15 APRIL

1897 - Andres Bonifacio y de Castro, leader and co-founder of the underground-society-turned-revolutionary government Kataastaasang Kagalanggalangang Katipunan nang manga Anak nang Bayan (KKK), appoints Emilio Jacinto y Dizon as Supreme Commander of all revolutionary forces in Manila during the Philippine Revolution against Spain; the appointment comes some three weeks after the infamous and anomalous Tejeros Convention that fraudulently and scandalously dislodged the Supremo from revolutionary power but which Supremo Bonifacio's camp nullified by way of the Acta de Tejeros; in less than three weeks' time, Generallissimo Bonifacio, along with his brothers, would be successfully seized, subjected to kangaroo court martial, and executed on orders of his revolutionary nemesis and perceived virtual coup plotter, Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy; the appointment of Jacinto, "Brains of the Katipunan" and Bonifacio's trusted friend and adviser says in Tagalog:

"SA PAGKAKILALA sa tapat na paglilingkod at pagtatangol sa Bayang tinubuan ni M. Emilio Jacinto Pingkian itong Kataastaasang Panguluhan sa pag-ganap nang kaniyang kapagyarihang tungkol, minarapat na inihalal ang nasabing kapatid sa katungkulang Pang-ulong hukbo sa dakong Hilagaan ng Maynila."

Photo scan credit: Dnvzs Zjzllg

14 APRIL

1900 - Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy, President of the fledgling Philippine Republic under siege from imperialist American forces, congratulates Capt. Galicano Calvo, a guerrilla force commander in Ilocos province, for victories scored against the enemy United States 2 1/2 months into the Filipino-American War (1899-1914); Aguinaldo also congratulates the patriotic stance of the Ilocanos for their role in the victories they scored in the guerrilla warfare the province has staged against the forces of the imperialist Bald Eagle nation and at the same time exhorts the Ilocano freedom-fighters to implement effective guerrilla strategies with minimal use of ammunition as much as possible against the superior enemy forces; the congratulation came amidst Aguinaldo's feeling of dejection when two Filipino generals surrendered to the enemy earlier during the Philippine-American War; the Fil-Am War would launch the North America's imperialist course, becoming the first of many Vietnams; the U.S. decided to invade the Southeast Asian nation, a former Spanish colony that revolted and declared independence, over its rich natural resources, including "mountains of coal" and its strategic importance to American commercial domination; the Fil-Am War was deliberately and secretly precipitated by the imperialist American military under the vile pre-arranged plan of US President William McKinley in the bid to push the American Senate into approving the ridiculous Treaty of Paris wherein Spain supposedly 'cedes' its former colony to the US  following the Peace Protocol forged a day before the infamous Mock Battle of Manila on August 13, 1898 as part of the two powers' imperialistic, shoddy and detestably anti-democratic deal.

Photo credit: http://philippineamericanwar.webs.com/ilocosandcagayan1899.htm

13 APRIL

Filipino soldiers in the plaza of Malolos

1899 - Two months after the breakout of the bloody and protracted Filipino-American War (1899-1914), the victories of the Philippine Army in intense gunbattles in Malolos, Marilao, Polo, Novaliches and Mariquina and the great losses suffered by the imperialist American invaders are communicated to the local chief of Gerona, Tarlac; the communique mentions about the Filipinos' positive expectations of their triumph in the Phil-Am War, including how the vile Bald Eagle invaders will supposedly be unable to advance to Marilao in Bulacan; the assessment is based on the analysis of the war defense by the Gen. Antonio Luna y Novicio, Philippine Republic's military leader said to have the greatest capacity for war, two months before members of the Kawit company assassinate Luna on orders of President Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy; the Phil-Am War was deliberately triggered by the imperialist American military under the vile pre-arranged plan of US President William McKinley so as to precipitate a war in the bid to push the American. Senate into approving the ridiculous Treaty of Paris and thus secure funding for invasion operations to annex the Philippines, former Spanish colony that launched the Himagsikan (Revolution) under Supremo Andres Bonifacio y de Castro in late 1896.

12 APRIL

1899 - Gen. Licerio Geronimo y Imaya appoints a foreigner, Arthur Howard, as a Captain of Infantry of the Philippine army and orders his forces, as well as civil and military authorities, to accord the new captain the respect due his rank 21/1 months into the bloody and protracted Filipino-American War (1899-1914), Geronimo's division, his Tiradores de la Muerte (Sharpshooters of Death) troop in particular, will be responsible for felling imperialist American Gen. Henry Ware Lawton eight months later during a historic battle in San Mateo, then wholly part of Rizal province; Howard, said to have been a  deserter from the enemy American ranks (1st California Volunteers),  supposedly trained the Filipino snipers that will tenaciously and courageously kill Lawton, the highest-ranking Bald Eagle military officer killed in action by freedom-fighting Filipinos;  the invading Americans would later appoint Geronimo to the Philippine Constabulary [read:imperialist police force] after a number of U.S. officers found Lawton's killer to be "the most honest, straightforward native that they have ever known"; the Phil-Am War was precipitated by the vile  American soldiers' shooting at some Filipino soldiers crossing the Sta. Ana bridge in Manila on secret orders from  U.S. regimental commanders who were implementing imperialist U.S. President William McKinley's 'pre-arranged plan' to blame the hostilities on the Filipinos so as to push their Senate into approving the Treaty of Paris and, thus, allow the military funding for the annexation of the Philippines; the army and guerrilla forces of the fledgling Philippine Republic will eventually lose to the North American imperialist and future superpower U.S. that set its sights on the Southeast Asian nation for its rich natural resources, including very fertile plains and valleys and "mountains of coal," projected potential markets and its strategic position in the Pacific. 


 Raw photo credit: Macky Hosalla

11 APRIL

1899 - The rather ridiculous Treaty of Paris by which Spain supposedly 'cedes' its former colony that launched a revolution against its rule, the Philippines, to the imperialist United States is ratified by the US Senate two months after the Philippines-American War (1899-1914) was deliberately precipitated by the American military; historians would later learn that the United States Congress decided to go to war based on a fraudulent claim that Filipinos began attacking American soldiers in Manila as part of the vile secret prearranged plan by the U.S. military to instigate a war by implementing the secret orders made by regimental commanders to bring about conflict by firing the first shots at native soldiers trying to cross Sta. Ana bridge in the bid to trick the U.S. Senate into approving the Treaty and, thus, secure funding for military operations to annex the Southeast Asian country; less than a year earlier, the combination of Filipino revolutionary forces and, to an extent, the resulting Manila blockade (following the Spanish-American War), had effectively wrested control of the archipelago from the Spain; most unfortunately, the Republican administration of William McKinley has begun steering the US towards an imperialist course of overseas expansion that would victimize not only the Philippines but, as well, Guam, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa and, for a time, Cuba, during the early part of the 20th century.


Photo credit: http://www.revolutionintheair.com/histstrategy/forbidbk.html

10 APRIL

1915 - "The Independent," a radical weekly periodical and the last of five major pro-Philippine Independence journalistic efforts by Vicente Yap Sotto, sees its maiden issue during the American colonial period; walking a thin line between resistance and collaboration with the imperialist Americans, future senator Sotto was earlier arrested and imprisoned in 1899 by the imperialist American military governor during the initial phase of the Filipino-American War (1899-1914) over his publication of "La Justicia," the Cebuano publication dedicated to espousing Philippine Independence but accepting "the fact of American military control"; as future Filipino solon during the  rule of the southeast Asian archipelago by the Bald Eagle nation, Sotto will author the pivotal  Press Freedom Law (later to be known as the Sotto Law, Republic Act No. 53).


Photo credit: http://senatorvicenteyapsotto.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html

9 APRIL

World War II Bataan (Death) March

1961 - "Bataan Day" is proclaimed as legal holiday in the Philippines under Republic Act No. 3022 to commemorate the start of the Bataan Death March, the World War II atrocity in which some 75,000 Filipino and American prisoners of war were forcibly and often fatally made to march by their Japanese captors from Bataan peninsula towards prison camps; the 1942 event came after the retreating American forces in Bataan surrendered to the Japanese who earlier made victorious surprise attacks against the imperialist United States Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor and subsequently the air base at Clark Field in Luzon island, the Philippines that was then an American colony; "Bataan Day" would later be changed to the euphemistic "Araw ng Kagitingan" by President Ferdinand E. Marcos in 1979 following anti-American criticisms and arguments that war defeats should not be celebrated; the inhumane treatment and experience met by the approximately 63,000 Filipino and 12,000 Americans during the march is said to have been caused by the big number of prisoners overwhelming the Japanese whose operation plan was only for 25,000 prisoners of war; the original text of the Philippine law proclaiming April 9 as "Bataan Day" reads:

Section 1. The ninth day of April is hereby proclaimed as Bataan Day, and all public officials and citizens of the Philippines are enjoined to observe such day with a one-minute silence at 4:30 o'clock in the afternoon, and to hold appropriate rites in honor of the heroic defenders of Bataan and their parents, wives and/or widows.

Photo credit: http://naturalhealth.ph/fitness/why-im-running-the-bataan-life-march-this-weekend/

8 APRIL

Gen. Antonio Luna - Gen. Baldomero Aguinaldo

1899 - Apolinario Mabini y Maranan, Prime Minister of the fledgling Philippine Republic, writes to President Emilio  Aguinaldo y Famy informing him that the latter's first cousin, Gen. Baldomero Aguinaldo, is willing to be relieved from the Department of War to avoid trouble with Gen. Antonio Luna y Novicio, Chief of Operations; some five months before the imperialist Bald Eagle soldiers precipitated the Filipino-American War (1899-1914), Luna was designated in charge of the war department prior to becoming assistant secretary of war and, nominally, director of war but his plans would continually be revised or rejected by the war secretary, within the context of  President Aguinaldo refusing to give him direct superior command in the field; writing from San Isidro, Nueva Ecija, Mabini adds in the report that  “It is the government and not the Chief of Operations [Luna] that is responsible for the war policy; that is why the Chief of Operations should obey";  within two months and even as the Philippine-American War rages on, Gen Luna, thought to be one with the greatest capacity for war among the Filipino leaders, would  be assassinated by members of the Kawit company  apparently upon orders of Pres. Aguinaldo who viewed him as his looming rival in the military hierarchy. 




Raw Photo Credits: http://www.yonip.com/archives/history/history-000051.html

7 APRIL

Bald Eagle imperialism
Photo art: JB

1900 - One year and two months into the bloody and protracted Philippine-American War (1899-1914), imperialist United States President William McKinley instructs the colonial body "Philippine Commission"  (read: Bald Eagle  commission to help colonize the Philippines) to reiterate US intention to establish and organize government – essentially popular in form – in the municipal and provincial administrative divisions of the Philippine Islands; the instructions given to the Philippine Commission that essentially aspires to impose American imperialistic rule through the establishment of a colonial administration teaching local-level governance patterned after that of Washington, comes as a long battle breaks out between Filipino and American forces in Cagayan de Oro, Misamis Oriental on the very same day; the Bald Eagle nation had decided to invade and annex the Philippines for the projected market of processed goods and its rich natural resources that pro-imperialism Sen. Alfred J. Beveridge describes as so rich that:

No land in America surpasses in fertility the plains and valleys of Luzon. Rice and coffee, sugar and coconuts, hemp and tobacco, and many products of the temperate as well as the tropic zone grow in various sections of the archipelago....The wood of the Philippines can supply the furniture of the world for a century to come. At Cebu the best informed man in the island told me that 40 miles of Cebu's mountain chain are practically mountains of coal...

Raw Photo Credit: http://paideia3.blogspot.com/2010/02/ame

rican-imperialism-and-brown.html

6 April

Seal used on KKK Supreme Council
documents until 1896

1896 - Orders aimed at strengthening the internal organization, including the implementation of new secret signs, and the financial capacity of the Kataastaasang Kagalanggalangang Katipunan nang manga Anak nang Bayan (KKK), the secret revolutionary organization aimed at liberating the Philippines from Spanish colonial rule, are issued by the Supreme Assembly and Supreme Council; during the same meeting, Katipunan co-founder and Supremo Andres Bonifacio y de Castro reminds all members to strictly follow said orders as the council also announces the immediate expulsion of all erring Katipunan members; the 11-point orders of the KKK Kataastaasang Kapisanan [Supreme Assembly] and the Kataastaasang Sangunian [Supreme Council] include listing certain expelled members as "Traitors," such as Jose Turiano Santiago (cousin-in-law of KKK official Emilio Jacinto) for supposedly disparaging the Katipunan before the family of patriot and polymath Jose Rizal y Mercado; the new secret signs approved include placing one's right hand on the left shoulder to signify that everything is all right and the password  "Na Sa Anak Bayan" [With the Children of the People]. 


Raw photo credit: http://kasaysayan-kkk.info/gallery.selyos.htm

5 APRIL

1896 - The Supreme Council of the Kataastaasang Kagalanggalangang Katipunan nang manga Anak nang Bayan (KKK), the secret society aiming to overthrow Spanish colonial rule in the Philippine archipelago, informs its members about a huge fire that  destroyed the houses of several Katipuneros in Manila, expressing belief that the enemies (colonial Spaniards) caused the fire and so agrees on publishing a pamphlet denouncing this act of arson; the KKK council (Kataastaasang Sanggunian) that has met at the house of the Physician General Pio Valenzuela in Manila also decides to produce a fund-raising stage show at the Teatro Colon on May 2-3 for the benefit of the members of the Katipunan affected by the fire; the conflagration, which occurred some eight miles away from the meeting place acros the Kawit bay,  even alarmed Supremo Andres Bonifacio y de Castro who feared that his own house in Dulumbayan was among the hundreds of houses ravaged by fire; Bonifacio's wife, fellow Katipunera Gregoria de Jesus and his son christened Andres, were unharmed although the Supremo's son would still soon later die in infancy; the fire unfortunately also destroyed the book collection "Basahan ng Bayan" that the Katipuneros were assembling.


Raw Photo Credit: http://kasaysayan-kkk.info/gallery.selyos.htm

4 APRIL

1899 - Two months into the protracted and very bloody Philippine-American War (1899-1914), the presumptuous administration of imperialist United States President William McKinley, through the Schurman Commission, issues a proclamation promising self-government to Filipinos; the Schurman Commission, formed by McKinley as a fact-finding civilian mission “to facilitate the most humane, pacific, and effective extension of authority" throughout the Southeast Asian archipelago  on January 30, 1899, which was five days  before the breakout of the Fil-Am War, serves as a proof that the US all along had imperialistic design on the Philippines; in fact the Phil-Am War was deliberately triggered by the imperialist American military under the vile pre-arranged plan of McKinley to precipitate a war so as to push the U.S. Senate into approving the Treaty of Paris and thus secure funding for invasion operations to annex the the Southeast Asian archipelago; as part of the secret orders made some two days earlier by American regimental commanders to bring about conflict, U.S. soldier Pvt. William Grayson ruthlessly fired the first shots at Filipino soldiers trying to cross Sta. Mesa  bridge on February 4, killing Filipino Corporal Anastacio Felix of the 4th Company, Morong Battalion under Captain Serapio Narvaez, with Col. Luciano S. San Miguel as battalion commander.

Photo credit: http://www.princeton.edu/~bsimpson/2008%20History%20102/2008springweek5.htm

3 APRIL

1896 - The Magdalo branch of the Kataastaasang Kagalanggalangang Katipunan nang manga Anak nang Bayan (KKK), the secret Philippine revolutionary aimed at liberating the country from the yoke of Spanish colonial bondage, is established during a meeting by the KKK Supreme Council; in the same meeting, Katipunan Supreme President Andres Bonifacio y de Castro also explains the duties and responsibilities of the newly elected officers, including his future nemesis Emilio F. Aguinaldo who takes the position of Magdalo branch president; the jurisdiction of the Magdalo chapter will cover Cavite el Viejo ( future Kawit ), Bacoor, Carmona , Dasmarinas, Imus and Silang, and later the towns of Amadeo and Mendez that will transfer from Magdiwang, the other KKK chapter with the bigger jurisdiction (covering the province's capital, Cavite, San Roque, La Caridad, Noveleta, San Francisco de Malabon (future Tanza), Naik, Maragondon, Ternate, Magallanes, Bailen, Indang, Alfonso, Amadeo and Mendez, and later, the three Batangas towns of Nasugbu, Looc and Tuy); the Magdalo faction will in less than a year's time prove to be a curse to Supremo Bonifacio because his attempt to unite this KKK chapter with its future rival faction, the Magdiwang, will lead to a virtual coup of the former against Bonifacio during the infamous, fraudulent or  anomalous Tejeros Convention, with Aguinaldo's camp grabbing power, ordering that the Supremo be seized dead or alive, and subjecting him to kangaroo court martial (with his lawyer Placido Martinez condemning instead of defending him) and subsequent assassination-cum-execution.


Photo credit: http://www.filipiniana.net/featurearticle/12965241194965

2 APRIL

Great Tagalog poet Francisco "Balagtas" Baltazar

1788 - Francisco Baltazar, future "Prince of Tagalog Poets," is born in Bo. Panginay, Bigaa, Bulacan during the Spanish colonial rule of the Philippines; Balagtas will produce the   allegorical awit masterpiece, 'Florante at Laura,' a love story set in Albania but marked with underlying nationalistic tones and severe criticism of the social evils of the period that will escape the eyes of the Spanish censorship, permitting it to be shown in theaters and plays; similar to his future teacher, Jose de la Cruz who is regarded as first or foremost Tagalog poet, Balagtas will write many plays meant to be staged during town fiestas; he will also write the political comedia (stage play) Mahomet at Constanza, which used the then-obtaining Greek War of Independence that had begun in 1820, as theme to project his idea of Philippine independence; also known as "Balagtas," Baltazar will also write the comedies "Orosmán at Zafira, Don Nuño at Selinda, Auredato at Astrome, Clara Belmore," "Abdol at Misereanan," "Bayaceto at Dorslica," and "Alamansor at Rosalinda," "La India elegante y el negrito amante," "Nudo gordeano", and "Rodolfo at Rosemonda"; in the 1900s during the early part of the colonial rule of the imperialist United States, Baltazar would come to be a symbol and infinite source of native traditions, motifs and themes that all good writers must constantly return to courageously battle Americanization, among others.

1 APRIL

President Emilio F. Aguinaldo
&  imperialist captor, Frederick Funston

1901 - Philippine President on-the-run Emilio Aguinaldo takes the oath of allegiance to the imperialist United States flag, only a few days after his capture in Palanan, Isabela by enemy American forces pretending to be captives of traitorous Filipino mercenaries almost two years and a month into the bloody and protracted Philippine-American War (1899-1914); the treacherous operation on March 23,  led by Bald Eagle soldier Frederick Funston, promptly merited condemnation by the Anti-Imperialist League, including American writer Mark Twain who will describe the US volunteer army officer as "the man who captured Aguinaldo by methods which would disgrace the lowest blatherskite that is doing time in any penitentiary; apart from swearing fealty to the enemy flag, Aguinaldo promptly even signs on that same day a widely circulated proclamation calling upon his generals and soldiers to accept imperialist-imposed peace and unite "around the glorious and sovereign banner of the United States," adding that he acknowledges the "sovereignty of the United States" over the entire archipelago; Aguinaldo's capitulation declaration would be defied for a time by only a few of the remaining Malolos generals at large, including Gen. Luciano S. San Miguel, but also by a considerable number of  Katipuneros, veteran patriots from the Revolution of 1896, as well as Moro freedom fighters in the Mindanao areas, thus helping extend the hostilities of the Fil-Am War (1899-1914).



Raw photo credit: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1457117486591&set=t.100000402936380&theater