Cavite Mutiny

CAVITE MUTINY

CAVITE PROVINCE Cavite got its name from a Tagalog word kawit  (which means hook ) owing to the hook-shaped land on the Old Spanish map. The land was formerly known as "Tangway" where Spanish authorities constructed a fort from which the city of Cavite rose. It is named as the Historical Capital of the Philippines. It is the cradle of  Philippine Revolution, and the birthplace of Philippine Independence. is a province of the Philippines located on the southern shores of 

 THE CAVITE MUTINY •

In the cold, gray dawn of the 17th of February, 1872, people started to gather on the grassy field of  Bagumbayan (now Rizal Park) south of Intramuros. At first, they were mostly Spanish soldiers and the Guardia Civil in their fine uniforms, office holders and letrados in suits, rotund friars with their sacristans, principalia in short black jackets worn over untucked baro. They were in a festive mood for they had come to witness a public execution, always a fiesta in the Spanish establishment.

 THE CAVITE MUTINY GOMBURZA   The three priests in black cassocks, bound and manacled, escorted by Spanish friars, guards and drummers appeared at a gate in the walled city. They were the condemned men, Fathers Burgos, Gomez and Zamora, who had been sentenced to death for sedition against the Spanish Crown and were to be executed by garrote, the most dreaded form of  execution: strangulation by a cast-iron

Gomburza have one thing in common:   They were secular native parish priests who did not belong to any of the religious orders (like the Dominicans, Franciscans etc.) but served in the dioceses directly under the Pope in Rome.   They represented the bitter, divisive cause of natives claiming parishes for themselves for “secularization,” opposed by the all-powerful friar orders who maintained that Filipinos were capable only of being boatmen or peons, but should not think that, because they could mumble Latin prayers they could now aspire to run whole parishes.

SECULARIZATION - the activity of changing something (art or education or society or morality etc.) so it is no longer under the control or influence of religion

EXECUTION BY GAROTTE Absurd as that may seem to Filipinos today, the penalty for holding such views was death by garrote, and those three Filipinos had been tried and proven guilty of such high treason.  The first to ascend the gallows was Father Mariano Gomez, whitehaired and visibly aged (he was 72), and indio of Chinese or  Japanese descent, who had been a popular parish priest in Bacoor, Cavite. Perfectly erect and serene, he spoke briefly, “Thy Will be done.”

Next came Father Jacinto Zamora, a Spanish mestizo Manileño, a classmate at Letran and Santo Tomas of the main “traitor” Fr. Jose Burgos. He stared vacantly into space and had to be led to the black chair. He was 36 and his arrest order had bore the name of  “  Jose Maria Zamora.” Jacinto Zamora was the parish priest of Pandacan.

Fr. Jose Burgos, 35, a handsome Creole, born in Vigan of Spanish parents, ascended last. He was the recognized leader of the “secularization” faction and had written vehement and eloquent manifestos. His being a fullblooded Spaniard made it plain that the fight was between the natives, born on Philippine soil, and the peninsulares, born on the Spanish peninsula. Burgos had called his faction “Hijos del Pais,” the original concept, which decades later, became Bonifacio’s “Anak ng

 The usual traditional cheers from the Spanish soldiers and dignitaries erupted as Father Burgos expired. “Viva España!” “Viva España en Filipinas!”

But now an ominous wailing and chanting rose from the silent crowd, who had fallen on their knees and were reciting in thunderous tone, “ Misere nobis, Lord have mercy. Let our cry come unto You!” Again and again, the Holy Litany of the Dying, taught to them by their parish priests. Nick Joaquin, in his history of Manila, wrote that at that moment, the Filipinos were no longer a mob, “they were already a nation .” O.D. Corpus wrote that “the sorrow had wrought a miracle .” It was the suddenly altered consciousness of the Filipinos.   The Spaniards recognized it, too. For they fled, in great alarm, to safety behind the walls of Intramuros, clanging the gates after them. The very next day, they began a reign of terror: frantic arrests, executions and banishments. 1. To a whole boatload of native parish priests to the Marianas (now Guam). 2. A group of lawyers and rich men. 3. The students, their teachers, the associates, disciples and friends of the Three Priests. ●

Anyone who could be suspected of leading the emerging uprising was silenced. Everyone else went into hiding. Just what was it all

In mid-19th century Philippines the balance of power between the Spanish and the natives had changed. The galleon trade had ended. Mexico declared independence in 1815 and, one after another, the Spanish colonies in South America were lost. A revolution and a new Constitution in Spain opened it to the liberal ideas of liberty and equality. Harm had been done.  The natives were restless.

In 1869 the Suez Canal  was opened, cutting travel time from Europe to Manila from four months to 30 days. In rushed a new world of Germans, French, British, East Coast Americans investors, merchants, teachers, scholars, sugar plantations, factories, dangerous ideas. The Filipino upper class became richer, better educated than the Spanish administrators and argued with the friars.

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 The exact identities of the victims of the mass arrests and executions after 1872 are nowhere obtainable either. Historians call it now the “period of  repression.” No other attempts at armed resistance or organized protests took place between 1872 and 1896. All possible leaders had been killed off or exiled. In 1872, Rizal was 11; Bonifacio, 7; Mabini, 8; Aguinaldo, 3; They became the soul and muscle of  the Revolution.

If we had any historical sense, the remembrance of the 17th of February of 1872 would be as big a fiesta as Rizal Day. Burgos, GomeZ and Zamora were the voices crying in the wilderness, preparing the way for Rizal and his generation and all the others who came after them. They were the precursors of the Filipino nation.

IMPORTANCE OF CAVITE MUTINY IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY Many believe that the Cavite Mutiny of  1872 was the beginning of Filipino nationalism that would eventually lead to the Philippine Revolution of 1896.