TITLE PAGE

Topic 6
 Controversies and conflicting views in Philippine history

Learning Outcome:
 Demonstrate the ability to formulate arguments in favor or against a
particular issue using primary sources (Cry of Balintawak or Pugadlawin)

Number of Weeks to be Taught:

 2

Background

The controversial site and date of “The First Cry” come in different versions. The
subject of the issue is the identity of the place as well as the exact date it was made.
There are at least five authors whose account seem to conflict in some points. The
following authors who differ in some historical facts are Dr. Pio Valenzuela, Santiago
Alvarez, Guillermo MAsangkay, Don Vicente Samson and Gregoria De Jesus.

Read the articles below and examine and analyze them. Determine the reasons
why they differ in few basic historical facts.
 GUIDE CARD

“Cry of Balintawak or Pugadlawin”

Pio Valenzuela’s Controversial

“Cry of Pugad Lawin”
(August 23, 1896)

The controversial “Cry of Pugad Lawin,” which has been confirmed by no other
witnesses of the event than Dr. Pio Valenzuela, is the second and later version of the first rally
of the Katipunan by Dr. Valenzuela himself. The first version which he gave told of the “Cry of
Balintawak” as the first staging point of the Philippine Revolution. He related the first version,
when events where still fresh in his memory and as he abandoned the revolutionary cause after
its outbreak and fled to Biñan, Laguna, for safety. Taking advantage of Gevernor General
Ramon Blanco’s proclamation of amnesty to the revolutionists, Valenzuela returned to Manila
on September 3, 1896, and surrendered to Blanco. He was imprisoned in Fort Bonifacio, where,
upon investigation, he told Francisco Olive, the Spanish investigator, that the “Cry” was staged
at Balintawak on Wednesdaay, August 26, 1896.” However, much later, Dr. Valenzuela, with
fading memory and without consulting the written documents of the Philippine Revolution, wrote
his Memoirs of the Revolution. In his memoirs, he claims that the “Cry” was held at Pugad Lawin
on August 23, 1896 as follows:

The first place of refuge of Andres Bonifacio, Emilio Jacinto, Procopio Bonifacio,
Teodoro Plata, Aguedo del Rosarioo, and myself was Balintawak, the first five arriving
there on August 19, and I, on August 20, 1896. The first place where some 500
members of the Katipunan met on August 22, 1896, was the house and yard of
Apolonio Samson at Kangkong. Aside from the persons mentioned above, among those
who were there were Bricio Pantas, Alejandro Santiago, Ramon Bernardo, Apolonio
Samson, and others. Here, were only exchanged, and no resolution was debated or
adopted. It was at Pugad Lawin, in the house, store-house, and yard of Juan Ramos,
son of Melchora Aquino, where over 1,000 members of the Katipunan met and carried
out considerable debate and discussion on August 23, 1896. The discussion was on
whether or not the revolution against the Spanish government should be started on
August 29, 1896. Only one man protested and fought against a war, and that was
Teodoro Plata [Bonifacio’s brother-in-law –Z]. Besides the persons named above,
among those present at this meeting were Enrique Cipriano, Alfonso Pacheco, Tomas
Remigio, Sinfroso San Pedro, and others. After the tumultuous meeting, many of those
present tore their cedula certificates and shouted “Long live the Philippines! Long live
the Philippines!
The “Cry of Bahay-Toro”
(August 24, 1896)

By Santiago Alvarez

Another version of the “Cry” which launched the Philippine Revolution is that written by
Santiago Alvarez, a prominent Katipunan warlord of Cavite, son of Mariano Alvarez, and relative
of Gregoria de Jesus (wife of Andres Bonifacio). Unlike Masangkay, Samson, and Valenzuela,
Alvarez was not an eyewitness of the historic event. Hence, his version cannot be accepted as
equal in weight to that given by actual participants of the event. Although Alvarez was in Cavite
at the time, this is his version of the first “Cry” as follows:

Sunday, August 23, 1896

As early as 10 o’clock in the morning, at the barn of Kabesang Melchora
[Melchora Aquino – Z., at a place called Sampalukan, barrio of Bahay Toro,
Katipuneros met together. About 500 of these arrived and eager to join the “Supremo”
Andres Bonifacio and his men…..

Monday, August 24, 1896

There were about 1,000 Katipuneros…. The “Supremo” decided to hold a
meeting inside the big barn. Under his leadership, the meeting began at 10 o’clock in
the morning…
It was 12 o’clock noon when the meeting adjourned amidst loud cries of “Long
live the Sons of the Country” (Mabuhay ang mga Anak ng Bayan)!
Eyewitness Account of the “Cry of Balintawak”
(August 26, 1896)

by Guillermo Masangkay

The following narrative was an eyewitness account by Katipunan General Guillermo

Masangkay, Bonifacio’s childhood friend. Similarly, this date and site were officially adopted by
the government during the early years of the American regime, after having consulted the
surviving Katipuneros and prestigious historians at the time. A monument depicting the event
was erected near the site, financed by funds donated by the people, and was inaugurated on
September 3, 1911. In his memoirs, General Masangkay recounts the “Cry of Balintawak,” as
follows:

On August 26th [1896 – Z.], a big meeting was held in Balintawak, at the house of
Apolonio Samson, then the cabeza of that barrio of Caloocan. Among those who
attended, I remember, were Bonifacio, Emilio Jacinto, Aguedo del Rosario, Tomas
Remegio, Briccio Pantas, Teodoro Plata, Pio Valenzuela, Enrique Pacheco, and
Francisco Carreon. They were all leaders of the Katipunan and composed the board of
directors of the organization. Delegates from Bulacan, Cabanatuan, Cavite, and Morong
(now Rizal), were also present.

At about nine o’clock in the morning of August 26, the meeting was opened with
Andres Bonifacio presiding and Emilio Jacinto acting as secretary. The purpose was to
discuss when the uprising was to take place. Teodoro Plata [Bonifacio’s brother-in-law –
Z.], Briccio Pantas, and Pio Valenzuela were all opposed to starting the revolution too
early. They reasoned that the people would be in distress if the revolution were started
without adequate preparation. Plata was very forceful in his argument, pointing that the
uprising could not very well be started without arms and food for the soldiers.
Valenzuela used Rizal’s argument about the rich not siding with the Katipunan
organization.

Andres Bonifacio, sensing that he would lose in the discussion then, left the
session hall and talked to the people, who were waiting outside for the result of the
meeting of the leaders. He told the people that the leaders were arguing against the
revolution early, and appealed to them in a fiery speech in which he said: “You
remember the fate of our countrymen who were shot in Bagumbayan. Should we return
now to the towns, the Spaniards will only shoot us. Our organization has been
discovered and we are all marked men. If we don’t start an uprising, the Spaniards will
get us anyway. What then, do you say?”

“Revolt!” the people shouted.

 Bonifacio then asked the people to give a pledge that they were to revolt. He told
them that the sign of slavery of the Filipinos were (sic) the cedula tax charged each
citizen. “If it is true that you are ready to revolt,” Bonifacio saved, “I want to see you
destroy your cedulas. It will be the sign that all of us have declared our severance from
the Spaniards.”

With tears in their eyes, the people as one man pulled out their cedulas and tore
them to pieces. It was the beginning of the formal declaration of the separation from
Spanish rule. With their cedulas destroyed, they could no longer go back to their homes
because the Spaniards would persecute them, if not for being Katipuneros, for having
no cedulas. And people who had no cedulas during those days were severely punished.

When the people’s pledge was obtained by Bonifacio, he returned to the session
hall and informed the leaders of what took place outside. “The people want to revolt,
and they have destroyed their cedulas,” Bonifacio said. “So now we have to start the
uprising; otherwise the people by hundreds will be shot.” There was no alternative. The
board of directors, in spite of the protests of Plata, Pantas, and Valenzuela, voted for
the revolution. And when this was decided, the people outside shouted: “Long Live the
Philippine Republic!”

I still remember Bonifacio as he prepared that day. Although a mere bodeguero

(warehouseman) and earning P25 (Mex) a month, he was a cultured man. He always
wore an open coat, with black necktie, and black hat. He always carried an umbrella. At
the meeting that morning of August 26, Bonifacio took off his coat and was wearing only
his shirt, with collar and tie. Bonifacio’s hobby was weaving bamboo hats. During his
spare time he wove dozens of them and sold them in Manila. Thus he made extra
money.

Led by Bonifacio, Emilio Jacinto and other leaders of the Katipunan, the men
were distributed in strategic positions and were prepared for the attack of the civil
guards. I was with a group stationed on the bank of a small creek, guarding the places
where the Spaniards were to pass in order to reach the meeting place of the
Katipuneros. Shots were then fired by the civil guards, and that was the beginning of the
fire which later became such a huge conflagration.
Another Eyewitness Account of the
“Cry of Balintawak”
(August 26, 1896)

By Don Vicente Samson

Don Vicente Samson, a native of Balintawak, confirmed the authenticity and credibility of
General Masangkay’s version of the first “Cry”. Don Vicente, a 12-year old boy at the time,
actually witnessed the event with his father and older brother, both of whom were katipuneros.
Moreover, he recalled the first fight of the revolution in the afternoon of the same day, August
26, 1896. His corroborative version of the “Cry of Balintawak” was as follows:

Don Vicente Samson, a graying old man in his middle seventies, is one of the
most respected and most popular figures in Balintawak, Quezon City. As the owner and
manager of the well-known Samson Gravel and Sand Company and the undefeated
barrio lieutentan of Bo. Balinggasay of that district, he is regarded by everybody as a
community leader and a man of means.

However, there is one thing about Samson that Balintawak folks do not know
very well. He is one of the few surviving persons who actually witnessed the “Cry of
Balintawak” in 1896 and who saw the first encounter between the Katipuneros and the
Spaniards, signaling the start of the Philippine revolution.

The ‘Cry’ was on August 26 and not on any other date. I remember it very well
because I noted the date myself,” Don Samson said in a recent interview at his home in
Bo. Balinggasay.

The old man revealed that he was 12 years old when the event happened but it
is still fresh in his mind because his father was then a Katipunan leader and his older
brother, a Katipunero. He said that they were among those who participated in the
ceremonies and fight that later ensued between the rebels and the Spanish civil guards
and infantrymen.

Don Samson recalls that everybody in Balintawak knew that something was
afoot as Katipunana leaders and members started converging at the house of Apolonio
Samson in Bo. Kangkong a few days before August 26. Apolonio Samson, a cousin of
Don Vicente and reputedly one of the richest men in Balintawak that time, threw open
his barn and butchered his cows, pigs and chickens for the Katipuneros.

Out of curiousity, Don Vicente followed his father and brother to those meetings
and often heard the rebels spiritedly discuss the planned revolution. Don Vicente
remembered Bonifacio as being taller and fairer than most of the Katipuneros and had
his hair parted near the side of his head. He also recalled the Supremo as having a
large voice that clearly and easily dominated the discussions for the several hundreds
of the Katipuneros present. Don Vicente also remembered Emilio Jacinto as a boyish-
looking man who was always beside Bonifacio writing down notes.

Don Vicente recalled that it was in the morning of August 26, that the discussion
on the revolution became more intense and heated than usual. He said it was the
prevailing sentiment that the revolution would start right away, but there were some
objections from some members and these cause verbal clashes so much so that
Bonifacio had to intervene every now and then. Shortly however, it was agreed that the
revolution would start on August 29. After that Don Vicente saw Bonifacio stood up on a
platform and delivered a short speech.

Don Vicente could no longer remember Bonifacio’s exact words but he vividly
recalls that after the speech, the Katipuneros, amidst shouts of “Mabuhay,” took their
cedulas out, tore them to pieces, and threw them into a dry carabao mud-hole nearby
where they were burned. Asked where the mud-hole was then located, Don Vicente
pointed to a direction near where the present old Balintawak monument now stands.

Hearing reports that the Spaniards were on their way to Balintawak, Bonifacio
and his men proceeded to Tandang Sora’ s in Pasong Tamo, a neighboring hamlet.
Here, Don Vicente said, was where the Katipuneros had their first fight with the
Spaniards.

Don Vicente said that as the enemy civil guards and infantrymen, numbering
about 80, neared Tandang Sora’s house, the Katipuneros, numbering several hundreds
and led by Bonifacio himself, executed an enveloping movement in an effort to capture
them. However, since the Katipuneros were only armed with bolos, spears, sulsulin and
arkonite (the latter two are crude guns made of iron tubes which use iron fragments for
bullets and which were fired with their ends buried in the ground), they had to deploy
most of the time in the face of the Mauser and Remington rifles of the enemy.

The old man remembered the bravery of one Simplicio Acabo, a neighbor of the
Samsons, who in his desire to capture one of the enemy rifles had to pay with his life.
The man apparently was the first to die in the revolution. According to Don Vicente,
Acabo bravely came out from his hiding place and lunged at a civil guard with his bolo,
but before he could touch the civil guard, he was felled by a bullet.

Old man Samson said that as Acabo lay mortally wounded, the civil guards and
infantrymen retreated towards Manila.
Don Vicente recalls that after this, the Katipuneros, including his father and
brother, left Balintawak. He did not know what they did next, but he remembers very
well that after the Katipuneros had left, the Spanish authorities instituted repressive
measures in Balintawak. The Spaniards searched every house in Balintawak in an effort
to find out who were sympathetic to the Katipunan. Persons found with scars on their
left arms and those who had no cedulas were immediately herded and thrown in jail.
Some of them were exiled to Guam. Among these was Melchora Aquino, known
popularly as Tandang Sora, “Mother of the Katipunan.”

Like most of the old folks of Balintawak, Don Vicente believes emphatically that
the first fight of the Philippine revolution took place in Balintawak. He said: “Don’t ever
believe that the stories that the first fight happened in other places. They were just
made up to distort the true story of the revolution.”

Gregoria de Jesus’ Version

of the First “Cry”
(August 25, 1896)

One of the participants in the drama of the Philippine Revolution of 1896 was Gregoria
de Jesus, the wife of Supremo Andres Bonifacio, and the “Lakambini of the Katipunan”. She
was the custodian of the secret documents, seal, and some weapons of the Katipunan, and
constantly risked her life in safeguarding them. After the outbreak of the Revolution in August
1896, she went to live with her parents in Caloocan, while Bonifacio and his men gathered in the
hills of Balintawak for the war of liberation. When warned that the Spanish authorities were
coming to arrest her, she fled to Manila and later joined her husband in the mountains and
shared the hardships and sacrifices of a patriot’s life with him. According to her version of the
First “Cry,” it occurred near Caloocan on August 25, 1896, as follows:

The activities of the Katipunan had reached nearly all corners of the Philippine
Archipelago, so that when its existence was discovered and some of the members
arrested, we immediately returned to Caloocan. However, as we were closely watched
by the agents of the Spanish authorities, Andres Bonifacio and other Katipuneros left
the town after some days. It was then that the uprising began, with the first cry for
freedom on August 25, 1896. Meanwhile, I was with my parents. Through my friends, I
learned that the Spanish were coming to arrest me. Immediately, I fled town at eleven
o’clock at night, secretly going through the rice fields to La Loma, with the intention of
returning to Manila. I was treated like an apparition, for, sad to say, in every house
where I tried to get a little rest, I was driven away as if the people therein were
frightened for their own lives. Later, I found out that the occupants of the houses which I
had visited were seized and severely punished – and some even exiled. One of them
was an uncle of mine whom I had visited on that night to kiss his hand, and he died in
exile.

The conspiracy having been discovered, Bonifacio and his followers hurriedly
fled to the nearby town of Caloocan…. On the 23rd [August, 1896 – Z.] Bonifacio moved
to the barrio of Balintanac [Balintawak] –Z.] followed by 200 men from Caloocan; on the
24th they were attacked by the Guardia Civil in the outskirts of the said town and they
retreated to their hiding places.

The Supreme Council called for a big meeting to be held the following day
[August 25 --- Z.] in the above mentioned barrio [Balintawak – Z.] More than 5,000
members attended. The meeting began with a discussion what course should be taken
in the face of the new nation and in view of the arrests that were being made. There
were some who were disposed to go back and surrender to the Spanish authorities.
Bonifacio was strongly opposed to such a course. He was for taking up arms face. Put
to a vote, Bonifacio’s approval was approved by overwhelming majority. See how strong
an influence wields!
 Orders were immediately sent out to Manila, Cavite, Nueva Ecija, and other
provinces for the Katipuneros to take at dawn on Sunday, August 30 th.
 LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Direction: State the similarities and differences of the subjects (events, dates) narrated
by the different authors with reference to eyewitness Pio Valenzuela’s
Version.

Reference Similarities

Pio Valenzuela Santiago Guillermo Don Vicente Gregoria de

Alvarez Masangkay Samason Jesus

Reference Differences

Pio Valenzuela Santiago Guillermo Don Vicente Gregoria de

Alvarez Masangkay Samson Jesus

Activity 2
Direction: Answer the questions below.
1. Why do you think Dr. Pio Valenzuela changed mind as to the place where the
“First Cry” happened?

2. Whose account do you believe is more credible? Why?

3. Whose account do you least rely on? Why?

4. Who were the Katipunan officers, in Gen. Masangkay’s account, opposing

Bonifacio of starting a revolution? Cite the reason of each why they opposed.

5. What does the tearing of cedula mean in the “Cry of Pugadlawin?”

 ASSESSMENT

Direction: Write the answer before the number.

1. Where was the “First Cry” happened?

2. When was the “First Cry” happened?

3. Who was the first and foremost witness of the “First Cry?”

4. What did the Filipinos tear that such act symbolizes separation from the
Spanish rule?

5. Who was the man in Gen. Masangkay’s account who opposed Bonifacio
and the same man who opposed in Dr. Valenzuela’s account?

6. Who was this boyish-looking guy who was seated beside Bonifacio
writing down notes?

7. Who was known as “Lakambini of Katipunan?”

8. How many authors said that it was in Balintawak that the “First Cry”
happened?

9. What does the “Cry” mean in the documents?

10. What does the cedula symbolize?

ENRICHMENT
 Direction: Create a Venn Diagram (three overlapping circles). Choose three authors
that you would like to compare. Use the Venn Diagram to enter information
in the area that is distinct only to one author, enter information in the area in
which two authors are the same or similar, and enter information in the area
that the three authors are the same or common. Example is given below.

Dr.
Valenzuela

Information distinct to Valenzuela

The Cry was on August 23, 1896
Info common to both Valenzuela and G. De Jesus

Meeting at 500
Info common to both Valenzuela and Masangkay Samson’s house initiall
y met
Info common to the three authors

The Cry was on August 25, 1896

The Cry was on August 26, 1896

Gen. Gregoria
Masangkay de Jesus

Info common to both Masangkay and G. De Jesus

REFERENCES
Zaide, Gregorio (Ed.). Documentary Sources of Philippine History, Vol. 8. Manila:
National Bookstore, Inc., 1990.