June 21, 2012
“At 12:30 in the afternoon of the first of August 1926, on Kalambuntan Hill, barrio of Bolinawan, municipality of Carcar, province of Cebu, where the mortal remains of General Leon Kilat were interred, there gathered Messrs. Adriano Enriquez, Rev. Fr. Alejo M. Barredo, curate of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente (IFI) of Bacong, Negros Oriental, and Basilio Villegas, nephew of Gen. Leon Kilat, commissioned by the family of the aforementioned general with the goal of verifying the exact location of the mortal remains of the revolutionary general Pantaleon Villegas y Solde, known in the Province of Cebu under the name Don Leon Kilat.”
Thus begins the four-page affidavit in Spanish executed and signed by Fr. Barredo, Villegas with Mariano Mercado, municipal president (equivalent to today’s mayor) of Carcar, and Vicente F. Sarmiento, councilor of the same town. This is one of four documents hidden among the memorabilia of Bishop Fernando Buyser of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente now part of the special collections of the Cebuano Studies Center at the University of San Carlos.
Forgotten for nearly a century, the documents, neatly folded, are accompanied by two silver halide photographs showing the bones of Leon Kilat after these were cleaned. They came to light again quite by accident as I was going through the Buyser collection while doing the Kabilin episode on the Philippine Independent Church last January.
Oh what I would give to have been present at this gathering. This would have been the fulfillment of an archaeologist’s dream, carrying out the excavation of the mortal remains of a revolutionary hero. I had to settle for the second best, holding and reading the documents of the actual exhumation that transpired not just that day but two more days thereafter, when the hero’s remains were finally found and with a surprise!
Present at that hill that fateful day, other than the aforementioned, were a host of other important personages, among them Hilario Abellana, municipal president of the town capital of Cebu as well as the revolutionary generals Gavino Sepulveda and Nicolas Godinez, together revolutionary commanders Elpidio Rama, Andres Abellana, Eduardo Roda, Juan Baraw— all representing the provincial branch of the Asociacion de los Veteranos de la Revolucion. Other than Mercado and councilor Samiento of Carcar was the municipal secretary, Jose V. Magallon, there to represent the Carcar municipal council, while councilor Jose Fortich was also there to represent the municipal council of Cebu.
To those among us who have forgotten him, Don Leon Kilat was the guy who led the Palm Sunday uprising in 1898, which we have come know as Tres de Abril, when the revolution against Spain exploded in Cebu a full five days ahead of schedule. What was supposed to be a well-planned Good Friday (or Ocho de Abril) uprising was hurriedly carried out because, as usual, someone squealed to the authorities who then began rounding up males and arresting anyone who looked suspicious. Fortunately, the revolutionaries prevailed and by the late afternoon that day, Cebu as well as Talisay and El Pardo were in the hands of the Cebuano Katipuneros, a victory that, alas, was not given its fair share of publicity and focus during the 1998 National Centennial Celebrations. (Blame it on Imperial Manila to look for heroes closer to home.)
With victory at hand, Leon Kilat then proceeded to Carcar to bring the revolution there by Holy Thursday. Carcaranons woke up the following day, however, seeing the badly butchered (chop-chop) remains of the revolutionary general, displayed near the church and some meters where his statue stands partly hidden (alas!) right now. Among the documents in the Buyser collection is a hand notation listing names of the actual culprits of this heinous crime that, whether one likes it or not, saved the old heritage houses of Carcar from the bombs that Gen. Adolfo Gonzales Montero, the last Spanish governor of Cebu, promised to unleash from the sea if they joined the revolution. (In contrast, the people of Tuburan readily took up arms and followed the Maxilom brothers, Arcadio, Enemecio and Samuel. Thus one finds no evidence of the Spanish-era pueblo of Tuburan today as it was incessantly bombed from a Spanish gunboat, burning the town while the Carcaronon elite were displaying Leon Kilat’s body to save theirs.)
Next week, the culprits and the surprise in the exhumation.
(Part 2)
June 28, 2012
As promised, I will reveal the identity of the person who killed Gen. Leon Kilat, which in fact confirms the written accounts about his demise in Carcar. On the blank reverse side of what appears to be a trial proof for the cover of the book, “Mga Sinakit sa Auto” written by the Aglipayan priest and novelist Fernando Buyser are the following lines in Cebuano, “Nario Alcuitas – cabo o jefe sa mga nagabuno kang D. Leon entre sa Jueves Santo ug Viernes Santo sa tuig 1898 – sa balay ni Capitan Tioy Barcenilla sa poblacion sa Carcar”. (Nario Alcuitas – chief or head of the murderers of Don Leon on Holy Thursday and Good Friday in the year 1898 – in the house of Capitan Tioy Barcenilla in the poblacion of Carcar.)
The note also identifies the persons who buried the revolutionary general, namely: Victoriano Lausona, Ceferino Ceballos, Damaso Ceballos, Catalino Ceballos, Felipe Canencia, and Domingo Canencia. Of these, only Victoriano was alive during the 1926 exhumation at Kambuntan Hill in Barrio Bolinawan, Carcar (see last week’s column). The caretaker of the Catholic cemetery on which the burial happened is also identified in the note as Felipe Panumban.
Last week I mentioned that it took three days to exhume Leon Kilat’s remains. I stand corrected. It only took two days actually. The first day, Aug. 1, 1926, ended without his remains being found. The members of the expedition team from Cebu (the municipal president Hilario Abellana and the veteran generals of the 1898 Revolution against Spain) left thereafter.
The following day, the excavations were still witnessed by the Aglipyan parish priest of Bacong, Negros, Rev. P. Barredo, and Leon Kilat’s nephew, Basilio D. Villegas, together with Carcar municipal president Mariano Mercado and some councilors as well as the chief of police, Guillermo Teves. Also present was Antonio Kiamko, a reporter of the newspaper “La Revolucion” and many other unnamed persons.
At around 4:50 p.m. of this second day, following directions provided by a certain Kambuntan resident named Luciana Alesna, the team proceeded to excavate. After a depth of one meter, a knee bone was uncovered, eventually leading to the rest of the bones of Leon Kilat. Then a surprise!
As the skull of Leon Kilat was recovered, the excavation proceeded towards his left when suddenly the bones of another individual was unearthed, eventually leading to three other individuals that were apparently interred together with him. Were these three also murdered together with Leon Kilat that fateful Holy Thursday midnight to early Good Friday morning of 1898? Unfortunately, the affidavit I have found does not mention any detail about these other individuals except to say that they were the revolutionaries named Lazaro, Rufo and Andres, whose surnames are unknown (“cuyos apellidos se ignoran”) and that they were interred together with Leon Kilat’s remains. The bones of the three were set aside for transfer to the custody of the Associacion de los Veteranos de la Revolucion in Cebu or to be buried anew at the Municipal Cemetery of Carcar.
From the immediate examination of Kilat’s bones, the team averred that what eventually killed him was blunt-force trauma to the forehead, the continuous blow of a hard object which caused the frontal lobe of the skull to splinter and which must have caused a large amount of blood to literally spray all over the body. It also appeared that Kilat had time to fend off the sharp edges of the bolos as his arm bones showed deep cut marks that would have resulted only from a sharp object. The spaces between these cut marks are but to the mere inch from each other, about three or four in each arm bone.
Next week we shall tackle in conclusion the political drama that unfolded in both media and the electoral field after Leon Kilat’s bones were finally exhumed.
(Conclusion)
July 5, 2012
More than the recovery of Gen. Leon Kilat’s physical remains, his exhumation at the old cemetery of Kambuntan Hill in Carcar revived fading memories of his betrayal. Rep. (later senator) Vicente Rama, then running under the Democrata Party, made Leon Kilat’s death a political issue against his opponent in the 1928 elections for the 3rd Legislative District, Maximino Noel. It was Noel who won the vote but a subsequent recount gave Rama the seat, winning 3,716 votes against Noel who garnered 3,637. Noel was supported by Don Sergio Osmeña while Rama was with the group of Don Mariano Jesus Cuenco, by then a bitter enemy of Osmeña.
What was Maximino’s role in Leon Kilat’s death? In truth he was probably barely out of his teens when the 1898 betrayal in Carcar happened. It was actually his father, Capitan Municipal Florencio “Inciong” Noel who figured prominently in the death of the revolutionary general. For while the other local leaders of Carcar did not want Kilat killed, Noel insisted that he had to die before the sun rose on Good Friday 1898. Among those who hesitated was Capitan Isyong Barcenilla on whose house Leon Kilat had stayed for the night, the same house where the crime eventually unfolded.
One can probably say that following the exhumation, this singular issue of Leon Kilat’s betrayal not in the hands of Spanish authorities but of his fellow Cebuanos—albeit representing the local town elite of Carcar—eventually led to the end of the political future of any Noel in Carcar. The presence of Municipal President Mariano Mercado alone speaks volumes of the changing tide in Carcar nearly 20 years after the assassination. And for some time after this, the issues refused to die down. The Freeman even delved into this sad fate of Leon Kilat in Carcar in a series of articles published in six issues in 1929, some three years after the exhumation, pointing the accusing finger at Noel and the local town leaders.
The decades have since numbed the pain of the betrayal and very few people, except academics, talk about this ignominious moment in Cebuano history nowadays. It may be important to note that this kind of betrayal of its own hero or heroes appears to be a common theme in the Revolution against Spain, with the most glaring being the execution of Andres Bonifacio by a factionalized Katipunan.
If there is one lesson to be learned from this, it is that betrayal is always a possibility in times of uncertainty, where everyone is on survival mode. While one cannot justify what Carcar’s elite families did to Leon Kilat, one must also realize that they made a choice and eventually lived to see how people judged them.
And so as one marvels at the old ancestral houses of Carcar dating to the late Spanish period, one must do so with the knowledge that Carcar survived the promised Spanish bombardment and burning of the town center in 1898 because its leaders made a choice no matter how ignominious and despicable. It is therefore perhaps to the memory of Leon Kilat as much as to those who sought to preserve these houses and the old town through the decades that these houses ought to also be celebrated.
* * *
SOURCE:
1. Bersales, Jobers (2012, June 21). Exhuming Leon Kilat. INQUIRER.net. Retrieved from http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/216437/exhuming-leon-kilat
2. Bersales, Jobers (2012, June 28). Exhuming Leon Kilat. INQUIRER.net. Retrieved from http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/219677/exhuming-leon-kilat-2
3. Bersales, Jobers (2012, July 5). Exhuming Leon Kilat. INQUIRER.net. Retrieved from http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/223859/exhuming-leon-kilat-3
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