Post by 79thfoot on Oct 10, 2012 3:27:29 GMT -5
I just discovered a real can of worms. Apparently - though I have to see an actual textbook dealing with this time period to bear it out - the US government or the writers of American history (probably both) have made it a policy to minimize and villainize the president of the First Philippine Republic, Generalissimo Emilio Aguinaldo. I thought before that this was just something isolated as I'd heard the same story from my American uncle who was a missionary there for a while (then married my Filipina aunt) and then later on read something in an Osprey book on counter-insurgency. The line is apparently that contrary to what we have been taught and affirm within our history, that Aguinaldo was only the leader of a small insurgent band which did not have the loyalty of the native people at all and in its entirety, that he was a power hungry murderous leader who orchestrated the murder of Bonifacio and Luna, that the Filipinos did not have the capacity to govern themselves and needed the benevolent Americans to sort them out, the whole 'revolt of the Tagals' story that the American government sold to the American people to give them causus belli against their Filipino allies who they sold out, is still being taught and accepted apparently as real history. This gives the Americans the right, in their eyes, to still refer to the Fil-American War as 'the Philippine Insurrection' because Aguinaldo's government was not in any way legal at all. I don't know about you but this persistent and very clearly politically oriented slander hurts my Filipino sensibilities.
Aguinaldo wasn't perfect. No one is. But from all the research I've done I see that he did his best under the circumstances and he was the only person short of Rizal who could have done what he did - create a virtually united revolutionary front and lead it under war circumstances against not one but two colonial powers. Sure there were regional sensibilities and often regional commanders were virtual warlords but they did have to acknowledge his overall authority. As for the Bonifacio-Aguinaldo controversy, I stand by Aguinaldo in this as I see Bonifacio's actions as ultimately reprehensible and a threat to the overall course of the revolution. Bonifacio was a great organizer and he did get the structure of the Katipunan in place - this in and of itself along with the influence of the Propaganda movement and Rizal in particular laid the ground work for a UNITED revolutionary front. No longer did the indio in the Visayas or Mindanao see himself in isolated serfdom to the Spaniards but he saw that this was going on throughout the archipelago. Why else did the friars and Spanish government hate Rizal and his books so much? This allowed Bonifacio to form the Katipunan after La Liga Filipino failed and allowed the Katipunan to be not just a Tagalog movement but as far north as Ylocos and as far south as the settlements of Mindanao. Bonifacio was a superb organizer and the Katipunan, his brain-child, set in motion the course to armed revolution - but he wasn't too good a battlefield commander. His raid on the polvorin at San Juan del Monte ultimately failed and the Katipuneros who were captured including Sancho Valenzuela were shot by firing squad. Other Magdiwang efforts in Manila came to nothing and after skulking around Manila and Morong (Bataan) he went to the one place where the revolution had won distinct success - Cavite Province.
Aguinaldo had been inducted by Bonifacio himself in the Masonic-style Katipunan rites and was recognized as the leader of the Katipunan in his area of Cavite. However, it was Aguinaldo's battlefield success that cemented him as the leader of the revolution in Cavite - winning dramatic victories at Imus (where a 'Braveheart - Stirling' style hold and flank caught the Spanish forces by surprise and routed them) to Binakayan where Filipino trenches built by Belgian trained engineer Edilberto Evangelista defeated a massive Spanish assault. Coupled with the success of Caviteno forces more inclined towards Bonifacio's 'Magdiwang' Party the end of 1896 showed Spain that the Philippine Revolution was a dead serious reality. Then it all started to go wrong.
Bonifacio came to Cavite and began putting on airs - even Dr.Pio Valenzuela, his compatriot, noted that Bonifacio was 'algo despota' - and demanding that he be made leader of the revolution, essentially claiming the success that Aguinaldo had won. Aguinaldo, preparing for the new Spanish offensive that was coming and not considering himself much more than a successful general, was less inclined to play politics as he was to prepare Cavite's defenses. It soon became clear that the revolutionaries had to determine whether a new revolutionary government instead of the Katipunan should lead the revolution and a convention was formed at Tejeros to vote in a new revolutionary government. While all this was going on, the Spaniards were relentlessly attacking with fresh reinforcements from Spain and a dynamic new governor general in charge, Camillo de Polavieja. Aguinaldo was at the front, fighting, not behind the lines politicking, which is where Bonifacio was. When the votes were cast, Bonifacio was voted to a relatively low position, and this position was challenged by one of Aguinaldo's officers since the position required legal know-how, something which Bonifacio, who had been not much more than a middle manager at a trading firm, did not have. Bonifacio was enraged - he had started the Katipunan, he felt that he should be the commander-in-chief and he refused to acknowledge the results of the Tejeros Convention. Thereafter, the two factions of Magdiwang (Bonifacio) and Magdalo (Aguinaldo) were hostile to each other. Bonifacio began to sabotage military operations, pulling troops out of line that were loyal to the Magdiwang Faction and refusing reinforcements at critical stages in the battle. Meanwhile Aguinaldo had just lost his elder brother Crispulo who fought a valiant but doomed delaying action at Pasong Santol just so his younger brother could be sworn in as leader of the Philippine Revolution. In the end, an attempted coup by Bonifacio at Naik was exposed and Aguinaldo was forced to decide what to do with the recalcitrant Supremo. He was in favor of banishment or imprisonment but two of Bonifacio's own subordinates - who had actually been involved at Naik - recommended death. Probably to whitewash their own part in the coup. Aguinaldo then sentenced Bonifacio to death.
This was not enough to save the Revolution, however. Aguinaldo was forced to retreat from Cavite province into the mountainous area in Bulacan in the central part of Luzon. In his fortress at Biak na Bato he fought the Spanish forces to a stand still in guerrilla war. The new Spanish governor General, Fernando Primo de Rivera realized that the rebellion would not be quashed by force of arms alone and proposed a truce. A peace pact was negotiated at Biak Na Bato which promised reforms in exchange for Aguinaldo and his coterie going into exile.
After this, the Americans got involved, the Spanish-American War began and so on and so forth.
Since the beginning the American government saw that it was in their best interests that Aguinaldo be vilified, that his part in the Philippine Revolution be minimized and reduced to nothing more than a bandit chieftain, just the leader of one insurrecto band among many. I can see now how this, coupled with their over-idealization of Rizal, was part of their plan of historical revisionism - something which Filipino historians have also called 'miseducation'. And so it continues today apparently, that American history views Aguinaldo as a villain, no less than Yamanutsa and Homma, a villain whose only crime was he stood up to the might of American arms. They see the factiousness of the nascent Philippine republic and see it as a war among warlords with NO CENTRAL GOVERNMENT rather than a shaky but complete revolutionary government whose generals were arrogant and difficult to control and yet still owed their authority to Aguinaldo and his government. I can see how important it is for America to believe that there was no central government because, as Eddie Izzard so eloquently explained, "No flag no country". If there is no 'flag' - no central government, no civil authority - then rebels are just bandits and their leaders nothing more than insurrectionists and bandit chieftains. Instead of seeing the Katipunan as the basis for a united revolutionary front which would pave the way for nationalist revolutionaries from Luzon to Mindanao recognizing Aguinaldo's authority - how else does one explain that upon Aguinaldo's return the Spanish forces throughout the islands were either put entirely on the defensive or soundly beaten save for those in Manila and the hold outs in Baler? - they choose to see the small pockets of Magdiwang hold outs, the Luna assasination (which as far as I can tell was a power play by Luna - who himself was not without his own faults - against Aguinaldo) or how this or that Igorot tribe refused to give Aguinaldo shelter in his retreat north as examples of how disunited the Philippines was. They cannot accept a united Philippines.
By putting all the blame on Aguinaldo, it also is convenient to make martyrs of those who Aguinaldo had to or was made responsible for executing - Bonifacio and Luna. But really, are those two really as guiltless as we imagine? Bonifacio is the poster boy of the masa and I am willing to acknowledge his drive, his ambition and his talent for organization made possible the Katipunan without which there would have been no revolution. Think about it - in the whole history of the Spanish Philippines NO revolt was ever successful because every revolt was localized. From Suleyman fighting for Maynilad against the steel clad conquistadors of Legaspi through Dagohoy's rebellion, to Silang and Palaris fighting in the North, every single revolt was quashed - and how? By the Spaniards taking a tribe that hated whatever tribe was rebelling and using them as mercenaries to put down their fellow natives. The Spanish army in the Philippines at the time of the Revolution of 1896 was not Castilian white, it was Indio brown! Native Regiments - Magallanes, Jolo, etc. and native paramilitaries - the Guardia Civil - were the backbone of Spanish forces in the islands until the rebellion grew out of hand following Aguinaldo's victories of 1896. It's only then that massive reinforcements of 'expeditionary rifle battalions' - the famed Cazadores' - were shipped in from Spain. What had changed? The Katipunan. The Katipunan, Bonifacio's brainchild, had changed the political and military game by providing a unifying organization within which the disaffected natives, whether they were Tagalogs in Manila, Ylocanos in the north or Visayans in Panay and Negros, could be made part of a single revolutionary organization that was poised to strike as a united front. All throughout late 1896, the rebellions would break out in various places in the archipelago and Spain would not be able to call in a tribe of mercenaries to quash it because all the tribes were united against her.
That is not to say that everything was all good. Power struggles and betrayals seem to be sadly endemic to a race as passionate as the Filipinos and in the Aguinaldo-Bonifacio and Aguinaldo-Luna power struggles it eventually got to the point where only one would survive. But does that make the 'victim' totally innocent? As explained above Bonifacio endangered the Philippine Revolutionary cause by creating political trouble rather than mediating a solution. Bonifacio was ultimately jealous of Aguinaldo's success and was undermining him - he was defeating his own revolution when Spain's best general was crashing in. Can anyone really fault Aguinaldo for wanting to stop this distracting and destructive sideshow from getting any worse? And how about Luna - yes he was instrumental in creating a 'modern professional army' but let's not forget that he and the other upper class mestizo illustrados had held aloof from the first phase of the Philippine Revolution. I suspect that Luna and many of his men had been Spanish loyalists but when Spain was beaten by America, they refused to accept it and sided with Aguinaldo if only to get back at America. Many of Luna's officers were ex-Spanish Army - Jose Torres Bugallon, who died fighting against the Americans in Manila for example. The native regiments were joining the Philippine Revolutionary Army, one even defected wholesale and there was a huge groundswell of popular support for Aguinaldo's revolutionaries all across the islands. The problem was, before the army had enough time to 'gel' as a national formation, they found themselves in a war with a much more powerful, professional army. Luna and many of the other generals, for example 'the boy general' Gregorio del Pilar, had egos the size of football fields and Luna's penchant for slapping soldiers (something which is deeply insulting in the Filipino machismo mindset) didn't make him any friends (any more than it did General Patton, come to think of it). Luna also botched the defense of a strategic river crossing when he personally took several battalions of troops and some artillery to 'punish' a recalcitrant rival, General Tomas Mascardo, at the time when the American forces were about to force a river crossing and what should have been a massacre for the Americans turned into a rout for the Filipinos. So it's not like Luna didn't bring a measure of guilt upon himself.
One might question in response how united the American colonies were - Washington himself had to surmount a coup attempt by Conway and Gates, Benedict Arnold, who might have been the Antonio Luna of the American Revolution defected to the British side after extremely shabby treatment by the American congress and the issue of Loyalists who fought on the British side as loyal subjects of the crown, including the legendary Robert Rogers, founder of the Rangers whose rules are still recited by American rangers today. All these issues are swept under the rug to present a picture - a myth if you will - of a united United States.
I am sorry but I cannot accept these very biased and subjective, not to mention politically inspired American myths as fact when my history tells me otherwise. They are no more factual than America taking half-naked bow and arrow armed members of indigenous tribes in the hinterlands, shipping them off to the St. Louis World's Fair and presenting them as examples of 'Filipinos'. They are part of American myth making designed to create an impression among the American people that they were right in supporting a war of aggression that was unjustified in view of their oft-trumpeted stand on freedom and independence and a blight upon their image as a beacon of freedom in the world. Imperialist conquest cannot be justified by lies - at least the British were clear that they were empire builders. I would ask that America simply renounce its pretentions to being 'freedom-loving' and supporting the cause of 'freedom' in the world and be clear about what it really desires. Manifest Destiny is just newspeak for imperialism.
Again, I think that in this case, I will have to agree to disagree with the 'American version' of things.
Aguinaldo wasn't perfect. No one is. But from all the research I've done I see that he did his best under the circumstances and he was the only person short of Rizal who could have done what he did - create a virtually united revolutionary front and lead it under war circumstances against not one but two colonial powers. Sure there were regional sensibilities and often regional commanders were virtual warlords but they did have to acknowledge his overall authority. As for the Bonifacio-Aguinaldo controversy, I stand by Aguinaldo in this as I see Bonifacio's actions as ultimately reprehensible and a threat to the overall course of the revolution. Bonifacio was a great organizer and he did get the structure of the Katipunan in place - this in and of itself along with the influence of the Propaganda movement and Rizal in particular laid the ground work for a UNITED revolutionary front. No longer did the indio in the Visayas or Mindanao see himself in isolated serfdom to the Spaniards but he saw that this was going on throughout the archipelago. Why else did the friars and Spanish government hate Rizal and his books so much? This allowed Bonifacio to form the Katipunan after La Liga Filipino failed and allowed the Katipunan to be not just a Tagalog movement but as far north as Ylocos and as far south as the settlements of Mindanao. Bonifacio was a superb organizer and the Katipunan, his brain-child, set in motion the course to armed revolution - but he wasn't too good a battlefield commander. His raid on the polvorin at San Juan del Monte ultimately failed and the Katipuneros who were captured including Sancho Valenzuela were shot by firing squad. Other Magdiwang efforts in Manila came to nothing and after skulking around Manila and Morong (Bataan) he went to the one place where the revolution had won distinct success - Cavite Province.
Aguinaldo had been inducted by Bonifacio himself in the Masonic-style Katipunan rites and was recognized as the leader of the Katipunan in his area of Cavite. However, it was Aguinaldo's battlefield success that cemented him as the leader of the revolution in Cavite - winning dramatic victories at Imus (where a 'Braveheart - Stirling' style hold and flank caught the Spanish forces by surprise and routed them) to Binakayan where Filipino trenches built by Belgian trained engineer Edilberto Evangelista defeated a massive Spanish assault. Coupled with the success of Caviteno forces more inclined towards Bonifacio's 'Magdiwang' Party the end of 1896 showed Spain that the Philippine Revolution was a dead serious reality. Then it all started to go wrong.
Bonifacio came to Cavite and began putting on airs - even Dr.Pio Valenzuela, his compatriot, noted that Bonifacio was 'algo despota' - and demanding that he be made leader of the revolution, essentially claiming the success that Aguinaldo had won. Aguinaldo, preparing for the new Spanish offensive that was coming and not considering himself much more than a successful general, was less inclined to play politics as he was to prepare Cavite's defenses. It soon became clear that the revolutionaries had to determine whether a new revolutionary government instead of the Katipunan should lead the revolution and a convention was formed at Tejeros to vote in a new revolutionary government. While all this was going on, the Spaniards were relentlessly attacking with fresh reinforcements from Spain and a dynamic new governor general in charge, Camillo de Polavieja. Aguinaldo was at the front, fighting, not behind the lines politicking, which is where Bonifacio was. When the votes were cast, Bonifacio was voted to a relatively low position, and this position was challenged by one of Aguinaldo's officers since the position required legal know-how, something which Bonifacio, who had been not much more than a middle manager at a trading firm, did not have. Bonifacio was enraged - he had started the Katipunan, he felt that he should be the commander-in-chief and he refused to acknowledge the results of the Tejeros Convention. Thereafter, the two factions of Magdiwang (Bonifacio) and Magdalo (Aguinaldo) were hostile to each other. Bonifacio began to sabotage military operations, pulling troops out of line that were loyal to the Magdiwang Faction and refusing reinforcements at critical stages in the battle. Meanwhile Aguinaldo had just lost his elder brother Crispulo who fought a valiant but doomed delaying action at Pasong Santol just so his younger brother could be sworn in as leader of the Philippine Revolution. In the end, an attempted coup by Bonifacio at Naik was exposed and Aguinaldo was forced to decide what to do with the recalcitrant Supremo. He was in favor of banishment or imprisonment but two of Bonifacio's own subordinates - who had actually been involved at Naik - recommended death. Probably to whitewash their own part in the coup. Aguinaldo then sentenced Bonifacio to death.
This was not enough to save the Revolution, however. Aguinaldo was forced to retreat from Cavite province into the mountainous area in Bulacan in the central part of Luzon. In his fortress at Biak na Bato he fought the Spanish forces to a stand still in guerrilla war. The new Spanish governor General, Fernando Primo de Rivera realized that the rebellion would not be quashed by force of arms alone and proposed a truce. A peace pact was negotiated at Biak Na Bato which promised reforms in exchange for Aguinaldo and his coterie going into exile.
After this, the Americans got involved, the Spanish-American War began and so on and so forth.
Since the beginning the American government saw that it was in their best interests that Aguinaldo be vilified, that his part in the Philippine Revolution be minimized and reduced to nothing more than a bandit chieftain, just the leader of one insurrecto band among many. I can see now how this, coupled with their over-idealization of Rizal, was part of their plan of historical revisionism - something which Filipino historians have also called 'miseducation'. And so it continues today apparently, that American history views Aguinaldo as a villain, no less than Yamanutsa and Homma, a villain whose only crime was he stood up to the might of American arms. They see the factiousness of the nascent Philippine republic and see it as a war among warlords with NO CENTRAL GOVERNMENT rather than a shaky but complete revolutionary government whose generals were arrogant and difficult to control and yet still owed their authority to Aguinaldo and his government. I can see how important it is for America to believe that there was no central government because, as Eddie Izzard so eloquently explained, "No flag no country". If there is no 'flag' - no central government, no civil authority - then rebels are just bandits and their leaders nothing more than insurrectionists and bandit chieftains. Instead of seeing the Katipunan as the basis for a united revolutionary front which would pave the way for nationalist revolutionaries from Luzon to Mindanao recognizing Aguinaldo's authority - how else does one explain that upon Aguinaldo's return the Spanish forces throughout the islands were either put entirely on the defensive or soundly beaten save for those in Manila and the hold outs in Baler? - they choose to see the small pockets of Magdiwang hold outs, the Luna assasination (which as far as I can tell was a power play by Luna - who himself was not without his own faults - against Aguinaldo) or how this or that Igorot tribe refused to give Aguinaldo shelter in his retreat north as examples of how disunited the Philippines was. They cannot accept a united Philippines.
By putting all the blame on Aguinaldo, it also is convenient to make martyrs of those who Aguinaldo had to or was made responsible for executing - Bonifacio and Luna. But really, are those two really as guiltless as we imagine? Bonifacio is the poster boy of the masa and I am willing to acknowledge his drive, his ambition and his talent for organization made possible the Katipunan without which there would have been no revolution. Think about it - in the whole history of the Spanish Philippines NO revolt was ever successful because every revolt was localized. From Suleyman fighting for Maynilad against the steel clad conquistadors of Legaspi through Dagohoy's rebellion, to Silang and Palaris fighting in the North, every single revolt was quashed - and how? By the Spaniards taking a tribe that hated whatever tribe was rebelling and using them as mercenaries to put down their fellow natives. The Spanish army in the Philippines at the time of the Revolution of 1896 was not Castilian white, it was Indio brown! Native Regiments - Magallanes, Jolo, etc. and native paramilitaries - the Guardia Civil - were the backbone of Spanish forces in the islands until the rebellion grew out of hand following Aguinaldo's victories of 1896. It's only then that massive reinforcements of 'expeditionary rifle battalions' - the famed Cazadores' - were shipped in from Spain. What had changed? The Katipunan. The Katipunan, Bonifacio's brainchild, had changed the political and military game by providing a unifying organization within which the disaffected natives, whether they were Tagalogs in Manila, Ylocanos in the north or Visayans in Panay and Negros, could be made part of a single revolutionary organization that was poised to strike as a united front. All throughout late 1896, the rebellions would break out in various places in the archipelago and Spain would not be able to call in a tribe of mercenaries to quash it because all the tribes were united against her.
That is not to say that everything was all good. Power struggles and betrayals seem to be sadly endemic to a race as passionate as the Filipinos and in the Aguinaldo-Bonifacio and Aguinaldo-Luna power struggles it eventually got to the point where only one would survive. But does that make the 'victim' totally innocent? As explained above Bonifacio endangered the Philippine Revolutionary cause by creating political trouble rather than mediating a solution. Bonifacio was ultimately jealous of Aguinaldo's success and was undermining him - he was defeating his own revolution when Spain's best general was crashing in. Can anyone really fault Aguinaldo for wanting to stop this distracting and destructive sideshow from getting any worse? And how about Luna - yes he was instrumental in creating a 'modern professional army' but let's not forget that he and the other upper class mestizo illustrados had held aloof from the first phase of the Philippine Revolution. I suspect that Luna and many of his men had been Spanish loyalists but when Spain was beaten by America, they refused to accept it and sided with Aguinaldo if only to get back at America. Many of Luna's officers were ex-Spanish Army - Jose Torres Bugallon, who died fighting against the Americans in Manila for example. The native regiments were joining the Philippine Revolutionary Army, one even defected wholesale and there was a huge groundswell of popular support for Aguinaldo's revolutionaries all across the islands. The problem was, before the army had enough time to 'gel' as a national formation, they found themselves in a war with a much more powerful, professional army. Luna and many of the other generals, for example 'the boy general' Gregorio del Pilar, had egos the size of football fields and Luna's penchant for slapping soldiers (something which is deeply insulting in the Filipino machismo mindset) didn't make him any friends (any more than it did General Patton, come to think of it). Luna also botched the defense of a strategic river crossing when he personally took several battalions of troops and some artillery to 'punish' a recalcitrant rival, General Tomas Mascardo, at the time when the American forces were about to force a river crossing and what should have been a massacre for the Americans turned into a rout for the Filipinos. So it's not like Luna didn't bring a measure of guilt upon himself.
One might question in response how united the American colonies were - Washington himself had to surmount a coup attempt by Conway and Gates, Benedict Arnold, who might have been the Antonio Luna of the American Revolution defected to the British side after extremely shabby treatment by the American congress and the issue of Loyalists who fought on the British side as loyal subjects of the crown, including the legendary Robert Rogers, founder of the Rangers whose rules are still recited by American rangers today. All these issues are swept under the rug to present a picture - a myth if you will - of a united United States.
I am sorry but I cannot accept these very biased and subjective, not to mention politically inspired American myths as fact when my history tells me otherwise. They are no more factual than America taking half-naked bow and arrow armed members of indigenous tribes in the hinterlands, shipping them off to the St. Louis World's Fair and presenting them as examples of 'Filipinos'. They are part of American myth making designed to create an impression among the American people that they were right in supporting a war of aggression that was unjustified in view of their oft-trumpeted stand on freedom and independence and a blight upon their image as a beacon of freedom in the world. Imperialist conquest cannot be justified by lies - at least the British were clear that they were empire builders. I would ask that America simply renounce its pretentions to being 'freedom-loving' and supporting the cause of 'freedom' in the world and be clear about what it really desires. Manifest Destiny is just newspeak for imperialism.
Again, I think that in this case, I will have to agree to disagree with the 'American version' of things.