Richardson, Jim. "Andres Bonifacio in Cavite, April 24, 1897". (January 2006)

Introduction

General Santiago Alvarez recounts in his memoirs that in early April 1897 Andres Bonifacio transferred his headquarters from the friar estate house in Naic to the barrio of Limbon, some twenty kilometers to the south in the municipality of Indang. He was accompanied "not only by his troops, but also by followers, men and women, old and young alike."¹ Since late February, the Spaniards had been waging a successful counter-offensive against the insurgent forces in Cavite and by now had already recaptured several towns. Bonifacio’s personal authority as the leader of the Katipunan, meanwhile, had been devastatingly challenged by the momentous assembly held in Tejeros on March 22, at which a new revolutionary government had been created and Emilio Aguinaldo had been elected President. When Bonifacio moved to Limbon, says Alvarez, he was already planning finally to leave Cavite and journey north to the mountains above San Mateo, closer to Manila. For a while, though, Bonifacio and his followers set up a small fortified encampment in Limbon, and he remained there until his arrest by Aguinaldo’s soldiers on April 28. As is well known, he and his brother Procopio were then put on trial for plotting to assassinate Aguinaldo and overthrow the government. Found guilty, they were executed on May 10.

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Serrano, Leopoldo R. "Mga Pangyayari sa Buhay ni Andres Bonifacio." Historical Bulletin 4.3 (September 1960 [1958]): 90-99.

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Mga Pangyayari sa Buhay ni Andres Bonifacio*

Sinulat ni Leopoldo R. Serrano

Itinuturing kong isang dakilang karangalan ang pagbibigay sa akin ng pagkakataong makapagsalita sa harap ng mga piling kasapi ng makabayan at bantog na "Kapatirang Alagad ni Bonifacio, Inc." Ayon sa liham na ipinadala sa akin ng kaibigang Exequiel Villacorta, ang simpatiko at masipag na kalihim ng inyong Kapatiran, noong ika-12 ng buwang ito, ako raw ay "isa sa mga nagsaliksik tungkol sa buhay at nagawa ng ating Bayaning Bonifacio." At noong kami'y magkausap sa kanyang tanggapan sa Abenida Rizal ay hiniling niya sa akin na isalaysay ko ang ilang mga pahgyayari sa buhay ng dakilang Supremo ng Katipunan bago sumiklab ang Himagsikan dito sa ating bayan.

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May, Glenn Anthony. "Historian says he's not questioning Bonifacio's heroism -- but historians' methodology -- Part II." Philippine Daily Inquirer 12.168 (Monday, 26 May 1997): E4-5.

[E4]

To summarize, then, Guerrero and Villegas have done nothing to answer the questions I have raised about the Bonifacio letters. They have not established the provenance of the documents; they have not explained why they were altered by the transcriber; they have not explained the inconsistencies in penmanship.

In fact, they have not provided a single reason for doubting my conclusions about Bonifacio letters -- that they are of dubious authenticity and that scholars who rely on them, as Guerrero and Villagas have, do so at their peril.

Fourth, Guerrero and Villegas attack me for calling into question certain parts of Reynaldo Ileto's brilliant book "Pasyon and Revolution."

Although I have great respect for Ileto and his book, I do criticize him because, in my view, he incorrectly links Bonifacio to the Philippine millenarian tradition. Ileto's argument about this linkage rests largely on his lengthy analysis of a prose work entitled "Ang Dabat Mabatid ng Mga Tagalog," which appeared in the Katipunan's newspaper Kalayaan and was often attributed to Bonifacio.

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Quezon, Manuel L. "Andres Bonifacio, The Great Plebeian." Historical Bulletin 7.3 (September 1963 [1929]): 245-248.

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Andres Bonifacio, The Great Plebeian*

By Manuel L. Quezon

Fellow Countrymen:

In designating my wife to lay the cornerstone of the monument which is to be erected in memory of the Father of the Katipunan and in requesting me to address you on this solemn occasion, you have conferred upon us a signal honor for which we are profoundly grateful.

When Rizal consecrated his doctrines with his precious blood, he was at once venerated by all. But unlike Rizal, Bonifacio was not immediately hailed as a national hero by the intellectual and well-to-do classes of our society. The masses, possessing that unerring Judgment by which they appraise true patriots, were the first ones who elevated Bonifacio to the pedestal of a hero of our people. The observance which we hold today is a solemn declaration by the entire country that Andres Bonifacio is deserving of the undying gratitude of his people, and that the memory of his life and deeds would keep the flame of inspiration ever burning in the hearts of generations yet unborn.

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May, Glenn Anthony. "Afterthoughts: Nationalism and Myth." Inventing a Hero: The Posthumous Re-Creation of Andres Bonifacio. Madison, Wisonsin: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1996. 163-6, 193.

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Afterthoughts

Nationalism and Myth

What remains of the Philippine national hero, Andres Bonifacio? The data we have about his early years turn out to be undocumented, and hence unproven. Some of them may be true, but we have no way of determining which are and which are not. His famous writings -- the newspaper article "Ang Dapat Mabatid ng mga Tagalog," the poems that schoolchildren have committed to memory, the translation of Rizal's poem, and the others -- cannot be shown to be his compositions. He may have written some of them; then, again, he may not have. Bonifacio's letters to Jacinto -- the core of his personal correspondence and, up to now, a major source on Bonifacio's role in the Philippine Revolution -- also may not have been his literary products. Indeed, my examination of their provenance, physical appearance, and linguistic properties suggests that they are probable forgeries. The standard account of the most important event in his life, the Tejeros assembly, has been exposed as a deception designed to hide the true role played at Tejeros by the author of the narrative, the former revolutionary Artemio Ricarte. Bonifacio's personality turns out to be a historian's imaginative construction. The claim that he was intimately connected with the Philippine millenarian tradition cannot be supported. In the end, the Bonifacio we have before us is mostly an illusion, the product of undocumented statements, unreliable, doctored, or otherwise spurious sources, and the collective imagination of several historians and a memoirist.

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