Tres de Abril’s 234

Finally a definitive volume on the outbreak of the revolution against Spain in Cebu is at hand. Last week, Ateneo Press released my good friend Michael Cullinane’s second of three books about Cebu entitled, “Arenas of Conspiracy and Rebellion in the Late Nineteenth-Century Philippines” with the intriguing subtitle “The Case of the April 1898 Uprising in Cebu.”

In 198 pages including a very helpful index, profuse end notes and a glossary, Mike weaves together the results of an on-again, off-again research that began during his days in Cebu as a young Peace Corps volunteer in 1972, on the names and whereabouts of 234 individuals.

These men and women came from what he lumped for ease in analysis as the Greater Cebu City (covering Cebu City and including Mandue, Opon and Cordoba; and the former town of San Nicolas, including Pardo), planned and/or participated in the April 1898 uprising that unfolded prematurely on Palm Sunday (April 3) instead of the original plan, Good Friday.

Culled from various sources, both archival as well as actual interviews with descendants, the list is actually much larger, totaling to 321 from other towns in the province of Cebu. But beyond the 234 that he could fully document, he found nothing more than names and claims that were hard to corroborate with other information given the time that elapsed when he first delved on this project (1972, or about 84 years after the event).

Mike thus decided to concentrate on the 234 and analyzes their participation from a variety of variables that are a delight to every social historian or even the casual observer and the curious who may want to find out who they where, what social class they belonged to, the kinds of work they were involved in and, most importantly, why they revolted.

Without giving away too much as to spill the delicious beans of information that this book contains, I will give some tidbits about these 230 men and four women who put their lives at stake to see the dawning of freedom from Spanish colonialism in Cebu. Mike has so kindly put out tables of different demographic characteristics of these 234 individuals so that one can immediately surmise that those who revolted that fateful day of 3 April 1898 or were arrested and executed in the days leading to that day were not ordinary men and women. The leaders were employed as escribientes or clerks who were serving various offices in the local Spanish bureaucracy, after attending secondary education at the Seminario-Colegio de San Carlos. Others were employed in commercial establishments that provided opportunities to interact with their revolutionary counterparts in Manila, like the local Smith, Bell and Co. warehouse.

And while a large number of these 234 came from San Nicolas (24 of the 45 leaders; 93 of the total number of conspirators), the main bulk of those that did rise up were actually from what the clustered Cebu City (including the earlier mentioned Mandaue, Opon, Cordoba and Talamban). But there is nothing more glaring than the fact that a large number of the 234 came from San Nicolas. Something must have happened there to rouse this former town, now just one of the 80 barangays of the city, rose up. Family names like the more well-known Abellas (a relative, another good friend, Atty. Harve Abella, is today the “spokesman” of this part of the revolutionaries), Abellanas, Lopezes and Pacañas, to the lesser known Echevarris, Datans and one Sabay.

I leave to the reader to find out what was in San Nicolas that kith and kin joined the revolution with no regard for the brutal reprisals that followed that fateful week as the Spanish holed up in Fort San Pedro were eventually reinforced and freed by their compatriots from Iloilo and Manila. Mike so kindly provided us with an appendix not only listing the names of these 234 but how they were related to each other and where they were born and specific events that some of them participated in.

Copies of this book, alas, can be ordered only by surfing the Net and visiting the Ateneo Press website, for now. Perhaps soon Dr. Mae Tadlip’s Benchmark, the latest book distribution outlet at the Banilad Town Center, will soon market this book to Cebuanos who should never forget Tres de Abril. We have Mike and his book to make sure we never do.

I will not end without mentioning the two other books that Mike has been working on recently.
Last month, Dr. Joy Gerra, head of the Cultural Heritage Program of the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. sent me Mike’s 48-page monograph entitled, “The Parian of Cebu City: A Historic Overview, 1565-1898”, published by RAFI.

Next month, it will be the turn of University of San Carlos Press, when it will release the 340-page “The Battle for Cebu (1899-1900): Andrew S. Rowan and the Siege of Sudlon.” That too will be another exciting foray into a fascinating event at the beginning of American colonial rule in Cebu. Atangi!