Fast, Jonathan, and Richardson, Jim. "The Katipuneros: Revolutionary Leadership in City and Province." In Roots of Dependency: Political and Economic Revolution in 19th Century Philippines. Quezon City: Foundation for Nationalist Studies, 1979. 67-74, 129-30.
[67]
9
The Katipuneros: Revolutionary Leadership in City and Province
Rizal's view of the lowly character of the Katipunan was widely shared in ilustrado circles. In the opinion of Felipe Calderon, a plantation-owner and successful lawyer, the insurrection was “organized by the most ignorant element of the people.”1 The first Filipino historian of the Katipunan, the propagandist Isabelo de los Reyes, stressed in a pamphlet published in 1900 that the revolutionary association was a “plebeian society,” whose members "belonged to the workmen and peasant classes" and among whose founders "there was not a single rich man, nor one of a learned profession."2 Behind such observations lay either distaste or condescension. Later accounts, however, have often echoed this uncomplicated analysis of the Katipunan's composition more approvingly, presenting the insurrection as a salutary popular reaction against ilustrado gradualism and prevarication. The elaboration of this argument forms the central theme, for instance, of Teodoro Agoncillo's The Revolt of the Masses, which since its publication in 1956 has been generally accepted as the most authoritative study of the subject. The Katipunan, Agoncillo asserts at the outset, was a "distinctively plebeian society."3 Objectively, he writes, the "middle class" reformists had proven themselves "the bulwark of the Spanish reactionary party,” too concerned with their own position and consequently too cautious to make any real impact on the nature of colonial rule.4 Through their failure to provide effective leadership, their inability to understand the common people's aspirations and their snobbish aloofness they had won "the hatred of the masses" and direction of the nationalist cause had passed into other hands."5 The sentiments of the Katipuneros, Agoncillo agrees with Isabelo de los Reyes, were that "where there are learned men everything is brought to naught by discussions.” For this reason, they "did not want to admit the learned" into the association.6
Apart from their more militant and immediate commitment to separation from Spain, to what extent did the Katipuneros' ideas and aspirations differ from those of writers such as Rizal, Lopez-Jaena and del Pilar? Historiographical opinion on this question has undergone an evolution similar to that on the place of the Katipunan within Philippine society. Having observed that the association had been organized "from below,” many ilustrados felt that the revolutionaries had departed from the enlightenment liberalism of the propagandists. The Spanish accusation that "upper class
[68]
Filipinos" were the true financiers and directors of the Katipunan was clearly unfounded, Felipe Calderon asserted, because the association was "socialistic."7 Florentino Torres, a prominent magistrate, testified that "the socialist character of the revolution of 1896… is a patent and positive fact."8 The ultimate goal of the Katipuneros, according to Isabelo de los Reyes, was the establishment of a "communistic republic."9 Such comments sowed the seed of historical orthodoxy. The officially approved chronicler of the American occupation, James LeRoy, saw in Katipunan propaganda "an element of resentment toward the wealthy" and expressed his agreement with the judgment of Calderon.10 The Filipino historian, Gregorio Zaide, in his monograph on the association, accepts without comment that the Katipunan's final objective was the "communistic republic" mentioned by de los Reyes.11 But again it is Agoncillo's The Revolt of the Messes that develops the hypothesis at greatest length. The Katipunan, Agoncillo writes, was "fundamentally a mass idea based on utopian soclalism."12 While the "middle classes" wanted to preserve their privileged position in Philippine life, the masses, symbolized by the Katipunan, wanted to overthrow the existing social order.13 Hostile to the "landowning class," Agoncillo asserts, the association aimed to abolish the basis of cacique power through the implementation of agrarian reform.14 Independence achieved and the grip of the "ruling class" destroyed, it would establish an economic democracy.16
Despite the weight of historical opinion behind them, the interpretations of Katipunan composition and purpose outlined above present a seriously distorted picture of the revolutionary association's character. Over-simplication and looseness of terminology have often compounded their error. One major source of confusion, pointed out by the historian Cesar Majul in a comment on the remarks of Florentino Torres, is that the mass character of the revolution per se has occasionally been taken as evidence of a "socialist" nature.16 Some observers have failed to appreciate, in other words, that although class and ideology are clearly related, they are nevertheless essentially distinct. To avoid repeating this mistake, therefore, and for the sake of greater clarity, the respective questions of composition and purpose will here be discussed individually.
The customary point of departure for proponents of the thesis that the insurrection was organized by "the most ignorant element" of the Filipino people has been the figure of Andres Bonifacio, popularly commemorated as the "Great Plebeian,” founder of the Katipunan and its President at the outbreak of the 1896 revolution. Agoncillo, for instance, despite his own evidence to the contrary, contends that Bonifacio was "almost illiterate" and "belonged to the lowest class."17 Even from the scanty information available on Bonifacio's life, it is certainly clear that the Katipunan Supremo was not of the "lowest class" of Philippine society.
The first of six children of Santiago Bonifacio, a tailor, and Catalina de Castro, a Spanish mestiza, he was born in the district of Tondo in 1863. His father had at one time served as the district's teniente mayor.18 The circumstances of the family are not recorded, but the parents were able to send Andres to private tutors in the locality and provide him with a sound elementary education.19 His studies were supplemented in the home, it is said, by a
[69]
"learned and patriotic aunt."20 However, his formal schooling was curtailed when he was orphaned at the age of fourteen and obliged to start work to help support his younger brothers and sisters. While still young he made and sold walking sticks and paper fans and, being a gifted calligraphist, designed advertising posters.21 Seeking more regular employment in his late teens, he joined Fleming & Co., a firm dealing in goods such as rattan and tar, afterwards transferring to another foreign commercial company, Fressel.& Co., where he remained until the outbreak of the revolution. Although traditionally presented as the decisive verification of Bonifacio's lowly proletarian credentials, the Supremo's occupational status in these two firms has apparently never been precisely determined, descriptions of his various positions ranging from "night watchman"22 and "warehouse-keeper"23 through "clerk messenger"24 to the distinctly less modest appellations of "agent"25 and "broker".26 Whatever the exact duties involved, however, employment in the capital's foreign houses offered good opportunities for advancement, and was much sought after. "The fathers of many who at this day figure as men of position and standing,” commented a British observer of Manileño society, “commenced their careers as messengers, warehousekeepers, clerks etc. of the foreign houses."27
Circumstantial evidence that 8onifacio's fortunes were indeed on the rise is provided by his marriage in 1893 to Gregoria de Jesus, the daughter of a gobernadorcillo of the town of Caloocan, a few miles north of Manila. His bride's upbringing had been far from impoverished. Looking after family interests with her sister "to enable our two brothers to study in Manila", Gregoria recounted later in a memoir, "I had to go out in the country to supervise the planting and harvesting of our rice and to supervise our tenants and laborers and also to pay the wages of my father's workers on Sunday mornings."26 It is also worth noting that although Gregoria's father hesitated before consenting to the marriage with Bonifacio, his initial reluctance was not based on any suggestion that his daughter's intended partner was beneath her station or that she would find it difficult to adjust to a less comfortable way of life. His objection, Gregoria recalled, was that Bonifacio was a freemason and therefore an enemy of the Church and likely to fall afoul of the authorities.29 This points to another inconsistency in the view of the Katipunan leader as a simple plebeian. The majority of Filipino masons in the late nineteenth century were men of some substance and education, and masonry constituted the principal organizational focus for the domestic following of the expatriate ilustrado propagandists. When Rizal, himself a mason, returned to the Philippines in 1892 wishing to launch a new association for the "study and application of reforms" it was to the leading officers of Manila's lodges that he first turned for assistance.30 The association resulting from this initiative was the Liga Filipina. According to Agoncillo, it "personified the middle class", to whom "it was inconceivable that the unlettered masses should be given the privileges of their respectable group.”31 In establishing the Liga, he asserts, the intellectual and wealthy gradualists "set up a sort of caste system from which the unlettered commoners were contemptuously excluded."32 Yet Bonifacio was one of Liga's founding members.
The foregoing discussion is not intended to infer that Bonifacio belonged
[70]
to the same social stratum as men like Rizal. Educationally he was excluded from true ilustrado status by his unfinished schooling, and financially he probably was one of the least affluent of the original Liga members. But the relative modesty of Bonifacio's circumstances in this company should not disguise the fact that he occupied a position closer to the centre of the social pyramid than to its base, closer to the petty-bourgeoisie than the proletariat. His principal associates in the early Katipunan moved in much the same milieu. Among those who joined Bonifacio in founding the Katipunan in July 1892, for instance, was Teodoro Plata, then a court clerk in the Manila district of Binondo and later at the court of first instance in Mindoro. Plata was a first cousin of Gregoria de Jesus and subsequently married one of Bonifacio's sisters.33 Together with Bonifacio and Plata in the first Katipunan "triangle" was Ladislao Diwa, a court clerk in the district of Quiapo, Manila. From his home province of Cavite, where his father was a master carpenter in charge of a workshop at the Spanish naval yard, Diwa had first come to Manila as a working student. After graduating from San Juan de Letran he enrolled in law at the University of Santo Tomas, where he first encountered Bonifacio, then clandestinely distributing propaganda literature to the students. The two became firm friends and for a while Diwa lived as a boarder in Bonifacio's house.34
Elected president of the first supreme council of the Katipunan established late in 1892, was Deodato Arellano, brother-in-law of Marcelo H. del Pilar and himself an active figure in various groups that supported the expatriate writers and worked for the reformist cause at home. When the Liga Filipina was launched by Rizal, he was chosen council secretary. Arellano worked as a clerk in the arsenal of the Spanish artillery corps.35 His successor as President of the Katipunan Supreme Council, elected in February 1893, was Roman Basa, who occupied a similar clerical position in the Spanish naval headquarters. Introduced to the association by Ladislao Diwa, a town-mate from San Roque in Cavite, Basa served as Katipunan president for two years, finally being replaced by Bonifacio himself.36 During his incumbency a number of organization changes were made that sought to improve and systematize recruitment to the association, including the formation of district branches known as popular councils. Assigned to head the popular council of Santa Cruz, Manila, was Restituto Javier, son of a Tondo property owner and compadre and fellow-employee of Bonifacio.37 Assigned to build Katipunan support in the Manila district of Trozo was a half-brother of Javier, Jose Turiano Santiago, who also held the position of secretary to the Katipunan Supreme Council. A graduate of Santo Tomas, Santiago made a living as an accountant and commercial agent.38
Aside from Santiago and Ladislao Diwa, at least two other Supreme Council officers -- Pio Valenzuela and Emilio Jacinto -- had attended the Islands' only University. Valenzuela, whose parents "belonged to the local aristocracy" of Polo, Bulacan, was a fourth year medical student when he joined the Katipunan. Another compadre of Bonifacio, he served as fiscal and physician on the Council.39 Jacinto, who had enrolled at Santo Tomas after graduating from San Juan de Letran, was first elected to the Supreme Council in 1895, soon after his nineteenth birthday. Despite his youth, he thereafter
[71]
became the closest of all Bonifacio's associates and the association's leading publicist and theoretician. To comply with the Katipunan principle of using only the vernacular, it is interesting to note, Jacinto had first to make himself proficient in Tagalog. The son of a well-known Tondo merchant, he had grown up more accustomed to using a corrupt form of Spanish then current among those Manileños "who had some visible means of livelihood and those who pretended to be among the ilustrado,"40
The antecedents, education and careers of men like Plata, Diwa, Arellano, Basa, Javier, Santiago. Valenzuela and Jacinto thus indicate that none of the most prominent Manila-based Katipuneros, any more than Bonifacio, could be classified as either “ignorant" or typically proletarian. On the contrary, the most striking link among those named is that they all occupied intermediate positions in Philippine society, more especially positions which brought them into direct contact, in a variety of contexts, with the institutions, policies and representatives of Spanish colonial rule. Those who had studied at the clerically-administered colleges and university felt, as Rizal had a decade earlier, that despite the prestige attached to attending such institutions the instruction they provided was anachronistic in both style and content, an affront to Filipino dignity and aspirations. Bonifacio and Javier, as employees of a foreign business firm, could witness at first hand the difficulties and frustration caused by the restrictive and complex legislation that surrounded overseas trade. The trend toward greater protectionism, they would be aware, not only endangered the chances of trade-based prosperity but also posed an immediate threat to the living standards of Filipinos in all walks of life by raising the prices of basic imported commodities. Plata and Diwa, court clerks, and Arellano and Basa, employees of the military, had an inside view of the actual machinery of colonial administration and control. The prejudice, corruption and injustice that pervaded the insular bureaucracy would form an integral part of their daily experience. In the absence of information on the individual motives underlying the separatist commitment of the Katipunan's directors, therefore, their common proximity to the educational, economic or administrative aspects of Spanish sovereignty itself seems to offer a partial explanation. The main burden of colonial rule may have fallen on less fortunate shoulders, but few were better placed to understand its workings and consequences than the leading Katipuneros.
In provincial areas where the Katipunan gained support the association's leaders occupied a position very much comparable to that of their counterparts in the capital. Again they belonged to intermediate social strata, and again they lived and worked at the interface between colonial power and the population. Many already held positions of prestige and influence in their respective towns prior to gaining distinction as revolutionists. Several were members of the principalia, the group formally recognized as the leading citizens of a town from whom the chief functionaries of pueblo and barrio government were elected. Others worked for the principalia as secretaries and interpreters. School teachers were also well represented. As a correlation between contact with the colonizers and revolutionary involvement existed in geographic as well as personal terms, the strategic position of Katipunan leaders at the forefront of local affairs and conflicts is perhaps best Illustrated by the example of Cavite, a
[72]
province immediately south of Manila where both the secular and clerical aspects of Spanish rule were particularly conspicuous, and where the Katipunan gained its firmest organizational foothold.
Before reviewing some of the personalities who headed the Katipunan in Cavite, however, it is necessary to refer briefly to the structure of the colonial local government apparatus with which a large proportion were associated. The principalia who administered the affairs of each town and its related outlying settlements traced their origins to pre-Spanish community leaders whose authority had been recognized by the colonizers and utilized as the cornerstone of a system of indirect rule. From the conquest until the eve of Spanish rule the two key functionaries of this system were the cabezas de barangay and the gobernadorcillo. At the foot of the bureaucratic ladder and the immediate link between government and people, the cabezas de barangay had jurisdiction over a barrio or other unit of equivalent population. By far their most important function was tax-collection, first in the form of tribute and later as a cedula payment. In addition they were in charge of assigning the adult males within their jurisdiction to local public works projects in compliance with the requirement that every year each man should render forty days labor service to the community. Until 1893, it was past and present cabezas alone who constituted the principalia. As such, by a process of indirect election, they chose one of their number to hold the office of gobernadorcillo, known after 1890 as capitan municipal.
The prime duty of the gobernadorcillo was to supervise and coordinate the work of the cabezas with regard to tax collection and the assignment of community labor, but he had besides a wide range of additional responsibilities. These included the maintenance of peace and order; the exercise of judicial authority in petty civil and criminal cases; administration of the postal service; upkeep of the local jail; providing for the needs of travelers; and ensuring that the inhabitants had gainful employment and were good Catholics. To assist him in these multifarious tasks the gobernadorcillo had a host of elected, appointed and drafted assistants, among whom might be mentioned the tenientes mayors, fellow principales, variously designated to look after police matters, the boundaries of cultivated lands and the branding of livestock; a corps of cuadrilleros or constables staffed on a rotation basis from among the townsmen; and a directorcillo, usually a person with some college education and a knowledge of Spanish who worked in a paid capacity as interpreter and municipal clerk.41
Subsequently by far the most famous of the Caviteño principales who played a leading role in the Katipunan was Emilio Aguinaldo. In March 1897 Aguinaldo was to be elected president of the Revolutionary Government that succeeded the Katipunan as the directorate of the insurrection. His father, Aguinaldo recounted in his Memoirs, had been "regarded as one of the learned of the times and a brilliant lawyer."42 He was also a landowner and had served several times as town gobernadorcillo. After his elementary education, Emilio enrolled at San Juan de Letran, joining a number of brothers and sisters already studying in Manila. Before completing his college course, however, he returned to his home town of Cavite Viejo to help his widowed mother manage
[73]
the family interests. Aguinaldo first entered the ranks of the principalia at the age of seventeen, becoming a cabeza de barangay, he later recalled, primarily because his mother saw the position as a means of avoiding military conscription.43 After about eight years as a cabeza, in January 1895, he succeeded his elder brother Crispulo (who was also to become a revolutionary general) as a capitan municipal of his town. Emilio joined the Katipunan later the same year, travelling to Manila for initiation by Bonifacio and taking the nom de guerre of Magdalo, a name subsequently also applied to the Katipunan council which incorporated Cavite Viejo and other municipalities of eastern
Cavite. In late 1896, once the guardia civil had been cleared from a number of these towns, the Magdalo council was reorganized as a sub-provincial insurgent government, headed by a form of cabinet.44 Elected as Magdalo president at this time was Baldomero Aguinaldo, a cousin of Emilio. Also a native of Cavite Viejo, Baldomero had attended the Ateneo Municipal and the University of Santo Tomas. Prior to the revolution he had worked in various capacities for the municipal bureaucracy, holding in succession the positions of registrador de titulos, directorcillo and justice of the peace.46 At least two of the Aguinaldos' principal associates in the Cavite Viejo Katipunan, Candido Tirona and Santiago Dario, served under Emilio as cabezas de barangay.48 Tirona, interestingly enough, came from a family long regarded as the chief rivals of the Aguinaldos in Cavite Viejo politics, but as more vital matters claimed their attention as well as that of their respective followers the petty factionalism of the past was set aside.47 Shortly after the revolution began, Tirona was acclaimed as Emilio's successor, under revolutionary conditions, as capitan municipal. He was also appointed Minister of War in the reorganized Magdalo council. Another former cabeza in this council was Pio del Pilar, later a celebrated general.48
In addition to Crispulo and Emilio Aguinaldo, a third member of the Magdalo Cabinet, Vito Belarmino, had had experience of the senior office of pueblo government, having held the post of gobernadorcillo in the town of Silang. His background was remarkably similar to that of Emilio Aguinaldo. His father, too, had in his time presided over the town tribunal and he also had for a time attended San Juan de Letran. Belarmino's formal education also had been cut short, in his case by recurrent outbreaks of cholera that disrupted life in the capital in the early 1880's. Prior to his election as gobernadorcillo he gained a wide knowledge of Silang affairs both as a cabeza and secretary of the tribunal.48
Principales and men of comparable, social position also dominated the leadership of the Magdiwang, the Katipunan council that in the early months of the revolution acted as the sub-provincial insurgent government in the municipalities of western Cavite. Elected Magdiwang president was Mariano Alvarez, capitan municipal of Noveleta, the town in which the council was originally based. An uncle of Bonifacio's mother-in-law, Alvarez was one of the oldest of the revolutionary leaders of 1896, having been born in 1831.50 Prior to joining the Katipunan his association with the cause of reform had spanned over at least two decades. In the same way as Emilio Aguinaldo and Vito
[74]
Belarmino, he had acceded to municipal office virtually as a matter of family tradition, his father having served as Noveleta gobernadorcillo. His other qualifications for office, education at one of the friar-administered colleges in Manila and an apprenticeship in town politics as directorcillo, also conform to a now familiar pattern.51 By profession a school teacher, Alvarez was one of many of this calling who were active in the Cavite Katipunan. A second school teacher in the Magdiwang cabinet was Artemio Ricarte, a graduate of Letran and the Jesuit Escuela Normal.52
As in the Manila sections of the Katipunan and in the Magdalo council in eastern Cavite, a number of Magdiwang leaders were linked by ties of kinship. Santiago and Pascual Alvarez, a son and nephew of Mariano, respectively held the posts of Magdiwang General-in-Chief and Secretary-General.53 Two brothers from an "Illustrious family" of the town of Maragondon, Emiliano and Mariano Riego de Dios, both men with an extensive formal education, respectively occupied the positions of Minister of Commerce and Brigadier-General.54 Completing the Magdiwang cabinet were Ariston Villanueva, a past gobernadorcillo of Noveleta, as Minister of War; Mariano Trias, a sugar planter and graduate of Letran, as Minister of Welfare and Justice; and Diego Mojica as Minister of Finance.56
In one important respect the urban Katipuneros differed significantly from their provincial counterparts. The contrasting backgrounds of Bonifacio and Aguinaldo illustrate this point fairly well. However prominent Bonifacio might have become in the various merchant houses for whom he was employed, by the very nature of their operations advancement to positions of senior responsibility in such firms was all but precluded. Moreover, Bonifacio did not own land which was still the standard measure of wealth and power in the Islands. Aguinaldo, on the other hand, was an important landowner in his district and accordingly, had no social superior in his cultural and political milieu. Simply put, the advancement of Bonifacio's career depended largely upon his willingness and ability to carry out orders: Aguinaldo's class matrix demanded that he give them.
[129]
[Notes]
(1) Calderon, Felipe G., "Memoirs of the Philippine Revolution” in Galang, Zoilo M. (ed.) Encyclopaedia of the Philippines (Manila, Exequiel Floro) 1957, Vol. XV, p. 215.
(2) de los Reyes, lsabelo, La Religion del “Katipunan"(Madrid, Tip. Lit. de J. Corrales) 1900, pp. 30, 37.
(3) Agoncillo, Teodoro, The Revolt of the Masses (Quezon City, University of the Philippines Press) 1956, p. 1.
(4) Ibid, p. 283.
(5) Ibid, p. 282.
(6) de los Reyes, Isabelo, La Sensacional Memoria de Isabelo de los Reyes sobre la Revolution Filipina de 1896-97 (Madrid, Tip. Lit. de J. Corrales) 1899, p. 80, quoted in Agoncillo, Op. Cit. p. 106.
(7) El Renacimiento, August 11 and 18, Sept. 1 and 18, Oct. 1, 1906, quoted in LeRoy, Jamas A., “The Philippines 1860-1898 -- Some Comment and Bibliographical Notes” in Blair, Emma H., and James A. Robertson, The Philippine Islands 1493-1898 (Cleveland, Arthur C. Clark Co.) 1903, Vol. III, p. 185.
(8) Florentino Torres evidence submitted before the Second (Taft) Philippine Commission Report, p. 191.
[130]
(9) de los Reyes (1899) Op. Cit. p. 78; (1900) Op. Cit. p. 37.
(10) LeRoy, Loc. Cit.
(11) Zalde, Gregorlo F. History of the Katipunan (Manila, Loyal Press) 1939, p. 12.
(12) Agoncillo, Op. Cit. p.115.
(13) Ibid, pp. 107, 287.
(14) Ibid, pp. 107, 284-85.
(15) Ibid, pp. 116, 307.
(16) Majul, Cesar Adib, The Political end Constitutional Ideas of the Philippine Revolution (Quezon City, University of the Philippines Press) 1967, p. 135.
(17) Agoncillo, Op. Cit. pp, 283-84.
(18) Eminent Filipinos (Manila, National Historical Commission) 1965, p. 63; Zaide, Gregorio F. Great Filipinos in History (Manila, Verde Bookstore) 1957, p. 105. Constantino, Renato, A Past
Revisited (Manila, Tala Publications) 1976, p. 162.
(19) Agoncillo, Op. Cit. p. 66; Manuel, E. Arsenio, Dictionary of Philippine Biography (Quezon City, Filipiniana Publications) 1955, Vol. I, p. 253.
(20) Zaide, Op. Cit. p. 14.
(21) Agoncillo, Op. Cit. p. 66.
(22) Taylor, John R.M., The Philippine Insurrection Against the United States (Pasay City, Eugenio Lopez Foundation) 1971, Vol. 1, p. 62. This is the description used in Taylor's introduction.
(23) Olegario Diaz, Commander of the Manila detachment of the Guardia Civil, "Report Upon the Insurrection Against Spain," Oct. 28, 1896. In Retana, Wenceslao E. (ed.), Archivo del Bibliofilo Filipino (Madrid, X Minuesa de los Rios) 1897, p. 342.
(24) Agoncillo, Op. Cit. p. 66.
(25) Ibid, p. 66.
(26) de los Santos. Epifanio, The Revolutionists: Aguinaldo, Bonifacio, and Jacinto (Manila, National Historical Commission) 1973, p. 85. De los Santos, born in 1871, was studying in Manila at the time of the revolution. The essays on Bonifacio and Jacinto were first published in 1917-18.
(27) Foreman, John, The Philippine Islands, third ed. (London. Kelly & Walsh) 1906, p. 258.
(28) de Jesus, Gregoria, "Mga Tala ng Aking Buhay,” in Alzona, Encarnacion (ed.) Julio Nakpil and the Philippine Revolution (Manila, n.p.) 1964, p. 166.
(29) Ibid, p. 166.
(30) Guerrero, Leon Ma., The First Filipino (Manila, National Historical Commission) 1971, p. 315.
(31) Agoncillo, Op. Cit. p. 106.
(32) Ibid, p. 282. Here again Agoncillo seems to be following the account given by Isabelo de los Reyes, C.f. Sensacional Memoria, Op. Cit. p. 80.
(33) Manuel, Op. Cit. pp. 351-53.
(34) Ibid, pp. 154-56.
(35) Ibid, pp. 59-61.
(36) Ibid, pp. 92-94, Zaide, Op. Cit. p. 4.
(37) Manuel, Op. Cit. pp. 234-35.
[67]
9
The Katipuneros: Revolutionary Leadership in City and Province
Rizal's view of the lowly character of the Katipunan was widely shared in ilustrado circles. In the opinion of Felipe Calderon, a plantation-owner and successful lawyer, the insurrection was “organized by the most ignorant element of the people.”1 The first Filipino historian of the Katipunan, the propagandist Isabelo de los Reyes, stressed in a pamphlet published in 1900 that the revolutionary association was a “plebeian society,” whose members "belonged to the workmen and peasant classes" and among whose founders "there was not a single rich man, nor one of a learned profession."2 Behind such observations lay either distaste or condescension. Later accounts, however, have often echoed this uncomplicated analysis of the Katipunan's composition more approvingly, presenting the insurrection as a salutary popular reaction against ilustrado gradualism and prevarication. The elaboration of this argument forms the central theme, for instance, of Teodoro Agoncillo's The Revolt of the Masses, which since its publication in 1956 has been generally accepted as the most authoritative study of the subject. The Katipunan, Agoncillo asserts at the outset, was a "distinctively plebeian society."3 Objectively, he writes, the "middle class" reformists had proven themselves "the bulwark of the Spanish reactionary party,” too concerned with their own position and consequently too cautious to make any real impact on the nature of colonial rule.4 Through their failure to provide effective leadership, their inability to understand the common people's aspirations and their snobbish aloofness they had won "the hatred of the masses" and direction of the nationalist cause had passed into other hands."5 The sentiments of the Katipuneros, Agoncillo agrees with Isabelo de los Reyes, were that "where there are learned men everything is brought to naught by discussions.” For this reason, they "did not want to admit the learned" into the association.6
Apart from their more militant and immediate commitment to separation from Spain, to what extent did the Katipuneros' ideas and aspirations differ from those of writers such as Rizal, Lopez-Jaena and del Pilar? Historiographical opinion on this question has undergone an evolution similar to that on the place of the Katipunan within Philippine society. Having observed that the association had been organized "from below,” many ilustrados felt that the revolutionaries had departed from the enlightenment liberalism of the propagandists. The Spanish accusation that "upper class
[68]
Filipinos" were the true financiers and directors of the Katipunan was clearly unfounded, Felipe Calderon asserted, because the association was "socialistic."7 Florentino Torres, a prominent magistrate, testified that "the socialist character of the revolution of 1896… is a patent and positive fact."8 The ultimate goal of the Katipuneros, according to Isabelo de los Reyes, was the establishment of a "communistic republic."9 Such comments sowed the seed of historical orthodoxy. The officially approved chronicler of the American occupation, James LeRoy, saw in Katipunan propaganda "an element of resentment toward the wealthy" and expressed his agreement with the judgment of Calderon.10 The Filipino historian, Gregorio Zaide, in his monograph on the association, accepts without comment that the Katipunan's final objective was the "communistic republic" mentioned by de los Reyes.11 But again it is Agoncillo's The Revolt of the Messes that develops the hypothesis at greatest length. The Katipunan, Agoncillo writes, was "fundamentally a mass idea based on utopian soclalism."12 While the "middle classes" wanted to preserve their privileged position in Philippine life, the masses, symbolized by the Katipunan, wanted to overthrow the existing social order.13 Hostile to the "landowning class," Agoncillo asserts, the association aimed to abolish the basis of cacique power through the implementation of agrarian reform.14 Independence achieved and the grip of the "ruling class" destroyed, it would establish an economic democracy.16
Despite the weight of historical opinion behind them, the interpretations of Katipunan composition and purpose outlined above present a seriously distorted picture of the revolutionary association's character. Over-simplication and looseness of terminology have often compounded their error. One major source of confusion, pointed out by the historian Cesar Majul in a comment on the remarks of Florentino Torres, is that the mass character of the revolution per se has occasionally been taken as evidence of a "socialist" nature.16 Some observers have failed to appreciate, in other words, that although class and ideology are clearly related, they are nevertheless essentially distinct. To avoid repeating this mistake, therefore, and for the sake of greater clarity, the respective questions of composition and purpose will here be discussed individually.
The customary point of departure for proponents of the thesis that the insurrection was organized by "the most ignorant element" of the Filipino people has been the figure of Andres Bonifacio, popularly commemorated as the "Great Plebeian,” founder of the Katipunan and its President at the outbreak of the 1896 revolution. Agoncillo, for instance, despite his own evidence to the contrary, contends that Bonifacio was "almost illiterate" and "belonged to the lowest class."17 Even from the scanty information available on Bonifacio's life, it is certainly clear that the Katipunan Supremo was not of the "lowest class" of Philippine society.
The first of six children of Santiago Bonifacio, a tailor, and Catalina de Castro, a Spanish mestiza, he was born in the district of Tondo in 1863. His father had at one time served as the district's teniente mayor.18 The circumstances of the family are not recorded, but the parents were able to send Andres to private tutors in the locality and provide him with a sound elementary education.19 His studies were supplemented in the home, it is said, by a
[69]
"learned and patriotic aunt."20 However, his formal schooling was curtailed when he was orphaned at the age of fourteen and obliged to start work to help support his younger brothers and sisters. While still young he made and sold walking sticks and paper fans and, being a gifted calligraphist, designed advertising posters.21 Seeking more regular employment in his late teens, he joined Fleming & Co., a firm dealing in goods such as rattan and tar, afterwards transferring to another foreign commercial company, Fressel.& Co., where he remained until the outbreak of the revolution. Although traditionally presented as the decisive verification of Bonifacio's lowly proletarian credentials, the Supremo's occupational status in these two firms has apparently never been precisely determined, descriptions of his various positions ranging from "night watchman"22 and "warehouse-keeper"23 through "clerk messenger"24 to the distinctly less modest appellations of "agent"25 and "broker".26 Whatever the exact duties involved, however, employment in the capital's foreign houses offered good opportunities for advancement, and was much sought after. "The fathers of many who at this day figure as men of position and standing,” commented a British observer of Manileño society, “commenced their careers as messengers, warehousekeepers, clerks etc. of the foreign houses."27
Circumstantial evidence that 8onifacio's fortunes were indeed on the rise is provided by his marriage in 1893 to Gregoria de Jesus, the daughter of a gobernadorcillo of the town of Caloocan, a few miles north of Manila. His bride's upbringing had been far from impoverished. Looking after family interests with her sister "to enable our two brothers to study in Manila", Gregoria recounted later in a memoir, "I had to go out in the country to supervise the planting and harvesting of our rice and to supervise our tenants and laborers and also to pay the wages of my father's workers on Sunday mornings."26 It is also worth noting that although Gregoria's father hesitated before consenting to the marriage with Bonifacio, his initial reluctance was not based on any suggestion that his daughter's intended partner was beneath her station or that she would find it difficult to adjust to a less comfortable way of life. His objection, Gregoria recalled, was that Bonifacio was a freemason and therefore an enemy of the Church and likely to fall afoul of the authorities.29 This points to another inconsistency in the view of the Katipunan leader as a simple plebeian. The majority of Filipino masons in the late nineteenth century were men of some substance and education, and masonry constituted the principal organizational focus for the domestic following of the expatriate ilustrado propagandists. When Rizal, himself a mason, returned to the Philippines in 1892 wishing to launch a new association for the "study and application of reforms" it was to the leading officers of Manila's lodges that he first turned for assistance.30 The association resulting from this initiative was the Liga Filipina. According to Agoncillo, it "personified the middle class", to whom "it was inconceivable that the unlettered masses should be given the privileges of their respectable group.”31 In establishing the Liga, he asserts, the intellectual and wealthy gradualists "set up a sort of caste system from which the unlettered commoners were contemptuously excluded."32 Yet Bonifacio was one of Liga's founding members.
The foregoing discussion is not intended to infer that Bonifacio belonged
[70]
to the same social stratum as men like Rizal. Educationally he was excluded from true ilustrado status by his unfinished schooling, and financially he probably was one of the least affluent of the original Liga members. But the relative modesty of Bonifacio's circumstances in this company should not disguise the fact that he occupied a position closer to the centre of the social pyramid than to its base, closer to the petty-bourgeoisie than the proletariat. His principal associates in the early Katipunan moved in much the same milieu. Among those who joined Bonifacio in founding the Katipunan in July 1892, for instance, was Teodoro Plata, then a court clerk in the Manila district of Binondo and later at the court of first instance in Mindoro. Plata was a first cousin of Gregoria de Jesus and subsequently married one of Bonifacio's sisters.33 Together with Bonifacio and Plata in the first Katipunan "triangle" was Ladislao Diwa, a court clerk in the district of Quiapo, Manila. From his home province of Cavite, where his father was a master carpenter in charge of a workshop at the Spanish naval yard, Diwa had first come to Manila as a working student. After graduating from San Juan de Letran he enrolled in law at the University of Santo Tomas, where he first encountered Bonifacio, then clandestinely distributing propaganda literature to the students. The two became firm friends and for a while Diwa lived as a boarder in Bonifacio's house.34
Elected president of the first supreme council of the Katipunan established late in 1892, was Deodato Arellano, brother-in-law of Marcelo H. del Pilar and himself an active figure in various groups that supported the expatriate writers and worked for the reformist cause at home. When the Liga Filipina was launched by Rizal, he was chosen council secretary. Arellano worked as a clerk in the arsenal of the Spanish artillery corps.35 His successor as President of the Katipunan Supreme Council, elected in February 1893, was Roman Basa, who occupied a similar clerical position in the Spanish naval headquarters. Introduced to the association by Ladislao Diwa, a town-mate from San Roque in Cavite, Basa served as Katipunan president for two years, finally being replaced by Bonifacio himself.36 During his incumbency a number of organization changes were made that sought to improve and systematize recruitment to the association, including the formation of district branches known as popular councils. Assigned to head the popular council of Santa Cruz, Manila, was Restituto Javier, son of a Tondo property owner and compadre and fellow-employee of Bonifacio.37 Assigned to build Katipunan support in the Manila district of Trozo was a half-brother of Javier, Jose Turiano Santiago, who also held the position of secretary to the Katipunan Supreme Council. A graduate of Santo Tomas, Santiago made a living as an accountant and commercial agent.38
Aside from Santiago and Ladislao Diwa, at least two other Supreme Council officers -- Pio Valenzuela and Emilio Jacinto -- had attended the Islands' only University. Valenzuela, whose parents "belonged to the local aristocracy" of Polo, Bulacan, was a fourth year medical student when he joined the Katipunan. Another compadre of Bonifacio, he served as fiscal and physician on the Council.39 Jacinto, who had enrolled at Santo Tomas after graduating from San Juan de Letran, was first elected to the Supreme Council in 1895, soon after his nineteenth birthday. Despite his youth, he thereafter
[71]
became the closest of all Bonifacio's associates and the association's leading publicist and theoretician. To comply with the Katipunan principle of using only the vernacular, it is interesting to note, Jacinto had first to make himself proficient in Tagalog. The son of a well-known Tondo merchant, he had grown up more accustomed to using a corrupt form of Spanish then current among those Manileños "who had some visible means of livelihood and those who pretended to be among the ilustrado,"40
The antecedents, education and careers of men like Plata, Diwa, Arellano, Basa, Javier, Santiago. Valenzuela and Jacinto thus indicate that none of the most prominent Manila-based Katipuneros, any more than Bonifacio, could be classified as either “ignorant" or typically proletarian. On the contrary, the most striking link among those named is that they all occupied intermediate positions in Philippine society, more especially positions which brought them into direct contact, in a variety of contexts, with the institutions, policies and representatives of Spanish colonial rule. Those who had studied at the clerically-administered colleges and university felt, as Rizal had a decade earlier, that despite the prestige attached to attending such institutions the instruction they provided was anachronistic in both style and content, an affront to Filipino dignity and aspirations. Bonifacio and Javier, as employees of a foreign business firm, could witness at first hand the difficulties and frustration caused by the restrictive and complex legislation that surrounded overseas trade. The trend toward greater protectionism, they would be aware, not only endangered the chances of trade-based prosperity but also posed an immediate threat to the living standards of Filipinos in all walks of life by raising the prices of basic imported commodities. Plata and Diwa, court clerks, and Arellano and Basa, employees of the military, had an inside view of the actual machinery of colonial administration and control. The prejudice, corruption and injustice that pervaded the insular bureaucracy would form an integral part of their daily experience. In the absence of information on the individual motives underlying the separatist commitment of the Katipunan's directors, therefore, their common proximity to the educational, economic or administrative aspects of Spanish sovereignty itself seems to offer a partial explanation. The main burden of colonial rule may have fallen on less fortunate shoulders, but few were better placed to understand its workings and consequences than the leading Katipuneros.
In provincial areas where the Katipunan gained support the association's leaders occupied a position very much comparable to that of their counterparts in the capital. Again they belonged to intermediate social strata, and again they lived and worked at the interface between colonial power and the population. Many already held positions of prestige and influence in their respective towns prior to gaining distinction as revolutionists. Several were members of the principalia, the group formally recognized as the leading citizens of a town from whom the chief functionaries of pueblo and barrio government were elected. Others worked for the principalia as secretaries and interpreters. School teachers were also well represented. As a correlation between contact with the colonizers and revolutionary involvement existed in geographic as well as personal terms, the strategic position of Katipunan leaders at the forefront of local affairs and conflicts is perhaps best Illustrated by the example of Cavite, a
[72]
province immediately south of Manila where both the secular and clerical aspects of Spanish rule were particularly conspicuous, and where the Katipunan gained its firmest organizational foothold.
Before reviewing some of the personalities who headed the Katipunan in Cavite, however, it is necessary to refer briefly to the structure of the colonial local government apparatus with which a large proportion were associated. The principalia who administered the affairs of each town and its related outlying settlements traced their origins to pre-Spanish community leaders whose authority had been recognized by the colonizers and utilized as the cornerstone of a system of indirect rule. From the conquest until the eve of Spanish rule the two key functionaries of this system were the cabezas de barangay and the gobernadorcillo. At the foot of the bureaucratic ladder and the immediate link between government and people, the cabezas de barangay had jurisdiction over a barrio or other unit of equivalent population. By far their most important function was tax-collection, first in the form of tribute and later as a cedula payment. In addition they were in charge of assigning the adult males within their jurisdiction to local public works projects in compliance with the requirement that every year each man should render forty days labor service to the community. Until 1893, it was past and present cabezas alone who constituted the principalia. As such, by a process of indirect election, they chose one of their number to hold the office of gobernadorcillo, known after 1890 as capitan municipal.
The prime duty of the gobernadorcillo was to supervise and coordinate the work of the cabezas with regard to tax collection and the assignment of community labor, but he had besides a wide range of additional responsibilities. These included the maintenance of peace and order; the exercise of judicial authority in petty civil and criminal cases; administration of the postal service; upkeep of the local jail; providing for the needs of travelers; and ensuring that the inhabitants had gainful employment and were good Catholics. To assist him in these multifarious tasks the gobernadorcillo had a host of elected, appointed and drafted assistants, among whom might be mentioned the tenientes mayors, fellow principales, variously designated to look after police matters, the boundaries of cultivated lands and the branding of livestock; a corps of cuadrilleros or constables staffed on a rotation basis from among the townsmen; and a directorcillo, usually a person with some college education and a knowledge of Spanish who worked in a paid capacity as interpreter and municipal clerk.41
Subsequently by far the most famous of the Caviteño principales who played a leading role in the Katipunan was Emilio Aguinaldo. In March 1897 Aguinaldo was to be elected president of the Revolutionary Government that succeeded the Katipunan as the directorate of the insurrection. His father, Aguinaldo recounted in his Memoirs, had been "regarded as one of the learned of the times and a brilliant lawyer."42 He was also a landowner and had served several times as town gobernadorcillo. After his elementary education, Emilio enrolled at San Juan de Letran, joining a number of brothers and sisters already studying in Manila. Before completing his college course, however, he returned to his home town of Cavite Viejo to help his widowed mother manage
[73]
the family interests. Aguinaldo first entered the ranks of the principalia at the age of seventeen, becoming a cabeza de barangay, he later recalled, primarily because his mother saw the position as a means of avoiding military conscription.43 After about eight years as a cabeza, in January 1895, he succeeded his elder brother Crispulo (who was also to become a revolutionary general) as a capitan municipal of his town. Emilio joined the Katipunan later the same year, travelling to Manila for initiation by Bonifacio and taking the nom de guerre of Magdalo, a name subsequently also applied to the Katipunan council which incorporated Cavite Viejo and other municipalities of eastern
Cavite. In late 1896, once the guardia civil had been cleared from a number of these towns, the Magdalo council was reorganized as a sub-provincial insurgent government, headed by a form of cabinet.44 Elected as Magdalo president at this time was Baldomero Aguinaldo, a cousin of Emilio. Also a native of Cavite Viejo, Baldomero had attended the Ateneo Municipal and the University of Santo Tomas. Prior to the revolution he had worked in various capacities for the municipal bureaucracy, holding in succession the positions of registrador de titulos, directorcillo and justice of the peace.46 At least two of the Aguinaldos' principal associates in the Cavite Viejo Katipunan, Candido Tirona and Santiago Dario, served under Emilio as cabezas de barangay.48 Tirona, interestingly enough, came from a family long regarded as the chief rivals of the Aguinaldos in Cavite Viejo politics, but as more vital matters claimed their attention as well as that of their respective followers the petty factionalism of the past was set aside.47 Shortly after the revolution began, Tirona was acclaimed as Emilio's successor, under revolutionary conditions, as capitan municipal. He was also appointed Minister of War in the reorganized Magdalo council. Another former cabeza in this council was Pio del Pilar, later a celebrated general.48
In addition to Crispulo and Emilio Aguinaldo, a third member of the Magdalo Cabinet, Vito Belarmino, had had experience of the senior office of pueblo government, having held the post of gobernadorcillo in the town of Silang. His background was remarkably similar to that of Emilio Aguinaldo. His father, too, had in his time presided over the town tribunal and he also had for a time attended San Juan de Letran. Belarmino's formal education also had been cut short, in his case by recurrent outbreaks of cholera that disrupted life in the capital in the early 1880's. Prior to his election as gobernadorcillo he gained a wide knowledge of Silang affairs both as a cabeza and secretary of the tribunal.48
Principales and men of comparable, social position also dominated the leadership of the Magdiwang, the Katipunan council that in the early months of the revolution acted as the sub-provincial insurgent government in the municipalities of western Cavite. Elected Magdiwang president was Mariano Alvarez, capitan municipal of Noveleta, the town in which the council was originally based. An uncle of Bonifacio's mother-in-law, Alvarez was one of the oldest of the revolutionary leaders of 1896, having been born in 1831.50 Prior to joining the Katipunan his association with the cause of reform had spanned over at least two decades. In the same way as Emilio Aguinaldo and Vito
[74]
Belarmino, he had acceded to municipal office virtually as a matter of family tradition, his father having served as Noveleta gobernadorcillo. His other qualifications for office, education at one of the friar-administered colleges in Manila and an apprenticeship in town politics as directorcillo, also conform to a now familiar pattern.51 By profession a school teacher, Alvarez was one of many of this calling who were active in the Cavite Katipunan. A second school teacher in the Magdiwang cabinet was Artemio Ricarte, a graduate of Letran and the Jesuit Escuela Normal.52
As in the Manila sections of the Katipunan and in the Magdalo council in eastern Cavite, a number of Magdiwang leaders were linked by ties of kinship. Santiago and Pascual Alvarez, a son and nephew of Mariano, respectively held the posts of Magdiwang General-in-Chief and Secretary-General.53 Two brothers from an "Illustrious family" of the town of Maragondon, Emiliano and Mariano Riego de Dios, both men with an extensive formal education, respectively occupied the positions of Minister of Commerce and Brigadier-General.54 Completing the Magdiwang cabinet were Ariston Villanueva, a past gobernadorcillo of Noveleta, as Minister of War; Mariano Trias, a sugar planter and graduate of Letran, as Minister of Welfare and Justice; and Diego Mojica as Minister of Finance.56
In one important respect the urban Katipuneros differed significantly from their provincial counterparts. The contrasting backgrounds of Bonifacio and Aguinaldo illustrate this point fairly well. However prominent Bonifacio might have become in the various merchant houses for whom he was employed, by the very nature of their operations advancement to positions of senior responsibility in such firms was all but precluded. Moreover, Bonifacio did not own land which was still the standard measure of wealth and power in the Islands. Aguinaldo, on the other hand, was an important landowner in his district and accordingly, had no social superior in his cultural and political milieu. Simply put, the advancement of Bonifacio's career depended largely upon his willingness and ability to carry out orders: Aguinaldo's class matrix demanded that he give them.
[129]
[Notes]
(1) Calderon, Felipe G., "Memoirs of the Philippine Revolution” in Galang, Zoilo M. (ed.) Encyclopaedia of the Philippines (Manila, Exequiel Floro) 1957, Vol. XV, p. 215.
(2) de los Reyes, lsabelo, La Religion del “Katipunan"(Madrid, Tip. Lit. de J. Corrales) 1900, pp. 30, 37.
(3) Agoncillo, Teodoro, The Revolt of the Masses (Quezon City, University of the Philippines Press) 1956, p. 1.
(4) Ibid, p. 283.
(5) Ibid, p. 282.
(6) de los Reyes, Isabelo, La Sensacional Memoria de Isabelo de los Reyes sobre la Revolution Filipina de 1896-97 (Madrid, Tip. Lit. de J. Corrales) 1899, p. 80, quoted in Agoncillo, Op. Cit. p. 106.
(7) El Renacimiento, August 11 and 18, Sept. 1 and 18, Oct. 1, 1906, quoted in LeRoy, Jamas A., “The Philippines 1860-1898 -- Some Comment and Bibliographical Notes” in Blair, Emma H., and James A. Robertson, The Philippine Islands 1493-1898 (Cleveland, Arthur C. Clark Co.) 1903, Vol. III, p. 185.
(8) Florentino Torres evidence submitted before the Second (Taft) Philippine Commission Report, p. 191.
[130]
(9) de los Reyes (1899) Op. Cit. p. 78; (1900) Op. Cit. p. 37.
(10) LeRoy, Loc. Cit.
(11) Zalde, Gregorlo F. History of the Katipunan (Manila, Loyal Press) 1939, p. 12.
(12) Agoncillo, Op. Cit. p.115.
(13) Ibid, pp. 107, 287.
(14) Ibid, pp. 107, 284-85.
(15) Ibid, pp. 116, 307.
(16) Majul, Cesar Adib, The Political end Constitutional Ideas of the Philippine Revolution (Quezon City, University of the Philippines Press) 1967, p. 135.
(17) Agoncillo, Op. Cit. pp, 283-84.
(18) Eminent Filipinos (Manila, National Historical Commission) 1965, p. 63; Zaide, Gregorio F. Great Filipinos in History (Manila, Verde Bookstore) 1957, p. 105. Constantino, Renato, A Past
Revisited (Manila, Tala Publications) 1976, p. 162.
(19) Agoncillo, Op. Cit. p. 66; Manuel, E. Arsenio, Dictionary of Philippine Biography (Quezon City, Filipiniana Publications) 1955, Vol. I, p. 253.
(20) Zaide, Op. Cit. p. 14.
(21) Agoncillo, Op. Cit. p. 66.
(22) Taylor, John R.M., The Philippine Insurrection Against the United States (Pasay City, Eugenio Lopez Foundation) 1971, Vol. 1, p. 62. This is the description used in Taylor's introduction.
(23) Olegario Diaz, Commander of the Manila detachment of the Guardia Civil, "Report Upon the Insurrection Against Spain," Oct. 28, 1896. In Retana, Wenceslao E. (ed.), Archivo del Bibliofilo Filipino (Madrid, X Minuesa de los Rios) 1897, p. 342.
(24) Agoncillo, Op. Cit. p. 66.
(25) Ibid, p. 66.
(26) de los Santos. Epifanio, The Revolutionists: Aguinaldo, Bonifacio, and Jacinto (Manila, National Historical Commission) 1973, p. 85. De los Santos, born in 1871, was studying in Manila at the time of the revolution. The essays on Bonifacio and Jacinto were first published in 1917-18.
(27) Foreman, John, The Philippine Islands, third ed. (London. Kelly & Walsh) 1906, p. 258.
(28) de Jesus, Gregoria, "Mga Tala ng Aking Buhay,” in Alzona, Encarnacion (ed.) Julio Nakpil and the Philippine Revolution (Manila, n.p.) 1964, p. 166.
(29) Ibid, p. 166.
(30) Guerrero, Leon Ma., The First Filipino (Manila, National Historical Commission) 1971, p. 315.
(31) Agoncillo, Op. Cit. p. 106.
(32) Ibid, p. 282. Here again Agoncillo seems to be following the account given by Isabelo de los Reyes, C.f. Sensacional Memoria, Op. Cit. p. 80.
(33) Manuel, Op. Cit. pp. 351-53.
(34) Ibid, pp. 154-56.
(35) Ibid, pp. 59-61.
(36) Ibid, pp. 92-94, Zaide, Op. Cit. p. 4.
(37) Manuel, Op. Cit. pp. 234-35.
<< Home