Biak-na-Bato is not a sell-out!

Biak-na-bato, is not a shameful betrayal of people’s sacrifices. 

Aguinaldo made the best of bad bargain. He accepted the Pact but made a secret agreement to use the Spanish indemnity to purchase arms abroad and resume their unfinished revolution. He did purchase arms and return to the Philippines to continue the revolution in May 1898. That could not be a betrayal.

And seemingly following the American colonial policy of denigrating anything that Aguinaldo did resulting into the Filipinos loss of respect towards him, Constantino went on to add that “ because Aguinaldo declaration was not a real independence proclamation, and because it is associated with a man whose revolutionary integrity is in question, June 12 should not be the symbol of our effort to achieve independence…”

With a man whose revolutionary integrity is in question ?

Such accusation referred to the oft repeated issue on handling of the Spanish indemnity of Php 400,000.00. 43 Filipino revolutionary leaders in Hongkong already voluntarily signed an affidavit attesting to the honest handling of that amount on April 23, 1898 as noted by Taylor (1971). These leaders include Mariano Llanera, Miguel Malvar, Tomas Mascardo, Jose Alejandrino, Servillano Aquino, and Mamerto Natividad. American historian John R. M. Taylor who would have been biased to the American point of view, also had a good word for Aguinaldo’s handling of the fund. Jose Alejandrino also defended Aguinaldo’s integrity. Alejandrino emphasized that Aguinaldo “had the integrity and unselfishness to return to his country to expose again his life for an ideal which is the ideal of his people and his race.” Most ironically, Quezon in 1941 even mentioned that “Aguinaldo was as poor as he was when the war started” when he addressed the US House of Representative. Such integrity could not be in question. 

Here is how Elias M. Ataviado, who experienced the Revolution both against Spain and America and interviewed both participants, friend and foe, see “Pact of Biak-na-Bato.” :

“Although the pact had lost a regional insurrection, however it had won an unquestionable triumph of national proportions; it had won the people of the country and made it sympathetic toward the cause of the revolution. The pact, indeed, was the “thunderbolt that struck” in the night of our forefathers, the clap of which awakened the national conscience from its colonial lethargy. It was the voice of God, that in darkness of the time, guided the “scattered tendencies” towards the ideals of the greater struggle ahead.”

The Philippine Revolution in the Bicol Region
Volume One ( August 1896 to January 1899 )
From the Spanish original Lucha y Libertad
Translated into English by Juan T. Ataviado

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Click:  https://archive.org/stream/filipinojuntainh00bell/filipinojuntainh00bell_djvu.txt