(This is page 2. If you missed page 1, click:
http://maxpages.com/tarlac)
After the era of the conquistadores, power
had passed to the hands of the Creole in alliance
with the Tagalog and Pampangan. For two
centuries (the 17th and 18th) the Creoles manned
State and Army, but not the Church --which was
why the Church became the first target of their
campaign. That they were in control of government
can be surmised from the shock with which,
at the beginning of the 19th century, they reacted
to the arrival of ships from Spain loaded with
peninsular Spaniards bearing appointments as
provincial governors, military brass and finance
officers -- positions traditionally held by the Creoles.
As late as 1842, Sinibaldo de Mas could note
that half of all civil and military posts in the
Philippines were still occupied by the Creoles; and
he warned that, if the islands were to be kept colony,
"the Spaniards born in the Philippines must be reduced
as much as possible in number."
As the educated class in the country, the
Creoles had been infected by the ideas of the
Enlightenment and the events of the French
Revolution -- just like their confreres in America,
where the colonies were lost in revolts led by
the Creole class. A repeat could not be allowed
to happen in the Philippines. But as the Creole
was displaced in State and Army by the Peninsular,
as his rise in the church was blocked by the friar,
and as he found himself reduced to a position
little better than that of the Indios, it was but natural
that should stop thinking himself as Spanish and
begin calling himself a Filipino in earnest. Form
(which, when fulfilled, becomes singular) had here
become dangerously separate; the Creole had
pulled the trigger of nationalism in the Philippines
-- and the explosion of his identity.
In the beginning, however, as with the Novales
attempt to capture the army (1823), the Creole
revolt could not but confuse established loyalties,
so that, obeying centuries of conditioning, the
Tagalog-Pampangan alliance instinctively sided
with the State against the would-be usurpers. It
was the Pampangan militia that aborted the Novales
coup. But as the Creole campaign intensified,
its attraction and influence spread beyond its
class with the result that a general following became
convinced that a transfer of loyalties from empire
to nation would be, not criminal, but lawful -- the
logical extension of the Creole clergy's argument
that it was they, the native-born, who, according
to the Council of Trent, had the legal right to control
the church in the Philippines, and not the foreign
friar. In other words, it was the Peninsular, not the
Hijo del Pais, who was the usurper. The confusion
of loyalties was thus cleared up -- and from here
it's but a step to the idea of separatism. Burgos
is the Creole on the verge of violent schism; and the
Cavite Mutiny of 1872 is already "Filipino" in the
sense that its participants can all be lumped together
as a single dangerous breed: the Native ---indiscriminately
Creole, Indio, mestizo and Chinese. so savage was
the post-Mutiny reprisals --- execution, exile and
expropriation --- that the elite class was all but
crippled, and from then on lost its nerve.
The failure of the Creole revolt was to ruin the
old triple alliance (Creole-Tagalog-Pampangan)
that had meant stability for the empire. The
principalia now stood alone -- for, on the one
hand, the fallen Creole had lost his value as ally
and, his spirit crushed by the post-Mutiny persecution,
had abdicated as leader, was no longer an agent
of history; while, on the other hand, the Peninsular
was neither ally nor leader, but simply despot, the
agent of anti-history, being as cruel to stop the
rise of the Indio as that of the Creole. The native
class that could, once upon a time, aspire to
promotion as captain, major or general officer was
now so mistrusted that Sinibaldo de Mas could
recommend denying to it even the rank of sergeant.
What happened to the Creole now happened to
the native Don: his rejection as a partner set him to
asking why he should be anybody's vassal when
he could be his own master. and this happened
precisely at a time (the mid 1800s) when the
principales had gained economic power and were
becoming affluent. Moreover, the long period of
Creole activism had been a valuable school for the
native Dons, educating them in sedition and
implanting separatist ideas. Even the failure of that
activism meant an advance for the principales,
for as the Creole, turned timid, abandoned insurgency,
leadership inevitably passed to the hands most
prepared for it: the Tagalog-Pampangan principalia
who became increasingly, after 1872, the propagandists
and activists until, in 1896, they rose in arms against
the empire they had once secured with their arms.
Toward this had tended the currents of our history
since 1571, when the Tagalog-Pampangan domain
was made the ground of those currents.
The Philippine Revolution was thus the uprising
of the Tagalog-Pampangan principalia, now at last
withdrawing consent and support from the empire,
but doing so not as a tribe (which is what distinguishes
their revolt from that of, say, Silang) but in the name
of a nation. At Biac-na-Bato (about 15 kms. from
Pampanga - O.S.) as in Kawit, the republic
proclaimed by a handful of Tagalogs and Pampangans
is for the whole archipelago, not just for their region;
Malolos (just about 10 kms. from the Pampanga-
Bulacan boundary - O.S.) is a Congress where the
Tagalogs and Pampangans represent the regions
outside their region. (In the Congress in Tarlac in
July 1899, a Tagalog, Fernando Ma. Guerrero,
represented the province of Leyte; a Pampangan,
Francisco Makabulos, represented Cebu: a Tagalog,
Daniel Tirona, represented the Batanes: a Pampangan,
Maximino Hizon, represented Sorsogon; a Tagalog,
Tomas Mascardo, represented Zamboanga; a
Pampangan, Servillano Aquino, represented Samar
---and so forth. Though there was the excuse in
Tarlac that the war impeded a true regional representation,
the Revolution was there still following a procedure
that become standard from Biac-na-Bato to Malolos,
the Pampangans and Tagalogs acting as deputies
for the entire nation.) Such historical vicarship is
not uncommon. Spain was made a nation by the
union of two small tribes, Castile and Aragon, which
chiefly waged the wars of the Reconquista. Similarly
is the American Revolution identified with two tribes,
the New Englanders and the Virginians; and though
'tis said that more Americans fought on the British
side than under Washington, it was the minority
under Washington that stood for the whole of the
nation. And likewise was history again on the side
of a minority of two during the adventure called the
Philippine Revolution. (The Pampangan and Tagalog
provinces that first joined the Revolution against
Spain and then against America are Tarlac, Pampanga,
Nueva Ecija, Bulacan, Manila, Cavite, Laguna and
Batangas. These 8 are represented by the rays of
the sun in our flag. - O.S.) 
Like the Creole movement, the revoltof the
principalia ended in failure but in its turn gave
rise to another activism: the revolt of the masses,
which took over in the 1900s and is still in progress.
One region has therefore been the theater for the
three major uprisings in our history: the revolt of
the Creole, the revolt of the principalia, and the
revolt of the masses; all three being so interlinked
as to show a sequence and all three more or less
describable as a Tagalog-Pampango enterprise
---including the third one, which had a climax (also
tragic) in the Huk rebellion. In his autobiography,
"Born Of The People", Luis M. Taruc devotes a
chapter to the original leaders of the Huk movement
and it's bemusing to note that, of the leaders he
mentions, four are Tagalogs (Vicente and Jesus
Lava, Mariano Balgos and Fred Laan), four are
Pampanguenos (Casto Alejandrino, Eusebio Aquino,
Silvestre "Linda Bie" Liwanag and Remedios Gomez),
two are from the Tagalog-Pampango province of
Nueva Ecija (Juan Feleo and Jose de Leon), and
one is a Creole (Mateo del Castillo, son of a
Spanish resident in Batangas). (Missing in this list
are Abelardo Dabu and Felipa "Dayang-Dayang"
Culala, both from Pampanga - O.S.) Apparently,
the Huk, too, continues the history of the Tagalog-
Pampangan alliance, which, at times, is coestensive
with its region and cannot survive beyond its frontiers
and, at other times, transcends those boundaries
to become a national movement.
It was on this storied ground that, in 1899,
General Servillano Aquino dispersed his army,
shifting the action from the plain of Tarlac to the
mountain of Arayat....(when Tarlac, then the capital
of the short-lived republic fell into the hands of the
advancing Americans, and Aguinaldo had to flee
northward, and the republic ceased to exist, and the
revolutionists became mere outlaws and fugitive,
engaging the Americans only on guerilla warfare
rather than battle confrontations..... It was
the setting of the lives of the Aquinos of Tarlac and
where the history of three generations of Aquino
took place -- Servillano Aquino, the grandfather,
Benigno Aquino Sr., the father, and Benigno Aquino
Jr., the man who could have been President but who
wound up as a martyr instead! - O.S.)
This is just the first chapter of the book. I hope it
caught your interest as it did mine and those of
a lot of other people.
Thanks to the author, NICK JOAQUIN and the publisher,
SOLAR PUBLISHING CORPORATION.
Thanks also to my good friend, ERNIE TURLA for the
privilege of using his computer and his internet server,
Maxpages, which enabled me to make this webpage.
Your webmaster,
OSCAR SORIANO
Los Angeles, California
To return to the very beginning of this essay, click:
THE TAGALOG-PAMPANGAN ALLIANCE
http://maxpages.com/tarlac
For another interesting website, click
CPL. LUCIO F. TURLA - THE UNSUNG HERO
http://maxpages.com/revolucionario
For an exciting soap opera / novel in Kapampangan,
entitled "Akung Makamate Kang Dimas" by Renato B. Alzadon, click:
http://maxpages.com/tarlac/novel
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