29 DECEMBER

Torture of Bicol Martyrs

1896 - Around 17 Filipinos from Bicol province face a Spanish colonial  military court in Manila on charges of rebellion and sedition four months  after the outbreak of the Philippine Revolution; Domingo Abella, Manuel Abella, Camilo Jacob, Cornelio Mercado, Florencio Lerma, Mariano Melgarejo, P. Gabriel Prieto, Tomas Prieto, Macario Valentin, Leon Hernandez at Mariano Ordenanza, Ramon Abella and Mariano Arana  and priests Severo Estrada, Manuel  Subarbano, Severino Diaz, and Inocencio Herrera, were mostly arrested based on confessions  extracted by Spanish soldiers through the torture of Vicente Lukban, future  general of the revolution and the subsequent Philippine-American War (1899-1914); before being shipped to Manila, the suspected Bicolano rebels were tortured through beatings, starvation and hanging by the thumbs and insulted, with eleven of them being adjudged guilty sentenced to die by firing squad in Bagumbayan (Domingo Abella, Manuel Abella, Fr. Diaz, Fr. Herrera, Jacob, Mercado, Lerma, Melgarejo, Fr. Prieto, Tomas Prieto, and Valentin); Hernandez at Ordenanza will die in prison, as Ramon Abella and Arana will deported to Fernando Po island off Africa while Fr. Subarno and Fr. Estrada will be cleared and will live to tell the story.

1896 - Rival Magdiwang and Magdalo factions of the secret-society-turned revolutionary  government  Kagalanggalangang Katipunan  nang  manga Anak nang  Bayan (KKK) meet to try to settle differences and possibly merge to further the aims of the Philippine Revolution, including in their discussion the framing of a constitution despite already having one earlier adopted by the Katipunan councils and chapters; while the differences remain unsettled, a plan is discussed to snatch Jose Rizal from the colonial Spaniards who were set to execute the patriot the following day although Rizal's brother, Paciano Rizal, would douse the plan when he points out that his brother would agree to his escape if only one person's life would be jeopardized. 

1899 - Bubonic plague starts to appear in the Southeast Asian archipelago, the Philippines, nearly 11 months after the outbreak of the Philippine-American War (1899-1914); the detestable rat-borne communicable disease would be continuously present to some degree until Summer 1906 and again erupting in 1913 until 1914; the horrific invasion of the Philippines by the imperialist United States of America will bring some 200,000 direct deaths (by conservative estimates) and about a million total direct and indirect deaths on the part of the Filipinos owing to the indiscriminate killings, use of concentration camps, "water cure" torture and other brutal war tactics by the Bald Eagle nation.


Photo credit: http://www.bicolmail.com/issue/2009/july30/1896.html