THE TEJEROS

ASSEMBLY
1897

MELDY MAE ORTEGA

 THE FIRST MEETING
On March 22, 1897, the Magdiwang and Magdalo councils met once more, this time at the friar
estate house in Tejeros, a barrio of San Francisco de Malabon. This convention proved even
stormier than the Imus meeting and, as in Imus, the declared objective of the meeting was not even
discussed.

According to Jacinto Lumbreras, a Magdiwang and first presiding officer of the Tejeros convention,
the meeting had been called to adopt measure for the defense of Cavite. Again this subject was not
discussed, and instead, the assembled leaders, including the Magdiwangs, decided to elect the
officers of the revolutionary government, thus unceremoniously discarding the Supreme Council of
the Katipunan under whose standard the people had been fighting and would continue to fight.

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Bonifacio presided, though reluctantly, over the
election. Beforehand, he secured the unanimous
pledge of the assembly to abide by the majority
decision. The results were:

President Emilio Aguinaldo

Vice-President Mariano Trias
Captain-General Artemio Ricarte
Director of War Emiliano Riego de Dios

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 EMILIO AGUINALDO
had been awarded the highest prize of the
Revolution on his own birth anniversary,
although he was not present, being busy at a
military front in Pasong Santol, a barrio of
Imus. As for Bonifacio, the death-blow to the
Katipunan and his election as a mere Director
of the Interior showed clearly that he had
been maneuvered out of power. It must have
been a bitter pill to swallow, especially since
even the Magdiwangs who were supposed to
be his supporters did not vote for him either
for President or Vice-President.

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 ANDRES BONIFACIO
Bonifacio and his men, numbering forty-five,
again met at the estate-house of Tejeros on
March 23. All of them felt bad about the
results of the previous day's proceedings, for
they believed that anomalies were committed
during the balloting. Convinced that the
election held was invalid, they drew up a
document, now called the Acta de Tejeros, in
which they gave their reasons for not
adopting the results of the convention held
the previous day. From Tejeros, Bonifacio and
his men proceeded to Naik in order to be as
far as possible from Magdalo men who, they
thought, were responsible for the commission
5 of anomalies during the Tejeros election.
 EMILIANO RIEGO DE
DIOS
During the Tejeros Convention on March 22,
1897, he was elected secretary of war of the
revolutionary government. Although
belonging to the Magdiwang Council, the
three Riego de Dios brothers voted Emilio
Aguinaldo as president of the revolutionary
government because they believed he was the
right man to lead the revolution against
Spain.

It was Emiliano Riego de Dios who advised

Aguinaldo to commute the death sentence
imposed by the Council of War on the
Bonifacio brothers.
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 ARTEMIO RICARTE
The romantic Filipino revolutionary and
“irreconcilable” Artemio Ricarte y Vibora
was born in 1866 at Batac, Ilocos Norte. A
teacher of Spanish in Cavite by profession
but a soldier by inclination, Ricarte secretly
joined the independence-minded “blood
brother-hood,” the Katipunan.
Subsequently, he became an officer in the
anti-Spanish Philippine uprising of 1896–
1897. When the Spanish-American War
broke out, Ricarte was one of those
recruited by Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo to
cooperate with the Americans in destroying
Spain's authority in the Philippines.
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 THE SECOND
MEETING
Aguinaldo, who was at Pasong Santol, a barrio of Dasmariñas, was notified
the following day of his election to the Presidency. At first, he refused to leave
his men who were preparing to fight the enemy, but his elder brother, Crispulo
Aguinaldo, persuaded him to take the oath of office, promising to take his
place and would not allow the enemy to overrun the place without dying in its
defense. Aguinaldo then acceded to his brother's request and proceeded to
Santa Cruz del Malabon (now Tanza), where he and the others elected the
previous day, with the exception of Bonifacio, took their oath of office.

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 Bonifacio and his men proceeded to Naik in
order to be as far as possible from Magdalo
men who, they thought, were responsible for
the commission of anomalies during the
Tejeros election. Aguinaldo, wanting to bring
back Bonifacio to the fold, sent a delegation to
him to persuade him to cooperate with the
newly constituted government. But Bonifacio
refused to return to the revolutionary fold
headed by Aguinaldo.

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THE NAIC MILITARY
AGREEMENT
● Bonifacio's anger over what he
● Among the forty-one men who
considered an irregular election
and the insult heaped on him by
Daniel Tirona, a Magdalo, rankled
for long.
● At Naik, they drew up another
document in which they resolved to
establish a government
independent of, and separate from,
that established at Tejeros.
signed it were Bonifacio, Artemio
Ricarte, Pio del Pilar and Severino
de las Alas. The document posed
a potential danger to the cause of
the Revolution, for it meant a
definite split in the ranks of the
revolutionists and an almost certain
defeat in the face of a united and
well-armed enemy.

● An army was to be organized "by

persuasion or force" and a military
commander of their own choice
was to take command of it.
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