28 SEPTEMBER

Balangiga hero, Valeriano Abanador, in old age

1901 - Two years & 7 months into the  Philippine-American War (1899-1914), the patriotic townspeople of Balangiga, Samar successfully attack the quarters of enemy Bald Eagle soldiers taking their breakfast at a convent house; Gen. Vicente Lukban will later write about the guerrilla-style offensive wherein the Filipinos, led by local chief of police Valeriano Abanador and two guerrilla officers under Lukban, killed around 70 American  invaders, including a major, a captain and a  lieutenant, with only five badly wounded able to escape in small boats to the adjacent Leyte province of  Leyte, and seized 20,000 rounds of ammunition,  sabres, and, in short, everything in the barracks of  the enemy and in the quarters of the American  Major" [number of casualties and survivors later shown as 48 dead and 26 survivors, mostly badly wounded].

1898 - Anacleto Solano, leader of the interim local revolutionary government in the Philippine province of Albay, signs  the act of adhesion of the local people to President Emilio E. Aguinaldo's government; the adhesion comes 3 1/2 months after Aguinaldo declared the Filipinos' Independence from colonial Spain but but a month after the Peace Protocol and the Mock Battle of Manila wherein the treacherous Americans falsely made it appear that their forces were the ones who subdued the  Spaniards and not the Filipino revolutionaries, and some four months before the bloody and protracted Filipino-American War (1899-1914) will be instigated by American regimental commanders upon the vile order of imperialist Bald Eagle President William McKinley in the bid to push the United States Congress to approve the annexation [translation: invasion] of the Philippine archipelago.


Photo credit: http://www.freewebs.com/philippineamericanwar/balangigamassacre1901.htm