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03:39:53 pm on August 23, 2009 |
The remarkable story of the Manila Galleon and the men who created international trade
Introduction
Somewhere along the line the book you hold in your hand or the electronic text you’re reading on screen came to you aboard ship. Wood pulp and clay were transported to the papermill which took those ingredients in a one end to be transformed into great, heavy rolls of paper at the other which themselves were transported by ship to a print works filled with machinery which also reached their destination countries by ship.
The dyes that make up the ink printed on the paper, the solvents that carry them on to the paper, and the oils and greases that keep the printing machines pounding out page after page, all travelled by sea.
As for your computer and the monitor you may be reading these words on, everything they’re made of travelled by sea, by ship, during their making.
Sure, aircraft can carry goods, too, but even a modest sized cargo ship can carry a hundred times more than an aircraft and at less than one hundredth the cost. And how do you think all that aviation fuel gets transported around the world? By ship.
When you hold a book, or switch on a computer, you’re looking at an infinitesimal part of a complex webwork of business, a global trade that began when the first Spanish galleon left Cebu, Philippines in the late 16th century and found a way to get to Acapulco, Mexico. Once that ship dropped anchor at its destination all continents, with the exception of yet-to-be discovered Australia, were joined for the first time in a regular trading process, the galleon trade.
The process that has resulted in this book, whether you’re reading it in hard back or on a computer screen.
It’s a story of the days when, it was said, ships were made of wood and men were made of iron. Sometimes the ships were called the Manila Galleon, sometimes the Acapulco Galleon, just as often they were called the China Ships.
This is the story of those ships, the men who rode on them, and the successes and failures of what was for a time the world’s biggest international business.
Bob Couttie
Subic Bay
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01:01:36 am on August 20, 2009 |
Let me tell you a story:
One day I had a parcel that I had to send from the Rizal Monument to Subic Bay Freeport, a distance of perhaps 70km. After talking to several couriers I found one who promised that he could get the parcel to its destination in as little as half an hour.
He had, he said, a very fast truck.
So I paid up and gave him the parcel.
The truck turned up four hour later in Subic Bay Freeport. I was astonished. I said: “But you promised that you could deliver it in as little as half an hour!”
He said: “My truck goes 150km an hour so I could deliver the parcel in as little a half an hour if there was a straight four lane highway from Rizal monument to Subic Bay Freeport, but there isn’t. And there are the traffic jams at Baliktawak and the San Fernando turn off. And speed limits. And the time it takes to put gas in the truck.”
“So,” I said, “Have you ever delivered a parcel in 30 minutes?”
“No” he said.
“So you’re lying when you advertise that you can?” I said.
“Oh, no,” he insisted, “I could do it if there was a straight, four lane highway all the way, no stopping at Balintawak and San Fernando and no speed limits.”
“But there isn’t,” I pointed out, “You can’t deliver what you promise.”
“But I said ‘In as little as half an hour’, I didn’t say I could do it right now. But I could do it if there was a four lane highway…”
That story isn’t entirely fictional, it’s the sort of story one hears from anyone using mobile wireless modems on laptops in the Philippines. Advertising ‘up to…” speeds are, in fact, unachievable, have never even been approached in practice, and their excuses are very much like those of my fictional trucker.
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10:38:43 am on August 5, 2009 |
As they lay former Philippine president Corazon ‘Cory’ Aquino to rest I remember my only meeting with her. It was a memorable meeting, in the wake of 1989 coup attempt,one of several financed by a man she thought to be a friend.
Plans to remove Aquino began almost immediately after the overthrow of Marcos, and might even have started before. In mid-1986, just months after the world had watched the Peoples Power Revolt in the Philippines that inspired similar revolts around the world, I was told by Manila businessmen: “We got rid of Marcos, now we have to get rid of Aquino”.
There had been coup attempts against Cory Aquino before, but the 1989 attempt, led by Gregorio Honasan and financed by a politician known as ‘777′, a powerful man still beyond the reach of justice, came closest to overthrowing Aquino and instigating a military junta. Disaffected and disappointed junior military officers under the Reform Armed Movement – disappointed that change had not come quickly enough after the overthrow of Marcos, were scammed by power-hungry politicians and Marcos remnants into supporting the attempted coup. They were led to believe that they had the support of the US.
It came so close to success that, according to a former US Foreign Service officer who was in the US Embassy crisis management room at the time, she asked for armed intervention by the United States. Preparations were made at the then-US naval base at Subic Bay with enough materiel to invade a small country. US politicians favoured intervention but the proposal was opposed by military officials with more of an idea of ‘ground truth’- shooting Filipino soldiers was not an option, it would turn the entire country against both the Americans and Cory Aquino. The military won the discourse.
Instead, a small number of US fighter aircraft would take off from USAF Clark and carry out high-level flybys while backchannels reached the coup leaders, advised them whose side the US was on and bluffed that there was a real likelihood of armed intervention.
Armed intervention was not unexpected. Indeed, a British diplomat saw a US fighter jet pass the British embassy building on Paseo de Roxas and immediately called the US ambassador to get assurances that there would be no shooting by US forces.
It was a close-run contest that, not unnaturally shook Aquino. Not because her own life might have been at stake – she was a woman of considerable bravery – but because of betrayal by people whom she believed to be her friends yet who financed and organised the coup, which was intended to bring back to power those who had given force to the Marcos regime.
After the coup attempt was stifled, Aquino went into purda. There were no triumphant interviews with the Filipino or foreign press for weeks afterwards. Then, I forget how, I was invited to a pool press conference at Malacanang. I was just a stringer, but I was the only foreigner to be a full member of the National Press Club at the time, which may be why I got the opportunity.
My notes have long disappeared but I recall there were six of us, mainly from places like Indonesia and a correspondent for a Spanish agency, including three women. Each of us were allowed just two questions.
I had the feeling that she was uncomfortable, that she had developed an invisible shield around her. There wasn’t the sense of presence or charisma that I expected, and I suspected that it was due to the after-effects of the coup attempt.
Each of us was allowed to ask one question, then each of us in turn until our own turn came again. It was difficult to develop a line so I knew I had to ask two key questions and hope that if anything remarkable was said one of the other journalists would pick it up – it was a pool interview to be shared with the world’s press, not an exclusive.
“Do you still want to be President?” I asked.
“Frankly, no,” she responded.
I waited impatiently, hoping the others would pick up the lead, they didn’t. “what’s it like being a woman president?” asked the Indonesian journalist. There was hardy a mention of the coup in the other questions either.
My turn came once more: “You said you don’t want to be president any more. Why is that?”
“Because I have been betrayed by people I thought were my friends” she said.
She did not resign, she could not resign – the coup plotters would have won, and she finished her presidency in 1992.
It is not yet time to determine how history will view Corazon Aquino, she had her strengths and her weaknesses and many of the changes she wanted to introduce were forcefully stifled in Congress and Senate, she could never entirely overcome family loyalties, but let us correct one common judgement:
Corazon Aquino did not restore democracy to the Philippines. Democracy can only come from the Filipino people exercising their right to a democracy.
She restored the opportunity for democracy.
It is up to the Filipino people to determine how to do the rest.
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08:07:11 pm on June 16, 2009 |
One of the the project that I’m particularly proud to have been involved with is the building of the Hellships Memorial on Waterfront Road in Subic Bay Freeport, a reminder of an atrocity all too easy to forget.
During World War 2 the Japanese rounded up vast numbers of prisoners of war of all nationalities, stuffed them into the crowded, sweltering holds of a variety of ships, and transported them to Japan as slave labour. Not knowing the valuable, suffering cargo these ships carried many were attacked and sunk by the allies in the belief that they were merchant vessels carrying war materiel.
Thousands died, others went mad, still others suffered mining for the glory of the inhumane Imperial Japan.
No nation, including the US, Britain and Australia, had ever set up a memorial to remember that sacrifice. A small team decided that wasn’t good enough and set about putting that right and I was asked to help put together a fund raising DVD for the project.
It presented an interesting challenge because I felt there was a need to set the scene, to emphasise the rational for the monument at the outset. Two dozen nationalities died on the Hellships so waving the Star and Stripes was not an option.
I decided to use an extract, sometimes called the Ode Of Remembrance, from Laurence Binyan’s poem For The Fallen, which is spoken on Remembrance Day, November 11, at the Cenotaph in London, in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. Although apparently unknown in the US and the Philippines, its haunting words were just as appropriate.
Then there was the issue of music. A bugle call was almost mandatory but which to choose? The US Taps or the more widely used Last Post? After a lot of deep thought I decided to use both and created and arrangement in which the two became a call and response, a concept that seemed entirely appropriate for those who had answered the call and responded.
I was asked to read the Binyan poem at the inauguration of the Hellships memorial and a surprisingly large number of people asked me for copies afterwards, including Filipino veterans.
So, you can hear it here
You can watch the inauguration of the memorial on YouTube here.
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07:48:43 am on April 29, 2009 |
If you enjoy Bob’s writings you’ll enjoy his new book, Chew The Bones: Maddog Essays On Philippine History, Bob Couttie’s third book,now available on Amazon.
Says the blurb: “Take a time-travelling journey of a thousand years of adventure and romance as you explore the unknown highways, byways and strange ways of an almost forgotten world. Dip into a unique, eye-opening collection of true stories they didn’t tell you at school. In this world slaves get benefits worthy of a corporate highflier. A redhaired hard-to-handle Hong Kong-born Irish teenager marries a man determined to change his country’s destiny. England’s Queen Victoria is given the world’s most expensive wedding dress, made by Filipinos. The last cavalry charge in American history begins with a hangover as the first Japanese bombs drop on the Philippines. A Scots-American widow find a new purpose protecting and building lives for the indigenous Aeta people of the Zambales Mountains.”
A review says: “Bob Couttie writes with an absorbing, lively sense of fun, fascination and scrupulous research. You come away from this book with a feeling for the romance and adventure that made, and is making, the Philippines what it is today.”
It is immediately from Amazon here
If you live in the Philippines, a special low-cost edition is available and you can get a personalised signed copy for just 300 pesos
To order one, email bobcouttie@yahoo.com
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11:58:51 am on July 1, 2007 |
The Case of the Wandering Monarch
A ship with 1,500 souls aboard, some of the most dangerous waters around the US coast and a GPS that tells lies. Guess what happens next…
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11:55:09 am on July 1, 2007 |
Sardinas Filipinas
Canned sardines are a familiar staple of Filipino food. but I’d never thought of combining them with spaghetti until my partner Ami suggested it. The idea of sardines and spaghetti really didn’t ring my bell but I tried it and it worked wonderfully. So here goes.
In the Philippines spaghetti is usually served with a red tomato sauce so sweet it should be a desert. I hate it. As it happens, the tomato sauce in canned sardines is not as sweet as in the commercial spaghetti sauces.
A word about spaghetti. Unlike Asian noodles, spaghetti needs lots and lots of water to boil in so use the biggest pan you have, fill it with water, add some salt and a little oil or butter to prevent the strands from sticking to the pan. Bring the water to a fast rolling (roiling) boil and keep it there – don’t turn the heat down to a mere simmer, the water must be roiling.
Take a handful of spaghetti – do not break it into pieces to fit the pan. Put one end of the bunch into the water and stir the water with the spaghetti, as the spaghetti softens, lower the bunch until it’s all in the pan. You now have around 13 and a half minutes, watch it on the clock while you make the sauce.
I was once asked to cook spaghetti at a party south of Manila and made up a vast batch. Only after I’d finished was I told that no-one was going to turn up for an hour and a half and the spaghetti sat in a bowl on the table congealing and getting cold. I could have cried. Spaghetti must be eaten freshly cooked and hot.
After 13 and a half minutes drain the spaghetti. I like to rise the spaghetti in warm water, purists find that objectionable, so do whatever you feel. Return the spaghetti to the pan, turn the heat right down, add butter, a little salt, some pepper and a nob of butter and toss until the butter is melted and spread evenly.
Chop up an onion and some garlic, melt butter or use olive oil (You can use star margarine) and gently cook the garlic and onion until yellow and soft, not burned or crisp. Add a can of sardines in tomato sauce, stir well in, breaking up the sardine into smaller pieces. Add some basil and oregano if you have it and let cook on low for a couple of minutes to let the herbs seep through. You can do all that while waiting for the spahetti to cook.
Put spaghetti on a warmed plate, top with the sauce, sprinkle grated cheese – Parmesan if you have it – and eat hot.
That’s about as simple as it gets, except maybe for my Spaghetti Carbonara, but that’s have to wait for another day.
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11:53:16 am on July 1, 2007 |
Verse 7
Deja a la luna verme con luz tranquila y suave,
Deja que el alba envíe su resplandor fugaz,
Deja gemir al viento con su murmullo grave,
Y si desciende y posa sobre mi cruz un ave,
Deja que el ave entone su cántico de paz.
Let the moon beam over me soft and serene,
Let the dawn shed over me its radiant flashes,
Let the wind with sad lament over me keen;
And if on my cross a bird should be seen,
Let it trill there its hymn of peace to my ashes.
The moon makes its first appearance here and perhaps with more reason than mere romantic imagery. The moon is associated with femininity and feminine deity, she shines by the light of the sun, a male element, yet it is a light that she transforms. Compare earlier verses and the reference to the ‘(friar’s) cowl of gloom’. No stars or moon can be seen through such a cowl, yet here the moon shines brightly, the cowl, ie. The friars have gone and the Patria is free to shine her light.
Here also is a repetition of the imagery of the dawn, the dawn of redemption, now shining its light over his grave. Although he refers to the night, ie., the moon, and the dawn, he does not refer to the day, perhaps because the day of liberation is already here.
Only the wind, impersonal, will lament over his grave. Again he uses a qualifying ‘si’ – ‘if’ when writing of the bird that may rest on the cross above him. It does not lament him but sings of peace, the peace that comes with liberation and the peace with which he rests below.
Verse 8
Deja que el sol, ardiendo, las lluvias evapore
Y al cielo tornen puras, con mi clamor en pos;
Deja que un ser amigo mi fin temprano llore
Y en las serenas tardes cuando por mí alguien ore,
¡Ora también, oh Patria, por mi descanso a Dios!
Let the sun draw the vapors up to the sky,
And heavenward in purity bear my tardy protest;
Let some kind soul o’er my untimely fate sigh
And in the still evening a prayer be lifted on high
From thee, O my country, that in God, I may rest.
Again we have the male principle, the Sun and the female principle, the Earth. The Sun evaporates the water from the Earth, cleansing it, in doing so the water rises, taking with it Rizal’s last cry, itself pure and unsullied, part of his spirit.
“Let a friend grieve for my early death” says line three. Here Rizal may be subtly reminding us of why he died – for the redemption of his country, one could hardly grieve over his earl death without giving pause to why he died.
The penultimate line reads better as “When someone prays for me in the serene afternoon, which to a modern reader may mean little. There was only one moment each afternoon when stillness and serenity ruled at the time of Rizal’s death – at the ringing of the Angelus when prayers were made, which very devout Catholics still make, to the incarnation of God in Christ. Christ, of course, was executed in his 30s for the redemption of mankind just as Rizal was executed for the redemption of his country.
To many Filipinos, Rizal appear as a Christlike figure and it is not far-fetched to suggest that in these lines, Rizal himself drew the same parallel.
Rizal’s relationship with God, and he certainly believed in a deity, has been subject to much controversy. From his letters, especially those to his mother, who was much concerned with which neighbourhood her son would end up in the hereafter, he believed God to be humane and rational, a reasoning Almighty who would recognize that Rizal’s intentions were good, even if he upset members of the Catholic church. In other words, he believed he could make peace with God, hence the last line of this stanza.
Verse 9
Ora por todos cuantos murieron sin ventura,
Por cuantos padecieron tormentos sin igual,
Por nuestras pobres madres que gimen su amargura;
Por huérfanos y viudas, por presos en tortura
Y ora por ti que veas tu redención final.
Pray for all those that hapless have died,
For all who have suffered the unmeasur’d pain;
For our mothers that bitterly their woes have cried,
For widows and orphans, for captives by torture tried,
And then for thyself that redemption thou mayst gain.
Rizal asks the Patria to pray for various groups of the deceased who have died, it is apparent contextually, in pursuit of the revolution against Spain, leading off with those who have died ‘in ventura’, probably here best interpreted as those who have died with achieving their goal, or at least before that goal can be achieved.
The Derbyshire translation uses ‘unmeasur’d pain’ in place of the Spanish ‘tormentos sin igual’ in line two which is probably inadequate. Torment would include the pain of separation from family that is a necessary concomitant of the warrior, the pain of the family itself not knowing whether their loved one is alive or not, the pain of actual injury and disease at a when then, even by contemporary standards, the available medical care among the warriors was at best rudimentary. There is also the torment of living in the field. These are not the torments of actual battle, but the hardships that must be endured.
In the mother-orientated culture of the Filipino male it is not surprising that Rizal gives more time to mothers than other family members, a whole line for mothers, a third of a line each for orphan and widows. In the latter case he links them to prisoners being tortured. What we have here is the pain of entire families who fathers, brothers and sons are fighting, dying, being incarcerated and tortured. It isn’t only those whose fight that must withstand suffering, but those at home, too.
Lastly, he appeals to the Patria to pray for her own ‘redención final’, her final redemption. Struggle, whether as a violent revolution or the seeking of liberty by other means, is a process of redemption, it is only when that process is complete, and the Patria free, that the redemption is ‘final’.
Verse 10
Y cuando en noche oscura se envuelva el cementerio
Y solos sólo muertos queden velando allí,
No turbes su reposo, no turbes el misterio,
Tal vez acordes oigas de cítara o salterio,
Soy yo, querida Patria, yo que te canto a ti.
And when the dark night wraps the graveyard around
With only the dead in their vigil to see,
Break not my repose or the mystery profound,
And perchance thou mayst hear a sad hymn resound;
‘Tis I, O my country, raising a song unto thee.
This verse doesn’t really appear to belong here. It would have been more appropriate one or two verses earlier, or at least before verse 10. Perhaps it is a sign of hurried composition, something written without the proper editing that marks a great writer – one French novelist wrote to a friend an apologized about it’s length ‘I didn’t have time to make it shorter’. I would suggest that the present verse 9 is out of place and may have been written later that other verse.
Rizal has previously talked about his grave alone and desolate. Now there is a cemetery. Derbyshire’s line ‘Break not my repose’ is wrong, ‘my’ should be ‘their’. In earlier verses Rizal used repetition for emphasis – Salud… Salud – Deja…Deja, and here uses it again with “No turbes su reposos, no tubes el misterio” – do not disturb their repose, no not disturb the mystery”.
With a classical education, Rizal would have been familiar with the derivation of ‘mystery’ from the Greek ‘mystērion’ in the sense of a divine secret or divine knowledge known only to initiates and revealed through ritual, it is still used in that sense in the Catholic mass, the Catholic mysteries being ‘Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ is born again’. Death is a mystery in itself , now revealed to those in the cemetery.
Derbyshire appears to depart almost entirely from Rizal’s Spanish text in the fourth line, where Rizal talks of the Patria hearing the note of a psalter or zither, there is no mention of a sad hymn at all and, indeed, as the final line shows, this is a song sung in praise to Patria so there is no rationale for sadness.
The choice of the psalter, a guitar-like stringed instrument played with the bare fingers, is interesting because, apart from being a musical instrument it is also the biblical Book of Psalms. In the Old Testament English translation the term ‘psalter’ is often used instead of harp, which is more correct. Unlike the psalter or the zither, the biblical harp does not have a soundbox.
The Psalter, then, has religious connotations. The Patria was Rizal’s religion, her redemption the object of that religion just as the redemption of man from sin is the object of the Catholic religion. The last line of Verse three makes this even more clear.
The zither is another stringed instrument, and also confused in the Old Testament with the harp. It has a squarish, flat soundbox and is plucked with fingers or, in some versions, with a mallet or plectrum, again it is mentioned in the bible in place of the harp.
In a sense, Rizal is talking of singing a hymn, one of praise to the Patria as is explicit in his last line.
Again, Rizal use repetition for emphasis as in the third line, which is better translated as “It is I, beloved Patria, it is I who sing the song to you”.
Alone among the dead, then, Rizal praises the Patria as Catholics praise Mary.
Verse 11
Y cuando ya mi tumba de todos olvidada
No tenga cruz ni piedra que marquen su lugar,
Deja que la are el hombre, la esparza con la azada,
Y mis cenizas, antes que vuelvan a la nada,
El polvo de tu alfombra que vayan a formar.
And even my grave is remembered no more,
Unmark’d by never a cross nor a stone,
Let the plow sweep through it, the spade turn it o’er
That my ashes may carpet the earthly floor,
Before into nothingness at last they are blown.
Little clarification is needed here. When his grave and the signs that marked it are long gone he wants his ashes spread by the plough and the spade to carpet Filipinas, to become one with it, with his beloved. A second thread here is that the ashes are his physical remains, his thoughts, words and philosophy are his intellectual remains. The symbolic ashes can also be seen as the remains of Rizal’s thoughts being spread across Filipinas, to fertilize the new, free country long after he himself is forgotten.
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09:14:59 am on June 20, 2007 |
Today is the birthday of Jose Rizal and one wonders what he’s thinking beneath his tomb on the Luneta. By coincidence I just happened to be thumbing through some forgotten, and now defunct, magazines on Philippine film and wondered what happened to Edward Gross’s biography of Rizal?
Edward Gross was one of the pioneers of film-making in the Philippines and made the first feature-length (for the day, it was 5,000 feet) movie on the national hero: “The Life of Jose Rizal”. A competitor, Charles Yearsley, actually beat him to the box-office, though, with a 500 foot quickie called “The Execution of Jose Rizal” and filched the same actors. Gross’s film premiered on August 12, 1912 on the 14th anniversary of the cessation of Spanish-American hostilities in 1898 and exactly a day short of the Spanish surrender to Dewey in Manila and a year and one month since another cinematographic entrepreneur (cum mercenary) LM Johnson allegedly signed the Philippine Declaration of Independence. Gross went on to put the Noli and the Fili on celluloid with his wife, the talented actress Titay Molina, as Maria Clara.
Gross was a Rizal fan and, before making the movie based on Rizal’s life, apparently wrote a biography on the Philippine national hero. There were still plenty of people around who had known Rizal, and maybe had even seen the execution and one wonders whether Gross actually researched his subject in any depth. Do any copies of the biography exist?
Be that as it may, one idea that has gone the rounds is that the famous photograph of the Rizal execution is just a still from Gross’s or Yearsley’s films in the 1912. At least two copies of the execution photograph by Manuel Arias Rodriguez exist, one in a museum in Madrid, another in a museum in Cavite, both are albumin prints, a technology not longer used in 1912, and anyone familiar with stills taken from films of the period would immediately dismiss the notion that they were frames from films.
So the diminutive man in the bowler hat in the famous picture is indeed, Jose Rizal.
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01:27:30 pm on June 9, 2007 |
Independence Day Mysteries
F orgive me for borrowing your Independence Day. Being British I don’t have one of my own. Colonized by all and sundry over a thousand years, the Brits never won a war of independence so on June 12 I hang out the red, blue, white and yellow and glue myself to the television to watch the ceremonies along Roxas Boulevard to savor a nation’s pride and hear the eternal arguments about which is the ‘real’ independence day for the Philippines.
Of course, what’s important is not the date, but the meaning. After all, Jesus Christ wasn’t born on December 25, or January 6 according to some Christian church traditions, yet these are still celebrated as his birthday. January 1 was not always New Year’s Day, which was once celebrated in March. New Year’s Eve in 1844 vanished entirely in Manila with December 30 followed by January 1 after the Spanish discovered that their ‘Philippine Time’ was whole day out of whack thanks to sloppy navigation in the 16th century.
Nevertheless, this is the time of year when that hoary old argument between the June 12 supporters and the July 4 supporters gets re-aired like an old blanket in storage. July 4 is the ‘real’ independence day say the latter because it’s the day when the United States granted and recognized the Philippines formal, if not full, independence.
In fact, the United States itself does not celebrate the day of recognition of its independence, but the day in 1776 when it was merely declared, July 4. Its status was not formally recognised by its colonial master, Britain until September 3, 1786 at the end of peace talks in Paris, bring the American insurgency to an end.
So, to accept July 4 as the ‘real’ Philippine Independence Day, one should celebrate American independence on September 3. What’s good for the Philippine goose ought to be good for the American gander.
We have the father of President Ate Glo, President Diosdado Macapagal, to thank for the fact that today we honor Independence Day on June 12, or possibly John F. Kennedy, or Professor Gabriel Fabella. In the first place, of course, we have to thank Emilio Aguinaldo.
Inevitably, the Declaration of Independence carries it own baggage of myth and mystery. We often imagine Aguinaldo on June 12 proudly waving the Philippine flag as he declared independence from a balcony that didn’t actually exist until the 1930s. No wonder the carved carabao holding it up looks dazed.
Rear Admiral George Dewey, was invited to the affair but, under orders to avoid contact with the revolutionaries, he decided to read his mail instead.
The actual declaration was made not by Aguinaldo but by Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista, Auditor of War and Special Commissioner designated to make the proclamation.
The sole paleface in the assembly was the mysterious L. M. Johnson, Colonel of Artillery who is often said to have signed the Philippine Declaration of Independence. The declaration itself says it was signed by Riazares “as well as by the only foreigner, a North American subject, Mr. L. M. Johnson, Colonel of Artillery, who attended the meeting…”
He is variously described in history textbooks as Dewey’s secretary and the commander of an American artillery unit. He was neither of these – a rear-admiral of the US Navy would hardly have a full US Army colonel as his secretary, and his name does not appear in the roster of the Olympia. In fact, contrary to widespread belief, he didn’t sign the declaration of Independence either, unless he did it in invisible ink.
Johnson may have been little more than a rubbernecker who was hospitably asked to become part of Philippine history and consented to be a temporary ‘Colonel’ of Aguinaldo’s artillery and a representative of the United States. Given Johnson’s earlier activities in Hawaii and South America, though, American journalist Trumbull White may have been correct when he described him as “actually in charge of the ordinance of the insurgent forces”. According to White, Johnson was cheered and born on the shoulders of celebrating Filipinos with enthusiasm.
Who actually was L.M. Johnson? He was a former hotel-keeper from Shanghai who was trying his luck with the Xbox of the time, the cinematograph. He may be the same L. M. Johnson who was a private in the Army of Hawaii in 1894, led by expatriate American businessmen who all seem to be called Dole, which eventually managed to leverage the annexation of Hawaii. L. M. Johnson earned his artillery props at the Battle of Moilili firing a field gun. Apparently a soldier of fortune he also fought in the war between Chile and Peru and elsewhere in South America.
Eventually, Johnson seems to have become a junior partner in an American company that operated the Alhambra theatre on the Escolta, which was sued for debt in August 1901.
There is, in fact, one other signature missing from the declaration of independence, but we’ll leave that till last.
The next step was the ratification of independence at Malolos on September 29. The description of the fine banquet afterwards is best left to Ambeth Ocampo. There were, fact, two banquets that day, for lunch and dinner and both presenting a minor mystery – how did they freeze the frozen strawberry preserves and Mocha ice-cream and chill the Champagne without ice from an ice-plant? The answer is probably in a long-forgotten bit of simple technology known to the grandparents of our grandparents: The food to be chilled was placed in a wooden pail filled with a chemical that produced and endothermic reaction when mixed with water – it got cold enough to freeze water.
All of which became largely moot with the American occupation of the Philippines and Filipinos would have to wait until October 14, 1943 for its next Independence Day. Okay, so it was issued by the Japanese and wasn’t taken seriously, nevertheless, it was another date on the independence calendar.
Next, of course, came July 4, 1946, with appropriate ceremonies and 21-gun salutes from American, Portuguese and Thai warships in Manila Bay. A qualified independence, yes, but even worse, one to be forever overshadowed by that of the United States itself. Inevitably, that inequity rankled. Philippine embassy parties were rather sparsely attended. As a result, the Philippine ambassador to London decided to hold his shindig a few days earlier and scored a hit.
Historian Gabriel Fabella decided enough was enough and in 1956 first floated the idea of changing Philippine Independence Day to June 12 in the Sunday Times Magazine. Over the next few years he continued to push the idea, but few snapped at the bait. In 1959 the Philippine Historical Society adopted a resolution supporting the change but it remained an idea whose time had yet to come. Significantly, his biggest audience came in 1961 in a radio broadcast from Legaspi City.
Then came a little to-do in 1962 between the Philippines and the United States and Presidents Macapagal and Kennedy respectively. The Philippines refused to allow the importation of American Virginia tobacco and powerful tobacco interests in the US Congress blocked the $73 million War Damage Bill that would fulfill post war promises made to the country. President Kennedy was firmly behind the bill and criticized Congress for its “lack of appreciation of the moral obligation the United States owes to the people of the Philippines”.
At the time, Macapagal was scheduled to visit the US. The visit was cancelled and Macapagal coincidentally remembered that, as a Congressman, he’d thought that Independence Day should be changed to June 12, just like Fabella.
As it happened, there was no law designating July 4 as Independence Day, it was merely a national holiday. As businessmen have become increasingly aware in recent years, Presidents can grant a national holiday at the drop of a hat. Macapagal announced June 12 as a national holiday and sent a bill to the Philippine Congress marked urgent to make the day the statutory independence day.
Emilio Aguinaldo was overjoyed at the change to June 12 and fulsome in his praise for Macapagal. Eyeing the Rizal Monument he wondered aloud to Macapagal whether there would ever be a matching Aguinaldo monument.
Efforts to revive the War Damage Bill were eventually successful, and Macapagal expended a great deal of presidential ink to assure Americans that the whole thing was not done in a fit of pique.
While Filipinos rather enjoyed having their own Independence Day their legislators felt otherwise and wanted to find some celebration for July 4. So it was that July 4 became Republic Day and is today known as Fil-Am Friendship Day, not that many folk take notice. With that bit of horse-trading out of the way, Macapagal could sign Republic Act 4186 on August 4, 1964, a little more than two years after he’d first put the measure to Congress as ‘urgent’.
It was, however, too late for Aguinaldo, who died in February 1964 and let us with an intriguing question:
Why didn’t he sign the Declaration of Independence?
