towards bagumbayan: new town, killing ground

THE ROOTS OF THE FILIPINO NATION by Onofre D. Corpuz ©1989

Chapter 12

TOWARDS BAGUMBAYAN: NEW TOWN, KILLING GROUND

Without 1872 Rizal would be a Jesuit today; instead of writing Noli me tangere he would have written something quite the opposite. The knowledge of that injustice and cruelty stirred my imagination even as a boy, and I swore to dedicate myself to avenging those victims someday.... May God grant me the opportunity one day to fulfill my vow. – Rizal to Mariano Ponce and his colleagues in La Solidaridad (April 1889)

There was, in 1591, a native settlement just south of the Spanish city of Manila. The work on the walls of the city had not been completed then. When the south wall was finished the site of the settlement was just 300 paces away from the wall. The people in the settlement were the families that had been forced to leave their homes in Manila, site of the old town of Raja Soliman that the Spaniards had taken over for their city.

The natives called their settlement “Bagumbayan,” meaning “new town,” with subtle intimations of fresh hopes in a new life. The people were assigned to the Spanish king as a royal encomienda; we read from the tribute reports for 1591 that Bagumbayan had a population of 1 900. Bagumbayan was built on low ground turning into swamp as it met the waters of the bay. Just south of it was the village of Ermita. South of Ermita, in turn, was the village called by the Spaniards Malate. The name of the place was really "Maalat," salty, because it used to be a fishing village and the people produced salt, but the Spaniards called it their way. This village of Malate was special; after the Spaniards had taken over Manila for themselves the regime reserved the site of old Malate for the descendants of the chiefs and princi pales of the old town of Manila. Immediately east of Bagumbayan was more marshland with nipa palm groves. The east of this tract is occupied in modern times by the undistinguished hulk of the city hall of Manila.

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In 1605 a summer house for the Spanish governorgeneral was abuilding to one side of Bagumbayan. It would have a pleasant prospect across a garden and ponds; this was to enable him to escape his ugly and depressing quarters within the walls. Upon his death the next year the place was bought by the Recollects, who built a convento. The site was secure because by the 1630s part of the area had become the parade ground for the troops.

In 1644 the governorgeneral ordered the demolition of the convento for its being too close to the walls. When his term was over however, the clergy had their way again and built the church of Santiago. It was this church which all Spaniards who lived outside the Intramuros had to attend. The new church of San Juan de Bagumbayan, nearby, was for the natives. The nipa groves next to Bagumbayan were still lush and thick during the 1750s. During the latter years of this decade the governorgeneral tried anew to have the churches torn down but the friars sought to have him excommunicated, and he failed.

In the war of 1762 the British captured, first, the churches of Malate and Ermita. From here they went on to take the churches of Santiago and San Juan de Bagumbayan. The British army general reported of these edifices that they “were much nearer the walls than the rules of war prescribe.” They were key salients, and the cover that they provided the invaders sealed the fate of Manila. After taking the city, of course, the British promptly demolished the two nearer churches and cleared the area of Bagumbayan, so that no trace remains of these structures nor of the old convento nor of the old settlement today.

It was in Bagumbayan, now a clear field, where the surviving mutineers of the Tayabas regiment were executed by musketry in 1843. For more and more Filipinos thereafter, Bagumbayan would mean death, not life, not hope, because thenceforth it became the Spanish regime's killing ground for rebels and martyrs. The execution of three Filipino priests by the garrotte in 1872 made them the first symbols of the newborn Christian Filipino nationalist movement.

Towards Politics: Reformers and Demonstrators

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The first Filipino patriotic statements may be dated to the 1860s. After the loss of the curacy of Antipolo to the Recollects the Filipino priests continued to press their rights to serve as parish priests and not only be assistants to the friars. For sometime now the latter had been steadily taking over the curacies of the priests pursuant to a series of royal decrees from Spain.

In 1864 Jose Apolonio Burgos, who was still only a deacon but would eventually obtain two doctorate degrees from the University of Santo Tomas, answered a particularly strong attack by a Madrid newspaper against the archbishop, Pedro Pelaez, and the Filipino clergy. His reply, based on civil and canon law, argued the disqualification of the friars from the ministry of the parishes. It then proceeded to debate the racist opinions of the friars on the Filipino priests, and finally to expose the former's attacks on the latter's loyalty to Spain as merely another trick to set the civil authorities against them.

Burgos work was entitled “Manifiesto que a la noble Nación Española dirigen los leales Filipinos” (“Manifesto addressed by the loyal Filipinos to the noble Spanish Nation”). The key to the reply was Burgos' identification of his people as “Filipinos”. It was a new usage; Burgos used the term as a name for a new group in the colonial population, a group to which belonged not just natives but also Chinese mestizos, and not only these but also Spanish mestizos and fullblooded Spaniards born in Filipinas. The new meaning of the term began to enter common usage, at least in the patriotic and reform literature, more and more from here on. It was by no means universal usage: the friar orders and the peninsular Spaniards would persist in naming the different subgroups separately, persist in calling the natives “Indios” until the end of their regime.

Nevertheless, the more intelligent Spaniards were sensing not only the new usage; they had begun to see in it a separation in identity between the peninsular Spaniards on the one hand, and their colonial subjects, the new Filipinos, on the other. We know that the archbishop of Manila sent a lengthy memorial to the then regent of Spain in 1870. In this memorial the archbishop reported that the feelings of the native priests against the friar

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orders were “now taking on an antiSpanish character”. He warned that the resentments of the priests would be spread “to their parents, relatives, and to the whole Filipino people”. (“se dará a margen a que los sentimientos de los Sacerdotes indígenas se propaguen a sum padres, parientes y a todo el pueblo Filipino”.)

It Is useful to look at the situation simply. In Manila there were educated Filipinos asking for reforms for Filipinas. We will come across the names of several of these men shortly. For them it was Filipinas that was the motherland. In Spain the Revolution of 1868 had produced a constitution that provided for equality and civil and political rights. In Manila the Filipinos asked that these rights be extended to Filipinos. But the grant of equality and civil and political rights was viewed differently by the Spaniards. In Filipinas. They controlled the political and economic life of the colony. They were the Spaniards of the friar orders that possessed the vast haciendas and completely dominated the parishes under them; besides the friars, they were the lay Spaniards who normally held half of the executive and military offices and middle positions in the civilian and military establishments. They were all supported by the labor and substance of the Filipinos. They did not treat any Spaniard who was not born in Spain as a full Spaniard. They were the peninsulars; their motherland was Spain, not Filipinas. For the Filipinos to ask for equality and civil and political rights, in their eyes, was not only a threat to their position of dominance; it was no less than sedition against Spain.

It is not possible to understand the relationships between the Filipinos and the Spaniards of the 1860s and early 1870s without sensing the intensity of the passions and interests, the hopes and suspicions, that divided them. A note of that era says that the opinion held of the Filipinos by the Spaniards boiled down to, and was based on, the following two propositions:

The Filipino is a good Christian, a fair acolyte, a bad coadjutor, and absolutely incapable of being a parish priest; and

The Filipino is a good soldier, a fair corporal, a bad sergeant, and absolutely incapable of being an officer.

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This was the picture of the Filipinos presented in Madrid, especially by the friars through their lobbyists and newspapers, in order to justify continued suppression of the Filipinos and to maintain the peninsulars' dominance.

The protracted conflict between Filipino priests and Spanish friars over the issue of secularization of the parishes suddenly spilled over into a much broader and potentially dangerous arena. The precipitating cause of this widened rift was the Revolution of 1868. Spanish patriotic literature affectionately named this revolution “La Gloriosa”. In truth it was largely a revolution of army generals but it gave birth to the Constitution of 1869, which contained liberal provisions.

Although those provisions were not extended to Filipinas, the leading Filipinos took encouragement from it and sought to campaign for equality in law and for civil and political rights. For this purpose they organized themselves into a reform group, the Comite de Reformadores. Their primary concerns are reflected in the fact that the Comite had two subcommittees. In the first were the priests Mariano Gomes, Jacinto Zamora, Agustin Mendoza, Jose Guevara, Simon Ramirez, Mariano Sevilla, and Jose Burgos under the latter's leadership.

Among the lay group were Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista, Joaquin Pardo de Tavera, Maximo Paterno, Jose Ma. Basa, Enrique Paraiso, Manuel Natividad, Angel Garchitorena, Jose Gonzales Esquivel de Esquivel, Martin de Alpa, Manuel Genato, Jose Bonifacio Roxas, Andres Garchitorena, Fruto Maniquis, and Vicente Salgado. The Comite was to campaign for reforms in political and civil rights under the concept of the assimilation of Filipinas as a province of Spain.2

The assimilationist reformers recruited youth members from the students in the Universidad de Santo Tomas. These young men were imbued with the reformist aspirations of their elders and worked as “auxiliary soldiers” of the Comite. They were organized as La Juventud Escolar Liberal (The Liberal Student Youth). Among their projects the members of

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the Comite founded a paper in Madrid, El Eco Filipino, as a counterfoil to one of the friar papers there, La Verdad, the paper whose attack on the Filipino clergy had been answered by Burgos in 1864.

The students Felipe Buencamino of Bulacan, Paciano Rizal of Laguna, and Gregorio Sansiangco y Goson of Malabon would pick up copies of El Eco Filipino from the house of Esquivel and, posing as zacateros (peddlers of zacate, grass for horse feed) and concealing the papers in the grass bundles, distributed them to subscribers. They were supervised in this chore by Florentino Torres and Rianzares Bautista. Buencamino was the leader of La Juventud. Its members included: Sansiangco y Goson, Rizal (whose brother Jose was eight years old in 1869), Gregorio Mapa, Bernabe Victorino, Florentino Villaruel, Hermogenes del Rosario, Eduardo Munarris, Manuel de Leon, and Basilio Teodoro. There were also three young priests: N. Canda, Agustin Estrella and Juan Aniag.

Buencamino in his memoirs refers to the Comite as the first “Liberal Party” in Filipinas, adding that “it became vigorous ... because it was composed of the richest and wisest Filipinos, causing very serious worry among the peninsular Spaniards especially among the friars”. The first open and public activity of the Comite jolted the Spaniards, as we shall see, and became an early link in a chain of events that led to a tragedy.3

The strain in the relationship between Filipinos and Spaniards surfaced beyond concealing in 1869 with the arrival of the new governorgeneral Carlos Maria de La Torre y Navacerrada in June. He was another army general. He was a fugitive from a searchandarrest order of the old government in 1867. That the times were going to be different was soon clear to all: after his arrival in Manila he lost no time ordering the tearing down of the bronze statue of Isabela II, which had been set up on a pedestal of dark Romblon marble in Arroceros in 1860.

It is not surprising that the various factions in the charged atmosphere in Manila saw La Torre not as the governorgeneral of an established government, but as the agent of a radically new political bloc or dispensation in Madrid. A study of La Torre's record (Rebanal y Ras, 1981) cites La

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Torre's own perspective of the partisan factions: the friars, the peninsular office holders, and the rich and ilustrado families.

The friars were afraid that La Torre would implement an 1835 law of Spain which decreed the abolition (and state seizure) of the properties of the religious orders; and another of 18 October 1868 which required the governorgeneral to immediately approve all applications by members of the religious orders, whether nuns or friars, for personal exclaustración (leaving the cloisters or convent). There was also a decree of January 1869 declaring “all the archives, libraries, and other artistic, scientific, and literary collections of the cathedrals, chapters, cloisters, and military orders to be national property.”

The officeholders hated La Torre because he represented the political party that had ordered their dismissal; they were to be replaced by partisans of the revolution. The majority of the peninsulars in Filipinas, according to La Torre, was made up of the friars and the office holders both civilian and military.

After the friars and office holders was a third group. La Torre says that it included “at most two dozen rich creole and mestizo families and scarcely a dozen persons of the more educated”; and that “together with the secular priests they hoped for freedom of the press, representation in the Cortes, takeover of the offices hitherto reserved for Spaniards, secularization of the curacies, and abolition of the religious orders' properties.”

La Torre did not intend it, but his statement of the number of rich nonSpanish families was a telling judgement on the record of the regime: “at most two dozen” rich families with “scarcely a dozen persons” of the better educated, in the subject population of some 4,700,000 to 4,960,000 Christians during this period, and after three centuries of the Spanish occupation.

Finally, La Torre expressed his opinion that the majority of the Filipinos had no share in the political tensions and crises swirling above them, although he recognized that they were the victims of much suffering and

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oppression.

La Torre did not provide details, but he was not unaware that the Filipinos were losing their lands. We know of the old custom of the small landholders borrowing money for their operations and how they would lose their landholdings to the lenders. The latter were the rich native and mestizo families and the friar estates. A history of the English firm Smith, Bell and Company (founded in 1853 in Manila) notes the “disadvantageous conditions” of dealing with the friar orders. This was because the loan relationship began with the landowner undertaking to deliver half of the harvest to the lender, but ended with later agreements that the landowner pay a stipulated sum of money to the lender, whatever the harvest was. In times of poor harvests the native landowners would lose their lands to the lender.

Inn the province of Cavite, where the Recollects and Domini cans were to take over the secular curacies pursuant to the September 1861 decree and where the friar haciendas were vast (aside from being near other friar estates in Laguna), many landholdings had been lost to the friar orders. The Cavitenos did not accept this easily, and the men of the dispossessed families would leave the pale of the law and retire into the mountains and forests. They were called tulisanes, brigands or outlaws, because they took vengeance on the officials and those who became rich from being lackeys to the Spaniards. Government efforts against these people would invariably fail because the residents of the pueblos supported and protected them.

The leader of the tulisan groups when La Torre assumed office was Casimiro Camerino. To the dismay of the peninsulars La Torre not only declared an amnesty for Camerino and his followers; he organized them into a “Batallon de Guias” as an auxiliary of the Guardia Civil (organized in 1867 as a paramilitary police) and named Camerino as commander with the rank of colonel. This was in August 1869.4

In fact the peninsulars' displeasure over the Camerino case was minor compared to the jolt and shock they felt as a result of three public events that happened the previous month. Each event was seen and reported by the

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antiLa Torre faction as a scandal, and the memory of them would create the backlash that culminated in the martyrdom of the leading Filipinos in the tragedy of 1872.

On 12 July 1869 a large group of residents of the Manila area led by members of the Comite de Reformadores felicitated La Torre with an evening serenade. It would seem to have been no more than a display of the people's gratitude for the democratic actuations of the new governorgeneral. The fortnightly El Eco Filipino of 17 October 1871 (in Madrid) reported that the people paraded along the main streets of the Intramuros and gathered in front of the palacio de Santa Potenciana, which was at that time serving as the governorgeneral's residence. Here the serenade committee was received and entertained by La Torre. El Eco Filipino was a liberal paper, and its account stressed that the people and the manifestation were peaceful, the entire affair orderly, and that La Torre was favorably impressed.

The leaders of the serenade are listed by Rebanal from the Manila newspaper El Porvenir (14 July 1869) as follows:

Joaquin Pardo de Tavera, doctor of laws, member of the council of administration and professor of Spanish law;

Jose Icaza, alternate magistrate, Royal Audiencia; Jacobo Zobel, property owner and member of the Ayuntamiento; Ignacio Rocha, businessman; Lorenzo Rocha, artist; Angel Garchitorena, industrialist; Andres Nieto, property owner; Jose Cañas, landowner; Jose Burgos, doctor of laws and curate of the Cathedral; Vicente Infante, military warden; and Juan Reyes, employee of the finance department.

If the liberal account of the serenade stressed its orderliness and propriety, the report on the same affair by a peninsular Spaniard of Manila called it farcical and seditious, participated in only by the lower elements of Manila society. This report, by a lawyer and official of a Manila organization

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that had been placed under investigation by La Torre for management irregularities, was hysterical. It pictured the affair as “the most serious attempt perpetrated in these Islands against the integrity of the Spanish nation since their discovery.” It inexplicably added two names to the El Porvenir list of the committee members, those of Manuel Genato and Maximo Paterno. It referred to them as Chinese mestizos. It added that most of the members of the organizing committee were also Chinese mestizos, “although they style themselves or pass as Filipino Spaniards.” After pouring more derision on the participants and the affair, describing the former as of “low worth” and even the pennants and paper lanterns in the serenade as of “worse taste,” it turned to the nonparticipants. It said that the peninsulars did not take part. “Neither did the property owners, merchants, lawyers, and officials of note, whether peninsulars or creoles; nor even the mestizos and natives of status.”

There was another account, by a friar. Its language was less colorful, but it even more strongly viewed the 12 July affair as a seditious act; it asserted that the serenade was one of the primary causes of the Cavite mutiny of 1872. This account was after the event; it alleged that La Torre had made promises of liberty to the serenaders; that the affair involved some creoles and mestizos and natives; and lastly that it was characterized by ideas that were contrary to those that had preserved Filipinas as a colony of Spain. It claimed that no peninsular Spaniards took part in the serenade.

These sensationalist assessments are perpetuated in Montero y Vidal's Historia General de Filipinas. This history's accounts of the popular manifestations are little more than copies of the antiLa Torre reports. This explains why Montero y Vidal's list of the committee members, although he cites El Porvenir as his source, includes the added names of Genato and Paterno as well as the notation that they were Chinese mestizos.

In September the official swearing of the oath of loyalty to the 1869 constitution was held throughout Filipinas. The rites in Manila were held on the 26th. There is no mention in the official documents of incidents of a political nature associated with the ceremonies. But the antiLa Torre lawyer's account was another agitated story about a political manifestation.

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It emphasized the VIVAS! to liberty and the constitution by “some recently arrived Spaniards” (the new officeholders sent to replace the incumbents) and by native Filipinos.

A third event took place during the last days of the month. It was the celebration of the first anniversary of the revolution. La Torre duly sent an official report to Madrid. It was a simple account. He wrote that in the evening of the 29th the people and gobernadorcillos of the nearby pueblos gathered at the Plaza de la Potenciana and that they shouted VIVAS! in acclamation of Spain, the Cortes, the regent, the minister of the colonies, and himself. He replied, he said, to the spirited hurrahs with "VIVA Espana Madre natural de las Islas Filipinas!"

Again the antiLa Torre account reported the celebration in uninhibited language. The proceedings were alleged to have been no less than an “incitement to sedition.” The people were said to have proclaimed La Torre as “the independent head” of Filipinas. The authorities were described as “completely demented.” Montero y Vidal's account not just faithfully echoes this narrative: it is embellished with unprovable details. Rebanal concludes that it is evident that neither Montero y Vidal nor his source was witness to the events he wrote about .5

The peninsulars' disgust over the events of 1869 was fueled into hatred against La Torre and the new Filipinos during 18701871. The Revolution of 1868 was a triumph of Spanish liberalism and the new government in Madrid instructed La Torre to set up a group to propose reforms in Filipinas. One of the reforms called for the setting up of an advisory body to the governorgeneral. It would be called the General Council and would have a delegate from each province who would be chosen by its provincial board. This moderate proposal, however, was ultimately disapproved.

At about this time (April) the authorities adopted a decision to rebuild the Manila cathedral, still in ruins since the earthquake of 1863. This necessitated the transfer from the cathedral crypts of the remains of Anda y Salazar. The Spaniards venerated his memory in recognition of his patriotism against the British a century before. The Filipinos admired him

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for a different reason: during the 1770s Anda supported the Filipino priests in the issue of the secularization of the curacies.

On the day of the ceremonies there was a procession attended by a multitude in mourning dress; the procession started from the cathedral and made its way to the church of San Agustin where the remains were to be blessed before the transfer to the Franciscan church (which was to serve as the cathedral during the rebuilding work). The crowd gathered inside the church for the blessing. Then, when the Responsory was about to begin, a young priest left his group; he had a wreath of flowers; he bowed deferentially to La Torre as he solemnly made his way to the catafalque where he lay the wreath. It had a long ribbon bearing the legend: “The Secular Clergy of Filipinas to Don Simon de Anda y Salazar.” The people, now in hushed surprise, watched a student step forward to lay a wreath on the coffin. And then a group of gobernadorcillos representing their pueblos, followed suit. An inquiry into the "scandal" was conducted but produced no results, and the popular conclusion was that it had been Jose Burgos who was responsible.

Meanwhile, scores of supporters of the new party in power in Madrid arrived in Manila to replace the peninsulars in the colonial service. The latter were identified with the old regime They blamed La Torre. Many of the new arrivals harbored the antifriar sentiments that were then part of Spanish 'liberalism.' Without realizing that their ideas had one impact when expressed in the relatively structured politics in Spain and another in the volatile situation in Manila, the newly arrived officeholder; circulated antifriar and proliberal pamphlets and handbills. Some of these inevitably found their way to the provinces.

Then in late 1870 a brace of decrees arrived from Spain for La Torre to implement. Two dealt with some changes in education. The first established the Instituto Filipino. It was to be a public – which meant a secular – institution. Its offerings would include general secondary instruction in conjunction with a curriculum of vocational education. The decree provided that the Instituto would absorb some of the courses that were then offered in a number of existing institutions, including the general secondary education

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programs of the Jesuit schools Colegio de San Jose and Ateneo Municipal as well as of the Dominican Colegio de San Juan de Letran. The other decree provided for the conversion of the Real y Pontificia Universidad del Colegio de Santo Tomas into the Universidad de Filipinas. The new university would likewise be a secular institution, with its rector or president appointed by the government. The Dominicans, who were primarily affected, led the opposition to these and similar decrees on education. Since the issues appeared to be serious, La Torre created a committee to consider the matter.

The members of La Juventud Escolar Liberal were reported to have staged a riot in 1869 “aimed at the reorganization of the curriculum of the University and of the University itself....” Artigas y Cuerva states that Buencamino together with parents of students from various provinces were arrested and imprisoned, The Comite, however, interceded with La Torre and Buencamino was released from Bilibid prison where he had been confined for eleven months.

Meantime, La Torre ordered the implementation of two other decrees from Madrid: one calling for the inventory of the properties of Santo Tomas and Letran, and the other a secret decree ordering that the application of any friar or nun for exclaustracion or secularization be approved immediately. The changes under the decrees did not last. The liberal Spanish minister who promulgated them (Segismundo Moret) went out of office in late December 1870, and his successor suspended most of them.6

It was now 1871. La Torre had written to Madrid in January to relieve him from his post. In fact his patron in Spain had been assassinated the previous month and orders for his relief had been signed nine days before his letter was written. It was the custom for an outgoing governorgeneral to write a memorandum for his successor for the latter's information, and La Torre's "informatory memorial was dated March 1871. It summarized the state of the regime as follows:

Unfounded anxieties on the one hand and absurd hopes on the other continued among the partisan factions that La Torre found upon his arrival in Manila. The government was in a bad state; there was insecurity in

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Manila and in the adjacent provinces. As for the treasury it was bankrupt, "without a real" to pay for the tobacco collections, the navy, the army, and other urgent obligations. He said that his policy of government had been one of morality and justice: giving equal audience to all; avoiding entangling ties to any faction; governing in strict conformity with existing legislation and not allowing discussion in the press of any changes in the political or governmental system; correcting abuses wherever they occurred; and consistently strengthening Spain's sovereignty and the colony's prosperity.

Montero y Vidal, who was bitterly antiLa Torre, had a totally different summation of the latter's administration. He called attention to the inflamed passions between La Torre's partisans and the enemies of his destructive policies; he stressed the:

revived and unhealthy hate on the part of the separatist creoles against their motherland, having glimpsed the possibility of getting themselves rid of the Spaniards; the disrepute in which authority had fallen as a result of his show of democratic forms and his thoughtless actions; the vanity of the Indios and mestizos on realizing their numerical preponderance over the peninsulars

Montero y Vidal also stressed the damages incurred by the friar orders from La Torre's hasty implementation of the education reform decrees, as well as the grievous fears and anxieties for the future felt by the peninsulars.

The widely differing assessments enable us to understand the passions and enmities inflamed during La Torre's term. Bu all that is background.

What was truly important during the period was the progressive surfacing of the Filipinos in politics. What was new during the La Torre era was that the liberal reformers and the leaders of the priests were no longer underground but ha emerged into some degree of prominence. The contending factions were the same, more or less, as those of 1822 and 1843. But now the Filipino liberal leaders were identified and working openly:

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Jose Burgos, Joaquin Pardo de Tavera, and Maximo Paterno. The emergence of Burgos was the most important development. The native priests were still nameless in the accounts of 1822 and 1843. Only modern research has revealed the early role of Mariano Gomes, collaborating with the creole Pelaez in the cause of the priests (1849). Now Burgos had assumed the leadership of the potentially most important political group in Filipino society: the secular priests. This vital group had family ties with the provincial principalia class. It was also multiracial. The progressive affiliation or identification by the Chinese and Spanish mestizos and some creoles with the native Filipinos emphasized the isolation of the peninsular Spaniards. When the liberal elements of Manila sought to impress La Torre with a show of solidarity and strength, Burgos was on the organizing committee.

Another new development was that the move by some leading creoles to make common cause with the Filipino priests evidenced their estrangement from Spanish nationalism and their association with, or entry into, the emerging Christian Filipino nation.

Moreover, during this period the leaders of the Filipino liberals and priests were maintaining links and relations with the liberals in Spain, primarily with elements in the press and in the Cortes. Agustin Mendoza, curate of the rich Santa Cruz parish, sent 7,000 pesos to Rafael Labra, Cubaborn liberal and delegate to the Cortes; the remittance was toward the establishment of a newspaper to champion the interests of the Filipino clergy. The brothers Jose and Pio Basa, Manila businessmen, whose sister was married to the editorpublisher of El Eco Filipino, maintained an active correspondence on political matters with their brotherinlaw. The brothers Manuel and Antonio Regidor, Spanish creoles, were close associates of Labra in liberal politics. Antonio was a doctoral candidate in the university of Santo Tomas where Joaquin Pardo de Tavera was law professor.7

The newly surfaced Filipino leadership, including some men who later on would be active in the Propaganda movement of the 1880s and 1890s, can only be correctly viewed as an opposition bloc. Because many of them were natives and mestizos they were looked down upon by the peninsulars of

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Manila society, although we must note that one of them, Pardo de Tavera, was of a noble Spanish family, more illustrious in ancestry than the commoners who made up most of the peninsulars in Filipinas.

Further down, a different stratum of colonial society was inching its way upwards into political participation. These were the gobernadorcillos and principales and other residents of the pueblos around Manila. They were the leading natives and Chinese mestizos of the lowermiddle and middle classes, mobilized by the liberals for the purpose of making up a good crowd for the serenade of 12 July, feeling good parading and serenading the governorgeneral in front of his residence and being received by him. They were no longer nameless folk in the crowd in a church procession demonstrating the wonderful labors and achievements of the friars. They were now actors in a process whose outcome they will not know, except that they were acting for themselves. The surfacing of these people for the first time in the political process was a critical advance in their education.

There is one point that must be clarified about La Torre. The standard portrayal of La Torre in the histories is that of a liberal. But how do we explain his decrees of January and October 1870 that exiled hundreds of people, summarily called “vagrants, troublemakers, and those suspected of having relations with the tulisanes,” to the distant island of Balabac and to Mindanao? These deportation orders of La Torre were clearly in accord with the despotic laws of the time, but he did not hesitate to issue them against Filipinos. The notion of La Torre as a liberal is the result of a reliance on Montero y Vidal, ignoring the fact that he provides abundant evidence of La Torre's reactionary actions but had to describe La Torre as a liberal because the liberals were seen as contributing to the erosion of Spanish dominion in Filipinas. Montero y Vidal wrote of La Torre that the latter had “the qualities which the leading separatists and revolutionaries approved of, in their ill concealed desire that Spain lose the rest of her old overseas empire.”

This is far too general for a correct appreciation of the events then happening in Filipinas. La Torre was a special kind of liberal. He had given equal audience to the rival political factions in Manila, including the reformist groups of natives and mestizos. He was the first governorgeneral

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to do so. But we must understand what his liberalism meant. He belonged to a political faction in Spain that championed constitutionalism and, for a while, also republicanism. He advocated some civil and political rights in Spain. The Spanish liberal faction to which he belonged characteristically included elements that were anticlerical.

Visávis the Spanish friars La Torre the liberal roundly criticized their “vices and defects.” Visávis the Spanish creoles, mestizos, and the Filipino priests, however, La Torre was clearly a Spanish liberal who was a Spanish patriot. Although he was aware of the injustices suffered by the Filipino priests, he decided against them on the crucial secularization issue. He described the demands of the liberal and reformist elements in Manila as “foolish.”

La Torre indeed personally records that although the 1869 constitution affirmed the liberty of the press and the free circulation of books and periodicals, he prohibited press discussion of changes in the political and government system. Even more to the point, he records that he once received direct instructions from Madrid to adopt these constitutional principles in his administration in Filipinas. But he demurred, observing that on this matter the constitution provided that Filipinas be governed by special laws. Since the Cortes had not yet enacted any such laws, he argued, he decided to observe and enforce the old laws.

La Torre was also affected by the peninsulars' fear of sedition and rebellion. He instituted censorship of the mail and ordered the interception of letters from Europe and Hongkong addressed to several peninsulars, creoles, mestizos and natives. Among the mestizos and natives whose letters were intercepted were Jose Burgos and Jacinto Zamora, both priests of the cathedral; Jose Guevara and Agustin Mendoza, Filipino parish priests of Quiapo and Santa Cruz, respectively; and several of the lay reformists.

La Torre's analysis of the political situation in Manila led him to the conclusion that, at least during his time, it was the friar orders that were the foundations of Spanish rule in Filipinas. He therefore counseled Madrid against implementation of the laws on secularization of friars and nuns, as

17


well as that on the abolition of the friar orders' properties. In all of these La Torre was consistent and we have his own words for it: “Those who wish ill upon the religious orders are the same persons who wish ill against Spain.” La Torre's ambivalent liberalism easily crumbled before the realities of Spanish interests. On a key issue directly involving the friars' vested interests, he adopted a decidedly antiliberal position. The schools in Filipinas, he said:8

only produce theologues and lawyers; these are the least needed here. Besides, they are the origin of those who represent antiSpanish interests. With the rarest of exceptions there are no priests nor creole lawyers of any education or influence who do not employ these, now and always, in creating all around themselves the aspirations of independence.

La Torre was caught between the occasional anticlerical liberalism of his superiors in Spain on the one hand and the reactionary intransigence of the "frailocracy" (from fraile, friar) in Filipinas on the other. The liberal governments in Madrid were shortlived and temporary, but reaction and friar dominance in Filipinas were unrelenting, set and stiffened by the thinking and habits of three centuries. When it came to keeping or losing Filipinas he was not about to side with those who, in his eyes, imperilled Spain's sovereignty.

A Mutiny and the Terror of 1872

La Torre's successor as governorgeneral was another Spanish liberal, another army general, Rafael de Izquierdo (April 1871January 1873). The policies he would adopt in Filipinas are clear from his position on the conflict between the Spanish friars and the Filipino priests. He believed that the influence of the friar orders had to be maintained; this influence must never be lost to the secular priests. According to him the friars must be upheld “at all costs” even if it meant the elimination of the secular clergy. In his own words:

For this purpose it is necessary to cause that the secular clergy

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disappear and that the regular clergy increase, which can only be attained through the promotion and support of the colleges in the Peninsula, and on the other hand limiting theological studies in Filipinas; the archbishop and bishops for their part imposing stringent requirements of intellect and virtue in the ordination of natives.

His administration began auspiciously, at least in the eyes of the peninsulars. Izquierdo restored the palace protocol and etiquette that had been modified by his predecessor along popular lines. There were the usual problems to attend to. The volcano of Camiguin off northern Mindanao erupted. Martial law was declared in Cavite and Pampanga as a measure against the tulisanes. The people were reluctant to accept the old coins that had the bust of Isabela and had to be told that these were as good as the new ones without Isabela's bust, and so on.

In May 1871 Izquierdo decreed, in effect, the nullification of the previous orders establishing the Instituto and secularizing Santo Tomas. At this point the status quo ante would seem to have been restored, at least with respect to the relations between the civil government and the friar orders.

But of course the regime and the people would never again be what they were in the past. The new Filipinos who had emerged during the short season of the La Torre term had in effect avowed in public that they were a reformist political opposition; their ideals had been openly adopted by the young students in the Dominicans' own college; and, portentously, the gobernadorcillos of the heretofore quiescent pueblos around the capital city were beginning to awake to political action. This last was ominous because it revived memories of the year 1820 when the natives and mestizos of Binondo and Santa Cruz had massacred the nonSpanish foreigners. Now the old fear came back: that the Filipinos would eventually become aware of their strength, their overwhelming superiority in numbers in the event of a racial conflict.

The months passed. In October the regime ordered the implementation of the orders governing the cedula personal pursuant to an 1863 decree of Madrid. Every person who was subject to the tribute and to the prestacion

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personal or forced labor service had to have a cedula as an identification document; the requirement was to be effective on the 1st January 1872. The government anticipated that the people might be led to believe that the cedula entailed an additional money payment and that trouble might arise, and so the friars and curates were asked to cooperate in informing the people that they did not have to pay for their cedulas.

One thing led to another. The workers of the arsenal in the fort of Cavite were by long practice recruited from the soldiers of the marine infantry. As they were not entitled to retirement pay, they were allowed the benefit of exemption from the tribute. This exemption was also extended to retired men of the armada as well as to the marine infantry.

On 20 January, payday, the arsenal workers received reduced wages, reportedly pursuant to an order of the civil governor. It was a Saturday, exactly twentynine years to the day when the soldiers of the Tayabas infantry regiment rebelled. That night mutiny broke inside the fort.

The British consul in Manila reported to his government on 10 March 1872:

On the night of the 20th January last the troops in garrison at Cavite revolted and took possession of the fortress of that town. The Spaniards residing in the fortress were killed, in all about eleven persons. The mutineers numbered some 250 persons and were composed of native artillery, infantry, marines, and a few of the workmen in the arsenal.

The telegram messages from the fort's Spanish commanders tell the brief story of the mutiny and its ending. At 8:05 A.M. of 21 January the uprising was still in progress; there had been firing all the previous night. At 11:00 A.M. government forces from Manila landed by the fort of Cavite; there were some 200 rebels; they were surrounded. Subsequent messages reported the arrival and participation of government gunboats in the attack on the fort. At 4:21 P. M. it was reported that the rebels were breaking up and taking flight. Next day, 22 January at 6:37 A.M., the telegraph message was: “There is no firing.” At 7:00 A.M. 23 January the Spanish flag was hoisted

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over the recaptured fort. The mutiny had failed.

Up to this point there was not much to differentiate the Cavite mutiny from all other previous Filipino uprisings. There was the same obvious lack of proper planning; the same want of organizational and logistics arrangements; the same lack of provision by the rebels for joint action with the people of nearby pueblos; and consequently, the same speedy suppression of the uprising through the use of loyalist native troops.9

The foregoing is almost all that can be known for certain about the mutiny: how it began, how it ended. Another paragraph of the British consul's report tells in summary the status of the immediate aftermath. At least 120 persons were arrested in Manila; among these were “twelve or fourteen native priests, six or seven lawyers, and several wealthy traders, all of them mestizos.” But the consul had to make an assessment for his government, and for this purpose he was at a loss. He reported that he could not ascertain what were the charges brought against the priests and the other persons arrested; he could know nothing about the judicial proceedings that were conducted; the involvement in the mutiny of those arrested could not be established.

But the first arrests had been made on the 21st January; the courtmartial had been issuing sentences since the 26th. The most famous executions of those arrested had taken place on the 17th February. Yet the consul, reporting on 10 March, had no hard data on the mutiny. The lack of information on what happened could only mean that the arrests, the charges, the courtmartial proceedings, and the sentencing were all conducted in secret and that the regime went out of its way, for its own unknown reasons, to keep the world from being informed of the truth. And so the consul's report continued:

We are unacquainted with the charges brought against the clergy and others who have been arrested and know nothing of the judicial proceedings instituted against them, we are unable to discover the part played by them in the late disturbances; the origin of the same must therefore for the present be left more or less hidden in obscurity.

But whatever may have been the motives that promoted this

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movement, it is evident that it was without organization and but very limited in its ramifications; for we find that the native troops sent from Manila fired on their brethren in arms at Cavite instead of assisting them as they might easily have done had they been so disposed; that no rumours of tumults were heard of in any of the towns or villages in the interiors; that no manifestations against the government took place among any portion of the native population at Manila; and that the people even of the town of Cavite remained throughout passive spectators of the scene.

The Cavite mutiny became different from all previous revolts and uprisings in Filipinas. In the past, an uprising was quelled; it was followed by amnesty or pardon, and every once in a while by the execution of the few unschooled leaders. Now the regime arrested more than a hundred persons, many of them educated and prosperous, including several members of the clergy, and subjected them to courtmartial. The proceedings lasted for months. It was the regime that made the mutiny different.

The arrests of the most prominent Filipinos began in Manila in the night of 21 January – it was just twentyfour hours after the mutiny had begun, and it had not yet been suppressed. The following were arrested:

Priests: Jose Burgos Jose Guevara Mariano Gomes Miguel de Laza Jacinto Zamora Toribio H. del Pilar Agustin Mendoza Vicente del Rosario Mariano Sevilla

Lawyers: Joaquin Pardo Bartolome Serra de Tavera Jose Basa Gervasio Sanchez Antonio Ma. Regidor Pedro Carrillo

"Civilians": Enrique Paraiso Pio Ma. Basa Jose Ma. Basa

Businessmen: Maximo Inocencio Vicente Zabala Crisanto de los Balbino Mauricio

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Reyes

Let us piece together what was not covered by the shroud of secrecy placed upon the case by the regime. We have the courtmartial sentence – not the record of the proceedings – on: Jose Burgos, acting canon, Manila cathedral; Jacinto Zamora, parish priest of the cathedral; Mariano Comes, parish priest of Bacoor, Cavite; and Francisco Saldua, described as a private person. The crime of which they were convicted was:

conspiracy against the political constitution of the State, and of being the authors of the military rebellion in the fort of Cavite on the night of the 20th January last, all for the sole purpose of separating this Archipelago from the Motherland, proclaiming therein a republic, and in this manner directly attacking the integrity of the Monarchy.

The penalty was death; it was to be through strangulation by the garrotte because hanging had been abolished in 1835. Coaccused with Burgos were Enrique Paraiso, Maximo Inocencio, and Crisanto de los Reyes, private persons. They were sentenced to imprisonment.

The sentence was promulgated on 15 February 1872. The decision was forwarded to the governorgeneral on this same day. The condemned could not enjoy any reprieve by grace of a delay on the part of the authorities. The traditionally slowmoving colonial bureaucracy now worked like lightning. The sentence was forwarded to the governorgeneral and he completed his review and approved the decision, all on 15 February. The sentence on the priests called for their degradation by defrocking, but this could be done only by the archbishop and so the governorgeneral rushed the communication to him informing him, that the execution was to take place two days later on 17 February at 8:00 o'clock in the morning.

It was still 15 February. Fighting for time, the archbishop returned his reply the same day, telling the governorgeneral that he was entitled to form his own judgment on the innocence or guilt of the priests. He asked that orders be issued to have the proceedings of the trial sent to him. He ended with a question: Should the Filipinos, a religious people, be confronted with the perplexing and confusing spectacle of seeing priests put to death? But

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the government's mind was made up. The proceedings were not sent to the archbishop. He did not unfrock the priests. The execution was held as planned.

The governorgeneral's refusal to furnish the trial records to the highest ecclesiastical authority in Filipinas meant that nobody except those directly involved in the trial, and least of all the public, was to know the truth. What was the connection, if any, between the priests and the mutiny? All that the public knew was that a trial was held. What was revealed and what was established at the trial? The public was told nothing except the sentence.10

The most recent generally available material bearing on the mutiny is in a compilation of documents including some that were originally owned by Rafael Labra, the Cubaborn political figure who was active in Spain and with whom some members of the Comité de Reformadores were in correspondence.

The document is the record of the trial of Bonifacio Octavo. Octavo was a Chinese mestizo. He identified himself as a second sergeant of the 1st company of the 7th Princess Infantry Regiment in the fort of Cavite. He says that he deserted in the early afternoon of 20 January 1872; he sailed to Cavite Viejo, then proceeded to Imus, returned to Cavite Viejo, and thence sailed to Bataan. Here he allegedly lived in the woods and barrios of that province until he was captured in the second week of September 1872. His interrogation lasted over 1828 September. The record included an alleged confession.

The substance of the record of Octavo's alleged testimony is as follows: In either November or December 1871 he was approached by marine infantry corporal Pedro Manonson, who had an unsigned “official looking paper” exhorting all the native troops to rebel against the Spaniards, and requiring them to signify whether they were willing to do so. The source of this paper was the civilian Francisco Saldua. The next afternoon Octavo met, in Manonson's house at the main street of Cavite: a sergeant Madrid; an unnamed artillery corporal; another corporal of the marine infantry; a retired sergeant; a clerk in the Cavite arsenal named Vicente Generoso; a

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civilian living in the fort named Leon; the latter's brother Tinong; and Saldua.

Generoso presented to the group a piece of paper on which was written the strength of Octavo's regiment that was available for the rebellion; Octavo signed the paper. Two other corporals then arrived; they also signed the paper, which was now referred to as an estimate of forces for the rebellion. Madrid and the corporals of the marine infantry also signed. Octavo states that Saldua told the group that the estimates of forces were for Father Burgos and that the latter, with Father Mariano Gomes, Father Jacinto Zamora, Father Guevara, “and many others were directing the rebellion.”

That same night Octavo met with the corporals “of his own 1st Regiment”[sic] he had earlier identified his regiment as the 7th Princess Infantry. The corporals said that the whole regiment was ready to answer Octavo's call to revolt. He replied that he would lead the regiment. This was the last time that Octavo spoke with Saldua and the others.

Octavo says that according to Saldua the aims of the rebellion were: the killing of all Spaniards and the proclamation of the independence of Filipinas, to be followed by the setting up of a provisional government under the presidency of Father Burgos. The provisional government would also include the priests Gomes, Zamora, and Guevara. Octavo assumed from this that Burgos was the leader. Moreover, the provisional government would rule until such time as a king would have been chosen.

Octavo testified that the rebellion was scheduled to begin on 20 January. However, in answer to questions, Octavo testified ,that he did not know of any signal agreed upon for the start of the rebellion. He did not know where the first cry would be E sounded. But he testified that after the revolution was won they were all to present themselves before Father Burgos who would reward them with promotions; Father Burgos had promised that the rewards would be high.

Octavo testified that he was not acquainted with any of the priests. He had only known of Father Gomes when he was assigned to Bacoor on patrol

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in 1857; he had seen Father Zamora !n the cockpit in Manila. With Father Burgos he had no contact; of him he knew nothing. None of the priests had said anything to him about the revolt. Saldua was the contact between the Cavite men or soldiers on the one hand, and Father Burgos and the other conspirators on the other.

Several times Octavo was asked questions about the conspiracy, particularly about the priests and then about certain lawyers and businessmen the interrogators were "feeding" him with names. But he consistently pleaded ignorance of those details. However, he answered questions about his movements during his desertion in Bataan. The interrogation was suspended at this point.

During the resumption of the interrogation Octavo's answers became more detailed and revealing. He testified that Saldua had told him that it was Father Burgos in Manila who had collected all the money that was needed for the revolution. Now Octavo had answers although altogether still very sketchily, to questions about the signal for the revolt to begin, on who would give the first cry, and about the operations assigned to various military units involved. His answers on the kind of government after the revolution became specific. He also said that he, Octavo, was to take over the command of the fort of Cavite and that it was he who would deliver the fort to Father Burgos' authority.

There is a confession of Octavo that is separate and apart from his replies to the questions asked during his interrogation. He said that Saldua and Madrid told him about four lawyers who, with Burgos and others, were directing the rebellion. One of the four would “probably” be chosen king upon the termination of the provisional government. He said that he had heard the names of three of the four lawyers: Pardo, Antonio Regidor, and Serra. Later he said that he had also heard the name of a fourth lawyer, a certain Reyes from Pangasinan. Octavo's confession ended here.

But he allegedly decided to amplify his previous testimony and the interrogation was resumed. Octavo then mentioned the names of three more individuals involved in the conspiracy: Joaquin Basa, Bartolome Filoteo, and

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a “Chimo” whom he “believed” was Maximo Inocencio.

We must bear in mind, when assessing the evidentiary value of Octavo's interrogation and confession, that there could be no challenge or crossexamination. In fact the interrogation took place during September 1872. By then the entire leadership of the Filipino clergy and liberal reformers had been liquidated by execution and exile. The colonial regime never published the proceedings of the courtsmartial, so that the defendants' pleadings and testimony are not known. Nor did the regime publish its own proofs, if any, of their guilt. Artigas y Cuerva, perhaps the leading student of the 1872 events, wrote (1911):

Up to this date, history has not given incontestable proofs that those illustrious sons of Filipinas were guilty of the crime that sent them to the scaffold; nor can it say now or in the future that the verdicts of the military tribunals were based on authentic proofs presented in the trial, because those documents do not exist or perhaps have been made to disappear.

Even the staunch defender of the regime, Montero y Vidal, who had sufficient time to gather documentary material about the episode (his history was published in 1895), provided no material from the official proceedings. He merely asserted that arrests were made on the basis of depositions taken from some of the captured mutineers, in which the latter were said to have “identified a number of the instigators with whom they had conspired.” Arrests were also made, still according to Montero y Vidal, based on “circumstantial evidence against others, for their actions during the time of La Torre.”

The purely circumstantial nature of the socalled evidence against those accused and punished, and the transparent effort to establish a connection between the mutiny and their actions in the time of La Torre, are established in a document cited by Artigas y Cuerva. This is Izquierdo's written testimony which he furnished upon request by the courtmartial and the prosecuting attorney. It is dated 8 February. Izquierdo wrote in reply:

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Since 1869 there has existed in this Superior Government data which are the basis for considering the cited priests as suspicious and as occupied in schemes against Spain, most especially [then follow the names of the priests] ... ; and that from confidential anonymous and other sources (some of them indubitable) they are considered guilty, and are the mouthpieces of the "Club Filipino"; and that some of them especially the parish priests of Quiapo, Santa Cruz, and Bacoor were severely admonished by the ecclesiastical governor, upon the instance of the Superior Civil Governor, General La Torre, in January 1870.

It is evident from public knowledge and from confidential sources that they are connected with the filibusteros of Madrid whose newspapers are circulating throughout these Islands, as well as with the Eco Filipino which is maintained and propagated by means of subscriptions of those whom they have initiated; it is believed from their public fame and from general public opinion that they were the principal instigators of the insurrection in Cavite, for there is the same information and precedents of the same period about the lawyers and the rest of the individuals who are cited ... and very especially D. Enrique Paraiso, retired employee, known in Manila for being antiSpanish, a characteristic about which he always bragged....

Izquierdo's “testimony” is not admissible evidence in a proper court of law. It consists only of suspicions and inferences and allegations and hearsay and circumstantial irrelevances.

It is somewhat more useful to examine the internal evidence within the Octavo testimony itself. And the truth of the matter is that the Octavo material is simply not believable. His alleged testimony is suspect or inconsistent even on matters about which he should have had direct knowledge. From his words it is clear, for instance, that the corporals of his regiment had been brought into the “conspiracy” ahead of him; nor is there evidence that Octavo possessed any special leadership qualities.

Yet he testified that the corporals, who presumably had more knowledge of the conspiracy than he did, asked him to lead the regiment. There were other units in Cavite aside from his regiment that were allegedly involved; these units had higher ranking noncommissioned officers such as the sergeant, Madrid. But it was to be Octavo who would take command of Cavite, the strongest fort after Manila, and deliver it to Father Burgos. No

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person or group was identified as having the authority to fix the attack objectives in the “rebellion” and the missions of participants. During the first part of his interrogation Octavo deposed that he knew nothing of the signals that would start the uprising; but then he cited a few sketchy items when the interrogation was resumed.

Octavo's testimony on the directing leadership of the revolt was pure hearsay. The alleged source of all his information was Saldua. Octavo could not even answer the leading questions asked of him during the first part of the interrogation. But then he was able to give out details after an interval, when the interrogation was resumed. It is obvious that he had been coached on what to say. He is alleged to have volunteered to “amplify” his earlier testimony, at which he named lawyers whose names he “had heard.” He had also stated for the record that he had met with Saldua and the others only twice: “either November or December.” It is no wonder that, although he was to take command of the fort of Cavite, he did not even know how the mutiny was to begin!

It has been suggested that Saldua was “the immediate instigator of the entire revolt.” But who was Saldua? What was his interest in the political aims of a revolution? There is nothing in the scant material to indicate that he was the instigator on his own initiative for his own purposes. He must be seen, at most, as an agent provocateur in behalf of other parties. On the basis of the Octavo material the alleged knowledge of the Cavite rebels about the roles of Gomes, Burgos, and Zamora and about the rebellion's goals was based on alleged statements of Saldua. A fragment of Saldua's testimony during the courtmartial is cited by Artigas y Cuerva. Saldua implicated Burgos and Jacinto Zamora. And then he (Saldua) alleged that the government of Father Burgos undertook to supply warships, that these warships were of the United States navy; and that Basa had told him, Saldua, that Burgos had received a letter on the matter of the warships.11

These statements of Saldua are as incredible as Octavo's in so far as external direction or involvement was concerned, both for being fanciful and for want of corroborating evidence. Saldua appears to have been the regime's principal witness against the priests in the courtmartial. But he was

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accused with them and convicted with them. The trial was conducted in secret. Then the regime ensured against scrutiny of the trial and its proceedings by withholding all publication. And, finally, the regime silenced its principal witness for all time by executing him.

An intriguing and significant aspect of the regime's actions on the Cavite episode was that death was decreed for the priests, but only exile for the lawyers and businessmen who were alleged to have been coplotters of the rebellion. This was not consistent with Octavo's testimony that one of the lawyers was to become king after the provisional government. Why, then, were the lawyers meted out lighter sentences? Tormo Sanz, who studied the case and focussed on the intervention by liberals in Spain toward the pardon of the lawyers and businessmen, states that “it would seem logical to conclude that the true instigators of the Cavite revolt were not the native priests whom Izquierdo mistakenly executed but the freemasons....” This conclusion exculpates the Filipino priests and offers a plausible explanation for the disparity in the sentences. This explanation is that some or most of the lawyers and businessmen were freemasons with ties to the Spanish freemasons – these were influential in Madrid government and politics, and the governorgeneral in Manila knew it. Besides, Izquierdo was a freemason himself. Nevertheless, this view does not establish the motives of the freemasons in allegedly promoting or instigating the mutiny; neither does it suggest their involvement with any postmutiny political arrangements.

The mystery in the Cavite mutiny, one closer to home, is still the identity of the principals of Saldua. In whose behalf, and in whose interests, did he act?

On the basis of the appearance of events, the stir and passions in the aftermath of the Cavite episode overrode all logic and legal niceties. The mutiny by some 200 soldiers led by corporals and sergeants without any demonstrated connections with native military units in Manila or elsewhere, unsupported by any pueblos, was treated by the regime as if it were the onset of a Filipinaswide revolution. If so, the number of people caught in the net of the regime's punitive actions suggest that it acted out of pure and simple panic and hysteria.

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But the regime's revenge and the trial proceedings also showed an orchestration that was possible only with power. It is therefore equally possible that the adventitious uprising had been made into an occasion for a frameup put together by the forces in power against imagined enemies. The reformers and critics of the reactionary friar orders and other peninsulars were sought out. They turned out to be the Filipino priests and liberals who had surfaced, for a brief time in the sun, during the La Torre era. But they were all far from the fort of Cavite.

On 26 January, just three days after the suppression of the mutiny, the courtmartial passed sentences of death on fortyone of the mutineers. The next day the governorgeneral approved the sentences but pardoned twentyeight; nine were to be executed by musketry in Manila and four in Cavite. The executions in Manila took place in the killing ground of Bagumbayan the same day. The courtmartial sentenced another eleven on 6 February; these sentences were commuted to life imprisonment.

The courtmartial reached back into the past. On 8 February it convicted Casimiro Camerino. He was sentenced to death by the garrotte; he was executed the following day.

On 15 February the fateful sentence on the three priests was handed down. Gomes was the grand old man of the secular priests. He had been assigned to the curacy of Bacoor almost fifty years earlier, in 1824. Bacoor was among the seven secular parishes in Cavite that had been assigned to the Recollects and Dominicans by the order of 1849. The friars never got the curacy. Gomes served his Bacoor parish for more than four decades and was never transferred or promoted by the archdiocesan authorities. Had he accepted a promotion or a transfer the curacy would have become vacant and become subject to takeover by the friars. It is certain that the dedicated man elected to stay in Bacoor in order to keep the curacy a secular parish. Gomes was a native and is said to have had Chinese or Japanese blood many generations back. He was seventytwo years old.

Jacinto Zamora was born in Pandacan, Manila. He wrote in his application for the first tonsure that he was a Spanish mestizo. He and

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Burgos were classmates at San Juan de Letran and later at the University of Santo Tomas while studying for their bachiller degrees. In the 1864 competitive examinations for vacant curacies Jose Maria Zamora obtained the highest score; Jacinto Zamora was second; Burgos was third. There is a story of Zamora's arrest to the effect that when the arresting officer went to take him at his house, the arrest order was made out in the name of Jose Maria Zamora. However, the officer discovered a note in the house which read: “Big reunion. Come without fail. Friends will come well supplied with powder and bullets.” With this evidence the officer crossed out “Jose Maria Zamora” in the arrest order and wrote in Jacinto's name. In fact the note was an invitation to a panguingue session from Father Duran, parish priest of San Anton; panguingue was a popular card game and the incriminatory “powder and bullets” was the colloquialism for gambling money. But it was well known that Zamora had been a colleague and follower of Burgos since their schooldays; he was also active in collecting funds from the priests for the support of El Eco Filipino; and finally, Burgos himself had been arrested in Zamora's own house. Burgos was visiting the priest Miguel de Laza, who was sick and staying with Zamora. De Laza would also be arrested. Zamora was thirtysix years old.

Jose Apolonio Burgos was born in Vigan, Ilocos Sur on 12 February 1837. His father Jose Burgos was a Spanish colonel. The son's facial features indicate that his mother, Florencia Garcia was not a fullblooded Spaniard; she was in all probability a Spanish mestiza – although a document presented by Quirino has Burgos' own statement that he was born of Spanish parents. He obtained the doctorate in sacred theology from Santo Tomas in 1868 and another doctorate, this time in canon law, in 1871. Pedro Pelaez died in the great earthquake of 1863; Burgos had to have been one of his students in the university.

Burgos had already gained notoriety for leading a student demonstration that turned into a riot while still in Letran in 1860 and, more important, for his 1864 manifesto in reply to an attack on the Filipino clergy. It was natural that he was the leader of the priests' bloc in the Comité de Reformadores, and was treated as such by the archbishop in 1870. After sending his 1870 memorial to the regent of Spain, the archbishop called

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upon Burgos and his brother priests to sign a pledge of “fidelity and adherence” to Spain. Burgos gathered the signatures. But since the memorial defended the rights of the Filipino priests in the archbishopric and asked for amendments to the September 1861 decree, the pledge was later treated by the enemies of reform as a seditious manifesto. It did not matter. Burgos became a marked man on his own account in 1864. In order to ensure his conviction the regime assigned a man who was his enemy to act as his defense counsel; the latter entered a plea for clemency, saying that Burgos had confessed his guilt! Burgos protested in vain.

Of the semiretired Gomes, the panguingueloving Zamora, and Burgos whose star was on the rise, the latter most deserved the friars' enmity and was the most qualified for elimination under the regime's definition of sedition. When Burgos was sentenced to death by the courtmartial he was just three days past his thirtyfifth birthday.

On 16 February, the doomed priests were transferred to an engineers barracks that had a chapel. The next day at 7:30 A.M they were marched between files of soldiers with fixed bayonets to the killing ground of Bagumbayan. The archbishop had decided not to defrock them. Gomes was strangled first then Zamora and then Burgos.

A document written in behalf of the Filipino clergy in 1900 states “as a fact” that Saldua was executed just ahead of the three priests; it then reports that, as Saldua was being killed, “among the expectant multitude were heard the voices of women calling out that he had been pardoned, and two women, his wife and mother fainted.”12

The courtmartial kept on issuing sentences until at least April. In midMarch the ship Flores de Maria had a notable load of passengers bound for exile in the Marianas. A first group was made up of the following priests: Agustin Mendoza, parish priest of Santa Cruz; Jose Guevara, parish priest of Quiapo; Miguel de Laza, chaplain of the Cathedral; Feliciano Gomez, nephew of the old priest Gomes; Anacleto Desiderio and Pedro Dandan (they had both been cleared of complicity by the ecclesiastical authorities but the courtmartial ignored the findings); Vicente del Rosario, an army chaplain;

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Justo Guazon, coadjutor of the cathedral; and Toribio H. del Pilar and Mariano Sevilla. Toribio was the elder brother of Marcelo H. del Pilar who would be a leader during the Propaganda campaign in Europe in the late 1880s. Sevilla obtained his doctorate in theology from the Colegio de San Jose in 1871 and was the army hospital chaplain. The last two were convicted because letters from them were found in Burgos' possession.

With the priests was a second group. These were the lawyers Joaquin Pardo de Tavera, Antonio Ma. Regidor, Mauricio de Leon, Enrique Basa, Pedro Carrillo, and Gervasio Sanchez; and the businessmen Balbino Mauricio, Jose and Pio Basa, Maximo Paterno, and Ramon Maurente.

The Spaniards in the Magallanes expedition had first passed by the Marianas in 1521. They called the islands the Ladrones. After the regime was established the islands were renamed after the Spanish queen Maria Ana. The islands were administratively part of Filipinas, as were also the Carolinas. After the Americans bought and occupied Filipinas they in turn used the islands as a place of exile. Filipinos who were prominent in the FilipinoAmerican war and who had not taken the oath of allegiance to the United States, of whom the best known were Apolinario Mabini and Artemio Ricarte, were exiled here. The principal island of the Marianas group is Guam.

With the execution of the leaders of the Filipino priests in February and the exile or imprisonment of the other leading members of the Comité de Reformadores in March, the regime and its supporters would have felt secure and satisfied. But Izquierdo was not only a Spanish patriot; he was also a lieutenant general and had to review the last battle and take stock and look to the next. On 27 March he addressed a long and confidential letter to the provincials of the Augustinians, Dominicans, Recollects, and Franciscans. This letter is cited in Artigas y Cuerva and it tells much, from the Spanish viewpoint, of the political backdrop behind the Cavite episode and how the regime regarded the future. We will summarize the main points:

Izquierdo asked the friar orders to reflect on his letter and discuss it with

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their respective councils. He gave stress to the mutiny, “with its horrors.” Its eloquent lessons must never be forgotten. Then: “The interests of Spain in Filipinas are sure in the present but not in the future.” Spain's interests would be attacked from both inside and outside. Nobody could replace the friar orders; none excelled them in their patriotism. But there are those who believe that they had already done all that was to be done. One day, when they least expect it, “the few who may be able” will leave Filipinas, but they will do so with deep remorse and regret.

The friar orders, Izquierdo continued, honestly believed that they still wielded great influence but in fact they no longer did. This influence “had been snatched from them... The secular clergy, yes, the secular clergy has taken over the influence and the prestige which the religious orders used to exercise and which they have allowed to be taken away from them.” Some friars were dreaming of past glories and believed in ridiculous concepts such as: “that the native does not believe in the Mass. nor in the efficacy of the giving of alms by the priest of his race; or that the latter's intelligence is weak and his obedience blind; and that the power of the name 'Spanish' is irreversible among the parishioners.”

Izquierdo continued: The enemies of the religious orders say that the latter:

do not perform their duties with the zeal nor with the ardor and evangelical enthusiasm that such elevated ministry demands. The enemies of Spain add that the religious orders ... have completely left the cure of souls to the coadjutors who are the ones who baptize, who administer penance and communion, who assist in funeral duties, who go for their religious duties everywhere day and night in good or bad weather; ... while the parish priest [that is, the friar curate] lives in ease and quiet in his house, collects the fees without complying with his duties, attends only the grand religious functions or formalities and ... often without going to the church, for he limits himself to the gallery or assembly room of the parochial house aided and accompanied by the priests of the region, to hold feasts – noisy and profane.

Izquierdo told the friars to “devote themselves exclusively to their sacred ministry and not take an active part in politics as is happening now, for it

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unfortunately divides our dear country.” He said that the proper politics for the friar orders lay in the Gospel, different from the politics of the civil authorities which has to do with the implementation of the laws. Finally, Izquierdo stated that the friar curates must:

treat the [Filipino] coadjutors with respectful and paternal consideration; ... bearing in mind that the coadjutors are indispensable and if necessary this I order that the coadjutors live in the parochial house, and be treated as brothers and not as servants.

We will return to Izquierdo's letter shortly.

In April the governorgeneral took precautionary measures by asking Spain for more peninsular troops. The native artillery regiment was disbanded. It was replaced by a regiment from Spain that arrived posthaste in Manila on 8 July 1872.13

A great deal can be written about the aftermath of revenge and terror that gripped Filipinas in 1872, but not much more that is based on fact can be written to this day about the cause of it all, the alleged conspiracy that produced the mutiny in Cavite, and the true involvement of the men who were arrested and sent to prison or were exiled or executed by the regime. The Spaniards had the truth but it chose to withhold it. More time, more data, are needed to reach the truth and establish what really happened. Meantime, we are left with an impression of sinister, dark, and vengeful forces having arranged those unhappy events.

Unless the guilt of the victims of the terror of 1872 is reasonably demonstrated pursuant to the laws of the regime at the time including the issue of the jurisdiction of courtsmartial over priests and civilians their innocence will have to be presumed. There was opinion at the time that they could not have been guilty of the first part of the charge against them: that they had conspired "against the political constitution of the State." How could they be guilty of conspiring against a constitution that was not in force in Filipinas? It is probable that the Madrid government ordered or approved an information blackout on the case of the three priests because their

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execution just two days after their hasty sentencing and the archbishop's refusal or failure to defrock them had confronted it with an embarrassing fait accompli contrived through irregular proceedings.

Who profited from the terror of 1872? It was not Spain and it was not the Madrid government. The liquidation of the Comité de Reformadores was the killing and elimination of men who sought the extension to Filipinas of the Spanish constitution, who asked for the political assimilation of Filipinas as a province of Spain. It was not the civil regime in Manila, and for exactly the same reasons. This leaves the peninsulars in Filipinas, the Spaniards who saw in the new Filipinos' reformist campaign the loss of their monopoly of the officers' ranks in the military and of all the posts of any consequence in the civil government service; but especially the friar orders because they had the most to lose and the most to explain if a regime that provided for civil and political rights were to be established.

But the lay peninsulars were temporary officers of privilege, their posts vulnerable and dependent on the fortunes of the political parties in Spain. And so this leaves the friar orders, whose profitable dominance of the parishes and whose haciendas (except the Franciscans) would be threatened under a regime of constitutional liberalism. Perhaps, after all, the terror of 1872 was the outcome of neither panic nor hysteria, but of importunate pressures exerted by established, puissant, desperate, and selfish forces upon a recently arrived and susceptible governorgeneral.

The terror of 1872 was a triumph of the friar orders. It wiped out the leadership of the Filipino clergy and of the reform group. It was as if a malignant blight or a heavy scythe had struck down the fairest plants in a growing field. A long, long season would have to pass before a new growth.

But the field was fertile. The season of blight was long but it would have an end. Izquierdo's letter to the friar orders had warned them that Spain's interests were not secure in the future. He asked them to stop dreaming of past glories, to stop believing that they no longer had to work at their spiritual vocation. He told them that influence over the Filipinos had passed from their hands into those of the Filipino clergy. And he told them not to

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interfere in civil politics “for it unfortunately divides our dear country.”

The friars and other peninsulars could have gotten exactly the same diagnosis as Izquierdo's from any thinking Filipino if they had only listened. What happened next was what had happened in many other societies, many other countries. Landmark events, shocking events, incline men to think in terms of basic principles. Such thinking leads men to examine their past and question their present life in terms of the good they aspire to and the evils they wish to avoid. If they are unhappy with the present they construct a desired future in their minds. The terror of 1872 led the Filipinos to construct this future.

The Youth and the Terror

1872 left an indelible imprint and was an obsession to the next generation of Filipino leaders. Apolinario Mabini, who would become the intellectual of the second phase of the Revolution, said it best of all. He has a moving interpretation of the execution of the three priests in the killing ground of Bagumbayan. He noted that the friars controlled the regime and sought to intimidate the Filipinos through the execution of the priests and the annihilation of the reformist leadership. But instead of the old awe, instead of a new fear, a hatred of the friars and the regime took hold of the people because of their profound sorrow for the victims. This sorrow, says Mabini, wrought a miracle:

It enabled the Filipinos to see their condition for the first time. Feeling pain, they knew that they were alive, and so they asked themselves what kind of a life it was that they led The awakening was painful, and working in order to stay alive was even more so. But one had to live. How? They did not know, and the desire to know, the anxiety to learn and understand, took hold of and possessed the youth of Filipinas.... The dawn of the new day was nearing.

Mabini's reading can be easily appreciated; he belonged to the generation of the youth; he was eight years old in 1872.

A more personal statement of the impact of the killings on the mind of a

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young Filipino was that of the national hero Jose Rizal, quoted at the beginning of this Chapter. In 1891 he dedicated his second novel, El Filibusterismo, to the memory of the three priests. Part of the dedicatory follows:

The Church, by refusing to degrade you, has placed in doubt the crime that has been charged to you; the Government by wrapping your trial in mystery and shadows, creates a belief that there was error committed in fatal moments; and all Filipinas, by venerating your memory and calling you martyrs, shows that in no way does it recognize your guilt.

Rizal was eleven years old in 1872.

Andres Bonifacio, founder of the revolutionary Katipunan, was inspired by the martyrdom of the priests. The Katipunan was a secret patriotic society dedicated to the awakening and liberty of the Filipinos, by arms if necessary. It had the solemn rituals of a clandestine organization; the password for second degree members was “GOMBURZA,” after the names of the three priests. Bonifacio was not yet nine years old when they were put to death.

Emilio Aguinaldo, who led the Filipinos in the successful revolution against the regime, perpetuated 1872 in the proclamation of Filipino independence in 1898. The proclamation listed a litany of abuses of the old regime and called for the redemption of Filipinas, among others:

for the sake of those persons who, through mere suspicion, were convicted ... at the instigation of the friars, without any form or semblance of a trial and without the spiritual consolation of our sacred religion; and likewise, for the strangulation from the same motives of the eminent Filipino priests, Doctor Jose Burgos, Mariano Gomez and Jacinto Zamora, whose innocent blood was spilled through the intrigues of those socalled religious orders that simulated a military rebellion in the night of 21 January 1872, in the Fort of San Felipe, pueblo of Cavite, accusing the said martyrs of having started it....

The proclamation was drafted by Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista, one of

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the members of the Comité de Reformadores. Aguinaldo was a boy of three years in 1872.14

The old regime hung on for another quarter century. It was able to survive because it had either destroyed or silenced the small group of leaders of the emerging new nation. In order to stay it had to keep on destroying and silencing the voices of protest. The reform movement was therefore forced to go underground. In time the boys of 1872 grew into young men. Another generation replaced the La Juventud Escolar generation. The times stamped the new reform movement with a singular characteristic. Fearing for their sons under the repressive regime at home, the rich families sent the young men abroad. It was there, mostly in the atmosphere of European liberal political thinking, that these young Filipinos matured their ideas of reform and later on of national liberty; they worked with a group based in Manila, and launched the Propaganda movement abroad.

We will note later, in the story of the Propaganda movement that began in the 1880s, that the new Filipino leaders were no longer priests or Spanish creole reformers. This means not only the obvious emergence of a new generation. The leadership passed into the hands of native and Chinese mestizo Filipinos. Moreover, the Filipinos' concerns now transcended those of the native priests, because the issue of the secularization of the parishes had become merged into the much broader concerns of the Filipino people.

As important as any other development was the awakening of the gobernadorcillos into the politics that was inevitably intruding into their lives. The gobernadorcillos were generally of limited schooling. They were unlike the ilustrados who were universityeducated, often in Europe. The gobernadorcillos were the link between the patriotic movement and the common people of their pueblos.

We can understand that with the martyrdom of the three priests, the seed of Christian Filipino nationalism took root in good soil. Like mushrooms springing suddenly from the warm moist earth under a bamboo thicket in the morning after a night of rain, ideas of political justice and their young Filipino advocates appeared during the 1880s. The sequel to the

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terror of 1872 was a period of repression, the age of filibusterismo, that in turn was followed by the Propaganda movement, that produced the Katipunan and the Revolution.

In the next chapters we will look at contrasting pictures of life in Manila and in the provinces before we resume the story of the later events that were linked to 1872, bringing more and more Filipinos to the killing ground of Bagumbayan.

§

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NOTES

Chapter 12

TOWARDS BAGUMBAYAN: NEW TOWN, KILLING GROUND

The quotation at the beginning is from Cartas Entre Rizal y Sus Colegas de la Propaganda, Vol. II in "Escritos de José Rizal," Publicaciones de la Comisión Nacional del Centenario de José Rizal (1961), 1 a Parte, #124. This compilation has two Parts or Partes, and the "#124" is the number of the carta or letter. Subsequent citations to this source will be to: "Cartas de la Propaganda," followed by "la" or "2a" Parte, and letter number.

1 The notes on the Bagumbayan settlement are taken from various scattered sources in BR; consult the Index in Vol. LIV.

2 Re Burgos manifesto: Manuel Artigas y Cuerva, Los Sucesos de 1872, Reseña Histórica BioBibliografia (1911), 86, and Note 1.

Re the two axioms about Filipinos: Felipe Buencamino, Sr., “Sixty Years of Philippine History,” in the commemorative Aguinaldo Centennial issue of Historical Bulletin (January to December 1969), XIII, 315316. The subsequent citations to this source will be as follows: “Buencamino, in Historical Bulletin, XIII,” with page number.

A useful perspective on the Spanish Revolution is Edward Henry Strobel, The Spanish Revolution, 18681875 (1898).

Re Comite de Reformadores: Artigas y Cuerva, 5556, 125; and Buencamino, in Historical Bulletin, XIII, 317318.

3 Re La Juventud: Artigas y Cuerva, 3435 and Note, and 5556. R: El Eco and distribution of the paper: Buencamino, in Historical Bulletin, XIII, 338.

4 Re La Torre and tenure in office: Jeremias Rebanal y Ras, El Gobernador de Filipinas Carlos Maria de la Torre (1981).

Re statue: Montero y Vidal, Historia General, III, 290, Note, any 509510.

Re factions, according to La Torre: Rebanal, 31, 4345.

Re antifriar laws: ibid., 68, 70; Strobel, 3940; Montero y Vida Historia General, III, 549550.

Re loans and loss of lands to lenders: Under 4 Flags (n.d ca. 1971), 21.

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Re dispossessed landowners in Cavite, Camerino, and La Torre: Artigas y Cuerva, 8995, 101.

5 Re serenade, oathtaking, and anniversary: Rebanal, 4650. The antiLa Torre lawyer was Pedro Gutierrez y Salazar, official of the Real Casa y Hermandad de la Misericordia de Manila, who operations were investigated by La Torre for irregularities in the management of its funds, to the detriment of claimants; La Torre actions were sustained by Madrid. Gutierrez wrote Las Proscripciones de Sila (remedio de) en Filipinas ... (1870). The friar account Resena que demuestra el fundamento y causas de la insurreccibn de 20 enero en Filipinas.... (1872). It was written by Fr. Casimiro Herrero. These two works are the basis of Montero Vidal, Historia General III, 502505, 510512.

6 Re instructions for La Torre to organize reform group: ibid., 518519. Re proposed general council: Artigas y Cuerva, 7778.

Re plans, and happenings in the cathedral: ibid., 103104. Montero y Vidal is silent on what happened during the church ceremonies: Montero y Vidal, Historia General, III, 522523.

Re antifriar pamphlets: ibid., 504505. Re decrees of 1870: ibid 542543.

Re La Juventud riot; Artigas y Cuerva, 3435 and Note.

Re decrees suspended: Montero y Vidal, Historia General, III, 551, 556.

,

7 Re La Torre's informatory memorial: Rebanal, 4546.

Re summary judgment on La Torre: Montero y Vidal, Historia General, III, 551.

Re Father Mendoza contribution: Leandro Tormo Sanz, comp., 1872, Vol. XXIII of Historical Conservation Society series (1973), pp. 3334, 113114. This compilation includes items of correspondence between Manila liberals and their relatives or colleagues in Spain.

8 Re La Torre's October 1870 deportation decree: Montero y Vidal, H istoria General, III, 516. Re quotation about La Torre: ibid., 499. Re La Torre's decisions, attitude toward friars, priests: Rebanal, 6568, 6972, 7781.

Re instructions to La Torre to implement liberal policies, and his demurrer: ibid., 61. Re censorship of mail: Schumacher and Cushner, Philippine Studies, XVII, 488493. Re quotation on schools: Rebanal, 78.

9 Re Izquierdo on elimination of native clergy: ibid., 82. Re early period of Izquierdo's government: Montero y Vidal, Historia General, III, 554556.

Our account of the background of the Cavite mutiny up to 20 January 1872 is based on

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Artigas y Cuerva, 98102, citing Antonio Ma. Regidor, one of those arrested and deported. There is a statement in LM., "Causes of the Dislike of the Filipinos for the Friars," in John R.M. Taylor, comp., The Philippine Insurrection Against the United States (1971), I, Exh. 8, as follows: "The native artillery soldiers stationed in the fortress of Cavite, as loyal as everyone else to the Spanish government, aggrieved on being displaced by the Spanish artillery, and workmen in the arsenal, also aggrieved by having been discharged, in spite of their many years of service and their knowledge and experience, and replaced by Spaniards with higher wages and without any knowledge of the work, while they and their families were left in poverty, mutinied to the number of one hundred and fifty...." LM., author of this statement, was evidently a spokesman of the Filipino clergy. The date of the statement is February 1900, and it was originally in Spanish. Instead of citing this document in the text, we used Regidor' s testimony as cited by Artigas y Cuerva; the latter is first hand, and is more detailed and in all respects reasonable. Regidor also mentioned the reorganization of the artillery corps as a factor causing the tense racial relations before the mutiny.

Re the British consul's report: De la Costa, Readings, 179180.

Re telegraph messages: Schumacher and Cushner, Philippine Studies, XVII, 500513.

10 The list of arrested persons is from Artigas y Cuerva, 115117, who says that it came from a confidential communication of the civil governor of Manila. Re sentence on priests et al.: Schumacher and Cushner, Philippine Studies, XVII, 522529; and Tormo Sanz, 9091, 168169. Re actions taken by the governorgeneral and archbishop on 15 February: ibid., 9294, 170171.

11 Re Octavo material: ibid., 7390, 152168. The statement in Artigas y Cuerva on the absence of documentary proof is in Artigas y Cuerva, 166. Re Izquierdo's written statement to the court: ibid., 222225. Re Saldua as the instigator: Schumacher, 27. Re Saldua allegation on warships: Artigas y Cuerva, 127128.

12 Re freemasons as the alleged instigators: Tormo Sanz, 11. Re Izquierdo a freemason: Artigas y Cuerva, 236.

Re the 26 January sentences, and decisions of the courtmartial until 15 February: Montero y Vidal, Historia General, 111, 568602, is the popular account of the mutiny and its aftermath.

The archdiocesan records on Burgos, Gomez, and Zamora are in Quirino, Philippine Studies, XXI; see also Schumacher, 1321. The story of Fr. Zamora's arrest is known, but Artigas y Cuerva, 142, adds the detail about Fr. Duran.

Re Fr. Zamora collecting funds for El Eco Filipino: Taylor, I, Exh. 8.

Re Fr. Burgos visiting Fr. Laxa: Artigas y Cuerva, 141. Re enemy of Fr. Burgos appointed by regime as his counsel in his trial: ibid., 135, and Note.

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Nick Joaquin, A Question of Heroes (1977), 924, is both a curious assessmcmt of Burgos et al. and an ambitious statement of the background and significance of the mutiny.

The citation to the 1900 document is to Taylor, I, Exh. 8. 13 Re Flores de Maria exiles: Artigas y Cuerva, 162, Note. Re Izquierdo letter: ibid., 174193.

14 Re Mabini' s interpretation: Apolinario Mabini, La Revolucion Filipina, Nos. 45, Documentos de la Biblioteca Nacional de Filipinas, comp. Teodoro M. Kalaw (1931), II, 283284. The compilation owes its title to that of the last piece, written during Mabini' s Guam exile (January 1901February 1903).

Re Rizal's dedication: Jose Rizal, El Filibusterismo, centenary ed., Vol. V in "Escritos de José Rizal, “Publicaciones de la Comisión Nacional del Centenario de Jose Rizal (1961). This is an offset version of the original edition published in Ghent in 1891.

Re Katipunan password: Teodoro M. Kalaw, The Philippine Revolution (1909), 1011.

Re 1898 proclamation of independence: The Independence Day National Committee, Act of Proclamation of Independence of the Filipino People, Cavite Viejo, 12 June 1898 (1971). This source has the facsimiles of the text of the proclamation and signatures; the printed Spanish text; and also English and Tagalog translations.

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towards bagumbayan: new town, killing ground

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