The Great Philippine Experiment

The year was 1899…this vast archipelago under a government run by its own inhabitants. Untried. Untested. It was to be our very own national experiment. Known to be the first republic in Asia, this experiment was begun with bright optimism for the future. Pulsating with authority from Malolos, Bulacan, this new fledgling government, beginning on June 12, 1898, upon the proclamation of independence, laid down the foundation of what was to be a vast network of government bureaucracy, connecting the islands via cable telegram and a complex chain of command among its own ground forces. If this government, for the first time run by Filipinos, was to work, it had to be efficient and orderly. There is no freedom in anarchy. In an age of roadless provinces, roaming bandits in the countryside, small pockets of armies made up of farmers, clerks, etc. that loosely answered to the government in Malolos, and in a country composed of islands, this was a great challenge. And for it to work at all with a few resources was an astounding feat. And at the center of it all, of this great undertaking, was a simple modest lawyer, maimed with polio, but with a prophetic insight that saw through other aristocrats who sought to erode this authority for selfish gain, and the Americans who initially appeared to support the new independent government but subjugated it in the end. 

*Apolinario Mabini, captioned by the American press as the Philippine “Secretary of State,” at Anda Street Police Station, 1900. From the Donovan McCune Collection. 

When Apolinario Mabini arrived late, being carried via hammock by community effort, from Laguna to Kawit, Cavite, on that fateful day of June 12, 1898 Aguinaldo saw Mabini’s potential, by the adviser of Felipe Agoncillo, the government’s diplomat. And Mabini took on the role of an adviser, without a care for any credit. He drafted all the decrees that Aguinaldo issued from June 1898 up to the time that he resigned on May 7, 1899. Ingeniously, he laid down the foundation of local government units in the provinces by a decree signed by Aguinaldo, assigning to liberated towns an election of their own leaders, and justices of the peace. He also guided the regulation of the flow of information, from the center of government in Malolos to its constituents, at the time when new technology came to the islands–technology such as the Telegraph, Trains, the Telephone. 

*Colorized image of a field telegraph station in an altar of a church in Caloocan, 1899. From the Universität Wien (University of Vienna).

The Malolos government word conventions on official letters via telegrams, the chain of command of the Chief Executive, and what was supposed to be a provisional constitution of the new Republic until it was truly ratified by a true body that represented the full spectrum of voices among the people, was all Mabini’s idea. He also set the town for the government’s foreign policy, and still insisting up to the end, that compromise with the Americans by agreeing for autonomy instead of independence, was wrong in every way, advocating the Philippine position’s legality.

*Captioned by the French press as “The Philippine Committee in Hong Kong.” Fourth from the left was Galicano Apacible, Mabini’s long time friend and regular addressee of his correspondence, 1898.

Mabini, maimed as he was, never batted an eye when rebuking what he thought was wrong leadership. He did not hold back on President Aguinaldo who hesitated to punish the excesses of the army, some of whom raped Filipina women, and lorded over the towns. Cracks of this great national project was already being seen, not because of the wrong structure established but because of a leadership that favored the few over the many, and one that hesitated to stand for justice. In a scathing rebuke, Mabini wrote a letter to Aguinaldo on February 28, 1899, amidst the Philippine-American War that broke out on February 4:

“We already see the disastrous effects of weakness. Not only the army but also the people notice this. And for the same reason that there is the belief that we do not punish the guilty, some soldiers might say that here it is nothing to disobey a general, while in other places such a thing is punished by musketry. If you will punish the companies that will disobey in the future, the people will say that you punish them because the soldiers are not from Kawit. At this rate, our soldiers will never know what discipline is.

Because you did not mete out punishment at the proper time to the soldiers of P– who committed abuses in Malabon, similar abuses were committed in Polo, is now here accompanied by two persons with mangled bodies, one of who is the chief of barrio Maisan himself, who was the victim of looting by seventy soldiers of P. These soldiers arrested all the men of the place, beating them with the butt of their guns.

If the townspeople do not help us, we cannot accomplish anything except being beaten by our enemies. Our soldiers will be weak if the people will not help them with food and other things they need.

God has given you the prestige that you enjoy so that you can use it to give peace and order to your people, and this cannot be accomplished if the abuses are not stopped. Without peace and order, you will lose prestige you have won, because it will come to be known that we do not know how to govern.

In these calamitous times, we need military dictatorship, not to control the townspeople, but above all, to suppress the abuses of the army, and nobody can do this but you, Chief.

If we have the people on our side, we can be sure that we shall triumph, if not today, tomorrow, or the day after. If we do not have the people with us, we shall perish. If the Americans pose serious dangers for us, our own countrymen would pose for us greater ones as a result of the abuses that can be committed against them, abuses that are often the cause of revolutions.”

[Emphasis mine].

The letter only gave a glimpse of the problems of this new government, and it would be exacerbated by the war. It is the perennial lesson of history, that nations, states, and kingdoms do not crumble from without but from within. The government only stood strong when people like Mabini were on the helm of leadership. It fell “like a house of cards” when they were not, when it was pulled from all directions by leaders with different selfish interest. “Woe to the Revolution,” Mabini said, “when the people, overburdened by contributions and consumed by abuses, turn to their enemies for salvation!”

Many of the landed gentry in the Malolos Congress, saw that compromise with the Americans by accepting autonomy was good, disregarding the already shed blood of the people who sacrificed their lives for freedom from American control. These gentry heaped upon Mabini various forms of black propaganda, calling him, “Camara Negra” or the Black Cabinet, implying that he was the real scheming power behind the throne, or that he suffered from syphilis hence his being paraplegic. But Mabini stood by Aguinaldo’s side so long as Aguinaldo still had faith in his advice. But it wouldn’t be so, for long. With Aguinaldo easily swayed, Mabini and the like-minded members of the Cabinet stepped down willingly on May 7, 1899 to give way to the autonomists. Mabini retired and stayed in Rosales, Pangasinan, where he was eventually captured by the Americans.

As Mabini had predicted, the republic predictably capitulated. President Aguinaldo was captured by the Americans on March 23, 1901 at Palanan, Isabela, and days later, swore allegiance to the American flag under duress. But the story didn’t end there. The dream of a Filipino republic born of our toil and tears went on under different circumstances, under different set of leaders, and when the People spoke once again, of independencia. 

The experiment, the Republica Filipina, the First Philippine Republic, inaugurated today 118 years ago, led by luminaries such as Mabini and a throng of other thinkers and heroes, echoes to us today its lessons amidst the same euphoria of optimism that it had when it was cheered upon in the streets of Malolos, and the halls of the Barasoain. Indeed, as with all representative democracies around the world, we are only as weak as when we assail our own values and own ideals. 

Would we dare look at the painful lessons of the past to guide our future?  

*Image above, including the standardized insignia of the Republica Filipina, from PCDSPO 2010-2016 designed by Derrick Macutay.