The Epic of Filipino Nation Building

BIMBO CABIDOG

The unfinished revolution then and now

Be careful of what you say, for it can be turned against you. In times of danger, nothing puts things better than this rule of thumb.

But even silence can have something to say. Quiet can be disquieting.

In the quiet of a land smothered by tyranny, at the waning years of the Spanish era, something was building. Dr. Jose Rizal, the renowned Malayan patriot who fought with his pen for an oppressed people, was deported by the Spanish colonial authorities. His works were censored. On July 7, 1892 six colleagues of his convened a secret council.

Andres Bonifacio, Deodato Arellano, Valentin Diaz, Teodoro Plata, Ladislao Diwa and Jose Dizon met at No. 72 Azcarraga St. in the Spanish governorate capital of Manila, Las Islas de Filipinas. The six were members of the La Liga Filipina, an organization Rizal founded to seek for liberal and progressive reforms within the Spanish colonial framework. Faced by intensifying repression and the futility of reformism, the men agreed to form a revolutionary society.

The clandestine meeting gave birth to the Kataastaasan Kagalang-galang na Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan. The concept of country has long lain in the minds of the people in the various provinces experiencing the same dark force. Finally, the historic day did not end without founding the revolution to terminate foreign rule and hoist the flag of national independence through armed struggle.  

The Katipunan, as the revolutionary society was popularly known, exemplified brotherhood with three defining objectives: a political, moral, and civic. It advanced freedom from colonial bondage, which has to be fought with arms. But the fraternity also coded the personal duty to help the poor and oppressed, as well as propagate good manners, hygiene, and morality.

From founding, recruitment went full blast over the months ahead through a triangle method of networking that avoided detection by the rulers. Affiliation with the secret society spread like wild fire. The spark on that day of the KKK’s founding quickly turned into a Luzon-wide conflagration. Political awakening rode on a highroad. The archipelago went into a flux. The people rose.

Draftees to the Katipunan went through a Mason-like initiation rite. The new recruit is ushered to a cubicle surrounded by nationalistic signs and symbols. He is seated at a dimly-lit table in front of a cabinet with black drapery. On the table rests a long knife, a revolver and a questionnaire that must be answered for approval of members.

The questions were: What was the condition of the Philippines in the early times? What is the condition today? What will be the condition in the future?

The future would come so soon. On August 19, 1896 the Spanish authorities found out the secret anti-colonial organization. The discovery gave impetus to insurrectionary action. Four years after the KKK’s founding, Philippine Revolution erupted.

At a large assembly in Balintawak, Caloocan the leaders of Katipunan put up a revolutionary government named "Haring Bayang Katagalugan." Thereupon, it declared armed revolution throughout the archipelago. Supreme head Bonifacio ordered an assault on the city of Manila.

The first military action flopped. But the surrounding parts revolted. Armed uprisings flared up in eight provinces of Central Luzon. They then engulfed areas of Southern Tagalog, such as Cavite. The revolutionaries gradually liberated towns in the first wave of attacks during the early months.

The new republic was now in full course. In November 1897, the revolutionary movement established the Republic of Biak-na-Bato. It promulgated a constitution.

Thus, the Filipino nation state came into being, nurtured by unwavering courage in the struggle for freedom, and nourished by the blood of heroes. For 350 years, the country languished under foreign oppression. Now, its brave fighters would no longer stop at anything other than national liberation.

But imperialist intervention didn’t let the strife taste complete victory. Just as the revolutionary struggle was sweeping the provinces and surging towards the ultimate crown, the capture of the capital of Manila, the North American nation which was by then already a neo-colonial power inserted itself. American naval operators plucked the defunct general, Emilio Aguinaldo, from exile in Hong Kong, and propped him up to take over again the revolution’s leadership.

General Aguinaldo had earlier signed the Pact of Biak na Bato, which surrendered the revolution to the Spaniards for $600,000. Thereafter, he and his cohorts took $400,000 of the money into exile. He then isolated his persona from the revolutionary movement, which however did not heed the treacherous agreement of surrender, but continued to conduct warfare against the colonial rulers.

Under the auspices of the US high command in Asia, Aguinaldo maneuvered to take control of the revolutionary forces in 1898. The forgiving leaders easily trusted him and yielded. But through him, the Americans halted the Filipino divisions advancing around the fringes of the capital.

The new foreign invaders conducted a mock battle to capture the seat of power. They later effected the surrender of the Spanish government sealed by the Treaty of Paris, which handed the Philippine Islands to the Americans for $20 million.

The epic of Filipino nation building would wind yet to another saga. The Americans dug in, while the revolutionary forces were being grounded around Manila by the US-Aguinaldo ruse. They were told to stay put for further developments. The development came out to be the arrival of hundreds of fresh troop reinforcements to the small American military contingent biding time in the conquered capital.

Shots by the American sentry at the San Juan bridge access, killing two Filipino officers, ignited the Philippine-American war. The US infantry regiments began to blast away with their much superior weaponry and training to push back the native freedom fighters, which retreated to the nearby provinces and further to the remote mountain interiors and hinterlands of the country.

The US imperialists have made good the McKinley dream of assimilating the country purportedly to teach Filipinos self-government. American officialdom used the lie that the natives were still a bunch of savages, to justify occupation. The seemingly altruistic purpose of teaching them self-government was of course nothing but rhetorical sugar-coating of what was pure and simple naked aggression.

The Filipino revolutionaries were already well enlightened of the liberal and democratic ideals that fueled the French revolution and other nationalist risings in Europe. What the natives learned from the new colonizers was not democracy as stated, but betrayal accompanied by the cruel whiplash of counterrevolution. The unfortunate turn of events lead to the US imperialists’ brutal pacification campaign towards the turn of the century. The unleashed might of that military push netted the slaughter of 600,000 Filipinos.

Nation-statehood for the Filipinos would be postponed for another 50 years of neo-colonial domination. But although the revolutionary mainstream was dissipated, the undercurrents of struggle persisted. They made their way into the scattered millennarian revolts that erupted throughout the American colonial occupation. They took the likes of the movements led by Gregorio Aglipay, Teodoro Asedillo, Macario Sakay, Papa Faustino Ablen of the Pulajenes, and all the other local revolutionists that strung up the threads of the struggle for freedom and independence through their own peculiar religious couching of the mission.

There are those who avow that the country is not really independent until now, that the grant of Independence by the Americans in July 1946 was a mere farce, for they continued thereafter to hold sway over the country and dictate on its successive governments. But whatever is its current status, the building of the Filipino nation never really ceased. It is an epic that continues until now to sail uncharted waters, like the Greek epics depicted by Homer.

Many refreshing and invigorating revolutionary streams will yet flow from the headwaters of that historic moment, when the nation was conceived in secrecy at a house in Azcarraga, Tondo and six brave men dared to remove their colonial blindfolds, recast their citizenship, wage struggle, and carry it to the logical end.

Sometimes, pioneers of something new have to keep quiet to start its noise. The KKK lit the fireworks of anti-colonial struggle that way. Nation is not usually born from the labor of multitudes. It may take only the sperm of a liberating idea from somebody or a tiny group of men and women to fertilize epic sagas.