Introduction
Anyone looking for
information on the 1896 revolution will sooner or later come across a book
titled Minutes of the Katipunan, last reprinted by the National
Historical Institute in 1996.
Virtually every historian who has cited this source has cautioned
readers that it is unreliable, and yet falsehoods from its pages often get
presented as fact in the scholarly and popular literature.
This piece
examines the origins of these “Minutes” (“Akta”), sketches their influence
on subsequent scholarship, and seeks to demonstrate beyond any doubt that
they are utterly spurious.
Acquisition and refutation
The “Akta” were first brought to light by Colonel
Pedro Cortés, a soldier of the Philippine-American war and before that, he
claimed, one of the founders of the Katipunan.[1] In the mid-1920s Colonel Cortés contacted
the National Library and offered for sale a collection of documents in
which the “Akta” were purportedly the main treasure. Before a deal had been struck the old revolucionario
died, but his son David later resumed the negotiations and the sale was
completed in October 1927. The
Director of the National Library, Epifanio de los Santos, paid the vendor the handsome sum
of P1,000, equivalent at that time to almost twice what a seamstress or
driver would be paid in a whole year.
The “Akta” were then shown to interested visitors
to the National Library as “the true minutes of the Katipunan”. Written (or at least bound) in a single
volume of 113 pages, they comprise 59 documents inscribed in a simple code
of numbers and symbols, and they span the history of the Katipunan from its
establishment in 1892 to the eve of the revolution.[2] The great majority are supposedly the
formal records of meetings of the KKK’s “Supreme Government” (“Kataastaasan
Pamahalaan”).[3] At the end of the volume is a further
document, handwritten in uncoded Tagalog and supposedly signed by Andrés
Bonifacio, Emilio Jacinto and Tandang Sora in Balintawak on August 21,
1896, that certifies the preceding records as authentic and directs that
henceforth all documents will not be in code but “patuluyan”
(literally, “go ahead”), which the English editions render as "in
ordinary writing".
In April 1928 Epifanio de los Santos died in post, and the National
Library was then without a Director until Teodoro M. Kalaw took up the
appointment in February 1929. During
this interregnum, some surviving members of the Katipunan pointed out four fundamental
flaws in the “Akta”:
- Many
things described in the documents simply never happened; they were
downright fibs (lubos na kabulaanan).
- Some
of the individuals listed in the documents as being members of the
Katipunan’s supreme body had never been members of that body.
- The
code used in the book had not been used by the Katipunan.
- The
signature of Bonifacio affixed to the final document was not genuine.[4]
In light of this refutation, Kalaw decided that
the documents should be decoded in their entirety, a measure that his predecessor
had evidently not felt pressing. No
less wisely, he also tried to determine the provenance of the documents, a
matter that his predecessor had seemingly neither clarified in writing
anywhere nor discussed with other members of the National Library
staff. Kalaw himself, it seems, went
to the hometown of Pedro Cortés – Santa
Cruz, Laguna – to talk to some of his relatives
and old comrades-in-arms. Cortés, he
was told, had become a close friend of Emilio Jacinto, the former secretary
of the KKK Supreme Council, when the latter had been living in Bubukal, a
barrio of Santa Cruz,
in around 1898-9. Before his death
in 1899 from malaria, Jacinto had given Cortés the “Akta” and other
documents. To save them from being
burned, lost or mutilated, Cortés had later hidden them in an iron chest
owned by a local optician.
Exhibition
Kalaw was not greatly reassured by the saga told
in Laguna, and he personally remained highly skeptical about the “Akta”.[5] The documents, however, had by now aroused
considerable public interest. This
was a time when patriotism was resurgent in the Philippines, the passionate
desire for independence stoked by frustration at the slow pace of progress
towards its attainment. Kalaw was
himself a fervent and distinguished nationalist, and he wanted the National
Library not only to be a custodian of the nation’s patriotic heritage but
also to help keep the flame brightly burning. Six months after his appointment, to
afford the public what his Assistant Director Eulogio B. Rodriguez called
“highly practical lessons in patriotism”, the Library mounted a big
exhibition of Katipunan and other memorabilia from the 1890s - books,
pamphlets and papers, photographs and banners, amulets and insignia. Also on display were the hat and shoes
Rizal wore when he was executed, the chair Bonifacio supposedly used when
he presided over meetings of the Katipunan Supreme Council, and a casket
that supposedly contained part of his skull and other bones.[6] These bodily remains, like the “Akta”,
had been acquired and represented as genuine during the directorship of
Epifanio de los Santos,
but their authenticity had similarly been called into serious question.[7] Despite his own doubts, Kalaw realized
the controversies enhanced the appeal of the items, and he decided the
bones and the “Akta” should be featured as star exhibits. Sober historical truth, as usual, took
second place to showmanship and propaganda.
The exhibition opened at the National Library
(then located in the Legislative Building at the top of Taft Avenue) on
August 26, 1929, a day chosen, according to Assistant Director Eulogio B.
Rodriguez, because it was the anniversary of the Cry of Balintawak, a “day
which is very dear to the hearts of the people.”[8] The event was originally scheduled to
last for just three days, but it drew such large and enthusiastic crowds,
up to 1,500 a day, that it was extended to run for two weeks. High school and college students arrived
literally by the truckload from all over Manila and the neighboring
provinces. The hall was full at all
hours of the day, palpable proof, Rodriguez rejoiced, that “those of our
forebears ‘who fell during the night’ have not been forgotten.” A congressman, Benito Soliven, was
equally enthused. “The exhibit”, he
said, “has demonstrated that there exists a strong and living bond that
unites the young citizenry of today with the patriots and heroes of
yesterday. The shades of the martyrs
of the revolution for the emancipation of the Philippines may rejoice at the
sight of their children who continue the work they left unfinished.”[9]
Publication and a second
refutation
And, as anticipated, the “Akta” caused special
excitement. Young visitors were
fascinated, said Rodriguez, by the “minutes of the Katipunan, written by
Jacinto in cipher, and the blood compact of the organization, also in
cipher and signed with blood…and they wished to know on the spot the secret
of the ciphers.” In response to
this level of interest, he announced, the decision had already been taken
to publish “these historical documents” soon.
Many veterans of the Katipunan visited what
Rodriguez called the “temporary temple of the sacred relics of their
cause”, and undoubtedly they would have been enormously heartened by the
enthusiasm the exhibition aroused.
They very much wanted the spirit of their struggle and the memory of
their fallen comrades to be kept alive and honored. But those who knew most about the Katipunan’s
past emphatically did not believe these ends would be well served by the
National Library publishing a collection of bogus documents embellished
with the fanciful annotations of their source, Colonel Pedro Cortés.
Kalaw decided to press ahead with publication, but
acknowledged the continuing dispute by qualifying the words “Akta ng
Katipunan” in the title of the booklet with the adjective “Pinagtatalunang” (“Controversial”) and by writing
words of caution in his preface.
Whilst he mentioned the objections raised by the Katipunan veterans,
however, Kalaw stated that opinion was “divided”, and that other veterans
had said the “Akta” should “be accepted as true, although some events (had
been) deliberately distorted owing to the march of events and other
reasons, which only Bonifacio and Jacinto could really tell.” He noted that the “Akta” contain
references, for example, to generous donations of cash to the Katipunan
from wealthy Filipinos, and to promises of military support from the
Japanese government. Those who
thought the documents genuine, he reported, maintained that these
falsehoods were not the inventions of a forger but rather attempts by the
KKK leadership to inflate the organization’s resources, connections and
strength so as to impress and encourage potential recruits. This argument contains a germ of truth,
because Katipunan organizers did make claims of this nature. But what would be the point, Kalaw might
have asked, of laboriously encoding such fictions in detail in secret
Supreme Council documents that potential recruits would never get to
read?
Kalaw’s preface to the “Akta” pamphlet, dated June
7, 1930, thus carried the false intimation that opinion among the veterans
was evenly balanced, and that there was still an onus on the objectors to
prove their case. “Therefore,
speak!” he concluded melodramatically.
“Those who like to contradict, explain! Give your own opinion! Opinions are needed now, so that these
documents may be truly judged.”
Kalaw’s declaration that the issue was not yet
settled would have dismayed the objectors, for they believed they had
already exposed the fatal flaws in the “Akta” a year or so previously, and
had said all that needed to be said.
Any veterans who thought the documents genuine, they would feel, had
never been close to the Supreme Council of the Katipunan and knew very
little about either its membership or its deliberations. Headed by José Turiano Santiago, the
objectors swiftly rose to Kalaw’s challenge. On July 27, 1930, having constituted
themselves as a committee, they issued a formal statement which they hoped
would set the record straight beyond any further equivocation.[10] It deserves to be transcribed in full:
“Comité de los
Antiguos Miembros del K...K...K... Ll... V...Z...Ll...B...
213-4 Moriones,
Tondo
Manila
The undersigned,
having been leading members of the [Katipunan], have gathered together on
their own initiative, because of the publication of [Ang Pinagtatalunang
Akta], in order to examine that booklet and deliberate over the
nature of the documents contained therein which are said to pertain to the
K...K...K... and, after having read and carefully studied each and
every one of the documents, agree and unanimously declare:
1. That the K...K...K... began
to exist as a secret society only on 6 June 1892 and that the admission of
new recruits did not commence until the month of August of the same year.
2. That the K...K...K... used
in its official correspondence, from the beginning until the start of the
revolution, a cipher which involved changing letters in the alphabet,
assigning them with different designations and significations. It never used another cipher, besides the
one in which the Pacto de Sangre is written which is deposited in the
National Library.
3. That the leadership of the
K...K...K..., up until the start of the revolution on 26 August 1896, never
included the names of Mariano Jacinto, Mariano Crisostomo, Pedro Cortés and
Vicente Fernandez. Those others
mentioned as signatories of the [“Akta”] under discussion became affiliated
with the society only much later, like Pío Valenzuela, who was initiated on
21 March 1895, José Dizon on 15 July 1896, and Feliciano Jocson and
Antonino Guevara around the year 1895.[11]
4. That, for this reason, the
undersigned are honestly convinced the minutes which appear in [Ang Pinagtatalunang
Akta] are false, fabricated and manipulated by someone who did not have
any knowledge of the functions, practices and procedures of the
K...K...K... These are apocryphal
documents made by those who could not give any credible explanations about
the same.
IN WITNESS
THEREOF, we affix our signatures now in Tondo, Manila, on 27 July 1930.
José Turiano
Santiago, President
Pío Valenzuela,
Member
Teodoro Gonzales,
Member
Briccio Pantas,
Member
Pío H. Santos,
Member
Esteban Flugio,
Member
Felipe Fulgencio,
Member
Guillermo
Masangkay, Member
Fidel Nobel,
Member
Francisco
Carreon, Member
Tómas
Villanueva, Member
The signatories, it is important to stress,
included almost all, if not absolutely all, the members of the KKK Supreme
Council still living. José Turiano
Santiago had been its secretary (Kalihim) from 1893 to 1895; Pío
Valenzuela had been its fiscal (Tagausig) from December 1895 to
August 1896; and Teodoro Gonzales, Briccio Pantas, Guillermo Masangkay and
Francisco Carreon had at some time or another all been councilors. On other aspects of Katipunan history
they had sharp disagreements, but on the “Akta” they spoke with
total unanimity. And with
incontrovertible authority. They
knew from direct personal experience that the code of numbers and symbols
was a sham; they knew the documents bore wrong names and wrong dates; and
they knew their contents were largely imaginary.
The devastating indictment of the “Akta” delivered
by the Comité de los Antiguos Miembros should have drawn the matter to a close
for evermore, and consigned the booklet published by the National Library
to the oblivion it deserved.
Unfortunately, it did not.
The refutations diluted: Gregorio
F. Zaide
The first substantial work on the KKK to appear
after the veterans’ conclusive exposure of the “Akta” as fake was Gregorio
F. Zaide’s History of the Katipunan in 1939. “The living Katipuneros have passed their
verdict!” he declares. “We cannot
help but accept the judgment that the Cortés documents are surreptious
[sic].”[12] Zaide was the most accomplished and
prolific historian of the time, and his works remain influential to this
day. It is a pity, therefore, that
his ringing endorsement of the veterans’ verdict is not his sole and definitive
comment on the matter, and that he makes other remarks that have much less
certitude. The authenticity and
veracity of the documents was “doubtful” and “under dispute”, he writes,
but they could still be used so long as “great care” was taken. Worse, he uses the “Akta” at least once
in his own narrative, flagging their erroneous detail only with a limp “it
is said” signal. And in his
annotated bibliography, worse still, he claims that they “throw interesting
light on the story of the society”.[13] They do not.
The refutations rebutted: Teodoro
A. Agoncillo
Zaide’s role in prolonging the currency of the
“Akta”, however, pales beside that of Teodoro A. Agoncillo, his successor
as the nation’s best-known historian and the author of what is still the standard
work on Bonifacio and the Katipunan, The Revolt of the Masses. The code in which the “Akta” are written,
Agoncillo writes, is “genuine”.
There is “no doubt”, he pronounces magisterially (albeit a trifle
opaquely), “that where a document [in the “Akta”] has no element of
exaggeration, it is genuine and the events narrated therein actually took
place.”[14]
No other historian of any stature had endorsed the
“Akta” so positively before, and none has since. The evidence that led Agoncillo to this
verdict therefore requires examination at some length, because if his case
for the “Akta” being genuine does not stand close scrutiny, then no other
case is left.
In the course of his researches, Agoncillo says,
he has obtained a photographic copy of a document that resolves two of the
fundamental problems with the “Akta” first pointed out by the KKK veterans
in 1928 or 1929 - that the numerical code in which they are written was not
used by the Katipunan and that the signature of Bonifacio affixed to the final,
uncoded document was not genuine.[15] Agoncillo reproduces his photographic
copy as an illustration in Revolt above a caption saying that it is
““an important Katipunan document hitherto unknown to students of the
Revolution”.[16] Agoncillo’s decision to give credence to
the “Akta”, it becomes clear, is founded entirely on this single sheet
bearing just a dozen or so lines of handwriting. It is, he claims, an order signed by
Bonifacio and Jacinto in Balintawak on August 21, 1896, and it directs
that “From now on all papers shall
not be written in [alphabetical] cipher but in numbers”.[17] This switch was necessary, Agoncillo
suggests, because the Spanish authorities had by then discovered caches of
Katipunan documents and broken the alphabetical cipher.
Readers of Revolt who are acquainted with
the “Akta” might at first be puzzled at this. An order to write “all papers” in a
numerical code would directly contradict the final document in the “Akta”,
purportedly signed on the same day in the same place, which as mentioned
stipulates that the use of code (Clave) shall be discontinued and
that Katipunan documents shall henceforth be in "ordinary
writing". When the reader turns
to a lengthy endnote, however, a very different picture emerges. Bonifacio’s signed instruction that “all
papers” should henceforth be in numerical code, Agoncillo infers, did not
in fact mean “all papers” at all. It
referred only to communications between himself and Emilio Jacinto, and
indeed only those two men “were privy” to the numerical code, “presumably
to minimize the danger of discovery to the authorities.”[18]
Bonifacio and Jacinto, if this story is to be
believed, must have signed a formal directive that affected no one but
themselves. Agoncillo then makes the
assumption, without any stated basis, that the new numerical code must have
been exactly the same code that Teodoro M. Kalaw and his National Library
colleagues had discovered in 1929-30 to be the key to deciphering the
“Akta”. He reproduces the code in
its entirety, from “A=+” to “Z=1”.[19] Bonifacio’s directive dated August 21,
1896, Agoncillo confidently concludes, not only shows the code of the
“Akta” to be “genuine” but also explains why the Katipunan veterans had
disputed its existence. Because the
numerical code had not been devised until August 1896, and because it was
to be used only by Bonifacio and Jacinto, the veterans simply never knew
about it.
Agoncillo’s explanation gives the whole argument a
new twist. Nobody before him, so far
as is known, had suggested that the “Akta” documents were anything but the
originals, written more or less contemporaneously with the meetings whose
proceedings they purport to record, starting in 1892. If the numerical code was only devised in
August 1896, this obviously could not have been the case. In claiming to have solved the riddle of
the code nobody knew, therefore, Agoncillo is obliged to deduce that
someone - Emilio Jacinto himself, he supposes - must have patiently
transcribed the “Akta” in their entirety from their original alphabetical
cipher into the new code of numbers and symbols.
Having completed the painstaking transcription,
Agoncillo suggests, “it is possible that Jacinto, while in Laguna, signed
[the final document] with the name of his Chief, since Bonifacio was in Cavite. Jacinto, I believe, had no ulterior
motive in doing so – if he did execute it – for he probably tried to
transcribe the Katipunan minutes into the new code and so had to sign the
name of Bonifacio.”[20]
Why on earth, one has to ask, would Jacinto think
it important in 1896 or 1897, in the midst of a desperate military
struggle, to spend time transcribing old Katipunan documents from an
alphabetical cipher into a numerical code to which only he and Bonifacio
were privy?[21]
Agoncillo’s mistake
So bizarre is Agoncillo’s version of events that
it arouses deep suspicions about the document upon which it has been
constructed – the “numerical code directive” supposedly signed by Bonifacio
in Balintawak. Agoncillo was a
professor who always impressed upon his students the fundamental importance
of primary sources. “No document, no
history”, he went so far as to say, whilst at the same time happily
ignoring such a harsh maxim. He also
prided himself, as he writes in his foreword to Revolt, on
subjecting his sources to “severe scrutiny”, on always looking “for
loopholes, inconsistencies and inaccuracies”, and on giving his reasons for
“dismissing that authority and for accepting that document”.[22] Scholars, he declared elsewhere, should
always “doubt everything until proven otherwise”; “Doubt everything,
including your parentage!”[23]
But when it came to the “numerical code directive”
and the “Akta”, sad to say, Agoncillo failed to heed his own sage
counsel. As already noted, he
reproduces his own photographic copy of the document as an illustration in Revolt. The original, its possessor told him, had
been destroyed. Unfortunately, the
photographic copy was not entirely legible, and as reproduced in the 1956
edition of The Revolt it is even less so. In the 2002 edition this problem is
further exacerbated by brutal cropping of the photograph and a further
deterioration in image quality - to such a degree, in fact, that nobody at
the printers or publishers noticed until too late that the image has been
printed upside down.
Since Agoncillo himself had difficulty in reading
his own copy, the transcription he provides beneath the illustration is
interspersed with question marks where he found words “hardly legible” and
dots where he could not make out a word at all. The text is therefore incomplete and
somewhat tentative. In the present
context the crucial sentence may be translated as “Therefore…from now
onwards whatever documents are created will not be rendered in cipher but
in numbers.” Beneath the text of the
order, as mentioned, the document bears the names of Bonifacio and Jacinto
(as “Pinkian”), and beneath the latter’s name is written a sequence of
numbers and symbols – “6+21+12+12197+8+”.
If this sequence is decoded, it reads “TADANGSARA”, which can only
be a miswriting or misreading of Tandang Sora - the name affectionately
given to Melchora Aquino, an octogenarian patriot who is honoured in
histories of the revolution for helping to provision the Katipuneros who
gathered in Balintawak in August 1896.
All this begins to ring a bell, to prompt a
feeling of déjà vu. Tandang Sora, it
may be remembered, had also supposedly joined Bonifacio and Jacinto in
signing the final, uncoded document in the “Akta”. That seemed strange, because the uncoded
document had authenticated all the preceding, coded KKK records dating back
to 1892, which she would not have been qualified to do. Now, stranger still, the old lady is
purportedly inscribing her name in a numerical code to which only Bonifacio
and Jacinto are meant to be privy.
Far from seeking to explain this conundrum, Agoncillo does not even
mention that Tandang Sora’s name appears on the document.
It may also be recalled that the final document in
the “Akta”, just like Agoncillo’s “numerical code directive”, was
supposedly signed in Balintawak on August 21, 1896. The ringing bell gets louder. And both documents, of course, have a
similar purpose, to effect a switch from one form of writing to
another. Finally, the accumulation
of similarities points to the answer.
The “numerical code directive” does not just bear an uncanny
resemblance to the final document in the “Akta”, it is one and the
same. In short, Agoncillo
inadvertently uses the “Akta” to authenticate the “Akta”.
How this came about can only be guessed. Agoncillo’s photographic copy of the
document presumably originated from the National Library, but who made it,
and when, is simply not known. It
cannot even be said for certain that his copy was taken directly from the
final “Akta” document; it may have been a copy of a copy and the odd word
may have got altered. Enough of the
text is identical, however, to leave no room for doubt. As transcribed by Agoncillo, the text of
the crucial sentence on the switch of code reads “Kaya…ngayon ang lahat
ng anomang kasulatang gaganapin ay hindi maglalaman (?) sa Clave kundi sa
bilang.” As transcribed by
National Library staff in 1930 and published in Ang Pinagtatalunang Akta,
it reads “Kaya mula ngayon ang lahat ng anomang Kasulatan gaganapin, ay
hindi nag dadaan sa Clave kundi patuluyan.” The critical difference – the only
difference of any significance throughout the two transcriptions – thus
lies at the sentence’s end.
Agoncillo reads it as meaning that alphabetical cipher should be
discarded in favour of numerical code.
The publications of the National Library in 1930 and the National
Heroes Commission in 1964 read it as meaning that numerical code should be
discarded in favor of “ordinary writing”.
Squinting long and hard at the illustration in Revolt does
not help. The very faint script
looks marginally more like “patuluyan” than “sa bilang”, but
it is impossible to be sure. The
overwhelming probability, though, is that the National Library staff read
the document correctly – because they were working with the original – and
that Agoncillo erred because he was working with a photographic copy which
was barely legible and which was possibly a copy of a copy. And, as we saw, the story Agoncillo built
upon his reading of the document was simply not coherent.
Agoncillo could have avoided his mistake had he
recognized the near identity of the final “Akta” document and his
“numerical code directive”. But he
wrote Revolt, as he later recalled, “on the spur of the moment” and
in haste, to meet the deadline of a Government-sponsored “Bonifacio
biography” contest. He had “no time
even to edit”, let alone to “polish”.
In retrospect, he felt, the “phraseology” could have been
better. Nevertheless, he affirmed
proudly, “The facts will stand and my conclusions will stand.”[24] In this instance his confidence was
misplaced, because his facts and conclusions do not stand. He was wrong to call the “Akta” genuine,
and wrong to give any credence to the “numerical code directive”. He fell victim to the perils of haste, and
it should be a warning to us all.
That said, Agoncillo was able even when working at
speed to recognize that the “Akta”, though “genuine” in his view, could not
be relied upon as a factual source.
All his other sources, for example, told him that Deodato Arellano
and Roman Basa preceded Andrés Bonifacio as presidents of the Katipunan,
whereas the “Akta” say Bonifacio was president from the start. Agoncillo rightly discounted what the
“Akta” said. His other sources,
similarly, related that leading Katipuneros visited a Japanese ship in Manila harbor in May 1896, whereas the “Akta” place
the episode in February that year.[25] Again, he rightly discounted what the
“Akta” said. And the man who brought
the “Akta” to light, Pedro Cortés, whose name is affixed to the documents
as a member of the Katipunan’s supreme body from the outset, is rightly
never mentioned by Agoncillo as having any place in the leadership at
all.
Postscript: the “Akta” live on
In his preface to Minutes of the Katipunan
– the 1964 English edition of the “Akta” – the historian Carlos Quirino
observes that the documents “remain seemingly as controversial as ever”.[26] Quirino was then the Director of the
National Library, as Teodoro M. Kalaw had been when the Tagalog edition was
published in 1930, and his preface follows Kalaw’s in alerting readers to
some of the “glaring mistakes” and “grievous inconsistencies” with which
the “Akta” are littered. Again like
Kalaw, though, Quirino found it impossible to reject the “Akta” completely,
or to resist the temptation to publish the documents.[27] He too leaves readers with the impression
that the matter deserves further debate.
The 1930 edition, he writes, was “based on the coded manuscript
which once belonged to one of the founding members of the revolutionary
society”, which suggests he accepted that the “Akta” at least had a sound
provenance. And in a footnote he
quotes the pronouncement of Agoncillo that the numerical code is “genuine”
and that where an “Akta” document has “no element of exaggeration”, it is
genuine”.
Quirino’s preface is carried unchanged in the 1978 and 1996 editions
of the Minutes published by the National Historical Institute, and
so far as is known the debate about the “Akta” has not progressed any
further. The baleful consequences of
reprinting these bogus documents, however, persist to this day, and can
readily be found even in cyberspace.
An edition of the Manila Bulletin Online, for example, relays the
nonsense that Apolinario Mabini “played a vital part in the establishment
of the Katipunan…. Andrés Bonifacio and Emilio Jacinto frequently consulted
Mabini, and, at their request, Mabini wrote the political platform of the
Katipunan.”[28] An
online bookstore advertises the Minutes of the Katipunan with the
legend that “This book reveals how the Katipunan was started”.[29] And
little nuggets of misinformation from the “Akta” still find their way into
other books, like for instance the National Historical Institute’s
five-volume collection of mini-biographies titled Filipinos in History. The bibliography of that chronically
fallible work, though, brings at last a thin smile. Perhaps inadvertently, it tells a
probable truth that others have been reluctant to tell. It gives a name for the author of the Minutes
of the Katipunan, and the name it gives is Pedro Cortés.[30]
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