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DOCUMENTS
OF THE Katipunan |
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“The Naik Military Agreement” Undated, c. April 19, 1897. Sources: Photographs of the original document in
Carlos Ronquillo, Ilang talata tungkol
sa paghihimagsik nang 1896-1897, [1898] edited by Isagani R. Medina,
(Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1996), p.111 [the first
page of the document]; and Adrian E. Cristobal, The Tragedy of the Revolution (Makati City: Studio 5 Publishing
Inc., 1997), p.127 [the second page of the document]. |
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Introduction The document transcribed
below, generally known as the “Naik Military Agreement”, proclaims that “some
leaders” – meaning, but not naming, Emilio Aguinaldo and others – have
betrayed the revolution, and that their authority should therefore not be
recognized by the revolutionary army.
All officers and troops, it affirms, will henceforth be united, “by
persuasion or force”, under the command of General Pio del Pilar. The
contested republic The “Naik Military
Agreement” was signed by many of the same individuals – most notably Andres
Bonifacio and the leaders of the Magdiwang council - who four weeks earlier,
on March 23, 1897, had put their names to the so-called “Acta de Tejeros”
in a move to nullify the outcome of the Tejeros convention held the day
before.[1] They thereby denied that a republic, or a
revolutionary government, had just come into being and repudiated Aguinaldo’s
election as president. This action did not have any immediate effect – Aguinaldo took his oath
of office that same night – and nor did it achieve its objective in the
longer run. But for a period of about
a month, until April 24, the opposition voiced in the “Acta” seems to have
deterred Aguinaldo from exercising his presidential powers or completing the
formation of his cabinet. In one of
Bonifacio’s letters to Emilio Jacinto there is an intriguing passage in which
he relates that Magdiwang representatives had met with Aguinaldo shortly
after he had sworn his oath as president and had persuaded him “to resign the
office of which he wanted to possess himself.” Aguinaldo had then issued a circular to all
the towns in Cavite, according to Bonifacio, in which he acknowledged that
his election at the Tejeros convention had lacked validity and that the
relationship between the Magdiwang and Magdalo councils should revert to its
former basis.[2] No copy of this circular has yet come to light, and possibly
its message was not as unequivocal as Bonifacio wanted to believe. Aguinaldo does seem to have decided,
though, that it would be judicious to defer his assumption of presidential
powers until such time as the post-election recriminations had subsided and
the dissentients had been mollified or neutralized. In his communications, in early April, he
still used the title “Pangulong Digma” rather than “Presidente”, and they
still bore a Magdalo ink stamp rather than any mark of the republic.[3] It
is significant, however, that on April 7 he addressed a communication to town
presidents in the Magdiwang as well as the Magdalo area of jurisdiction.[4] Some of his supporters, moreover,
began to address him as “Presidente”. [5] Beyond doubt, he himself wanted to assume
that position just as soon as he could overcome the challenge to his
authority from Bonifacio and the Magdiwang camp. Military
crisis The factionalism within
revolutionary ranks reached this fateful climax amidst a grave and deepening
military crisis. When the Tejeros
convention met on March 22, 1897 only two towns in Retreating southwestwards,
the revolutionists came to a halt during the second week of April 1897 in the
town of Looking back, we know that the internal discord culminated in
tragedy. Before the month of April
came to an end, Bonifacio had been arrested and imprisoned by Aguinaldo’s
troops, and within another ten days he had been tried by a military court for
plotting to overthrow the government, found guilty, sentenced to death and
executed. But hindsight should not
force the conclusion that this grim denouement was inevitable, or could have
been foretold from the moment Aguinaldo had been elected president at
Tejeros. Soon after the revolutionists
arrived in Naik, recounts Santiago Alvarez, there was a tense confrontation
between Aguinaldo and Bonifacio, but it ended with the two leaders embracing
and the onlookers feeling elated that fraternal fellowship and solidarity had
been rekindled “among comrades united in a common cause”.[8] For about a week, Alvarez writes, a spirit
of “close brotherly co-operation” prevailed.[9] Rifles and commissions This reconciliation was not in any way superficial or bogus, at least
on the part of Bonifacio and the Magdiwang leaders. Demonstrating their goodwill and trust in
the most practical manner possible, they authorized the troops under their
command to lend a substantial number of firearms to Magdalo soldiers. Since nobody willingly hands a gun to an
enemy, they cannot at this point have regarded the Magdalo soldiers as
enemies, actual or potential. They saw
them as comrades, literally as comrades-in-arms, whose most immediate and
paramount concern, like theirs, was to defend themselves and the town of When the Magdalo soldiers asked to borrow the guns, Santiago Alvarez
relates, he as captain general of the Magdiwang army, other Magdiwang
leaders, and Bonifacio, gave their consent unanimously and gladly. Their own troops, he recalls, were still
fatigued from their recent battle to defend San Francisco de Malabon, whereas
the Magdalo troops had rested for a few days and were ready to return to the
field. As firearms were scarce, it
made sense from a military standpoint to lend the guns to the Magdalo soldiers,
who would otherwise go to the front armed only with bolos, spears or
daggers. The Magdiwang units
accordingly handed over most of their guns – about two thirds, Alvarez
estimates – to the Magdalo soldiers, and the Balara troops under Bonifacio’s
command did the same. As agreed, the Magdalo
troops then departed with the guns and took up defensive positions in the
trenches that had been dug around the approaches to the town.[10] The Spanish attack, however, did not materialise as soon as
anticipated. The Spanish commander,
General Lachambre, was recalled to A large number of Magdiwang and Balara troops had in effect been
disarmed. To have a chance of bearing
rifles again, it immediately became clear, they would be required to leave
their units and enlist in the Magdalo army, which was in the process of
becoming the army of the revolutionary government.[14] The Magdalo commanders, says Alvarez, went
around the Magdiwang units distributing commissions in the Magdalo army to
any soldier, regardless of rank, who was willing to join.[15] The loss of weapons, Alvarez relates, deepened a decline in Magdiwang
strength that had begun some two months earlier. In early February, the Magdiwang minister
of welfare and justice, Mariano Trias, had defected to the Magdalo camp,
accepting the rank of lieutenant general and taking with him two
senior officers, Mariano San Gabriel and Julian Montalan, and their
respective troop detachments.[16] Trias also persuaded Emiliano Riego de Dios, the Magdiwang
minister of welfare, to defect as well, which in turn very likely led to the
secession of forces from his home town of Cumulatively, these defections tipped the balance of strength between
the two armies. The Magdiwang,
initially the stronger, became much the weaker. In January 1897, Alvarez estimates, the
Magdiwang had about 3,400 men with guns, while the Magdalo had about
2,000. But by March or April the
number of men with guns in the Magdiwang ranks had dwindled to about 400,
while the Magdalo army could count as many as 5,000 men under arms.[20] Though it pains
him to do so, Alvarez frankly admits that the Magdalo ascendancy sprang in
part from the deficiencies of his own side.
“A hidden, grave disease,” he writes, “crept in little by little to
vitiate the Magdiwang government and the Supreme Council of the Sons of the
People headed by the Supremo Andres Bonifacio….and were it not for their sworn
dedication to defending the freedom of the Mother Country, it might perhaps
be said they were undone by stupidity or incompetence.[21] Alvarez neither details the symptoms of the
“disease” nor gives any examples of “stupidity or incompetence”, and latter-day
historians can only speculate about what he means. When he turns
from the causes to the consequences of the Magdiwang army’s decline, however,
Alvarez is far clearer. The Magdalo command’s
refusal to return the rifles borrowed from the Magdiwang and Balara troops,
he indicates, virtually sounded the death
knell of the Magdiwang army as a separate command. As the bulk of their forces were absorbed
into the Magdalo army, he and his senior officers were left in control of
little more than a rump or remnant.
Bonifacio, meanwhile, found his position and influence “virtually
negated”.[22] People who came to the casa hacienda
in Naik to seek assistance, advice or arbitration on some matter were no
longer able to see him. They were
directed instead, Alvarez relates, to the rooms occupied by the embryonic
Government of the Philippine Republic.
The way to Bonifacio’s door was literally blocked, presumably by armed
guards.[23] The
charge of treason Bonifacio and the
Magdiwang leaders thus found themselves deliberately marginalized, and the
Naik Military Agreement might be seen as their last, forlorn attempt to
reverse the tide. But unless further evidence comes to light, we
shall never know for certain what impelled the signatories. The Agreement itself, a very brief document
probably drafted in haste, condenses the reasons for branding “certain
leaders” as traitors in a single sentence.
The traitors, it says, had broken the unity of the revolutionary
forces – an accusation that perhaps embodies the signatories’ overall
resentment at the Magdalo ascendancy.
The traitors had deceived or tempted away (“pag hibo”) the
soldiers – an accusation that probably expresses the particular resentment
stirred by the dispute over rifles and commissions. And, most crucially, they had betrayed the
revolution by coming to an agreement with the Spanish enemy (“pag ayon sa
kaauay na Kastila”). The charge of treason sprang in part from Aguinaldo’s reaction some
weeks earlier to letters he received from two Spaniards urging a negotiated
peace, one from Rafael Comenge, the fiscal general of the colonial
government, and the other from Father Pio Pi, superior of the Society of
Jesus, who wrote at the behest of the auditor general of the army. In his letter, dated March 14, Father Pi
asked Aguinaldo whether he would be willing to meet the auditor general or
some other representative of the government to discuss a cessation of
hostilities. “It may well be, “
he wrote, “that among your own desires and objectives, there are some which
are just and merit attention: if
regarding these complaints some agreement should be reached which would
terminate the war, I am certain that an immediate amnesty would be granted,
with more liberal terms than the amnesty already given.”[24] The day after he received the letter, Aguinaldo later recalled, he
asked its bearer to show it also to Bonifacio and the Magdiwang council. Bonifacio’s reaction, the word got back to
Aguinaldo, was to ask angrily “Why was this letter written to Capitan Emilio
and not to me?”[25] According to Bonifacio himself, Aguinaldo
was willing to abandon the revolution provided the Spanish government agreed
to expel the friars from the Islands, to give representation to the Aguinaldo replied to Father Pi’s letter on March 17. He specified nothing about the terms or
concessions he wished to discuss, but said he was willing to meet “any
delegate of [the colonial] government who comes to the territory under my
command” and he suggested Tuesday, March 24 as a convenient date. [27]
If Bonifacio was annoyed that the
Spanish authorities, through Father Pi, had approached Aguinaldo rather than
himself as the foremost leader of the revolution, he would have been even
more incensed had he known that Aguinaldo spoke in his reply about “the
Republic” and “the government of which I am head”– five days before a
republic had been initiated, or he had been elected as its president, at the
Tejeros convention. At that convention, on March 22, the Spanish peace
overtures were debated, Bonifacio argued strongly against conciliation, and
the delegates, he told Jacinto, had overwhelmingly backed his view that the
fight should go on, that freedom was not negotiable.[28] At more or less
the same time, in any event, the Spanish auditor general decided not to
pursue the idea of talks with Aguinaldo.
Perhaps he and other Spanish officials felt they lacked the proper
authority, and needed first to get directions from the government in The response in the Magdalo camp to the amnesty proclamation, Bonifacio
notified Jacinto, was “despicable”.
Three of the most senior Magdalo leaders – Daniel Tirona, the minister
of war of the Magdalo council; Jose del Rosario, the minister of the
interior; and Lieutenant General Juan Cailles – had traitorously accepted the
pardon (“nag si suklob sa indulto”) and gone over to the
Spaniards. So too had nearly all the
people in the Magdalo town of Tanza, including the parish priest, the whole
lot of them supporters and partisans of Aguinaldo (“kabig o partidos ni
Capitan Emilio”). [31] Soon afterwards, another member of the
Magdalo cabinet – Cayetano Topacio, the minister of finance - had been caught
as he was about to flee the liberated zone.
Presumably hoping to ingratiate himself with the Spaniards, he was
taking with him two Spanish prisoners and a Spanish woman. Bonifacio had ordered his men to tie up
Topacio, who was subsequently tried before a council of war. But he had not been punished, Bonifacio
reported to Jacinto, because of the “favouritism” that prevailed in Bonifacio’s letters thus confirm that the charge
of treason levelled against Aguinaldo and his allies rested on two main
counts. First, they had signalled
their willingness to enter into peace negotiations with the Spaniards, to
abandon the cause of freedom and to settle instead for a list of reforms and
concessions. And then, secondly, some
amongst them had hastily accepted the Spanish offer of amnesty, and instead
of being punished their capitulation had been practically condoned. Bonifacio mentioned these two issues when
he wrote to Jacinto on April 16, and reiterated them in much the same manner
when he wrote again on April 24. Since
the Naik Military Agreement was signed between those dates – on or around
April 19 – it is safe to conclude that its signatories were more inflamed by
these issues than any other. No doubt the indictment was embellished by flying rumours and fanciful
suppositions, but its force stemmed too from a certain political logic. The premise that Aguinaldo and his allies
had become “traitors” vindicated the efforts of Bonifacio and the Magdiwang
leaders to nullify the outcome of the Tejeros convention, and justified their
outrage at the loss of their firearms.
Why, some asked, had Aguinaldo’s partisans been so determined to win
control of the Republic instituted at Tejeros? Why had the officers of the Magdalo army so
adamantly refused to return the rifles loaned by the Magdiwang troops and the
Balara men? Why would they want to
head a Republic, or to command its army, if they were predisposed to abandon
the cause of liberty, to accept the Spanish amnesty? If Aguinaldo and his allies were indeed
traitors, according to this hostile logic, there could be only one answer. They were not content to yield to the enemy
just as individuals, or to lay down just their own weapons. They wanted every revolutionist to abandon
the struggle; they wanted the entire revolutionary army to be disarmed and
disbanded. “Many people,” Bonifacio
told Jacinto, “strongly suspect that they strive so hard to get control of
the government in order to surrender the whole Revolution.”[33] The
meeting at the casa hacienda Convinced
that the revolution was being betrayed, Bonifacio and the Magdiwang leaders
hurried to pre-empt the betrayal. They
needed to alert other revolutionists to the danger, and most urgently they
needed to persuade the officers and troops of the Magdalo army that their own
commander-in-chief was double-dealing.
Every officer and soldier in
the army headed by the “traitor” Aguinaldo, they hoped, would see that they
had a patriotic duty to defect, and to transfer their allegiance to an army
headed by commanders who remained steadfast to the cause. If the Magdalo army could be won over, they
visualized, Aguinaldo would be left discredited and isolated, and the forces
of the revolution would remain intact to fight and win another day. Their ambition, in short, was to depose
Aguinaldo by a putsch, a coup of the state as yet unborn. The scheme had a
very modest, very momentary success. Two
senior Magdalo generals – Pio del Pilar and Mariano Noriel – found the case
against Aguinaldo plausible, and decided to turn against him. Recognizing the value of their defection,
and hopeful that it might prompt a general exodus from the Magdalo ranks,
Bonifacio and the Magdiwang leaders designated Pio del Pilar as captain
general of the new army rather than one of their own generals, and they also
gave Noriel a position befitting his seniority. On or about April
19, the plotters met at the casa hacienda in Naik to constitute the
new army, to confirm Pio del Pilar’s appointment as its head, and,
presumably, to discuss strategy and tactics, to decide exactly how to
proceed. At this point, regrettably, it becomes impossible to know both sides of
the story. Bonifacio does not mention
the meeting in the letter he wrote to Jacinto on April 24, and neither do
Santiago Alvarez or Artemio Ricarte – two other prominent participants – in
their respective memoirs. The only
first-hand accounts that mention the meeting, so far as is known, both come
from the camp the signatories of the Naik Military Agreement denounced as
traitorous, one written by Lazaro Macapagal, a major in the Magdalo army, and
the second by none other than Aguinaldo himself. [34] Macapagal recalls that on the day in question he
had been assigned by Aguinaldo to head a scouting mission in the hills to the
south of Naik. He took along 60 men
with rifles, and they spent the day exploring the terrain and planning what
route the army should take if it was forced to retreat from Naik in the face
of a concerted Spanish attack. When
they returned to the town that evening, they were intercepted by one of
Macapagal’s fellow officers. General
Pio del Pilar, the officer told Macapagal, had given orders that the scouting
party should proceed directly to the casa hacienda, where the troops
would be reviewed (“rerevistahin”) and some food had been
prepared. Once they reached the estate house compound,
Macapagal relates, the soldiers were divided into three companies to get
their meal ration in turn. A colonel,
Escolastico Salandanan, then appeared with Ciriaco Bonifacio, the brother of
the Supremo. The colonel ordered the
first group of men to follow him upstairs to be fed, but Ciriaco remained
downstairs, apparently keeping watch.
When the colonel came downstairs again, he faced the rest of the
soldiers and said “Attention. Listen,
from now on, I (pointing a finger to his breast) will be your officer in
command. Whomever I order you to shoot,
you must shoot him at once, ha?” he shouted loudly. “Yes, Sir,” they
answered. He then commanded the second
group of men to follow him upstairs, and Ciriaco again stayed with the
remainder. The next time Colonel
Salandanan came down the stairs he was accompanied by a group of armed Balara
men, who he posted at the gate, ordering them to shoot anyone who tried to
enter or leave the compound without his permission. Once the guards were in place, he brought
the last lot of Magdalo men upstairs, but left Macapagal behind in the
compound with Ciriaco still on guard.
Referring to himself in his narrative as “the major”, Macapagal
continues: “For quite some time, the major paced back and
forth between the door [of the estate house] and the horse stables….he felt
uneasy and wondered why such things happened….[He could not get out of the
compound] because the guards at the gate would shoot him…. The Supremo’s
brother was also watching him….Whilst [the major] was still pacing between
the stable and the door…Ciriaco [went to sit on a bench] with some of the
guards at the gate. The major went on
walking back and forth, sometimes glancing at his guard so that once the
guard was not looking he could escape….[Eventually] he saw Ciriaco looking
the other way….[The major] was then near a handrail which served as a
division between the horses in the stable.
With lightning speed, while his guard was not looking, he climbed the
handrail, lifted himself up the wall and was able to jump down outside. Being free, he could now run to the house
where General Aguinaldo was staying to inform him of what had happened.”[35] Upon hearing Macapagal’s breathless, startling
news, Aguinaldo immediately ordered troops to hasten to the casa hacienda
and take up positions around the perimeter walls. There they waited, Macapagal says, for the
signal to attack and massacre (“puksain”) all those who had
treacherously captured the Magdalo soldiers.”[36] As soon as he received word that everything
was set, Aguinaldo went to the scene, and after discussing the situation with
his officers he walked up to the gate with two of his generals and a small
detachment of troops. The officer of
the guard halted them, but very courteously: “Please, sir, do not feel
offended, but nobody is allowed to enter.
Those are the orders of the Supremo.”[37] “Is that so?” Aguinaldo responded. “Why, is
it a secret what they are doing upstairs?
Why should they exclude even us who are comrades in the defence of our
country? Those orders must only apply to strangers and the enemies of our
country, but you know me, don’t you?” he asked the officer. [38] “I
do know you, sir, “the guard replied, and he let Aguinaldo and his companions
pass. Ordering the others to remain
within the compound, and only to move if they heard him fire a signal shot,
Aguinaldo walked on alone to the estate house door, where he was again halted
by a guard and again allowed to pass.
Once inside the building, he crept
upstairs to the room where Bonifacio and the Magdiwang leaders were
meeting. Looking through a small crack
in the closed door, he saw Bonifacio reading out an anonymous letter. The letter alleged that he, Aguinaldo, was
planning to surrender all the weapons held by the revolutionists in What most surprised and alarmed Aguinaldo was the
presence at the meeting of the Magdalo generals Pio del Pilar and Mariano
Noriel. From their facial expressions,
he writes, he could see that they were carried away by the anonymous letter,
which they scrutinized very closely.
And then Aguinaldo heard Bonifacio say “I hope that our new Captain
General, Pio del Pilar… will act diligently and with the utmost haste will
put an end to the factional divisions, so that all the troops of our
government can be united into a single army!”[40] At this point, Bonifacio’s brother Procopio
suddenly appeared at Aguinaldo’s side.
“So, you are here!!!” Procopio exclaimed. “Look who’s here, listening to our meeting!”
he shouted out, pushing open the door.
Aguinaldo took four paces into the room and greeted the astonished
gathering with a polite “Good evening to you all”. Andres Bonifacio, who was presiding over
the meeting, responded with equal politeness.
“Come in and listen to our meeting,” he said. “Thank you,” Aguinaldo replied, “but if you
really needed me, then you should have invited me, in which case I would have
joined you without hesitation. So, I
bid you all farewell, sirs.” Quickly he left the room and went looking for the
Magdalo troops who had gone to the estate house after being promised an
evening meal. He found some of the
men, confined in pitch darkness, behind the first door he unlocked, and told
them to go to the outside balcony and await further orders or his signal
shot. Ciriaco Bonifacio then came
looking for him, saying his brother Andres wanted him to return to the
meeting. Aguinaldo followed Ciriaco
back to the meeting room, but again made his excuses and wished everyone a
firm “Goodnight”. He resumed his
search of the house and its bodegas, and was eventually able to locate
and liberate all the remaining Magdalo troops. Whilst he was doing this, he says, a
soldier came running with news that Andres Bonifacio and almost everyone else
who had been at the meeting had just hustled down the stairs, across the
compound and off into the night. “It
was good things happened that way,” Aguinaldo reflects, “because it avoided a
fight with our fellow revolutionists, the spilling of our blood, all for the
sake of just one person!”[41] “For the sake of just one person.” Aguinaldo wrote his memoir thirty or more
years after the event, but it is clear that his words do faithfully reflect
his feelings at the time, and the thinking that guided his response. He held Andres Bonifacio alone culpable for
instigating the failed coup. Everyone
else he was prepared not necessarily to forgive, but at least to conciliate,
to attempt to win over. Apologies Aguinaldo’s first priority was to deal with the
plotters from within his own camp, Pio del Pilar and Mariano Noriel. They had remained at the casa hacienda when Bonifacio and the
Magdiwang leaders had suddenly departed, and Aguinaldo summoned them as soon
as all the detained Magdalo troops had been set free and were eating their
long-delayed supper. The two generals
came straight away, he recalls, but understandably they felt apprehensive and
embarrassed. He assured them immediately
that he bore no grudges against them, and did not propose to punish them in
any way, not even to strip them of their rank. He accepted that it was only their deep
patriotism that had led them to switch their allegiance. Placed in their position, he said, he too
might have been swayed by Bonifacio’s rhetoric and might have accepted a high
position in his army. But, he avowed,
the allegations of Bonifacio and the contents of the anonymous letter were
lies, the inventions of people with dirty consciences (“maruruming budhi”), people who were more interested in
factionalism (“magkahati-hati”) and intrigue than in “delivering our Mother Country from
enslavement.” When he had finished this little peroration, says
Aguinaldo, the generals both exclaimed “Mother of Christ!” They admitted what
he had said was true, and thanked him effusively for saving them from their
folly and sparing their lives. “We
were blinded by false promises, sir,” they said. “We own our mistake.” The misunderstanding, Aguinaldo concludes,
was patched up, and the matter was closed.[42] Departures Bonifacio, meanwhile, left town that same night.[43] Together with his brothers and the Balara
men he went to the neighbouring Co-option The exodus of his most refractory antagonists made
it easier for Aguinaldo to take the next step in consolidating his authority,
which was to propitiate the relatively less refractory Magdiwang leaders who
had remained in Naik. Meeting them
individually and in groups, he was able within the space of two or three days
to convince them, as he had convinced his two dissident generals, that he was
not about to betray the revolution and that he wanted them at this side,
serving the emergent nation, in government or in battle.[46] Most importantly, Aguinaldo persuaded the
Magdiwang leaders to accept at last the legitimacy of the republic instituted
at Tejeros on March 22 and his election as its president, and they agreed to
collaborate with him and his fellow Magdalo leaders in completing the
business left unfinished at Tejeros.
The republic did not have to be held in abeyance any longer. Belatedly, some minutes (“acta”)
were produced as a formal record of the decisions taken at Tejeros, and the
Magdiwang leaders accepted their validity, thereby recanting their previous
insistence that the convention’s decisions were null and void.[47] They also allowed that, in accordance with
these “acta”, the five still-vacant positions in the cabinet should be
filled by people who held the trust of the president (“dapat maguing mga taung katiuala ng Presidente”). Rather than hold elections to fill the
positions, they agreed, it was therefore better to leave it to Aguinaldo to
appoint whoever he wished (“ipagpaubaya
sa sariling palagay”).[48] Aguinaldo now felt secure enough to be magnanimous
towards his erstwhile critics.
Pursuing his strategy of conciliation and co-option almost to an
extreme degree, he appointed Mariano Alvarez, the president of the Magdiwang
council, to the post of Director de Fomento; and Jacinto Lumbreras,
the Magdiwang minister of state, to be his Director de Estado.
His appointees as Director de Gobernación and Director
de Gracia y Justicia, respectively Pascual Alvarez and Severino de las
Alas, were also former Magdiwang members, though they had probably distanced
themselves from the council some weeks before, around the time of the Tejeros
convention.[49] More surprisingly still, Aguinaldo
permitted Artemio Ricarte to retain his position as captain general (or General
en Jefe) of the republic’s armed forces.
Ricarte had been elected to this position at Tejeros on March 22, but after swearing his oath of office on March
23 had issued a formal protest that he had only done so under duress. Subsequently, as we have noted, he had
signed the Naik Military Agreement, and at the time the government was being
formed he was not even around. On April 24, at eight o’clock in the morning,
Mariano Alvarez, Jacinto Lumbreras and two of the other new ministers swore
their oaths of office in front of Aguinaldo, and an hour later the cabinet
held its first session.[50]
Around the same date, maybe later that same day, a larger, more open
meeting was held to announce that the republic conceived at Tejeros had now
been born. According to the historian
Teodoro M. Kalaw, the revolutionists agreed at this assembly to reorganize
the army, forming “new fighting units” (which were presumably intended to
integrate the hitherto separate Magdalo and Magdiwang commands) and adopting
a single set of rules governing ranks and commissions.[51] The insignia, salutes and signals of the
army are likewise said to have been revised and standardized.[52] And the flag of the revolution, it was
agreed, should have as its central symbol a “mythological sun” rather than
the “baybayin K within a sun” hitherto employed throughout the Katipunan.[53] The
republic affirmed Having quieted
the dissenters in Naik, the pro tempore
headquarters of the revolution, Aguinaldo next wanted to ensure his authority
was recognized elsewhere. The moment
his government was in place, he instructed his clerks to make copies of a
circular for despatch to the town presidents in all the municipalities that
couriers could readily reach. Writing
for the first time on notepaper bearing the rubric “Republica Filipina – Presidencia”
he warned the town chiefs that any lack of support for, or even indifference
to, the Government would not be tolerated.
“Having been elected President of our Nation,” he informed them, “at a
meeting held in [ “that
in the fulfilment of its duties the Government must be supported by everyone,
and that if you give it your assistance you will deserve not only the thanks
of the whole country but mine as well; but, on the other hand, if you should
fail to give me the assistance which I request of you my regret will be
great, for I shall consider your indifference to matters affecting our
country as a sign of a lack of patriotism, which will be punished with the
utmost severity and without delay.”[55] It
may be telling that a copy of the same circular was individually addressed to
the president of the regional government of Batangas, Miguel Malvar. [56]
Earlier in the month, Malvar had been in The adherence of the
Batangas revolutionists to the Katipunan, however, was not as solid or
unambiguous as Bonifacio wanted to believe.
Malvar’s main intent was simply to fight the Spaniards, and to this
end he was willing to forge alliances with anyone who could help.[58] Whilst he was securing troops from
Bonifacio he was simultaneously appealing to Aguinaldo for ammunition, powder
and lead for refilling spent cartridges, and for two gunsmiths who could
repair faulty rifles. He also
repeatedly asked Aguinaldo for supplies of rice to feed his troops.[59] Even if Malvar had been inclined to support
Bonifacio, moreover, he would not have had the backing of the Batangas
regional government as a whole. His
interior minister, Santiago Rillo, had been one of the prime movers behind
Aguinaldo’s election at Tejeros, and had subsequently taken it upon himself
to be the president’s eyes and ears in the Batangas government. “It is said,” he warned Aguinaldo, “that
General Malvar…is borrowing rifles from the Supremo. That being the case, you must summon him in
order that you may have a talk with him.
I shall be on the alert with regard to the other chiefs here in
Batangas….”[60] It is not known
whether Aguinaldo did summon Malvar for a cautionary chat, or whether his
April 24 circular had the desired effect, but there is no record of any
further contact between Malvar and Bonifacio, and no question that Malvar
fully accepted the authority of the new government. Acquiescence Once the
Magdiwang leaders in Naik had decided to support and participate in the new
government, those who had left the town in the wake of the abortive coup
obviously had a difficult choice to make.
Continued resistance to Aguinaldo, in effect, would now mean breaking
as well with their own associates, including their relatives and friends, and
in the short term was likely to be both dangerous and fruitless. Bonifacio had made it known that he had
decided to leave At this point,
the pre-eminent figure among the holdouts was Santiago Alvarez, son of
Mariano, cousin of Pascual, and captain general of the dwindling Magdiwang
army. He decided that the
confrontation must be brought to a stop.
Thirty years later, he explained his thinking at the time very
cogently in his memoirs, and surely his views would have been shared by many
others. So desperate was the military
crisis, he recalls saying to the Magdiwang general Luciano San Miguel, so
great the danger of defeat, that unity had become paramount. “Right
now, the enemy is overwhelming us; we are weak and without strong
defences. We shall be forced to
withdraw to scattered encampments in the mountains and the back country, each
one fending for itself. If we are not
united, there will not be the single Government we need to implement our
common decisions. The result will be
chaos; our plans and policies will be divergent and partisan. What nation will have dealings with us if
this happens, if we carry on our Revolution but our laws are enacted the
benefit of selfish interests and not for the Country and the cause of In such dire
circumstances, Alvarez recalls telling San Miguel, “I recognize the
establishment of the “Philippine Republic” wholeheartedly and gladly, even
though my reason and convictions led me to oppose it.”[62] Likewise, he continued, “I
hail the well-deserved promotion of Artemio Ricarte to the position of
Captain General, and welcome too the worthy appointment of the president of
the Magdiwang, Mariano M. Alvarez, to his new post of Minister of Welfare, an
office that he is serving well, although he is suffering from rheumatism and
is presently unable to go to his office.
I myself am continuing to serve, although it is not me who is the
General in Chief of the ‘R. Filipina’ but General “Vibora”. I am still with the Magdiwang army up to
now, but I cannot say that we should keep our Army separate from theirs,
because I believe in Unity and not in “Everybody for himself”.[63] Alvarez recollects this discussion
as having taken place on April 29, the day after Bonifacio had been arrested
by Aguinaldo’s troops and imprisoned in the Naik estate house. San Miguel had just told him that some
Magdiwang leaders, notably Ariston Villanueva and Diego Mojica, had hatched a
plan to send a detachment of soldiers to liberate the Supremo, but that this
plan had been abandoned due to a sudden resumption of the Spanish
offensive. “I am thankful that the
plan did not materialize,” Alvarez responded. “What
good will it do if a small number of comrades split away and display the
measure of their force? If that
happens, the thick ranks of the enemy will ride to victory over our own
follies, and we shall be defenceless against them because of evil intrigues,
of brother subjugating brother, when our blood and our lives should be
consecrated to no other purpose than the A day or so
later, Alvarez recounts, he heard disturbing rumours that he and other
Bonifacio partisans (“maka-Bonifacio”) were soon to be arrested and
interrogated in the same manner as the Supremo himself, accused of plotting
to assassinate Aguinaldo and overthrow the government. Alvarez decided it would be best to speak
to Aguinaldo directly, and went to find him in a village between Naik and
Indang, where he was holding a meeting with some of his ministers and
generals. When he entered the room, he
says, everybody received him cordially, and said nothing to fracture their
long-standing comradeship and
friendship (“Walang anumang naging salitaan na dapat makasira sa dating
pagsasama at pag-iibigan.”).
Though the encounter was tense, it ended, Alvarez says, with some
light-hearted jests (“biruan”) and with Aguinaldo saying to him “We
are hoping that you will not part ways with us.” (“Huwag ka sanang
hihiwalay sa amin.”) “No,” Alvarez
replied, “I shall never part with you in the defense of the Motherland.” (“Hindi. Kailan ma’y di ako nahiwalay sa inyo sa
pagtatanggol ng Inang Bayan.”)[65] “Unto the grave” The men who signed the Naik Miltary Agreement pledged to stay true to
their word “unto the grave”. In
actuality, the document was a dead letter almost before the ink was dry. Pio del Pilar, we noted, the designated
captain general of the stillborn army, returned to Aguinaldo’s embrace the
same night, as did Mariano Noriel, the only other senior defector from
Magdalo ranks. Nearly all the
Magdiwang signatories reached various degrees of accommodation with the
embryonic republic over the next few days. Bonifacio, it seems, did not even know that his erstwhile allies had become
reconciled to Aguinaldo and the republic, or that his own authority in On the very same
day Bonifacio wrote to Alvarez, a detachment of government troops took up
positions close to his encampment, and early the next morning, April 28, they
advanced towards the trenches dug around the camp. There was a brief skirmish, in which Ciriaco
Bonifacio was killed, and Andres and his other brother Procopio were then
quickly disarmed and placed under arrest.
The accounts of this incident are conflicting, and the details are
still debated to this day, but it is clear that Bonifacio’s Balara men –
their number at this point is not known – put up barely any resistance. Some of them were later questioned by the
Judge Advocate appointed to investigate the charges against Bonifacio and his
brother. One testified that when the
government troops neared his trench, they called out, asking whether it was
necessary for them to fight one another.
“No,” he answered, and thereupon he and his companion were immediately
disarmed (“ay sinamsam agad
ang kaniyang baril sampuo ng sa kaniyang isang kasama”).[68] Another told much the same story. Bonifacio, he said, had ordered the men in
the trenches to shout out “Halt!” if any troops approached, and to open fire
if three such shouts were ignored. But
the men did not obey these orders, the soldier testified, because they did
not regard the government troops as enemies.
The government troops then asked for their guns, and they yielded
their guns straightaway.[69] “Why,” asks Santiago Alvarez, without offering an
answer, “Why did the followers and comrades of the Supremo Bonifacio fail at
that shameful, calamitous moment to give up blood and life in defense of the
true Hero?”[70] The bitter truth was that some of those Bonifacio had regarded as
allies not only failed to defend him, but even contributed to his conviction
and execution. Pedro Giron, most notoriously, a commander
of the Balara men and a signatory of the Naik Military Agreement, told the
Judge Advocate that Bonifacio had assigned him to go to Aguinaldo, demand
that he relinquish his claim to the presidency forthwith, and press him to
submit to Bonifacio’s authority. If
Aguinaldo rejected this ultimatum, he was to be killed, and in anticipation
of this outcome, Giron said, Bonifacio had paid him ten pesos in advance to
commit the deed.[71] Pio del Pilar, whom Bonifacio had hoped
would draw away the Magdalo army from Aguinaldo, “testified in the presence
of many” about the plot in which he had been a prime party. So too did Modesto Ritual, a colonel who
had also signed the Military Agreement.
These two men, it seems, did not appear as witnesses at the formal
hearings, but the Judge Advocate nevertheless took cognizance of their
accounts when he submitted his report on the investigation to the Council of
War.[72] And appointed to preside over the Council
of War convoked to pass judgement on the investigation, strange to say, was
another repentant participant in the abortive putsch, Mariano Noriel. Having
deliberated, the Council of War recommended that Andres and Procopio
Bonifacio should be sentenced to death for their “unfortunate deeds” (“mga
guinagauang saui”). [73]
The case was then referred to Emilio Aguinaldo, who decided initially that
the death sentence should not be imposed and that the brothers should instead
be sent away under guard to an indefinite, isolated exile. After this decision was announced, however,
a number of his commanders and advisers pressed him to reverse his decision
and endorse the Council of War’s recommendation. And the men who at last persuaded him to
have Andres Bonifacio and his brother killed, he later recalled, were the two
Magdalo generals who had fleetingly been their co-conspirators, Pio del Pilar
and Mariano Noriel.[74] Del Pilar,
Noriel, Ritual and Giron were not, of course, representative of Bonifacio’s
former allies as a whole. Most, like
Santiago Alvarez, were doubtless shocked by his arrest and horrified at his
subsequent execution. But they,
despite their anguish, accepted that the discord had to end, that the
challenge to Aguinaldo had failed and had to be dropped. The only men who
ultimately stayed loyal to the Naik Military Agreement “unto the grave” were
Ciriaco, Procopio and Andres Bonifacio.
The tragedy of the
revolution How are we, more
than a century later, to comprehend this tragedy of the revolution? Many issues, it is clear, were not in
contention. Neither the primary
sources nor the memoirists tell of ideological conflicts between the
revolutionists, or of heated debates about how the economy and society should
be reshaped once freedom had been attained.
They do not mention, either, any discord over how the liberated areas
should be governed, or over such matters as whether Tagalog or Spanish should
be adopted as the language of government.
Bonifacio’s allies in the Magdiwang leadership, his co-signatories to
the Military Agreement, belonged to the relatively well-educated and
well-to-do principalia, the same strata of Caviteño society as the
Magdalo leaders they condemned as “traitors”.
The two camps were not set apart by class antagonisms, or by cultural,
regional or linguistic divisions. It
is safe to say, too, that the spoils of political office cannot have been at
the root of the rivalry, for amidst the military crisis there were none to be
had: no luxuries or trappings to enjoy; no lucrative contracts to skim; no sinecures
to bestow on family and friends. What
did pre-occupy the revolutionists, to state the obvious, was waging the
revolution. The overriding priorities
were practicalities: fighting battles;
obtaining arms and ammunition; constructing trenches; feeding and quartering
the troops; treating casualties; providing for widows and orphans; helping
refugees; raising funds; securing food supplies for the civilian population;
and maintaining law and order. It is
these issues that dominate figure most frequently in the contemporary
documents, and are mentioned most often by the memoirists as sources of
friction amongst the revolutionists.
Literally from the moment the revolution began in Cavite, the
Magdiwang and Magdalo camps exchanged taunts and recriminations about which
first raised the flag of rebellion, about whose troops fought most valiantly,
or had retreated from an engagement too soon, had allowed such-and-such a
town to fall to the enemy, had neglected to cover a flank, or had promised to
participate in a joint action but then failed to show. As
the military situation became ever more desperate in March, April and May
1897 the recriminations became sharper, and escalated, as we have seen, into
insinuations and accusations that the other side was losing its stomach for
the fight, was going into hiding, was parlaying with the Spaniards, or was
about to surrender. Contrarily,
however, protagonists on both sides
were acutely conscious that disunity at this desperate time could only
damage the army’s morale and effectiveness and hand a further advantage to the Kastila. In the absence of fundamental differences of
outlook, or spoils to squabble over, the divide between the Magdalo and Magdiwang camps became less
clear-cut. Their partisan rancour
became less constant, more mutable and intermittent. In early April 1897, as we noted, the
passions aroused at the Tejeros convention seemed to have cooled, and for a
while relations between the two were again comradely. As the advance of the Spanish forces displaced
the Magdalo and Magdiwang leaders from their respective home towns and
bailiwicks, the original territorial raison
d’être for two separate governments was largely lost, and an increasing
number of leaders and adherents shifted their allegiance from one to another
– overwhelmingly, from February 1897 onwards, in the Magdalo camp’s favour,
but not exclusively so, as the fleeting defections of Pio del Pilar and
Mariano Noriel showed. Others, such as
Artemio Ricarte, moved back and forth between the two. The rapidity and finality with which the plot against Aguinaldo
collapsed has to be seen, therefore, in the context of great volatility and
fluidity. Most of the Magdiwang
leaders who put their names to the Naik Military agreement, it would seem, recognized
immediately that the attempted putsch had been an ill-conceived, ill-executed
disaster, a debacle that had merely played into Aguinaldo’s hands. The Magdalo officer corps and their troops,
the drama at the casa hacienda had
manifestly shown, were not inclined to defect en masse. The officers and troops of the Magdiwang
and Balara armies, the events had also shown, did not want to fight their
Magdalo counterparts. They had allowed
Aguinaldo himself to walk up to the door of the room where the plotters were
meeting, and had not fired a single shot to prevent him and his troops from
taking control of the building. If
their troops were not prepared to make a stand at that moment, there was not
the slightest chance that the Magdiwang leaders and Bonifacio would be able
to take over the entire revolutionary army, in the words of the Military
Agreement, “by persuasion or force”.
In an instant, that threat was exposed as empty, and Aguinaldo knew
that the resistance to the republic and his presidency had been hugely
compromised and diminished. Any
further resistance to Aguinaldo’s supremacy at that point, the Magdiwang camp
understood, would be futile and potentially fatal. Mariano Alvarez and Jacinto Lumbreras, we
saw, responded at once to Aguinaldo’s astute, conciliatory overtures and
decided within days to join his cabinet.
Bonifacio also knew that his life was in danger, and he too must have
realized that any military engagement with the Magdalo forces at that
juncture would be lost. He alone amongst
the principal signatories of the Military Agreement, however, explicitly and
adamantly still refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the republic and
Aguinaldo’s presidency. In his
testimony before the Judge Advocate investigating the charges against him, he
reiterated that the decisions taken at the Tejeros convention had been
annulled, and insisted he did not know that a government had been formed, or
that Aguinaldo had taken his oath of office as its president.[75]
Bonifacio,
we have seen, had intended to leave The document The “Naik Military
Agreement” was first brought to light by the historian Epifanio de los There are at least
two Tagalog versions of the text that differ from the original. Obviously not copied from the original,
these versions are in fact retranslations into Tagalog from either the
Spanish of Epifanio de los Perhaps for the
first time, the transcription below renders the “Naik Military Agreement”
exactly as it was written, and a stab has been made at a new English
translation. Any corrections, or
suggestions as to how the translation might be improved, will be gratefully
received. |
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› › › › › › › › › › › › › › › › › › › › › |
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The Tagalog text Kaming nangagtala ng tunay naming mga pangalan sa ibaba
nito ay pauang mga pinuno ng Hokbo ay nangagkapulong na pinanguluhan ng
Kataastaasang P,lo tungkol sa guipit na kalagayang tinatauid nitong mga bayan
at ng panghihimagsik; buhat sa napag aninao na Kataksilang gaua ng ilang mga
pinuno sa pag sira ng matibay na pagkakaisa, pag ayon sa kaauay na Kastila at
pag hibo sa mga kaual; bukod dito ang pagpapaubaya sa pangangasiua sa mga
sugatan sa kadahilanang ito aming pinagkaisahan na iligtas ang bayan dito sa
malaking panganib sa pamaguitan ng mga paraang sumusunod. Una: ang
lahat ng hokbo ay pipisanin sa pamamaguitan ng matuid o sapilitan at
mapapailalim sa pamamahala ng Kagg. na si M. Pio del Pilar. Ikalaua:
uala kaming kikilalaning makapangyarihan sa lahat kundi ang una ang matuid at
ang lahat ng tapat na mga pinuno na buhat ng una at magpahangang ngayon ay di
nasisilipan ng Kataksilan at pagtalikod sa pinanumpaan. Ikatlo: ang sino pamang gumamit ng kataksilan,
karakarakang lalapatan ng katapusang parusa. Ito
ang aming pinagkaisahan na pinanumpaanan sa harap ng Dios at ng bayang
tinubuan na di tatalikuran magpahangang libingan. Andres Bonifacio[81] Pio del
Pilar[82] Maypagasa Esteban San Juan[83] Modesto
Ritual[84] Mulanin Palaso Kampupok Andres V. Gumamela[89] Escolastico
Gillardo[90]
Conteral Ba…[ ?][91] Jacinto Lumbreras[92] Felipe
Gervasin[93] Bagong bayani G. Artemio Ricarte[94] Casimiro
Vizcama[95] Vibora Santiago
A. Apoy[96] L.
San Miguel[97]
Maku-Lam [ ?] |
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English
translation We who sign this below with our true names, all
leaders of the Army convened at a meeting presided over by the Supreme
President to discuss the critical situation of the pueblos and the revolution;
having discerned that certain chiefs have committed Treason by destroying the
strength that comes from unity, by coming to an agreement with the Spanish
enemy and deceiving the soldiers, and also by neglecting to tend to the
wounded, it is therefore our resolve to rescue the people from this grave
danger by the following means: First: all troops shall be unified, by persuasion or
force, under the command of the Most
Respected Mr Pio del Pilar. Second: we shall recognise no authority other than
reason, and all the loyal leaders who from the outset and until now have been
seen not to have committed Treason or turned their backs on their sworn duty. Third: whoever commits treason shall immediately
merit the ultimate punishment. This
is our agreement, and we swear before God and the country of our birth not to
betray it unto the grave. [signatures] |
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Notes |
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