DOCUMENTS OF THE Katipunan
HOME Supreme Council Record of meeting held on April 3, 1896, in Kawit Source: Archivo General Militar de Madrid: Caja 5677, leg.1.23
Introduction On April 3, 1896, Andres Bonifacio and three other members of the Supreme Council of the Katipunan - Pio Valenzuela, Emilio Jacinto and Pantaleon Torres - went to the town of Kawit in the province of Cavite. There, at ten o’clock in the evening, Bonifacio presided over the formation of a Katipunan branch called Magdalo after the town’s patron saint, St. Mary Magdalene. Transcribed below is Jacinto’s formal record of the meeting, at which it was agreed to elect “Magdalo” (Emilio Aguinaldo) as president of the branch; “Panahun” (possibly Silvestre Legaspi) as fiscal; “Mabangis” (Benigno Santi) as secretary; and “Sukat na” (Candido Tria Tirona) as treasurer. At some point before the outbreak of the revolution in August 1896 the branch (By.) was elevated to the status of a popular council or Sangunian Bayan (Sb.), and at that juncture Baldomero Aguinaldo, Emilio’s first cousin, was elected as its president. In his memoirs, Emilio Aguinaldo mentions Bonifacio coming to Kawit to help establish the Magdalo branch, but he mistakenly says this happened “one day in June 1895” – ten months before it actually did. Aguinaldo likewise brings forward the date he joined the Katipunan by a year, remembering his initiation as being in March 1895 when in fact it was on March 25, 1896 – just nine days before the meeting in Kawit and just five months before the start of the revolution.[1] Santiago Alvarez also mentions the formation of the Magdalo branch in his memoirs (he had accompanied Bonifacio and the other members of the KKK Supreme Council to Kawit), and he dates the occasion correctly as Good Friday, 1896. The meeting was held in Aguinaldo’s own house. Just as it was about to begin, he relates, shouts were heard outside: “Fire! Fire in Manila!” Alvarez continues: “We went to the stone bridge to east of the house to look across the bay to Manila. When we saw the huge conflagration the Supremo [Bonifacio] was dismayed and he fell limply against the stone wall. He said he felt certain that his house and his furniture had gone up in flames.”[2] Sadly, his fears were not unfounded.
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K . K . K. N. M. A. N. B. Kataastaasang Sangunian (Pinagsulatan) Sa ngalan ng Bayang tinubuan at sa lalung kapurihan at kaayusan ng K.K.K. Ngayong ikatatlo ng Abril ng taung isang libo, walong dan, siam na puo’t anim, pinulong nitong K.S. sa pamagitan ng k.p, ng k.t., ng k.kal at ng kas. Bulalakaw, ang mga kpon ng bayan ng Kawit hukuman ng Tangway. Sa ikasampung daguk ng bakal sa tansu ng gabi ay binuksan ang kar.[3] at tuloy ipinagsabi ng k.p. na ang kadahilanan ng pagpupulong na ito’y ang pagtatayu ng isang By., sapagka’t ang mga kpon. nitong nasabing bayan ay lumapit na may kabilangang kinakailangan ayon sa talagang palakad. Sa bagay na ito’y pinagkaisahang alanan ng Magdalo ang By. na itinatayu. Ginawa ang paghahalal ng mga pinuno, at lumabas na p. ang kap. na Magdalo, t. ang kap na Panahun, kal. ang kap. na Mabangis at ty. ang kap. na Sukat-na. Pinapanumpa at pinatangap ng kani-kanilang katungkulan ang mga kap. na ito, at saka ipinahayag ng k.p. na buhat sa araw na ito’y natatayu ang By. Magdalo sa bayan ng Kawit hukuman ng Tangway. Nangaral ang k.p. at ipinakilala ang mga gaganapin sa bawat katungkulan. Kapagkatapus maggawad ng panunumpa ang lahat na di isisiwalat nsa kanino pa man ang namasdan at napakingan, niwakasan itong pagpupulong sa ikalawang daguk ng bakal sa tansu ng umaga ng kinabukasan. Kawit ikatatlo ng Abril ng taung 1896. Ang K. P. Ang K. Kal Pnllgknzll

Notes

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[1] Emilio Aguinaldo, Mga gunita ng himagsikan (Manila: Cristina Aguinaldo Suntay, 1964), pp.31-2. The membership slip signed by Aguinaldo when he joined the KKK is preserved in the Madrid military archives along with those of two other recruits who had travelled with him from Kawit that day, Candido Tria Tirona and Raymundo Mata. The latter figures in Agoncillo’s Revolt of the Masses as a “blind old man” who, posing as a patient, accompanied Pio Valenzuela on his trip in June 1896 to see Rizal in Dapitan. His membership slip shows that he was in fact just 40 at the time, though his signature suggests that he was indeed blind. Archivo General Militar de Madrid, Caja 5393, legajo 5.3; Teodoro A. Agoncillo, The Revolt of the Masses: the story of Bonifacio and the Katipunan (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1956), p.117.

[2] Santiago V. Alvarez, The Katipunan and the Revolution: the memoirs of a general, translated by Paula Carolina S. Malay (Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1992), p.8.

[3] Abbreviation of “karurukan” – summit.