CAVITE
DURING THE AMERICAN REGIME
The City of Manila fell to the Americans on August
13, 1898, after a few token shot fired by the Spaniards in accordance with the
secret agreement between Spanish and American representatives signed behind the
back of General Aguinaldo. Under the agreement, Aguinaldo and his revolutionary
army were not allowed by the Americans to enter the Walled City and part in the
victory celebration. It was at this juncture that the Filipinos saw the perfidy
committed by their so-called ally – the Americans. As further evidence of the
American duplicity, General Wesley Merritt, commander of American military
government in the Philippines.
Writing from Singapore on September 23, 1898, Howard W.
Bray, the long-time British resident in Manila who acted as interpreter in the
Aguinaldo-Spencer Pratt talks prior to Aguinaldo’s return to the Philippines,
said, ”The capture of Manila is not the capture of the Philippines, as the
possession of New York would not be possession of America.” Thinking along the
same line, Aguinaldo and his revolutionary forces merely ignored the American
military government.
Meanwhile, after a few-weeks Aguinaldo transferred
the sent of his revolutionary government from Bacoor to Malolos Bulacan,
presumably to prepare for the worst, since the American had shown themselves to
be utterly undeserving of Filipino trust and respect.
Then followed the Treaty of Paris of December 10,
1898, which Felipe Agoncillo, representing Aguinaldo and the newly established
independent Philippine government, condemned as not binding on the Filipino
people because he, their representative was not allowed to take part in its
deliberations. Another proof of the Americans bad faith as U.S. President
McKinley’s proclamation of December 21, announcing the American “policy of
benevolent assimilation,” and at the same time directing the American military
government to extend all over the Philippines the sovereignty of the United
States. It should be remembered that McKinley issued the proclamation long
before the U.S. Senate ratified the Treaty of Paris. Had the American
government under McKinley ceased to have any moral and legal scruples?
Again, on January 20, 1898, McKinley appointed the
First Philippine Commission headed by Jacob G. Schurman to investigate
conditions in the Philippines and to make recommendation to the president of
the United States as to the kind of government to be established in the
country. Several times the treaty had failed to muster enough votes for
ratification because it was strongly opposed by some American senators who
believed it was unfair to the Filipinos. But not with standing this opposition,
McKinley went ahead appointing the First American Commission to lay the groundwork
for the formal occupation of the Philippines. The McKinley administration had
to provoke the San Juan Bridge incident wherein a Filipino soldier was shot and
killed by an American volunteer, then falsely blaming the Filipinos for
starting the shooting in order to secure
the treaty on February 6. It was against this background of American duplicity that the
American rule started in the Philippines.
On March 22, 1900,
Military Governor Elwell S. Osis issued General Order No. 40 providing for the
reorganization of the local governments in accordance with a plan prepared by a
board consisting of two Filipino jurists, Cayetano Arellano and Florentino
Torres, and three American officers.
The plan was patterned after the Maura Law of Spain. Arellano and Torres had previously been
prominently identified with the Aguinaldo government at Malolos. As the Philippine-American War was still
going on, it is evident that the two had already gone over to American side,
thus “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”
They were the first Filipino collaborators on record.
On the matter of
prominent Filipinos shifting their allegiance to the enemy while their brothers
were still fighting for the country’s survival, General Alejandrino made the
following perceptive observation:
The enlightened class who came to Malolos in order to
fill honorific positions which could serve to shield them against reprisals of
the people for their previous misconduct, flew away like birds with great
fright upon hearing the first gun report, hiding their important persons in
some corner, meantime that they could not find occasion to place themselves
under the protection of the American Army.
Only a few followed the Government (of Aguinaldo) in its odyssey and,
certainly, less enlisted in the army.
Aguinaldo
and his guerilla army were still fighting in the jungles of Northern Luzon when
the Second American Commission headed by William Howard Taft arrived in Manila
on June 3, 1900. Shortly thereafter the
Taft Commission began exercising legislative functions while the military
governor, General Arthur MacArthur, retained his executive power. From September 1900 to August 1902 the
commission enacted a total of 440 laws.
On March 12, 1901,
twenty-one days before the treacherous capture of Aguinaldo in Palanan, Isabela,
the U.S. Congress passed the Army Appropriations Act, together with the Spooner
Amendment sponsored by Senator John C. Spooner of Wisconsin, ending the
military regime in the Philippines.
Consequently, the civil government in the Philippines was inaugurated on
July 4, of that year, with Taft as the first civil governor. The title was changed to governor-general on
February 6, 1905.
Holed
up in his mountain redoubt, Aguinaldo found time to write down some of his
thoughts – thoughts by which posterity will judge him.. In an unsigned and
undated document in Spanish, Aguinaldo admits that his “feeble army” (was)
defeated by the superiority of arms of the North Americans. “We had to abandon and did abandon positions,
forts and towns, not being able to resist their powerful impulses,” he says,
“but we were not conquered.”
Aguinaldo adds that “God
himself, in creating man, endowed him with freedom.” Then, quite sarcastically, he asks, “How can one man deprive
another of it?” He vows that he would
prefer death rather than submit to foreign domination. Finally he puts down all his noble thoughts
in this brief prayer.
Oh,
Great Architect of the Universe! Thou,
who has created us and has endowed us with free powers to think and work, deign
to give us light in this dark position to guide us according to thy will, thou
who has given us liberty and domain, give us courage and moans with which to
defend ourselves against our invaders.
Thou, who have created us free, permit us not to fall into slavery. Oh, Most High Lord, permit that my existence
be all for the service of my people and when
I must leave this vale, may it be by a hostile bullet.”
No
finer, nobler, and more exquisite thoughts of a patriot at bay could have been
written! Death by a hostile bullet
meant a heroic death – death in combat – death standing on one’s feet and not
on bounded knees.
No sooner had the
Americans captured Aguinaldo by all means possible, fair or foul, including the
use of Macabebe mercenaries, top American officers disguised as prisoners of
war, and forged documents, than they began the colonization of the Philippines
in earnest. On November 4, 1901, the
Taft Commission enacted the Sedition Law, which made any advocacy of
Independence or separation from the United States whether by peaceful or
forcible means, punishable by death or long imprisonment. This was followed by the enactment of the
Brigandage Law on November 12, 1902, punishing by death or long imprisonment
membership in an armed band, even if proved only by circumstantial
evidence. It was under the Brigandage
Act that the Filipino patriot, Macario Sakay, was hanged to death in 1907. To the very end Sakay was protesting against
his inhuman punishment, saying that he was not a brigand but a sincere patriot
working for his country’s freedom.
Reminiscent
of the repressive rule of Spanish Governor-General Valeriano Weyler
(1888-1891), the Taft Commission on June 1, 1903, passed the Reconcentration
Act which empowered the governor-general to authorize the provincial governor
to “reconcentrate” the residents of towns “infested with lardoons or outlaws”
in the poblacion or larger barrios of the municipality so as to deprive
Filipino rebels of their source of provisions and arms. It was Weyler who applied the reconcentration
policy in Cuba in 1896, thereby gaining the appellation “Butcher Weyler” for
his ruthless campaign against the Cuban insurrectos. Finally, the Taft Commission passed the Flag Law of 1907, which
prohibited the display of all kinds of flags, banners, symbols, and other
paraphernalia used by the rebels, as well as the flags, banners, and emblems of
the Katipunan. It was not until 1919,
under the Jones Law that the Flag Law was repealed by the all-Filipino Philippine
Legislature, thus legalizing the display of the Filipino flag.
The Reconcentration Act
was applied with the greatest severity in Cavite, drawing trenchant editorials
from journalist and poet-laureate Fernando MA. Guerrero (1873-1929), editor of
El Renacimiento (The Awakening).
Guerrero ran a series of articles exposing the sordid and dehumanizing
conditions of the Caviteños “reconcentrated” by the American authorities in
Bacoor, Cavite. Once account of the
incident says:
“…Some 600 to 1,000
residents of Bacoor, Cavite, had been arrested and hauled into an improvised
detention cell on suspicion that they were bandits or in cahoots with
revolutionaries… The writ of habeas corpus had been ignored. The residents were summarily seized and
herded together in a compound of only 400 square meters or less than a square
meter for each of the, on the ground floor of an old convent which had been
used as a garage and partly as a stable.
The place was filthy and nauseating with horse manure. The dirty, bare brick floor was not fit for
human beings to sleep on. Some of the
prisoners had to sleep in a sitting position.
Food was meager. It was a
torture diet of rice and coffee, with a wee bit of dried fish added to the dish
for lunch. In the first two days of
confinement, many of the detainees were down with fever. The men were forced into hard work under the
sun and in the evening they were driven back to their prison cells like
animals.
Angered by the expose of
El Renacimiento, the American-controlled Philippine Constabulary filed a libel
case against Guerrero and Lope K. Santos, editors of the Spanish and Tagalog
sections, respectively, of the crusading paper. Tried in the sala of Judge Manuel Araullo, the case lasted almost
seven months. In February 1906, the
judge handed down a verdict acquitting the two editors. The case proved to be a cause celebre, and
El Renacimiento was hailed as the “guardian of civil liberties and defender of
the oppressed.”
General Mariano Trias,
who had been handpicked by General Aguinaldo to succeed him in case of his death
or capture, was the first appointive governor of Cavite under the American
regime. He served four years,
1901-1905. Trias was succeeded by Col.
Louis J. Van Schaick, also appointive.
But why an American army officer?
As a consequence of the
continued fighting in many parts of Cavite between American forces and Filipino
rebels, the province became so depopulated that the Philippine Commission
headed by William H. Taft, the first civil governor, approved Public Act No.
947 of 1901 reducing the municipalities of Cavite from 22 to nine; namely (1)
Imus (absorbing Dasmariñas and Bacoor); (2) Kawit (Noveleta and Rosario); (3)
Silang (Amadeo and Carmona); (4) Mendez (Bailen); (5) Indang (Alfonso); (6)
Naik (Ternate); (7) San Francisco de Malabon (Tanza); (8) Maragondon
(Magallanes); and (9) Cavite (San Roque and Caridad),
It would seem that the
peace and order situation in Cavite had not improved at all during the Trias
administration, forcing Luke E. Wright (1904-1906), the first governor general,
to appoint Colonel Van Schaik as the second provincial governor. It was during the Van Schaik term
(1905-1907) that many cases of human rights violations took place, which editor
Guerrero denounced in no uncertain terms in his paper El Renacimineto.
In 1908 Leonardo R.
Osorio of San Francisco de Malabon became the first elective and third
provincial governor (908-1909). Because
of the unsettled peace and order condition in Cavite, it had not been possible
to elect the provincial governor earlier although the Provincial Code (Act No.
83) had been passed by the Philippine Commission as early as February 6,
1901. Under the code, the governor was
elected not by universal suffrage but by the municipal councils of the
province. Coming from a well-to-do
family, Osorio spent his own money to help poor families and indigent prisoners
in the provincial jail. Osorio ran for
the Philippine Senate in 1924, but was defeated forcing him to retire from
politics and devote his time to private business and civic activities.
General Tomas Mascardo of
Kawit, under whom Major Manuel L. Quezon served during the revolution, was
elected provincial governor in 1910. He
served for only one term, and then he quit politics. He was succeeded in 1912 by Antero S. Soriano of Sta. Cruz de
Malabon, the first political kingpin of Cavite. Soriano was reelected for a second term in 1916, and when this
expired in 1919 he ran for the Philippine Senate, becoming Senate president
Quezon’s trusted lieutenant in the upper chamber of the Philippine Legislature.
In 1925 when Cavite’s
Representative-elect Augusto Reyes died before the opening of the House of
Representatives, Soriano was prevailed upon by Quezon to run in the special
election for the vacant position in Cavite.
He was elected by an overwhelming majority. However, Soriano was not able to finish his term in the lower
house because death put a halt to his remarkable political career.
After Soriano four other
provincial governors were elected before the start of the Commonwealth
government; namely, Luis O. Frerre, Sr., 1919-1921; Raymundo C. Jeciel,
1922-1925; Fabian Pugeda, 1925-1931; and Pedro F. Espiritu, 1931-1934. Of the four, Governor Espiritu was easily
the most colorful. For fourteen years,
1921-1935, Espiritu was the mainstay of the opposition Democrata Party in
Cavite. Endowed with a golden tongue,
he had no peer as orator in both Tagalog and Spanish in the entire
province. A journalist of note, he
edited Tagalog as well as Spanish language papers, including Ang Bansa (The
Nation), LA Nacion, Ang Republika (The Republic), and Ang Bayani (The Hero).
Starting his political
career as the lone representative of Cavite in the lower house, 1921-1924,
Espiritu was just beginning his second term as provincial governor when he fell
ill and died on his 48th birthday, May 5, 1935.
Under the Philippine Bill
of 1902 passed by the United States Congress, Cavite had only one
representative in the Philippine Assembly, the first all-Filipino lawmaking
body in he country. The assembly
constituted the lower house; and directly above it was the Philippine
Commission, or upper house, composed of Americans and Filipinos. The chairman of the commission was the
incumbent American governor-general.
Ironically, Cavite’s
first representative in the first Philippine Assembly, 1907-1908, was a
non-Caviteño: Rafael Palma of Manila.
He had established residence in Cavite for a few months to be eligible
for election. A journalist and first
editor of El Renacimiento, 1901-1903, Palma proved to be too good for his job
as a member of the lower house (Philippine Assembly) such that on July 6, 1908,
he was appointed to the upper house (Philippine Commission).
In 1916 the U.S. Congress
passed the Jones Law creating the two-chamber Philippine Legislature, which
consisted of the Philippine Senate (upper house) and House of Representatives
(lower house). Palma ran for the fourth
senatorial district comprising Manila, Laguna, Rizal, and Bataan and was duly
elected. While serving as senator he
was appointed by Governor-General Francis Burton Harrison as secretary of the
interior in the first cabinet ever organized under the American regime. Palma thus became the first Filipino to
occupy concurrently two high government positions, to wit: as senator
(legislative) and as cabinet man (executive).
Besides Palma, the
following were Cavite’s representatives in the Philippine Assembly and later in
the House of Representatives:
(1) EMILIANO Tria Tirona,
1908-1912; (2) Florentino Joya, 1912-1916; (3) Emiliano Tria Tirona, second
term, 1916-1919; (4) Emilio P. Virata, 1919-1921; (5) Pedro F. Espiritu,
1921-1924; (6) Augusto A. Reyes, 1926; (7) Antero S. Soriano, 1925-1929; (8)
Fidel Ibanez, 1929-1931; (9) Emiliano Tria Tirona, third term, 1931-1934; and
(10) Francisco T. Arca, 1934-1935.