The Filipino-American War: 1902-1906 The American Occupation

T H E R O O T S O F T H E F I L I P I N O N A T I O N by Onofre D.
Corpuz
Chapter 21
The FilipinoAmerican War:
19021906; The American Occupation
[The Filipino people] should preserve and perpetuate their

Occidental way of life which they can only do through continued
association and cooperation with America and the western world.
Geographically, we Filipinos are Orientals and will forever be so.
Spiritually, that is to say, because of our culture and Christian
civilization, we are of the west. The great destiny of the Filipino
people, as I conceive it, is to play the role as the connecting link
between Orient and Occident. Manuel L. Quezon to Franklin D.
Roosevelt (1943)
A middling crowd gathered in the small plaza in front of the

Ayuntamiento or city hall of Manila on 4 July 1901. There were not more
than a thousand or so Filipinos. There were some US Army officers and
soldiers plus a few American civilian employees of the military
administration. Wooden planks set on a few stone building blocks served for
a makeshift grandstand. It was a hot morning, and the huge man on the
stage who was to be the first American civil governor of the Philippines was
perspiring. The occasion was the turnover of civil executive authority in the
occupied provinces from the US military governor to a civilian governor. The
army men were sarcastic about the affair, and an eyewitness report says
that the Filipinos “should have been enthusiastically hopeful but [were]
merely apathetic.”
For several years after 1901 the American administration of the new
colony was as makeshift as the grandstand on which it was inaugurated. It
was not truly a civilian regime. The ruler of the Philippines was the
President of the United States acting in his capacity as commanderinchief
of the Army. He governed through the War department and the regime in
Manila reported to the War department's bureau of insular affairs. Under
US Public Law No. 235, approved on 1 July 1902, the bureau was to be
headed by an army officer on detail with the rank of a colonel. Under the
FilipinoAmerican War: 19021906; American Occupation 1
T H E R O O T S O F T H E F I L I P I N O N A T I O N by Onofre D. Corpuz
same law the American President's authority became civilian, exercised by
authority of the US Congress, although the regime in Manila continued to
the end to report through the bureau.
When William H. Taft, the first civil governor, was Secretary of War he
acknowledged (1907) “the somewhat anomalous creation of the Philippine
Commission, as a civil legislature in a purely military government” and that
there were not only differences but “considerable friction” between the
Commission and the military.
Even after the Philippine Assembly was organized in 1907, the authority
of the civilian administration was complete only in the Christian provinces.
The Assembly did not have authority over the provinces of Agusan, Nueva
Vizcaya, and Mountain. These remained under the Commission's authority.
In the Muslim provinces US Army officers were the governors. These
provinces or districts made up one huge province officially called the Moro
Province. It was administered by the Military Governor, a general of the
Army. It had a legislative council made up of the military governor and
some assistants. They prepared all legislation for the Province. The military
administration of the Muslim region ended only in 1914, when its
supervision was transferred to the Department of Mindanao and Sulu.
In the Christian provinces the Commission exercised not only legislative
but also executive authority. It was the upper house, acting en banc, of the
colonial legislature. The governorgeneral as chairman and four other
members made up the cabinet and were the executive power. But the early
differences with the military authorities constrained the Commission to
create its own military force, the Philippine Constabulary.
The reason for the incomplete and quasicivilian government was that
the Christian Filipino resistance was continuing, and there was a war going
on in the southern islands. Section 6 of US Public Law No. 235, which
defined the temporary administration of civil affairs in the colony, provided
that “whenever the existing insurrection in the Philippine Islands shall
have ceased and a condition of general and complete peace shall have been
established therein...,” the Commission was to certify the same to the
American President. The latter (Theodore Roosevelt) proclaimed a general
amnesty on 4 July 1902, presumably due to the surrender recently of
Generals Lukban and Malvar. The guerrilla leaders in Cebu (Generals Juan
Climaco and Arcadio Maxilom) and Bohol (Samson) were reported to have
surrendered in November and December 1902. After the presidential
proclamation of general amnesty the Commission certified, on 8 September
1902, that “the recently existing insurrection in the Philippine Islands had
ceased and a condition of general and complete peace has been established
herein,” although the Commission made it clear that its certification did not
cover the Lake Lanao region in Mindanao.
The November 1902 report of the Commission was categorical. It said

that: “The insurrection as an organized attempt to subvert the authority of
the United States in these islands is entirely at an end, and the whole
Christian population, with the exception of a few thousand of persons who
have settled in the Moro country in isolated towns, are enjoying civil
government under the beneficent provisions of recent Congressional
legislation concerning the Philippines.”
However, the Commission report to the Secretary of War in 1903 was not
so sure. That year it could only say: “The conditions of the islands as to
tranquility are quite equal, so far as peace and good order are concerned, to
what they were at any time during the Spanish regime.”
We know now that the Americans, with more than 70,000 troops fighting
the Filipinos in 1900, had refused from the very outset to admit that there
was a war. If there was no war they could not declare that a war was over.
Their solution was to declare that they had “established” peace. This self
deception continued for years and did not end until 1907 when Taft, as
Secretary of War, came back for the inauguration rites of the Philippine
Assembly. The ceremonies took place in the morning of 16 October at the
Grand Opera House on Plaza Cervantes, Santa Cruz, in Manila. In the
course of explaining the difficulties that faced the regime in the early years
Taft finally stated, without qualification or elaboration, that there had been
a war after all:
The civil government was inaugurated in 1901 before the close of a
war between the forces of the United States and the controlling
elements of the Philippine people. It had sufficient popular support to
over awe many of those whose disposition was friendly to the
Americans. In various provinces the war was continued intermittently
for a year after the appointment of a civil governor in July, 1901.
The truth in 1902 was that the war was waning, but it was not over. The
war that the Americans called an insurrection did not end that year or in
1903 or 1904. There were still actions to be fought in the field. Among many
Filipinos the weariness of six years of war had not stilled the yearning for
freedom.
The occupation regime that claimed to be a civilian government and

pretended that it no longer had an insurrection on its hands used forces of
war and military methods against the continuing Christian Filipino
resistance until 1906. The force most commonly employed by the regime
against the resistance was the Philippine Constabulary. If it were true that
there was general and complete peace then the police forces of the towns
would have been enough to maintain peace and order. But the regime's
decision was shaped in 1901, when it received the report that: “The
presidentes and councilors of the towns, however, are all Filipinos, many of
them exinsurrectos.” The Commission also claimed that the people were
being “terrorized and often forced into an attitude of hostility which they did
not feel.....” So it created the Philippine Constabulary that year. The
organization was made up of native recruits and American army officers.
The regime already had the Philippine Scouts, a purely military
organization composed of companies of native soldiers in the US Army.
However, the civilian Commission and the US military in the islands did not
agree on how to deal with the “insurrection” during this period, and the
former felt that it could not count on the Army's cooperation. As the
resistance continued and when the “disturbances” assumed really serious
proportions, the civilian and military authorities were forced to cooperate
closely; both the Scouts and Constabulary together, and sometimes regular
US Army units of company to battalion strength, were used.
In 1902 peace had not reached the people in the provinces of Rizal,
Batangas, and Cavite, Tayabas and Albay, Samar and Leyte, Negros and
Cebu, Surigao and Misamis. These provinces (counting both in Negros) had
a total population of 3,013,884 in 1903; this was the area of the active
resistance. Indeed as late as 1905 the Cavite provincial governor reported
that: “The civil Commission must have been mistaken as to the actual
conditions of the province at the time the civil government was
established.”1
This chapter tells the story of the Filipinos during the early years of the
American occupation. We begin with an account of how the Filipino
American War really ended.
Patriots, Ladrones, Pulahanes
The men who played noteworthy roles in the closing stages of the War
were a diverse lot. There were the irreconciliables. Many of them lived in
Manila, men of status, surrendered officers of the Revolution, men who had
to take the oath of allegiance to the regime but were still committed to the
ideals of the Revolution, even though each year the goal of independence
was farther and farther away. They gave moral and financial support to
those who continued to fight as soldiers against the regime. But they
worked in secret, and so we know only that they were there, and their
individual identities remain unknown.
Then there were the officers and soldiers of the scattered Filipino army,
“lost commands” or new groups made up of men from disbanded units.
There was one general still active in the field after Gen. Malvar's surrender
in 1902. As a group the Filipino generals, whatever their social origins,
showed in their actions the discipline of patriotism and of the public well
being.
The persona of the lower ranks who figure in our story is less clear. None
was above the rank of major. We read from the reports of the regime that
two of them promoted themselves to the rank of lieutenantgeneral. Some
almost surely did not make the difficult adjustment from life in the field to
life in an occupied pueblo. Others are said to have become outlaws, but the
regime at this time indiscriminately denigrated every Filipino leader
against it, and usually called every resistance leader a bandit or robber or
brigand. Besides, provincial guerrilla leaders often enjoyed popular homage
and the aura of the folk hero.
Another class of men in this part of our story can easily be seen as count
erparts of characters during the Spanish era. Some in this class were men
who were driven outside the pale of the law during the past regime, and
they remained outside the law now. Others were the children of native folk
belief, Hispanic Christian religiosity, and social upheaval: men who were
sincere, and others who were apparently opportunistic religious leaders
who, with their adherents, were regarded askance by society and who
reciprocated at times with provoked or unprovoked violence.
And so we will meet with various kinds of men, produced by the

complexity of the troubled times. Many of them could honestly say that their
actions in 1902 and in the years that followed were those of soldiers. To the
regime, however, everybody owed allegiance and obedience to its law and all
who refused and resisted were criminals and marauders and bandits. It did
not matter that there were patriots, robbers, restless men, religious cultists,
and opportunists. The regime treated all of them either as ladrones or
pulahanes (also "pulajanes"), the latter described only as "a band of
religious fanatics in the mountains".
Luciano San Miguel was a colonel in 1899, commanding in San Juan del
Monte where the Americans fired the shots that began the war. He was in
Malolos that Black Saturday. We lose track of him during those first months
when the war ground along the railroad from Caloocan to Malolos and from
there fanned out to the east, then west, and farther north to Pangasinan
and the Ilocos. He would have had his share of defeats, retreats, and lack of
rifles and bullets. He was relieved from field command in October 1899, but
the great enemy offensive launched late that month led to his reactivation
in November. In December he was commanding general in Zambales and
operating also in Pangasinan.
He revived the Katipunan in his command at this time; he felt that, had
not the Katipunan been abolished, victory would have been won. He
deduced that as a result of the dissolution of the Society, the people of the
pueblos had not been made an integral part of the military effort; this was
because, in the absence of the Katipunan, resistance was seen as the role of
the army alone.
Like his fellow generals, San Miguel had a high and possibly an
extremist view of the role of the military leadership. They believed that it
was the generals alone who had the right and the duty to protect the nation.
Thus, civilians who treated with the enemy on the vital matter of the
nation's fate were “meddling in affairs which do not concern them.” This act
of civilians was, to San Miguel, “that deceit commonly called politics”. This
was why the generals despised and hated the leaders of the Federal Party
as traitors.
San Miguel was under heavy attack in Zambales and Pangasinan during
midDecember 1899 to early January 1900. He was not taken, nor did he
surrender. Then we lose track of him once more, until a report of the
American civil governor states that in November 1902 there were
“marauding bands” operating in Bulacan and Rizal. The governor's report
described these in 1903:
They are essentially robber bands, thieves, murderers, and

kidnappers for ransom, determined to live on their neighbors and
willing to sacrifice any number of Filipinos to the enjoyment of an
outlaw life. They masquerade at times as "revolucionarios" in order to
win the assistance just mentioned [from supporters in Manila], but they
are nothing but ladrones and should be punished only as violators of the
law.
The Americans were learning fast. When a Filipino was persecuted by
the Spanish friars the law could not give him redress because the law made
him a filibustero. When he lost the family lands to landgrabbers he could
not recover them through the law because the law declared him a tulisan or
outlaw. Then the Americans' law made the Filipino soldiers rebels or
insurrectos, and amnestied them as such under the proclamation of 1902.
But San Miguel decided not to surrender and take the oath of allegiance
to the United States. Under the law of the Americans he, therefore, ceased
to be a misguided insurrecto. That law made him a marauding outlaw,
although he was the same man in 1902 that he was in 1901. The Americans
did not understand; or perhaps they refused to understand. They adjudged
San Miguel as the leader of “wellknown ladrones, thieves, and other
criminals.” In fact, San Miguel was representing the Hongkong junta, which
did not support outlaws. Nor was he a robber. The ilustrado Pedro A.
Paterno has a note of how San Miguel presented him in 1897 to the latter's
young bride, a lady “full of virginal sweetness and grace, wellknown
mestiza daughter of the wealthy Chinese Ong Capin.”
San Miguel's continuing fight was partly sustained by backers in Manila.
These men were patriots. The regime referred to them more elaborately as
“irreconcilable persons of responsibility.” Mrs. Taft, who later wrote a book
about this era, recalled that the irreconcilables were men “posing in
everyday life as loyal citizens.” They continued to work in the cause of
independence; they were caught by the Americans' declaration of peace but
could not be reconciled to the occupation regime.
The irreconcilables organized the Partido Nacionalista in 1901. For

purposes of registration with the Philippine Commission they declared that
the party would work within the law, but would seek early autonomy and in
time independence under United States protectorateship. The party's
avowed methods were peaceful, as exemplified by one of its declared
activities: “To inculcate in the Filipino people a love of instruction, a desire
to work, the necessity of economy, and the spirit of association.” The words
were reminiscent of the old Katipunan. At first the party had two
presidents: Santiago Alvarez and Pascual H. Poblete. The vicepresident
was Andres Villanueva. There were sixteen secretaries, including: Macario
Sakay, Pantaleon Torres, Lope K. Santos, Jose Palma, Aurelio Tolentino,
Aguedo del Rosario, Francisco Carreon.
The next year the Katipunan was again revived, and it is not unexpected
that Luciano San Miguel was the head (it continued to be a secret society).
It must be noted that at this time Gregorio Aglipay had organized the
schismatic Filipino Independent Church and Isabelo de los Reyes had
founded the Unión Obrera Democrática de Filipinas. The Partido
Nacionalista (now headed by Dominador Gomez), the Katipunan, the
Aglipay church, and the labor movement all bespoke a clear and continuing
nationalist sentiment.
It is within this context, not that of petty ladronism, that San Miguel's
struggle must be appreciated. And it is only within this context that we can
understand why he sought, at this point, counsel and guidance from a man
whose ethics and uprightness no honorable person could question:
Apolinario Mabini.
Some days after Mabini arrived in Manila (26 February 1903) from his
exile in Guam (since January 1901) he received a letter from San Miguel
greeting him and requesting advice. There is no trace of this letter, but we
will know what San Miguel needed to have advice about, from Mabini's
letterreply. Mabini could not give an answer immediately; he had not had
time enough to assess conditions. So he scribbled a message on a calling
card, thanking San Miguel for his words of welcome and saying that he
would send a proper answer shortly. This was brought to San Miguel.
On 27 March Mabini wrote his reply. He addressed his letter to “General
Luciano San Miguel.” He wrote of liberty; the goal of independence through
resumption of the war; the Filipinos' lack of arms; the possibility that arms
assistance might be had from a foreign power, but that this same power
might later wish to annex the Philippines; the additional destruction and
losses that war would entail; the path of independence via peaceful means;
the opinion of the majority of the people. In this connection he made the
suggestion: “Let us conform to the opinion of the majority, although we may
recognize that by this method we do not obtain our desires.” He also
suggested that a public meeting might be held to discuss the situation and
the options available. If San Miguel agreed, he said, he could use Mabini's
services to convey his terms (on such matters as safeconduct, for instance)
to the authorities. Mabini was personally inclined to peace at the time, but
he wrote that: “I believe that as long as the Filipinos do not endeavor to
liberate themselves from their bonds the period of their liberty will not
arrive.” Such a letter is not one that a leader of outlaws solicits from a man
like Mabini, nor would Mabini write such a letter to a leader of ladrones.
San Miguel's messenger picked up the letter the same morning of 27
March 1903. San Miguel did not get it. The messenger went back to Mabini
the next day to report that he delivered it to San Miguel's second in
command. San Miguel and his forces had been engaged in two recent
actions, one with the Philippine Constabulary and the other with a joint
force of the Constabulary and the Philippine Scouts. The second encounter
was fought in PugadBabuy (“Wild Pigs Lair”) in the hilly country of eastern
Rizal; San Miguel's force lost heavily and he was killed. Paterno, although
often said to be proregime, wrote in 1910 that San Miguel "died gloriously
under the fire of the American guns." On San Miguel's body was found
Mabini's calling card. The Filipinos' last general fell in battle.2
Outside of Rizal and Bulacan there were unstable conditions caused by
what the American governor Taft described as “criminal malcontents” and
“lawless elements” in Surigao and Misamis. In Surigao, the American
captain of the Constabulary was killed, government rifles were seized, and
the capital town was held by “the lawless band." Relief forces from Iligan
and Leyte had to be called in. Taft stubbornly refused to admit that the
peace was not complete, but we know the true condition of the province from
his own words: “I concluded to turn over the province to the military.”
Taft blamed the troubles in Misamis on the people misunderstanding the
purpose of the census then being conducted. He said that they rose because
they thought that the census was going to be the basis for taxation. But in
the end, he said, “all the lawless elements were captured or killed and the
living are now in Bilibid” [the penitentiary]. Taft enjoys the reputation of
being a good man; after his service in the Philippines he became United
States Secretary of War, President, and Chief justice of their Supreme
Court. But Taft's credibility may be questioned from the evidence of an
American judge who was assigned to Misamis and who worked there from
May to September 1903, trying the cases of the “lawless elements” in court.
The judge, James F. Blount, contradicted Taft; he declared that the men
were “genuine insurrectos,” not outlaws. Blount wrote that:3
They were by no means unmitigated cutthroats. I have often
wondered how they managed to be so respectable at that late date. They
did not steal, as did most of the outlaws of 1903. Their avowed purpose
was to subvert the existing government.
The reports of the Commission and the governor during these years treat
all the disturbances as problems of “tranquility” or “peace and order.” Well,
the most critical disturbance during 1903 was not a simple peace and order
problem. It was the serious resistance in Albay. Its abaca, better known as
Manila hemp, made Albay the richest of the provinces at the time. The
leaders of the insurrection were Simeon Ola of the town of Guinobatan, with
Agustin Saria and Lazaro Toledo, both from Cavite. All three were majors in
Gen. Vito Belarmino's command. Belarmino surrendered in July 1901; Ola
and Toledo were with him but soon returned to the hills; Saria never turned
himself in.
They conducted, according to Taft, a “reign of terror” throughout the

province. But Taft's report also suggests that they were Robin Hoods and
that they enjoyed popular sympathy in the pueblos. Taft tells an unlikely
tale about Ola fighting not so much the regime as he was against the
wealthy abaca growers.
Unable to make any headway in the campaign against Ola, the regime
remembered the method that Gen. Bell had used successfully against
Malvar. The latter had surrendered when the people of Batangas and
Laguna had been forced into concentration camps. And so it came the turn
of the people of Albay to be herded like prisoners into the camps, although it
had now been almost a year since the “insurrection” was said to have been
over.
The towns of Albay were like most other pueblos, bisected by the
highway which served as the main street. The tribunal or town hall, like the
church, stood in the center of the población. In 1903 the concentration camp
or “zone of protection” in each Albay town was defined by a square with
sides approximately 2,000 yards (1,830 meters) long. Two sides ran 1,000
yards from and parallel to the main road, the other two sides 1,000 yards
from the town hall. The defined area was less than 3.5 square kilometers.
Into this square the people of the barrios and outlying districts of the
municipality were herded together with the residents of the población. The
provincial governor's report for 1903 stated:
Naturally, the effect of this unusual volume of persons in such a

limited area was disease and suffering for want of food and ordinary
living accommodations.
The leading men of the province formed a committee to raise funds for
feeding the poor. They also collected contributions to support the townsmen
who "volunteered" to help the Constabulary and Scouts go thrashing into
the hills after the ladrones. The concentration lasted from March to October
1903. Then, Taft says, “the people were allowed to return to their homes.”
But Taft did not tell all. He knew that the concentration method required
that all houses outside the camps be burned or otherwise destroyed; and so
there were no homes for many of the people to return to.
The provincial governor's report was actually restrained. He (R.F.

Santos, formerly colonel in Gen. Belarmino's command) had to make the
necessary condemnation of the ladrones. He also wrote that “through it all
the pacific and obedient nature of the people demonstrated itself, and the
political situation was never in danger from any of the effects of this
reconcentration on the masses of the people.” But Taft absolutely avoided
the word. He would only report that the Commission authorized the
governor of Albay and the Constabulary “to bring the people from the
outlying barrios, where they were exposed to the invasion of ladrones,
nearer to the populated portions of their respective towns.”
The regime was really touchy about the business of concentration. Taft
took care to stress that “the people thus brought in were [to be] properly fed
and not subjected to unnecessary privations.” In the same solicitous tone the
commander of the Constabulary in the Bicol region described the
concentration in Albay as nominal. It was, he reported in 1903:
without any pitiless shooting down of defenseless women and

children and such other attendant horrors as are generally associated
with the word reconcentration. There was no starvation, as all the
people were given sufficient food for their needs provided they
performed some work, and in case they were sick or helpless, the food
was furnished gratuitously.... The object of the reconcentration was not
to punish the people indiscriminately, but to deprive the ladrones of the
means of subsistence in the interior, and enable the troops to operate
freely without fear of injuring innocent people.
The socalled civil government had good cause to treat the issue gingerly.
The President of the United States had declared that peace had been
established in America's new colony; it would not be nice for the colonial
regime to be caught using barbaric war tactics such as herding non
combatants and innocents into concentration camps. Worse, the
concentration in Albay and the Reconcentration Statute enacted by the
Commission (1903) ran smack against U.S. Public Act No. 235, the
governing law of the regime since 1 July 1902. This law provided in part:
deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of
law....
The concentration in Albay lasted eight months. It yielded the expected
results. Ola and hundreds of other men were captured or surrendered. They
were brought to court. Again, Judge Blount was assigned to the province to
assist in the trials. And, again, he reported that the matter was not an
outlaw disturbance but an insurrection. But it was not this issue that
concerned him. What profoundly disturbed Blount was two lists, one
containing fiftyseven names, the second sixtythree, of men who were kept
in the Albay provincial jail. They were all officially reported to have died
between 20 May and 3 December 1903 (with one exception). The most he
would say about the matter was that “in the Albay jail in 1903 we had a sort
of Andersonville prison, or Black Hole of Calcutta, on a small scale.”4
The Commission also reported in 1904 that the Hongkong Junta was
showing renewed life. The irreconcilables in Manila sponsored agitation for
immediate independence in the hope that this would influence the American
presidential elections. Artemio Ricarte secretly returned in December. He
had been brought with Mabini to Manila from Guam in February the past
year but had been shipped off to Hongkong because he refused to take the
oath of loyalty. He and Aurelio Tolentino collaborated in nationalist
activities.
The Commission had dismissed Isabelo de los Reyes, founder of the

Unión Obrera Democrática, as “a crackbrained insurrecto agitator.” Now
the Commission called Tolentino “a crackbrained playwright.” This was a
slur. Tolentino was among the signatories to the independence proclamation
and later president of the junta de Amigos that was active in 1900 in
Manila, with authority from President Aguinaldo to organize guerrilla
groups. He was one of the secretaries of the Partido Nacionalista. As a
playwright he wrote Tagalog plays which were vehicles for the party's goals.
He was not in the least crackbrained. Anyway, Ricarte also went to
northern Luzon; there he met with a corporal of the Constabulary who had
served under him in the field; the man seized the Constabulary barracks in
Vigan, Ilocos Sur.5
The war returned to Cavite in 19041905. The Commission named

Cornelio Felizardo, Julian Montalon, Lucio de Vega, a man named Oruga,
Macario Sakay, and Fructuoso Vito as the ladrón leaders. All were former
officers in the Filipino army and the Commission conceded that political
aims were “at least a factor” in their activities. It referred to Sakay as a
former barber in Manila, much like the Spanish governorgeneral Anda y
Salazar reporting to his king that Diego Silang and Juan de la Cruz Palaris,
the leaders of the two great rebellions of the 1760s, were cocheros (rig
drivers) in Manila. The governorgeneral's 1907 report said that Sakay had
tried to revive the Katipunan in 1902, and he was tried and convicted of
sedition. Then he was amnestied and took the oath of allegiance. But his
activities displeased the authorities, and he fled to the hills and set up his
organization. In time, he became head of the diverse groups of Montalon,
Felizardo, and other chiefs, although most of the assaults were conducted
under the direct responsibility of the latter and not by him.
These groups conducted raids on the towns of San Pedro Tunasan in
Laguna, Paranaque near Manila, and Taal in Batangas between November
1904 and January 1905. The attackers were able to kill a few Americans
and to capture arms and ammunition. The townsfolk, as usual, withheld
cooperation from the regime. Batangas and Cavite at this point were said to
be overrun with ladrones.
While the authorities were organizing for a major campaign the town of
San Francisco de Malabon, home of former Gen. Mariano Trias, the then
provincial governor, was attacked on 24 January. The garrison was made up
of the Constabulary and a few Scouts. The town treasury was emptied, rifles
and ammunition were carried off, and Trias' wife and their two young
children were taken by the attackers. This led the regime to drop all
pretense of peace. Cavite was virtually occupied by one battalion of the US
Army Second Cavalry, another battalion of the Second Infantry, and yet
another of the Philippine Scouts. The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus
was suspended. But the Commission reported that this resulted in no real
progress. It explained that there were “numberless blind trails” in the two
provinces, and the people sympathized with the ladrones, and it was easy
for the latter to melt into the peaceful population.
It was the guerrilla war all over again, and the regime herded the people
into concentration camps anew. The Commission assured its superiors by
taking pains to point out that:
The people were allowed, of course, to take with them their food
supplies of every sort, together with their cattle and household
property, and proper provision was made for their comfort by building
temporary houses fully as good as those they ordinarily occupied.
W. Cameron Forbes, a Commission member from 1904 and governor

general from 1909 to 1913, has a similarly benign picture of the
concentration in Batangas and Cavite. He says that concentration under the
Spaniards “involved a great deal of suffering,” but in this case the families:
were escorted, with such valuables as they could carry, to the

reconcentration camp in which they were required to reside. They were
allowed much freedom of movement provided they did not return to
their barrios. The camps were under the direction of the presidents of
the towns. The American officials were careful about the treatment of
every one in such camps and complaints received prompt attention. The
principal hardship of reconcentration lay in the fact that the farmers
could not care for their crops. This, however, had the important effect of
inducing the bandits to surrender when they saw that their continuance
in the field was going to prove injurious to the interest of their friends.
With the towns battened down and sealed, the military went after the
ladrón groups. The Commission reported that by July, only Felizardo,
Montalon, and De Vega remained of the noteworthy leaders. Concentration
was apparently ended in July, although in August 1905 the privilege of the
writ of habeas corpus had not been restored in either Batangas or Cavite.
The Commission stated that Felizardo was killed. It ended its report with
the apparent non sequitur that more land was under cultivation in
Batangas and Cavite than at any time since 1896.
In its 1906 report the Commission confessed that Felizardo was not
really killed in 1905 as it had reported, but that he was truly dead this year.
Felizardo had served as a lieutenant under Gen. Juan Cailles, commanding
in Laguna; Cailles, now governor of the province, was among the witnesses
who identified Felizardo's body. Sakay was now the only notable leader of
the “ladrones.” He is said to have claimed the title of president of the
Filipino Republic. He had a vicepresident, Francisco Carreon; he had a
lieutenantgeneral, Leon Villafuerte. Julian Montalon also styled himself
“LieutenantGeneral of the Army of Liberation.” They were described by the
Commission as among “the most wicked and desperate men ever at large in
the Philippine Islands.”
The ending of the disturbances in Cavite and Batangas was anti

climactic. One of the Indios Bravos in Europe, Dominador Gomez, returned
from Spain after the declaration of peace. He was a medical doctor, but soon
became a leading figure in political affairs as well as in the labor movement.
He is reported in 1903 as having proposed to the regime that the ladrones
be guaranteed immunity from prosecution as well as food and employment
for one year in exchange for their surrender and return to the law. This offer
was not accepted then. In May 1906, he offered to get Sakay and his men to
surrender; this time his services were welcome. He was as good as his word.
The hunted men came forth and gave themselves up.
Sakay, Montalon, Villafuerte, and De Vega were brought to trial in

September. They were charged and convicted of the crime of bandolerismo.
This crime was invented by the Commission. It was always difficult to prove
in court that a man committed the usual criminal acts, or that he was
present when these acts were committed. So the Commission enacted the
Bandolerismo Statute in November 1902. Under this law it was enough to
show, by inference and circumstantial evidence, that the man was a member
of a group defined by the law as a criminal band. The Commission chairman
would later be the US Supreme Court Chief Justice. The first two sections of
the Bandolerismo law read:
Section 1. Whenever three or more persons, conspiring together,

shall form a band of robbers for the purpose of stealing carabao or other
personal property by means of force and violence, and shall go out upon
the highway or roam over the country armed with deadly weapons for
this purpose, they shall be deemed highway robbers or brigands, and
every person engaged in the original formation of the band, or joining it
thereafter, shall, upon conviction thereof, be punished by death, or
imprisonment for not less than twenty years, in the discretion of the
court.
Section 2. To prove the crime described in the previous section, it
shall not be necessary to adduce evidence that any member of the band
has in fact committed robbery or theft, but it shall be sufficient to justify
conviction thereunder if, from the circumstances, it can be inferred
beyond reasonable doubt that the accused is a member of such an armed
band as that described in said section.
The accused were found guilty and sentenced to death under these
astonishing rules of evidence. The sentences on Montalon and Villafuerte
were later commuted to life imprisonment.
The 1905 concentration in Batangas and Cavite broke the spirit of the
resistance in this region. The area's rich lands and mild climate had
attracted foreigners for centuries. Because the law often supported the
landgrabbers the people became wary, easy to stir, and inclined to revolt.
But the people of Batangas had been under concentration as recently as
1902, and the Batanguenos and Cavitenos had been in war almost without
respite since 1896.
The Bandolerismo statute partly launched the political career of a young
Tayabas lawyer. Manuel L. Quezon was a lieutenant in the Bataan sector
during the retreat of the Filipino forces. He surrendered in April 1901,
finished his law studies in Manila, and went home. His record of the era
says that, as a result of the law:
In the latter part of 1903, and even of the first half of 1904, every
provincial jail in the Philippines was filled with socalled bandits.
Innocent Filipinos living in faraway villages who were put in jail on
mere suspicion or on woefully deficient evidence, were innumerable.
Quezon says that he took on the defense for every man who had no
lawyer and won acquittal in every case.6
We will next take notice of three other cases of disturbance and

resistance during this time. We see them in widely separated areas: north
central Luzon, NegrosCebu, and SamarLeyte.
The regime's scanty reports on these cases stressed what was exotic and
often bizarre, urging us to see the people involved as sociological curiosities.
It is not easy now to get away from the images created by the reports: rural
sects and their leaders with long hair claiming to be prophets and assuming
titles of “Pope,” and followers said to be no more than superstitious and
ignorant members of fanatical religious movements. Some of this was surely
true; we must realize that the sects and movements had historical
precedents. But religion and superstition were not the whole of the matter.
Our account presents the cases as both disturbance of the peace and
resistance to the regime.
The movements were manifestations of a familiar phenomenon in old

Filipinas: cultism that was closely related to both religion and alienation
from the authorities. We came across an early and famous example of this
phenomenon in the Cofradia de San Jose of Apolinario de la Cruz (supra,
Chapter 11) during the 1840s.
The cultist sects and brotherhoods were generally quiet, their leaders
more or less avoiding the interest of the authorities. But the folk would be
stirred during unusual times, their anxieties agitated by social upheaval
and disaster. Thus flared the disturbances in Samar in 1884, fruit of the
18821883 cholera epidemic (supra, Chapter 15). Social turmoil and the
overthrow of the familiar order of things during the Revolution and the war
were even more jarring, pushing a host of religionrelated groups in the
highland and rural areas to the surface. The Katipunan ng San Cristobal
(Brotherhood of San Cristobal) that was active in Batangas, Laguna, and
Tayabas in 1898 was clearly an echo of the De la Cruz movement.
The regime regarded the cultist sects and brotherhoods only in their
religious aspect. The Constabulary report of 1903 provided a list of what its
officers described as “religious and fanatical movements,” saying that they
were all organized around the belief in “a church militant in its highest
form”:
DiosDios, Pulajans, Colorados, CruzCruz, San[ta] Iglesia,

Cazadores, Colorums, Santo Ninos, Guardia[s] de Honor, Soldados
Militantes de la Iglesia, and Hermanos del Tercero Orden.
But if it is not possible to segregate the element of resistance in the

movements, it cannot be ignored either, especially since the Americans
represented to the folk a heretical faith, a false religion. In fact the
Commission noted that all of the movements engaged in raids for the
purpose of capturing rifles.
The Constabulary report of 1903 also noted the fall of three “popes”
during the year: Faustino Ablena of Samar (who signed his letters as “Senor
Jesus y Maria”); Fernandez of Laguna; and Rios of Tayabas. There were two
other popes still at large: Papa Isio of Negros and “King” Apo of Pampanga
and Nueva Ecija.
Felipe Salvador came to the Commission's attention in 1903. He was

portrayed as a quasireligious leader, the stock prophet with long hair. He
was considered an outlaw. The Commission reports do not involve him in
raids or attacks of note before 1906. Indeed they state that he was
quiescent: “for a considerable time he has been hiding in the swamps” of
Bulacan and Nueva Ecija or in the forest of Mt. Arayat. In other words, the
Commission expected him to make trouble. Salvador was the leader of
Santa Iglesia ("Holy Church"). In April 1906 his adherents attacked the
Constabulary barracks in Malolos and seized some guns. But they lost
heavily in a subsequent engagement in the nearby town of Hagonoy, and the
Commission said this year that Salvador was negotiating for surrender and
that his followers in Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Tarlac, Pampanga, and
Pangasinan were peaceful and quiet. The Commission bombastically
asserted in its 1906 report that, as far as Luzon was concerned: “Never
before within the history of modern times has this great island been in so
peaceful and orderly a condition as now.”7
Our second case is that of the NegrosCebu region. In Cebu in 1903 the
pulahanes were a serious problem. They raided towns and battered a
Constabulary force, killing two officers. The Commission also noted ladrón
disturbances in Iloilo and Capiz.
In Negros the leaders had adhered to the Revolution in 1898 but as
easily declared submission to the Americans in March 1899. Those leaders
were sugar hacenderos. The socioeconomic extremes of Filipino society were
probably most starkly reflected in the Negros of that era, specifically in
plantation society. The hub and heart of this society was the hacienda; the
hacendero was lord of all. His house was like the convento in the población;
it was the manor house, the center of the community. The sway of the
hacienda over the people is pictured in a contemporary account:
The oxen, carabao, and horses to be seen in the fields or on the roads
belonged to the hacendero; the broad acres of sugarcane and rice, the
milch goats that fed beside the hedgeless roads, the long galvanized iron
shed that housed the milling machinery, the paraos and lorchas [water
craft] that loaded grasssacks of crude sugar at the landing on the river,
the bamboo and nipa huts of the laborers all were his. Even the
laborers, men, women, and children, tanned to darkest bronze by toil in
the paddies and fields, might be said to belong to the hacendero, for they
were usually so deeply in his debt for clothing and food advanced that
escape was wellnigh impossible.
All of the common people in the hacienda and most of the masses outside
in the pueblos and mountains were unschooled and poor. The resistance
passed into their hands when the hacendero class submitted to the
Americans. As in Luzon and SamarLeyte the organization of the poor folk
was featured by superstition and religion. So the “outlaws” of Negros were
called “babaylan”. We see the religious element in the term, for the
babaylan was the preSpanish priest or priestess. John R. White, a young
American Constabulary officer who is the source of the quotation above,
simply adopted his superiors' notion of the babaylans and called them
“fanatical outlaws.”
The best known leader of the Negros babaylans was Dionisio Papa,
commonly known as Papa Isio it could have been a play on words, for
“Papa” was a common enough surname, and it also meant “Pope.” But Papa
Isio was probably not a mere babaylan; in early March 1899 he had written
Aguinaldo to inform him of his command. He and his followers eluded the
Constabulary for months. His base was located on Mt. Mansalanao, 1,830
meters up on the ridge that leads north to Mt. Kanlaon. This base was
finally captured by the Constabulary in late May 1902. Papa Isio went into
hiding and the resistance in Negros ended in late October this same year
when Dalmacio the Negrito, who ranked next to Papa Isio and was the
babaylan leader in the north of the island, was captured.8
We now turn to our third case. In 1904 the regime noted that ladrones
bands “seem always to have existed to some extent among the Filipinos...,”
although it also said that there was no longer a single organized band of
them in Luzon and the Visayas except in Samar. Here the pulahan leader
was Papa Bulan; the name is the telltale link with a cultist and rural
movement. His base was in the headwaters area of the Gandara River. The
Constabulary in Samar with the Constabulary and Scouts of other provinces
are reported to have broken up the pulahanes into small groups.
Over 19031904 the occupation regime had been qualifying its preceding
reports to the effect that general and complete peace existed in the islands.
In 1905 it admitted that there were more pulahanes than ever. There were
actions in Samar in the towns of Orás and Dolores; here the pulahanes
practically annihilated two detachments of the US Army 38th Company of
Philippine Scouts and captured 59 carbines and six revolvers. But the
regime in Manila reported that it took strong measures, and concluded that
it had no doubt that the pulahanes would thenceforth be lawabiding.
The next year it reported that it was wrong. After elaborate
arrangements the regime was able to get the pulahanes to agree to
surrender; a day in March 1906 was set for the surrender and the district of
Magtaon in the mountainous heart of Samar was chosen as the venue for
the ceremonies. But when the pulahanes were in formation for the
surrender they fired on signal at the Constabulary and a hand to hand fight
ensued. The Commission concluded its report saying lamely that much of
the province was “in an orderly condition.”
Across the narrow strait from Samar pulahan activity surged anew in
Leyte. The pulahanes, who wore red in their dress or in their headbands
(and thus "pula," or red) were still known to the regime basically as
highland people. In June 1906 they attacked the town of Burauen; they
killed some policemen and seized some rifles. The Constabulary reported
that the mother (Maria Lipayon) of “two pulajanes or outlaws” was in the
town jail; the two sons (Juan and Basilio Cabero) wished to free her and
take revenge on the justice of the peace and other officials of the town; and
the pulahanes “undoubtedly” resented the new land assessments and the
land tax. This last is unbelievable. If, as the regime claimed, the pulahanes
were mountain people, then there could be no land assessments and land
taxes because there were no surveys of mountain lands; even for most of the
lowlands in Luzon at this time the system of registration of land titles was
not yet working.
So there was something fishy about the Commission report. And it
became fishier and fishier when the Commission reported that five US
Army battalions took to the field to help “restore order” in Leyte. The final
inconsistency was the Commission's assurance that the governorgeneral
went to Leyte and held conferences with the majorgeneral who was the
highest ranking US Army officer in the Philippines, and also with the
brigadiergeneral commanding the US Army department of the Visayas, the
colonel commanding all US Army forces in Leyte, the colonel who was
Constabulary chief for the district, the governor of Leyte, and all the town
presidentes of the province. We are asked to believe that those worthy
officials were in conference because two members of a band of outlaw
mountain folk succeeded in rescuing their mother from jail and because they
were against the land tax.
The bungling in the reports of the occupation regime over the years was
due to its resolve to shore up the crumbling structure of deceits and

misrepresentations about the Philippines that had first been built up in
18981899 to mislead the American public. The fault of the Commission, of
Taft (to the end of 1903), and his successors was that they did not know
when to end the farce.
The last word in this part of our story will have to be that of an English
lady, resident with her husband from December 1904 to August 1905 in
Iloilo. The lady, Mrs. Campbell Dauncey, had a lively interest in current
affairs, and along with her tales of trials setting up house and hiring local
help she has left notes and comment about the period, mostly on the
regime's policies and pronouncements and their consistency with practice.
She recorded a Manila Times item on the arrival of bloodhounds from the
United States to be used in the campaigns in Samar and Cavite. She wrote
that Samar was under martial law in 1905:
owing to the patriotism and enterprise of certain jolly fellows, called
Pulajanes, going about with big curved bolos, and old Spanish flintlocks,
and in fact anything they can catch hold of.
These persons are really patriots of a most irreconcilable type, but it
suits the programme of the Government to label them ladrones
(robbers), and to refer to their own hard fights with them as “cleaning
up the province.” On the strength of this nickname, the Americans cut
down these patriots freely (when the Pulajanes do not do the cutting
down first), and if they catch them alive the poor devils are hanged like
common criminals.
If Mrs. Dauncey was correct, not all the pulahanes and sects were
outlaws or simple religious fanatics after all.
The five US Army battalions that were sent to Leyte in 1906 ended the
active Christian Filipino resistance to the occupation regime. The war was
over at last. None of the irreconcilables and officers of the Filipino army and
none of the pulahan and “outlaw bands” would be active after this year.
Felipe Salvador broke off his negotiations for surrender in 1906 when he
heard of the death sentence and execution of Macario Sakay. He remained
at large but was captured in 1910. Otoy, the last important pulahan chief,
died in Samar the same year.9
There was one more conflict that had to be fought before the Americans
could complete their conquest of the archipelago. It was different and apart
from the Christian FilipinoAmerican War.
The Moro Wars: 18991912
The Muslim Filipino was called "Moro" by the Spaniards. The term was
not common usage among the masses of Filipinos in Luzon. This was
because of the isolation imposed by the doctrina and the nature of the friar
schools, although there was the onceayear exception: the annual
presentation of the moromoro play during the pueblo fiesta. It was during
the American occupation that the term became part of the Filipino
vocabulary. The Americans simply adopted the Spanish usage and it became
widespread through better communications, books, and the new school
system.
The Americans' respect for the Muslims as fierce and brave warriors, and
their denigratory view of Muslim Filipino culture, imparted to the word
“Moro” a combination of fear and distrust and a feeling of cultural
superiority toward the Muslims. In this part of our story we will often use
the old term in order to preserve the spirit of the era, mindful that the
secessionist Moro National Liberation Front since the 1970s revived the old
usage much as the Indios Bravos during the 1880s adopted the Spaniards'
term of derogation, not in shame but in pride.
We have to review the background of the new war so that we can

appreciate the significance of its historic outcome. We will remember that
when the war began, the Christian and Muslim Filipinos were as far apart
and divided as they had been since before the era of white colonialism and
thenceforth throughout the long Spanish occupation. The Malolos Congress
was unable to appreciate Aguinaldo's concept of a federation with the
Muslims, and his own letter to the Sultan of Sulu was unanswered.
The peace protocol of 12 August 1898 between Spain and the United
States gave the latter provisional occupation and possession of “the city,
bay, and harbor” of Manila. It was provisional because the final
determination of the control, disposition, and government of “the
Philippines” (not necessarily “archipelago”) was left to the treaty of peace.
By the time the treaty negotiators were parleying in Paris there was no
longer any vestige of Spanish control, possession, or government in Filipinas
(that is to say, the Christian part of the archipelago). And Spain never had
control, government, nor possession of the Moro territory. It did not have
any “suspended sovereignty” because its sovereignty had been terminated.
And so when the United States offered to pay $20,000,000 for the cession of
the archipelago in November 1898, Spain accepted.
During the Moro wars since the sixteenth century the Moros would win
some, and the Spaniards would win some. When the Moros won they always
withdrew with the captured prize of war; they never took territory. If the
Spaniards won they would sometimes enter into a treaty with the losing
sultan. But the Spaniards would never be able to occupy what they thought
they had won. All such treaties were good only until the enemy expedition or
fleet sailed away. This Muslim view was the fruit of experience with
foreigners who kept bothering them. In 1851 after their victory over Jolo the
Spaniards unilaterally incorporated Sulu as part of Spanish territory. In
1860 they wrote out another document constituting Mindanao, Basilan, and
the Sulu and TawiTawi island groups into a politicomilitary province of
Filipinas.
But these Spanish documents were merely pieces of paper. In 1870, for
instance, which was a full ten years after the province of Mindanao was
created, the Spanish regime could do no more than estimate the total
population at 157,591! Those documents were conceived by the Manila
officials to impress Madrid and expressed the Spaniards fancy and
imagination. They reflected neither the reality or Spanish capability.
The Spaniards had to fight the Sultan of Sulu again in 1876, and then
the Maranaos in the 1890s. Well, what they did not accomplish in three
hundred years they did not achieve in two decades. During the 1880s1890s
the Spaniards could not govern their “province” and suffered costly losses to
the Maranaos, Maguindanaos, and Taosugs.10
The Spaniards had just failed, yet another time, to conquer the
Maranaos when the Revolution broke out. They abandoned their presidios
in the southern islands as the troops were sent north to fight Aguinaldo's
forces. They did not fight the Americans. Throughout Luzon (except only in
Manila) they surrendered to the Filipinos; their token forces in Cebu and
Iloilo capitulated without a fight. The remaining depleted garrisons in Jolo
and Zamboanga no longer held bastions of Spain; the sites were merely
evacuation bases for Spanish troops who could escape surrender or capture,
preparatory to the final voyage of retreat from the archipelago.
And so, in Paris in 1898, when Spain and the new imperialist United
States were selling and buying a country and people, Spain sold something
it did not own or possess. What it sold was paper: pieces of paper that said
that Sulu was part of the Spanish Crown and that Mindanao and Basilan
and Sulu and TawiTawi were a province of Filipinas.
Now the United States had paid for a bill of goods. Its Senate consented
to the treaty in February. The Congress appropriated the purchase price in
March. The ratifications were exchanged in April. The money was paid in
May. That they had paid for paper was not a bother to the Americans. That
they could not get their money back from Spain was not a problem either.
The Americans would collect what they paid for, by themselves and by force.
And this was how the Americans bought themselves a war with the Moros.
The first American probe into the Moro territory was in the south, in
Jolo; in May 1899 a US Army detachment relieved the Spanish garrison
there. The Zamboanga presidio was occupied in December the same year.
The Philippine Commission, which assumed office in 1900, had no
important reports on the Moro situation then because the Moro territory
was under the US military. In time the military achieved a presence,
outside of Zamboanga and Jolo, also in Lanao, Cotabato, and Davao. From
this exposure the Americans inevitably learned that the major Moro
groupings were those of the Taosugs, the Maranaos, and the Maguindanaos.
The regime's policy during this early period was merely to occupy the
abandoned Spanish outposts.
MoroAmerican relations during these initial years were therefore

characterized by noninterference. The Americans were loathe to plunge
into relations with a nonChristian people about whom they knew almost
nothing except that they were brave and fierce warriors. The US War
Department published a gazetteer of the Philippines in 1902. This simply
noted that the people of the Sulu archipelago were “Moro” in race. As for
population, we read the following simple entry: “14,415 men for war.” In
1901 the Philippine Commission reported “the friendliest relations” with the
people of Zamboanga, Sulu, Cotabato, and Davao. But it noted that the
Maranaos “have long been reputed the fiercest and most uncompromising
members of this tribe” – that is, the Moros.
The Commission had the slightest change of tone in its 1902 report. A
school had been opened in Zamboanga and another in Jolo, “but at present
the Moros are not manifesting any considerable eagerness to be taught by
Americans.” The Commission attributed this to the Moros' belief that they
were invincible, and it concluded that they had best be awakened to their
“feebleness as contrasted with the powers of a civilized nation.”
The waning of the war in Luzon and the Visayas was followed by a more
pronounced US Army presence in the Moro region. And so the two peoples
became more exposed to each other. The Moros did not document their
views of the newcomers, and so we rely mostly on the American material.
Ethnocentricity was unavoidable. The first governor of the Moro Province,
General Leonard Wood, wrote of the Taosugs that: “They are nothing more
or less than an unimportant collection of pirates and highwaymen, living
under laws which are intolerable...” Of the Moros in general, Wood reported
in 1904:
Such laws as they have are many of them revolting and practically
all of them utterly and absolutely undesirable from any standpoint of
decency and good government. The Moros are, in a way, religious and
moral degenerates.
Wood's deputy for the district of Sulu echoed his superior:
In many things they are inferior to the American Indians, and I

know of no trait in which they are superior.... They are all pirates, ex
pirates, or descendants of pirates.
We have a mixed impression of the Taosug country and people from an
American constabulary officer. He saw the isles against:
a sea of sparkling blue rarely lashed by storms; islands so lovely that
they seemed destined for a race of fairies; and a people in general so
unlovely in appearance and disposition that they were as satyrs in the
garden of paradise.
For their part, the Moros generally kept their distance from the
Americans. The latter were baffled or flabbergasted when they learned of
the datus appropriating or “stealing” slaves or livestock from each other,
which was also common among their men, and all had scores of ways of
evading paying debts. There was piracy and kidnapping of persons for sale.
It was a way of life and each loss or setback was carefully measured by the
Taosugs according to whether or not it merited armed and violent solution,
which everybody avoided because each one waited for the day when he could
perpetrate the same oneupmanship on the other. The Moros took all this in
stride. "Insha' Allah" as God wills. And when the Americans said that they
would settle disputes “according to law” they might be asked to settle such
cases as, for instance:
The Moro Tangoa of Pandukan borrowed a gong from a Chino called
Batu of Tullai (Jolo) while the latter was staying at Pandukan. Before
he returned the gong the Chino left Pandukan.
Then the Moro Lisang of Pandukan claimed the gong and wanted to
take it away from Tangoa, saying that it was his gong and that he had
pawned it to a Chino.
Kim, the father of Tangoa, said that they could not give up the gong,
as Tangoa had borrowed it from the Chino Batu; that they must inform
the latter and that Lisang should come back after three days. Kim sent
a messenger to the Chino Batu, who returned with Batu's answer, that
if Tangoa gave up the gong he would have to pay him, Batu, 100 pesos.
Then Lisang came and tried to take the gong by force. In order to avoid
a fight, Kim said: “I shall take the gong to your (Lisang's) house
tonight.”
Kim then went to Nakib Hajim and laid the case before him; the
nakib said: “This is not just; I shall see Lisang about it.” But Lisang
would not obey the nakib, and said that Kim had agreed to give up the
gong to him, Lisang. Kim and Tangoa left Pandukan that same night for
Tullai and returned the gong to the Chino Batu. The next day Lisang
burnt the house of Kim in Pandukan. Kim and Tangoa say that they are
afraid to return to Pandukan because Lisang has said that he would kill
them.
When the Moros could not avoid direct dealing with the Americans the
former would often seem to be wheedling, even fawning, or dissembling and
haggling. The Sultan of Sulu wrote a letter in May 1901 with the following
address: “This letter from your son, His Highness the Sultan Hadji
Mohamad Jamalul Kiram, to my father, Major Sweet, governor of Jolo.”
But this humble conduct was ritual, and was good only until it came to a
fight. The Moro culture produced many juramentados, individual men who
went through cleansing and purifying religious rites before they ran amuck
to kill unbelievers, often Americans, till they themselves were killed. Aside
from the juramentados there were the sabilallahs (“sanctified warriors”)
and the jihad (collective sabilallah action in a "holy war"). In the ordinary
sense of “fighting” the usual Moro way of attack was by ambush. For a fight
against an enemy in force the Moros lay it all out in the open. A datu and
his people, or a number of datus and their people together, numbering
several hundreds or a few thousands of warriors with their women and
children, would make a last stand; all would retire to their fort or cotta,
often atop a hill, where they would be incomparable in handtohand
fighting but would be slaughtered by American artillery, guns, and assault
forces.11
True to their reputation, the Maranaos had made it plain that they did
not welcome Americans in their territory. In 1902 they attacked a US
cavalry detachment exploring the route from Parang (near Cotabato) to the
lake; several troopers were killed. In retaliation two American columns
went after the Maranaos, from the south in Parang and another from the
north in Iligan. There was, reported the Commission, “fierce resistance” in
both cases. The star in the Lanao campaign was a young American captain,
John J. Pershing, who earned a reputation that won him an unorthodox
promotion from the American President straight from captain to brigadier
general.
The Commission report for 1903 stated that organized Maranao

resistance was suppressed and that military operations were suspended for
a year. Zamboanga and Maguindanao were said to have been pacified, but
“in Jolo we have a condition that needs thorough and drastic treatment.”
Outside of juramentados, killings of unwary soldiers, and attacks on

small army columns, the Taosugs had been relatively peaceful since 1899.
The reason for this was the KiramBates Agreement. This was signed on 20
August 1899 by the American general John C. Bates for the regime; and by
the Sultan, the Raja Muda (the Sultan's eldest brother and heir apparent),
Datu Atik (the Sultan's youngest brother), Datu Kalbi of Tandu, and Datu
Joakanain (Julkarnain). The agreement was intended by the regime to
serve as a modus vivendi with the Taosugs. In effect the Sultan was
recognized as the ruler of his people. A measure of how the Americans did
not wish to upset the Taosugs was Article X of the agreement: it recognized
slavery by implication since it provided only that a slave might buy his
freedom by paying “the usual market price.” At this time the Americans did
not actively pursue their usual position that the Treaty of Paris gave them
sovereignty over the archipelago. Article I of the KiramBates agreement did
declare American sovereignty, but Article III provided that: “The rights and
dignities of the Sultan and his Datus shall be fully respected.....”12
The policy of noninterference produced only aggravation for the

Americans. The Philippine Commission conceded that until 1903 “nothing of
importance was done toward bringing the inhabitants of the Moro province
under American control.” The military governor of the district of Sulu
complained that: “After four years of occupation,” the Americans were no
better off than the Spaniards, since “the Americans cannot be permitted to
go out of the gate of the walled city of Jolo without arms [and] beyond the
outposts without an armed escort.” Wright, Taft's successor as governor
general, declared in 1904 that during the life of the KiramBates agreement
Americans were attacked whenever they moved “a step beyond the
protection of the garrison,” armed or unarmed. The same situation obtained
in Lanao and Cotabato.
In 1903 the regime decided to organize for direct administration. It

created the Moro Province. In coverage the province was much like the old
Spanish province of Mindanao. It consisted of the TawiTawi and Sulu
archipelagoes, Basilan, and the entire island of Mindanao including its
adjacent islands, but excepting Misamis and Surigao which the Commission
had earlier organized as Christian provinces. The basic law was Act No.
787, passed on the first of June 1903.
The new province was under a governor. For this job the regime
recruited Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood from his reputedly successful tour as
military governor of Cuba. At the same time he was made commanding
general of the US Army department of Mindanao and Sulu. He was assisted
by five district governors. The districts were Zamboanga, Lanao, Cotabato,
Davao, and Jolo. The Province had its own legislature called the Legislative
Council composed of the governor and his assistants: the provincial
secretary, the provincial attorney, provincial engineer, provincial schools
superintendent, and provincial treasurer. The Council was like a Philippine
Commission for the Moro Province. It could pass laws; create municipal
governments and a school system; prescribe the organization and procedure
of district courts to decide civil and criminal cases under Moro law; it could
regulate the licensing, construction, and use of Moro boats displacing less
than ten tons in the coastal trade, and so on. At this time the American
regime was thinking of a separate body of laws each for the Christians and
the Moros. There was also a Moro constabulary.
The direct intrusion of the American government into their affairs, which
soon included the imposition of the c6dula tax that the Spaniards never
succeeded in collecting, had the natural and inevitable results:
The Moros did not take kindly to the new order of things, which are
distasteful to them in every respect. They resented any interference
with their customs or habits of life and regarded the appearance of the
white man in their villages as an unwarranted and offensive intrusion.
This was generally true of all the Moros and especially so of those
inhabiting the Lanao district.
In 1903 the Panglima Hassan, leader of Look and prominent ally of the
Sultan, led 1,000 armed followers into Jolo in order, according to Wood, to
massacre the garrison. In October a US Army topographical survey team in
Sulu was attacked.
Hassan was called in by the district governor to account for the team
after it had not returned by the scheduled time. Hassan went to Jolo with
some 4,000 warriors. Wood left the Cotabato campaign and brought
reenforcements to Jolo. Hassan refused to surrender and withdrew to make
camp at Lake Siit. Wood led the American attack. Vic Hurley, writing on the
Moro wars, reports that the campaign covered some eighty kilometers of
fighting and ended with more than 500 Moros killed. Hassan was taken on
14 November 1903 but was rescued by his followers inside Jolo. The war
spilled over into 1904. Both sides took the offensive by turns until March
when Hassan, with only two followers left, was killed. The Commission
reported that in 1904 there was peace in Sulu after the Americans decided
“to bring matters to an end.” The troops marched across the island against
heavy resistance. The KiramBates agreement was abrogated this same
month.13
As early as 1903 the Commission reported that the Moros of the Lake
Lanao region “have been subdued” and that organized resistance had ended.
Its 1904 report, however, said that Wood “took the offensive” against the
Maranaos, and closed by saying that there were no longer “overt acts of
Moro hostility.” This means that the war did not really end.
The bloodiest campaign of these early years was in Cotabato, the

Magindanao country. Here the dominant leader was Datu Ali; he was the
Raja Buayan, first cousin and successor of Datu Utu. He bitterly resented
the interference in datu affairs by the government of the Moro Province and
in May 1904 he ambushed a company of the Seventeenth Infantry and killed
two officers and seventeen soldiers. It took more than a year's campaigning
to pin him down. At one time a fortyman company of soldiers was tracking
him:
It was a bloody little affair, typifying the difficulty of campaigning
against hostile Moros in that part of Mindanao.... Mile after mile the
trail led through the high tigbao grass, impassably interlaced on either
side and often overhead, while underfoot was the vicious black mud of a
churnedup trail with occasional holes where the men sank to their
waists. Then there was a sudden spurt of rifle fire from ahead, from
either side, from an invisible enemy secure behind the maddening wall
of matted, canelike grass. The men in Advance fell dead and dying in
the stinking mud.
The officers pressed forward, and, in like manner, were mown down
without seeing the foe. The remnant of the expedition withdrew in
disorder while the victorious Moros with vicious kris (Moro dagger or
sword, with serpentine cutting edges) and barong (Moro bolo) completed
their work by beheading and disemboweling the dead and dying
Americans. Yet even then Datu Ali showed some spark of chivalrous
warfare. Two captured American soldiers were cared for and later
returned to Cotabato.
Ali's base was Kudarangan in the upper Cotabato valley. Wood describes
Ali's cotta with almost certainly some exaggeration and has a note on Ali's
following:
It was larger than 20 of the largest cottas of the lake region of Sulu,
and would have easily held a garrison of 4,000 or 5,000 men. It was well
located, well built, well armed, and amply supplied with ammunition.
There were embrasures for 120 pieces of artillery. Eightyfive pieces
were captured, among them many large cannon of from 3 to 51/2 inches
caliber. The other pieces in the work, small lantakas [bronze culverins],
were carried off or thrown into the river.
Ali is at present at large with an armed following of 50 or 60 men,
and a miscellaneous following of a hundred or two [hundred] people,
who accompany him under compulsion from place to place, carrying
food, etc., and whose personnel is frequently changed. As the hereditary
dato of the upper valley the people at heart sympathize with him, but
not to the extent of openly taking up arms in large numbers.
The cotta was taken but Ali escaped, only to be killed in October 1905.
Another last stand at this time was that of Datu Usap at his cotta in
Laksamana, Sulu. The Americans bombarded the fort with artillery, then
closed in with rapidfiring Gatling guns and rifles. Wood's report for 1905
has Usap with 400 men in the cotta, of whom only seven surrendered.14
The slaughter in Laksamana was a prelude to the massacre in Bud Dajo.
Mt. Dajo is a hill about 640 meters high situated some nineandahalf
kilometers from the población of Jolo. Its top is the crater of an extinct
volcano. In March 1906 there were six hundred Taosug men, women, and
children gathered at the crater. They were families who had abandoned
their homes because they refused to live under American (or any other
foreign) rule; they refused to pay the cédula. They went down the hill to till
their small fields in the daytime. They became openly defiant against the
Americans.
The latter decided on a military solution. The force that was mobilized
for the attack on Bud Dajo numbered 790 officers and men from infantry,
cavalry, artillery, and constabulary units plus sailors of the gunboat
PAMPANGA. The Taosugs did not have a chance. Their position was first
bombarded by mountain artillery and naval gunboat shelling. Then three
columns went up the hill by three different lines. The action began just after
daybreak of 6 March 1906. There was a trench line twothirds up the hill,
within rifle range of the earthworks at the lip of the crater. The shooting
began at this line. The artillery batteries kept up the shelling, answered by
occasional lantaka fire from the cotta. The lantaka shot off “slugs, stones,

and old junk.” Nightfall, the quiet broken by sentry fire, brass gongs
beating, and war chants from the cotta.
The next morning the attack resumed in earnest. The pounding from the
bombardment had softened the Moros; the main defenses of the beleaguered
Taosugs were taken that morning. There was a cotta in the crater, but the
defenders had only a few muskets and fought against the American Krag
rifles with kris, kampilan, and spear. Most of the Taosugs were riddled with
bullets before they could get at the enemy.
One of our sources on this action has 1,000 Moro defenders and six
survivors. Another has “over six hundred Moro men, women, and children
killed while resisting to the last.” The Commission acknowledged the killing
of the women and children but maintained that it was unavoidable and the
criticism “without warrant.” The Commission concluded that: “The
extermination of these outlaws afforded the greatest relief to the Moros of
the surrounding country, who rejoiced that their plunderers were no longer
able to continue their depredations.”
One of the assessments of the Bud Dajo slaughter was that although the
loss of life was to be regretted, the forcing of the Taosugs into a last stand
averted what would have been a long drawn out strife that would have cost
more lives. This did not prove right. The conflict continued into the first
years of the next decade. Whether they were in garrison, on offduty strolls,
or on scouting and mapmaking surveys, American detachments of up to
company strength would be attacked by juramentados or ambush parties.
An occasional American logger or farmer would be killed.
The 1908 report of the Philippine Commission referred to the Lanao

Moros as “the most intractable, the least reliable, and the most difficult to
deal with” among all the Muslims of the Moro Province. The next year an
expedition was sent against them, in what is called the Buldong country
between the Lake and the Cotabato Valley. Meanwhile, the most famous
“bandit” in Sulu from mid1907 to mid1909 was the Samal, Jikiri. He is
said to have been born on the islet of Pata south of Jolo – although, since he
was a Samal, he would have been born on a boat. The Commission only said
that in 1908 he was the leader of “a few outlaws making trouble.” The
regime set a price of 4,000 pesos for his capture, dead or alive, and even the
formal Muslim leaders of Jolo were as anxious as the regime to see his
capture. The Commission reported his death in 1909 in “a very sharp
encounter between the pirates and the officers and men of the Sixth
Cavalry, assisted by the Navy.” Actually, Jikiri, who had attacked
Constabulary barracks and pearling boats, and even captured a squad of
Borneo Muslims sent after him by the British government, was tired and
took refuge in a volcano crater cave on the island of Patian near Jolo and
had decided to fight a classic last stand with his remaining warriors and
their women. There they were annihilated on 4 July 1909.
There was another action in Bud Dajo in 1911, although on a much
smaller scale.15
The last great battle in the Moro wars was the battle of Bud Bagsak in
1912. The year before, an order was issued prohibiting all persons in the
Moro Province from carrying or possessing guns or bladed weapons, except
only bladed working tools. This order was issued as a response to the
unprecedented outbreaks of juramentado attacks and in view of the defiance
and tension building up, especially in Jolo. Gen. Pershing, new governor of
the Moro Province, estimated that there were three hundred loose firearms
outside of the guns of the military in Jolo and that these were in Bud
Bagsak, another hill near the town. In the first months of 1912 families (the
American sources say “outlaws”) had been seen gathering at the peak. Here
there was a stone cotta. Its defenses were reenforced by five satellite cottas
disposed around and below it. There were the unmistakable signs of
Taosugs digging in for another last stand, if the Americans forced one.
There were five hundred men, women, and children in the stone cotta of
Bud Bagsak.
The attack was directed personally by Pershing. It began on 11 June,
Wednesday, at daybreak. There were the usual mountain guns, the
infantry, Constabulary, and Scouts. The artillery shelling was deadly, and
three of the secondary cottas were captured, with some handtohand
fighting, at the end of the day. Thursday. There was continuous artillery
bombardment and rifle fire on the two remaining secondary cottas. The
Taosugs would rush out from their shelter across over twentyfive meters of
open ground to engage the attackers; they would be cut down. But the two
cottas held. Friday, the Muslim holy day. Orders were issued to take the two
cottas. Again the shelling and sniper fire from American sharpshooters,
then a fivehour close action. The two cottas were taken. The mountain guns
were hauled uphill and emplaced near one of the captured cottas. Now the
stone cotta of Bud Bagsak could be shelled. Saturday. The mountain guns
pounded Bud Bagsak. The assault forces dug in about 550 meters from the
cotta.
Sunday morning. Bagsak cotta absorbed a twohour artillery

bombardment. The American foot soldiers moved up the ridge to within
sight of the Moro trenches. The mountain guns raked the trenches and the
sharpshooters picked off the Moros. After an hour of fighting the attackers
got to within seventy meters of the stone cotta. It was 10 A.M. The quick
shot, the volley, the counterfire, each rush of Moro warriors mowed down.
Gen. Pershing joined the firing line. The fighting continued past the noon
sun into midafternoon and beyond. Every ten meters of the last seventy
required an hour to take. Just before 5 P.M. the Moros could be seen atop
the stone walls; they were out of bullets and were flinging their barongs or
bolos and krises at the attackers. One last assault, the walls were scaled,
and the cotta fell. Almost every warrior, woman, and child in the cotta
died.16
The Americans were quite right to claim decisive victories in

Kudarangan, Laksamana, Bud Dajo, and Bud Bagsak. But the Moros had
not gathered their warriors and women and children and food and weapons
in the cottas to win a battle victory. The had merely retired to be alone.
They did not want to pay the invader's tax or be subject to his laws, and
they did not know or believe that the Americans would respect their
religion. They wanted to keep their way of life. If they had been left alone
they would have remained in grudging, perhaps sullen and suspicious,
peace. They fought because they were attacked, and they were prepared to
die.
Bud Bagsak was the last great Moro defiance in this sense. “Modern
times” and “progress” that would have bypassed the Moros now marched
across the Moro country. The Department of Mindanao and Sulu replaced
the Moro Province in 1914. The new department also marked the end of
military administration. In 1916 the Moro territory was made part of the
twelfth senatorial district for purposes of election to the Philippine Senate,
although the law (U.S. Public Law No. 240, enacted 29 August 1916) vested
discretionary authority in the governorgeneral of the Philippines to appoint
senators for districts that were not within the territory represented in the
Philippine Assembly. The first Moro senator was appointed; he was Hadji
Butu, prime minister of the Sultan of Sulu when the Americans first arrived
in 1899.
In 1920 the Philippine Legislature abolished the Department of

Mindanao and Sulu and placed the region under the Bureau of Non
Christian Tribes in the Department of Interior. In effect this last
arrangement placed administration of the region in the hands mostly of
Christian Filipinos; it may be presumed to have been a mistake, or at least
a step backwards. To rectify this, in 1936 there was created a Commissioner
for Mindanao and Sulu with authority direct from the President of the
Commonwealth.
In retrospect, the great outcome of the MoroAmerican War was the

political incorporation of the Muslim territory into the government of the
Philippine Islands which in time developed into the Filipino State. This
system embodied two historic elements. The first was the freedom of the
Muslim Filipinos in their religion, a legacy that they fought for and
deservedly won. They were the only Filipinos to achieve this.
The second was the bringing of the Muslim and Christian Filipinos into a
common civil and criminal law system. This historic decision is not well
documented. We will recall that the Philippine Commission's Act No. 787
had vested the government of the Moro Province with the power and
function of eventually developing a law system based on Moro law. The Act
provided that the Moro Province government was to enact laws that:
shall collect and codify the customary laws of the Moros as they now
obtain and are enforced in the various parts of the Moro Province
among the Moros, modifying such laws as the legislative council think
best and amending them, ... and to provide for the printing of such
codification, when completed, in English, Arabic, or the local Moro
dialects as may be deemed wise. The Moro customary laws thus
amended and codified shall apply in all civil and criminal actions
arising between Moros....
There was no serious effort to do the complex job. Perhaps it was due to
the military exigencies of 19031904. Certainly it was due in large part to
Gen. Wood, whose views on the Moros' usages and customs we already
know. His 1904 report recommended against codification. So in 1904, just
over a year since it passed Act No. 787, the Commission concluded that the
Moros had “no general system of laws” and that each community had its
own usages and unwritten custom law, “all so full of incongruous and
absurd provisions as to make them worthless as a basis upon which to
build.”17
It was not until the first years of the 1980s, after years of dealing with
the Muslim secessionist rebellion, that the government of the Republic
undertook the beginnings of studying the Muslim Filipino custom laws and
applying the Shari'a (Islamic law) and the Kitab (book of Muslim law) in
court cases involving Muslims, but a great deal remained to be done.
Peace came, finally, to the archipelago. This was due to the superior
arms and apparently inexhaustible resources of the United States, and to
the exhaustion and weariness of the people from the years of revolution and
war. We will now turn to the conditions of life during the first decade of the
occupation.
The Aftermath
The stable peace that normal communities enjoy is different from the

sad, heavy, and blighted peace that descends upon people in the wake of a
war. McKinley's “benevolent assimilation” of the Philippines was a
malevolent thing. It devastated the Filipinos and their land for years. But
even long after McKinley's death by assassination in his home country his
war left permanent scars on the Filipinos. Their free Republic was wiped
out from the face of the earth. Another final scar was the irrecoverable
population loss. We will see the extent of this loss in the table next page.
A few brief notes will be necessary. The Moro Province is not included
because by 1903, the year of the last census, it had not been affected by the
Revolution and the war as were Luzon and the Visayas. We did not use the
Spanish population figures later than the 1887 census; if we used the
Spanish estimates for, say, 1894 or 1898, we would have an aggregate

population loss by 1903. The 1887 figures are from the only census during
the Spanish regime; it tried another in 1896 but this was aborted by the
Revolution. The Appendix to Volume I explains why the post1887 estimates
are defective. The 1887 figures in the Table however, do not cover the
population growth over the nineyear period 18871896. This means that the
arrested population growth as well as the actual population losses incurred
over 18961903 are understated in the Table.
It is necessary to point out that there were some boundary changes

between 1887 and 1903. There are no 1887 numbers for the two provinces of
Misamis and Surigao; they were part of the huge province of Mindanao.
Rizal province was created in 1901 from the pueblos of the old district of
Morong and some pueblos of the old province of Manila. But the boundary
changes do not affect the overall picture. We may also presume some
population transfers between provinces or islands in the course of the two
wars, but it is not possible to establish any magnitudes. Finally, because of
the conditions in many Luzon and Visayan provinces at the time of the 1903
Census, that year's enumeration could not have been exhaustive, so that the
underestimation effect of using the 1887 census numbers would be offset to
some degree:
We may now consider the numbers. The total of the provincial

populations in 1903 (discounting the numbers for Misamis and Surigao) was
6,389,033 against a total of 5,662,459 in 1887. Thus the 1903 figure exceeds
the 1887 number by only 726,574 over the period of sixteen years. In the
simplest terms,
Provincial Populations (Except the Moro Province), 1887 and 1903
Province 1887 Census 1903 Census

Cebu 518,032 653,727
Pangasinan 302,178 439,135
Iloilo 433,462 403,932
Leyte 270,491 388,922*
Negros Occidental 231,512 303,660
Bohol 260,000 269,223
Samar 195,386 265,549
Batangas 311,180 257,715
Albay 228,139 239,434
Ambos Camarines 194,022 233,472

Capiz 224,000 225,092
Bulacan 239,221 223,327
Pampanga 223,922 222,656
Ilocos Sur 215,792 211,623
Tayabas 109,782 201,936
Negros Oriental 140,498 184,889
Ilocos Norte 163,349 176,785
Sorsogon 98,650 164,129
Laguna 169,983 148,606
Rizal 188,677 148,502
Cagayan 96,367 142,825*
Misamis 135,473
Cavite 134,569 134,779
Tarlac 89,339 133,513
Nueva Ecija 156,610 132,999
Antique 115,434 131,245
La Union 110,164 127789
Surigao 0 99,298*
Isabela 48,302 68,793
Zambales 87,295 56,762
Romblon 55,329 52,848
Bataan 50,761 45,166
*Three municipalities in Leyte, one in Cagayan, another in Surigao not included.
this indicates an average annual growth of some 45,410 a year, an

excessively low increase when compared to the 258,542 increase over the
oneyear period 18751876. The 18911894 increase according to the Spanish
data was 659,077; this averaged to an annual increase of 219,692.
Of the thirty provinces (again without Misamis and Surigao) eleven show
a population loss by 1903. Nine of these are Luzon provinces; this confirms
that the fighting during the two wars was concentrated in Luzon although
the loss of 29,530 in Iloilo was the fourth biggest loss overall. That Cebu
shows a population gain confirms that the fighting there was relatively
minor and of shorter duration compared to Luzon and to IIoilo. The only
other Visayan province showing a loss is Romblon; there are no explanatory
data for this and it is not improbable that part of the loss was due to out
migration during the period.
The third highest population loss was suffered in Zambales, at 30,533. In
percentage terms, at almost 35 per cent, this was the highest loss. Zambales
and nearby Bataan were small provinces in population terms; there was
heavy fighting in this sector in 1899 and 1900. The area of the new Rizal
province adjacent to Manila was the site of continued guerrilla actions until
early 1903. Its pueblos suffered the second highest loss, at 40,175.
Not surprisingly, the biggest loss was in Batangas, at 53,465. This was
17 per cent of its 1887 population. Although the main fighting in 1899 and
1900 was in the north of Manila the Batangas population suffered greatly
from the concentration in late 1901 until 1902. The people of Batangas had
a bleak life in 1903. That year it was the only province in the country where
the rice crop did not increase. In 1905 the Batanguenos would again be
placed in the regime's concentration camps.
The other provinces with significant losses in either absolute or

percentage terms were Nueva Ecija, Laguna, and Bulacan. Minor losses are
indicated in Pampanga and Ilocos Sur. It must always be borne in mind that
all the indicated losses are understated and would be larger if 1896 data are
available.
In addition to the provinces that suffered clear losses there were those
where population growth was virtually stationary on the basis of the 1887
and 1903 data. These were: Bohol, Capiz, Albay, Ilocos Norte, and Cavite. If
reliable data were available for 1896 these provinces would almost certainly
be in the loss category. And it is certain that the indicated minimal growth
in Cavite would be wiped out as its people would be forced into the
concentration camps, like Batangas, in 1905.
It was surmised in the Report of Census of 1903 that the Filipino

population level of that year had already been reached in the mid1890s.
This is an indication that any actual growth over 18961903 was completely
wiped out during the period of the two wars. Since the fighting during the
FilipinoAmerican War was more violent and lasted longer than during the
Revolution, it is clear that the major part of that loss must be attributed to
this war. However, the 1903 Census Report maintained otherwise; it
claimed, without evidence, that the greater part of the loss was due to
epidemics.18
In any case, it would take some time for the population to recover its
energy and grow. The people were doomed to suffering throughout the first
decade after 1900. The difficulties during this period were part of the
continuing cost of the wars. Aside from communities and families having to
locate themselves anew, the hardships directly due to the wars were
worsened by disasters and epidemics, dislocation of agriculture, and
shortage of food.
The area cultivated to rice and other food crops was greatly reduced. Le
Roy estimated a drop of 303,509 hectares in the area under tillage between
1896 and 1903. At a low average yearly production of 35 cavans per hectare
this represented a production loss of 10,662,815 cavans a year. The major
causes of the loss of hectarage were: the dislocation of farmers and their
having to go to the wars, and, more dramatically, the death and destruction
of from 75 per cent to 90 per cent of the carabao stock (the carabao or water
buffalo was virtually the Filipinos' only draft animal in rice agriculture).
Taft spoke of “gaunt famine” in one or more provinces in 1901. The next
year the Commission reported soaring prices for rice and carabaos. The
governor reported that “now these islands are compelled to spend about
$15,000,000 gold (or two times $15,000,000 Mexican, as the peso was then
called) to buy food upon which to live.” The Commission was constrained to
appropriate 2,000,000 pesos for the government to buy and resell rice. Rice
imports in 1901 were 20 per cent of all imports; in 1902 they were still a
high 18 per cent. In 1903 the regime had to undertake the distribution of
rice in the provinces. The volume involved was some 25,098,975 pounds as
reported, or 11,384,820 kilograms. Of this, 4,971,916 kilograms were sold to
those who could pay. The number of families that could not pay was large; to
this group 6,387,519 kilograms were distributed; they worked off the rice
that they received through labor in road improvement and other civil works,
and in the killing of locusts. In addition to the rice imports and the rice
distribution program a law of late 1902 called upon all town presidentes
throughout the archipelago to convene their townspeople “to notify them of
the impending danger of famine” and to urge them to plant quickgrowing
crops such as camotes, corn, and other food plants.
The price of carabaos had gone up from 20 to 200 pesos. An inoculation
program for carabaos against rinderpest and a complex transaction for
importation of carabaos from China was implemented beginning in 1903.
The greatly reduced carabao stock limited the 1902 rice crop to only 25 per
cent of the normal crop level. But even this small crop was threatened by
locusts. This pest ravaged the Visayan provinces in 1901 and swept the
Luzon fields in 1902. In August 1903 a law was passed establishing a “locust
board” in each province. This law subjected every ablebodied resident in
each town to impressment in local programs to fight the locusts; non
compliance was a misdemeanor punishable by fine or imprisonment or both.
These crushing problems were not enough. Taft acknowledged that there
was “much suffering” in the provinces of Batangas, Iloilo, and Ambos
Camarines due to the shortage of food. However, he said that no cases of
actual starvation had been brought to the regime's attention. He ought to
have recognized that severe malnutrition was enervating the people; instead
he said that “the people have always found enough camotes or tubers and
other food roots to avoid starvation.” Then he added that diseases and not
enough food “carried off many” because the camotes and tubers and other
food roots were “indigestible and unhealthy” when not properly cooked. He
blamed people for dying because he thought they did not know how to cook
food plants that were part of their culture.
Malnutrition lowered the people's resistance to disease. A cholera

epidemic broke out in 1902. The regime predicted a loss of 100,000 lives in
the archipelago, and reported some villages entirely depopulated. Mabini
came home from Guam in late February 1903 to die from the cholera in
Manila in May. Registered total cholera cases by September 1903 were
157,036 and total deaths reached 102,109. However, these numbers were
believed to be only twothirds of the actual cases and deaths.19
The prostrate country could hardly cope with the combination of food
crises and disasters. In January 1903 the United States war secretary had
to recommend to his government that $3,000,000 in emergency relief funds
were needed to relieve “distress in the Philippine Islands.” The Congress
voted the amount that year.
Not all the calamitous conditions would be solved in the short term.
Some would abate by the middle of the decade. The dense brush and cogon
growth that had taken over the neglected fields would be cleared; the last
cholera case of this era was reported in April 1904. Some problems would
appear to wane and recur. The rinderpest seemed to abate by middecade
but again became marked in 1909; it gathered renewed strength in 1911,
afflicting the animals in 81 towns, but the situation seemed to have
improved in 1912.
The locust problem was chronic. From the Visayas provinces in 1901 to
the Luzon provinces in 1902, the locust plague devastated 23 of the 30
provinces in 1903. Only small or sparsely populated or nonrice provinces
escaped: Bataan, Benguet, Bohol, Masbate, Cebu, Paragua (Palawan), and
Sorsogon. Partial reports from the provincial locust boards showed more
than 8,501 tons of locusts destroyed from August to September. Negros
Occidental appears to have been the hardest hit, with 3,444 tons destroyed.
In 1905 onefourth of the provinces invaded by locusts reported 648 tons of
the pest destroyed, compared to the total 5,184 tons destroyed in 1904. But
the locusts made a comeback in 1909 and again in 1912.
The rice problem stayed beyond the decade. There had not been a single
year since 1901 when the rice crop had sufficed to meet annual needs. Rice
imports were from Siam and China in the early years of the decade, but in
the second half of the period French IndoChina became the principal if not
sole supplier. Imports for the year ending June 1902 were valued at more
than $10,000,000 gold. This gradually went down as a result of the
production campaign and of the easing of the resistance.
In 1908 the figure was at $5,861,256; the next year it was $4,250,223.
But there was another crop failure in 1910; it worsened in 1911 and the
situation was again near crisis proportions in 1912. This year the schools
were mobilized in a campaign to get rice eaters to shift to eating corn.20
The Purchase of the Friar Lands
There were 1,124 friars in the Philippines in 1896 and 1,013 in 1898.
Those who had most contact with Filipinos were of course those who ran the
doctrinas or parishes and missions. There were 967 friars assigned to these
in 1898. We will note the drop in numbers since 1896. After the outbreak of
the Revolution in 1896 and during its second phase in 1898 40 friars were
killed and 403 taken prisoner. Virtually all of the latter were released later
on by the government of the Republic. In 1900 only 472 remained in the
Philippines, the others having died or gone back to Spain or moved to China
and other countries.
These numbers indicate how the Spanish friars (Dominicans,

Franciscans, Augustinians, Augustinian Recollects) were unwanted by the
Filipinos. The latter, however, treated the relatively few Jesuits, Capuchins,
and Bepedictines differently; they were not working in parishes but were
chiefly engaged in running schools. The Philippine Commission reported in
1900 that they “do not seem to have been assaulted or imprisoned for any
length of time.” At this point the American regime pushed the process of
expulsion of the Spanish friars. In 1902 the United States war secretary
wrote to Taft that the friars driven from the parishes and “collected” in
Manila entertained the “vain hope” of returning. But they “cannot be
restored to their positions except by forcible intervention on the part of the
civil government, which the principles of our government forbid.”
Accordingly, Taft went on record in 1903: “This Government deprecated and
still deprecates the return of the friars to their parishes....” In 1902 there
were only 380 Spanish friars left in the Philippines, and in 1903 only 246.
When it took testimony on the friar question in 1900, the Commission
took note of “the statement of the bishops and friars that the mass of the
people in these islands, except only a few of the leading men of each town
and the native clergy, are friendly to them.” But it concluded that this was
not so because:
All the evidence derived from every source, but the friars
themselves, shows clearly that the feeling of hatred for the friars is
wellnigh universal.
It is a depressing story, this plight of the friars at this time. In short, the
Commission decided that if the friars were to be allowed to return to the
parishes, there would result “lawless violence and murder.”
One of the root causes of the Revolution was the grievance of the
Filipinos that the friar haciendas had been built up from the unlawful
usurpation or grabbing of their lands. The uprisings in the Tagalog
provinces during the 1740s (supra, Chapter 7) were directed against
usurpation of the people's ancestral lands, often in collusion with crooked
government clerks and surveyors. This grievance lay deep in the people's
minds; they saw and felt that the law did not protect them and that the
government sided with their oppressors.
There were three notable Filipino “agrarian reform” concepts before

1900. The first was the rudimentary and fateful request to the regime by the
residents of Calamba, Laguna for the sale or conveyance of the land in the
Dominican hacienda to those who had “labored to make the land tillable, to
those who had poured their substance, toil, and sweat in the land” (supra,
Chapter 15). The second was embodied in Aguinaldo's June 1897
proclamation (supra, Chapter 17) which called for the restitution to the
pueblo or original owners of all the friar lands and, in case of failure to
locate the owners, government auction of the lands in small lots, at prices
within the reach of all and payable within four years. The third was the
takeover of the friar lands by the people in 1896 (notably in Cavite). The
friars had fled and the people paid no rents. The Revolutionary Government
in time assessed low rates on the people.
The recovery of the lands was legitimized in the Additional Article of the
Malolos Constitution, declaring the restitution to the Filipino State of all
the lands, buildings, and other properties of the religious orders in Filipinas.
The procedure for the titling and registration of lands under the Filipino
Republic was prescribed on 27 February 1899 as “Regulations for the
Adjudication of Uncultivated Lands, Which Have Not Yet Passed Into
Private Ownership, or Cultivated Lands The Ownership of Which It is
Desired to Acquire.”21
The American occupation reversed all that had happened since 1896. In
the course of the purchase of the friar lands the regime in effect restored all
property rights in the lands to the friar orders. It set aside for naught the
people's hopes of recovering rights to properties that they believed to have
been usurped or stolen from their forefathers.
We will recall that during most of the Spanish regime the colonial laws
disposed that the Filipinos held the lands but did not own them as property
(supra, Chapter 10). This was because under the colonial laws all the land
belonged to the Spanish king and the native subjects held land only in
usufruct. It was not until after a long time before they could buy land. Until
well into the nineteenth century, moreover, there were no cadastral or land
surveys of the crown lands or public domain (if the people did not own the
land, it was in the public domain), and the land registration system was a
mess. Only the influential and the rich could benefit. The masses of the
people learned to distrust and stay aloof from the government and its
systems. As the Philippine Commission found out in 1900, the public lands
had not been surveyed and that: “Owing to irregularities, frauds, and delays
in the Spanish system,” the Filipinos did not register and get titles to the
lands they held, but only “contented themselves with remaining on the land
as simple squatters;” at any moment in danger of eviction. As in times past,
the Filipinos relied on the conviction, which counted for little or nothing in
court, that they owned the lands they held by ancestral rights.
Then, during the Revolution and the war, all land records in the
Philippines were destroyed except in three or four provinces. Since the
American regime ruled that all untitled land was public land and no claim
based on prescription could lie against the government, all claims to land
could only be validated by titling under the new laws. A campaign was
conducted to encourage land titling and registration under the Public Land
Act of 1903, but in 1911 only 9,000 out of a total of 2,250,000 parcels had
been duly registered.
But the Dominicans, Augustinians, and Recollects (the Franciscans

under their own rules generally could not own land) knew the advantage of
having titles. In 1900 they claimed somewhat more than 164,594 hectares of
haciendas, of which 49,268 hectares were located in the province of Cavite.
The Philippine Commission stated that the Recollects owned 37,649
hectares, the Dominicans 65,538 hectares, and the Augustinians 61,406
hectares. The Commission decided that it could solve “the burning political
question” posed by the friars if the “insular government,” as the new
government was often called, purchased the friar haciendas for resale in
small lots to the people.22
The reports of the Commission tell the long story of the friar lands
purchase, supported by voluminous exhibits. Taft went to Rome in 1902. He
reported that the Pope, Leo XIII, agreed to the sale of the lands. The regime
was momentarily taken aback by the discovery that the religious orders had
conveyed ownership to the haciendas to other parties. The Dominicans
conveyed all but a small portion of their holdings to an Englishman who
organized the Philippine Sugar Estates Development Co., Limited, to which
he then sold the properties. The Augustinians conveyed their properties to a
group called La Sociedad Agricola de Ultramar. The Recollects retained
their Mindoro hacienda in their own name, but conveyed the rest of their
holdings to the British Manila Estates Co., Limited.
One cannot resist the suspicion that these parties were no more than

dummies. Taft's impression on this matter was that the interests of the friar
orders “had been made as ambiguous and doubtful as possible.” The
Commission observed that: “The friars seem to remain the real owners.”
From 1901 to 1903 a Filipino surveyor, Juan Villegas, was engaged by
the Commission to do the survey work, classify the lands, and estimate their
values. In 1903 the representatives of the landowners estimated the value of
the properties at “between thirteen and fourteen millions of dollars gold.”
Villegas' estimate, based on his surveys and taking into consideration the
then depressed state of agriculture, the lack of carabaos, the threat of
agrarian disputes, and other factors relevant to pricing, was $6,043,000 (or
12,086,438.11 pesos). On 5 July 1903 Taft adopted this latter figure as his
offering price. This was rejected by the vendors; negotiations and the
unfavorable political situation drove them to a lower valuation of
$10,000,000 and later on to an informal $8,500,000. As for Taft, he moved
up to $7,543,000 and then stood pat.
In his July 1903 letter to the apostolic delegate who was sent to Manila
by the Pope to negotiate the purchases, Taft might have made a subtle
threat in suggesting that agrarian disputes would result if the friars or their
agents would attempt to take possession of the haciendas: “What the
Government proposes,” he wrote, “is to buy a lawsuit, and something more
than a lawsuit, an agrarian dispute.” This was, presumably, why Taft
moved up from his original offer of $6,043,000. Paying $1.5 million more
than Villegas' estimate was thought worthwhile by Taft, who reported that
the regime “is knowingly paying a considerable sum of money merely for the
purpose of ridding the administration of the government in the islands of an
issue dangerous to the peace and prosperity of the people of the islands.”
Although the purchase of the friar lands was received well at the time
and was probably motivated by good intentions, the way the matter was
handled sacrificed the Filipinos' interests.
McKinley's Instructions to the Commission in 1900 charged the latter to
thoroughly investigate the matter of the rights to the extensive friar estates,
as well as the claims or complaints against them, and to settle the issues
justly. In its discharge of this duty the Commission was enjoined by the
Instructions “to have regard for substantial rights and equity, disregarding
technicalities so far as substantial right permits.” This was surely a “pro
people” rule. But the Instructions next required the Commission to protect
all rights of property in the islands. This was a “proproperty” rule, and
would be preserved in the letter, rather than appreciated in the spirit, of the
law. This was made clear by the injunction in the Instructions that: the
prohibition against “the taking of private property without due process of
law shall not be violated.” To cap it all, the people's welfare was made
secondary to property rights in the legalistic formula that: “the welfare of
the people of the islands, which should be a paramount consideration, shall
be attained consistently with this rule of property right....” (Emphasis
supplied) All the words about the people's welfare was just verbiage.
In the event, the purchase was effected without any showing that the
Filipinos' “substantial rights and equity” were heard or considered. This was
already evident in Taft's offering letter of 5 July 1903 letter to the apostolic
delegate; it explicitly said that the lands “at one time owned” by the three
religious orders were “now owned by,” and then followed the name of the
company or corporation in the case of the particular hacienda or estate. Taft
prejudged the question of ownership. He knew all along that he was buying
the estates in order to avoid the agrarian troubles that would arise if the
friar orders attempted to take possession of the properties. He knew that
the root of these troubles was the people's opposition to the friar orders'
claim of ownership. Taft knew that the Filipinos fought the Revolution in
large part because of the friar haciendas, and that they had taken over the
properties and did not pay rents to the friar orders, and later on paid the
rents to the Revolutionary Government and then to the Republic (supra,
Chapter 20).
Taft did not faithfully comply with an important provision in the
Instructions that charged him:
to make a thorough investigation into the titles to the large
tracts of lands held or claimed by individuals or religious orders;
into the justice of the claims and complaints made against such
landholders by the people of the island[s] or any part of the
people....
Taft had decided on his own, in July 1903, that the friar orders or their
agents or successors had good titles.
The Commission engaged the services of a Manila law firm to examine
the titles to the friar estates preparatory to consummating the purchase.
This firm was Del Pan, Ortigas y Fisher, which duly submitted, on 20
October 1904, reports on its examination of the titles in the cases of the
following haciendas:
La Sociedad Agricola de Ultramar (Augustinians):
Haciendas Location
Banilad Talamban Cebu
Talisay Cebu
Minglanilla Cebu
San Francisco de Malabon Cavite
Tala Rizal
Muntinlupa Rizal
Piedad Rizal
Malinta Bulacan
Dampol Bulacan
Binagbag Bulacan
Isabela Isabela
Parcels
San Marcos Bulacan
Matamo Bulacan
Barihan Bulacan
Daguila Bulacan
Calaylayan or Anibong Bulacan
AlangIlang Bulacan
Malapad Bulacan
Recoleto Bulacan
British Manila Estates Co., Limited (Recollects):
Hacienda of San Juan de Imus, situated in the pueblos of
Cavite Viejo, Imus, Bacoor, and Dasmarinas Cavite
Recollects:
Hacienda of San Jose Mindoro
Philippine Sugar Estates Development Co., Limited (Dominicans):
Haciendas
Binan Laguna
Calamba or San Juan
de Bautista Laguna
Santa Rosa Laguna
Lolomboy Bulacan
Toro Field Bulacan
Santa Maria de Pandi Bulacan
Naic Cavite
Santa Cruz de Malabon Cavite
Oriong Bataan
Del Pan, Ortigas y Fisher did a good job, for the times. The lawyers
worked with old deeds where available, originals often gone, papers old, ink
faded, the writing in obsolete characters, some in the old native script;
property boundary changes; vague settlements of diverse classes of
encumbrances; complex cases of inheritance; relevant intermediate
transactions or depositions made in foreign cities, and so on. The
examination was by all legal standards a good “paper chase.” But the
lawyers relied only on the paper when they came to the question: “Who
owned the lands and was the ownership lawful?”
For instance, about the case of the hacienda of San Juan de Bautista or
Calamba, which was the center of a scandalous dispute between the
Calamba townspeople and the Dominicans from 1887 to the early 1890s, Del
Pan, Ortigas y Fisher reported absolutely nothing. This is unusual because
this case was the origin of the notorious persecution of the Rizal family.
The law firm simply concluded that the Dominicans (and the Philippine
Sugar Estates Development Co., Limited) held good title to the property.
This was not all. The lawyers reported that the Dominicans by their own
good selves had declared during the registration of the property that it
consisted of an area of “more than 7,000 hectares.” But then, without
explanation, the lawyers proceeded on the basis of the Dominicans owning
16,424 hectares because “the last survey credited” the religious order with
that area, and it was that area that appeared in the preliminary contract of
sale to the government. This area was said to have been adjusted
subsequently to 13,673 hectares.
Another glaring case of legal technicalities drowning out substantive

right and equity was the lawyers' treatment of the protest of the people of
Talisay and Minglanilla, Cebu, charging illegality of the title deeds
submitted by the Sociedad Agricola (and the Augustinians). The people
charged that the collection of rents from them was an abuse and that they
as tenants paid under protest. Del Pan, Ortigas y Fisher made legal short
shrift of the tenants' case, due simply to the fact that they did not present or
claim to have any title deed.23
But how could the people show any title deeds when they did not have
any? And how could they have title deeds when the Spanish regime had
given the deeds to the contested properties to the Augustinians? The
lawyers knew that there had been the Revolution and the Malolos
Constitution. They knew that the United States had fought both the
Filipinos and the Spaniards. In the event they chose to give weight to the
law of the Spanish regime rather than to the law of the Filipino Republic, a
choice which derived from their discretion and not from law, and their
report did not lay the basis for this choice. This point would have been the
appropriate question to settle on the basis of substantive right and equity.
We can only surmise that, since Taft, their principal client, had already
stated (prematurely) in 1903 that the friar orders had good title, and since
their report was submitted in 1904, they had prudently decided to be guided
by Taft's earlier known position.
Taft's purchase of the friar lands was a success. It was a success because
the friar orders got good money. They unloaded vast haciendas on the
insular government, properties they had not held since 1896. Taft returned
things to the status quo ante bellum. It was as if the Revolution and the

Republic had never happened at all. Taft also avoided bloody agrarian
troubles. This made the occupation regime happy.
Taft was in a hurry. He was to leave the Philippines in late 1903 to
become the United States secretary of war. He had no time for a thorough
study of the Filipinos' claims and rights. In his inaugural speech as civil
governor in 1901 he had announced that it was his “high and sacred
obligation to give protection for property,” among others. Property, property:
but Taft treated the fruits of usurpation as property, and dismissed the
substantive and equity rights of the Filipinos to their forefathers' lands.
And Taft made the Filipino people pay for it all. He paid $1,500,000 more
than his own expert's estimate. The friar lands purchase was to be financed
by the insular government floating bonds. Taft incurred indebtedness for
the Filipino people without their consent. And, finally, the haciendas bought
by Taft would be sold to the Filipinos. So the Filipinos ended up paying for
the lands twice.
Elite Politics, Independence Without Nationalism
We will note three strands in this part of our story: modernization, elite
politics, and the evaporation of the substance of nationalism in the national
leadership. Modernization was such a pervasive development during the
occupation period that histories later on hardly remarked it as a leading
feature of the era. This period would also be viewed later on as marked by
the Americans' “introducing democracy” to the Filipinos, when in fact what
they did was to implant elite politics. Lastly, the colorful personalities
involved in the Independence campaign distracted attention from the fact
that the independence issue was often primarily the vehicle for personal
political ambitions and that the supposed nationalist leaders were creations
of the American occupation culture who could not jeopardize their rise to
elite status that began when they took the oath of loyalty to the United
States.
The doors of modernization opened to the Filipinos with the twentieth
century. Back in the 1890s the people's industry and the fruit of their land
had provided the solid base of a growing foreign trade for Asian and western
trading ships. Their country enjoyed a good location for regional trade and
was close to the China market which the western nations coveted. Its sugar,
abaca (Manila hemp), tobacco and cigars, and copra commanded a growing
demand in world trade. The Revolutionary government demonstrated its
capacity to deal correctly with foreign business interests as shown, for
instance, in its relations with the British firms. The Filipinos could look
forward to the challenges of independence under their own leaders. They
had enough educated men, including many educated in Europe, for
provincial governors, a legislature, and national administration.
In any case, progress and modernization in Filipino society were almost
certain after obscurantism and feudalistic politics would have passed away
with the friardominated Spanish regime. The regime's judicial system was
corrupt. In addition, instead of using the people's taxes and local funds for
education and other social services, it stole and misapplied them for such
things as allowances for the Duke of Veragua (heir of Christopher
Columbus) and other Spanish grandees, and for covering the costs of Spain's
legations in the Far East and some of its island possessions such as
Fernando Po off the west coast of Africa.
During the 1880s some Filipinos would offer to set up schools at no cost
to the regime we will recall in this connection the school project of the girls
of Malolos and the importance given to similar projects in the Noli me
tangere and El Filibusterismo of Rizal., In life and in fiction they were
disapproved. Aguinaldo accused the regime of keeping the people in
ignorance and denying them enlightenment in his 31 October 1896
manifesto. His 23 June 1898 proclamation promised to combat the
“inveterate vices of the Spanish bureaucracy, ... cumbrous and slow in its
movements.”
In fact modernization was assisted by the new American regime. The
people lived through the aftermath of the wars and adjusted to the new
conditions. Under the new regime there was an openness that would have
been horrifying to the old. At the same time its policies encouraged
business, especially American business, which brought in American
business methods. More directly, it planned or undertook ambitious
programs in public sanitation and popular education as well as in road
building and other transport and communications. In the public sector
administrative efficiency was effected through a modern civil service.
Finally, the regime almost immediately managed limited but free and lively
electoral politics at the town level. A progressing and modernizing society
over 19071941, contrasting sharply with the old Spanish colonial society,
was conspicuous and visible and must be considered as an important factor
in the cooptation of the new generation of Filipino leaders.24
The notional view that the most important contribution of the occupation
regime was the introduction of democracy is not based on the evidence.
Democracy was not an official concern during the period and most certainly
not during the critical early years of the Republican Party administrations.
In fact the Manila regime never used the word. The Secretary of War, to
whom the regime in Manila reported, had other social concerns. A typical
American concern was stressed in the Secretary's cable of 15 January 1901:
TAFT, Manila
Cable answer following questions. What is present condition Manila as
to use of intoxicating liquors, drunkenness, and disorder? How does it
compare with principal American cities? Do natives frequent American
saloons, or drink American liquors? How much drunkenness among
American soldiers? Are houses of prostitution licensed, protected, or in
any way encouraged by authorities ?
ROOT, Secretary War.
The Commission dutifully cabled reassuring answers on the 17th, so that
Root was able to report to the US President that Manila with a population
of 400,000 had fewer saloons than any of twelve listed American cities with
similar or higher populations.
The earliest statement of the kind of politics and government that the
new regime wished established was from the Commission's “General Theory
In Formation of the Government,” contained in its 1901 report. It was not a
theory of democracy. It was at best a theory of enlightened tutelary
government, in which the Americans thought they would teach the Filipinos
how to govern themselves. We have the testimony of a person who saw the
theory developing and at work in 19041905. This witness is none other
than our Mrs. Campbell Dauncey, who noted in 1904 that the:
American scheme out here is to educate the Filipino for all he is
worth, so that he may, in the course of time, be fit to govern himself
according to American methods; but at the same time they have ready
plenty of soldiers to knock him in the head, if he shows signs of wanting
his liberty before Americans think he is fit for it. A quaint scheme, and
one full of the goahead originality of America.
And Mrs. Dauncey was absolutely correct, even if she happened to be an
Englishwoman in whose eyes the Americans were heretically violating the
holy rules of British colonial administration. The Commission spelled out its
theory in its first sentence:
The theory upon which the commission is proceeding is that the only
possible method of instructing the Filipino people in methods of free
institutions and selfgovernment is to make a government partly of
Americans and partly of Filipinos, giving the Americans the ultimate
control for some time to come. In our last report we pointed out that the
great body of the people were ignorant, superstitious, and at present
incapable of understanding any government but that of absolutism.
Surely this meant that Filipino participation in the colonial regime, the
Filipinos who would receive instruction in the art of government by the self
appointed teachers, would be restricted to the elite of Filipino society. This
was ensured by the statement that: “In this condition of affairs we have
thought that we ought first to reduce the electorate to those who would be
considered intelligent....”
Out of this decision came the Commission's adoption in essence of the
former Military Government's General Order No. 40, which had governed
voting in the occupied pueblos. The suffrage could be exercised only by those
who were: male; 23 years old or older; and either had served in pueblo
offices under the Spanish regime (in other words a member of the
principalia), or spoke, read, and wrote Spanish or English, or owned real
property valued at least 500 pesos or paid at least 30 pesos of the
established taxes.
This was not all. The Commission report did not state the most
important qualification of all: that in order to qualify for the suffrage one
must have taken the oath of loyalty to the United States. Politics was
limited to the proAmerican elite.
Since the war was not yet over in 1901 and there were members of the
upper class who were fighting the US Army, the loyalty requirement meant
that the political system that would be allowed to develop would include

only those who had joined or were openly in sympathy with the Federal
Party. This party was founded on 23 December 1900. It issued a manifesto
upon its founding, saying:
So we call ourselves the Federal Party, since under American

sovereignty, the highest and unanimous aspirations of the Filipino
people will be to become part of the its federation, constituting a free
and sovereign state in the form now enjoyed by the states of the Union.
Aware that its requirements for suffrage resulted in a very small

electorate, the Commission anticipated that: “Many of the common people
will be brought within these qualifications in one generation by the
widespread system of education which is being inaugurated, and then
gradually the electorate will be enlarged.”
Meanwhile, the Commission would organize town and provincial

governments. A Filipino provincial governor would, in the words of the
Commission, be “associated” with Americans. This was due to the fact that
the provincial board or rulemaking body for the province was composed of
the governor and two Americans, so that an American majority was
ensured. The Commission went on:
As the government proceeds this association in actual government
will certainly form a nucleus of Filipinos, earnest, intelligent, patriotic,
who will become familiar with practical free government and civil
liberty. This saving remnant will grow as the years go on and in it will
be the hope of this people.
There was one more question to be covered by the theory. “How long,” the
Commission asked, “before real results will be accomplished?” And it
answered its own question:
Of course it is impossible to tell. Certainly a generation
perhaps two generations will be needed, though a thorough
system of public education, the introduction of railways and the
intercommunication of all sorts, and the rapid material
development of the country, which is quite possible, would greatly
assist in this instruction.
At this point the Commission theory dealt only with municipal and
provincial governments. These had been covered in McKinley's “Instructions
to the Philippine Commission” of 7 April 1900. The Instructions were also
silent on the central administration. This was why the theory was vague
and openended as to the time when the Filipinos would be judged to have
attained the capacity for complete selfgovernment. In any case the war was
still going on. Then the Federal Party was founded in December. It attracted
many adherents. It assisted the regime in the peace campaign, many of its
members going on sorties to the provincial capitals. Because the guerrilla
war in the pueblos was at its height at this time, the regime rewarded the
party's members with positions. Three of its leaders were appointed to the
Commission in September 1901: Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera, Benito
Legarda, and Jose Luzuriaga. In no way, of course, did they represent the
people.25
The record was reviewed in 1907 by Taft, who was now Secretary of War
and was in Manila for the inauguration of the Philippine Assembly. Taft
explained in his speech that the United States was engaged in a “great
experiment.” This was quite correct in a way. Unlike every colonial power of
the time the United States did not even have a corps of colonial
administrators. It was still new in the imperialist game. This enabled it to
approach colonial administration with somewhat new attitudes and
methods. This enabled its leaders to formulate the untraditional line that
they were preparing the Filipinos for selfgovernment; it is probable also
that they were forced to do so by political criticism in the United States and
by the fact that the war was turning out to be unexpectedly expensive.
But the fact that the Americans were venturing into something new did
not automatically make an “experiment” of what they were doing.
Imperialism is imperialism. The colonial subjects do not decide their fate. It
is the experimenter who decides when he has had enough. Even if tutelary,
imperialism means that the colonial subjects who are being taught can
never be the judge of when, or whether or not, they have been taught
enough or learned enough to be capable of selfgovernment. After his visit
Taft made a report to his government. This report contained, among others,
the same view of politics and government that the Commission had defined
in 1901 (he was then its chairman) and that he reviewed in the course of his
speech before the Assembly, although the speech was addressed to the
Filipinos and the report to the Americans, so that emphasis appears in one
that might not be in the other.
In his report Taft said that the regime in Manila did not have the funds
for supporting universal popular schooling, so that it would take “longer
than a generation to attain this.” Moreover, the decision as to the Filipino
people's political capacity for independence was to be made by the US
Congress. This was because the islands were a possession of the United
States and because: “The judgment of a people as to their own political
capacity is not an unerring guide.”'
Indeed in his 16 October 1907 speech Taft warned the delegates to the
Philippine Assembly that if the majority merely aimed to “hold up the
government to execration, to win away the sympathy of the people in order
to promote disturbance and violence,” he would conclude that the “Assembly
was a mistake and that Congress must abolish it.”
Finally, in his report to the President, who transmitted it to the

Congress, he said that: “Any attempt to fix the time in which complete self
government may be conferred upon the Filipinos in their own interest, is I
think most unwise.” Taft's report ended with four recommendations. None
dealt with the Filipinos' immediate political concerns. Two dealt with
protection for American trade and agricultural interests (tobacco and sugar)
and one with removing restrictions on the acquisition of mining claims and
the holding of lands by corporations.
The American President Roosevelt transmitted the report to the US

Congress endorsing approval of the recommendations Regarding the
political future of the islands, he said that:26
[The Filipino people] have yet a long way to travel before they will be
fit for complete selfgovernment, and for deciding, as it will then be
their duty to do so, whether this selfgovernment shall be accompanied
by complete independence. It will probably be a generation, it may even
be longer, before this point is reached.... We desire that it be reached at
as early a date as possible for the sake of the Filipinos and for our own
sake. But improperly to endeavor to hurry the time will probably mean
that the goal will not be attained at all.
What evolved out of the politics and governmental system under the
regime became the lasting foundations of Filipino politics. These
foundations were firmly rooted by the close of the first decade of the new
century. The fate of the nationalism that began with the Revolution and
sustained the new nation during the years of war with the Americans was
resolved during the same period. The decisions of the Americans were
crucial to this development, but the key factor was the nature of the Filipino
participation in the occupation regime.
There were two levels and mixed tendencies of participation from 1900
to, say, 1903. The war was still going on. In the town occupied by the US
Army the military government had cautiously allowed local elections; in any
event there was the army garrison at watch. Here the elected town
presidents, vice presidents, and members of the municipal councils had
either turned proAmerican or remained loyal to the nationalist Revolution.
They were voted in by the restricted suffrage, so that both those elected as
well as those who elected them were members of the local elite. They had all
taken the required oath of loyalty, the nationalists only as a matter of
expediency. During this period and until mid1902, however, all were
dominated by the local Katipunan chapter.
The other level of participation was very clearly proregime It began in
1901 as soon as provincial governments were organized by the Commission.
The Provincial Government Act provided that the first governors were to be
appointed but their terms were to end in February 1902, after which the
new governors were to be elected. Thus the first governors were chosen by
the regime from among those who had taken the oath of loyalty and,
preferably, were Federal Party members. How the provinces were organized
was important. The Commission members and Federal Party leaders, in
many cases accompanied by their wives, went on provincial sorties and met
with the local leaders; these tended to be Federalistas, members of the
Federal Party, or their sympathizers. The “popular consultations” took place
in the provincial capitals and lasted for three halfday sessions. The
province was declared organized and the appointees announced and sworn
in after the last session. There were no Katipunan chapters at the provincial
level.
Starting in 1902 most of the Filipino governors were elected by the vice
presidentes and members of the municipal councils who had been elected in
the towns of the province. These officials met as a body in convention and
voted for the governor.
In 1903, outside the Moro Province, there were 37 governors. Not all
were Filipinos because some provinces were “unpacified,” and a few of the
Filipino governors were appointed by the regime, for the same reason. There
were 27 Filipino governors altogether, appointed and elected; the rest were
American army officers. Of the Filipinos Simplicio Jugo Vidal of Capiz and
Julio Llorente of Samar had been among the expatriates in Europe; Pablo
Tecson of Bulacan, Juan Climaco of Cebu, Martin Delgado of Iloilo, and
Juan Cailles of Laguna were officers of the Filipino army during the war;
and another, Arturo Dancel of Rizal, was a delegate to the Malolos Congress
and founding member of the Federal Party.
In 1904 there were two more provincial governors who came from the
ilustrado generation in Europe; Gregorio Aguilera Solis of Batangas and
Raymundo Melliza of Iloilo. The governor of Antique was former general
Leandro Fullon and former colonel R.F. Santos was governor of Albay.
Joaquin Luna was governor in La Union. In 1906 Albay had an American
governor. This year Teodoro Sandico, active in the Propaganda, the
Hongkong Junta, and the war against the Americans was governor of
Bulacan. Isabelo Artacho was the governor of Pangasinan; he was in the
BiaknaBato government and later filed suit in Hongkong to divide the
money that Aguinaldo had deposited in the banks. Two new governors in
1906 dominated Filipino national politics until World War II: Sergio
Osmeña of Cebu and Manuel L. Quezon of Tayabas. There were still seven
US Army officers serving as governor in 1907.
The former military officers who fought in the war had been amnestied.
We cannot say whether they all remained nationalists in spirit or whether
they embraced the new regime. The same may be said of the former
propagandists save in the case of Llorente, who was proAmerican as early
as 1899. It is even more difficult to say how the voters now saw these former
leaders, but it is not impossible that the latter were regarded at least partly
in terms of their old leadership roles.
At about the same level of participation as the governors were the judges
and fiscals (prosecuting attorneys) of the courts. All were appointed officials.
Taft records that “substantially all” appointed officials were Federal Party
members. All secretaries of the provincial governments were appointed and
the majority on the provincial boards was American. Then in 1906 the
governors conference, the first ever to be held, recommended that governors
be elected not by the town councils but by direct vote, and that the majority
on the board be likewise elective. This was passed into law, and so in 1907
the board had a Filipino majority; aside from the governor and the treasurer
(the latter was an American) there was a “third member” called tercer vocal.
His compensation was fixed at not less than five or more than fifteen pesos
per actual session attended.
The regime's avowed theory was clearly that of an open elite. The easiest
way for members of nonelite families to be listed in the electorate was of
course through the public schools in order to gain literacy in English (the
medium of instruction). Besides getting them into the electorate, schooling
would enable the best of them to compete in the examinations for clerkships
in the civil service. These important prizes for schooling, unavailable during
the Spanish regime, promised the nonelite class decent salaries and a
status their fathers could never attain, and are the reason why the pursuit
of school certificates and diplomas is almost a mania among Filipinos.
But of course it would take a long time, more than just one or two
generations, for the common folk to have real participation in electoral
politics. Since 1900 the elite families in the towns not only dominated but
monopolized political activity. The rest of the people were followers or
spectators and had no advocates. Politics was the contest among the local
elite families for the positions of influence and prestige, much as the
families during the Spanish regime vied for the post of hermano mayor.
Politics began and ended with the families that owned the land, that had
the money and connections for business and enterprise, and that sent their
sons on to higher education.
Until 1907 the only elections were local, up to the provincial level. The
national cause that had united the people from various provinces, from
Luzon and the Visayas, during the Revolution, was suppressed and could
not be advocated. If, as the regime's theory allowed, more and more of the
common people would be brought into the electorate in the course of time,
would the elite system that was being entrenched year after year be
affected? How fast would the common people enter the electorate and would
their entry mean a difference? We will return to these questions after the
1907 elections.27
Aside from the limited suffrage there was another factor that affected the
Filipino participation in government. This was the existence of the
Irreconcilables, the Intransigentes or intransigents. Their only concern was
immediate or early independence, and there was no way they could legally
come forth and advocate it as a political goal. There were no national
elections. They saw the Federalistas become judges, and wondered how
these could judge fairly in cases under the Bandolerismo statute. They were
dismayed by the case of Cayetano S. Arellano. Aguinaldo had named him
secretary of foreign affairs in 1898; he declined to serve. He did not go to
Malolos. He had entertained “the idea of union with the United States” as
early as June. He was a founder of the Federal Party and in 1900 the regime
rewarded him with the post of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The
Irreconcilables could not participate in politics actively.
There were still nationalists even after the death of General San Miguel
in early 1903. We will have recourse to Mrs. Dauncey's testimony one last
time. She has a detailed account of the visit to Iloilo in 1905 of Taft and his
large party. In this charming Visayan town Taft had declared a formula in
1903 that soon became famous and touted as unprecedented by those who
did not know that Aguinaido had said it on 12 June 1899 in Tarlac. Taft's
remarks were made when he was still governorgeneral and were published
in the Iloilo paper El Nuevo Heraldo. Mrs. Dauncey records the key
sentence:
These Philippine islands are going to be governed for the Filipinos,

and no one but the Filipinos, and any stranger or American who does
not like it can get out.
This Taft formulation has to be explained. When Aguinaldo said that
“Filipinas is for the Filipinos” we know that what he meant was that
Filipinas “should be governed by the sons of this land.” What Taft said had
nothing to do with the Filipinos. When he took over the leadership of the
civilian regime he inherited a host of Americans in the colonial service from
the military regime. Most were exmilitary who knew that the guerrilla war
was not over and therefore did not sympathize with the civilian
administration. They were critical of the Commission and Taft, and his
speech in Iloilo was simply a message for them to get out.
The Taft party in 1905 was large, larger if he had his way. He had asked
the Commission to pay for the transportation costs of as many members of
the United States Congress as wished to join. The Commission obliged and
sent invitations to seventy: luckily, only seven senators and twentyfour
congressmen accepted. They arrived in Manila on 5 August and in Iloilo on
the 15th.
Mrs. Dauncey records that the junketing party was greeted by crowds
and brass bands and a long procession that wound toward the Gobierno or
government house. We will omit the description of the procession except to
say that Mrs. Dauncey unerringly noted the absence of priests and that
some of the streamers strung on the parade floats proclaimed the Filipinos'
aspiration "to govern ourselves our own way." The visitors and their hosts
proceeded to the court room, which soon filled with Americans and Filipinos,
all in white suits. Melliza was the town presidente and gave the welcome
speech. Several speeches followed; the Filipino orations were "marvelous,"
full of "fiery patriotism," but were in Spanish and were "toned down in the
English rendering." Taft was cornered by the Filipinos on the independence
issue, and he replied:
I am not come to give you your Independence, but to study your

welfare. You will have your Independence when you are ready for it,
which will not be in this generation no, nor in the next, nor perhaps for
a hundred years or more.
The Filipinos were “staggered” at this answer from their “Patron Saint”
and “sat quite still and immovable.”
The account then deals with the disastrous banquet that was held for
Taft in the evening of 16 August at the Santa Cecilia Club. The Filipinos
were hosting. The Americans applauded at their countrymen's speeches as
they were delivered; the Filipinos were quiet at the translation. The latter
roared with applause at their own countrymen's speeches; the Americans
were mute at the English translation. Taft repeated essentially his message
of the morning when it came his turn; it was followed by an embarrassing
silence on the part of the Filipinos, except for “two or three hisses.” Not all
the tables were filled. Mrs. Dauncey checked her guest list against the table
placings and noted that the seats that were unoccupied were all assigned to
Filipinos. The absent hosts had been deeply frustrated by Taft's remarks in
the morning at the Gobierno.
The reason we cite Mrs. Dauncey's account of the Taft visit is her entry
for 22 August:28
The papers from Manila with the account of our festivities have
arrived, and I never read such brazen lying in my life; in fact, the
reports are so cooked that they leave off being annoying and begin to be
funny. The wild scenes of popular enthusiasm, the crowded banquet, the
frantic love of the people of Panay for their idol, and so on, and so on.
And as to sheer reporting, Mr Taft's speech (which the Manila people
are informed are greeted by the natives with thunderous applause) is
given at great length but the impassioned utterances of the patriot ...
are dismissed in a few mild words. No mention, too, of the ominous
banners in the procession ... and not the faintest hint of the one or two
hisses which greeted the sentiments of the Secwar himself.
So much for the local papers. And if that is the way they dally with
truth out here, one can only faintly wonder what impression of this trip
is being disseminated amongst the intelligent voters in the faroff
U.S.A.
But if the nationalists of Iloilo were sulking in 1905, that year they had
encouraging news. On 28 March the governorgeneral (Luke E. Wright)
proclaimed that, pursuant to U.S. Public Law No. 235, the Census (1903)
had been published that year, and that if two years thereafter (1907)
general and complete peace continued, outside of the Moro Province and the
areas of the nonChristian tribes, then the Commission would call for
elections to a Philippine Assembly. The effect of this proclamation was to
trigger off preparations for the expression of the electorate's sentiments, for
the first time, on a national issue, that of independence.
Meantime, there was another sector of Filipino participation in

government. This was the civil service. This was a genuine and valuable
contribution of the occupation regime. The civil service was important to the
Filipinos because to be admitted into the service was proof of achievement.
The civil service covered the insular (national) and provincial levels as well
as the city of Manila (administered centrally like Washington, D.C., which
was administered by the US Congress). Admission was proof of achievement
because entry into the classified branch was strictly based on competitive
examinations either in Spanish or English.
The data on examinations for entry or original appointment are
interesting. During the oneyear period from October 1901 there were, in
Manila, 1,192 examinees in English for the various jobs open; there were
1,560 examinees in Spanish. In the English tests 62 per cent passed and 43
per cent of the examinees in Spanish passed. In the examinations held in
the provinces there were only 75 examinees in English, of whom 50 or 66
per cent passed; while there were 504 examinees in Spanish, of whom 240 or
47.6 per cent were successful.
The language and educational trends are reflected in the 1907 data on
examinees. For original appointment, the cumulative total of examinees in
English by that year was 14,237 and in Spanish 14,920. However, for the
year 1907 the examinees in English were at 3,347 while there were now
only 1,534 examinees in Spanish. In six or seven years the public school
finishers had outnumbered those who had Spanish schooling or who came
from Spanishspeaking families. This trend became permanent and
irreversible.
The distribution of civil service posts between Filipinos and Americans in
1907 was 3,902 to 2,616; however, most of the technical, scientific, and
professional and higher ranking positions were filled by Americans, besides
the fact that a number of them were recruited in the United States. On the
other hand, appointment of Americans was steadily diminishing due to the
attraction of employment in Cuba and Panama as well as in the United
States. This was reenforced by the loss of American employees to the lure of
higher salaries in private firms.
Entry into the civil service was also covered by the loyalty oath
requirement.29
On 28 March 1907 the Commission adopted a resolution declaring that
the great mass of the people had been peaceful, lawabiding, and loyal to the
United States since 1905. It noted the “minor” disturbances by Felizardo
and Montalon in Cavite and Batangas and the pulahanes in Samar and
Leyte, but said that the overwhelming majority of the people in the four
provinces did not take part in the disturbances. The same day it telegraphed
the resolution to Washington and the next day an executive order arrived
directing it to call for elections to the Philippine Assembly.
The elections were held on 30 July. The 1907 elections may be regarded
in three ways. First, the elections signaled the origin of a party system in
action, with the parties already reflecting some features of political party
behavior into the 1980s. Second, they showed how small the electorate was.
And third, the results indicated that the Filipino leadership would neither
be assertive nor militant under the regime.
An American official's comment of 1907 anticipated much later opinions
on Filipino electoral politics: “Political parties based on opposing principles
of government have not yet crystallized, so that politics and the personality
of the politicians are indistinguishable.” The personal and family interests
invested by Filipinos in elections are so high and intense that perhaps it
was inevitable that the struggle among these interests pervaded even the
theoretically nonpolitical phase of the elections: the registration of voters. A
report on the registration in Capiz Province stated:
In Capiz politics constitute the only thriving industry and the maneuvers
of two rival factions to possess themselves of the municipal and provincial
offices constitute Capiz politics. The competition between these two factions
is so intense that it was not unnatural that the one which controlled the
municipal council of any town should avail itself of its power ... to appoint
its own partisans as inspectors.
As a result, the people applying to be included in the voters list in Capiz
were treated on a case to case basis according to the factional loyalty of the
inspectors. There were two towns in the northern island of Batanes; there it
was reported that “there were no political parties, only the partisans of rival
cattle dealers.” This report for Batanes stated that the people would have
approved if no elections forms were sent to the island so that no elections
would be held. Fortunately, the 30 July elections were conducted in a fairly
satisfactory manner. The Filipinos had demonstrated their skills in evading,
while not violating, the election law. But they had not yet begun to buy
votes openly or kill each other in the course of the campaign.
The electorate was small, something that could not be helped because of
the legal requirements for suffrage. According to the 1903 census there was
a civilized population of 6,623,804 in the election provinces. Only 143,965
were qualified voters. Of these only 104,966 registered. Only 98,251 or 1.48
per cent voted. The voters did not represent the masses of Filipinos but only
the educated and propertyowning class, so that the results could not reflect
the people's opinions, much less their values and needs.
It may also be noted that 131,013 had voted in the preceding municipal
elections, showing a greater interest in local than in national polls. The
higher turnout in local elections meant that the factions that appealed to
the voters in the contest for the local offices were not as active in mobilizing
the voters for the selection of the leaders who would be working in Manila at
the national level.30
Nevertheless, the 1907 elections were more representative than the

numbers indicated. Filipino participation in government until this time had
been dominated at the provincial and higher levels by Federal Party
members. The announcement that an Assembly would be established meant
not only that more jobs would be open, but also that the Filipinos elected
would have lawmaking authority equal to that of the American Commission.
That would give the Filipinos a voice and role in the national
administration. These opportunities called for a serious organization of
effort and opinion.
What happened was that three major blocs of opinion surfaced. The
heyday of the Federal Party, dominant from 1900 to 1903, came to an end.
Taft's partisanship closed the doors of appointment to many able men
outside the party, but his successors did not limit their appointments to
Federalistas. Besides, the Federal Party's statehood goal, owned Taft, “did
not awaken enthusiasm anywhere.” The party, hoping to overcome its
image, changed into the Partido Nacional Progresista, dropped its statehood
platform, and adopted a cautious stand for independence. But that goal had
already been preempted by the opposition.
Various "independist" and nationalist organizations had been forming

since 1901, only to be frustrated by a negative attitude and refusal of
recognition by the regime. Then the proclamation of March 1905 removed
the legal obstacles, provided the organizations committed themselves to
legal political methods. The only problem left was how the groups could be
united. Some groups were for immediate, others for “most urgent,”
independence, or some other shade of independence with nationalism.
Accommodations took place in 1905, and in 1906 the various groups were
reduced to two major independence parties: the Partido Independista and
Partido Union Nacionalista. For the Assembly election campaign they fused
into the Partido Nacionalista in March 1907. Among the leaders in the
unification work were Francisco Liongson, Galicano Apacible, and Teodoro
Sandico of the colony in Europe, as well as Alberto Barretto, who had served
on the peace commission that negotiated with the Americans in May 1899.
Two young governors, Osmeña and Quezon, were elected to the party
council. It must be noted that the party kept the name of the old group of
the Irreconcilables, founded in 1901. It advocated immediate independence.
There were also a few nationalists who did not join the Nacionalistas, but
campaigned as independents, Indepentistas, and Inmediatistas.
The Independents, the third major grouping, showed strength in the

balloting but did not have the advantage of a party identity; the accounts do
not show them campaigning as a party with a clear or specific position. They
were presumably men who inclined to either Progresista or Nacionalista
views but preferred not to be identified with either organization.
Finally, there were the Roman Catholic and Philippine Independent

Church (Aglipayan) factions. The Aglipayans contested only in Ilocos Norte.
The Catholics campaigned in Cebu, Manila, Rizal, and Pangasinan. They
were swamped. In Manila; they won 59 votes while the Nacionalistas got
5,671 and the Progresistas 1,361. Of the total votes cast they won only
1,192, but their candidate in Pangasinan managed to place among the
province's five delegates.
The Nacionalistas received 34,277 votes and won 31 seats. The

Progresistas got 24,234 votes and 16 seats. The Independents had only
22,878 votes, but beat the Progresistas by gaining 20 seats. In addition
there were 13,305 votes and 12 seats won by the other nationalist pro
independence candidates. Of the elected delegates 49 were listed as
Nacionalistas and one as an independent Nacionalista, which indicates that
there were Nacionalistas outside the party.
On 15 October 1907 there was a welcome for Taft at the Ayuntamiento
building in the Intramuros. Felix Roxas, the chatty young student who
arrived in Barcelona in 1881, was mayor of Manila. He delivered the
welcome address, likening Taft to Michelangelo. The inaugural ceremonies
for the Assembly were originally scheduled to be held the next day at the
same place, but inadequate space forced a move to the Grand Opera House.
After Taft finished with his speech he questionably took over the chair,
declared the Assembly open for business, and took it upon himself to accept
a motion to adjourn until the afternoon for the session at the marble hall of
the Ayuntamiento. 31
In retrospect, the formal leadership of the Nacionalista party began to
show signs of a lukewarmness to nationalism as soon as it was in power.
There were two candidates for the speakership of the Nacionalista
dominated Philippine Assembly when it met for its organizational session.
Pedro Paterno had declared early. He was a son of one of the 1872 exiles. He
was an early ilustrado. He was the famous intermediary for the truce of
BiaknaBato; chairman of the consultative assembly of Filipinos in the last
days of the Spanish regime; president of the Malolos Congress; premier in
the Aguinaldo cabinet in 1899; founding member of the Federal Party in
1900 but a recent convert to the Nacionalistas. He was a delegate for
Laguna. His politics was clearly slippery, probably opportunistic.
The other candidate, albeit a quiet one, was Sergio Osmeña. He was
young, not quite 29 years old. He was not in the Revolution and was only at
the periphery of the recent war. Notwithstanding the fact that his
biographer refers to his mother as “Dona” Juana Osmeña y Suico, the
Osmeña family was obviously not Society. For some reason or another the
biographer (Albano Pacis) omits or has no data about the father. But
Osmeña was an able man and of more quality than many of higher status.
He earned his way up through education and service under the new regime.
He served first as fiscal and then elected governor of Cebu; when he
succeeded Gen. Juan Climaco in 1906 it was just one of the many events
that were happening in many places where the men of the nationalist
Revolution were giving way to the new men, creations of the occupation
regime. Osmeña was certainly respected by his fellow governors; they
elected him chairman in their first conference in 1906.
Paterno's joining the Federal Party in 1900 was already ages ago, while
Osmeña's presidency of the governors conference was as fresh as yesterday.
When the Assembly met in the afternoon, back at the Ayuntamiento, the
youngest delegate, Nicolas Jalandoni of Iloilo, nominated Osmeña;
Dominador Gomez, Paterno's campaign manager, moved to elect by

acclamation, announcing that Paterno had withdrawn from the contest.
Osmeña's speech mentioned patriotism and how fortunate it was that the
Assembly included some who had been in “the struggle for the liberty of the
people.” He asked that all act “as good, just and consequential men,”
conscious of “our responsibility and all the force of our patriotic convictions,”
because in that lay “the greatest,the most meritorious service for the
country, for our beloved Philippines.” A month later, at an official banquet
for the overstaying Taft, Osmeña spelled out his idea of the role of the
Philippine Assembly:
Just as we have not defrauded the hopes of the authors of the

Municipal Code and the Provincial Act, we shall not defraud those of
the persons who convoked the Assembly. The Assembly will not
constitute an impediment nor be a source of systematic and
unreasonable opposition to the work of the Government, but by sound
criticism and hearty cooperation it will contribute to the successful
administration of the country.
Instead of a drag, it will be a propelling power which will accelerate
the fulfillment of the promise of the United States to the Philippines
until that time when we shall have attained our ideals.
Whatever those ideals were, Osmeña had said all that needed to be said.
Within the decade just passed his people had fought a revolution and a war
against colonial powers. His words as their leader in the colonial
government, however, almost suggested that the struggle was over. The
regime had promised that independence, in some form, at some uncertain
future, would be granted. For Osmeña that promise was good. One only had
to wait and the fruit would ripen and fall. If everybody behaved, self
government would come. For Osmeña political change, the goal for which
his people fought the Revolution, would be won by correct administration in
cooperation with the colonial regime.
The Nacionalistadominated Philippine Assembly, whose majority ran on
a plank of immediate independence, was to be no less and no more than a
loyal opposition. It would not be a drag. It would not rock the boat. If the
regime was American, so be it. Osmeña had pledged that the Assembly
would give it “sound criticism and hearty cooperation.” It was as if the pro
regime Progresistas had won the elections.
Section 8 of US Public Law No. 235 provided that the Assembly and the
Commission would vote for two resident commissioners to the United
States. The functions of the commissioners were not spelled out in the law.
The office evolved into the Filipino representation in the United States
Congress during the campaign for independence. The Nacionalista
Assembly nominated a member of the Commission, Benito Legarda, and
Nacionalista, Pablo Ocampo. The Commission agreed. Of Legarda we know
enough. Taft assured the American President in 1908 that Ocampo was an
organizer of the Partido Nacionalista but that he left the party because he
objected to the word "inmediatista" in the party name. The resident
commissioners were in way officials of the United States government; it
paid their salaries; the House of Representatives assigned rooms for them in
its building and gave them the right of floor debate although not that of
voting.
With these men in Washington and Osmeña in Manila the Filipino

independence campaign would be a wellmannered affair and would not be
waged as a militant struggle. The Assembly's first act in the new Philippine
Legislature was passed on 16 October 1907. It was a joint resolution and
was also passed in the Commission the same day. It read:32
Conveying to the President of the United States and through him to
the Congress and the people of the United States the gratitude of the
people of the Philippine Islands and the Philippine Assembly and their
high appreciation of the privilege conceded to them of participating
directly in the making of the laws which shall govern them.
The characteristics of the Filipino political elite would be seen in the
delegates of the 1907 Assembly. The eighty delegates were classified as to
“profession, avocation, or pursuit.” There were nine classes: lawyer,
professor, physician, pharmacist (this was still a man's profession and
stayed so until the 1940s), property owner, journalist, agriculturist,
merchant, and merchantagriculturist; and a lone delegate was listed as a
justice of the peace. There were fortyfive lawyers, and the five professors
were most likely professors of law. The class of agriculturist, which included
thirteen delegates, was a euphemism for plantation or large estate owner; to
the thirteen must be added the four merchantagriculturists. None of the
delegates had worked with his hands or at a mechanical trade for a living.
Besides, being a legislator in those days was unaffordable by the common
folk, even if they had been electors and voted in one of their kind. If a man
was a provincial family breadwinner he could not afford to go to Manila and
serve in the legislature. He would have been paid for this roundtrip
transportation and subsistence expenses between his home and Manila,
only once per session actually held and attended, and the twenty pesos a
day of actual attendance. This was considered, in 1907, “probably the
highest per diem paid to any body of legislators in the world.” Even so, the
man would not be able to afford leaving his family and field and nets and
tools or foregoing his wages, to serve in the legislature in Manila.
In the 1909 elections 37 delegates sought reelection; only 19 were

returned. This did not indicate sociopolitical volatility, since no new classes
of men were involved. What it meant was that provincial factional rivalry
among the elite families was close. This characteristic of Filipino electoral
politics was shown as early as the 1907 provincial elections, which were
held after the Assembly polls. The large provinces of Pampanga, Tayabas,
Laguna, and Rizal had allNacionalista delegates. In Negros Occidental only
one of the three delegates, and in Iloilo only one of the four, was Progresista.
In the Philippines the provincial governor and whoever is the province's
representative in Manila are automatically rivals; they are threats to each
other's dominance in the province unless the two are brother or the closest
allies and even so, one might not be sure.
The votes cast in the 1909 elections exceeded the 1907 vote by almost
100,000. This was because the elections were general: for the Assembly, the
governors and third members, and th: town officials. The Nacionalista Party
again led the field, winning with 92,996 votes. But it was not a walkaway:
there were 36,876 Independent and nonparty votes and 38,588 Progresista
votes.
For the 1912 elections 252,456 persons applied for registration and
249,805 were accepted by the inspectors. A slightly less number of 248,154
were enrolled, and 235,786 voted. The votes for the Nacionalistas ballooned
to 124,753 while the Progresistas stayed at almost the 1907 level at 37,842.
A notable development was the growth of the Independent and nonparty
vote to 71,241.
The key question about the 1912 electorate is whether its growth over
that of 1909 indicated a definite progress toward democracy. There were
81,916 voters who qualified by satisfying the literacy requirement; the
number was not far below the total number of voters in the 1907 Assembly
elections. This certainly indicated some progress in the regime's school
program. However, the people who were in the electorate by other than the
literacy requirement also increased notably. Those who qualified by virtue
of having held office during the Spanish regime (61,815) and the voters who
qualified by virtue of being property owners (60,553) totalled 122,368. The
rest of the voters qualified, by having a combination of two of the three
qualifications – including 1,748 who possessed all the three qualifications.
But there were 37,226 votes who had their ballots prepare for them (by
the election inspectors) because they were illiterate.
These illiterates obviously came from both the officeholders of the

Spanish era and the propertyowning class. Under the old laws
gobernadorcillos had to be literate in Spanish, but the office of directorcillo
or pueblo secretary became necessary because many of the capitanes or
pueblo heads did not know enough Spanish for the preparation of pueblo
official documents and correspondence. Forbes attests to the illiteracy of
many of the property owners.
Moreover, many of those who were literate were not necessarily finishers
of the English language school program but were Spanish literates. Since
education in the new school program was the most accessible route into the
electorate for the nonelite masses, a democratic trend via this route was not
yet clear.
There were two elections in 1916. The first, in June, were the familiar
elections. The second were the October elections for the new Philippine
Senate. On 29 August 1916 the Philippine Autonomy Act was passed in the
United States Congress; it provided for significant local autonomy “without
impairing the exercise of the rights of sovereignty” by the United States,
with a declaration of purpose about independence in some indefinite future.
It also provided for a Senate to replace the old Commission, so that the
colonial legislature would become allFilipino. The Nacionalistas romped all
over the opposition in both elections.33
There is not much of a story left to tell. The story of Filipino national
politics until 1941, at least as much of it as can be told from the known acts
of the men who became leaders since 1907, is simple. It is a story of the
continuing erosion of the ideals of the nationalist Revolution and the First
Republic. The Nacionalista leaders were a political generation away from
Rizal and Bonifacio and Aguinaldo. Each in his own way, the latter had
risked their all in the cause of their people. Rizal was a son of an inquilino
family, Bonifacio a plebeian, Aguinaldo came from a provincial principalia
family. They were all driven to fight and struggle so that their people would
become a nation that would have a life of its own. Each had a sensitivity,
according to his station, not only to political but also to social change. This
was most clear to Aguinaldo because his troops in the Revolution and the
war were common folk, who kept the war going even after they had lost
their President and all their generals.
Quezon and Osmeña, on the other hand, were the creations and loyal
beneficiaries of the American regime. Even their occasional disagreements
with the regime were conducted under its rules, the bottom line of which
was defined by the oath of allegiance that they had sworn to the United
States. They were extremely able and respected professionals; they won
success with the coin of their cooperation; while Rizal, Bonifacio, and
Aguinaldo were traitors and martyrs to the regime that ruled their people.
It is not possible to chronicle the political story of the Filipinos during the
rest of the American occupation without seeing Quezon and Osmeña in the
focal center, except that their story was basically that of the rivalry of
professional political leaders that became less and less the story of the
Filipinos, so many of whom had no participation, and whose role is
unrecorded.
Manuel L. Quezon, brilliant and ebullient to Osmeña's urbanity and

organizational efficiency, was the son of a Spanish mestizo sergeant in the
Spanish army in Filipinas, born in Manila and an emigrant to Baler,
Tayabas where he married the Spanish mestiza schoolteacher. The young
Quezon and Osmeña were students in the Dominicans' San Juan de Letran,
a notch or two below the Ateneo, the school for the sons of the inquilinos
during Rizal's time. In 1903 Osmeña placed second in the bar examinations,
Quezon fourth. Fernando Salas, secretarygeneral of the office of the
president and the cabinet in the provisional revolutionary government of
the Visayas in late 1898, placed third. Quezon first won notice as a
successful prosecuting attorney or fiscal like Osmeña; from this post he
went on to the Tayabas governorship and then to the Assembly. His
national political career began to rise when he was resident commissioner
from 1909 to 1917, during which he learned valuable lessons about
Americans and especially about Washington politics. The passage of the
Philippine Autonomy Act in 1916 was a deserved, as well as a lucky
achievement, and he was catapulted to election in the fifth senatorial
district without campaigning. He was duly elected first senate president,
from which post he became a serious rival to Osmeña.
The most praiseworthy political practice of the early American regime
was its observance of the general American respect for the electoral verdict.
In the 1907 Assembly elections, for instance, the proFederal Party regime
was never criticized for improperly influencing the voting, and it accepted
the results. After Taft left the governorship, his habit of appointing only
Federalistas to important government posts ended. The reason for this was
that the subsequent governorsgeneral did not wish to appoint clearly
incompetent persons who had no qualifications except membership in the
favored party.
The Nacionalista victory in the Assembly elections led to the

appointment of Rafael Palma, a Nacionalista, to the Commission in 1908.
This raised the number of Filipinos in that body to four, although none of
them was entrusted with a cabinet portfolio. The first Filipino commissioner
with portfolio was Gregorio Araneta; he became secretary of finance and
justice by promotion from his post as attorneygeneral in mid1908. Juan
Sumulong, judge of the court of first instance, was appointed commissioner
without portfolio in 1909.
After the organization of the Assembly an opposition mentality led the
Nacionalistas to disagree with the Commission, especially over the annual
budget act, so that during the threeyear period from 1911 to 1913 no
appropriations law was passed. However, under the law the preceding year's
appropriations act was deemed passed in such a contingency, so that that
was not a serious problem.
But the Nacionalista opposition to the regime was ritualistic. A

reconciliation was effected in 1913 after the Democrats won the American
November 1912 elections and replaced the Republicans. When Francis
Burton Harrison arrived in Manila to be the first Democratic governor
general, he asked for the resignations of the four Filipino commissioners.
Palma's resignation was not accepted and four new Filipinos were
appointed: Victorino Mapa to the post of secretary of finance and justice
from his position as Supreme Court justice; two former Assembly members,
Jaime C. de Veyra of Leyte and Vicente Singson Encarnacion of Ilocos Sur;
and Vicente Ilustre, property owner from Batangas. The Commission now
had a Filipino majority.
The Nacionalista honeymoon with the regime was sanctified and re
enforced when the party won uncontested control of the new Philippine
Senate in 1916. Harrison was friendly to Filipinization of the
administration, if only to get rid of Americans appointed during the
Republican era, even if many of them were competent or nonpartisan
professionals. There was a brief interruption of the good relations during
the ensuing Republican administration when the former military governor
of the Moro Province, Leonard Wood, was appointed governorgeneral. The
Wood era was an intermission, as the Nacionalista control of Filipino
elections continued to be so pronounced that the party and its politics, which
simply meant the politics of the OsmeñaQuezon rivalry, defined the themes
in the world of articulate Filipino politics.34
The cozy good relations between the occupation regime and the
supposedly oppositionist party, the Nacionalistas, whose members
dominated the legislature, drove the proregime Progresistas, the minority
party, to become the actual opposition. In other words, it opposed a regime
with whose political principles it professed to agree. But it was so identified
by its image as the proponent of the rejected statehood goal that it was an
impotent opposition party. The proregime Progresistas were left out of the
jobs that the opposition Nacionalistas enjoyed by virtue of their control of
the election votes.
This abandonment of principles espoused by a political party, the anti
regime Nacionalistas by their bland nationalism and cozy cooperation with
the regime, and the proregime Progresistas by their opposition, marked the
beginning of the disintegration of meaning in the platforms of Filipino
political parties. From here on, principle evaporated from the party system
and organized political behavior in the Philippines except, maybe, in the
Communist organizations.
Quezon even gave “political turncoatism” a twist by suggesting a duty of
patriotism in the course of a famous split with Osmeña. It was 1922: “My
loyalty to my party ends where my loyalty to my people begins!” He was
correct in a way. Party loyalty is a duty only when one's party is a party of
principle.
At that time the principle of nationalism that the Nacionalistas had once
espoused had long ago receded into the almost forgotten past. On the other
hand, Quezon did not have to invoke patriotism, since his quarrel with
Osmeña was nothing but an intraparty row.
Actually, the nationalist faction within Osmeña's Nacionalista Assembly
was allowed to push through a nationalist resolution in 1910. On 5
December this year the Assembly adopted a joint resolution requesting the
United States Congress to recognize the Filipinos' right and capacity to
prepare and adopt a constitution for their selfgovernment. This was sent to
the Commission, where it was tabled, and that was the end of it.35
After 1910 Osmeña's Nacionalistas accepted the lesson that one could not
even have selfgovernment, much less independence, just by passing
resolutions. Independence became a slumbering issue, coming alive only in
the few times when someone, perhaps Quezon, whose long service as
resident commissioner had earned him good contacts in the Congress, would
report that a bill affecting the Philippines, especially an independence bill,
had been filed in the insular affairs committee of either house of the
Congress.
Then Harrison came in 1913, and the honeymoon became a commonlaw
marriage. The nationalists kept their commitment to immediate
independence alive, a goal which they thought their own party had now
become apathetic about. They could not accept their party's love affair with
the regime. They were also deeply concerned with what they thought was
the party system's smug acceptance of elite politics and cavalier neglect of
social change. Their twin goals were those of the Revolution and the
Republic: independence and democracy. In 1914 they founded the Partido
Democrata Nacional as a protest party; its members were called Terceristas,
the third voice in the party system, or Democratas.
The Democratas were articulating the last echoes of the ideals of the
nationalist Revolution. They charged that the Nacionalista Party failed to
support the spirit of democracy. The party under Osmeña was a personalist
or elite group; it did not even have an executive committee. Like everybody
else, the Democrata founders advocated political independence. But they
went farther, calling for policies toward industrial and mercantile
independence (which in those times meant national selfsufficiency);
expansion of Philippine markets and protectionist policies for Filipino trade,
agriculture, and commerce; and more authority for the provincial governors
(a principle in the Malolos Constitution). All of these concerns were
consistent with the old ideals. There was another set of Democrata concerns.
They advocated populist systems such as the initiative, recall, and
referendum. They declared that:
The Nacionalista party and its leaders have been deaf to fraternal

entreaties to desist from playing the role of "Mazarins" in politics, their
conduct causing the American imperialists to assert that an
independent government in the Philippines would be tantamount to the
rule of a few at the expense of the masses.
The ideals of the Partido Democrata Nacional of 1914 derived from its
leadership. The moving spirit was Sandico, a key figure in the fusion that
led to the Nacionalista Party of 1907. He was among the Bulacan activists of
the 1880s; served the Propaganda in Europe, the Hongkong Junta, the
Revolution; and then fought as a general in the war. With him were three
other exgenerals: Juan Cailles of Laguna, Francisco Macabulos of Tarlac,
and Emiliano Riego de Dios of Cavite. They were joined by other
Nacionalista rebels and some Progresistas. Among the latter was Arsenio
Cruz Herrera. He was a delegate in the Malolos Congress and a member of
the Permanent Committee of the Assembly under the Republic, and then
became a founding member of the Federal Party.
The Progresistas and Democratas were overrun in the 1916 elections.
They fused into the new Partido Democrata only to be overwhelmed again in
1919. In 1920 they adopted a new platform. They asked for absolute and
immediate independence and accused the Nacionalistas of having
abandoned that goal "since the Jones Law was enacted." They also espoused
democratic policies in favor of labor in general, and better conditions for
workers, arbitration in labor conflicts, and benefits for the aged. Two more
figures from the Revolution joined the party: Col. Simeon Villa and Gen.
Tomas Mascardo. Forbes thought many of the party's policies “very radical
and occasionally socialistic.”36
The OsmeñaQuezon split in 1922 helped the Democratas win 26 of the
93 seats in the lower house. In the 1925 elections they almost maintained
their strength, but the Quezon and Osmeña blocs made peace and the
reunited Nacionalistas kept their dominance of electoral politics until the
eve of World War II.
Filipino politics and government did not change much over this period.
The sources and the base of political leadership did not change. The party of
Quezon and Osmeña did not think to review or expand the limited
electorate. This neglect was glaring because the Autonomy Act of 1916
authorized the allFilipino legislature to prescribe, and therefore modify, the
suffrage qualifications after the 1916 elections. But the Nacionalistas were
unbeatable and content with the status quo. It was in fact the United States
Congress that liberalized the suffrage requirements: the 1916 law lowered
the voting age from 23 to 21 years and allowed literacy in a native language
as an additional qualification. The Autonomy Act was also silent on the
loyalty oath requirement for voters and elected officials, although in practice
it remained in force because violation of the oath of allegiance to the United
States was a disqualification for voting pursuant to Section 432 of the
Administrative Code.
The quintessential symbol of this political system was Quezon. He was
elected in the fifth senatorial district (the provinces of Cavite, Batangas,
Mindoro, and Tayabas) without ever campaigning.
The merger of the nationalists (Partido Democrata Nacional) with the

proAmericans (Progresistas) after 1916 was conclusive evidence that the
Filipino electorate was no longer moved by the nationalism of the
Revolution and Republic. What was most needed therefore was for the
Filipino leadership to spell out and spread a new and appropriate
nationalist ideology for the times. It was not enough for the nationalists to
oppose the Nacionalistas, who were now working with and for the regime.
There had to be fresh views of the nation and its ethics and ideals, and
everything had to be derived from a sense of the worth of the Filipino and
his identity and culture and aspirations.
The man who came closest to contributing to this redefinition was Claro
M. Recto, a Democrata in the House of Representatives. He castigated
Quezon and 0smefia and Manuel A. Roxas (a protege of Quezon) during the
mid1920s but, obeying the now clear script of Filipino politics, Recto
seemed to ally himself with the American governorgeneral, now a
Republican, against the latter's Filipino opponents. Recto was an
intellectual without Quezon's charisma or Osmeña's diplomacy. He had
little popular appeal, either with the limited electorate then or with the
expanded electorate later on.
Recto became president of the 1935 constitutional convention that was
convened pursuant to the Philippine Independence Act or TydingsMcDuffie
law of the United States Congress, approved on 24 March 1934. Section 10
of this law provided for recognition of independence and withdrawal of
American sovereignty after a tenyear transition period following the
inauguration of the government to be organized under the constitution. This
would have been in November 1945. There had been, in fact, the Hare
HawesCutting law before the TydingsMcDuffie law. The earlier law was
approved in January 1933, and had the same provisions on independence
and a transition period. The Quezon and Osmeña blocs in the majority party
fought a battle royal over the acceptance of this earlier law. It would have
been too much for Quezon if the law had been accepted; it would have been
Osmeña who would get the credit for the passage of the independence law
since it was 0smefia (joined by Roxas) who had been in the United States
and supported passage of the law in the Congress. The Quezon bloc won; the
HareHawesCutting law had no effect because acceptance by the Filipinos
was a legal requisite to its effectivity; Quezon went to Washington, came
back with the TydingsMcDuffie law that was almost identical with the
rejected law, posed as the savior of the nation, and won approval by the
electorate.
There was irony in the fact that 0smefia and Quezon fought each other
bitterly over the independence acts. The irony is that, way back in April
1924 H.R. 8856, otherwise known as the Fairfield bill, was introduced in the
United States Congress, authorizing the Filipinos to adopt a constitution
and providing for recognition of the independence of the Commonwealth of
the Philippines twenty years after its inauguration. This would have worked
out to almost exactly 1945.
Public opinion in the Philippines was against the bill, mainly because the
interim period of twenty years was seen as too long. The most important
among the objectors to this provision in the bill was Gen. Aguinaldo. Quezon
and Osmeña, who had both been in the United States when the bill was in
Congress and who supported its passage, reported after they returned to
Manila that they had been “unable to accept” the Fairfield bill. But Recto,
who was with the QuezonOsmeña mission as the Democrata minority
member, revealed that the two had in fact supported the bill. And he had
documents to prove his accusations.
Osmeña was back in the United States in 1925 carrying another petition
for independence. The petition was eloquent because it is easy to be
eloquent on a matter such as independence, but it relied less on the
Filipinos' rights and more on American “good faith.”37
The constitutional convention began its work on a Monday, 30 July 1934.
The proceedings were recorded in a mixture of Spanish and English so that
we note, for instance, that “El Doorkeeper anuncia la entrada de los
presidentes de ambas cámaras.” Quezon, as senate president, opened the
ceremonies, in English. Exactly two hundred delegates answered the roll
call. The record suggests that Quezon repeatedly ignored the persistent
efforts of Tomas Confesor of Iloilo to get the floor to make a nomination for
the provisional chairmanship of the convention. It also appears that the
nomination of Jose P. Laurel of Batangas was railroaded, and the
nominations were closed and he was elected by acclamation. Quezon yielded
the chair to Laurel, who asked for nominations for permanent president of
the convention. Recto, of Batangas, was nominated.
At this point Confesor was recognized and he nominated Pedro Guevara,
resident commissioner during the passage of the independence law. He
explained the nomination by saying that Guevara was now poor and old and
would soon pass away. But Guevara declined the nomination and Recto was
elected by acclamation.
The convention completed its work on 8 February 1935, when the final
draft of the constitution was adopted. In his valedictory that evening Recto
noted that there was no single provision that was not formulated by the
delegates through their suggestions. But he made special acknowledgment
to the “Seven Wise Men” of the convention who wrote the draft as presented
to the assembly. They were: Filemon Sotto and Manuel Briones of Cebu,
Manuel Roxas of Capiz, Vicente Singson Encarnacion of Ilocos Sur, Miguel
Cuaderno of Bataan, Norberto Romualdez of Leyte, and Conrado Benitez of
Laguna. In his speech Recto observed that:
For it is not alone by means of constitutions and laws, however

wisely conceived and formulated they might be, that we may hope to
found a free nation, a stable government and a happy and prosperous
community, but by building up here a citizenry as conscious of its duties
as of its rights, if not more so, and purified by the precepts of the
patriotic code of honor and morality.
During the convention debates Confesor had proposed inclusion in the
declaration of principles of the following:
The Filipino people hereby declare themselves ready for immediate,
complete, and absolute independence, and are in a position to assume
now the obligations and responsibilities of a sovereign state.
The assembly disagreed, but provided in Article II (Declaration of

Principles) that: “The Philippines is a republican state.” Article XVII
provided that the government to be established under the constitution was
to be the Commonwealth of the Philippines, which would be known as the
Republic of the Philippines upon the withdrawal of United States
sovereignty.
Despite the fact that it had to include principles and mandatory

provisions imposed by the United States Congress, the rest of the 1935
constitution was not only a good political constitution. In the declaration
that the Philippines was a state wherein sovereignty resided in the people,
the delegates were risking the entire constitution's disapproval by the
Americans; but they were reasserting nationalism and abandoning the well
mannered stance of the Nacionalista leadership since 1907.
The constitution featured clearly nationalistic and democratic provisions
and, in the long neglected area of suffrage, expanded the electorate. It
prescribed a basic literacy qualification but abolished the old elitist
requirements and provided for women suffrage if at least 300,000 of them
voted for it in a plebiscite to be held for the purpose, which they later did.
From 1935 onwards the Filipinos began to have full control of their
political system. Its beginnings had been virtually defined by American
prescriptions, but from here on it would develop only according to Filipino
desires and abilities. The Americans could no longer be properly blamed for
what it would become, and so the Filipinos would have only themselves to
praise, or blame, for what they would make of it.
The tenyear transition period before independence was broken by the
Japanese invasion and occupation during World War II. The Japanese
regime sponsored a republic. Its president, Laurel, took his oath of office on
14 October 1943. Not counting the BiaknaBato republic of 1897 and
starting with the Republic of 1899, the third Republic was inaugurated on 4
July 1946 after the war.
The ending of the American occupation did not clear up the old issues:
McKinley's pious professions, the Commission's theory of government, Taft's
assessments in 1907. George F. Kennan wrote in 1951 that the United
States “set the Filipinos free” in 1946:
but not really primarily for their sake not primarily because we

were sorry for them or thought them prepared for freedom and felt that
we had an obligation to concede it to them but rather because we found
them a minor inconvenience to ourselves; because the economic
intimacy that their existence under our flag implied proved
uncomfortable to powerful private interests in this country; because, in
other words, we were not ourselves prepared to endure for long even
those rudimentary sacrifices implied in the term “the white man's
burden.”
Nor, as later events proved, would the American withdrawal in 1946 be
clearcut. Aside from the great military bases in their former colony,
something more than ghosts and memories from the occupation would
endure. We have quoted from Quezon's 1943 letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt
saying that the Filipinos, "spiritually" speaking, had an "Occidental way of
life" that could be preserved only through continued association with
America and the western world. The depth of Quezon's conviction is
confirmed in his autobiography (1946) where he wrote that when the United
States went to war in Europe in World War I:
It was then for our own cause and our own national aspirations that
America was unsheathing her sword and for the first time in her history
taking active part in the bloody quarrels of old imperialist Europe.
America's policy in the Philippines – its solemn pledge to grant the
Filipino people their independence contained in the preamble of the
Jones Act [the law of 1916] had borne its fruit.
Twenty years earlier, in a speech before a provincial audience, Quezon
made one of his most engaging and oftquoted remarks, to the effect that he
would “prefer a government run like hell by Filipinos to one run like heaven
by Americans.” Between our views on the shortcomings of the Nacionalista
leaders' nationalism and the images they projected as nationalists, there
are, maybe, the complexities of their roles and times to consider.38
It was the successors of Quezon and Osmeña, some of whom were the
latter's protégés during the years of accommodation with the regime and the
years of the independence campaign, who would lead the country during the
first years of the new republic, the years of rebuilding after World War II.
This story of the roots of the Filipino nation ends here. In the Epilogue
we will briefly assess what the Filipinos have made out of their heritage
from the past.
Notes
The FilipinoAmerican War, 19021906; The American Occupation
The quotation at the beginning is from Carlos Quirino, Quezon, Paladin of Philippine Freedom (1971),
372.
I Re turnover of authority from US military governor to civil governor: Philippine Commission,
19001903, 140. Taft's inaugural address is in ibid., 277281. Re program in plaza: John R. White,
Bullets and Bolos (1928), 34.
Re insular affairs bureau: see Section 87, US Public Law No. 235, a text of which appears in
Philippine Commission, 19001903,438460.
Re Taft opinion on anomalous creation of the Commission, etc.: ibid., 1907, Part 3, 247.
Re divisions of authority in regime: "The Ford Report on the Situation in the Philippines,"Historical
Bulletin, XVII, 586589.
Re surrender of generals and guerrilla leaders: Philippine Commission, 1902, Part 1, 13.
Re Commission's certification of end of "insurrection": ibid., 1907, Part 1, 210. Re November report:
ibid., 1902, Part 1, 3. Re 1903 report: ibid., 1903, Part 1, 3.
Re Taft admission that there had been a war: ibid., 1907, Part 1, 216.
Re town officials being insurrectos: ibid., 19001903, 182. Re creation of Philippine Constabulary:
ibid., 182183. Re civilmilitary differences, civil government unsure of Army cooperation: White,
8.
Re Cavite governor's report of 1905: Philippine Commission, Part 1, 1905, 212.
2 Re San Miguel in late 1899: Taylor, V, Exhs. 1022 and 1023. Re report on marauding bands in
Bulacan and Rizal: Philippine Conmission, 1903, Part 1, 29.
Re Paterno note on San Miguel: Paterno, 72. Paterno was right in 1903 an E.F. Ongcapin had three
transactions with the occupation government's insular purchasing agent valued at 289,30 pesos. see
Philippine Commission, 1903, Part 1, 119, 121.
Re Mrs. Taft note on irreconcilables: Mrs. Taft, 255.
Re Partido Nacionalista, Katipunan: Philippine Commission, 1903 Part 3, 3942.
Re Mabini letter: an English text is in ibid., Part 1, 2627; thi source also provides the details on the
contact between San Migue and Mabini. Paterno, 72, is our source on San Miguel's death.
3 Re disturbances in Surigao, Misamis: Philippine Commission, 1903 Part 1, 30. Re Blount findings
in Misamis: Blount, 422.
4 Re disturbances in Albay, Ola, other leaders: Philippine Commission 1903, Part 1, 31; and ibid.,
Part 3, 91. Re the concentration i Albay: ibid., 1904, Part 1, 365366. See Blount, 416, for brief
note on elements of concentration.
Re Constabulary report: Philippine Commission, 1903, Part 3, 139 Re Reconcentration Statute: It was
passed 1 June 1903, after th Americans had declared peace; a text is in ibid., Part 1, 140141.
Re Blount judgment that the Albay "insurgents' were not out laws: Blount, 423429. The lists of men
are in: ibid., 430433. R1 Blount's comment about Andersonville: ibid., 434.
5 Re Hongkong Junta and irreconcilables: Philippine Commission, 1905 Part 1, 52. Re slur on De
los Reyes: ibid., 1902, Part 1, 4. Re slur on Tolentino: ibid., 1904, Part 1, 4. Details on Tolentino
as a responsible revolutionary figure are in: Taylor, V, Exh. 1121. R. Ricarte: Philippine
Commission, 1904, Part 1, 45.
6 Re war in Cavite in 19041905, leaders: ibid., 1905, Part 1, 5253 ibid., 1907, Part 1, 37.
Re raids in Laguna, etc.: ibid., 1905, Part 1, 5354. Re militar; campaign, concentration: ibid., 5459.
See also reports of the era vincial governors of Batangas and Cavite, ibid., 173176; 207217. R
1906 situation: ibid., 1906, Part 1, 30.
Re Gomez, from Spain to Manila: ibid., 1903, Part 1, 36. Re hi 1906 offer: ibid., 1906, Part 1, 3031.
Re bandolerismo: a text of the law is in ibid., 1903, Part 1, 343! Re conviction of the accused: ibid.,
1907, Part 1, 3642. Re Quezon and bandolcrismo cases: Quezon, 9091.
7 Re Katipunan ng San Cristobal: Taylor, III, Exhs. 278 and 2781/2; and V, Exhs. 548, 560, and
970 for related matters.
Re Constabulary report on religious movements: Philippine Commission, 1903, Part 3, 39. Even a
simple survey account of these groups would require a work of book length. Our account is limited
to their appearance as "disturbances' during this era and is basically illustrative. The reports of the
Philippine Constabulary in Philippine Commission, 1902, Part 1, 179ff., identified the leaders of the
groups or movements. The annual reports of the provincial governors (beginning in Philippine
Commission, 1903, Part 1, 731935) are interesting but appear, in the case of the Filipino governors'
reports, to be restrained. It is not correct to view the groups simply as "religious fanatical
movements." Certainly some of them had a political and revolutionary orientation. Papa Isio, the
"babaylan leader" in Negros, formally reported on his command to Aguinaldo in March 1899.
Although most of the groups were rural folk associations, there was the striking exception of the
Guardias de Honor, which was strongest in Pangasinan; it opposed the Katipunan and the
Revolution and was encouraged if not promoted by the friars. see Taylor, III, Exh. 337, and Note
to Exh. 970.
Reynaldo C. Ileto, Pasyon and Revolution (1979), is a study of the Apolinario de la Cruz type of these
groupings. It lays stress on their quaint features, and they appear basically as oddities. It is surely in
error to the extent that it treats of the Katipunan as if it were no different from the others. Alvarez,
340347 (typescript), has material on the early Kolorum.
Re Felipe Salvador: Philippine Commission, 1903, Part 1, 3233. Ileto, 261263, has details of
Salvador's background. Re Salvador in 1906, and Commission report about peace in Luzon:
Philippine Commission, 1906, Part 1, 3133.
8 Re Cebu, Iloilo, Capiz, in 1903: ibid., 1903, Part 1, 31.
Re hacienda in Negros society: White, 116117. Re Papa Isio reporting to Aguinaldo: Taylor, II, 413
415. Re Constabulary pursuit, victory at Mt. Mansalanao: White, 97103. Re fading away of Papa
Isio, Dalmacio the Negrito captured: ibid., 149154.
9 Re ladrones bands in Filipinas: Philippine Commission, 1904, Part 1, 1.
Re Papa Bulan and Samar situation in 1904: ibid., 23. Re pulahanes, Samar, in 1905: ibid., 1905, Part
1, 4748, 5052. Re aborted surrender, Samar in 1906: ibid., 1906, Part 1, 3436. Re pulahan attack
in Leyte in 1906, pulahanes and land tax, conference of higt officials, US Army battalions, ibid., 36
38. Details of the raid ir Burauen, and the situation in Leyte in general, are in the provincial
governor's report, ibid., 320322.
Re English lady's observations, note on Samar in 1905: Mrs. Campbell Dauncey, An Englishwoman in
the Philippines (1906), 288.
Re Salvador's capture: Philippine Commission, 1910, 9. Re Otoy's capture: ibid., 1911, 15.
10 Re unilateral acts of Spain in 1851, 1860: Montero y Vidal, Historic General, III, 308310. Re
1870 population figures: supra, Appendix tc Volume I. The overall picture is in Vic Hurley, Swish
of the Kri: (1936), 139148. There were two versions of the 1851 "treaty." ThE Spanish version
declared the submission of the Sultan of Sulu and the incorporation of Jolo and its dependencies
into the Spanisl• crown. The Sulu version declared "agreement in union (in friendship) between
Spain and Sulu. see Saleeby, History of Sulu 107111.
Datu Michael O. Mastura, Muslim Filipino Experience (1984), 4750, has lists of Maguindanao
and Sulu treaties with foreign powers There is a problem in interpreting these treaties. To the
sultan they were primarily and almost solely evidence of foreign power recognizing them. But the
western parties see them primarily in terms of rights and obligations assumed and undertaken.
Thus when the American general Leonard Wood was appointed governor of the Moro Province in
1903, he said of an 1899 treaty with the Sultan of Sulu that "absolute subordination to the
sovereignty of the United States was not made as clear by the Bates Treaty when translated into
their language as it might have been....Philippine Commission, 1903, Part 1, 80.
11 Re first probe in May 1899: Hurley, 152153.
Re policy to merely occupy abandoned Spanish posts: Philippine Commission, 1904, Part 1, 6. Re
population of Sulu archipelago Gazetteer, 846. Re friendly relations in 1901, the Maranaos fierce
etc.: Philippine Commission, 19001903, 160.
Re 1902 Commission report: ibid., 1902, Part 1, 884.
Re Wood on Taosugs: ibid., 1903, Part 1, 490. Re Wood o Muslim laws in general, in 1904: ibid.,
1904, Part 2, 577. Re hi deputy's opinion: ibid., 1903, Part 1, 498, 506. Re constabulary officer's
impression: White, 265.
Re illustrative dispute, quoted: Philippine Commission, 1903, Part 1, 540. Re sultan's letter: ibid., 518.
Re juramentados: ibid., 489; and see Samuel K. Tan, The Filipino Muslim Armed Struggle (1971), 12
14, for distinctive features of juramentado, sabilallah, jihad.
12 Re Maranao attack, fight with Americans in 1902: Philippine Commission, 1904, Part 1, 7.
Re Pershing: Hurley, 162; Forbes, I, 189. Re Maranao situation in 1903, Zamboanga, Maguindanao,
and Jolo: Philippine Commission, 1903, Part 1, 79; and ibid., 1904, Part 1, 7.
Re KiramBates Treaty: ibid., 1903, Part 1, 492 refers to the agreement but without detail. Hurley,
156159, has the English text; ibid., 154156 has the draft proposed by the sultan but rejected by the
Americans.
13 Re failure to bring Muslims under control by 1903: Philippine Commission, 1904, Part 1, 6. Re
Sulu military governor's complaint: ibid., 1903, Part 1, 491. Re Wright's 1904 statement: ibid.,
1904, Part 1, 12. Re unchanged situation in Lanao and Cotabato: ibid., 7.
Re Moro Province: ibid., 1903, Part 1, 7679; ibid., 1904, Part 1, 810. The organization of the Moro
Province was in preparation for abrogation of the KiramBates treaty, notice of which was given to
the Sultan on 21 March 1904. He pleaded loss of revenues; after hearings in Manila, which he
attended, he was voted 13,500 pesos in annual payments, of which 6,000 was for him personally.
see ibid., 13; and Sixto Orosa, The Sulu Archipelago and Its People (1970), 3637.
Re result of American intrusion: Philippine Commission, 1904, Part 1, 10.
Re Panglima Hassan: ibid., 1903, Part 1, 490; Hurley, 167169.
Re abrogation of treaty: Philippine Commission, 1903, Part 1, 489543, being mostly material
appended to justify Wood's recommendation for abrogation.
14 Re Lake Lanao region in 1903 and 1904: ibid., 79; and ibid., 1904, Part 1, 11.
Re Cotabato campaign: the quotation is in White, 218. Majul, 33; and White, 215, refer to Datu Ali.
Re Wood's description of Ali's cotta: Philippine Commission, 1904, Part 2, 578. Re death of Ali:
ibid., 1906, Part 1, 86.
Re Datu Usap's last stand: ibid., 1905, Part 1, 343. Hurley says Wood had 400 men to Usap's 100 and
criticizes Wood for what he calls a "slaughter." Hurley, 176.
15 Re Bud Dajo: ibid., 182187; White, Chapter 37.
Re Commission's justification of Bud Dajo action: Philippine Commission, 1906, Part 1, 3940.
Re 1908 Commission report on Lanao Moros: ibid., 1908, Part 1, 44. Re Buldong country campaign:
ibid., 1909, Part 1, 42.
Re Jikiri: see ibid., 1908, Part 1, 44; ibid., 1909, 42; and Hurley, Chapter 21.
Re second Bud Dajo in 1911: White, 312.
16 Re Bud Bagsak: our account is based on Hurley, Chapter 24. Orosa, 4041, says 300 Muslims
were killed.
17 Re new Department of Mindanao and Sulu: Mastura, 5253; Peter Gowing, Muslim Filipinos
Heritage and Horizon (1979), 35. The Moro territory was in the twelfth senatorial district by
virtue of US Public Law No. 240, approved 29 August 1916; a text of this law is in Maximo M.
Kalaw, Philippine Government Under the Jones Law (1927), 437452.
Re Hadji Butu, appointed senator: Mastura, 53.
Re Wood's recommendation against codification: Philippine Commission, 1904, Part 2, 579; ibid.,
1905, Part 1, 330. Re Commission's aborting codification: ibid., 1904, Part 1, 13.
18 Re Table: for the 1887 numbers see Gazetteer, 2728, 30; for the 1903 numbers Philippine
Re opinion that 1903 population level had been reached in the mid1890s: Censo de 1903, 1, 477.
19 Re loss in hectarage tilled: Le Roy, 154155. Re losses in carabao stock: the interior secretary
(Manila) reported 75 per cent Philippine Commission, 1902, Part 1, 297; the Commission
reported 90 per cent ibid., 4; and the secretary of war (Washington) reported 90 per cent. ibid.,
xii.
Re Taft on famine: ibid., 19001903, 278. Re soaring rice and carabao prices: ibid., 1902, Part 1, 5. Re
need to import food: ibid., 16. Re Commission setting aside funds for rice: ibid., 1903, Part 1, 9899,
which has a text of Act No. 485. Re rice imports in 1901 and 1902: ibid., 1902, Part 1, 20; and ibid.,
1903, Part 1, 1718. Re 1903 rice distribution: ibid., 688689. Re warning of famine; planting of
fastgrowth crops: ibid., 98.
Re carabao prices: ibid., 1902, Part 1, 5. Re importation of carabaos: ibid., 1903, Part 1, 2325.
Re rice crop down to 25 per cent of normal: ibid., 1902, Part 1, 16. Re locusts in 1901 and 1902: ibid.,
4, 16; and ibid., 1903, Part 1, 1920. Re "locust law": Act No. 817, in ibid., 9596.
Re people dying, according to Taft due to improper cooking: ibid., 2223. Re epidemic: ibid., 1902,
Part 1, 5, 16, 267274, 304404, 411414; ibid., 1903, Part 2, 15.
20 Re relief fund: ibid., 1902, Part 1, xii. Re rinderpest: ibid., 1909, 6061; ibid., 1911, 171; ibid.,
1912, 2526. Re locusts: ibid., 1903, Part 1, 689; reports of the provincial locust boards are in 695
712. See also ibid., 1905, Part 1, 94; ibid., 1909, 47, 61; ibid., 1912, 25.
Re rice imports, 1902: ibid., 1903, Part 1, 23. Re rice imports, 1908: ibid., 1909, 1314. Re situation
up to 1912: ibid., 1912, 22, 3940.
Re schools in campaign: ibid., 4142.
21 Re numbers of friars, 18961900: ibid., 19001903, 39. Re Jesuits, etc., not assaulted: ibid., 39
40.
Re war secretary letter to Taft, 1902: Stuntz, 300.
Re Taft against return of friars to curacies: Philippine Commission,
1903, Part 1, 46.
Re friar numbers in 1902 and 1903: ibid., 45. Re people's hatred for friars, murder if they returned:
ibid., 4647, 148.
Re 1899 rules on land titling: Taylor, IV, Exh. 952.
22 Re irregularities in Spanish registration system: Philippine Commission, 19001903, 49. Re
reversion of untitled land into the public domain, small number of parcels registered: ibid., 1907,
Part 2, 540; ibid., 1911, 7.
Re friar estates in 1900: ibid., 19001903, 43. Re decision to buy the haciendas: ibid., 48. The
purchase was authorized in Sections 6365 of US Public Law No. 235.
23 Re apparent conveyance to "dummy owners": ibid., 1903, Part 1, 40; ibid., 19001903, 48.
Re Villegas: ibid., 1903, Part 1, 39, 142179; ibid., 1904, Part 1, 747751. This material includes
testimonies.
Re prices offered and counteroffered: ibid., 1903, Part 1, 40, 43. ibid., 1905, Part 1, 26, shows the
amounts paid to the vendors over October 1904 and October 1905.
Re Taft buying a dispute: ibid., 1903, Part 1, 4244. Re Instruc tions: ibid., 19001903, 910.
Re the various estates, questions raised on the law firm's ap proach: our list is assembled from the data
in the lengthy report c Del Pan, Ortigas y Fisher in ibid., 1904, Part 1, 752816; and ou questions
relate to this report.
Devins, 246247; and Stuntz, Chapters 16 and 17, deal with thi friar lands issue from the American
Protestant antifriar attitude The Stuntz material quotes correspondence between Taft and th,
Vatican including the agreement between him and the cardina secretary of state to the Pope.
24 Re allowances to Duke of Veragua, etc.: Corpuz, 140.
25 Re January 1901 cable messages: Philippine Commission, 19001903, 2829.
Re "General Theory" of the Commission: ibid., 143147. Re Daun cey comment: Dauncey, 13.
Re suffrage requirements: Philippine Commission, 19001903, 144; sec also Stuntz, 172173. A
justification of the requirement arguing that they were liberal, is in Philippine Commission, 190 Part
1, 164165.
Re Federal Party manifesto: Taylor, V, Exh. 1182.
Even though the numbers of voters that we will be citing ar low, they may in fact overstate the
number of legally qualifi voters since there were cases of registrants under the officeholder
qualification who were not actually officeholders in the Spanis regime. see Philippine
Re Filipinos appointed to the Commission: ibid., 19001903, 140141.
26 Re Taft speech at Assembly inauguration: ibid., 1907, Part 1, 215 226. Re Taft report: ibid., Part
3, 237310. Re Roosevelt endorsement: ibid., 235.
27 Re provincial Sorties, appointment of governors: ibid., 19001903, 133135.
Re 1903 governors: see the reports of provincial governors in ibid., 1903, Part 1, 731935. Re Dancel:
Taylor, IV, Exh. 673, and V 1182. Re governors, 19041907: see the reports in Philippine Commis
sion, 1904, Part 1, 360684; ibid., 1905, Part 1, 123436; ibid., 1906. Part 1, 157483; ibid., 1907,
Part 1, 246491.
Re 1906 governors conference: ibid., 8283, 150151.
28 Re Arellano: ibid., 19001903, 7; Taylor, II, 122. Re Mrs. Dauncey's account: Dauncey, 307340.
Re Taft party, Philippine government asked to defray transport costs: Philippine Commission, 1905,
Part 1, 3541.
29 Re Wright proclamation: ibid., 1907, Part 1, 211212.
Re civil service: a text of the civil service law, passed 19 September 1900, is in ibid., 19001903, 13
19. Re 1901 examinations: ibid., 1902, part 1, 4958. Re 1907 examinations and cumulative data by
1907: ibid., 1907, Part 1, 145.
Re distribution of posts between Filipinos and Americans: ibid., 146148. Re recruitment in the U.S.:
ibid., 1902, Part 1, 50. Re attraction of employment in Panama, Cuba, and loss of American
employees: ibid., 1907, Part 1, 7980, 149.
30 Re resolution of March 1907 and call for elections: ibid., 212214. Re comment on Filipino
political parties: ibid., 166. Re registration in Capiz: ibid., 168. Re Bataan: ibid., 166.
Re data on qualified electors, registered electors, and actual voters: ibid., 201202. Re municipal
election votes: ibid., 201.
31 Re Taft's appointing only Federal Party members: Forbes, I, 146; II, 108. Re nonpartisanship of
his successors: ibid., II, 108109. Re Taft admission that Federal Party had no popular support:
Philippine Commission, 1907, Part 3, 274.
Re Nacionalista parties in 1905, 1907: Lang, 5762, has a summary of the organizing activities up to
1907.
The data on parties and votes received are in Philippine Commission, 1907, Part 1, 203; and pp. 5051
is a list of the successful candidates and their party affiliations.
Re welcome program for Taft, and inaugural program of the Assembly: ibid., 205, 227228.
32 Re no mention of Osmena's father in his biography: Pacis, I, Chapter 2, mentions only his mother
and uncle and that Osmena was the "man of the family."
Re contest for spcakcrship of Assembly: ibid., 121.
Re Osmena's maiden speech, his idea of the role of the Assembly: ibid., 121123, 126127.
Re resident commissioners: Philippine Commission, 1907, Part 3, 277.
Re joint resolution: ibid., 1908, Part 1, 88.
33 Re social status of elected delegates: ibid., 1907, Part 1, 5051. Re per diem: ibid., 164.
Re 1909 elections: ibid., 1910, 4547.
Re 1912 elections: ibid., 1912, 4549. Re illiterates among the property owners: Forbes, II, 124.
A text of the 1916 law is in Maximo M. Kalaw, 437452.
34 Re Quezon: Quezon, 16; Quirino, 34. Re bar examinations: Pacis, I, 46.
Re Palma, Araneta, Sumulong: Forbes, I, 170.
Re AssemblyCommission conflict over appropriations: "The Ford Report on the Situation in the
Philippines," Historical Bulletin, XVII, 390.
Re resignation of Filipino commissioners, their successors: Forbes, II, 220221.
35 Re Quezon and political turncoatism: Quirino, 145. Re 1910 resolution: Philippine Commission,
1911, 17,
36 Re Partido Democrata Nacional: Liang, 8990, and 113, Note 10. Re merger of Democratas and
Progresistas into the Partido Democrata: ibid., 92. Re new Democrata platform: Forbes, II, 113
114.
37 A sympathetic treatment of Recto is: Emerenciana Yuvienco Arcellana, The Social and Political
Thought of Claro Mayo Recto (1981). Re Recto exposé of Quezon and Osmena: Liang, 140144.
The 1935 convention proceedings are in Salvador H. Laurel, Proceedings of the Philippine
Constitutional Convention (1966). The Appendices include the texts of the approved constitution,
the HareHawesCutting law, the TydingsMcDuffie law, and Recto' valedictory. see Volume VII.
Re Fairfield bill: Forbes, II, 374, describes the system of govermnent that the bill would set up in the
Philippines as "a supervised republic." Theodore Friend, Between Two Empires (1964), 4, maintains
that Osmena and Quezon "starved it with indifference," referring to the Fairfield bill. However, the
evidence Friend provides is not convincing; the key element in the matter has to be Recto's public
accusation that they supported the bill, despite their claim to the contrary.
Re Osmena's 1925 independence petition: Forbes, 11, 554555.
Re the independence campaign: Bernardita Reyes Churchill, The Philippine Independence Missions to
the United States (1983), x, concludes: "Political leaders often vied with one another to demonstrate
the intensity of their advocacy of independence, yet seemed to shrink from it when its attainment
seemed imminent."
38 Re initial proceedings in the 1935 convention up to the election of Recto: Laurel, I, 116.
Re Confesor's proposed provision in the declaration of principles: ibid., VI, 124. Even in his later
career, Confesor came to be known as "the stormy petrel."
Re Japanesesponsored republic: Hartendorp, 1, 609649.
Re Kennan assessment: George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy (1951), 1819.
Re Quezon on US in World War I: Quezon, 133.

The Filipino-American War: 1902-1906 The American Occupation

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Filipino-American War: 1902-1906 The American Occupation

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

T H E R O O T S O F T H E F I L I P I N O N A T I O N by Onofre D.

[The Filipino people] should preserve and perpetuate their

A middling crowd gathered in the small plaza in front of the

The November 1902 report of the Commission was categorical. It said

The occupation regime that claimed to be a civilian government and

And so we will meet with various kinds of men, produced by the

They are essentially robber bands, thieves, murderers, and

The irreconcilables organized the Partido Nacionalista in 1901. For

They conducted, according to Taft, a “reign of terror” throughout the

Naturally, the effect of this unusual volume of persons in such a

The provincial governor's report was actually restrained. He (R.F.

without any pitiless shooting down of defenseless women and

The Commission had dismissed Isabelo de los Reyes, founder of the

The war returned to Cavite in 1904­1905. The Commission named

W. Cameron Forbes, a Commission member from 1904 and governor­

were escorted, with such valuables as they could carry, to the

The ending of the disturbances in Cavite and Batangas was anti­

Sakay, Montalon, Villafuerte, and De Vega were brought to trial in

Section 1. Whenever three or more persons, conspiring together,

We will next take notice of three other cases of disturbance and

The movements were manifestations of a familiar phenomenon in old

Dios­Dios, Pulajans, Colorados, Cruz­Cruz, San[ta] Iglesia,

But if it is not possible to segregate the element of resistance in the

Felipe Salvador came to the Commission's attention in 1903. He was

The next year it reported that it was wrong. After elaborate

due to its resolve to shore up the crumbling structure of deceits and

We have to review the background of the new war so that we can

Moro­American relations during these initial years were therefore

In many things they are inferior to the American Indians, and I

The Commission report for 1903 stated that organized Maranao

Outside of juramentados, killings of unwary soldiers, and attacks on

The policy of non­interference produced only aggravation for the

In 1903 the regime decided to organize for direct administration. It

The bloodiest campaign of these early years was in Cotabato, the

occasional lantaka fire from the cotta. The lantaka shot off “slugs, stones,

The 1908 report of the Philippine Commission referred to the Lanao

Sunday morning. Bagsak cotta absorbed a two­hour artillery

The Americans were quite right to claim decisive victories in

In 1920 the Philippine Legislature abolished the Department of

In retrospect, the great outcome of the Moro­American War was the

The stable peace that normal communities enjoy is different from the

Spanish estimates for, say, 1894 or 1898, we would have an aggregate

It is necessary to point out that there were some boundary changes

We may now consider the numbers. The total of the provincial

Province 1887 Census 1903 Census

Ambos Camarines 194,022 233,472

this indicates an average annual growth of some 45,410 a year, an

The other provinces with significant losses in either absolute or

It was surmised in the Report of Census of 1903 that the Filipino

Malnutrition lowered the people's resistance to disease. A cholera

These numbers indicate how the Spanish friars (Dominicans,

There were three notable Filipino “agrarian reform” concepts before

But the Dominicans, Augustinians, and Recollects (the Franciscans

One cannot resist the suspicion that these parties were no more than

Another glaring case of legal technicalities drowning out substantive

things to the status quo ante bellum. It was as if the Revolution and the

that the political system that would be allowed to develop would include

So we call ourselves the Federal Party, since under American

Aware that its requirements for suffrage resulted in a very small

Meanwhile, the Commission would organize town and provincial

Finally, in his report to the President, who transmitted it to the

The American President Roosevelt transmitted the report to the US

These Philippine islands are going to be governed for the Filipinos,

The war returned to Cavite in 19041905. The Commission named

W. Cameron Forbes, a Commission member from 1904 and governor

The ending of the disturbances in Cavite and Batangas was anti

DiosDios, Pulajans, Colorados, CruzCruz, San[ta] Iglesia,

MoroAmerican relations during these initial years were therefore

The policy of noninterference produced only aggravation for the

Sunday morning. Bagsak cotta absorbed a twohour artillery

In retrospect, the great outcome of the MoroAmerican War was the

but not really primarily for their sake not primarily because we