna's tight hold on the army he had organized. Aguinaldo had been so impressed by that army he had asked that one or two battalions of it be sent to him in Nueva Ecija; Luna had rejected the request, saying that dis· ciplined troops were needed at the front. Luna had been insist· ing on a dictatorial government with a cabinet composed of men of his confidence and headed by himself as secretary of war. His argument was that the autonomistas had to be kicked out of the government because they were killing the people's will to fight; but couldn't his real aim be to isolate Aguinaldo by ridding him of men of his confidence? And then there was his ferocious persecution of Colonel Manuel Arguelles, whom he suspected of subversion. Says Alejandrino: "The conviction of Arguelles convinced all the enemies of Lu· na that he was implacable and that they could expect no mercy from him. The intrigues formed against Luna by those who sur· rounded Aguinaldo increased,

177

WOULD LUNA HAVE BEEN A STRONGMAN?

undoubtedly ending his vacillation; he decided to proceed according to their advice. Says Teodoro Kalaw: "Luna's conduct created ill will around him. It was hinted that he wanted to set himself up as Dictator and to seize from Aguinaldo the leadership of the Republic through a coup d'etat. It seems that Aguinaldo gave cre· dence to these murmurs;in confidential letters written in Tagalog to his intimates he announced that he was threatened by a grave danger and that he expected much from their loyalty. When Aguinaldo summoned him to a conference in Cahanatuan, Luna went there, thinking it would be about the formation of the new (dictatorial) cabinet."\ When Luna slapped uencamino it had been in the presence of Aguinaldo, and this was t~en as signifying the little esteep1 in which the President was held by

Luna, who, according to Mabini, had been heard saying that Aguinaldo was a man of weak character and an inept leader. From the day of the slapping (May 25) Aguinaldo was observed to become aloof towards Luna and such Luna admirers as Lieute· nant Colonel Leyba, and is said to have set spies on suspected Luna partisans like Generals Maximino Hizon, Venancio Con· cepcion and Alejandrino. Wrote General Concepcion: "X (Buencamino?), true to his threat of revenge, elaborated on the unspeakable for the mother of A (Aguinaldo?) so that she would influence and incline his mind towards consenting to the death of Luna." "The death of Luna being decreed," says Alejandrino, "the Government sent him a telegram in Bayambang calling him to an urgent conference, while <\t the same time Aguinaldo started his

trip to Angeles with an escort of 2,000 men. Immediately upon receipt of the telegram, Luna left for Cabanatuan by way of Aliaga, accompanied by Colonel Francis· co Roman, Major Simeon Villa, the Bernal brothers, and an es· cort of 25 cavalrymen." They found the bridge to Ca· banatuan broken; the impatient Luna left his aides behiTtd and, with Paco Roman and Captain Eduardo Rusca, took a canoma· ta to town. They arrived at the presidential residence (which was the convento) at around three in the afternoon of June 5, 1899. According to a witness, the Ka· wit Companies were deployed around the convento and allover town, guns on the ready, speak· ing only in whispers. Commandant Delfin Esquivel, who claimed to have been an eyewitness of the tragedy, testi· fied that Luna was met at the door by an officer whom "Luna

A NATIVE BAMBOO INTRENCHMENT ACROSS THE "IANILA·DAGUI'AN RAILWAY

178

ANTONIO LUNA

had degraded for cowardice a few days before in Angeles. "And you have the face to ap-

pear before me!" roared Luna at the officer. "Who reinstated you

in the service?" "They there," replied the officer, gesturing to the house. fists Eyes flashing and clenched, Luna entered the house and ran upstairs, after slapping a sentry who had been too un· nerved to salute. Upstairs, Luna was met by his mortal foe, Felipe

Buencamino, who told him that Aguinaldo had gone to San Isidro.

The exasperateC\, Luna vented his wrath on Buencamino. The two men were wranglin~ when a rifle shot was heard. 1"una rushed

downstairs and was ~o nfr onted at the foot of the stairWay by an· other mortal foe, Captaip Jane-

line, or Pedrong KastiJa, the recalcitrant in Caloocan. Wh,t occurred between the two wit! al·

ways be a mystery; what's certain is that the fatal interview ended with Luna being hacked in the head with a bolo. At that, as at a signal, all the men of the Ka· wit Companies that had a score to settle with Luna crowded round the fallen general and hacked, stabbed, chopped and shot as they pleased. The wound· ed man somehow managed to drag himself away, stagger out to the street, even draw his pistol and fire as he stuttered: "Co ... '--' I " war ds.'T· ral. .. t ors.' '~assms. Upon seeing their chief stagger out of the doorway, fending off a bristle of spears and bolos, Paco Roman and Eduardo Rusca jumped down from the carroma· ta to run to his aid. Rusca was shot in the leg but saved himself by fleeing into the church. Ro· man ran across the street but was felled by bullets and died on the spot. Luna had already expired, bleeding from more than 40 wounds.

GENERAl. VENANCIO CONCEPCION

As he lay dying, an elderly wo-

man had looked out from an up· stairs window of the convento. According to one version, she called out to the assassins: "Ana bo, nog%w po 'yon?" According to another Version, what she said was: "Ana bo ong ginogowo nino yo so general? Kowowo nomon, huog ninyong potoyin!" In both versions, the elderly woman is supposed to be the President's mother. Buencamino th!!n emerged and

ordered that everything be removed from the dead man's pockets, especially the telegram he had received. In Luna's pock. ets was found a scribbled will: he left everything to his mother, and asked that he be buried in the clothes he had died in. No punishment was meted out to the assassins; instead, Luna's staff officers were ordered arrested and there was a purge of the more prominent Luna sympa· thizers, notably the Bernal bre>

WOULD LUNA HAVE BEEN A STRONGMAN?

COLONEL fRANCISCO ROMAN

thers, who were both assassinated. Alejandrino thinks he escaped the purge only because his brother Joaquin, who led a regi· ment in the north, was too powerful to antagonize. "There exists no doubt whatsoever," says Alejandrino, "that the tragic end of Luna was premeditated." The men around him had convinced Aguinaldo that Luna was a "pernicious man" and a "hindrance to unity."

Buencamino would say that Luna died because "ambition was stronger in him than gratitude." Mabini, when he heard of the assassination, mealy-mouthed that, of course, it was a "sad end" but, then, "impartial persons" had recognized in LUna some "very dangerous tendencies" because he wanted everybody to obey him but would not obey anybody. Mabini regretted his violent death - but "his disap·

179

pearance banished a danger that was menacing." Luna "aspired" too much, thinking himself better educated than Aguinaldo. " If he had got what he wanted there would have been a division that would have annihilated us." Later, very much later, Mabini, now embittered against Aguinaldo, would sing a different elegy. Now Luna was a "lively fiery genius who saw his plans frustra· ted by a lack of the necessary support" (this from Mabini!) and whose every act "revealed an honorableness and patriotism united with a zeal and energy equal to the circumstances." Now, to Mabini, Luna no longer seemed "dangerous" or "menacing"; he had not really wanted to supplant Aguinaldo; he had merely wanted to head the eabi· net, and this, said Mabini, was, after all, a "legitimate and correct" aspiration. And the man who once said that Luna was not fit to run an army, let alone a department of war, now mourned the loss to the Revolution of a "strong and intelligent arm." Mabini was, of coutse, merely using the dead Luna to flog Aguinaldo. But the most acute observation on the Luna tragedy was made by General Venancio Con· cepcion, who read in it the triumph of the clan spirit, of the '''supremacy to which those who belonged to the first revolution felt they had a perfect right; and above all of the C(lvitismo fused with egoism and the thirst for authority which they reveal in all their actions, undeterred by the groans of the nation that must pay for their arrogance." With the killing of Luna and the purge of his followers, the idea of nation perished, c(lvilis· mo triumphed, diminution of the spirit continued, un til in the end the Republic had shrunk not even to a clan but only to one

180

ANTONIO LUNA

DEAD FILIPINO SOLDIERS ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE

man, the lonely man fleeing across the heathen highlands where Luna had thought to build the Republic a sanctuary. From the enemy camp, the tribute by Marion Wilcock in Harper's History sees the difference between Luna and his opponents as the difference in the way they reacted to the triumphs of General Lawton. The reaction of the Aguinaldo-Paterno camp was despair: so invincible was American might they were justified in suing for an "honorable peace."

But Luna was outraged by this "timidity" of Aguinaldo and Paterno and would invoke the very desperateness of the situation as a reason "to animate, as in fact he did, the courage of Filipinos and to seize the revolutionary government": "Luna was a signal type of the Creole race. or good family, of great virtue and intelligence, he would have been the leader of his people but for the treachery that led to his death." When Aguinaldo stood at bay

in Palanan, did he wonder if he had been wrong about Luna after all? Did he wonder if Luna might have turned the Mountain Province not into a Luna fortress but really into a fortress for the Republic? And if Luna had not been stopped, would the story have been different? Would the Republic have sat out the crisis in safety and to a happy ending, with neither Paso de Tirad nor Palanan inevitable as long as General Article One stood guard at the gates or the rortress?

Was The Hero Of Tirad A Hatchetman?

Trad

Pass, like Bataan, is bad shrine for Filipinos, because there we feel absolved of the faults that lead to such disasters as Tirad and Bataan, or, for that matter, Pinagiabanan and Caloacan. Where we should bewail our incompetence, our sloth, our lack of enterprise, our reluctance to look ahead and plan, our inability to organize, our disunity and childish trust in outside forces expressed in our bahala no - where, in short, we should burn with shame for our ineptitude, there are we made to feel justified in our very stupiditiesand in going on acting stupid. If we bungle and botch, never mind, we do fall gloriously, 0 felix culpa that produced a Del Pilar at Tirad, a starved USAFFE in Bataan! And because we think heroism can cover up for our

botches, we are always very eager indeed to acclaim our defeats as "moral victories." Tirad was such a "victory"; Bataan was such a "victory." Ours is a most myste· rious progress because we make it on disasters. In what shambles will we acclaim our next "moral victory"? The wrong thing to do about Tirad is invoke Leonidas and Thermopylae, because we would be invoking to our hurt another people fatally flawed with the in· ability to unite and organize. Be· sides, the parallel with Leonidas, l<ing of the Spartans, is neither exact nor flattering: it was not Aguinaldo who fell at Tirad. Moreover, the annals of war show that in mountain warfare, especially in actions on a moun· tain pass, the advantage is with the defender, not the invader, and victory must be expected

from the former. A British·Indian army using artillery was annihilated in the mountains of Afghanistan in 1841 by native troops that had, not modern weapons, but the advantage of terrain. A mountain pass in Adowa enabled primitive Ethiopian warriors to destroy an Italian army in ] 926. Under simi· lar circumstances was a British· trained Egyptian army under General Hicks in the 1880s de· feated in the Dry Forest of the Sudan by native lancers and archers. A Spanish army that in· vaded Morocco in HJ21 was lured into the rocky fastnesses of the Riff, where some 20,000 Spanish troops were killed or captured. In World War II, the German defenders of Monte Cas· sino held the Allied armies at bay for a whole year, thanks to the mountain fortress; and it took

18.

the British two yean; to dislodge the Japanese from the mountains of Burma.

But Tirad Pass was taken in six hours.

There were, you will say. only 60 men to defend it. Precisely. And that was the stupidity. OUf improvidence always forces us in the end to improvise, when it's too late even to improvise. We will not plan ahead, we will just muddle through, and then at the last hour we send men to die for our blunders, our lack of foresight. If there were any justice, it's Aguinaldo, it's Mabini, who should have perished on Tirad. But so that Aguinhldo can flee in rutile flight, 60 men are sent to pay with their lives fo\ the monstrous botch he has m짜e of the Revolution. And we now read Tirad as a symbol of heroism, not stupidity. A few more Tirads and we'll be the most heroic people in extinction. It's a kind of poetic justice, however, that the vain resistance on Tirad, vain for lack of men and materiel, should have cost the life of its hero, because Gregorio del Pilar is not guiltless in the sorry plight of the Republic toward the end of 1899. An army could have held Tirad Pass indefinitely; but if Del Pil"r had, on Tirad, not an army but only 60 men, it was because, through his fault, the armies or the Republic were lost in Pangasinan, lost not in battle but through the most incredible carelessness. It was for that inglorious goof that he paid "gloriously" with his life - and (or a number of other things., besides, like the sinister role he played, during this last part of the Revolution, as Aguinaldo's hatchetman. The romantic picture of Del Pilar at Tirad is intolerable to those who know what led to the

GREGORIO DEL PILAR

slaughter on that pass. And what led to it was a trail not only of folly but of crime, with the murder of Luna as its maddest infamy. Instead of just a delaying action on Tirad, the Republic could have made a stand, a successful stand, in the Mountain Province - but (or the folly of its leaders. Through three centuries, the Spanish army had found the highlands an impregnable (ortress, ever assaulted in vain. The Americans could have been placed in the same frustration or, better still, could have been lured to the mountains to be decimated, for in mountain warfare, it's the defender who holds the initiative, he who chooses where the fighting shall be; the invader can only follow. Had he implemented the Luna plan, Aguinaldo could have had an impregnable fortress, into which he could have lured to a mass death one American army after another. Recall the most recent use of the Mountain Province as a fortress: by the Japanese in 1945. When the war ended, Yamashita was still entrenched in the mountains, half a year after he had taken his anny there; and had the war not ended he might have continued resisting for another half year, or longer. The effectiveness or the Japanese resistance can be gauged by the length o( specific actions. The battle over Dalton Pass alone lasted some three months; and it also took three months to wrest Bessang Pass from the Japanese. Yet the Japanese were fighting in unknown unfriendly territory. Aguinaldo would have fought under better circumstances. He would have had the highlanders behind him; the Mountain Province was still wild, the greater part of it inaccessible; and the Americans were far away from

home base, their lines of supply across the Pacific in danger from an interested Japan, a covetous Germany. A protracted war would have gotten on American nerves (like the Vietnam war) and the carping at home would have frayed the moraJe or the troops in the Philippines. In fact, though the Philippine-American war lasted barely a year, Americans were already fuming against it before it ended. The route of the war (from Manila to Dagupan, along the railroad) clearly pointed to the Mountain Province as a last refuge for the Republic. Yet only one man saw the obvious and tried to prepare for it: Luna. And Luna was liquidated. Even granting that Luna had to be killed for the sake of "unity," and that he was not the proper man to turn the highlands into a bastion for the Republic, it's still inexplicable that his plan to transfer the army there and shift to guerrilla warfare was not carried out. He had already sent officers to the highlands to pick out evacuation sites; had sent prisoners there to start food fanns for the troops; had sent metal there for the manufacture of munitions. Why were these preparations not continued? It was not for lack of time. Between the killing of Luna in June and the American landings on the coast of Pangasinan in November, there were five months of quiet on the front, five months of inactivity by the enemy (because the Americans were preparing for their outflanking action by sea), five months during which the government, which was then already practically at the foothills of the Mountain Province, could have, in accordance with the Luna plan, transferred itself, aJong with the anny. to the highlands; en-

185

WAS TIiE HERO OF TlRAD A HATCHETMAN?

tre nched itself there; and sealed the approaches with blasted roads and bridges or with fortifications. Had this been done, the Americans' outflanking action (landing troops in Pangasinan to trap the Republic between two pincers) would have been nullified. The Americans would have landed in Pangasinan only to find that the Republic had already escaped to the mountains and barricaded itself there. Even if only part of the plan had been carried out (the transfer of the army but not of the government). Tirad Pass would have had some meaning. Then the delayin~ ac tion would have been vital indeed, for it would have been to ~able Agui路 Tarlac, to naldo, after the fall rejoin the army in the ountains and to escape to prepaI"ed posi路 tions. But nothing had bee~ prepared, though the Repubhc had been given five months of 'grace to reorganize. When Tarlac fell, there were no positions to escape

to, no army to rejoin, no provisions for housing and feed ing what should have been evacuated, no itinerary even for the retreat and the flight , though it's an axiom of war that an army must know beforehand where to retreat should a retreat become necessary, and that the retreat must be to prepared positions - that is, positions where the troops will not suffer hunge r and privation. But Aguinaldo's "odyssey" was obviously not through prepared positions; we have the word of one of his companions, Dr. Simeon Villa, that they underwent hunger and privation. The truth is, the Aguinaldo fleeing through the highlands did not know where to go; he simply ran and ran until, in Palanan, he reached the sea and could run no farther. In this light, the purpose of the "delaying action" at Tradto enable a man who pidn't know where he was going to get there - becomes nonsense. But all this part of the Revolu路 tion is already sheer nonsense.

One gasps in disbelief to read that only when Tarlac town, the last capi tal of the Republic, had fallen and the Americans were already in Lingayen Gulf did Aguinaldo order a shift to guerilla warfare and an evacuation to the mountains. But how transfer an army at such short notice and in a time of general panic? It's hardly surprising that somebody like Gregorio del Pilar, who, like so many officers of the Repub路 lic, found time in wartime for fiestas and amorous dalliance, should mislay his troops. But even after this mishap, a sizable portion of the army remained and could have been used in the mountains. The renowned Tinio Brigade was still intact, had escaped the shambles in Pangasinan because it was in Abra, very near to where the fleeing Aguinaldo and the remnants of the army presently turned up, headed for the mountains. Was an effort made to locate this brigade, summon it, carry it to the mountains? No;

AMERICANS ON TH E SITE OF THE BATTLE OF TtRAO PASS

186

the Americans, better than the Filipinos, knew where Aguinaldo's last chance lay and made haste to place themselves between Aguinaldo and the Tinio Brigade. There must be no army for Aguinaldo to rejoin, and vice-

versa. That, for the Americans, was the real reason for the BatUe of Tirad Pass - and it overestimated Filipino intelligence. As far as is known, neither Aguinaldo nor Del Pilar had the least intention of saving or contacting the Tinio Brigade. For them, the Battle of Tirad Pass had a simpler purpose: to enable Aguinaldo to get nowhere fast. Gregorio del Pilar's finest hour was, to use a current cliche, an " exercise in futility."

Kakaron De Sili

GREGORIO DEL PILAR

ing to one claim, it was at the Arellano house on Elcano Street in Tondo that the Katipunan was founded. In this filibustero household, the young Goyo's chore was to distribute on the sly the pamphlets of the Propaganda. Once, while in Malolos with a supply of the pamphlets he slipped them in place of the counter-revolutionary pamphlets distributed in church on Sundays and had the delight of seeing, next Sunday at mass, the padre cura himself circulating subversive propaganda. In 1896, the new bachelor of arts could not, for lack of means, think of going on to the University; instead, he was intending to enroll at the School of Arts and Trades and study to be a maestro de obros when the Revolution broke out. The Goyo del Pilar that went home to Bulacan was to have a more brilliant career than the humble one he had set (or himself. t The distinction between Balintawak and Kawit can be seen in the Revolution in Bulacan. On

OEOOATO ARELLANO

receiving orders from Bonifacio to rise in arms, the Katipunan leaders in Butacan, late in August of '96, assembled some 300 men to attack the garrison in San Nicolas town. " While we were discussing how to stonn the quarters of the guardia civil," recount路 ed Don Vicente Enriquez, one of the Bulacan leaders, "Doroteo Karagdag arrived from Manila

The man who cut so Byronic a figure in '98 was horn to shabby gentility, in San Jose, Bulacan on November 14, 1875, the fifth of six children. Though the Del Pilars wiilre principalia (Marcelo H. del Pilar was a brother of Gregorio's father, and the family had noble Gatmaitan blood) the generru's branch of the family was poor and it's said that he hawked meat pies on the streets as a child. At 15, he was sent to the Ateneo, where, through the six years of the bachillerato, he was rated good in Latin, Greek, Spanish and French, middling in philosophy, excellent in arithmetic and rugebra. While studying at the Ateneo, he lived with an aunt who was married to a renowned propagandist, Deodato Arellano. Accord-

THE OLD ATENED IN INTRAMUROS

•

187

WAS ntE HERO OF TIRAD A HATCHETMAN?

and told us that the Katipunan had miscarried in Balintawak (habia abartado en Balintawak) and that Pio Valenzuela, noted K.tipunero of Buiacan, had been captured. At midnight we dispersed and returned to our homes, with disillusion in the heart." And that, as rar as the Bulakeiios were concerned, was the end of the uprising ordered by Bonifacio. Not a cry had been raised nor a shot fired. Nothing more happened in Bulaean during the following weeks. Then came news of the "successive triumphs" of the Revolution in Cavite. The Bulakeiios recovered heart, t~k up arms and 3,000 strong maro.hed to Paombong, seized it and \here formed a military government. The move· ment in Bulacan was thus allied to the Aguinaldo Rev~ution in Cavite, not to the aborti't. Bonifacio uprising. A note i~ vel Pilar's diary has him awaitin anns from Imus. In the wilds known as Kaka· ron de sm (between San Rafael and Santa Maria, north of Bigaa) a citadel rose under the direction of a "miracle man," Eusebio Roque, popularly known as Maes· trong Sebio, a mis/ico who prayed in battle and was said to repel bullets. The citadel in Kakaron de Sili had streets, a market, a foundry, an armory, its own government, its own police, even its own banda de musika. To Kakaron de Sili came Gregorio del Pilar in December, 1898, around Christmas time, to enlist in Maestrong Sebio's troops. This is his definitive entrance into the Revolution, though there are stories that he had joined Bonifacio in Balintawak, that he had also participated in the Bulakeiios' march on Paombong. He was then 21 years old. In the diary he kept, the entry for Christmas Day of '96 runs:

"All the brothers are assem· bled. To eommemorate the birtb of the Savior, we hoist our Flag. we fire the cannon, we glorify the K.K.K. In the afternoon, tIaining in anns. Joy is painted on every face. And in the sky we seem to hear, bursting with enthusiasm, the cry of Vivan los Filipinos!" There echoes the gaiety that our fathers insisted was the spirit of the Revolution, a gaiety that had its comic note. When the Bu· lacan troops, retreating from Pa· ombong, passed through Hagonoy, they were received to the joyful music of the town's brass band. The Spaniards arrived the next day and the poor musicians were the first to be 31rested. At dawn of New Year's Day, 1897, six Spanish columns converged from all directions on the citadel of Kakaron de sm. The battle raged through the morning until only ten men - Del Pilar,

his elder brother Julian, a brother·in-Iaw of theirs, and other members of their clan - were left to defend the fort. Even Maestrong Sebio had decamped. The Del Pilars managed to escape before the Spaniards occupied the citadel. Reported Gregorio in his diary: "As for me, I need not say how I fought. Those who saw me in peril can tell. A Mauser bullet grazed my forehead. Thank God I was spared that danger. Finally I had to leave the fort because, when I looked for our valiant brothers, none was any longer at his post. This should not cause shame. Self.preservation is a law of God. I passed the nil!:ht in the barrio of Manata!." For his courage at Kakaron, Del Pilar was made a lieutenant, but it was with disgust that he left this first army he had joined. Its leader, Maestrong Sebio, was sold by his own soldiers to the

THE ANCIENT CHURCH OF BULACAN TOWN

•

I ••

GREGORIO DEL PILAR

Spaniards, and executed on February 16, 1897. "Our conscience," wrote Del Pilar, "could not permit us to remain any longer in that place, among those so-called brothers," With his group he tried to make his way to lmus but got only as far as Montalban, where he stayed during the first two weeks of Feb· ruary. The entry in his diary on Montalban shows that the horrors of war and his recent bitterness had not darkened his young eyes: "We went to the cave of Montalban, jumping over enormous white rocks washed by the crystalline waters of a spring that runs singing. We saw small fish playing near the banks of the river. We entered the cave bearing lights. We did not reach the bottom because it is so deep. They say that an Englishman traveled the cave for four days without seeing the end of it." He returned to Bulacan and

joined Adriano Gatmaitan's army, where he became a captain - and this led to a popular Del Pilar legend: how, vearning to possess a Spanish Mauser (he had only a Remington), Captain Goyo, all by himself, waylaid seven Spanish cazadores escorting a friar to Malolos, shot down the cazadores, took the friar captive, and found himself in joyous posses· sion of seven Mausers. The true story is less dashing but more cozy. There really was a friar being escorted to Malolos by cazadores and Goyo del Pilar had offered to waylay the group by himselr. He shot down one of the cazadores, whereupon the friar and the other cazadores leapt out of their rigs and fled. Del Pilar picked up the Mauser of the killed cazador; in the abandoned rigs were found four sacks of coins - and Del Pilar was allowed to decide what to do with them. He decreed that all the married men in the troops were

to be given 50 pesos each, the unmarried ones 25 pesos each, and that the remaining money was to be sent to Manila to buy a blanket and a cloak for every soldier. So, his yearning was fulfilled bevond his expectations: he got not only the Mauser he craved but also a blanket, a cloak, and money in his pockets! Closely following this is another Del Pilar legend : how he and his men entered Paombong dressed as women, carrying their anns dressed as babies, and heard Sunday mass along with the un· suspecting guardia civil, on whom, at the bell of the Sane/us, they sprang with knife and gun, slaying the Spanish soldiers and making away with their arms. Another version has Del Pilar and his men entering Paombong disguised not as women but as Spanish cazadores. Again the true stOTY, as told by Del Pilar him· self, is better than the legend. He and ten of his men had slipped

INSURGENT BARRACKS IN BtAK·NA.fIATO IN 1897

189

WAS THE HERO OF TIRAD A HATCUETMAN?

into Paombong in the night; when the bells rang for Sunday mass in the morning, his men entered the basement of the convento and fell upon the Spanish cazadores sleeping there, while Del Pilar stationed himself on the plaza, firing at the second story of the convento to prevent what cazadores might be up there from approaching the windows. In a quarter of an hour, Del Pilar's group had seized 14 Mausers and escaped. The feat, said Artemio Ricarte, exalted Del Pilar "to the horns of the moon." And it brought hinl to the attention of Aguinaldo, who promptly raised the youn~captain to lieutenant colonel. Del Pilar celebrated his promotion by creating a distinctive flag for his troops - a flag \hat, with its triangle and two ban14s of color, anticipates our prese tone,

THE OEL PILAR STANDARD

with the difference that in the Del Pilar flag the triangle is in blue, without sun and stars, the lower band black. Flying this banner, young Del Pilar marched right into the heart of Aguinaldo and the inner circle of the revolutionary command. By the summer of 1897, Aguinaldo was in retreat before the forces of Primo de Rivera and the center of the Revolution had shifted from Cavite to BuJacan,

where, in Biak-na-Bato, Aguinaldo's mountain hideout, and the only territory he can be said to control then, a "republic" was proclaimed on May 31, 1897, in a typical Philippine gesture of bravado. Del Pilar was among the ratifiers who signed the provi路 sional constitution of this "republic" on November 1 of that year. And in December, as further proof of how close he had become to Aguinaldo, he was of the chosen few that Don Emilio, after the Pact of Biak路na-Bato, took with him to exile in Hong Kong. All the major dates in Del Pilar's life fall in December: he joined the Revolution in December, he accompanied Aguinaldo into exile in December, he died at Tirad in DC1::ember. Three successive Decembers comprise the gist of his life. Said Aguinaldo of his favorite:

THE BOy GENERAL I'OSES WITH HIS SWORD AND MEM8ERS OF HIS STAfF

GREGORIO DEL PILAR

190

"I took him to Hong Kong, Saigon and Singapore. He was my man of confidence. I could trust him with everythinJ(. Therefore, T had him always at my side until he died." When the exiles in Hong Kong organized a Supreme Council, Del Pilar was unanimously elected to a position on it, second only to Tomas Mascardo. And his influence on Aguinaldo became so marked that it aroused talk and backbiting. When Aguinaldo was supposed to go to Europe, he chose only two companions: Goyo del Pilar and Pepita Leyba. The "trip to Europe" ended in Singapore\ where Aguinaldo conferred with U.S. Consul Pratt; the Americ~ had declared war on Spain. \ Again, when he returned to Cavite on an American transport, Aguinaldo displayed his s~ecial regard for Del Pilar by tilking him along. And when they reached Cavite, Aguinaldo crowned his regard with apotheosis. After proclaiming himself Dictator of the Philippines, Don Emilio announced that he was appointing his man of confidence, Gregorio del Pilar, the "dictator of Bulacan and Nueva Ecija." It was an honor the like of which Don Emilio would confer on nobody else, aside from himself.

Byron de Bulacan

' I : e young man justified his general's esteem by covering himself with glory. No sooner had he landed than he had slipped into Bulacan, organized a battalion, was laying siege to Bulacan town, had sent troops under Colonel

/ '. / /III/~N / HI

•

/1, ""'; ,.1

( /

~~ ••" I ... N<

no.

j,y.".~~

",,'<"

.. / {" 4

... •

".f"". ,,' ".-"".' .,

FACSIMILE OF A DEL PILAR ORDER OF APPOINTMENT

Pablo Tecson to take Nueva Ecija. On June 24, 1898, the Spaniards in Bulacan surrendered and Del Pilar rode at the head of his troops into a town decked out with flags and arches, to the noise of bells and fireworks, On the plaza where he had passed propaganda as a boy waited the Spanish governor, the command· ant of the Spanish forces, the lines of the guardia civil, the battalion of cazadores. The Spanish flag was hauled down, the new Philippine flag went up. Weeping, the officers of the cazadores turned over their battalion flag to their vanquisher. A choir sang

a hymn to Del Pilar composed for the occasion by Maestro Pedro Santos, The local boy was not without honor among his own, In Nueva Ecija, too, Spain had fallen. Del Pilar organized three more battalions. Aguinaldo raised him to full general. The young warrior was at his zenith. He was famous, powerful, po· pular, elegant and good-looking. The stay abroad had polished him. He was the Lord Byron of the Revolution and he dressed the part, with a glitter of boots and uniforms, diamonds on his fingers, a white horse £or mount.

191

WAS THE HERO OF TIRAD A HATCHETMAN?

When the first Filipino governor of Bulacan was installed, Del Pilar presided at the rites dressed in froc, formal togs made by "one of the best tailors in Hong Kong." Women swooned over him; he had a sweetheart in every town, a mistress across each bridge and on this side of it, too. "Mixed up with his official correspondence," sighed Teodoro M. Kalaw, "to his hands also came, mysterious and perfumed, the beautiful letters of love." Yet something of doom flawed his shining. He was superstitious, carried anting·tJ(Itings, would not allow churches to be touched after one of the tones he had ordered taken from a church to fortify a river refused to sink, was troubled by bad earns on the eve of Tirad. On the inauguration of the Congress in Malolos, plaeed in command of the military papde, he had resented some crititism by another general, Isidoro Tor·

res; whereupon he had ridden on his white horse to the middle of the plaza and there, before the President and the Congress, had shou ted at the top of his voice: "General Torres, where General Del Pilar commands, you do not command!" And that little inci· dent was to start a feud between the two generals that lasted through the war. When war with the Americans broke out that unattractive side of Del Pilar had already begun to show. A bitter passage in Jose Alejandrino may refer to De! Pilar: "There was a young preten· tious general who set up his headquarters in one of the near· by towns, not bothering even to present himself to General Luna. He did not want to recognize any orders other than those which emanated directly from the Cap. tain General (Aguinaldo) of whom he was a great favorite. At the headquarters of General

Lun;l it was learned that this gentleman spent days and nights at fiestas and dances which his rJatlerers offered in his honor. " But I(alaw says that Del Pilar drove his troops to fight "like lions" because, after an inept showing in battle, Luna had be· rated them as "sundalong mantika. " Another story has Luna and Del Pilar riding together on the front, with Luna so absorbed in what he was saying he did not notice they were moving into a danger zone: Del Pilar did notice but would not back off because Luna didn't. In the Battle of Bulacan, General Venancio Concepcion was placed under Del Pilar and Lhe two could not get along together. When Baliuag fell, each blamed the other. Del Pilar took the mat· ter to Aguinaldo; Concepcion was removed and sent to Luna in Pampanga. As far as Aguinaldo was eoneerned, the Del Pilar star was still rising. TIlere were more

HIS TROOPS "ORM A BACKGROUNO TO THE BOY GENERAl. ON HIS WHITE HORSE

192

GREGORIO DEL PILAR

THE ARMIES Of THE REPUBLIC AWAIT AGUINALDO_AND THE WAR WITH AMERICA

BEFORE THE DEIlAeLE: THE REPUB LIC CELEBRATES IN MALOlOS

senior officers who could have represented the military on the first peace commission sent to the Americans but Aguinaldo chose Del Pilar and the Americans were enchanted with the "hoy general," who seemed even younger in their midst. Said he

of General Lawton, his antagonist in the Battle of Bulacan: "He was a giant! I looked like a child beside him." The Americans could hardly see in that

"child" the enemy they were fighting and Del Pilar was always to enjoy a good American press.

After the peace commlSSlon, which was a flop, Aguinaldo had a grimmer task for his favorite.

On June 4, 1899, Del Pilar joined Aguinaldo in San Isidro, Nueva Ecija. The President was in military uniform, his uniform as captain general that he almost

193

WAS THE HERO OF TIRAD A HATCHETMAN?

never wore, and he thus present· ed himself to some 300 assem· bled troops. Defore leaving with the troops for Angeles (which they entered in battle formation) Aguinaldo gave Del Pilar his assignment: capture General Luna, dead or alive; Luna had been "accused of high treason." Del Pilar left at once on his mission but, before he could get to Pangasi· nan, where Luna was headquartered, Luna had come down to Nueva Ecija and been murdered in Cabanatuan. Only because of the distance between San Isidro and Bayambang did Gregorio del Pilar not go.. down in our history as Luna's ~in. On hearing of Luna's death, Del Pilar rejoined ~guinaldo in Angeles and tOgethe~hey sud· denly descended on he head· quarters of General enancio Concepcion, a Del Pilar foe and suspected Luna partisan. Recounted Concepcion: "The minute they were 411 in front of my headquarters, General Del Pilar separated himself from us and, giving orders, placed troops all around my head· quarters, posted four sentries at each door, replaced my company of guards with members of the presidential guards, and then presented himself to the President saying: 'We can go up.' When they were upstairs Aguinaldo and Del Pilar conversed in secret. Afterwards I was subjected by Aguinaldo to an interrogation about a .certain conspiracy that he said was being plotted against him. "The next day I asked for in· formation about my chiefs of brigade. . . General Del Pilar, showing signs of satisfaction, took me to one of the rooms and said: 'There they are, incommuni· cado, as the result of an indictment I am processing on orders of the Captain General.' "

Concepcion was relieved of his command and detained, as were all the chiefs of the regiments or· ganized by Luna. If the killing of Luna was madness, this demoral· ization of the army was suicidal. The unresting Del Pilar, breath· ing fire and slaughter, then rode off on another mission: to take possession of Luna's headquarters in Bayanlbang, and liquidate the Bernal brothers, Manuel and Jose, aides·de·camp of the killed general. Del Pilar arrived in Bayam· bang on June 7, accompanied by his brother Julian and their troops. They were able to locate only a younger Bernal brother, Angel, whom they arrested and maltreated. Two days later, they took him to Dagupan, where his brother, Captain Manuel [lernal, was located in the house of the Nable Joses. (A daughter of this house was apparently Del Pilar's last sweetheart.) Manuel was seized, bound elbow to ~lbow, and marched to the Calia de gobierno. Testified Angel Bernal: "In the government building, General Del Pilar and his brother Julian stripped my brother Ma· nuel of his uniform and military insignia; and between those two brothers, Gregorio and Julian, he was tortured in my presence, flogged with barbarous fury until he was unconscious, bathed in his own blood, but without having emitted even a whimper." Manuel Bernal was allowed to live a week longer before he was mercifully liquidated. The other Luna aide-de-camp, Captain Jose Bernal, when captured, was taken to Angeles and there murdered by soldiers, on orders from above. The beloved hatehetman got his reward: Aguinaldo appointed his Goyo del Pilar commandant general of Pangasinan, with headquarters in Dagupan - but this

reward was, you might say, still part of his job as batchetman. He had to be put in a position where he could instantly crush the Ilocanos should it turn out that the killing of Luna had inflamed them and made them dangerous. At a time when a foreign enemy had to be faced on the field, the hatchet of the Repub· lic was poised against its own people.

Decline And FaU

Gotterdammerung, the stormy twilight of the gods, rumbled for the Republic during the Novem· ber of '99, a November wintry with tears and typhoon. The early gaiety had bogged down in the mud of the Central Plain. Aguinaldo had caught the chill of fatalism and there's a hint of hys. teria in Gregorio del Pilar's amorous frenzy in Pangasinan - a Del Pilar pursuing still another new Jove, and doing so, says Teodora Kalaw, "without scruple and almost publicly," though he had already "distributed his heart in fragments among half a dozen girls." It was also during this period that a comrade of his, Vicente Enriquez, saw the young general nervous for the first time. After an attempt by Spanish prisoners to escape, Del Pilar had posted a guard detail on the Lingayen River, then forgot about it and went swimming in the river, heard himself challenged, ignored the challenge und found himself being fired at by the very guards he had set on the river. "I saw him pale for the first time," recalled Enriquez. "The officer in

GREGORIO DEL PILAR

194

charge of the guard detail, a relative of his, was punished for his imprudence," The young god was getting intimations of mortality_Where the Lingayen flowed out to sea American warship had appeared. As Jose Alejandrino saw it, the ghost of the murdered Luna haunted this wild twilight of the Republic. Sardonic is his account of how a vanguard of the Del Pi路 lar Brigade, after th& fall of Tar-

lac, besieged the department of war headquarters in Bayambang, encircled it and posted sentries ai all the exits before the officer in command went up to notify A1ejandrino, who was in bed, that General del Pilar was arriving with Aguinaldo. "I received him lying down," says A1e~ndrino of the distrustful officer, "to show him my scorn." Bayambang was where Luna had had his head路 quarters and Alejandrino could think of only one plausiIJ e explanation for the vanguard's excess of caution: "The specter of Luna still inspired terror." Indeed it was this fear of ghosts that had installed Del Pilar in Dagupan as commandant general of Pangasinan, which is to say Dictator of the North. Since the north was vital to Aguinaldo as an escape route, the only man he could trust had to he put there, to make certain that a retreat to the north would not be blocked by, say, mutinous Ilocanos outraged by Luna's murder. And apparently there was such a feeling running among northerners, especially in the curious people's army called the Guardia de Honor, which, led by a God the Father, a Jesus Christ, a Holy Ghost, and a gaudily booted and uniformed Twelve Apostles, was drawing the peasants away from the Republic. The presence, therefore, in Dagupan of Aguinaldo's hachetman

was tactics: to remind the restive of the terror unloosed after the assassination. Says Teodoro Kalaw: "Aguinaldo wanted to put Del Pilar in a place where he could watch at close hand any movement of the nocanos or the Luna partisans should they think of avenging the death of the general. Morebver, something was already being heard of the exploits of the Guardia de Honor and there were rumors of the existence of a faction of the aggrieved. The other reason was, according to observers, that Aguinaldo and Del Pilar believed, with reason, that they should not be together because apart they could protect each other better against a common enemy." In their concern about this "common enemy," Aguinaldo and his favorite seemed to have forgotten about the actual enemy, the Americans, who were preparing to outflank Aguinaldo in Tarlac by landing troops in Pangasinan. "General del Pilar," observes Kalaw, "stayed in Dagupan from June to November of路 1899. Five months, which were of relative repose, since enemy attacks were few and were resumed in that region only during the first day of November, in accordance with a combined plan prepared in Manila by which three great American forces were to converge at a point in the north to finish once and for all with Aguinaldo's army." And what did the Republic do during those five months of "relative repose" when its doom was being plotted? Aguinaldo sat on his hands in Tarlac, neither moving to transfer the government to safety nor even bothering to find out just what the mysteriously inactive Americans were up to. And his dashing

Goyo del Pilar was as usual engaged in a number of love affairs, busy with fascination and with making himself fascinating, while any moment now the coastline of the province he was supposed to guard would be in danger of . . mvaslOn. "The truth is," says Kalaw, "eminent and elegant youth that he was, Del Pilar had b~ome even vainer in Dagupan. He ordered the best horses, because he liked to ride and to show off his horsemanship. In a letter sent to a relative in Bulacan, he asked for the finest of riding boots." And while courting an "aristocratic" girl in Dagupan, another distinguished heiress he had courted was "dying of jealousy and consumption" in Tarlac. The love letters quoted by Kalaw (one girl is pitifully grateful for the general's announcement that he wasn't jilting her; another girl jealously grieves that his diversions are to the scandal of the public) show that, as a lover, Gregorio del Pilar was no gentle. man but a cad. However, for the Byron of Bulacan, always the best horses, the nicest girls, the finest riding boots. And all this at a time when the enemy was closing in on the Republic. Del Pilar's unconcern is reported in the unpublished memoirs of Telesforo Carrasco, an officer of the Spanish army who had joined the Revolution and was serving as adjutant in Pangasinan when the Americans began landing in San Fabian, where the Philippine troops were under Commandant Tomas Tagunton. Wrote Carrasco; "One day, just before these landings, 1 was summoned by General del Pilar, who asked me if I knew Commandant Tagunton well. I said yes. 'I believe,' said the general, 'that if the

WAS THE HERO OF TIRAD A HATCHETMAN?

Americans try to land in San Fabian it will cost them dearly, because I understand that Commandant Tagundon, who has two companies and good fortifications, is of great courage. What do you think?' I replied that in my opinion the commandant should be relieved at once and that the defenses of that tov.n should be reinforced with one or two companies more_ I told him why he should relieve the com-

mandant. A few days before, the Americans had bombarded San Fabian. As their battleship approached, the troops in San Fabian ran to the trenches, but Commandant Tagunton , who was on horseback, galloped away, sowing panic among the troops, who imitated him. and it took more than a day to reassemble them. 'All this,' I said to Gen路 eral del Pilar, 'you may not know of, but I can prove it through the

THE FOLDER WHERE OEL PILAR KEPT HIS LOVE LETTERS

195

captains and other officers of that detachment. If I say that the defenses of that town should be reinforced it's because I believe that it would be a great blow to us should the Americans take San Fabian and establish a mili路 tary encirclement with the purpose of trapping the government.' " But Del Pilar was not alarmed enough to act. "I don't know," says Carrasco, "why nothing of what I suggested to him was followed; and what r feared happened: without any resistance at all, San Fabian was occupied_" As for Commandant Tagunton: "At the first volley from the battleships, he disappeared from town, leaving it to the will of the enemy." The routing of his troops in Nueva Ecija on October 19 should have warned Del Pilar that the Americans were renewing their northward push. (They were actually coordinating the push with their Pangasinan landings.) But on November 1, when Del Pilar wrote to Aguinaldo, it was to denounce rebellious officers, complain about the gossiping in Pangasinan, reveal a "presentiment" he had that he would pass Christmas in Manila, and ask for four cavalrymen to escort him on his reviews. A few days later, Tarlac has fallen, the Americans are landing in San Fabian, and Del Pilar goes to join the fleeing government in Bayambang. He would still put up a dashing front and make light of the American gains, but Aguinaldo is now totally in the grip of fatalism . "Remember," said he to his protege, "what your uncle Marcelo when alive often said: "Expect the worst and you will be right. " The older man's pessimism was

196

GREGORIO DEL PILAR

to be justified, From Bayambang they ned to Santa Barbara. Del Pilar still had under him over 2,000 troops: 1,000 in the Del Pilar Brigade, 350 in the Joven Column, 400 in the Kawit Batta路 lion, 100 in the Corps of Lancers, plus two vanguard companies. General Venancio Concepcion expressed anxiety over the safety of such a large expedition marching under they knew not what plan.

"The President assured me," Concepcion would later recall, "that Del Pilar had everything studied and prepared beforehand and that it was he - that is, Del Pilar - who was responsible tor the said expedition." In the night they heard what sounded like rifle shots. Colonel Sityar was sent to notify Agui. naldo and Del Pilar. Del Pilar laughed and jested: "Colonel, you are confusing the sound of

musketry for the noise they make pounding rice." Annoyed by the laugh and the jest, Sityar muttered to Concepcion: "But, General, I should know from experience when I hear ririe shots." No check was made: no inquiries were ordered. The next day they learned to their dismay that it had been rifle shots. Concepcion's worst fears had been realized. Apparently the enemy had caught up with

SECOND FROM LEFT IS GENERAL CONCEPCION WITH FELLOWOFFICERS

WAS THE HERO OF TlRAD A HATCHETMAN?

the tail of the expedition and the troops had panicked. The Joven Column, then acting as rear· guard, was dispersed. The com· panies under Colonel Monteneg· ro were forced to retreat. The Kawit Battalion fell to p i~es. General Gregorio del Pilar, the man "responsible fo r the said ex· pedition," had, with a laugh and a jest, mislaid his army. Because he lost it, Tirad got a hero. But can courage redeem stupid· ity? The folly of improvidence-a retreat undertaken pell.mell, ac· cording to no specific plan, and with a large dis~ganized army had been aggravated by the reck· lessness of the man ~ command. And now, as the h?~de of fugi· tives, which included.. women, stumbled northward, n,ture it· self provided the squalor \or Got· terdammerung, bringing on dark and damp, as though to p'unish the Repub lic for having wasted the hours of sun. Now the skies darken; the storms rage; wind and water be· dev il the Republic as it slogs through the mud, as it rlees des· perate through a cold bleak North, the Gringo ever closer at its heels. Now, when it's too late, the arsenals are ordered evacuat· ed and poor General A1ejandrino, his teeth chattering from the cold, loads the artillery on cara· bao carts that get stuck in the mud, loads food and supplies on carts that bog down in the mud . Through driving rain and rutted road rides Adjutant Telesforo Carrasco and, at the Rancheria F'amy, where the fugitives pause for a night, comes upon a dismal scene: Aguinaldo's wife and her brother and Colonel Leyba's sis· ters drying their clothes before the fire. "That night we ate bad· ly cooked goat's meat, slept in the goats' pen, with the horses'

blankets for mats." But every· where with them went a brief· case of General del Pilar that contained a girl's letter and lock of hair - not the new love in Da· gupan nor the old love in Tarlac but another love in Bulacan. "The letter was a farewell," says Kalaw. "Always romance, the amorous adventure, suavely inter· vening at the most critical situa· tions of war!" And what can be more romantic indeed than a young warrior who win mislay his troops but not a love letter? Northward they ran and ran all the last half of that November of '99: north through Pangasinan, north through La Union, north through J1ocos Sur till they reached the highlands of Concep· cion town, from where th~y climbed the peak to Paso de Tirad, 4,500 feet up a steePI~ope, and down the other side I the village of Angake, where they rested for a week. During that week, Del Pilar ordered three lines of trenches dug on Tirad Pass. Aguinaldo had given him "the pick of all the men that can be spared" and bidde n him to de· fend the pass. On November 30, when Agui· naldo and his party left for Cer· vantes, word having come that Americans were already in Can· don, Del Pilar headed the escort and he stayed the night in Cer· vantes. Just after they had reo tired, everybody was startled by a heavy thud, as of saddles drop· ping. A check was made: the sad· dies were in place, the horses peacefully feeding. But the inci· dent so disturbed Del Pilar he could not sleep all night. Right after breakfast in the morning, he alerted his soldiers for the return ride to Tirad. Aguinaldo begged his favorite to stay beh ind in Cervllntes: 'here were enough officers to direct the defense of the pass. But Del

197

Pilar insisted on leaving. As he mounted the reddish horse that had been given him in Cervantes, Aguinaldo noticed that the horse had a tuft of mane that twisted upward, an ominous sign for horsemen, as Aguinaldo pointed out, renewing his pleas that Del Pilar remain. But the young man finished with his good byes and rode off. On a mountain, when the Revolution was in retreat, did he and Aguinaldo first come to know each other, at Biak·na· Bato; and on another mountain, during a final retreat, did he and Aguinaldo part for the last time. While Del Pilar was riding back to Tirad on the morning of Dec· ember 1, 1899, the American forces under General Young were advancing on it. However, not Ti· rad itself was the objective of the Americans but the isolation of the last remaining army of the Republic: the Tinio Brigade on the Abra River. Says Kalaw: "When General Young arrived in Candon on Novemher 21, his immediate objective was to pre· vent the numerous forces of General Tinio that were at the mouth of the Abra River from uniting with the Aguinaldo party, and vice·versa: prevent Aguinal· do from uniting with the forces of General Tinio." On November 30, Major March of the U.S. 33rd Infantry received an order to lead his men at once to Tirad Pass and "interpose your forces between those of Aguinaldo commanded by Gen· eral Gregorio del Pilar, which should now be in Cervantes, and those of General Tinio, which are in AbTa." For our side, Thad was just a "delaying action." But the Americans would im· pede what we had not even in· tended: the recovery of an anny for the Republic.

198

GREGORIO DEL PILAR

Into The Clouds

Americans took Concepcion town below the pass on December 1 and at dawn the next day climbed the approaches to Tirad. They immediately saw that they could not rush the pass. It was too narrow and steep, a pronounced zigzag with a natural barricade of rook, behind which

the Filipino

dere~ders

were en-

sconced. However, it could be "squeezed" from b'etween two points: from Lingay. the village at the foot of the pass, and from the peak round which the pass zigzagged. Major March first took Lingay

and posted a rearguard there. Then he sent ten sharpshooters under a lieutenant to take the peak. Once the peak had been occupied, a simultaneous attack by both rearguard and vanguard commenced. The defenders on Tirad were thus under fire from two opposite directions and under this cover of fire Major March advanced: his men were soon swanning all over the rocks and falling upon the Filipinos behind them. Before noon the "battle above the clouds" was over. It was really a very minor skirmish that lasted barely six hours. March reported two dead and nine wounded. Of the Filipino defenders, 53 had fallen, including Del Pilar. But this skirmish captured the imagination of the Americans because it was reported to them by two highly imaginative newsmen. If we have an American路made hero it's Gregorio del Pilar and his makers were

newsmen John McCutcheon and Richard Henry Little and a local American newspaper called The Manila Freedom. McCutcheon, who reported that Del Pilar was "the last to fall," dazzled his readers with his account of the glitter that Del Pi路 tar wore in his tast battle: gotd braid, spurs of silver, a newly tailored khaki uniform, and three gorgeous golden medallions hang: ing round his neck. A dllMic, but surely not of journalism, is Richard Henry Little's famous story or the battle: how they found the body of young General Gregorio del Pilar, who was "the last to retreat"; how they had heard his voice continually dUring the battle "urging his men to greater effort, scolding them, praising them, cursing, appealing one moment to their love of their native land and the next instant threatening to kill them himself if they did not stand firm" (Mr. Little must have had terrific hearing to have been able from afar to hear all this in the din of battle); how they had seen the young general falling back, under heavy fire, to the second intrenchment and not turning away on his white horse until all the men there were down; how they had held their breath as a sharpshooter aimed at the young general; how they had seen the man on horseback roll to the ground; and how, when they reached him, "the boy general of the Filipinos was dead." Equally moving is the story that appeared in The Manila Freedom: "It is said that in the battle against Major March's troops, Mr. Gregorio del Pilar, surrounded by the dead and the wounded Calling by his side, fought a valiant defense, inspiring his troops by his example and, though gravely wounded, had stood atop the

trench to animate them when a bullet pierced his heart and he fell among his comrades. When the American troops advanced they found the body of the general on the same spot where he had fallen and the expression on his face was of a command or a supreme desire abruptly interrupted. One of his hands, pressed to his heart, from which blood flowed, clutched a silk handkerchief embroidered with the name of his sweetheart." Too, too! - but not for Americans then, nor for us now. We're still lapping it up. From these three American "reports" principally sprang the legend of Del Pilar at Tirad, a picture as romantically embroidered as that silk handkerchief. What's the true picture? There exist two separate Philippine eyewitness accounts which, since they more or less agree with each other, explode the American "reports" as pure romance. One account is by Del Pilar's aide-de-camp, Vicente Enriquez, a pal from boyhood of the general. Goes the Enriquez testimony: "We passed the night in the cabin on the peak. Around dawn (of that tragic December 2) we heard shooting from the direction of Concepcion. At daybreak, the general ordered me to go down to the trenches to see what was going on .... From a hilltop 1 saw some American troops resting below, their arms stacked up. Our soldiers told me that our position was impregnable . . . . We all agreed that we were winning the battle. "I returned to the peak. where 1 had left General del Pilar but midway up I saw him with Lieutenants Eugenio (this should be Telesforo) Carrasco and Vicente Morales and the bugler. 1 told

WAS 'IlIE HERO OF TIRAD A HATCHEThfAN?

him what I had seen. The general quickened his pace on learning that the Americans could be seen from a certain high point. We arrived at the upper trenches. Then we wen~ to the hilltop where I was and the moment we got there we heard renewed firing and saw our soldiers giving battle. Our soldiers, pointing with their hands, warned Del Pilar that the enemy was almost on top of us, but we could see nothing save an irregular movement in the cogan grass. So the general ordered a halt to the firing. And ered on the hilltop he tried to see and distinguish tM enemy. While he was doing this ~e was hit by a bullet. The general covered his face with both hands, falling backward and dying: instantly. He wore a new khaki uniform

with his campaign insIgnia, his silver spurs, his polished shoulder straps, his silk handkerchiefs, his rings on his fingers. Always hand· some and elegant!" At least Enriquez agrees with the Americans that Del Pilar died stylish - but no claim that he fought from trench to trench, that he rallied the soldiers, that he was the last to retreat, that he was the last to fall, or that he fell clutching a sweetheart's handkerchief to wounded heart. For one thing, he wa... not shot in the heart. IT Enriquez speaks true, what brought the general to that fatal hilltop was mere curiosity (to see the Americans) and what killed him was foolhardiness. If he had not ordered a stop to the firing the Americans would not have had a chance to aim at him: and

a sold ier should surely know bet· ter than to stand erect on a bat· tlefield just to discern the enemy. That kind of rashness hardly makes for a "glorious" end, espe· cially if, as in this case, the death that results destroys the morale of the troops. Enriquez's account is more or less corroborated by Adjutant Telesforo Carrasco, who was with the party that escorted Aguinaldo to Cervantes: "At seven in the morning we Jeft Cervantes in the direction of Angake - General del Pilar, Aidede-Camp Enriquez and I - arriv· ing in Angake at three in the afternoon. At that moment we saw the signal [Jags on that mountain announcing that the enemy was in sight. Without resting, we rode to the peak, where

'~ " . , ,'' ' ' ' ' " THE REPUBLIC FIGH TI NG IN THE WILDERNESS

GREGO RIO DEL PILAR

200

we learned that the Americans had reconnoitered the fie ld and fired some shots without being answered. "The general, his aide-de-camp and I passed the evening recalling the life in Dagupan and then we went to sleep . "At dawn, we saw the enemy climbing the slope and moments later the firing began in the first intrenchment, which was under Lieutenant Braulio. At nine in the morning, two Igorotes climbed to the peak and told the general that the Americans had suffered losses at the first intrenchment and could not advance. Heartened by the news, the general dec ideC\ to descend and take part in the combat. "This we did and an-J1our later found ourselves where nine soldiers were defending the left flank of the mountain in the second intrenchment. Hardly had we got there when we saw the Americans climbing up, only 15 meters away, whereupon the soldiers started firing. "The general could not see the enemy because of the cogon grass and he ordered a halt to the firing. At that moment I w.l.S handing him a carbine and \w rn· ing him that the Americans were directing their fire at him and that he should crouch down be· cause his life was in danger and at that moment he was hit by a bullet in the neck that caused instant death. On seeing that the general was dead, the soldiers jumped up as if to flee, but I aimed the carbine at them say· ing 1 would blow the skull off the brains of the first to run, whereupon they resumed firing while the body of the general was being removed to the next trench. " When Carrasco and the reo maining soldiers retreated to that trench they found the body

of the general still lying the re. Apparently that was where it was found by the Americans, who despoiled the dead general of his hoots, finery, papers, trinkets and money. The next day, the Americans having marched off to the high. lands, Vicente Enriquez, who, with the bugler and two soldiers, had fled after the battie, emerged from their hiding place and ran towards Concepcion . On their way down the pass, they carne upon the general's body, ..m.ich had been stripped of everything but unde rwear. "I noticed," recalled Enriquez, "that the breast was clean of blood but I saw a wound in the cheek that I supposed was what killed him. We put him in a ditch and covered him with stones and dry leaves. We wanted t o bury him but the nature of the rocky terrain, the lack of adequate tools, ami the fear that some American column m ig~t come upon us, kept us from doing so, though that was our desire." When the body began to stink, some Igorots buried it unde r a great rock. Because of the Tirad disaster, Aguinaldo decided to summder the women in his party to Major March, who promised they would have safe·conduct to Manila. They were accompanied by Jose Enriquez and an Igorot guide. Among the women was one who belonged to the " high. est official rank" and, as they ap· proached Tirad, she whispered to Enriquez: "When we reach the site where the general died, stop and tell me and don't move even if they kill us." They reached the site and the Igorot guide pointed out the rock where Del Pilar was buried. Recounted Enriquez: ''The disti nguished and charm· ing lady - she was said to be one

of the fia ncees of Del Pilar alighted from her horse, knelt before the rock and, heart thro b· bing with emotion, prayed for the dead lover. We were at a height of 4 ,500 feet and it seemed we could touch heaven with OU I prayers"

Out Of The Clouds

Tirad was where all hope end· ed for the Republic. North in November had been towards a terminus in time and space, as the year and the road ran out. But still there had been a g1im· mer of hope: the highlands as a final fortress. Now in December, with Tirad taken so quickly, so easily, what might have been a fortress had become only dead

encl. The Republic was condemned to wander in the wilderness be· cause it had, from timidity, failed to take the right road. In '98, only one road ran to victory: the Camino Real from Cavite to Manila. With Manila not taken, no other fortress could save the Re public. For Manila would have afforded not only a psychological but a practical advantage, all the badly needed materiel that no other place in the country could provide. If the Republ ic needed arms, Manila was an arsenal. If it needed funds, Manila was a bank. H it needed equipment and sup· plies, Manila was a market. And if it needed technicians, Manila was a factory. Because it failed to take Mani· la, the stations of the Republic becanle progressively bleaker: from Malolos to Cabanatuan to Tarlac to the barren stones of

WAS WE HERO OF T1RAD A HATCHETMAN?

Tirad. And this declension ex· pressed a dwindling of the spirit. His enemies summed up Aguinal· do's failure in one word: Ciluitis· mo. And the irony is that the clan he cherished, to the disaster of the nation, failed him in the end. Not the Kawit Battalion guarded him on his last trek: and what of the clan joined him in the highlands merely heaped, likl' a Daniel Tirona, more shame on the lost cause. In the end it was to Manileiios and Bulakeiios that Aguinaldo

turned, having learned too late that loyalty is not synonymous with clan. There's the pathetic picture of his receiving the news of Del Pilar's death and summon· ing the group left to him, a group no longer Caviteiio, to whom he said: "On nobody do I depend but you, Bulakeiios, on your known loyalty." Says Kalaw: "This reference of Aguinaldo to the loyalty of the Bulakeiios is an outstanding point in all this interesting revolutionary trek.

''V'II:HERE I COMMAND. NOBODV ELSE COMMANOSI"

201

For even when their leader, Del Pilar, was dead, the Bulakeiios formed the principal and deter· mined nucleus of Aguinaldo's escort. "When Aguinaldo's 31st birth· day was celebrated in the wilds of Lubuagan on March 22, 1900, Dr. Barcelona pronounced a toast dedicated to the soldiers, telling them that 'as soldiers of Bulacan they should emulate him who was their chief, the brave General Gregorio H. del Pilar, who died on Mount Tirad defend· ing the President of the Republic.' The soldiers remembered the scene on Tirad and wept. These same Bulakeiio soldiers, when the party was in Asibanlan on May 29, 1900, again saved with their daring and courage, the life of the President when he was surrounded and attacked by the enemy. "I asked an officer of the Bulacan Brigade what was the rca· son for this spedal Bulakeiio loyalty to President Aguinaldo and he replied that it was the me· mory of their belol'ed chief, General Gregorio del Pilar, the man llIost in the confidence of the President. Arnor con amor se pa· gao " The reason was therefore per· sonal, and we are back in clan sentiment. Sentimental, too, was the American regard of Del Pilar, expressed in an interjection of James A. Le Roy: "The youthful general, the popular young gen· eral, one of the idols of the revolutionary cause!" And in a reporl in the Chicago Record: "lIe was a handsome boy, and he fought only for the highest motives of justice, never for personal gain." More acute was the judgment of Captain John R. M. Taylor: "One can see without much stretch of imagination the

GREGORIO DEL PILAR

202

THE CROSS MARKS THE SPOT WHERE eEL PI L AR PERISHED ON TIRAD

French prototypes in Filipino leaders. Luna was a Malay Danton, Mabini a Malay Cauthon; while in the young general, Grcgorio del Pilar, it is possible to

again see St. Just. In Aguinaldo, silent, cold, reserved, and cruel, but with a gift of words which stirred the men about him, distant and strange as they seem to us, moved an Asiatic Robespierre." Since 81. Just was a young fop chiefly remembered for his fanatical devotion to his chief Robespierre, the parallel is indeed startling. However the Philippine view of Del Pilar has been chiefly shaped by the more romantic American judgments, and this despite the cool attitude towards him of several of his contemporaries - Jose Alejandrino, for instance_ The chilliest judgment was made by General Venancio Con-

cepclOn: "The impressions I am having of this second part of my command . .. are not new, being the same impressions I had in Bulacan in relation with the Brigade of G. H. del Pilar. The supremacy to which those who belonged to the first revolution, with fewexceptions, feel they have a right, and above all the cavilismo fused with egoism and the thirst for authority which they reveal in all their actions, undeterred by the groans of the nation that must pay for their arrogance ... must surely lead to the grave the sacred aspiration of the Philippines, if God does not remedy the situation. For these deans and owners of the Philippine Revolution, there are no other ideas but their own, no discipline other than to obey Aguinaldo, no strategy more effective than avance mga kapalid - all else do they find vicious, as the artificial

product of intelligence and art. "The behavior shown to me by G. H. del Pilar in Bulacan, by Makabulos, San Miguel and La路 dislao Jose in Pampanga and Tar路 lac, and the unalterable indiffer路 ence of Senor Aguinaldo to any th ing that might be against his old comrades and constant adulators, confirm my previous impressions." These are impressions that, however painful, we must begin to take into account, lest ours be the fate of those who, refusing to learn from the mistakes of history, are condemned to repeat them. Tirad was the extreme expression of the layolayo lang spirit of the Aguinaldo clan. Rather than a tragedy of war, the death of Del Pilar was a last act of adulation. lie died defend ing not the Republic really but, as Dr. Barcelona said, the President of the Republic.

When Stopped The Revolution?

Le or

endits unfinishlng -is usually pictured in Palanan. There, in September, 1900, the rleeing Aguinaldo reached dead end, up against the Pacific Ocean, an east without hope. There was no neeing to the north; the Americans had landed in Aparri. Nor to the south; the enemy held the Central Plain. Nor back across the highlands that had taken a difficult month to traverse. But the dead cnd of Palanan was at least a hole to hide in. The hunters marveled to lose all scent of the quarry, once down from the mountains and on the Pacific coast. Aguinaldo in Palanan would laugh to read varying reports of his death; one paper carried a detailed account of his near-capture in Cavite. As far as the Americans were concerned, the war ended when native defense collapsed at the

other end of the Manila.Dagupan railroad. But they- and Aguinaldo -knew that as long as he escaped them, final victory escaped them. Therefore their dogged pursuit of the fugitive who was In his person the Republic, the continuing Revolution. In his winter flight across the highlands (December, 1899) he had been accompanied by about a hundred troops, ten officers. and two aides: Drs. Simeon Villa and Santiago Barcelona. They reached the Cagayan Valley in January, 1900; rested a while in Nueva Vizcaya; then wandered about in the wilderness for five months. It was May when they came to Tierra Virgen in Isabela, where Aguinaldo set up head路 quarters and tried to organize a guerrilla warfare in the Cagayan Valley, giving what commanders of his were still in the field the

option to act on their own against the enemy, "without waiting for superior orders." Tierra Virgen was a refuge for only around four months. In August, the Americans having landed in Aparri, Aguinaldo resumed his flight, towards the sea. When he reached Palanan on September 6, 1900, he had only 17 soldiers with him and his two most faithful followers, Drs. Vii路 la and Barcelona. Palanan turned out to welcome him, to the music of a brass band. A house was ready for him and his offi路 cers; the troops were billeted at the convento. In Palanan the fugitive was to enjoy seven months of respite from the terror of capture. The Manila newspapers arrived more or less regularly, for the Republic still had a dependable courier system. On weekend afternoons

ARTEMIO RICARTE

206

t here were concerts on the plaza by what Aguinaldo described as "a fairly capable band." These serenalas were usually followed by a dance at the parish house beside the church . It was a "peaceful and uneventful life" but it palled on Colonel Villa, who had been made chief of staff, and he begged Aguinaldo to give him a command in the field. The General decided to reo quisition 400 troops from the forces in Central Luzon, to put these troops under Colonel Villa and make him the commander of the military district of the Cagayan Valley, comprised by the provinces of Cagayan, !sabela and Nueva Vizcaya. To replace Villa as chief of staf拢\ Brigadier General Teodoro Sandiko was summoned - from "wherever he may be found" - to join Aguinaldo in PaJanan. These arrangements we~ to doom the General, for the IE~tter to Sandiko, sent by courier, \fell into American hands. The Americans thus learned where Aguinaldo was and were given an idea of how to trap him: by sending to Palanan what would appear to be

an installment of the troops he asked for, preceded by what he would believe to be an answer to his letter to Sandiko, an answer forged by the Americans. The plot but proved again how inscrutable the Occidental is, how baffling and cunning and deep, forever a dismay to Orient.. al candor and courtesy. But it certainly was fitting that American dealings with Aguinaldo, which began with the knavery of their Asian consuls and the hooey of Dewey, should now climax with an act of trickery and treachery executed with the utmost skill by Yanqui officers and gentlemen. On March 22, 1901, Aguinaldo turned 32 and Palanan celeb路 rated as though it were the town fiesta, with arches allover town, horse races, band concerts, dances and theater. The Senor Presidente had already received the Americans' forged announcement of arriving troops and he took the news as one more reason to Ceast. He could now garrison the province and go ahead with his plan to put up a large arsenal in Palanan to supply "cen-

ARMY HEADOUARTERS IN PALANAN

tral and even southern Luzon with ammunition." Commercial houses in Cagayan and Isabela had promised him machinery and tools. Hope was expressed by these projects he described in a letter to his cousin Baldomero and which he signed with his names from happier times: Colon de Magdalo. Colon had been his name as a Mason; Magdalo, as a Katipunero. The day after his birthday gala, the supposed reinforcements arrived, towards four in the afternoon. The troo ps, about 85, in number, were actually Macabebe scouts in the pay of the Americans and were accompanied by five American officers pretending to be prisoners, among them Colonel Frederick Funston, the mastermind of the plot. But the real leader of the expedition was Captain Lazaro Segovia, a Spanish soldier who had fought the Revolution in Cavite in '96 but had left the Spanish army to join the Revolution in '98. He surrendered to the Americans in 1900 and passed to the employ of Colonel Funston. Aguinaldo was not aware of th is, nor surprised that the troops should be led by a Spaniard, because the revolutionary army counted with so many Spanish soldiers who had defected to the Republic. According to Segovia, he served in Nueva Ecija under Mariano Llanera, one of the Revolution's Creole officers. When the troops arrived Aguinaldo was dressing to receive some ladies planning to organize a Red Cross league. He went to a window and saw the new arrivals, in familiar rayadillo uniform, marching into the plaza, where, in front of the presidential residence, a 20-man unit of the presidential guards waited to receive them. The new arrivals came to a halt before the house and presented arms; then their

207

WHEN STOPPED THE REVOLUTION?

two supposed officers, Segovia and Colonel Hilario Tal Placido, went upstairs and were received by Colonel Villa, Dr. Barcelona and several other officer.;. Presently the Senor Presidente appeared, dressed in khaki. He con· versed with Segovia and Tal Phi· cido, asking about conditions in Central Luzon. "It was my intention," Aguinaldo would say later, "to allow Hilario Tal Placido and his men to rest in the camp in Palanan for a week and then send them to Isabela. The men were to be attached to the s.uerrilla forces already operating" there and Col· onel Tal Phicido 'was to assume the military chieftainship of the province. " After talking with ~ Placido and Segovia, Aguinaldo ordered that the new troops were. to fall out and retire to the quarters prepared for them. Captain Segovia hurried downstairs and was heard shouting something indistinct. What Segovia shouted was: "Now, Macabebes!" At the order the Macabebes began firing at the presidential guards. Agui· naldo, who stood at a window FREOERICK FUNSTON

with his ofricers, thought that the troops were firing a salute into the air - until a sergeant below the window, covering them with his rifle, ordered Aguinaldo and his officers not to move. Tal Placido had already run to the door, to prevent their escape. Nevertheless, Colonel Villa man· aged to jump out a window, was shot in the wrist by Segovia, continued to run, was shot again in the back, finally surrendered and was taken prisoner. One American account, James H. Blount's, has a droller picture of the capture: "Then Phicido, a very stout individual, grabbed Aguinaldo, who weighs only about l15 pounds, threw him down, and salon him until General Funston arrived." Aguinaldo would say that he seized a pistol to defend himself but was stopped by Dr. Barcelona. The doctor waved a handkerchief to signify that they were surrendering and the scouts rushed into the house shouting Hurrah (or the Macabebes! They were followed by the five American officers, all armed with carbines. Aguinaldo was identified and told that he was a prisoner of war of the army of the United States. He was shut up in a room with Villa and Barcelona. The Americans ransacked the house for documents and came upon the entire treasury of the Philip. pines: P14,(X)0. The townspeople were meanwhile fleeing, so that Palanan was a ghost town in a matter of hours. The capture had been effected towards evening of March 23, 1901, and assembled for this final scene were all the elements of the Revolution, each represented by appropriate characters the Creole and the I1ustrado by Drs. Barcelona and Villa, the Peninsular by Lazaro Segovia, the Yanqui by Colonel Funston and

his aides, and the lost masses by the Macabebe scouts who delivered the Republic to the enemy. Here in errant wildemeSli ended, detoured from objective, the march of the Revolution along the Camino Real from Cavite to Manila. Two days later, on March 25, Aguinaldo and his fellow prison· ers were marched to the bay and loaded onto the American cruiser Vicksburg. They arrived in Mani· la on March 28 and Aguinaldo was rushed to Malacaiiang, where he found General Arthur MacArthur at breakfast. The President of the Republic had, after all, reached the Palace, though he entered it captive. "Such was my return to Manila after an absence of more than five years." On April I, 1901, Don Emilio took the oath of allegiance to the United States and on April 16 he called on the warriors still in the field to lay down their mns: ''The complete termination of hostilities and a lasting peace are not only desirable but absolutely essential to the welfare of the Philippines. This cause has been ARTHUR MACARTHUR

• 208

joyfully embraced by a majority of OUT fellow countrymen, who have already united arounu the glorious and sovereign banner of the United States. In this banner they repose their trust. ''The country has declared unmistakably for peace. So be it. Enough of blood, enough of tears and desolation. So also do I respect this will now that it is known to me. "By acknowledging and accepting the sovereignty of the United States throughout the entire archipelago, as I do now without any reserva.,!:ion whatsoever, I believe that I am serving you, my beloved country. May happiness be yours." The Republic had indeed end· ed - hut had the Revolution? Aguinaldo might have surrendered, but not Malvar. Then, Malvar, too, swore allegiance to the United States, hut not\Mabini. And when Mabini came in at last, there was still Ricarte h.olding out. And as long as he held out, the Revolution held out. When stopped the Revolution? Certainly not on that March day when Don Emilio fell captive in Pal an an, nor on the April Fool's Day when he swore allegiance to the United States, nor yet on the day he called on his armies to surrender_ The 1900s that were Empire Days to the Americans, and (or Filipinos the ABCs of a new culture, are usually read in terms of peaceful development: the first Philippine Assembly, the rise of Osmena and Quezon, the public schools, the independence missions to Washington, the pensionados, the Jones Act. But is this a correct reading of the 1900s? Have we been trained not to see an important movement of that period: the continuing Revolution? The fond cliche is of a

ARTEMIO RICARTE

THE FAMEO MAUSER RIFLES OF REVOLUTIONARY OAYS

people swiftly and wholeheartedly falling in love with America. The submerged evidence is oC a bitter, stubborn, quite widespread resistance. The American lovers won in the end, and so thoroughly tl,at we could forget there was even a struggle. The memory would have embarrassed our American passion when that passion was still a love affair. Does this explain our reluctance to include Ricarte among our heroes? Ai; Aguinaldo, in the 1900s, vanished into black legend, Ricarte, the only general who never swore allegiance to the United States, emerged as the leader of the Revolution, its untiring con· tinuer. This was in the days when the canon of national heroes was being formed and Ricarte could not, of course, be allowed even a minor place there, not so much because he was still alive as because he was still active, dangerously active. As the original antiAmeIican (to time that tenn to mean those of us who still opposed America after America had been accepted as benefactor) he

signified a road we had rejected_ The prejudice against him was to darken when he returned in 1942 with the Jap invader, though he thus fulfilled what was the hope and prayer of our patriots throughout the 1890s. Ricarte must, in fact, have thought he was completing the Revolution, by driving out the Americans. As the last surviving general who had never knelt to the Americans, he was, in his person (as the uncaptured Aguinaldo had been) the Revolution - and if any date marks when the Revolution stopped it could just as well be July 31, 1945, when the aged ailing general expired in Kalinga, after retracing in reverse Aguinaldo's earlier flight from the highlands to the Cagayan Valley. A history of tragic flight indents the Pacific coast. Where the Republic fell, in 1901, in the person of Aguinaldo, the Revolution ground to a stop, in 1945, in the person of Ricarte, At that time, to suggest him for national hero would have meant a lynching; but since then there has been the New Propa-

209

WHEN STOPPED THE REVOLUTION?

ZAPOTE BRIOGE, ENTRANCE TO CAVITE PRoVINce ganda to make it square but square not to be anti-American. The first of the ilk sho'uld be the hero of the hour.

The First Blow

1 : e man who was in on the end was also in on the start, Cor Artemio Ricarte was among those who led the first uprising of the Katipunan in Cavite: the August 31, 1896 assault on the Guardia Civil in San Francisco de Malabon. It's ironic that, among Caviteiios, Ricarte should be regarded as more "in" than, say, Bonifacio or the other "outsiders" from Manila, because Ricarte was not even a Tagalog. Born in Batac, nocos Norte, on October 20, 1866, he studied at Letran, moved on to Santo Tomas, wound up graduating from the Escuela Nonnal as elementary teacher. He was as路

signed to San Francisco de Malabon and from then on was of Cavite. When he joined th: ;Katipunan he took the name V).bora and the Viper it was that P?cked in the arm all those he in~tiated into the Magdiwang Council. With the blood from the incision the neophyte signed his oath of obedience. After the failure in San Juan of the Bonifacio uprising, the Ca路 viteiios dedded to act on their own. In his memoirs, Ricarte tells how, on the morning of August 31, 1896, he was sent by tbe Katipunan leaders of San Francisco to confer with those of Noveleta "for the purpose of coming to an understanding as to wbat should be done." What they agreed on was a simultaneous uprising in both towns, to be launcbed at tbree o'clock tbat afternoon with an attack on the barracks of tbe guardia civil. Towards noon, the Katipunan leaders in San Francisco de Malabon, Ricarte among them, gatbered at a restaurant, ostensibly for lunch, and were ordered dispersed by the suspicious mayor.

This precipitated the revolt. The Ricarte group seized the town hall, found five rifles there and some lances, and with these anns descended on the barracks, where they were met by the fire of the entrenched guardia civil. The battle lasted till dawn of the following day, when the guardia civil surrendered. The August 31 uprising in San Francisco de Malabon was thus the first action of tbe Revolution in Cavite, preceding by a few hours Aguinaldo's coup in Kawit, which started at around three in the afternoon of the same day. If in the Magdala camp Aguinaldo was such a wonder as warrior, being a peaceable businessman, no less so in the Magdiwang camp was Ricarte as insurgent. being a courtly schoolmaster. When tbe Magdiwang organized a government Ricarte was made brigadier general. On November 8, 1896, Spanish warships bombarded the Cavite coast and landed a great number of troops, which seized Binakayan and marched on the rebel forts in Noveleta, then under Ricarte's

ARTEMIO RICARTE

210

command. Mter seven hours of fighting the government troops retreated in disorder, leaving behind large quantities of arms and ammunition. For this victory Ricarte was raised to major general. Ricarte says it was he who wrote the letters inviting Bonifacio to Cavite (the Magdiwang had sent scouts to the mountains of Montalban that December to look for the missing Supremo) and the Ricarte memoirs display a Bonifacio bias. The Magdalo are there accused, for example, of withholding from Bonifacio the minutes or resolutions of the Imus Assembly, so he could not act on them; but since the as路 sembly was held (toward the end of December, '96) under the auspieces of the Magdiwang the reo cords would surely have ~been in their hands, not with the agda-

10. Ricarte was elected captain general of the revolutionary government at the Tejeros Convention (March, 1897) that ended with an enraged Bonifacio declaring the elections null and void.

The next day, according to Ricarte, he gathered Bonifacio and the other Magdiwang chieftains with the intention of reconciling them with the Magdalo, who had been invited to the meeting but did not show up. Ricarte's account is doubtful. The real purpose of that meeting was apparently to draw up a manifesto (the Acta de Tejeros) repudiating the proceedings of the previous day's convention, where Aguinaldo had been elected president. This Magdiwang confab ended at around five in the afternoon. An hour later, Ricarte was with the Magdalo. Aguinaldo had arrived from the front and the Magdalo were for swearing him into office, along with the other officials elected in the convention. Ricarte says he tried to hide in the crowd but was spotted and, after much argument, induced to take his oath of office as captain general, but on the condition, says he, that his resignation was to be accepted right after he had been sworn in. Here, again, Ricarte seems devious as a viper indeed. If he was

AN INSURGENT STOCKADE IN CAVITE

really sincere in not wanting to assume office, as a sign of his adherence to Bonifacio, all he' had to do was stay away from the Magdala's ceremonies. Or having gone there, he could have been honest and said outright he thought those ceremonies were illegal because, just a few hours before, he and Bonifacio and their faction had drawn up a formal act voiding the results of the previous day's elections. Therefore, he could not "resign" what he had not been elected to. But in the space of a few hours Ricarte was first with the Bonifacio group plotting to overthrow those who had been elected and then with the Aguinaldo group swearing in those who had been elected! Protesting too much, he himself took the oath of office and then did not resign as he said he would do at once. He merely left immediately after being sworn in, next day sent in his reo signation; but his name remained on the roster of inducted officials. No wonder that Ricarte's odd behavior led the Magdiwang to suspect, very unjustly, that he was being held "captive" by the Magdalo. A month later, on Easter Sunday, 1897, Ricarte and the other Magdiwang chieftains virtually disowned Bonifacio by attending an assembly called by Aguinaldo, during which the results of the Tejeros elections and the subsequent induction of the elected officials were ratified - and Ri路 carte assumed office as captain general without any protest on his part. Less than a month later Bonifacio was executed. If Ricarte was shocked by the killing of his idol he failed to show it in the one obvious way: by disengaging himself from Aguinaldo. The other top Magdiwang leaders Santiago Alvarez, Diego Mojica,

211

WHEN STOPPED THE REVOLUTION?

AGUINALDO WITH PRIMO DE RIVERA DURING THE NEGOTIATIONS IN BIAK·NA·BATD

Ariston Villanueva - get left behind in the forests and mountains of the Cavite-Batangas boundary when Aguinaldo flees to Bulacan. But Ricarte, clearly a man who knew how to take care of himself, is still with Aguinaldo in Biak·na·Bato. The memoirs are authority for a flash of drama at Biak-na-Bato: the clash of temper between Aguinaldo and Pedro Paterno during the negotiations for peace. Don Pedro had been tactless enough to show ennui one day when Aguinaldo was as usual perorating on the Revolution and the Republic, while they sat in the wilds. Who, suddenly asked the sophisticated don, heard Aguinaldo except the rocks of the mountains and the trees of

the forests? Hurt to the quick, Aguinaldo fulminated against Don Pedro and his kind as learned men who, instead of lead· ing the blind, mocked them with words and sturn bling blocks. "You are the worst- enemy of the Revolution!" screamed Aguinal· do. Stung in turn, Paterno hit back with the Word of an older insurgency, for Paterno here represented not only the Propa· ganda of the '80s but also, as a son of '72, the libertarian movement that had led to the executions and deportations of the '70s. It was not so much Don Pedro Paterno, therefore, but the Dustrado that replied to the Rebel: "Before you conceived your idea, we had already done SOj be-

fore you took up arms, we had already taken them up; but we were not lucky enough to achieve success - and neither will yOU, if you insist on your present course!" Ricarte says Don Pedro had to be led away to save him from Aguinaldo's fists. The Pact of Biak-na-Bato made Ricarte practically the caretaker of the erstwhile revolutionary government when Aguinaldo went into exile. Ricarte it was who had to turn over to the government all inventories of insurgent ordnance; supervise the surrender of arms; aissolve the headquarters of Biak-na-Bato; is· sue passes and safe-conducts to insurgents going home; and han· die the payments fOf surrendered

212

arms. According to the records, Ricarte received (rom the government a total of P6,614, in behalf of the insurgents; besides a personal gift of P6,OOO from Governor-General Primo de Rivera. He was in charge when the Revolution formally surrendered to the government on December 29, 1897. in a ceremony held at Biakna.Bato, where, after the insurgents' war flag had been lowered, the Spanish banner was hoisted and saluted together by insurgent and government troops, in what had been Aguinaldo's last bit of realm. Then the insurgents, weeping, stepped back and surrendered their a~ms while in a valedictory speecti Ricarte bade them return home with confidence, like the prodi~al son to his Cather's house. He would claim that he was, however, not one of the Cavite generals who pledged their aid to the government at the outbreak of the Spanish.American War:. When Aguinaldo returned with the Americans in '98, Ricarte rejoined his General but fell into disfavor when prisoners placed in his charge (they included lsa· belo Artacho and the other loot· seekers who had pestered Agui. naldo in Hong Kong) escaped. Ricarte was to be an obscure minor figure during this second phase of the Revolution. He was in command in Sta. Ana when Manila fell on August 13, 1898, but, like the other Filipino generals, was not allowed by the Americans to enter the city. When war with the Americans started he was at the Malolos conference called by Aguinaldo. According to American records, Ricarte was "the instigator of the fire and outbreak in Manila" during the first month of the war; he issued, on July 12, 1898, "a circular letter calling for contribu· lions to carry on operations

ARTEMIO RICARTE

THE AGUINALOO PARTY ENTRAINING FOR EXILE

against the United States govern· ment"; and on October 13 "called upon the people of the Philippines to rise against the United States." In the field, his most signal action was the battle on June 10, 1899, against an American force of 4,000 on an isthmus of Lagu· na de Bay. In July, 1900, he and a group of commandos managed to slip through American lines and enter Manila but were dis· covered and arrested. During his six months in Bilibid he stuQ' bornly refused to take the oath of allegiance to the United States. On January 7, 1901, he was shipped to Guam in the group that included Mabini and the other rejectors of American do-minion who preferred exile to submission. The exile in Guam was to last two years, during which time the number of recal· citrants were to dwindle until practically none were left except Ricarte and Mabini.ln February, 1903, he and Mabini were brought back to Manila. Mabini took the oath of allegiance ; Ri· carte still refused to do so, was

,permanently banished and shipped to Hong Kong. Hong Kong was where the old junta of the expatriates of '72 (like Jose Maria Basa) had served as link between the Propaganda in Spain and the Propaganda in the Philippines; and this junta was reactivated as the Katipunan Abuiuyan, with Ricarte as its president, in March, 1903. In May of that year, a mysterious colleague of Ricarte's, Manuel Ruiz. known as "Prin," arrived in Hong Kong and began working with Ricarte on something called Republika Universal DemOcrata Fiiipina. On December 8 of that year the Ricarte·Prin group dissolved the Hong Kong Junta and replaced it with a committee geared to establishing the "Re· publica." The older expatriates in Hong Kong drifted away but Ricarte and Prin were presently proclaiming a Gobiemo Triumvi· rato Dictatorial. They had heard of the impending war between Russia and Japan and thought it an opportUlie moment to resume the Revolution in the Philippines. In fact, they had heard that the

WHEN &'TQPPED THE REVOLUTION?

213

and revolt against the Govern· ment of the United States in the PhilipPLne Islands"; but in 1903, in Hong Kong, he sUll believed that the Katipunan revolution had not "died completely" and could still be revived, for in December, 1903, he secretly set sail for the Philippines, to resume the Revolution.

The Second Wind

AfTER BIAK·NA·BATO. EXILE IN HONG KONG

Revolution had never., really end· ed; at that very time (the last quarter of 1903) an ~icer of the original Katipunan, eneral Macario Sakay, who had en ad· jutant to Emilio Jacinto, Was battling the Americans and sending word to Hong Kong that tH,e en· tire country was again eager to take up arms. F'or Ricarte, the second (or 1898) phase of the Revolution had been a false one, because "the Katipunan revolution, whose flag - the birth of which we saw and the death we con· templated - was, after Commodore George Dewey of the United States of North America deCeated the Spanish SQuadron on Philippine waters on May 1, 1898, substituted on the return of Emilio Aguinaldo by the trio color of the second insurrection against Spain, wh ich should be called the Dewey-Aguinaldo or the Aguinaldo-Dewey insurrection. " But the second flag, the trio color, had no happier a career. "This banner, after flying in every corner of the Philippine

archipelago. was also torn down and mutilated to shreds by the ever victorious banner pC the United States, under whose flattering shade gold circulates in abundance and individual righls guaranteed to the fullest degree. The Americans seek to establish themselves more securely than the Czar of Russia or the most despotic ruler on the face of the universe; and the Philippine Islands are now sheltered in all confidence from the tempest· uous stonns of time." It was a time, according to the Ricartean sarcasm, "known as the Time of Light." But, actually, a Time of Dark for the Philippines, because the Katipunan perished when Dewe y won the BaHle of Manila Bay. "On that memorable and glorious day - May 1, 1898 - there died completely the Katipunan revolution, to give birth 011 that same date to the Dewey.Aguinai. do Revolution or the AguinaldoDewey Revolution." Ricarte wrote that in the later 1900s, when he was again ill Bili· bid serving a tenn for "sedition

CiVil government had been established in the Philippines on July 4, 1901; and by their with· drawal of military role, the Americans meant to show the world that peace reigned in the Philippines, that the mass of F'ilipinos welcomed American dominion, and that the "insurrection" against the United States had been confined to a few greedy warlords, se\'eral mad Canatics, and many more bandit chief· tains. As early as November, 1900, the Taft Commission was report· ing that "a great majority of the people long for peace and are willing to accept the establishment of a government under the supremacy of the United States." The U.s. secretary of war, Mr. Elihu Root, was also in the country at that time and everywhere he went he found that "the patient and unconsenting millions" were very, very anxious to be rid of "Aguinaldo and his band of assassins. " With Aguinaldo captured and his "assassins" generally sunen· dering, the state of the country should the n have proved the American contention conect and the proof used was civil gov-

214

ARTEMIO RICARTE

The Yanqui soldier. who, during this time of peace, was busy killing and being killed, knew better and sang out his Ceelin~ for the native nigger:

He may be a brother of William H. Taft. But he ain't no friend of mine!

ISASELO DE LOS RIiVES

ernment. Alas, no sooner had civil rule been established than it had to be withdrawn (within hair a month!) (rom Batangas, Cebu and Bohol. During the honeymoon of "peace," 1901;2, a "Great Insurrection" raged in the southern Tagalog provinces, a rebel general marched in Bicolandia, and U.S. troops were being massacred in Samar. The Americans were presently being driven to the practice or pogrom and concentration camp, to stifle the

resistance of those "patient and unconsenting millions" said to be so willing to accept the supr~ macy of the United States. Evidently. Aguinaldo or no Aguir.aldo, they were determined to resist the Gringo - and they did, violently and bloodily. though July 4 after July 4 the Govern. ment of the United States in the Philippines extolled the state of peace and the benevolent assimilation of what Mr. Taft had so kindly accepted as his little brown brothers.

Curiously enough, it was an American who saw history plain. In his book on the American occupation (1913) James H. Blount, who was in the Philippines Crom 1899 to 1905, records the Empire Days as the time of a Revolution unstopped, a Revolution still in progress - and oC the Americans' "systematic efforts" to conceal the fact., "A short time after the civil government was instituted," says Blount, "the insurrection got its second wind." That "second wind" has been muffled or tainted for us by the American sneer at "bandoleros" and "fanatics," as in one early summary (Appendix No_ 149 in the Watson Collection) of what the Americans minimized as "disorders" or "disturbances": "In this way were formed the numerous bands o[ outlaws that for the next few years infested the Tagalog provinces, some claiming a political mISSIOn, others inspired by fanatical religious leaders, but most of them having purposes undefined. and existing to no other end than to rob and steal, cattle thieving being their chief occupation. The result was that there appeared several alleged Sons of God, Virgin Marys, at least two Popes, and a Black Jesus." But. for us, the significance of what those "outlaws" had in common bums through the American sneer. "The operations of these bands were generally controlled by what were called Katipunan

OOMINAOOR GOMEZ

councils and lodges. although in fact they had no more relations to the Katipunan founded by Andres Bonifacio than the Kati路 punan had to Freemasonry. In the Tagalog provinces almost every town had its 'Katipunan,' each operating, as did the bands controlled by it, independently of the other." Through 1902-3, armed bands roamed Rizal province "claiming to be the continuation of the insurrection," under the command first of Luciano San Miguel and then of Faustino Guillermo, "a fugitive from justice charged with murder." A similar continuation was orrered by a "fanatic" in Sorsogon, Antonio Col ache, who "had been a lieutenant under Aguinaldo during the Revolution." Also during 1902路3 was the "insurrection" in A1bay led by General SimeOn Dla. whom the Americans branded tadron, yet did not disdain to negotiate with. Indeed, the terms the Americans used in this case do

WHEN STOPPED THE REVOLUTION?

not indicate they were dealing with a common bandit. An annistice was declared so they could parley with Ola; then Ola broke off negotiations and withdrew with his entire force and a large number of additional recruits he had secured during the armistice. After that, it's hard to join in the American laughter over the rebellion of "Pope" Faustino Ab· len in Leyte, or of the "Santa Iglesia" in Pampanga and Nueva Ecija, or of the Pulajanes in Cebu and Samar. What we do rind hila· rious is that the poor Gringos, to keep up the fiction of peace all over the land ... "except in the non-Christian provinces," had to classify the provinces where the Pulajanes were revolting, like Sa· mar, as "non·Chr~tian"! But, then, to an Empire-Day Gringo, a revolt against the United States of America could only be nonChristian, however staggering its Christian trappings. In Leyte arose a "Pope"!, Rios who organized an army and set up an External Municipal Government. "He declared himself the Generalissimo and Viceroy, and announced his intention to drive out the Americans and con· stitute himself the king of the Philippines. He later announced himself as the Son of God. Stilt later he was hanged for his crimes." Almost like this would sound the Roman account of an· other Son of God hanged for the crime of wanting to drive out the invader. In Pampanga the folk savior was an Apo Ipe (Felipe Salvador) who led a dissident movement headquartered in the Candaba swamps and known as the Santa Iglesia. On September 16, 1903, Apo lpe and his troops attacked the Constabulary banacks in San Jose, Nueva Ecija, leaving the American commanding officer wounded and a sergeant dead.

215

AURELIO TOLENTINO

In Cavite the link with the Revolution was obvious enough in the person of General Mariano Noriel, whom the Americans accused of maintaining two "bandits" in the field: Julian MontaIan and Cornelio Felizardo. When the Montalan-Felizardo forces raided the Laguna town of Bay, they were, reported the outraged Americans, "aided by the municipal president, who sent out the municipal police to escort the bandits into town to insure them a,ainst a surprise by the Constabulary." The "disorders" were too widespread not to be suspected as a national movement, though the Americans firmly refused to see them as anything but the depredations of independent ban· dits - Aniceto Oruga in Batangas; EI Roldan (Mariano Leones· tal in Tayabas; the BullU'do brothers in Ilocos Norte; the Tolido, Saria and Sacula bands ~ "of considerable size"-in A1bay. Yet again and again the Americans were startled to discover

connections among these "bandits" that bespoke an underground. When they captured the chief trouble-maker in lsabela, Manuel Tomines, an ex-officer of the Revolution who had organized an anny equipped with arms used in the Revolution, they learned that Tomines had met with the "revolutionary ring" in Manila in January, 1903; that his movement in Isabela was the r(!Sult of an agreement "the object of which was to unite all who had been officers of the Revolution"; that all the members had sworn to take to the field again when called upon; that he had been made colonel in command of the Cagayan Valley "to organize rebellion there"; that his commission was signed by Ricarte; and that his instructions were "to start the insurrection in January,1904." Again, when Isabelo de los Reyes ned to Hong Kong after serving a prison tenn for his labor agitation, he revealed to the Hong Kong Junta that all the time he was in the Malabon jail he was daily being visited by in· surgent leaders come to consult him on their revolutionary move· ment. "And this," runs the American comment, "was no idle boast; those visits were noted and recorded ... More than this there was a plot afoot to raid the town of Malabon and release Reyes and his fellow prisoners. and to declare him president of the Republic." And James Blount, who laughs at his fellow Americans' reluctance to call a spade a spade and the Philippine "disorders" a revolution, bluntly declares that Misamis in 1903, though "nominally in a state of peace," was actually in a state of revolt. "As I wrote Governor Taft afterwards, the Misamis crowd of disturbers of the peace were genuine insur-

ARTEMIO RICARTE

216

rectos. I have often wondered how they managed to be so respectable at that late date. They did not steal, as did most of the outlaws in 1903. Their avowed purpose was to subvert the existing government." That purpose was avowed by movement after movement not only widespread (the geography of tumult sizzled from the I1ocos and Cagayan down to Misamis

and Surigao) hut so persistent that the tenacity could only have been of the national will. If the "disorders" CQuld, up to 1904, be dismissed as the mere hacklash of the recent war, their persislence afterwards,. right into the second decade of American rule, would have to be regarded as something more S(!riou~ especially since pogrom and cbncentration camp had failed ~o stop them. Blount thinks tha\ true peace was not established III the Philippines until around 19q5 yet in that year a Manila cqok, Atolio Tolentino, was organizing an "anny of independence" in Camiling, Tarlac; and a government draughtsman, Simeon Basa, was organizing the Katipunan in Zambales. In 1906 Pascual Poblete was resuscitating the Katipunan in Manila and the Americans' PC were hunting down Macario Sakay, "the self-proclaimed president of the Philippine Republic." In 1907 an Ejercito Libertador Nacional took up arms in Tayabas and was crushed by Provincial Governor Manuel L. Quezon; and the PC finally captured Severino Rodriguez, who had led the annies of the Santa Iglesia in a try to take Malolos_ In 1909 the followers of Arsenio de Guzman, who claimed to be Rizal reincarnated, reestablished the Katipunan in Sta. Rosa, Laguna_ They were "mostly ignorant farm hands and tenants" of the Zaballa hacienda but when they

rose against their hacendero and slew him the ensuing trial revealed that "a well-laid and extensive plot was afoot in the province to start a revolution." In 1910 occurred the Mandac Uprising in Nueva Vizcaya, Yotlich was supposed to trigger a general revolt in the region. In 1911 the PC nipped in the bud an uprising in Taytay. In 1912 a conspiracy was unearthed in Cebu City to seize the PC headquarters and proclaim an independent republic. Also in 1912 was the "Balintawak Plot" (August 26) of

MANUEL L. QUEZON

neo--Katipuneros to attempt another Battle of San Juan. In 1913 there was the uprising in Zambales led by Bias Sison and two Aglipayan priests. In 1914 a meeting in Balintawak attended by "the more ignorant people of the laboring masses" ended in a decision to "raise the banner of revolt in Balintawak on August 26," but the plot was foiled by PC spies. Nevertheless, there was an abortive uprising in Manila on Christmas Eve of that year. In 1915 Pablo PenuJlar, an ex-

preacher, appeared in Pangasinan saying he had orders to prepare "for general revolt" and, before he was betrayed to the PC, had begun to attract a following, "all illiterate laborers." The Philippine Assem bly of 1907 is usually advanced as the definitive proof of a state of peace and Philippine-American rapproachement. Says Blount of the period: "It would be an overstatement of the case to say that the Filipino today had rather have the Spaniards back as their overlords instead of us." Because the Spaniards, at least, freely intennarried with the natives. And two years later, in 1909, Governor-General James Smith himself was admitting "the growing gulf between the races," despite the Americans' beneficent projects and public works - consummated, observes Blount, "at the expense of the people of the Islands." Said Smith in 1909: "An era of ill feeling has started between Americans and Filipinos, and, I hesitate to say it, race hatred." The governor-general was wrong, of course; the "era of ill feeling" didn't start then because it had been glowering all along. Blount says that when he left Samar late in ] 904 "the whole island was seething with sedition. " To downgrade the continuing Revolution, the Americans declared it to be led by "the ladrone element and other vicious classes." After the capture of Aguinaldo, the "mass of intelligent men had decided to confonn," so that the latter路day "Katipunans" and "Republics" were associated with bandits, convicts, fugitives from the la~, barbers, cooks, Aglipayan priests, ousted Protestant preachers, folk mystics, "ignoran t farm hands and tenants," and "illiterate laborers." This American view is not

217

WHEN STOPPED THE REVOLUTION?

wholly correct; the movement counted with Ricarte, Isabelo de los Reyes, Dominador Gomez, playwright Aurelio Tolentino, and the senores of the original Partido Nacionalist.1. Yet in a sense the Americans were right in despising this "second wind" of the Revolution as the rude breath of the masses. And we are confronted with a startling development of the Revolution. Up to 1901, only with difficulty can the Revolution be pictured as a popular movement. On the one hand, it was of bourgeois

exploded again and succeeded with the uprising of the Cavite landowners, which led to the Republic and the Congres& in Ma10108 (conceded to be a bourgeois triumph) and then to the war with the Americans, again a bourgeois Undert.1king, the Luna phase or it being describable only as the resurgence of the Creole anny. During this last phase the masses were indifferent or hostite, as evidenced by the anti-Republic Guardia de Honor, Alejandrino's tickle hord4, the defecting Macahebes, and the peasantry

THE FIRST PHl l lPf' INE ASSE"'BL Y IN SESSION

conception; on the other hand, it was a Tagalog.Pampango enterprise (our flag proclaims that). Taking it as a single movement spanning the whole of the 19th century, one would say it began with the Creole revolt against the Peninsular (this led to Burgos and '72); continued with the Propaganda of the ilustrados in the '80s; exploded and flopped with the Katipunan revolt in Manila;

that Mabini saw turning away from ,the cause. The Revolution was hardly of the masses. But after 1901, as the Amer路 icans testify, the insurgent movement gathered momentum again, but this time as a movement of outlaws, outcasts, peasants, laborers, the poor, the ignorant, the have路not classes in general. In other words, the bourgeois Revolution of the 19th century

that, after Aguinaldo's capture, the " mass of intelligent men" aba ndoned, was picked up and continued by the masses., which, during the 1900s, turned it into a truly popular movement, a Peasant Revolution, a Proletarian Revolution, nationwide in scope and incredibly tenacious, directed against both Yanqui and hacendero, both of whom were being resisted, plundered, stain. Wherefore the American sneer that the insurgents wert! merely cattle-thieves and cutthroats. (Several of the neo-insurrectos, like Dominador Gomez and lsabelo de los Reyes, were also labor agitators, the fonner disdained by the Americans as a "conceited windbag," the other denou nced as " the real power behind the bandit throne." Both were of the Propaganda of the expatriate era.) It may be that when we speak of the "Unfinished Revolution" it's not to the 19th-century Revolution we should be referring to but to this continuing Revolution of the 1900s that the AmericaIl5 correctly saw as an undertaking of the masses. The Revolution was indeed "captured," not from the masses, in the 1890s, but by them, in the 19006. If this reading be right, then we have been emphasizing the wrong movement in the 1900s. The mainstream of OUr history was not our "political development" or education Cor self.rule, not the First Philippine Assembly or the rise of Osmena and Quezon or the Jones Law. The mainstream is the continuing Revolution, the Revolution down路 graded as a movement of "the more ignorant people of the laboring masses." This is the thing that was cut off, that remains unfinished. And it wasn't really American police methods that cut it orf, though the me.

218

thods were brutal enough.

On September 28, 1901, a company of American infantry was massacred at Baiangiga, Sa-

mar. In reprisal, General Jake Smith was sent to Samar with instructions to "kill everything over ten years old" and burn the rest. Jake Smith obeyed his orders to the hilt and lert Samar a "howling wilderness." From

July, 1901, to August, 1902, raged what Blount calls "the Great Insurrection" in the southern Tagalog provinces. Early in 1902 General J. F. Bell was sent to pacify Batangas, with a force of 2,500 men. '~[ take so large a command," said\he, "for the purpose of thorou~ly searching each ravine, valley and mountain peak for inSUrgents and for food, expecting to destroy ever.ything I find outside of town. Alf ablebodied men will be hilled 0( captured." By July of that \year, 163 insurgents had been killed, 209 lay wounded, 3,626 had been "pacified." From October, 1902, to October, 1903, Albay was in the grip of the Ola insurrection and hundreds packed the Albay town jail. In a single sixmonth period, 120 prisoners mysteriously died "by reason of various ailments." The rate was 20 deaths a month in a single jail. Along with pogrom went the concentration camps, which belied the bandit tag hUng on the insurgents. The Americans were too often discovering that the "bandits" were aided and protected by the populace they were supposed to be preying on and that in cerlain provinces, like Cavite, every male past puberty was outlaw. In the Surigao insurrection (1903) the PC, says Blount, was so ineffective because of "the general feeling of insecurity I found in the province as to how far the whole population might be in sympathy with the bri-

ARTEMIO RICARTE

gands." To constrict this mass sympathy, the entire populations of outlying barrios were herded from their homes and assembled in certain places where they could be kept under watch. Inside such camps the reconcentrados were fed, but to move outside meant death. Though the Reconcentration Law of June 1, 1902, violated, as Blount points out, the prohibi. tion in the Bill of Rights to deprive anybody of life, liberty or property without due process of

shot" a "corpse-carcass stench" was usually wafted. "At nightfall clouds of vampire bats softly swirl out on their orgies over the dead." But another American officer testified at a probe that "if there had been any great mortal路 ity in the reconcentration camps in Batangas, he would have known of it." The fact is, the papulation of Batangas, which was over 300,000 in 1899 had dropped to around 250,000 in 1903, after General Bell's pacification campaign.

THE MASSACRE OF AMERICANS IN BAlANGIGA

law, the Americans had no qualms about practising concentration where resistance to them was most ferocious, and the most notorious camps were in Samar, Cavite and Batangas. Whether the mortality rate rose ~ause of these camps is still a question; but one American officer recalled how into "a reconcentrado pen with a dead line outside, beyond which everything living is

In the long run, however, neither progrom nor concentra路 tion camp was so effective in slowing down the Revolution as the native politico and the public school. If we take this continuing Revolution as the mainstream of our history, then the other movement we now so proudly claim to be the beginning or our history as a self-governing people, was actually a movement or be-

2j9

WHEN STOPPED mE REVOLUTION?

trayal, of anti-history; and its heroes - Osmeiia, Quezon, et Ill. - by collaborating with the Americans to make a government succeed in the Philippines, committed treason, since the whole intent of the Revolution in the 1900s was, by creating disorder, to make impossible and unworkable a Government of the United States in the Philippines. More damaging was the counter-revolution of the public school, which we count among our blessings. By 1914 the Revolution is obviously in decline, and for an equally obvious rea· son. it had runfut of recruits, it had run out ol\continuers. By 1914 those who were children in 1901 had grown up into a new generation, the gener,tion of sajones educated wholly in the Americans' public schools, where, in the profoundest way possible, they had heen brainwash~d, deprived of memory, alif'lnated from their own history, and oriented towards the culture symbolized by Washington and Lincoln, Longfellow and Tennyson, July 4 and the Thomasites. Now truly began the love affair with America; far from wanting to continue the Revolution. the young sqjones could not even see it. Clearer to them the drama of Lexington or of GeUysburg. The Philippine Revolution had run out of Filipinos. But in 1903, when General Artemio Ricarte sneaked back to the Philippines, the climate was still nationalist and insurgent. A Partido Nacionalista had been founded under the presidency of an old Magdiwang chieftain, Santiago Alvarez; De los Reyes and Gomez were organizing labor; and Macario Sakay had taken to the field as the "Commander-inChief of the Tagalog Archipelago," to overthrow the American empire.

MACAR IO SAI< AV

On December 23, 1903, Ricarte arrived in Manila aboard the steamer Yuensang, having made the voyage stowed away in the hold. By mixing with the workmen on the steamer, he was able arri· to disembark un noticed. val had been preceded by rumors circulated by the underground, that he was coming with a convoy of Russian ships and a quantity of arms carried on th~e German ships. Actually, he had been negotiating for the purchase of munitions from a German and a French arms factory and had come to the Philippines to raise the P540,OOO the factories demanded before delivery.

Hfs

The Fire Nex t Time

T he five months (January· May 1904) during which Ricarte tried to reorganize the Revolution unfold a familiar story of disunity and factionalism. That he could, for five months, with a price on his head, not only elude the military but move about quite extensively, attests to an

effective underground. He had more trouble at the top, with the leaders. About the only one of consequence he drew to his side was Aurelio Tolentino, the playwright who had been jailed the previous year for bis seditious Kahapon, Ngayon at BukllS. On Christmas Day, 1903, Ricarte had issued a manifesto announcing his presence in the Philippines and sneering at the claim that the political parties a-forming represented a campaign of emancipation through peaceful means. "Nothing is accomplished by the pen without the efficient aid of brute force." There was no other way but "arms Ilnd patriotism. " "Finally of you, American and Filipino Imperialists, tyrants of my people, of you I pray and request that, from thj,; day when I take command of the defense of Filipino rights, you charge against me and all my family, 2nd not against individual followers of mine, those acts of my compatriots in arms punishable by the laws of humanity. If this you do, you will convince me as well as the Filipino people, arming for speedy uprising, that you know how to administer justice. "Come then, proud star·span· gled eagles, come to rend me alld satiate further your gluttonous hunger! "Come then, you traitorous natives, plot the sale of my body or my life that you may have more gold in your purses! "And come, my beloved fellow citizens! To arms! To anns!" The call was spurned by the insurgent leaders, who may not have liked Ricarte's announceme nt that " from this day I take command." He visited Aguinaldo and, after reproaching the Gen· eral for taking the oath of allegiance, explained his revolutionary plans. " He answered that he

220

did not wish to take part in the Revolution, seeing that the people did not accept him now." Ricarte then asked for a donation to the cause but Aguinaldo begged off, saying he was poor. More interested seemed to be General Pio del Pilar, but, after a conference with Del Pilar and his grouP. Ricarte decided not to let them join him because he did not trust Del Pilar. lsabelo de los Re. yes, when approached, "tried to dissuade me from my intentions, assuring me that the people would not respond." 0 0minador Gomez was likewise lukewarm, arguinJl that "without the necessity for Shedding blood the independence o[ the country would be ass ured in three or four years." When R icarte consulted Gregorio Agl ipay. a cousin of his whom the Americans suspected of usi ng the schismatic church to push the resistance, Aglipay "advised me to surrender," but on seeing how determined Ricar te was, "he told me to do what I t hought best." Even Aurelio !folentino was at first unenthusiastic when he learned that Ricarte proposed to fi ght " with daggers and bamboo lances," as in '96 ; but in February, 1904, Tolentino was presenti ng himself to Ricarte. "He told me tha t I was being pursued by the secret police and that he had decided to join me in the field and help me realize my intentions." One inten路 tion was to attract to the cause those members of the Constabu路 lary and the Philippine Scouts who had been with the Revolution. T hat February, Sakay sent a commission to confer with Ricar路

teo "We discussed vario us points relative to the organization of t he Revolu tion, there being no conformity between us regarding certain issues, such as the change

ARTEMIO RICARTE

in nag which I proposed, and the appointments I had brought from Hong Kong, with which Sakay was not conformable, because they had not been submitted to him for approval. I noti路 fied Sakay's commissioners that I had appointed Aurelio Tolentino dictator, introducing him to them. They received the notification with great coldness. I wrote a letter to Sakay notifying him. . . that if he desired my company he should look for me in the place where I was. I did not receive an answer to it." Yet there was response. No sooner had Ricarte arrived in Manila than six of the lower-echelon leaders had presented themselves to him. " I implored them not to cease in the organization of regiments for the Revolution and I gave them pamphlets ( to) serve as basis for the organization of the army." The Maniobra de Vibora envisioned a provisional military dictatorship under a president and a bicameral congress, w"ilh the country divided into twelve "confederate states," the island of Guam included as well as J olo "and its adjacent islands." Manila, as soon as seized from the Americans , would be the fed-

eral capital; the oUiciallanguage would be Spanish; the death penalty and all prisons would be abolished; the Chinese would be barred from business and banking; the flag would be that "of the former Filipino government." Ricarte was most active from January to early March, if we are to believe the 1904 reports of the PC, which seemed able to keep track of his movements though unable to catch him. By January 2, .according to the PC, he had already raised P150,OOO, was boasting he had 27,000 guns in the islands, with 3,000 more aniving. On January .. he had "gone to join the forces of Julian MontaJin," was reported visiting Matagondon. On January 15 one PC report claimed he was in his hometown in Docos Norte, another report had him in Cavite " organizing forces (or an insurrection." On January 17 he was said to have sailed for CaJapan. On February 18 the price on his head was raised (rom P500 to P2,500. On February 26 he was announcing that the Russians, French and Germans would help the Filipinos gain their independence. On March 3 aColonel Scott reported that Ricarte " was trying

TH E GR EAT TONDO FIRE AT THE START OF THE GRINGO WAR

WHEN STOPPED THE REVOLUTION?

HIE OLO e lLI 8m AS IT LOOI(EO WH er.I fllCA RTE WAS IMPRISONEO THERE

FORT SANTIAGO AS IT LOOI(EO OURINO THE AMERICANS' EMPIRE OAYS

221

222

to organize an insurrection and had held several meetings to that end in and about Manila" and was believed to have gone to Nueva Ecija. Actually, after the first week of March, Ricarte must have felt that his pursuers were closing in on him, for on March 8 he and Tolentino, then hiding somewhere on the bayside, sent a petition to Governor-General Wright asking to be included in the amnesty of July, 1902. Then they fled to Balintawak, to await the answer. No answer came and the two decided to part, Tolentino going off to Camarines Norte, Ricarte taking a boa~o Bataan. "On my arrival m Mariveles I went to work in the Sisiman quarries until Holy Week when I fell sick and went to the.. town of Mariveles where J presented myself to the Justice of the Pe~ce to serve him as a clerk under the name oC Jose Garcia by wh\ch I was known throughout Mari· veles. " Under that alias, and from a government post, Ricarte was able to continue his activities for three more months, until, recognized by the clerk of court and denounced to the authorities, he was arrested at the Mariveles cockpit on May 29, 1904. He was tried in Manila by Judge Ma· nuel Araullo, convicted of sub· version, drew a six-year sentence, re·entered Bilibid on June 7, 1904. He spent all the six years of his term in solitary confinement, denied mail and visitors, with none to talk to "except the ants and cockroaches" and the Amer· icans who, from time to time, al· ways in vain, tried to force him to take the oath of allegiance. But from his cell he seems to have been able to keep in touch with the insurgent movement. On November 14, 1907, the PC

ARTEMIO RICARTE

reported that he "was making blood compacts and organizing a political society, the plan for which was written by Ricarte in prison and is now in the hands of a certain Tiburcio in Mariveles." Also in prison were written his memoirs, at the urging of English journalist William Brecknock Watson. During Ricarte's six years in prison, Osmena rose to prominence as the editor of a muchcensored newspaper, Quezon advanced his political career by breaking the peasant revolution in Tayabas, Sakay was tricked into surrendering and then hanged as a bandit, and the Americans were attacked as Aues de Rapifl.a in the famed editorial that cost EI Renacimiento its life. On June 26, 1910, Ricarte finished serving his term. As soon as he stepped out of Bilibid he was arrested again, by American agents, and taken to the Manila customhouse, where the American collector of customs bade him take the oath of allegiance to the United St"tts. The hardest die-hard of them all refused. He was put on a ship and sent back into exile. He was 44 when he returned to Hong Kong, but the lonely years in prison had failed to tame the Viper.

The Last Advent

Hong Kong Ricarte continued to makE> revolution in the Philippines. In 1912 two abortive uprisings were traced to him. One, the Ai>" ril attempt in Pangasinan to seize

the capital town, was led by six chieftains who had been led to believe that their armies would be reinforced by Japanese troops; the rumor was that a treaty had been entered into by Japan and, presumably, General Ricarte and that the Japanese army oould soon sweep the country. "Seven towns were involved in the con· spiracy and 500 arrests were made." The other uprising, known in American police annals as "the Ricarte Fourth of July Plot," was "unquestionably the most serious of the several conspiracies the arch-plotter had been at the bottom of since 1900." The plot was to assemble "a large number of members of so-called labor unions and others of the laboring classes" ostensibly to march in the July 4 parade at the Luneta, but with bolos and daggers concealed in their clothes. At a signal they were to fallon the American troops participating in the parade and massacre them. With the arms seized from the Americans, the rebels were then to march on the insular treasury, transfer all the money there to a steamer and sail for Malabon, which was to be the provisional headquarters of the revolutionary government. The Americans got wind or the plot and pre-arranged the pa· rade so that there was always a large open space between their troops and the Filipino partici. pants. It was thus impossible to rush the American troops. Other· wise, the carnage could indeed have decimated the American army in Manila. "The military authorities had planned to participate as usual in the parade but in greater force, in view of the ugly rumors that had for some months been circulating concerning Ricarte's activity in fostering an anti-American, pro.Japanese

223

WHEN STOPPED THE REVOLUTION?

sentiment among the ignorant classes, and the ultra pro..Japanese activity of several other more intelligent Filipinos along the China coast and in Japan." Presumably. as in the 1890s, a Japanese invading army would, in 1912, have been received with open arms by Filipinos, at least the insurgent among them and "the ignorant classes." In July, 1914, Ricarte proclaimed the constitution of a republic to be set up in the Philippines (including Guam), henceforth to be known as the Rizaline Islands and its people as Ri-

zalinos. The terms Filipino and Philippines were to be abolished, but the Philippine flag was to be kept. The Rizaline Republic, when established, would "recompense" all those who had joined the "Liberating Army" to "overthrow quickly and by whatever means the present foreign government_" Cried Ricarte to his people; "I shall not consent that you remain under a foreign government and, fully decided, I shall cross the seas to seek you." To Americans, this new manifesto was but an effort by the "arch-plotter" to make a fast

buck: his agents in the Philippines were selling commissions in the "Liberating Army." Even before the manifesto, these agents had apparently organized a large enough field force to harass the operations of the railroad. . "It was purely and simply a Ricarte organization and was act路 ive in many parts of Luzon, especially in Rizal, Tayabas, Tarlac, Bulacan and Nueva Ecija. In the Visayas it appeared in Iloilo ... As one means of gathering funds, Ricarte published in Hong Kong a paper entitled The Cry of the People, which passed freely

RICARTE WITH THE GROUP OF FILIPINOS EXILEO TO GU.t.M IN 1901

224

through the mails until March, 1914, when the Secretary of Communications and Police, urged thereto by the better class of law-abiding Filipinos, ordered it excluded, resulting in the cutting off of the greater part of Ricarte's meager income. This caused the arch-plotter to seek other means of gaining funds and he again adopted his old plan of selling commissions in an imaginary 'army' to such as would pay him the price of the honor. In July, 1914, he sent over to the islands a number of copies of his Constitution of the Rizaline Islands. His agents at once distri- . buted them in the provinces of Rizal, Tarlac, Nueva Ecija, Tayahas, lloilo and Antique, selling at the same time co~missions ranging from Lieutenant to Colonel at prices ranging f~om 50 centavos to ten pesos. The organizers of forces were arrested in each province and sente'nced to imprisonment." Neverthless, the movement spread. A quarrel over funds led to the exposure of a conspiracy to revolt in Taytay, Rizal. A I'Ri_ carte army" was being "reviewed" in Bulacan in July, 1914. And a full-scale uprising was planned for December 24 of that year, the quickly suppressed uprising the Americans called "The Christmas Eve Fiasco_" The uprising was to have been undertaken by the Revolutionary Army of the Philippines, "an oath-bound society in which use was made of the pacta de sangre; and its membership, like that of the society founded by Andres Bonifacio, was composed of domestics, cooks, cocheros, muchachos, and such like, a class wholly without education or intelligence ." One "captain," who was a cook, was to gather his army at the Mdliln Gardens; another army was to assemble at the Lu-

ARTEMIO RICARTE

neta; a third army was to rise in arms in Navotas. The "armies" at the Mehan and the Luneta (which were to have marched on the U.S. army barracks and the insular treasury) were quickly broken up by the Americans' secret police. The army in Navotas succeeded in taking the municipio and holding the chief of police and the provincial governor captive for a while. ''The movement failed to accomplish anything, however. save to create a small scare among the limited few who got to hear of it on the night of the 24th . . .Ricarte remained safe in his refuge in Hong Kong. " The Christmas Eve Fiasco of 1914 was the last spring of the Viper. World War I had broken out and rallying round Mother America was the generation of sajones for whom Ricarte was a mere crackpot, Sakay a criminal, the 1900s an era of benevolent assimilation. The English in Hong Kong were no longer willing to harbor an agitator like Vibora. With his wife, the last rebel found a new asylum in Japan, teaching Spanish in a school in Tokyo, running a restaurant in Yokohama, and perishing from memory, from national memory, dUring the '20s and the '30s of coddled amnesia. When he reappeared among us in 1942, it was as if a ghost had come back from the grave. But there can be no condemning Ricarte's return with the Jap invader for the simple reason that the old man (he was pushing 80 during the Pacific war) was still acting according to policies that would not have been condemned by the Propaganda of the '80s, nor the Revolution of the '90s, nor the insurgency of the 1900s. The Comite de Propaganda in Manila had deliberately transferred to Tokyo early in

the 1890s with the intent of get路 ting a Japan emerging as world power involved in the Philippine struggle for freedom. The Luna plan for a war of attrition in 1899 was based on the hope that American inability to end a war scandalously prolonged would tempt or oblige the Japanese to intervene. And the Americans testify to the pro-Japanese agitation by the Filipino insurgents of the 1900s. The image we were to have of Japan as ogre was an路 other product of our American indoctrination; our own heroes looked up to Japan as savior. For Ricarte, a man with one obsession, time stopped at this particular moment of our history: when the face of the Revolution was turned in hope towards Japan. When he returned with the Japs in 1942 he was, therefore, to his thinking, continuing the Revolution, the obsession to which all his years in exile were devoted. The anachronism of his efforts can be illustrated by an amusing example. During his exile Spanish died in the Philippines, English became the practi. cal idiom. But in Tokyo Ricarte continued to tutor in Spanish scores of Japanese who must have been intended, however, vaguely then, for some future Philippine campaign; in fact, several of his students - for example, Colonel Ota-did tum up in the Philippines during the Occupation, though they must have found that whatever they learned from Ricarte, including Spanish, would have been useful in the Philippines at the turn of the century - but not in the 1940s! Poor Vibora is one of history's displaced persons, a man out of his time but still living it, and he provides a surprise ending to the myth of the Retu rning Hero. Every culture has a mythic hero

225

WHEN STOPPED THE REVOLUTION?

THE PHILIPPINE REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE IN HONG KONG THAT RICARTE TOOK OVER

asleep in some cave or mountain fastness, from where his people expect him to return and resume their liberation - as Spain under the Moors awaited the return of EI Cid. But Ricarte was a Cid returning in the 20th century to free his country from the Moors. He was a Rip Van Winkle come back thinking the present to be the past when it was already the future. In the writing done in English during his exile is an early gem, the short story Dead Stars, where the hero discoyers that a summer love he had been cherishing for so long had long

ceased to exist; and the story could be a Ricarte parable. "So all these yean; - since when? - he had been seeing the light of dead stars, long extinguished, yet seem路 ingly still in their appointed places in the heavens." And all the yean; of his exile the Viper had been steering to a star over his land, not knowing, till he came back, that he had been fol路 lowing a light long extinguished. He who had been of the Resistance now found the Resistance against him. He who was the Revolution now found himself the counter路revolution. Sick-

Iy and aged, he had been brought back by the Japs on the promise, presumably, that at last he would be the President of a liberated Republic. But the Japs found Ri路 carte to be a name that stirred no memories among his people and rallied no patriots - a ponderous Anchises whom no Aeneas cared to carry forward. So he was dropped; mOre useful puppets were found. He had been painted villain, the arclJ-plotter behind the sinister Makapili, which some, including Aguinaldo, saw as a vindictive old man's effort to "square accounts" with those

226

who had betrayed the Revolution. Finally, there's only the dying old man stumbling along the Pacific coast, fleeing towards the highlands. In June, 1945, in the company of his aide, Colonel Konochiro Ota, he is in Bayombong, wasted by dysentery. Somehow he manages to make it up to Kalinga country, where, towards the end of July. he finds he can move no farther and bids Ota to "erect my tomb both in the Philippines and Japan." He falls into a coma and, very possibly on July 31, 1945, gives up the ghost. It's in keeping with the myth of the 'Returning Hero that there still is, and probably always will be, some question as to where he was laid, where he lies sleeping.

With his death the day of the Revolution completed its e,ycle. It had been a long day, ~egin. ning deep in the small hours\ in a silence secret with strange noises (of the Palmeros conspiring? of Novales arming?) and a darkness where the figures move in sha· dow, the face of Luis Rodriguez Varela barely distinguishable as he rises to proclaim himself the Conde Filipino to the first birds stirring, the first cocks crowing, while in the dusk glimmering in· to half·light the faces slowly be· come clearer, here a Mariano Go. mez riding off to meet with the Cavite outlaws, there a Pedro Pe· hiez hurrying to early mass at the Cathedral, and at the University are students gathered in angry protest when the dawn breaks, breaks with a cry, a crash, a cia· mor, abruptly wakened people rushing about in panic to see the coil of smoke over the fort in Ca· vite, to see smoke in the mist through which the sun cleaves, the first long shaft of sunlight falling on 8 stoic Padre Gomez, a crazed Padre Zamora, a raging

ARTEMIO RICARTE

Padre Burgos being led to the scaffold, the mist shredding about them in the sunshine till no haze blurs the air and it's morning, morning in Paris for Juan Luna in his busy studio, morning in Ghent for Rizal bent over his manuscripts, morning in Manila for the concealed Marcelo del Pilar directing the marchers in the Great Manifestation, and late morning in Madrid for Lopez Jaena, at a sidewalk cafe, having the first cup of his bohemian day, waiting, as the sun climbs, for less hardy expatriates to stagger up hom bed and hangover, but waiting in vain, for the heat of the day has drawn them back to its orient, their fires have lit a red noon, and the blaze of noon is Katipunan red, is Bonifacio at Balintawak, the Magdiwang in Noveleta, Aguinaldo in Kawit, Rizal whirling around in Bagumbayan, and the stunned expa· triates packing dungeon and torture cham ber I as the red heat flames into afternoon, the golden afternoon of a proud Aguinaldo marching up the Camino Real to Manila, the banners of the Repub· lic before him and Mahini loom· ing behind, but no gates, alas, opening to his armies, nor no road save the lost road of retreat, through sunlight slanting level now with the flags, towards the spill of sunset color in MaJolos, where sits the Congress, a bravu· ra splendid as the sunset, though upon it (aJls a shadow, tile sha· dow of the Gringo standing tail on the bridge in San Juan, the rim of sun fast diminishing be· hind him and the shadow spread. ing, gray dusk brimming to the first hum of frog and bug and a sudden startling crackle of gun· rire, twilight tiding higher as An· tonio Luna fights his way north along the railroad, evening and cold rain setting in as the Repub· lie faJls in Tarlac and AguinaJdo

sloshes northward through the mud, up to the highlands, up to the clouds on Paso de Tirad, where stands Gregorio del Pilar, the fading light on his face and night closing in behind, the stormy night deepening on the mountain trails, and AguinaJdo fleeing, Aguinaldo groping under a wild curve of sky, outraced by the moon that races in reverse and speedily sets in cloud, leav· ing the heights lonelier as the fugitive stumbles down a slope and reaches dead end, as he comes at last to ultimate ocean, pitiless midnight, the midnight that is Palanan, and in the mid· night gloom he lies captive, betrayed, under guard, while the Yanquis ransack the house for papers and loot, the total mid· night aJl over the land escaping minute by minute into the smaJl hours, becoming a silence secret with strange noises (of the neoinsurgents conspiring'? of the new Katipunans rearming?) and a darkness where the faces are barely distinguishable, Sakay in RizaJ, Noriel in Cavite, OIa in AI· bay, Monta1an and Felizardo ad· vancing together, and aJl the other figures lost in that murk so stark only a flicker of lightning or of faJse dawn yields us the face of a Ricarte younger, reo turning, ever the fire next time, and of Ricarte older, tottering towards an unknown grave in the highlands, stopped there at last as the dark glimmers into haJf· light and a hush announces the time when it's aJways three o'clock in an east without hope, for, now, with none to hail an· other crack of doom at dawn and, now, with the dawn forever in suspense unless it break, again, with a cry, a crash, a clamor (and a coil of smoke from a battlement), the nameless faces now sinking into darkness but seem .. waste of history, the toll of time.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Nick Joaquin was born in Paco, Manila, in 1917. He began on a proofreader'. job at the Philippines Free Prest where for over twenty years he became, as Quijano de Manila, one of the belt-known journalists in the counlry. Mr. Joaquin published his first book in 1952, Prose and Poems whi('h inrludPfl his Jong play, "Portrait oUb t ' (a play which has been I" the major cities of tbe as in New York, USA, ... 1e made into a film in the PI In 1953, Mr. Joaquin's novelette, "The Woman Who Had Two Navels", was reprinted in Partisan Review; won tbe first Stonehill award for the novel (1960) and then in (1961) the Cultural Heritage Award from the Philippine Government. "Summer Solstice", one of his best stories, was published in Wake and read by Lionel Trilling before his class. Other literary awanU include first prizes tor his stories in the annual Free Press Literary Contest and the Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. His Prose and Poeflll was voted by a panel of Philippine literary critics .. the "most distinguished book in 50 years of Philippine Literature in English". His "Selected Stories" came out in 1962 and "La Naval de Manila" in 1964. In 1972, the University of Queensland Press published bis "Tropical Gothic" in Al15tralia. Mr. Joaquin has travelled extensively in Asia, the near East and Europe, and h .. been to the United States, Mexico, and Spain on a Rockefeller Grant; hI! toured AUitralia for a month, and has been to Mao'. China, Chiang's Taiwan, and Castro' C In recognition of h ~ flU InlUmn contribution to Literature It h' p;ne n Government conferred on 1976, the award of National

JACKET DESIGN BY HILARIO S FRANCIA

â&#x20AC;˘