Chapter 18

            At 2:30 in the morning, the day following, May 11, a Spanish trooper waved a white flag over the parapet of the fortified area. It was still quite dark, still nighttime dark, and the rebels saw it when flashes of explosions burst over the battlefield. It also helped them to see when a northeast wind blew and the white flag fluttered in the air. Although it could be also that the trooper had waved it more vigorously.

            From the Zamboangueño trenches a great roar rumbled. It was like a virus infecting them because soon either end of the trenches was cheering and shouting hurrahs.

            But the cheers and hurrahs did not last long because between flashes of light the rebels saw a lone figure coming toward them waving a smaller piece of cloth, maybe a kerchief or a sleeve torn from the seams, also white or light color, tied at the end of his rifle barrel. He was trotting slowly, and near the trenches started to shout his peaceful intention. He was making sure that in the dark and having to depend only in the flashes of explosions the insurrectos would not mistake him who was coming in peace for a belligerent trooper.

            ‘Alto!’ voices rang out from the trenches. ‘Who comes?’

            ‘I am a Spanish officer … from the Spanish garrison,’ said he. ‘I wish to speak to him who is in command.’

            From the trenches a voice rose,

           ‘Qué quieres?   What do you want?’ Seconds later, the same voice directed down the trench said, --- ‘Sergeant, sergeant!’

            Somewhere from the dark, a small middle-aged man climbed out of the trench, with the help of his men. Cupping his rump with their hands, they pushed him up from behind and nearly toppled him over the edge of the embankment. Flashes of explosion and bombardment weaved above the combatants. A streak of light struck the old sergeant and his men.

               ‘Un Viejo! Are we fighting old men? thought the Spanish officer, continuously waving the piece of pale rag at the end of his rifle. ‘I have a message from the Honorable Governor General Don Blas Grado y Cuartocruz, commandant of the Fort of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, knight of …’

            ‘Mensaje? Enough,’ voices from the trenches cried. ‘Tell your commandant we accept the surrender of the plaza and the Fort.’ Laughter rang through the sporadic darkness of the trenches.

            ‘Por favor, be reminded there is nothing to laugh at in this war,’ the Spanish officer said. Hardly could the rebels see him in the pre-dawn shadows, save during the spark of the bombardment. ‘The message is important and serious.’

            Rayo! Are you surrendering or not?’ a single voice said, gruff but smooth as coming from a young man; it was not the old sergeant’s.

            ‘---Una mensaje,’ went on the Spanish officer, ‘from his Most Excellency, the commandant of the Fort.’

            An insurrecto peered over the embankment and jeered,

            ‘Si-si, si, don seňor commandante … commandante, muy Excellente commandante.’

            ‘Mierda!   Excrement! Fanfarrón!   Bluffer!’ curses echoed from the dugout.’

            Stepping back, he lowered the butt of his rifle and turned his face to the piece of cloth looped at the end of his barrel. It fluttered a bit in the wind blown in from the northern mountains. Its breath reached the parapet of the fortified area and fanned the bigger white flag there. I had better speak with the old sergeant, he thought. An old man perhaps would be reasonable than these bastardos jovenes!        

            ‘His Excellency is calling a truce and a ceasefire,’ he shouted. His voice jumped through the before-dawn half dark across the cratered battlefield to the Zamboangueño insurrectos.

            ‘I do not hear you,’ a shadow before after embankment shouted back. It was the old sergeant.

            ‘Qué?

            ‘I said, “I do not hear you,”’ said the old sergeant. ‘I am an old man.’

            But through the trenches resounded a mocking laughter, young, boisterous, young as only young voice can.

            ‘I am serious,’ said the Spanish officer, angrily, very red in the face, the rebels imagined, as only Spanish face tend to color cherry in anger.

            This again from young voices and now mixed with gruff, rough man’s cynical incredulity.

            ‘Did you say, sir-officer, that the governor general Grado wants a ceasefire? That the white flag your soldier waved above the garrison does not mean you are surrendering?’

            ‘No-no; the commandant General Don Grado wants only to talk. Talk for truce, a ceasefire.’

            ‘Coňo de su puta madre!   Cunt of your mother-whore!’ sharp, swear words in Chabacano.

            Again, stepping back a bit, the Spanish officer wiped his face on the piece of pale cloth. Though it was cold that pre-dawn, his sweat pores were open and had softened. ‘I resent … very much,’ he said; maybe trembling with anger; maybe likely inauspicious fear. He raised the butt of his rifle higher from the ground, tipping the white rag in sight. At the end of the barrel, the piece of rag quivered. ‘That is not the way to talk with a gentleman,’ he managed to say although fear now ran down to his toes.

            A faint light over the eastern horizon, filtering through the heavy dark clouds there. Still the rebels could not see him quite well. Again, they could see him only through flashes and bursts of the cannonade and bombardment; that was the time also that the sky lit a bit, the battlefield shook. Though they assumed the Spanish officer puffing up his chest, as boastful Spaniards would at most times, particularly talking down to an Indio, him they thought inferior --- even about to quiver in fear, as his white flag was quivering at the tip of his rifle in the wind.

             The old sergeant stepped up. Behind him, lean, lithe shadows climbed out of the trench. The lithe shadows followed him, silently like ants, no like rats after a crumb to be precise.

            ‘Mierda!’ complained the old sergeant. ‘Why did you raise a white flag if you did not mean to surrender?’

            Across the expanse of scarred earth between him and the old sergeant, the Spanish officer gazed emptily. Closer, closer the rebel sergeant moved. Not a step behind were the other rebels. He could see him and them clearly, intermittent moveable forms in flickers of light. He was in danger; their movements were suspicious. Quicker than the other times, he retreated before the old one and the dark shadows, he swearing, ‘Los bastardos! Before the sergeant or the other troopers could get any closer … ‘devour me,’ he would tell his comrades back at the Fort, he cried, ‘No-no. Do not touch me!’

‘Hang him.’

‘...for bringing bad news!’

‘No! for deceiving us. Surrender…? You fake. You and your commandant …’

Fast, the raised rifle by his flank, the Spanish officer spun on his heels, half ran, and hesitating, half walked to disguise the terror that shook him, back to the fortified area.

‘Hijo de cabra, bastardos!  Son of a goat, bastards!’

‘Hoy, hoy, hoy! Run you cabròn!’ the rebels shouted after him. ‘Sin guebos,    Without balls, cuckold!’

In the intermittent darkness, the Spanish officer, with his small white flag quivering still, disappeared quickly. And the trooper stopped waving the white flag on the parapet, drawing it in the darkness.

The old sergeant and the young rebels mixed with grown men, belonged to the Zamboangueño Voluntarios and regulares revolucionarios, si.

Among the rebels and the old sergeant were Ambrocio Almazen, hero of the hijacking of the thirteen Spanish steam gunboats, Tiburcio Brocales the filòsofo, and the always-crabbing Severino Lumalocdoc.

No longer with Almazen’s group were the secret- bearer Margarito Singalon of the fishing village of Labuan, and Simon Centeno the secret-keeper also of the same fishing village. When the Spaniards torched the cluster of huts of the Santa Barbara Settlement, flames hurt both men. Simon suffering serious burns; while Singalon was burnt slightly, as he tried to save his compoblano Centeno.

....

The tragic story was that they had just sallied from the trenches, with Centeno among the front troops, minutes before 11:00 o’clock that night of the major offensive. Right into the cluster of huts went Centeno. The Samal and Subanon tribesmen had hastily abandoned it only minutes before the rebel’s assault, even the most hardheaded had fled. These tribesmen were the early settlers of the plaza, as early as those in the Magay Old Community: sometime middle of kuan    something 17^th century. 

In their own trenches before the cluster of houses, the Spaniards had dug in hours earlier, rifles ready with orders to burn the houses and huts.

‘When the insurrectos are inside, you burn the Settlement,’ General Sophez had said.

‘Si, Don General Sophez,’ the Spanish trench men, ready with lit torches, had replied. 

The hero Almazen and the rest could probably have gone around it, I mean around the cluster of huts. But at that moment no one thought of breaking the advance formation and the front troop’s momentum. Also, there had been no order given. Regular soldiers, being robot-like as soldiers are anywhere, told themselves to obey first was their first duty. Further still, this particular group was the prone of the attack. They had the mal suerte to be the first to go through the native Settlement. No such mal suerte for Major Marquez’s left and right flanks, sabes tu. Of a few isolated stunted mangrove trees and scrub that could have slowed them down grew mostly on the open field, east of the advancing company. But they had sort of rushed on to their fate, like water in a fast-flowing, unrocky stream.

....

So, it happened that this group of rebels was just a few meters beyond the edge of the cluster of nipa- and wooden-houses. When suddenly, the Spaniards torched it, and the dry nipa-thatched roofs and brittle sawali-walls quickly burst and roared into flames. At the same instant, the Spanish infantrymen in the trenches started shooting into the Settlement at the insurrectos. Then, the light swivel gunfire of the artillery, lined just a bit behind the Spanish trenches, burst fiercely, and finally the heavy guns from the bastions on the masonry curtain of the fortified area fired their big shells.

Boom boom boom, they went: ra-tat-tat, like that.

In the confusion and chaos, Simon Centeno was separated from the Almazen group. Knowing Centeno’s faulty sense of direction, they did not look for him right away; they thought he was just lost and had always found his way back. Only Singalon took any serious cognizance of his missing compoblano and went to look for him --- or save him if he was trapped in the fire.

Into the burning native Settlement and the leaping flames, Singalon scurried through. Cinders and red coals crackled under his feet, soles fizzed, clouds of ash rose to his shanks and up to his waists. In the swirling smoke his nostrils twitched, eyes burnt and water flowed freely from their ducts.

A quarter of an hour passed when soldiers found Centeno in the cluster of burning houses. He lay about the cinders and glowing coals, badly burnt. The soldiers were from another company, not Singalon’s.

In fact, the soldiers discovered both compoblanos lying not far from each other; Centeno’s charred clothes were pasted on his blistered body. And ashes and burnt pieces of clothes stuck to his scalded flesh.  Puffs of smoke were rising from them.

Several minutes went past before a medical team of three scuttled into the Settlement for the wounded and burnt soldiers. Not a few of the houses were burning still, with flames dying slowly. They carried a stretcher between them. At the edge of the Settlement, they saw the two injured Zamboangueño troopers. The three rushed over to the pair.

‘This one is quite alive,’ one of the three said. He was meaning the fisherman Singalon. ‘Maybe just needs some treatment. Let us take him to emergency.’

‘How about...’ a second one said, examining the other pair, rebel Centeno the secret-keeper. He shook his head.

‘Well?’

‘He is gone, maybe...’

Somebody, maybe the third, said they should be going; must not delay taking the first one to emergency. They went, and as they were nearing the edge of the Settlement, met another medical team going through the rubble of the burnt houses and dying embers, their stretcher empty.

‘No more wounded?’ the second medical team said to the first.

‘Over there...’ said the first team, pointing to the spot where they had been. ‘Your stretcher empty? May as well pick up the other burnt soldier, this one’s companion maybe. Although it maybe quite late for him.’

‘O’kay. On our way.’

The second medical team went to the spot, which was pointed out to them, and through more thick, suffocating cloud of smoke. Somebody coughed. His companion clapped his hands over his nose and mouth and held his breath.

‘Here is the other one,’ said he through his fingers.

‘O’kay,’ said the fellow who had said ‘o’kay’ before.

He and the first one stepped to either end of the wounded soldier, lifted Centeno up and plumped him down sloppily on the stretcher.

‘Is he still alive?’ said either of the two.

‘Cannot tell, too much smoke in my eyes. But he is not moving, perhaps is seriously burnt. Half-dead maybe.’

He wiped water from his eyes on the sleeves of his shirt. The other soldier was sensitive to smoke and gave a second cough.

‘Chinga!    Fuck!’ 

With Centeno seriously burnt between them on the stretcher, maybe half-dying, as one of the stretcher-bearers observed, they exited from the burning Settlement, quietly following the first medical team. Now both medical teams crossed the narrow plain toward the direction of the emergency hospital. It was out there in the middle of the woods. It was not far from the battlefield, in the next barrio in ‘upper’ Santa Catalina.

....

That the May 11 white flag was not ‘surrender’ but a truce to negotiate: ‘what is good for all’ --- it was rumored that saying that General Sophez did not blink even.

And yet, in spite of this frustration and disappointment, General Tenorio immediately created a commission. It was called the Zamboanga Revolutionary Army commission, and met with Don Grado in the Spanish Transatlantic flagship Zaragosa early that same morning.

As hostage for the safe return of the commissioners, rebels held a Spanish officer called Colonel Olvis at their advance camp. Curiously, not one of our chroniclers or old folk ever mentioned him again, and so as in their journals, the colonel would completely disappear in our story.

According to local accounts, the members of the commission were all very prominent citizens of the pueblo: Vicente Victoriano Rivera, Francisco Tarroza, Juan Solis, Epifanio Espiritu, Juan D.  Francisco, Manuel Natividad, and its head Don Salvador Salas. But no Alcalde Laureano Artang, who wished so much to be el numero uno ... el presidente. Obviously, since the top Zamboangueño officers were suspicious of Alcalde Artang, they excluded him from the war commission panel..

Even to these days, progenies of the revolutionary war commissioners are to be found living in Zamboanga still, though the Tarrozas and the Riveras, very popular and prominent then in my youth, are thinning and seldom heard of, ay.

El General wanted results immediately. ‘If there are no impediments for the cessation of hostilities,’ he told the commissioners, gravely, the war should end right away.’ So, the Zamboanga commissioners and their Spanish counterparts worked on past the hour of noon, without a break, there on board the Transatlantic flagship Zaragosa.

Lunch was quickly prepared and served, the commissioners lunching with Don Grado seated at the head of the table. None could not notice how it looked just as if there was no war, that we were not fighting each other, the Spaniards there on one side and us on the other. For Governor General Don Blas Grado loomed at the head of the table, lording it over us like a chivalrous and great host in early days before the insurrection. ‘Cre tu con migo,’ Don Salas would report on the civil, well-mannered atmosphere to General Gueremon later. ‘Believe you me.’

Immediately after lunch, the conference commenced again, and the hour of siesta passed unnoticed. No one took a nap, not even the Spaniards notoriously addicted to long siestas, they that would drop everything rather than miss it. And yet, even with this sacrifice and toiling straight without a break for coffee or hot chocolate from early morning and into twilight floundering over the harbor --- the governor general and the Zamboanga war commissioners were unable to  thresh out any agreement for truce.

Thus, the commissioners left the flagship Zaragosa frustrated with no solution how to end the fighting. One whole day wasted, Susmariosep!     Jesús, Mariá y José!

....

Late afternoon, same day, at the rebel headquarters in Santa Barbara, an adjutant read the report of the head of the war commission Don Salas. Then an initial colloquy among the commissioners followed later. No clarification from General Tenorio, preferring rather to hear the end of the report before commenting. But he could not wait to express his pique at the Fort’s commandant.

‘Not only pig-headed is the governor general Grado,’ cut in Don Tenorio, somewhere past the middle of the report, ‘but a man of too much pride and vanity.’ After a pause, he went on, ‘But not unexpected of Spaniards, or naturally boastful Spaniards, do you not think so?’ 

Leaning his head to one side of his shoulder, he continued:

‘Even if it is already quite obvious to all, and I mean especially the Spaniards themselves, hó, o, that only hours away or at most a day when we will overrun their trenches and fortifications destroyed …, pues tell me, gentlemen, how come Don Grado it is who is giving us conditions for truce? Can anyone of you here, frankly, explain that to me?’

‘Unfortunately, Don Gueremon, those are the conditions of Fort commander don Grado,’ confirmed head commissioner Don Salas, ‘as read just now by Don Noche. In particular, that he keeps the hundreds of Remington rifles. And at no circumstances shall we occupy the Fortaleza itself.’ The other members nodded their heads. One or two simply stared past Don Salas to the wall behind him.

‘Si, si; it is difficult to understand, y el hombre is stubborn. He would not budge an inch and yield to our most reasonable and small demands.’

‘Who really asked for truce?’ General Tenorio asked again, raising his voice, unbearded face scowling. ‘Us...? Or them Spaniards! Did we ask for the truce, hah? Was it you, or me, gentlemen, who raised the white flag?’ A few more decibels his voice rose and continued rising. ‘Contrary is the situation now, do you not see? That is how the Spaniards are manipulating it .… How just the opposite picture they make it look to us!’

‘Sabes tu el maga custumbre de los Españoles,’ said Tarroza, in Chabacano dialect: ‘Smug and boastful …up to now they’re thinking that they still are the “rulers” and “masters” of this part of the world. In their eyes, we are nothing but their vassals and enclavos    slaves still. We have to take off our hat and bow to the friars and kiss their ring.’

‘Coňo!    Cunt!’

Don Salas straightened his neck, lifted his face toward the direction of el General, who had stood up from his arm chair during the reading of the report and leveled his head on his shoulders. Had not sat back since, hó, o. He was so dithered and irritated.

‘Don Grado claims that their garrison will already be relieved,’ said the Secretary General Salas, by the Americans in their warships, Ohio andCavite. For expatriation to Spain. Soon. This was agreed upon by the concerned parties,’ he said; ‘meaning themselves and the Norte Americanos, in the Treaty of Paris … December last. He even said to us: “Why do we have to quarrel? Let us leave in tranquility and peace. Were we not your protector, against the Moros and the foreign invaders like the British and Dutch?”’

On the General’s left temple crooked veins and furrows arched up his brow. The brazen lie had struck and revived a betrayal in the past, during his great-grandfather’s time, reviving it instantly.

Don Tenorio interrupted him, a hand flinging out although there was no one to expel his anger: the enemy had melted in time and space. Pues, instead of his fists marking vengeance, it burst into words.

‘ --- And when they abandoned us in 1662 to defend Manila, where that coward Governor General Lara had holed himself like a rat,’ said Don Tenorio, ‘from a threatened invasion by the notorious Chinese pirate Koxinga, ha! Who was fresh from his conquest of Formosa from the Hollanders, which, I mean the invasion, gentlemen, never came, coño. Because the Chinese pirate caught a virus and died before reaching our shore: ‘a miraculous intervention from heaven’ claimed the coward Lara. “Miraculous”! Mi bulí!   My arsehole! Ha-ha.’ Shortly after a wee laughter, he bristled at the thought, the treachery of over three hundred years roaring in his mind still; freshened by memories and folklore of his ancestors. 

‘Even the ghost of my great-grandfather could not stomach the insult, the treachery that long ago through the centuries....’

Must control my temper, hijo de cabra! As leader of my people should never lose it. Patience. What are a few more days after waiting for centuries? Hó, o. Bracing himself, he went on in a low voice:

‘Ay, what have they to say to that, hah? Puñeta! ... Leaving our ancestors alone to defend Zamboanga against all enemies, not just against Moslems ... like our neighbors, the Lobos and the Gornlics.’ He stopped, clutched his hands on the edge of the long table and raised his chin from his chest, leaning hunched forward. When he spoke again, it was not as heated as before.

‘No problem ... I mean, they can leave Zamboanga any time they wish, and I promise not a single hair in a Spaniard’s head will be plucked. But General Sophez surrenders, no! Let us be decent and humble with words … turns over to us the over 1,000 Remington rifles.

‘I want those rifles! The new comers Norte Americanos must not have them, even a single rifle … no no! y cojones to whatever they agreed in that Treaty. The gall even to think ... sinvergüenzas!  shameless!bastante ya    enough already --- tell him.’

Silence.

Major Marquez said that honestly he was not aware if such an agreement was stipulated in the Treaty of Paris. Huah, maybe Don Grado just made that up? On the other hand, he was sure that not two months ago Governor General Grado was already asking the North Americans to relieve the garrison here.

The major was not looking at anyone, not even at General Tenorio. It was as if he were talking aloud to himself. Now he paused for several seconds, before beginning now to speak again. This time he spoke directly to the other commissioners.

‘If you, gentlemen, remember, Governor General Grado had asked for relief when the Moros and our Filipino compatriots were harassing the Spanish garrisons and forts in Jolo, Tawi-Tawi, and Cotabato. But obviously General Otis did not send any war vessels or sea transport ... y por qué?   and why?’

No responds.

Sidling to one side of the table, Captain Morales supported his lean, wiry-body with his big hands on the tabletop. He bent toward his fellow officers and the revolutionary war commissioners. Whisper-like words emitted from his lips, his head askance on his shoulders. He seemed to gaze at all present from one side of his bent face, obliquely. And, as if in comic imitation, those at the table, from either end of it, likewise bent their heads sidewise on their shoulders.

‘That is true, the truth,’ said Captain Morales, ‘really … but no truth of Don Grado’s claim ... what did he say? --- that the North Americans are waiting only for word from the Spaniards to advise them when they want to be relieved and expatriated to Spain? Muri pa yo.    May I die. Ay, General Otis never said that, si-si.  Or why are the Norte Americanos not doing kuan    blank anything still to help in expatriating them?

‘Instead, the CSS Ohio and USS Cavite put up only this blockade of our sores. The fact is General Otis did not even bother to answer to their request. Nor commit any troops to relieve the Spanish garrisons in Mindanao. Hó, o.’

Because late March or mid–April, some 50,000 American troops were tied up fighting the Filipino rebels in the North. General E. S. Otis, United States military governor of the Philippines, did not wish to destabilize his Northern campaign. This would happen for sure if he were to send troops and naval vessels to relieve the Spanish garrisons in Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago.

He had asked for reports from captains Browne and Clark, who were around the Zamboanga peninsula; reports were not encouraging. The Zamboangueño insurrectos were very well entrenched and armed. General Otis estimated he would need more than 2,000 troops to invade Zamboanga, and some war vessels to cruise the Sulu Sea. 

He did not have these many troops to spare, or additional war vessels. Nothing he could do, save to make use of what he already had in the area, the Ohio and Cavite warships. Thus, a sea blockade while the U.S. command sat on their arse that month of May. Like a contented dog with its bone, the Norte Americanos watched ‘the fool Spaniards and Zamboangueño insurrectos bloody each other.’

In a journal, an American officer put ink to paper describing the real going-ones in the South --- without the ‘prejudice of history as written by the victor.’ Was it Napoleon who said that? Obviously, it was farthest from the American officer’s thoughts that his journal would get into the hands of a 21st century Zamboangueño Indio. Here was what he wrote:

‘For the capture of these arms from the hijacked thirteen Spanish gunboats by the Zamboangueño insurrectos caused it to be imprudent to land troops at Zamboanga and try to hold the town with any force which we could spare from Luzon.’ And moreover, ‘Captain Browne had been holding the harbor of Zamboanga with the CSS Ohio for some time ... and because of a presumable  armed resistance if we attack, Zamboanga in the meanwhile was left to look after her own affairs, while the naval blockade continued to watch the adjoining waters.’

An unbiased account pictured it this way.

....

We continue with our story:

Commissioner Tarroza directed his eyes at Don Salas. He said, ‘Yes, yes, Governor General Grado is not disposed to change his mind on surrendering the rifles.’ He shook a hand in the air. --- ‘and the plaza also if he could have his way, but willingly give anything to the Norte Americanos ... never to us!

‘Hermanos, caballeros …that’s the way I see it, too. That is how it is: final. Coño!’

 Behind one end of the long table, General Tenorio straightened up, neck stiff, before saying, ‘Pues, what are we waiting for?’ He had hoped that the fighting would stop. A truce held even if it was just a truce, not a capitulation.

But no! Surrendering to a mestizo would smirch and smudge the pride, vanity, honor and dignity of a Spaniard. Or worse to an Indio, as Filipinos were then called by the Spaniards, because of a Portuguese explorer’s error in geography. So be it ... rayo! 

Silently he stared, from one to the other end of the long table. Faces lifted, the rebel officers waited for his command. If faces could speak without sounds emitting from the mouth, without jaws clapping, they were saying, Do we attack again ... now!

‘No, no; not immediately … late tonight, yes, late at night,’ he said, just as if he had read their thoughts; but would not agree to the time proximity of the attack. It could wait a while; this time there was no hurry, urgency. He turned in particular to his two top military officers. ‘Major Marquez ... Captain Morales,’ he said, ‘make all necessary preparations to renew the assault we started yesterday. But late, late tonight … enough to give our troops a little rest. They deserve it. And the Spaniards will not be expecting it, at such late hour tonight, say ten-eleven o’clock tonight....Muchas gracias, gentlemen, Don Salas, to all the commissioners, good ... good work.’ But his voice sounded bleak. 

Chapter 19

            Just when it was getting dark, after the officers and civil officials left the conference, an aide came in. He informed the general that his sandile  mistress Juanita Bualan had just arrived from her village.

She was the middle-child of Thimuay Mangura Bualan, of the coastal village of Siocon, about 100 kms northwest of Zamboanga pueblo. Juanita was the Subana sandile    mistress of General Tenorio, who had a weakness for young, strong-limbed women. Juanita was simple and innocent in her ways, as Subanas were before they become Christians; reserved in the native way of steeped humility. But she had a fiery, motherly urge to keep her lover Don Gueremon away from harm. So great was her concern for him that every battle the General fought she died a thousand deaths, so she told him.

            Many times, not just before this visit, Don Tenorio entreated her never to come to his advance headquarters. It would be an embarrassment, although his suite already knew of his licentiousness and liaisons. So did his wife, Milagros, her that had been taciturn of his sandiles.

            At one point strongly warned his Subana sandile Juanita he would stop seeing her, if she came. And yet, she made this trip. She had no fear for her life. It was for his life and losing him that she feared. He suspected that in her simple mind but strong woman, lover, instinct, she knew he had not meant those terrible words, since how could he ever leave her? … ay, not see her!

            She had taken an outrigger-canoe, arriving at sunset in the coastal barrio of Labuan, thirty kms. northwest of Zamboanga. The two rowers unfurled the sail when there was wind, and, not to lose time, rowed briskly when it stopped.

            A few hours more and they came upon the Subanon village of Cawa-Cawa. They had not left the west coast, from where they started.

            In Cawa-Cawa (native word for a huge pot), they disembarked and went to see the Subano thimuay    leader of the people. She gave him her father’s greetings, as she was instructed to and requested permission to pass through his village. A kin of Juanita Bualan’s father, the thimuay here had Juanita and her rowers fed well, gave her a pair of new rowers, plus a guide to lead her to General Tenorio’s advance headquarters. Her own weary rowers, pleased with this exchange, were to remain in the village for a much-needed rest --- until the return of Juanita and the trip back to Siocon.

            Juanita Bualan and her guide took the difficult and longer route, one which went through the swamps and woods, instead of across the plain along the coastline: the much shorter route; but she had no wish to expose herself unnecessarily to Spanish patrols constantly out on reconnaissance. General Sophez feared the insurrectos might land new forces along his southwest coastlines. So, he kept his patrols constant and active on southwest of the island.

....

            When Juanita Bualan entered the Spartan quarters, a fragrance of the forest and sea flowed behind her. Then the half-lit room was filled with the expanse of this invisible fragrance and the crescent night. In the half-light of the oil lamps, her strong limbs were barely visible to his naked eye. The thighs rippled underneath her oblong malong, spangling waves of rivers ... so he imagined. General Tenorio felt tight and strung like a bow. 

‘I knew you would come, princessita mia,’ he said as she approached him. ‘And you know how angry I would be if you had strictly followed my orders: not to come here, ever ...’ 

‘You are not angry with me then?’

‘No-no, of course, I am not mad at you. How can I be with my fair princessita?’

‘I had to come,’ she responded, halting before the camp bed, ‘even against your wishes. Perdòna me, querido.’

‘I know ...’

‘I fear that this is the last time ...’ Suddenly, a lump rose to her throat. Her concern and love for him she had meant to tell him failed to become words. He held her hands; she remained standing before him, barefooted, since it was her tribe’s custom to leave slippers or foot-coverings before entering a house. ‘Do you love me as much as you love your woman, Milagros?’ she said.

Don Gueremon knew she could not see his eyes in the half darkness, and yet made no reply. His voice might quiver, deceiving him, he feared. He could lie, yes, por què no! But why lie? Enough lies in the world! Pues, nada. ‘You do not answer?’ she asked.

He evaded giving her a reply by diverting her train of talk, reminding her of having disobeyed him. But his voice was unconvincing, too soft, almost a whisper.

He said, ‘You disobeyed me’---manifesting she come closer by patting the edge of the bed in the half-lit room. She seated herself beside him and turned her face toward his. He felt her eyes on his in the half darkness.

She said: ‘Only to be near you, querido. For I fear for you ... did I not say that? Already? How do I know that after this I will see you again? Ay, may gulay, the god-guardian of our tribe, protect you from all harm for me.’ 

Her hands lay awkwardly by her flanks, and Juanita turned her face, looking down emptily from the hard camp bed onto the dirt floor. 

‘My father said there are many evils in this world,’ she said, after a while. On her lap, she placed a hand. ‘Some you can vanquish, and others you cannot. The Spaniards are one of those evils you cannot vanquish. So why fight them?’

‘We will defeat them, you will see,’ he assured her, sounding much harsher than he had intended. ‘Equality and freedom are our weapons ... all over the world, particular in France, and these weapons have proved triumphant over evils like the Spanish oppressors.’

Juanita had no idea at all of the meaning of those two words, though she had sometimes heard her querido   lover speak of them; but really she did not understand anything about ‘equality’ and ‘freedom’…. What are they? She consented to be baptized a Christian to please him, but politics was for men such as her querido, as it was with her father, the thimuay. France was a country far, far away, he once told her, where they fought for ‘equality, fraternity, and freedom’... but they were mere words to her, meaningless, innocuous words, which brought no image she knew of to her head.

‘We have little time,’ she said, suddenly realizing that time was flitting fast. She lifted her hand from her lap and gently put it down on his: she thinking We have been talking too long, wasting too precious time when we should be making love. ‘I must be back before father worries why I have not returned yet.’

When finally she gave herself to him, totally, wholly, the fragrance of the forest and the ripple of the river overwhelmed him. He felt like an ancient gladiator being offered a woman on his hard Spartan bed the night before his fight to an unpredictablemaňana    tomorrow. Only this fight was for an idea, an aspiration for tomorrow’s Filipinos; the other fight, the gladiator’s fight was physical: to prove his prowess, his dominance over his adversity. On the contrary, this one was not just physical; it had ideas and things that were intangible and priceless.

Before leaving his bed, she told him he could always find allies and protectors among her people, her Subanon tribe.

‘I also came to tell you that with us, the Subanons, you will always have a sanctuary. There you will always find loyalty and love,’ she said. ‘If things do not go well with your revolution … then flee towards Siocon. My father thimuay has already prepared our people in case you have to hide from the Spaniards.’

‘Not from the Spaniards, querida. They will be gone tomorrow.’ He was about to add:

‘But from the Norte Americanos, them that defeated Admiral Montojo in Manila Bay, them with their iron warships will be the next and stronger adversary. At the moment, the North Americans know, they know they cannot fight us. Not while fighting at the same time General Aguinaldo in Luzon, and expect victory still.’

But not a word of this left his lips, in order to spare her from worry and a boring monologue.

‘Tell your father muchassissimas gracias for thinking of my welfare,’ he said instead. ‘And the warriors he sent me. I have always thought well of your father thimuay, princessita, and bear great respect and admiration for him. But let us hope and pray to the Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception there will be no need for me to seek sanctuary in your village of Siocon.’

With those last words from the General, the Subana Juanita quietly left their camp bed and slipped out of the Spartan quarters into the night.

If not for the lit torches round the camp, she could not have found her way back to her guide. It was very dark outside, as if a lunatic had half-splashed the sky with pit.

Meanwhile, bitten by swarms of swamp mosquitoes while waiting, the guide was pleased to see her. Immediately, the guide led her back to the fishing village of Cawa-Cawa. From there the two new rowers, given her by the thimuay, put her in a canoe and paddled her back to Labuan. From there, this time with her own two rowers rowing, in the pitch darkness of night, they proceeded back to her tribal land of Siocon.

Chapter 20

About 7:00 o’clock that evening, hours before the planned renewal of the assault, General Tenorio met only with his two top officers, Major Marquez and Captain Morales, in his advance headquarters in Santa Barbara.

‘We cannot waste any more time,’ he said to both. ‘The plaza should be in our hands the next two days ... we must not fail. Ay, the more time Don Grado has in his hands … the more opportunity to make secret deals with the Norte Americano General Otis. I do not trust those Norte Americanos. I swear to both of you ... the coňo su nana    cunt of their mothers will be our next enemy. They are just waiting for us to weaken or for themselves to grow stronger before attacking us. Like vultures.’

‘Si, General, said Major Marquez. ‘Our Zamboangueño Voluntarios and regular forces will be at the front of the attack tonight.’

Undaunted, Captain Morales assured el General the full force of his artillery and to send in his troops past the Old Community of Magay and before the palisade of the fortified area before midnight, he promised.

‘Rest assure, Don Gueremon, we will be there an hour after we attack. This I promise el General.’

Fighting words ... but can the captain do it? I know of no instance he has failed to keep his words.

‘Muy bien, muy bien,’ he said. Am I glad I have two officers I can fully trust, unlike that vain, boastful alcalde local de las rancherias ... does nada pero hace intrigas y chismes   nothing but makes intrigues and gossips and pose himself as el presidente.

‘Indeed, we will get to the palisade and the masonry curtain tonight,’ the major was saying. ‘We must neutralize the orillon and the cavalier there on the fortified area.’

If he was not sufficiently confident of success earlier, both officers’ assurances and optimistic attitude boasted him. Surely, this time they will succeed to overrun the Spanish trenches and the fortifications.

‘All that would be very much desired,’ he said; quite reserved to tell them absolutely what he felt really: his doubts, oscillation sometimes, and yet at certain moments, like now, great astonishing confidence somehow saturated them. He, instead, reminded them the importance of coordinating all their actions to ensure victory that night.

‘Is Lieutenant Fermin at the eastern front?’

‘Si, General Tenorio ... waiting for further orders.’ Then, almost at the same time, both Marquez and Morales said,

‘We can always rely on him. He is at the wet land of Rio Hondo, just along the fringes of the mangrove swamp; camped there since the truce.’

‘Muy bien. Tell him to probe the northeast walls, again, where the old entrance of the Fort used to be,’ said General Tenorio. ‘That is the weakest part of the wall there… the workers merely covered it up with masonry when they placed Our Lady’s niche permanently on its wall there…’ He stopped, recalling that bullets or shrapnel must not strike the Immaculate Conception’s icon or niche even accidentally. It will surely bring us mala suerte... bad luck, since the Our Lady has always protected us from the Moros and from natural calamities.

‘But look how we pay her in return... by defacing her niche? Dios mio!’

‘Will send my adjutant with your specific instructions to the young lieutenant,’ said Major Marquez.

‘And where is General Sophez?’ asked General Tenorio, not looking at either officer, but gazing in front of him. ‘I do not trust myself if I don’t know where he is, me cago ... that one general is sharp. He is always there among his troops, unlike those Spanish officers before. You know, the ones we are fighting now are different. Take that ingeniero who had no business being there, not being a soldier, really. But there he was repairing the masonry curtain and ramparts, and being himself shot and wounded.  Jesùs!’

‘I saw him often at the northwest orillon,’ said Captain Morales, ‘if not at the bulwarks near the Jesuit compound watching us ... like an eagle.’

‘Una águila ... and Captain Calvo?’ said General Tenorio.

‘At the bulwarks of the fortified area,’ said Major Marquez, ‘if he is not with his artillery down there. Sometimes down at the trenches.  He is everywhere since a bullet struck Engineer Jimenez; my adjutant informed me that his wounds  are not serious.... He is at the Fort, I assume, where they’re taking care of his wounds. They brought Jimenez there because Lieutenant Fermin’s bowmen partly burnt the hospital in the fortified area... last night. Not really intentional ... Seňor Fermin stopped it before the structure was about completely to be burnt down.’

‘ … Aahh, burnt?’ his mind was far away, no longer with Engineer Jimenez, nor the burning of the hospital, too. ‘Probe, probe,’ said General Tenorio. ‘Tell Lieutenant Fermin to probe the northeast walls, particularly after the hospital. There, where I said used to be the main entrance of the Fort when the Spaniards first built it. And again, remind Fermin does not even scratch what is our culture, our inheritance: the icon of Our Lady of the Immaculada Concepciòn.’

‘Yes, General.’

‘And tell him to cut off all the water sources from the Tumaga River to the moats of the Fortaleza, if that has not been done yet.’ He paused, probably remembering the poisoning of the river and pozos    water wells by Alcalde Artang. And of course, he had not forgotten the failed assassination.

Did he now swear, curse at those whom he thought were responsible for nearly getting himself murdered? How could he forget it, since he was only this far from being dead? All would have been lost ... even before the main assaults to take the plaza were about to begin.

‘Probe and harass the Spaniards there,’ he repeated. ‘Nobody expected the lieutenant to come down the river Santa Barbara-Tumaga, midnight last night, not even General Sophez, to strike them from the east that late .... perhaps, we can do that again tonight ... that is the only point we can get as near to the Fort without taking the Fort itself ... indeed, ha-ha.’

‘And Alcalde Artang …’ said Captain Morales, his voice fading away.

‘He seems to be on our side once again,’ said General Tenorio. Just in time, he cut off a burst of cough-like laugh before it filled up his chest.

None would miss the point that el General had said it in mockery. Because even in the dark, with just petrol lamp lighting the darkness, his eyes glinted in its flickering flame, and definitely either officer had not just imagined it.

Certainly, yourself could not have helped it, too, if in Don Gueremon’s shoes. You know, to take the opportunity at jabbing sarcastic at the mayor of Cabonegro.

‘I will tell him myself,’ General Tenorio went on, like an afterthought; ‘that we need all the artillery we have to pound the Spaniards in their trenches and there in the fortified area. Particularly, the high-caliber guns hijacked from the thirteen gunboats, which he had insisted taking to his barrio.... I will tell him  ... very clear, yes?’

‘And what hour did you say we start the assault, Don Gueremon?’ both officers spoke all at once, sort of confirming.

‘Some hours from now ... we will attack again ... about ten o’clock tonight.’

‘Very well, General.’ Again, both officers replied nearly in unison.

....

And so, at about past 10:00 or so that evening the Zamboanga insurrectos renewed the attack, firing their heavy the artillery first. Made you think it was the Chinese New Year, as the sky lit dazzlingly and a canopy of flashing light arched above the plaza of Zamboanga. Then the shouts and screams of the attacking troops.

‘Viva, viva la revoluciòn!’

‘Arriba Zamboanga!’

Now, thousands of regular revolucionarios and Zamboangueño Voluntarios and the Deportados leaped from their trenches; and then, bolted across the open field like spiked deer. In front of the fortified area and palisade, they started firing their rifles, sending missiles and bullets at the Spaniards there.

The immediate targets, which the insurrectos must neutralize quickly, were the northwest orillon, the guns from the embrasures along the masonry curtain, those behind the palisade before the Jesuit compound and the Governor’s Casa, though everyone knew the Governor General Don Grado was no longer there.

It was the only way; there was not any other. You could not turn south and go directly to the Fortaleza, where Don Grado was, since the governor general thought it prudent to transport himself temporarily to safety and away from harm. You did that, I mean turn south, and you instead put yourself before the Fortaleza’s over forty guns on the southwest orillon and three bastions would be rumbling at you, hò, o.

Captain Morales was no fool even to think of it. So, instead, he directed his men to go straight like a plumb line toward the orillon at the fortified area and the palisade. First,  he had to go past the Lutao and Subanon Old Community. There wasn’t any problem there. General Sophez had totally burnt it down, as we know. If there were no Spanish riflemen on the battlements, Captain Morales and the Deportados could have just walked through if they so wished. For what remained, were the embers, glowing cinders, and blazing coals: the vestiges of wooden walls and round trunk-posts of what had been hundreds of huts and wooden houses, a few of the well-to-dos with tile-roofs.

At a hundred or so meters from the palisade, give everything they got. Si,  gritando    screaming at the top of their lungs. Let the Spaniards think the devil himself had got loose from Hades. Although would you think this would work? Likely what might work on the mind: the still burning walls and house-posts, red embers and coals blazing on them like solitary sentinels in the night; and of course, the light and flaming sky: might just make the Spaniards think of hell on earth in Zamboanga’s soil.

Meanwhile, there was Major Marquez with the main Zamboangueño Voluntario force besieging the Spanish trenches, breastworks, and pounding with light cannons the masonry curtain. While on the east flank, Lieutenant Fermin in the cover of night had dammed the Santa Barbara-Tumaga River, there at the shallowest portion by the first growth of mangrove swamp.

Partially was able to cut the flow of water to the moat, that one along the east bank down skirting the walls in the shallower river floors, only a third of moat, if you want to give it a figure. For in fact the Santa Barbara-Rio Hondo River was a tributary of Tumaga River that was just too big and deep for men to block up in a hurry and in the dark.. Even today, there are still some parts just deep as it was centuries ago.

There was no need to cut off the water supply to the fortified area. Fermin would find out later, that the Spaniards themselves suspecting the water had been poisoned and polluted --- most probably the Spaniards found out about the poisoning much earlier than General Tenorio himself --- and had cut it off.

From barrio Cabonegro boomed the rebel artillery, of the hijacked high-powered guns from the thirteen Spanish steam gunboats. It looked as if Alcalde Artang, he that was proud as a wild cock in the woods, had never delayed Lieutenant Fermin’s Mulumuluan Guerreros. Chinga,    Fuck, had Artang not thought what would happen if Lieutenant Fermin never made it to the east wall midnight the day before for the main siege, and its renewal this night? Loss of hundreds of rebel lives, ay, not discounting the tragic disaster of defeat! But with his artillery now booming, who could say he had held ‘hostage’ Lieutenant Fermin and his Mulumuluan Guerreros in his barrio for hours.

For indeed, so intense and thundering were the high-caliber guns now, missiles streaking in the lint-forged night.

Yet, cre tu,   would you believe, that night the Zamboanga rebels failed to take the plaza and the Fort of Zamboanga --- in that second, renewed, main assault!

Not that night, truly. Hó, o, even when everything had gone from bad to worse with the Spanish command...

It could have been even worse than that, though; the turning back of the rebel attack.

Verdad. Bien grande gayot era el differencia.   True. Would have made a very big difference. If. We mean, if General Collas, the last to flee Jolo to the Fort of Zamboanga with over a thousand men, had engaged those same forces into battle here ....

Don Collas had made a deal with the Jolo sultan, folks there suspected. General Collas was supposed to have told the sultan, ‘We surrender the garrison without a fight, great sultan. But you let us leave peacefully.’ The Jolo sultan’s face remained dull and blank. Rather sarcastically, he reportedly replied: ‘I would have taken your garrison by force, General Collas, if you had chosen to fight. What is a thousand lives to me ... you who have decided the most important thing now, dä, is to spare your warriors, so you can be expatriated to Spain.’

Yes: there was such a deal, we very well suspect. For the Spanish troops looked quite fresh upon arrival in Zamboanga, fresh as the fragrant ilang-ilang flowers in your garden. Not a sign of fatigue or battle-weariness in them at all, that night of their arrival at the Fort in May. Moslem Jolo was the last of the garrisons deep south. That same night, Don Grado, the last of the Spanish governor-generals ---we guess his spirits were high --- asked Collas to deploy his fresh men on the battlefield. But General Collas chose to yield to reason and pragmatism, rather than to give his heart to Mother Spain.

‘I did not flee that hell in Jolo to end up in another hell in Zamboanga,’ he told General Grado. ‘I came here with my men to be repatriated to Spain. Not engage myself in another hopeless war in this infidel island. I am very sorry, General Grado,’ shaking his head vigorously, that his plumed helmet tilted quite low on his brow. ‘I have no intention to go from, and permit me to quote:  “the frying pan to the fire.”’

Cannons rumbled and echoed just beyond the Fort; their thunder enhanced by the dark night.

An explosion burst nearby but did not derail Don Grado’s thoughts.

What is this man, this supposed caballero: a coward or just a practical man as he said so himself! Certainly, not a Don Quixote fighting windmills like me! And yet, there are my men ... thousands ... at the trenches and fortifications ready to give their lives for Mother Spain and the king.

‘Like your own men ... those from the other provinces fled to this Fort after having been hopelessly besieged in their garrisons by rebels and Moros,’ Governor General Grado said. ‘They were exhausted, some even gravely wounded ... unlike your men, General Collas, forgive my saying so.’

‘Be practical, Governor General Grado,’ said General Collas. ‘No relief is forthcoming from the Norte Americanos. We are on our own. I don’t have to be in Cavite or Zamboanga to know this.  There, even still in Jolo, I already suspected the North Americans are not extending any help ... either in troops or ships to expatriate us to Spain.’

‘Expatriation? How about honor, dignity, and pride...!’

‘Ah, let us be practical, General Grado,’ said the other, grumpily. ‘Common sense, pragmatism, your Excellency ... let us rather follow it.’ He stopped a while, cocked his ears toward the rumbling, thundering explosions of the rebels’ cannons from Cabonegro, Santa Barbara, and Magay. ‘I understand you called up General Otis again today, heh?’ General Collas continued. ‘And you got the same reply, right! … “No-no, we cannot help you now, just get out of there, we’ll deal with Tenorio later.” I can almost hear the American general say it. --- Pues, let us be practical and pragmatic, heh?’

There were the words again, “practical” ... “pragmatism.”

‘Si, si, that was truly General Otis's reply,’ General Grado had to admit then. ‘But our forces from the garrisons in Tawi-Tawi, Cotabato, and other parts of Mindanao, they are down there in the trenches ... fighting also with our conscripted Visayan and Indio troops.’

Slightly lowering his chin, General Collas disagreed. His case was wholly different.

‘Most of them have lost their officers and command,’ he said, ‘... had none until they got here. In their situation, they were ready to follow any officer that would lead them. It is quite different ... quite different case with my soldiers. They never lost their commander.’

‘Very well, say no more, General Collas,’ interrupted Grado. ‘Indeed, it is with great sorrow that I should hear this from one of Spain’s generals. Never, never thought I would see the day ...’ he stopped; thinking Ay, never thought I would hear a fellow general give excuses such as ‘different,’ the same meaning and excuse as ‘pragmatic’ ...and did it matter now? He was tired, too. He now had no wish to continue speaking with a man who had already made up his mind ... made it long before it was mentioned that he engaged his forces for the defense of Spain’s honor and pride. ‘Your quarters are being readied, General,’ he finally said. ‘Hope you find them comfortable as that in the fortified area … unfortunate we have to transfer you. Here.’

‘Si, si, I must rest a bit. Maybe we should all rest ... whether one comes from Jolo, Tawi-Tawi, any part of these string beans of islands,’ said General Collas.  ‘I do not know… but I know I have not had any restful night since leaving Jolo.’   

Obviously a lie, un embusteria: never seen anyone so prim and sprightly See how he looks in his mail coat, he thought so polished and shiny it blinds you; even without any light. And the plumed helmet, which had threatened to fall off after he had shaken his head to signify a vigorous ‘no-no’ reply.

‘Of course, General Collas,’ he said instead. ‘No doubt you need your rest.’

....

 Although the second major assault failed to take the plaza of Zamboanga and the Fortaleza dela Nuestra Señora Immaculada Concepciòn that night, it did not stop General Tenorio and his Zamboangueño insurrectos. The following day and 13^th of May the Zamboangueño rebels intensively launched new assaults against the Fort.

Governor Grado felt that the proverbial ‘13th’ could indeed be an unlucky number. This time the rebels might succeed to take the plaza. And so, again, asked General Collas, we assume much more strongly, to commit into battle the general’s over a thousand Spanish soldiers. And again, Collas refused, repeating the exasperating excuse that he did not get out of Jolo hell to get into another, much more hot, with devils boasting forks or tridents and roaring tongues of flames licking its brim. It looked like General Collas in spite of getting his tail nearly burnt in Jolo had not lost his skill for metaphor, even as the roar of Marquez’s and Morales’s guns and cannons deafened the ears and the clashes of arms were heard by bending over the masonry curtain and before the embrasures of the Fort itself.

Governor General Grado clipped his shoulder blades sadly, and swore under his breath.

Cojones, not a pragmatic man, o, no, but un cobarde! ... He finally concluded that which he now realized had not been able to say to the fleeing general two nights before.

The proverbial unlucky day of the 13th of May passed uneventful, and the next day when the insurrectos still failed to take Zamboanga Governor General Grado actually believed he could hold on forever and leave the Fort with his honor and dignity unsullied and unsmudged with defeat. And then, on the 15^th,mal suerte    bad luck (were zodiac signs misaligned?) struck the Spanish camp. For on that day, a rifle slug hit Captain Calvo while directing artillery fire at the advancing insurrectos. Wounded on the left shoulder, Captain Calvo avoided falling on the ground by supporting himself with his other hand on the wheel of swivel-cannon. Another account, which escapes me now, probably Amado’s Apuntes Historicos de Zamboanga, or ex-Jesuit Macrohon’s Roots of Zamboanga Hermosa, confirmed the wounding of the head of the apunterias, though their dates varied: the former mentioned it happening a day earlier. Never mind ... the fact is thatthe excellent apunteria officer Captain Calvo, wounded and incapacitated, left the Spaniards in this very critical time without an able officer to command their artilleria.

When word of the wounding of the Spanish apunteria capitán reached him, Captain Morales, himself the over-all chief of the rebel artillery, confidently said:

‘A matter of hours ... then we will have them running to their ships. Si, si, nobody can direct artillery, limited, as it is, against an enemy as able as Captain Calvo was. And no army on earth fights without artillery, and expects to hold out long.’

No doubt, General Tenorio had the same level of confidence, maybe even higher. A rumor spread that, with unleashed passion, he said, ‘Hijo de su puta madre! the Spaniards are finished’ --- ecstatically pounding his fist on his table that the oil lamp jumped and spilled on the papers and maps there.

But Captain Morales was wrong, and since General Tenorio had shared the same opinion, as we know, he too had underrated the bravery and doggedness of the Spanish troops.

Because they held on, Jesús, Mariá, y José! clawing and pawing at the earth. If there was a stub of thicket or a blade of grass, they held onto it. On the trenches the Spanish troops kept on firing back, and so too their artillery, that which could be mustered without Captain Calvo, although definitely not so effective and operational as before.

‘Those guns should have fallen in our hands,’ said Major Marquez to General Tenorio, ‘two nights ago. But no ... they are operational still. And where are we? Back here where it looks we just started.’

Incredible, Don Tenorio said he could not understand why the man had to fight so desperately. ‘When he knows any time now it will be all over,’ he thinkingWhy does General Grado not leave peacefully? Since for him the war is over. No honor and dignity are involved or will be lost.

Ah, expatriation to his homeland Spain ... that is all that is left for him! he thought. But no sooner, since the Norte Americanos have made a pragmatic rather than honorable choice: not to relieve the Spanish garrison and fight us! 

However, it is, truly, because of honor and pride that Don Grado won’t surrender. Ay, not to a half-breed, much less to an Indio half breed … that is it, hijo de cabra. Or does he fear that we will ambush and massacre his forces. Coño,    Cunt, while they are embarking on their ships for Mother Spain? --- as vengeance for two centuries of Spanish bondage, oppression and bigotry. And don’t we forget the abuses of the licentious friars!

Hó, o: that is what he is afraid of ... madre de Dios, si! And the Norte Americanos will not even come to relieve them ... will not even give Grado the courtesy and respect by telling him frankly, ‘Our regrets, we cannot help you.’ Instead, this rebuff: ‘No! You just leave’ ... without any explanation whatsoever.

Poetic justice! ay.

Chapter 21

When will it end?

On the night of May 16 at his advance headquarters, General Tenorio was waiting for word from the front line. He could not see a thing, of course, from where he was of the actual fighting, nothing in the dark of the night. He did not mind, though. He knew for some time already that his troops were attacking the Fort on all sides, save the south edifice facing Basilan Straight. But the sky, its dome a little way in the foreground of the Fort was on fire. He could very well see that and smell the sulfur and phosphorous powder, too. And there were the explosions of the cannons, they going  bbrroomm bbrroomm bbrroomm! ... He could hear that very well, he was not deaf: madre de Dios!

An aide rushing down the treeless yard halted before him. ‘General, sir,’ said the aide, ‘the Spaniards have abandoned their trenches and breastworks.’ He recalled that he was outside his headquarters, in the vacant yard. His head lifted toward the direction of the Fort. His ancestors had built it, some had died from overwork and exhaustion, others permanently disabled in a fall from a scaffold.  He would soon capture and take it, as it should have decades ago: the builders to own what they themselves built. ‘Good, very good,’ he said, not looking at the aide. His eyes riveted at the burning night sky. Then, quite unexpectedly, maybe minutes later, another aide came in, as quickly and hurriedly as the first. ‘Sorry to report, sir-general,’ he said. ‘The retreating soldiers have regrouped and are positioned behind the masonry curtain ... all along the parapets, general-sir. They have joined the other troops, and are firing from there.’ ‘Bueno    Good,’ said General Tenorio thoughtlessly, without waiting for an explanation or words to that effect, he thinking But what is good? ... the ‘abandoning and retreating,’ ‘firing from there’...  the dawning of the forthcoming Spanish surrender. Or expansion of the war He dismissed him, reminding him to keep the general always informed. Of everything.

He went back inside his tent, and did not leave it for sometime. So, from reports of this aide, and cyclic others, he was kept abreast of every detail of the night assault, the progress of the fighting, the hopes and fears.

One moment the flame of victory leapt as high as the flames soaring from the burning structures at the fortified area; the next water poured over it ... the hope dashed, gurgling sounds in the mire, puñeta!... Had he been wrong thinking victory was in his hands before the break of another day?

On his head, through the reports, he saw his advancing troops springing over the Spanish trenches. How they crossed the scarred battlefield, went past the breastworks. Unstoppable, onrushing.

It was all true, what he pictured. Until just before the masonry curtain when abruptly, a phalanx of intense rifle fire whammed upon the rebels. It spun the Zamboanga rebels’ charge on its back, halting it fast in its track, heels scratching the battlefield. ‘Coño su puta madre!’  field commander Major Marquez swore.

A little later a report to the General came in, saying General Adolfo Sophez was everywhere. He was seen at the masonry curtain, all along the parapets, and on the ramp of the northwest orillon, not the main orillon on the south bulwark of the fort of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception itself, but the one, of lesser high-caliber and bulk, on the fortified area being fiercely besieged. Sophez was directly commanding the repositioned or newly mustered Spanish troops, dislodged from their trenches and the breastworks.

From the breastworks and on the battlefield, he directed the cannonade and rifle firing himself. A while he was able to stem the advance, though partial and temporary, but about enough to halt the Zamboangueño rebels back, and drench a wee bit their cockiness and overconfidence. It woke up many of them from their illusion.

The main force of the Zamboangueño revolucionarios led by Major Melanio Marquez had come from the north, ay. Past the trenches and scarred battlefield before being temporarily hard-pressed in front of the masonry curtain by, as we know, General Sophez.

Incredibly, about the same time, our rebel forces saw General Sophez also at the northwest orillon behind the palisade facing Captain Morales and his two lieutenants, Pascual, northwest, and Lamon, southwest, of the Old Community completely burnt-down now. And, moments later, they also spotted him at the cavalier, east, directing the light-caliber cannon there which would stamp Lieutenant Fermin’s Mulumuluan Guerreros from breaking into the east wall, particularly the walled-back portion of the old northeast gate, and outflanking the Spanish defenders there. That would have kuan    something, you know, assured the Zamboanga rebels well as substantiate General Tenorio procrastination of an early victory. The surrender of the Spanish forces before the break of dawn the next day, which looked now as unlikely to happen, you know what I mean, chinga!    fuck!

How is this possible? you may ask. The Spanish general is only human, as were his officers and troopers. But that was what our own rebel troops swear by, and why we should not take it, as the expression goes, as gospel truth: worse untruth has been written of the truth: si-si, por què no!

But, or, close to reality and reason, if allowed to expedite, it could be the Spanish artilleryman, not General Adolfo Sophez himself, he that had literally dragged out of the artilleryman his fear by pulling him, away from the masonry curtain by his wrist, or his breast shirt. Sophez even half-carried him on his back to the cavalier, east wall; wrote Don Piantong in his journal, citing old rebels as ancient as he. There he, General Sophez, even pressed the artilleryman’s hands grasped in his, pressed them upon the then cold barrel, to fire the cannon and renew the heat, made it so red hot nobody without injuring himself could lay a hand upon the hot barrel for days after the siege. So, it was probably the artilleryman our rebel troops saw, not General Sophez, not him that could not be in two places at the same time and space; though he were superhuman.

Yet does it change the myth, the fixation? If untrue what matters the disbelief! we ask ourselves.

As the night progressed toward dawn, unharshly shoving the dark through its first light, Captain Morales and Major Marquez noticed more Spanish soldiers now behind the palisade and bastions. In curling fury, flames, clouds of smoke, soared from the burning buildings: the Jesuit compound and the Governor’s Casa. Both were burning still despite the relentless effort to put it out by the troops, they that should be fighting the rebels not the fire like pristine firemen, trying to extinguish and control the fire from spreading.  Earlier that night Lieutenant Fermin’s bowmen had started the fire, razing everything within the range of their flaming arrows.

Only the hospital had ceased burning down to ashes completely. Because in conscience, green of youth, Lieutenant Fermin had stopped his Mulumuluan bowmen from further shooting their flaming arrows at the hospital. ‘Stop, stop! Sick men ... wounded soldiers in there,’ cried he. ‘We do not fight the sick, the wounded, and the helpless. Stop shooting your flaming arrows now, ahora mismo … at this moment!’ It was a nightmare: he remembered crying the same plea to his bowmen the night he came through from Mulumuluan. Madness!

Thus, the bowmen unstretched their taut bowstrings, and let go instead at the east and south parapets and ramparts, and beyond the covered area, that was once the entrance gate beyond the niche of the Nuestra Seňora dela Immaculada Concepción. He had explained it all, to Pedro Piantong, grandson of the Lutao chief among the first to settle in Viejo Poblado, then no older than Fermin who would in reminisce write down in almost those same words in his booklet, or journal, Complido Reflejo de los Heroes, why Fermin had halted his bowmen from shooting their flaming arrows further.

But it was a temporary halt, drawback, of the siege by the Zamboangueño insurrectos. For minutes later, on the ground, in the battlefield, the rest of the Spanish artillerymen, now without Señor Calvo, capitan de la apunteria, to command, began to scatter and flee. Across the drying moats, the Spaniards fled from Major Marquez’s advancing Zamboangueño Voluntarios and regular forces.

Left behind was the Spanish artillery, they would also scuttle and flee. Quickly the rebels took the guns and turned them against the Spanish defenders themselves, those at the northwest orillon and cavalier on the east masonry curtain of the fortified area.

Is this the beginning of the end then?

Chapter 22

In the afternoon of the following day, May 17, the hero Almazen was following a path east of their camp, before the small hills. We had not mentioned about those hills earlier, since they had not played any part in our tale, or for that matter were crucial geographical points. But you can see them very clearly on the right hand corner of a page, before the fortieth page, east of the fortified area, quite prominent on the sketch map of the fort of the Immaculate Conception  by  Vargas, published in 1735.

Whether those hills were not flattened or leveled down to accommodate human structures before the revolution against Spain or the North Americans we unfortunately do not know, and likely the main reason, as it deems on us now, why we have not mentioned or had missed them.

Some distance away, westward, was the hospital of the Zamboanga rebels, actually an open structure. Like a gymnasium without walls, but with a firm thick roof of woven nipa palms. Strong enough to keep away strong rains except one blown by typhoon storm.

Close to the ground, about a foot from its surface was the floor and a bamboo ladder. This served as stairs, or steps, which had only two rungs attached to a pair of bamboo poles with nawi strands on opposite ends. And it, the ladder, leaning, at a 45-degree angle on the edge of the floor.

Some distance away, a strong tangy odor wafted into his nose, jolting the region round his temples. It was the sharp smell of hospitals, toxic, sterilizing, camphor, and dead or dying meat. Although still some meters from the hospital, his eyes started smarting.

He blinked several times to wash with duct water the sharp odor of sterilization and ether. Once his eyes stopped smarting so much, he casually looked around the low bamboo strip-woven floor. A human reflex when you find yourself in a new, strange place. He was not really ready to see his friend, the filósofo    philosopher Tiburcio Brocales. Shrapnel had struck him.

But there he was, his head turned to one side of his shoulder. Like all the other wounded soldiers, save for some officers privileged to lie on cots or wooden beds, he was lying on the bare bamboo striped-woven floor. Without a pillow under his head or mat under his straight supine body, such that he had to somewhat twist his head awkwardly to the right, as the visitor Almazen spoke to him.

‘Buenas dias, Señor Brocales,’ said Almazen, in an artificially rough formality. By this pretentious formality, he meant to surprise him, and hopefully, the pleasant discovery it was but his friend and comrade-at-arms Almazen would lighten and raise his spirit.

In fact, when Brocales turned his face more sharply to one side to see who had addressed him so profoundly, maybe an officer or somebody of higher rank than his, his face turned gentle. And it shone the instant he recognized the hero Almazen.

‘Ah, it is you ... I did not think you were coming!’ he paused, swiveling his head here and there, as if he were looking for a chair in his own sala for his guest to sit. ‘Please sit down,’ Brocales said. ‘Anywhere you wish, ‘Ñor Almazen. As you can see there’s enough open spaces in this big sala, though not a single furniture...’ laughing, and abruptly stopping when the sutured wounds threatened to open in his chest and alongside his flanks.

Ah, with his wise cracks as always, Almazen thought. Following the advice of his friend, he sat on the floor, squatting on his heels. He could not avoid but divert his eyes from him to the other patient, covered entirely with bandage and dressings, nearby. Everything covered save for his mouth, nose with two dark caves peering through the gauze, and drooping eyelids suffused with a veil of uncontrollable sleepiness. It looked like at any moment he would drop to sleep.

He asked Brocales if indeed this was not the lost Centeno.

‘Si, indeed it is him,’ the other responded. ‘Whom Singalon had mentioned to him…with the secret?’

‘I thought they found him dead in the fire at the native Settlement. Or died afterwards with serious burns... hardly can recognize him, all covered up like that with those dressings.’

‘That is why he is still alive,’ said el filósofo Brocales. ‘They know he cannot talk, or that he is dead, sabes tu.’

A hesitant, delayed smile jerked in his face. Abruptly, it disappeared. A serious face emerged from it. With a grave face, twisted from the cast of his head, steeped in conspiratorial tone of voice, Brocales flung his hair-tussled head here and there. He wanted to see if anyone was listening, before telling Almazen that he knew of his, Centeno’s, and Singalon’s secret, too. Although he did not tell him how he had come to it.

Maybe Centeno realizing that one foot was already in the grave had told him, thought Almazen. Before they bundled him up like that. Or with sign language, kuan    something. Still must have sworn to keep it among them, fearing very much for their lives. If either Mayor Artang or the rajah muda would find out! That Simon had overheard lieutenants Lamon and Pascual speak of the assassination plot, the clandestine and conspiratorial meetings between the conspirators Alcalde Artang and Rajah Muda Hassan, chinga!    fuck!

With much difficulty, the filòsofo Brocales lifted his head from the barren bamboo floor. In the same tone of voice, seriousness of frame of mind, he told Almazen the urgency of informing the general of this collaboration and assassination plot. There was no one else to do it.

All of a sudden, he pulled Almazen to him by his collar. ‘Here, here, can you not smell him?’ he said. ‘Gangrene… since before yesterday. He started to scream, none of us could sleep, and to smell so no food you take would stay down… ayer, ayer, Dios mio! He is dying and kuan   blank secret dies with him if no one would...’

With his bent head low, his nose close to either men, the visitor Almazen smelled the rotting flesh of Simon, who would not be around after tomorrow he was sure, or a day after si suertisto ‘le     if he is lucky to be alive still.

Hijo de cabra! I came to visit a friend, but in what did I get myself involved in? Involvement to stop an assassination plot!

Brocales did not release his tight grasp on the collar of Almazen’s shirt, even pulling the man harder this time toward him, so that his face lay flat to his like flat iron. He continued:

‘Especially now to stop them. You know whom I mean. You heard of the failed assassination, heh? You heard, si … so what ‘Ñor Simon heard is true, that there is a conspiracy to murder our general. It is not just rumors, makeup stories, no-no.’ 

With one hand and as inconspicuously as possible, Almazen tried to peel off the man’s fingers from his collar. Too strong, like a locked vise-grip.

‘Yes-yes, I heard,’ he said. ‘Who has not...’

Just then, Brocales lowered his back on the bamboo-woven floor. He had half-raised himself from lying there. He unclasped his fingers, releasing his friend’s collar.

‘You know of course that Singalon died last night,’ he said, in a soft voice still, quite sudden. Completely mysterious, Singalon’s death. For he was not burnt that badly... rumors only that it was serious. His burns, I mean, though I could be wrong... no proof at all save one’s unfounded suspicion, not backed up by facts. That’s bad.’

Still the filòsofo     philosopher though he is wounded, though he himself perhaps is dying too…’

Almazen nodded his head, but whether he indeed agreed or no to see the General just was not clear. Under the stress of that moment, it could be both ways and neither one.

‘Si, si, I know of his sudden death...’ said Almazen. ‘In fact, why I decided to come here now to see you: I told myself I should not make the same mistake… delay visiting my friends and look what happened? I missed seeing Singalon before he left this world.’

Then, realizing how somber and doom-like were his words, of deep remorse missing seeing a dying comrade because he had delayed visiting him... he straightened himself up. Then shook his head hard, sort of rolled it on his shoulders, here and there: like that.

A self-conscious twist marked the corners of his mouth, as if to expressing stupidity, idiocy, stretching his reddish cheeks.

‘I am sorry, indeed I am,’ he said, finally.

‘But he was not seriously burnt, you know,’ Brocales continued, voice thin, almost inaudible. ‘When they took him out of that fire and brought him here ... kuan    something must have happened along the way. Singalon was too weak, he could not protect himself.’

‘He protects himself? You mean there was kuan   something foul about his sudden death?’ 

Becoming paranoid already, thought Almazen. If I was not told of the secret, of the assassination plot... will I be so suspicious and distrustful of everything, everyone?

‘Qué?    What did you say?’

‘I was only thinking to myself. Do not mind me,’ said Almazen.  

‘It does not matter, I understand very well,’ said the filòsofo Brocales again.

Almazen smelled quite strongly the rotting flesh of the dying soldier Simon, him that had not said a word still. Or could not at all. Not even to look at either of them or to nod. For although both spoke in whispers the secret-keeper was close enough; he was not that far away he could not hear them.

Brocales was no longer holding his collar. Almazen jerked his upper trunk, straightening himself up stiffly. At this stage, we may say the hero Almazen knew he had to do it, coño su nana!

I must see the General and tell him of the secret of the dying soldier Simon Centeno. Who was born of civil workers’ family, knew nothing of soldiering but somebody gave him a rifle instead. Somebody has made a mistake and it will cause the earlier uninspired demise of Centeno. There is nobody else who can do it now.

Almazen recalled how he had received his hero’s medal. He did not intend to become a hero, had not intended to, really, if you wish to hear the usual excuse. But he was there at the hijacking. What else could he do with the old gun in his hands?Una cosa nomas.     One thing only. That is to fire at the Spaniard threatening to blow his head off with his Remington rifle. Ampara ya lang!    Have mercy! he cried in his native tongue Chabacano.

....

He stepped out of the army hospital with the afternoon light beginning to fade. Flat clouds on the northwestern horizon and somber light faint in the sky. Silhouetted against it were the mountain ranges of Mount Pulong Bato and to his right the eastern rolling hills beyond the marshland. Past the hospital he halted, dazed. He realized he had walked some distance on the opposite direction. Away instead of toward the front line where he had come from.

Puñeta! Back to my unit to join with my other comrades, that is where I should be going.

Rumors were flying that general headquarters was ordering another assault later that night, maybe the final assault at last: a go-for-broke, unrestrained. That would send the Spaniards springing out into the sea and on their ships back to Spain, coňo!    cunt!

They had said this before, though, almost a week ago on their first assault of the Fort. And did anything come out of it? This time likely, they would make it. There was something in the air and in the men, he could not tell what but he himself felt it too, victory! not false hope….

A galloping horse almost struck him, him walking with his mind swollen with daydreams of victory and end of the fighting. You know what I mean, there on the path with his head down. The urgency to report the conspiracy to General Tenorio was wee bit forgotten. And just in time, he jumped to one side, and the horse’s wiry-muscled rump missed stricking him by inches chinga!    fuck! Through the web and confusion of his mind roared a loud, imperious voice:

‘Soldier, where are you going? Back to your unit, do you not know there’s a war! a war to liberate us from Spanish oppression!’

He looked up, and through the golden afternoon light saw horse and rider before him, recognizing el General even with his muddled mind, or should we say head, and blurted,

‘General, so sorry, very sorry. I did not see you … dispensa me!’

But General Tenorio reigned in his great white horse, and shouted: 

‘The Spaniards are over there…you, judido, are going the opposite path. Pues, hombre, what are you waiting for?’

It was here then, at that very moment, that our hero Almazen remembered he had promised his comrades to report  to el General about the assassination plot. The humble civil servant Centeno, ordinary employee turned infantryman, whom he had just left dying there in the hospital, and would be dead before maňana he was sure, had first hand information of the conspiracy. Well, that was what they were sure now after the attempted assassination had freakily confirmed it, and Lieutenant Fermin flagged at the rancherias of Cabonegro.

He was now resolved to tell General Tenorio, resolutely stood before the great white horse, and said, ‘General, perdón! but I have... honorable General…’

But General Tenorio, angered by the man’s laxity and imprudence, misinterpreting his loyalty and rectitude, you know what I’m trying to say, reared back his horse.

‘Back, go back to your unit, soldier!’ he shouted. ‘Did you not hear me the first time? Puñeta!  Demonio!’

So, what could a lowly soldier do but obey. A slight spasm quivered in his throat, an involuntary shake rocked his frame.

‘Ah-ahhh, kuan     blank what I wish to…’ before spinning on his heels, and walking hurriedly the opposite way.

At the end of the path, he came upon the dirt road, which would lead him back to his unit, past the abandoned Spanish trenches and beyond the burnt Santa Barbara native Settlement. Frustrated, angry with himself for trembling and shying away, for failing to give the message, though an involuntary messenger he was, ay For being too awed and unnerved by el General, he thought aloud to himself.

I think it is fate, hò, o. But who won’t be by such imposing figure! Whatever happens is beyond us. He did not even recognize me, whom he had pinned a hero’s medal ten days short to make a month ago on April 7. Ah, si, si, the day we hijacked the Spanish gunboats. Ay, is it not weird?... destiny... just el General’s destiny and fate whatever awaits him now!

But no, we must defy fate when we can make a choice: he said aloud to himself still. Unlike my shooting at the Spanish sailor, there was no time even to think what to do. Became a hero by accident, accidente no mas not because I am a brave man. Now I have a choice, which I can make, coño su nana! I must go back…warn the General.

He returned to the same path he had left, going the opposite direction this time. If he hurried, he might catch up with General Tenorio still, though he was on his white horse. He knew a shortcut in the woods, after having camped here for weeks. Out of the footpath he now strode, onto uneven ground, treading on the rough land of scrubby undergrowth and broken by clusters of sharp protruding rock shelves.

Minutes later, with only traces of the afternoon light simmering over the scrubby land, he was entering the woods when some thorny thickets caught and twirled round his body. As he entangled himself, climbers falling from tree branches wound tight round him, sort of tying him up… like that. Further struggling to free himself, he stumbled on the carpet of leaves and tore the skin of his palms on the thorny thickets.

Bang! bang! bang! suddenly came a burst of gunfire, whooshing overhead. If he had not tripped,Dios mo… he sprung up, certainly was jolted by the gunfire, and jerking his head aqui y alla and seeing nothing but the scour of imbedded ring of cicadas round tree-trunks.

He could not flee even if he wanted to, since he had not completely freed himself from the encircling climbers. But he did not intend to do that, of fleeing. He was instinctively only trying to unwound the climbers and at the same time swiveling his head on his shoulders. Who was shooting at him?

‘Halt, halt! you deserter,’ a rough voice ordered. 

Oo, no! I’m not a deserter, he screamed in his head.

The owner of the rough voice was invisible still in the golden light of the vanishing afternoon.

‘Ebos cobarde!’ the same voice said; ‘chingaaa voss nanaaa!   fuck your mother!’

No-no, not a deserter, por favor, he cried dumbly, struggling. A little more length of unwound climbers and he would be free from them; then he would explain what he was doing there. Or where he was going.

‘Cobarde! Chingaaa vos nanaaa!’

Again: bang! bang!      

He never saw who shot him nor the last of his afternoon wholly fade away.
 

Chapter 23

May 17, before ten o’clock in the evening, not more than a kilometer from the fortified area. Major Marquez and the main Filipino rebel forces were gravelling their teeth waiting for orders to attack again and hopefully would be the final assault leading to the fall of the Spanish garrison in Zamboanga peninsula. For the Spanish colonists without artillery, the trenches abandoned, their top officers either wounded or dead, particularly Inginiero Señor Jimenez and artillery Captain Calvo, there was no other fate but defeat and ruin. Captains Jimenez and Calvo were licking their wounds at Fort Immaculate Conception. Where Governor General Grado himself was grabbling with his inevitable destiny and tragedy. Sabes tu what I mean… ay, the Spaniards were doomed: some two decades short of four centuries of oppressive and tyrannical colonization (1521-1899) of Las Islas de Felipenas, this would be Spain’s first defeat in Asia and the final fall of her only Christianized colony in this part of the World!

Victory for the rebels was indeed a sure thing now. In fact, General Tenorio himself was now at the front with Major Marquez to lead the decisive and final attack, the administering of the coup de grace, and ultimate crash of the tyrannical colonists!

Thus, about 10:30 o’clock in the evening, simultaneously, or nearly so, the different rebel forces opened the ultimate siege on all fronts. Captain Morales’s Deportados on the western front, and opposite, east, in Rio Hondo, Lieutenant Fermin’s Mulumuluan Guerreros, moved in chorus with the main force of Major Marquez’s Zamboangueño Voluntarios and regular troops from Santa Barbara led: firing their rifles, machine guns, and artillery at will.

As they were advancing, patches of dark clouds from the smoke of the heavy cannons rose into the pointed dome, defacing the waning moon. Save for the flashes of explosions and bombardment, only the orb of light made it possible to advance the troops. Without it, the advance would stick in the swamps or maybe half-drown in the river Tumaga.

Luckily, the dark clouds that had obliterated whatever light there was, coño su nana    cunt of your mother, blanketing the whole battlefield in inky darkness --- soon drifted away from it. Again, you could see the face of the next man beside you, and quite well, not always, truly, but the instant  when the bursts of firing and shelling would be so intense and concentrated, you know, it looked almost bright as day in flashes.

Thus, that was how the Zamboanga Indio rebels marched toward the Spanish colonists in the fortified area and the Fort on the night of the grandmother of all grandmothers of all assaults.

Now, on the east, Lieutenant Fermin and his Mulumuluan fighters and archers, or bowmen if you wish, succeeded in neutralizing the cavalier of the fortified area with their flaming arrows and small artillery. Buen suerte, not a bullet or missile touching the icon of Nuestra Seňora Immaculada Concepciòn on the northeast reinforced coral-block wall. Goaded by the silencing of the cavalier, the main force from the north  sprung onwards, advancing fast, and soon Major Marquez was knocking on the masonry curtain, while the other insurrectos as much goaded attacked in full force the other fronts.

And before midnight, General Tenorio and the Filipino insurrectos were less than a hundred meters from the masonry curtain of the fortified area.

As he had promised, soon after midnight, Captain Morales was pounding the palisade, southwest, with his troopers and trying to break through it and get inside the fortified area itself from that side of the wall. Behind the palisade, as we know, were the Jesuit compound and to its right, farther southward, not too far off, really, the abandoned Governor’s Casa. Ay, the Zamboanga rebels, all, would just love to burn and fan its embers.

They were now firing freely and at will, volleys of bullet careening the explosive air hanging over the fortified area; the grim scene became less ghastly with the awesome spectacle of flaming arrows from the Mulumuluan bowmen cutting across the fiery sky. Streaking fast in luminous suspended arch, they filled the dark with flickering tails of light just like myriad of falling stars and misdirected miniature flaming comets. Little exchange of fire now from the Spanish troops on the walls and ramparts.

But just then kuan     something happened. There is no one who can dispute this ... el jura yo se      I will swear to that.    

At this point, while the massive strength of our forces were pounding at the walls of the fortified area, the rebels saw a figure they believed was General Sophez himself rising from the parapet. Had he incredibly recovered so quickly from his wounds? Or miraculously risen from the dead! But, like gun smoke, he disintegrated from sight, and after he crumbled, was the last time our rebel troops saw. Sometime later, Spanish troopers, half-bodied, from head to shoulders, were seen marching behind the parapets, and this likely when the general was taken away. They brought him to the safety of the Fortaleza. As we know, Don Grado, the last Spanish governor general of Las Islas de Felipenas, had also retreated there and sought its safety, as well as the coward General Collas.

By this time, dawn was breaking harshly. The cold of the new day settled over the blood and gunpowder mist of the battlefield. Thus, when General Tenorio and his two top officers, Marquez and Morales, saw the first light of el sol, they decided just to wait for the day to grow before renewing their attack of the fortified area and, sabes tu, then, the Fort itself.

But when the day came full upon the horizon, el sol rising as if there was something glorious to happen, not volleys of bullet or cannon missiles and grapeshot faced our Zamboangueño rebels. Rather, a white piece of cloth waving on top of the parapet. There near the northwest orillon, about where earlier General Sophez had fallen the day before.

It was a very small piece of cloth, like a kerchief. It gave us the impression that its weeny size was purposeful, well designed to evidently manifest the Spanish garrison’s cynicism and mockery in defeat: that such a ridiculously teeny piece of cloth could signal the call for a cease fire or surrender, yet concealing the fact of Spain’s shame and embarrassment.

For bien grande gayot   very huge indeed was the Spanish’s pride and smugness. How terrible then their humiliation and disgrace losing to mere Indios, them that they treated before worse than servants and enclavos    slaves: considered unsuitable to socialize and dine with, to be in their company.

Ampara ya lang…ahora tiempo tamen di atun!     Have mercy, now it is our time too!

Chapter 24

Thus, on May 18, 1898, the Spanish commandant of the fortaleza, Governor General Blas Grado, surrendered the plaza of Zamboanga and its Fort to the Zamboanga insurrectos. It was Christianity’s citadel in Mindanao for two and a half centuries.

General Collas was right. Don Grado gave in to the inevitable, but unlike Collas, he gave thecoño de su grand puta madre insurrectos hell, too! ‘I didn’t scuttle and run,’ said General Grado.

And, evening of that same day, can you imagine he gave a grand banquet: to the victor, General Gueremon Tenorio, and his Revolutionary War commissioners. The banquet was served at the Fort, opposite the chapel, on its south wing. Just outside its windows, which also served as gun turrets, you had a wonderful scene of the port. So, any ships that had weighed anchor there.

Don Blas Grado, first commander of infantry, knight of the royal and military order of saint Hermenegild and of Isabella, the Catholic, political and military governor of this district, spoke briefly at the banquet. He said,

‘As a gentleman soldier to another, I am tendering this despedida dinner. To Don Gueremon Tenorio y Imbing, general of the Zamboanga revolutionary army, and to his men:  salud!’

And that was all.

How it must have grieved him to say that, to Indio Zamboangueños whom maybe minutes before the victory were called ‘indolents,’ ‘barbaros’ and ‘esclavos.’

Likely to enliven the rather lugubrious occasion, a commissioner jokingly hinted he wished there were more such banquets.

Unfortunately, Mayor Artang had other thoughts. Without getting up from his seat, he said it would be Don Grado’s last one if he did not turn over to him the chaplain of the Fort, a certain Friar Gutierrez.

‘The cunt friar has committed many sins against the people of Zamboanga,’ he accused the friar, fixing his beady eyes at him. ‘Not excluding ravishing innocent altar boys as well our young village women. He must pay for his past lechery, licentiousness.’

Everyone was shock, petrified.

‘And what do you intend to do with his holiness?’ Governor General Grado could hardly manage to ask.

But all eyes, coño, were on Friar Gutierrez. He was fidgeting in his chair to the right of Don Grado’s high-backed chair.

‘That is a secret yet,’ replied Mayor Artang, the only Protestant there, unconcerned how caustic his voice sounded.

Silence.

You could likely hear a pin if it were dropped that time. Yet most of the diners had ceased eating or drinking, having had wild pigeon soup. Forks and spoons seemed to come to life, clashing against each other loud.

Outwardly looking calm, Governor General Grado attempted to lighten the situation.

‘Come now, Don Laureano,’ he said aloud for all to hear. ‘We know how much you love parades and fiestas, as we all do, of course… so are you not going to invite us tomorrow on this “secret” affair, before we leave for Spain?’

‘Indeed, I shall,’ Alcalde Artang replied, with irony in his voice. ‘But for the main exhibit, only Friar Gutierrez will be invited. In fact, he is going to be our main attraction. It is too bad you will not see this, Don Grado. I assume you will be leaving us soon!’

To save himself from further embarrassment, Friar Gutierrez sprung up to leave the dinner table, noisily scraping back his chair on the coral-tiled floor.

‘Stay, stay, Friar Gutierrez,’ ordered Mayor Artang, in a rather loud, rude voice. ‘You are not going anywhere… you are now my hostage, cabron! for the prompt and safe departure of Governor General Grado here and other Spaniards to Manila…’

Dumbfounded, Friar Gutierrez fell back in his chair. Almost missed the edge of his wooden seat and slipping down on the coral-block floor. So pallid was his face, white as paper. So that the terror in his face and eyes outshone the combined light of the oil lamps and flickering candle light.

But no one went to console him, soothe his nerves.

Afterwards, when everyone had left, the banquet only half-finished, two men remained at the dinner table: the two most important of all men in the peninsula, General Gueremon Tenorio y Imbing, and Governor General Don Blas Grado.

‘This is likely the last opportunity, Don Tenorio that we could talk by ourselves’ said General Grado, the first to speak. ‘Will be too busy, muy ocupado mañana… too many things to do... stuff to take with us back to Spain. And of course, the embarkation of the officers and their families. No time mañana to talk leisurely or on anything that has nothing to do with official matters. You know what I mean, General...’

‘Por qué? Is there anything that we should talk about?’

‘Si, mucho, Don Tenorio. Por la primera vez since our conflict, we have time to talk.’ Pause; then, ‘And how is your father: Don Isidro?’

Caught a wee bit by surprise, since he had not expected it, his voice sounded unnatural, much terser than he had intended.

‘Muy bien.  Por qué?’

‘Heh…so Don Isidro did not join you in your revolution?’

‘No. Papa decided to stay neutral.’

There passed a brief silence before Governor General Grado spoke again. His voice was low, conspiratory.

‘Watch your back, Don Tenorio,’ he said.

‘Mi detras?’

‘Yes, your back,’ repeated Governor General Grado. And then, he raised his eyes like one concentrating on a spot just in front of him. ‘All those who become leaders forget this wisdom which echoes to us from the past. Shrewd generals must not forget it: that after the victory you must turn your face to your back. Because the new enemy rises from there… no longer in front. He can be anybody, your own men or trusted friend.’

‘What do you wish to tell me? Are you making chismes    gossip after the conflict had ended and we are victorious!’

Instead of replying, Don Grado stabbed his fork at the lump of roast meat on his plate, holding it as if it were a sharp tool.

Don Tenorio’s eyes riveted at the other’s hands. So many times the fork plunged down at the paloma de monte     wild pigeon roast meat before successfully securing a piece.  But Don Grado did not put a single piece of roast meat into his mouth.

‘Of your enemy in the future and who now is visible to you,’ Governor General Grado said after some time: ‘there they are anchored in Basilan Straight, those two warships of the Norte Americanos, the Ohio and Cavite.  But not all, mind you, and forgive for repeating, that is in front of you… that you can see clearly any time you wish.

‘Meanwhile, all you ought to do to see your new enemy is to only stand on the parapet of this Fort, which now is in your hand… and look around and you can see them.’

The Spanish governor general stopped, took a long breath, since it looked like he was unaccustomed emitting what he had just said. In fact, he drew on so much effort expressing it that several alien expressions briefly manifested in his face.

‘But the enemy at the back, he that will employ treachery… what else can you call him but “traitor”?... him you cannot see even how high is the parapet: him you never can escape, and only see him when it is over, finished!’ 

For the first time, then, Don Tenorio turned directly facing Governor General Grado: his beardless face with an expression no less solemn and grave, than one embedded on the face of una làpida    a sepulcher.

Ay, el alcalde de las rancherias… is he referring to Mayor Artang? he thought. Since there can be none other save my childhood friend, the Rajah Muda Hassan… no!’

To put himself face to face with Governor General Blas Grado, he pulled up his chair again. But he was unsuccessful, since there was this huge table alongside of him at the dinning hall. At most, he could only present an oblique view, half an expression too.

‘Excusa me, Don Grado! But you are saying that my own men are the traitors! No, no, out of disrespect, but such accusation is improper… should not be made without proof.’ He rose from his chair and then sat back in it.

What can he say? Admit he cannot control his own men, and that his own childhood friend is a traitor, or will be one?

Blood rose to his face. With self-effort he lessened the pressure,  the reddish hue round it diminished.

‘And who are these traitors? I would be no less pleased if you were to mention them?’

Pouting his lips, bulbous and flaked, the governor general jutted out his chin above his chest under a mail coat.

‘Hahaha, perdòna me, Don Tenorio,’ he said with half-laughter. ‘But I cannot give you that information... for my king will accuse me of being sympathetic and in empathy with the enemies of Spain: a traitor I’ll be myself!’

General Tenorio was deeply offended, the blood and deep color in his face rose again. He could not erase it quickly enough as before.

‘And why did you mention it if you cannot tell me who are the traitors? Hó, o, maybe you are just gossiping, to destroy the friendship and trust shared among us,insurrectos. What you could not destroy with all your soldiers and guns.... Maybe, after all, that is the truth, the ultimo and only truth.’

Now it was Don Grado who felt snubbed and offended. Instead of pouting, his lips now drew back above his bearded chin. In the air crept a defiant silence. Afterwards, there was like the silence of a banquet when all the food had been eaten, the table cleared, and all the guests had gone and left for home.

Although at this particular banquet, we know, don’t we? that two personages remained: the two being the most important of all men in the peninsula then. And contrary to an earlier assumption, full of food was the banquet table, overflowing with so many varieties of exquisite dishes still. Since all the officials of the Zamboanga Revolutionary Army commission left before finishing their dinner.

Y sabe kita porque, rayo!    And we know why, thunder! Because right in the middle of the banquet, Mayor Artang had taken Friar Gutierrez as his hostage.

‘No-no, you are mistaken,’ Governor General Grado cried with obvious pain in his voice. ‘If you give yourself time to think about it… why will I tell you all this yet? We are going home to Spain already, and if you wish to know that’s the last order I received from Manila. Leave, leave immediately... with or without the Norte Americanos help.  Pues, what for since everything here is done, si, Don Tenorio.… What for but for our friendship with your papa, Don Isidro. That is the only reason, if you must know, and you should ponder upon that. Because the advice was given with sincerity and as an illustration of gratitude for the services given by your father, a segundo official mayor in Malacaňang Palace… and yourself, too if I may add, before this conflict, heh?’   

More silence.

Coňo!     Cunt!…Don Grado giving me a lecture! A habit the Spaniards cannot stop, or will not, like the friars... even now in defeat. ‘Sermonizing’ us the last three hundred years but with the friars’ licentious hands squeezing a Subana’s rump. Can Don Grado not see that it is all over now for them? What got into his head that he thinks he can lecture and ‘sermonize’ us still?

Chapter 25

The next day, May 19, 1899, the entire Spanish garrison, with its officers and troops, boarded the expatriation ships: on the Transatlantic San Jose the officers and their families, and the soldiers on two others, one ship was the Nuestra Señora del Carmen and the other the Milagrosa.

Meantime, an officer at the pantalan    wharf walked straight toward Don Grado, flanked by General Tenorio and Don Salas on each side. El sol    the sun was in his eyes. He squinted more from the sunrays than the grave news he was bringing. Raising his lips to the ear of the other, the governor general being a taller man, he whispered into it.

The pair of insurrecto leaders pretended to show no interest, but what was said to Governor General Grado in a whisper he soon made vulgar. Because although both General Tenorio and Don Salas were by his side, he repeated the message in his very loud, gruff voice that some officers’ wives  passing by on their way to board the expatriation ships turned their heads; and, then, reluctantly passed on.

‘General Tenorio, we have a little problem,’ said Don Grado. ‘I believe you will never guess what it is in all your life.’

‘And what is it, if I may ask, Don Grado?’

‘There are Zamboangueño families who like to come with us to Spain,’ the governor general replied. The pretended innocence of a child, or no less its youthful appearance marked his face. He explained that according to the officer-messenger, the latter was helping load their stocks and supply at the pier when his eyes strayed away, and he saw that there were already several Zamboanga families on the ship Nuestra Señora del Carmen.

‘If your compoblanos were not stopped,’ went on Don Grado, a wee bit of smile brightening his face, eerily childish... ‘they would have made it on board even before General Collas…!’

‘Pues, we should tell those families to get off the ship,’ said General Tenorio, not without irritation, he thinking Puñeta!… I am not about to apologize to the vanquished, whether he is a Spaniard or no.

‘There is really a problem,’ said Governor General Grado, without faking the cynical timbre in his voice. ‘Because nobody, Don Tenorio, wants to leave our ship. Our marines cannot get them off, even as they threaten to use force.’ To add drama to the situation that did not deserve any, Don Grado raised his voice several decibels higher. Addressing not just General Tenorio or Don Salas, but to an invisible audience as well, he said:

‘Maybe Don Salas should go to the ship... and convince your people that their future and welfare lie here in Zamboanga…under the protection of the Zamboanga Revolutionary Government.’

So, under the heat of the sun, Don Salas went down the pier toward the ship. General Tenorio could not hide his shame, disappointment. Physically impossible. For beads of water were spontaneously pouring from alongside his flanks down to his arms and elbows, even to the back of his hands, which were trembling also. It was not because of the heat of el sol, definitely. He held his hands to his sides, and vigorously flapped them against his thighs, producing this sound on his thick khaki pants: swash swash swash. And then, he bent his elbows behind him to hide his shaking hands from the eyes of Don Grado.

What shame, indeed. His own compatriots preferring to flee with the enemy than celebrate their victory and new freedom. What do they want? To be forever enclavos    slaves of Spain? he thinking Ay, Don Salas, I don’t truly understand. Ay, the world will not lack masters for those who prefer to be forever enclavos!    slaves!

Later, alone with Don Salas, without the tropical sun scorching them both, he told him he thought that at that very moment when some Zamboanga families were embarking the expatriation ships, he would have sunk into the ground, sunk in remorse and shame.

‘Coño vos nana gayot esos, maga mal criado, shaming us before Governor General Grado,’ he said. ‘Here we are like fools kicking out those boastful, abusive humbugs of Spanish arseholes, after centuries of bondage and being their lackeys, rayo! and how do our people thank... us? By joining the enemy to the enemy’s homeland!

About this time, some 6,000 Spanish soldiers had embarked on the expatriation ships for Spain.

Mayor Artang was not around at the port. He was quite busy elsewhere. After shredding off Friar Gutierrez’s sotana, he paraded him through the streets of Zamboanga and its plaza. Half-naked the friar was driven through an angry, club-swinging gauntlet. At one end of it, the alcalde forced him to kneel before a bewildered crowd of young boys and girls. Then Alcalde Artang forced Friar Gutierrez down on his fours and in that humiliating stance to confess his sins of the flesh and to say mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! While he was pleading for forgiveness, a Moro mercilessly mustered out a dozen whiplashes across his bare back. The lashes were for penance, said Artang, for his sins of lust and greed.

Now weak and bleeding, he was driven to the port with a horsewhip. Countless pairs of eyes fell on Friar Gutierrez, stripping him further of the last vestiges of his dignity and decency.

However, without warning, as he went up to the plank of the Transatlantic ship and the safety of its shell, what do you think the fool friar did? but to turn around and at the top of his lungs cried out that he forgave them all! --- ‘Listen: you blasphemers and you with your lost, damned souls, oi, I forgive, forgive you.’ Enraged, Mayor Artang rushed up the gangplank to take the friar back as hostage and likely expose him to more severe punishment. ‘Chinga   Fuck,’ he shouted with heat and rage. ‘This time I will feed you to the crocodiles of the swamps.’

Luckily for him, Governor General Grado and General Tenorio had not yet left the pantalan. As Alcalde Artang was dragging him off the ship, both Don Tenorio and Governor General Grado cried:

 ‘Bastante ya, Don Laureano, let him go!’

And then, abruptly, in an obvious rush to get away, Governor General Blas Grado spun on his heels. Looking down a bit, at the shorter General Tenorio, Grado said over his ear, ‘It is time for me to go ... good’bye, General... y mi recuerdos con tu Papa.’ He said it fast, and before either could embrace and pat the other’s back, as was the custom of saying goodbye to friends or relatives then as now, General Tenorio said, ‘It was an honor to do battle with such an honorable and gallant man, so this grand…’ But Don Grado did not wait for him to finish. Quickly, he walked off toward the Transatlantic flagship Zaragoza. Left awkwardly alone, General Tenorio went on with his unfinished speech‘--- this grand farewell, to you General Grado... a twenty-one gun salute.’

Tenorio raised his right hand high over his head, he did not turn to look back toward the southwest orillon and gun bulwarks, for briskly now he dropped his hand as signal.

Suddenly, from the Fort, the cannons roared and rumbled with the twenty-one gun salute. Above the ramparts the air reverberated with the explosions, as the Transatlantic flagship Zaragoza, expatriation ships San Jose and Nuestra Señora del Carmen and Milagrosa, were pulling out of the port of Zamboanga.

On the pier, some Zamboangueño insurrectos shamelessly shed tears, and the Spanish soldiers too as they turned to cast a last look from the side of the ship of what had been home to them in Southeast Asia --- un rincóncito de Espaňa   a little nook of Spain --- for hundreds of years.

Chapter 26

After the Spaniards left, Alcalde Artang burnt down everything that had escaped the Spanish’s or Zamboanga insurrectos’ torches during the fighting… all but the aduana, which the North Americans might need, he thought, he did not burn down. If the Americans planned to land their marines, the aduana would be of good use for the invasion of the pueblo.

In the meantime, no celebration was complete without the traditional tuba  coconut wine drinking and bailes   dances. 

‘Go, Lieutenant Guillermo,’ he said to one of his aides. ‘Gather all the pretty girls you find in the nearby barrios and bring them here for the bailes.’ It was not just for a day or night, but for weeks afterwards, Alcalde Artang kept the girls and refused to return them home to their villages. Meantime, they stayed with acquaintances or friends. A kind-hearted woman might take them in... si tiene suerte.

sabes tu, a drunk discovered a wine cellar in the Fort, which the departing Spaniards had left still very much stock with excellent wine. Quickly, a cheering crowd of would-be drunks ransacked the wine cellar. Nearly as fast, the man population drank itself to inebriation, not excluding some sluttish women. Soon the drunken men and sluttish women were gamboling and dancing, dancing wildly in the streets.

In the bailes the following night, a mestizo punched a Subano datu pawing his younger sister. Enraged, the Subano went after the mestizo with his kris. Prodded by the threatening kris, the mestizo outran and lost the datu among the bailarinas   dancers. Maddened by his failure, the kris-brandishing Subano imparted his anger at the crowd there, swinging his kris at everyone and dispersing all in confusion, like fowls in a chicken coop. Fortunately, before anyone could get hurt, somebody had the good sense to offer the crazed Subano datu a glass of tuba wine, which he imbibed and fell heavily asleep. Pues, the bailes continued until four o’clock in the morning of the following day.

Several times, General Tenorio warned the alcalde de rancherias Artang to stop the bailes and debauchery. He even admonished him to send those innocent bailarinas   dancing girls back home.

He said, ‘You have been keeping them for weeks against their wishes, no?’

Mayor Artang replied, ‘Eh?’ too soused to say more.

So, Don Gueremon’s words went from one ear and out the other. So, the dissipation and orgies went on undiminished for days more.

This has to stop.

General Tenorio sent soldiers to stop the bailes. Alcalde Artang ignored them and snubbed them.

‘But they are orders of General Tenorio himself,’ the soldiers said.

‘Tell Don Gueremon that the war is over,’ said Artang. ‘He should enjoy our new victory.’

The soldiers balked. Mayor Artang then had them stripped of their uniforms and guns by his guards. He subjected some to worse indignity by their being dressed up like the bailarinas in the festival, ay.

Alcalde Artang had not left the aduana since he went there to drink with his drinking companions. Before Don Gueremon’s soldiers left, Artang lifted a bottle of wine, swiveling his head at his festive audience, and invited everyone to drink with him.

‘Don Gueremon Tenorio cannot do anything,’ he said confidently to them. ‘Because he needs us.… There is nothing he can do. Not while the United States warships remain anchored there off the port. Anytime, the warships Ohio and Cavite could fire their guns. Quite easy to start a new war.’

Datu Hassan, who had joined him after the General’s soldiers left, declined the wine. ‘The agua pataranta,   crazy water,’ he explained to Mayor Artang, ‘invites strange behavior from the Moros than from his brother Christian tribesmen.’ While Mayor Artang was drinking, the datu refusing another drink said, ‘I believe the North Americans would be better colonists. I have no wish that I and my people would be under the revolutionary republic run by Spanish mestizos.’

Not surprising to hear this from Hassan, thought Artang, or any other Moro chief.

But that was not all the datu said, as he added, the tone of his voice gruff, cynical:

‘Since the revolutionary leaders have traces of Spanish blood, what assurance do we Moslems have they will not be as cruel and despotic as their fathers were… once they become our masters, wâ?’

Obviously, he was referring to the fact that the top leaders of the Zamboangueño revolution, all, were Spanish mestizos. Without regard, that Alcalde Artang was a mestizo himself, so was the rajah muda himself, who however traced his ancestry not to Spanish bloodline but to the Arab Moslem missionaries who came to Mindanao in mid-fifteenth century. The difference with the rebel leaders being that Artang and Hassan both looked more like Turkos with their dark complexion. That was the obviously bien claro differencia.

At the height of the festivities, the revelers ransacked public buildings, including the churches, trampled upon the floors, flung and shattered pews, and smashed the altar with clubs.

Heretics and thieves profanely slashed icons and ran off with the statues of various saints too heavy for one man to carry; a thief strung a rope around the neck of the town’s patron saint, Nuestra Señora dela Immaculada Concepciòn. With a couple of collaborators, the statue was profanely dragged out to the streets, and amidst a jeering, mad crowd, stripped off its golden wig and glossy, seam-embroidered, silken clothes. Insatiable, their profligate profanity brimless, the looters and plunderers looted all the gold and silver, sparing not the chalice and monstrance, of the churches. Pranksters had their day, too, by smearing the faces of the saints with mud and tar. An instant procession emanated from the church led by the most notorious troublemaker of the town. Behind him, a mixed crowd sang bawdy songs at the top of their lungs.

A Chinese mestizo, a blood-cousin of one of the Zamboanga Revolutionary Army Commissioners, Alfredo Macrohon, paraded through the streets of the plaza dressed in an over-sized sotana loosely folded over his shoulders. He had sweet-talked a fat Dominican friar out of his hiding place behind the altar of his parish church, and then forcibly stripped his sotana off his back. 

In all the frenzy and madness of a fiesta and victory celebration, the victory celebrants forgot to raise the Zamboanga Revolutionary flag. Only in the middle of the week into the orgies and bailes was the flag raised at the Fort--- to the unease and shameful omission of the liberated colonials.

Finally, the festivities ended, as all do whether it begins with a bang or a squeak. Afterwards the town became something like a ghost town. The festivities had lasted too long, folk said. By that time, everything, save the aduana, the revelers had not burnt to ashes in the renewed fire, ay. Even some isolated houses in the outskirts of town untouched during the final assault were now mere embers and dying coals.

Still, in the entire catastrophe, or rather as usual in one, there is always a redeeming feature. Do you not think so?  For seemingly the only image imbued with life there was the rebels’ flag. It just waved and fluttered boldly high on the bulwark of the Fort, unmindful and unperturbed, though German, Dutch, and British ships sailed past it through the Straight of Basilan on their way to the East Indies. Although today, international ships no longer cross the channel as in the old days.

‘There it was… the Filipino revolutionary flag,’ said the captains of those foreign ships. ‘For all to see, waving proudly and defiantly, and nothing the pair ofu.s. warships off shore could do but watch helplessly, and humbled, for many, many months.’

Six months in all, and for once all our sources, local, armchair historians from Manila and the U.S., irrevocably agree on the number.

....

Upon waking one November morning in Santa Maria, his old headquarters, General Tenorio was aghast to learn that los dos Norte Americano barkos de guerra,   the two North American warships, Ohio and Cavite, were gone. Clandestinely, the two ships, which had weighed anchor off shore since March, showing no sign of leaving after the Zamboangueños had booted out the Spanish colonists from the peninsula, had, and shrouded in the dark, sailed for Lokas, the island of Rajah Muda Hassan. After taking in fresh fruits and vegetables, which were aplenty there in the island, and filling their tanks with fresh water, captains Browne and Clark then dropped anchor, northeast, much closer to the shore of the pueblo than any time during the insurrection. 

It was a clear, bright day, that mid-November. El sol shone brightly too in Santa Maria and in Lokas island. Here the white sand on the beach sparkled under the sunrays.

Chapter 27

            The Betrayal

            On both the journals of the two Zamboangueño  authors, Benjamin Amado’s Apuntes Historicos de Zamboanga, and Pedro Piantong Rivera’s A Humble Chronicle of the Birth of a New People, subtitled Complido Reflejo de los Heroes,   Perfect Mirror of Heroes, it says that in mid-November, 1899, some six months after General Gueremon Tenorio y Imbing captured the Fort of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception and liberated the people of Zamboanga from over two hundred years of Spanish tyranny and bondage, Major Melanio Marquez, el General’s second in command, was murdered by Alcalde Laureano Artang in Cabonegro barrio. The major was covering the retreat of General Tenorio.

They were fired upon by the same artillery and long rifles hijacked from the thirteen Spanish steam gunships by Major Marquez himself in April, that same year.

They rode into barrio Cabonegro because the day before, General Tenorio had received a confidential report from Sergeant Gowito Saavedra that Alcalde Artang was turning over the heavy guns to Captain Browne of the CSS Ohio, which was moored with its sister-ship USS Cavite at Datu Mahmud Hassan’s Lokas Island. El General and Major Marquez were there to verify the report, and if true, stop Alcalde Artang from performing this treacherous act.

They were coming in north-west of the revolutionary general headquarters in Santa Barbara, neither men suspecting an ambush when they were attacked; that the alcalde local de las rancherias Artang would be bold enough to fire at them without warning; nor that the alcalde and Datu Hassan had now completely allied themselves with the North Americans as Americanistas: collaborators.

The story went that the head of the artillery Sergeant Saavedra, a confidant of the General, at first refused to fire upon General Tenorio, saying he was not a traitor. Whereupon, Alcalde Artang unholstered his handgun and placing the barrel at the artillery officer’s head, said:

‘If you don’t fire at my command, you are a dead man yourself.... Fuego!   Fire!’

Sergeant Gowito Saavedra fired but his aim was not faultless, giving General Tenorio the chance to turn and slip out of the ambush. But Major Melanio Marquez was not so lucky, taking the bullet meant for el General from a repeat rifle in his chest.

And so, the betrayal was irreversibly and finally consummated: with a wrong victim.

Chapter 28

                Interview

Maestro (Teacher) Jose Atilano was a researcher at the cultural and historical department of the Jesuit school in Zamboanga city. He had done an extensive paper on General Gueremon Tenorio y Imbing for his B.A. history. At the time of this interview, he was on assignment by the department head, an American Jesuit, to ‘fill in’ the six-month gap from the capitulation in May, 1899 of Governor-General Grado and his forces to the Zamboangueño insurrectos and the beginning of the war between them and the North Americans in November: ‘fill that in,’ he instructed.

His informant was one Ramon Tenorio, 68 years old, youngest half-brother of el General, who was living then in a small house, in a Subanon village west of the capital; half a day away through rugged road and across several rivers and rough terrain.

Jose Atilano: So General Tenorio was not in Cabonegro to attend a birthday party, as claimed by some historians and the General’s biographer.

Ramon Tenorio: No, he was there with his second in command Major Marquez to inspect the artillery, particularly those hijacked by Major Marquez himself from the thirteen Spanish steam gunboats. That is a much known story… I mean the hijacking.

Jose Atilano: Si, indeed it is. Pues, no truth then to the stories… there was even a feature on it in a Manila national newspaper.

Ramon Tenorio: None.El General was in Cabonegro precisely to inspect the captured ordnance.

Jose Atilano: An American Protestant missionary turned amateur historian blames General Tenorio for the chaos, the burning of Zamboanga pueblo, and the debauchery that followed the war.

Ramon Tenorio: He does not know what he is saying.

Jose Atilano: --- that women were kept for weeks against their will to join in the bailes and other festivities. The American amateur historian, Chuck Roberts, which is his name, even said in his book entitled Edict from Mindanao, and I quote, ‘… carabaos and cattle were butchered by the insurrectos, and there was total disregard of law and order in the land.’

Ramon Tenorio: Hijo de cabra! No, no-no; it was the traitor Artang who ordered the burning of the pueblo of Zamboanga, and his men butchering the carabaos and cattle rustling. With that traitor of Datu Hassan, of course, the two of them, the datu more treacherous than his co-conspirator Artang, since General Tenorio trusted him, was his bosom-and childhood-friend.

Jose Atilano: And the women…

Ramon Tenorio: Hó, o, they were kept against their will for the festivities and dances. Artang who was responsible for all this.

Jose Atilano: When I was earning my MA in history, I interviewed ‘Ñora Ica in Tumaga and…

Ramon Tenorio: Si, ‘Ñora Ica, the story-teller…bless her soul.

Jose Atilano: She told me about the execution of two revolutionary officials, a Lieutenant Lamon and Bocavieja, who was the undersecretary of administrator Noche--- the execution ordered by the General himself. She said the two were very innocent of their crime of treason!

Ramon Tenorio: Innocente? Cojones!  Those two were prime examples of rumormongers, rabble-raisers!

Jose Atilano: I see…

Ramon Tenorio: And furthermore, soon after the murder of Major Marquez, the two promptly joined the Zamboanga collaborators, Mayor Artang and Datu Hassan, then known as theAmericanistas. ‘Ñora Ica is a gossiper, bless her soul! and loves to tell stories and does not care if it is true or not. She means no harm, Mister Atilano.

Jose Atilano: I see.

Silence. Jose Atilano looks up at some old pictures on the wall. Among them were those of the General on his favorite white horse, in the basic uniform of that day, and his staff, taken sometime after the war; the old pueblo of Zamboanga; the plaza named after Captain Browne, 1920; and of Governadorcillo Isidro Tenorio, father of el General, seated on an armless-chair, with his wife Dominga Imbing, in Subana native dress, impassively standing behind him; and the young informant, grey background.

Jose Atilano: Our local historians have not written much … in fact, more foreigners and Manila armchair-historians, so-called, than by our local recorders and writers of these historic events.

Ramon Tenorio: How true! That is why they got many things mixed up. They write about our revolution while comfortably seated in their air-conditioned offices… copying each other’s facts, data, not bothering even to get them first-hand in Zamboanga. While the Norte Americanos and the Spaniards--- they of course are biased. ‘History as written by the victors,’ somebody quoted that to me.

Jose Atilano: Could you fill us up what

happened next after the murder of Major Marquez?

Ramon Tenorio: Major Marquez was not the target, tu sabes.…

Jose Atilano: Si, si.                    

Ramon Tenorio: Pues, after the murder, the betrayal, the General, of course, wanted vengeance. But Don Salas, next to Major Marquez in command of the revolution, convinced him otherwise. He said he would be fighting his own people and many would die, innocent of the hideous crime of treachery, treason of that proud, cymbal-and parade-loving Mayor Artang.

Jose Atilano: So the General---

Ramon Tenorio: Si, si; instead, he went back to his old headquarters in Santa Maria. I think it was there that he decided what to do next. And that was to leave Zamboanga, his homeland which he had never wavered to sacrifice his own life for her freedom… and avoid a conflict with Don Artang and the other collaborators, then called Americanistas. You see, by this time they already, including of course Datu Hassan, identified themselves with the Americans.--- Gueremon believed it was the only way to save his people from a fratricidal war, brothers against brothers…. One of his selfless orders was to abandon the Fort and the plaza of Zamboanga which in had cost hundreds of insurrectos’ lives before falling into our possession. So that when the Norte Americanos besieged the Fort, that November, they found only a handful of insurrectos who fled right away from the advancing U.S. marines and Don Artang.

Jose Atilano: Roberts said the rebels jumped off the Fort’s walls like monkeys and fled into the mangrove. Is that how it happened?

Ramon Tenorio: Ha-ha. The walls are too high, maybe four-five men’s height. You jump from that height and you break either your leg or worse, your neck. Adios! Anyway, they did not have to jump … the insurrectos simply walked out of the gate. You know, there was Don Gueremon’s order for them to abandon it, the Fort, not to fight in order to preserve the Fort from destruction … save it for posterity. By this time, the rebels knew they were not to engage in battle with the Norte Americanos or the Americanistas.    

Jose Atilano: (laughter) Yes, of course. Piantong Rivera mentions in his diary-journal about Mayor Artang promising the American Captain Browne with the head of General Tenorio, and that he himself would take it to the warship Ohio.

Ramon Tenorio: You know that never happened….

Jose Atilano: But did he really say that; make that horrible promise to the American captain, as a savage warrior does?

Ramon Tenorio: Uah-uagh, you don’t have to doubt it… the mayor of Cabonegro was a humbug,un bugalon y fanfarrón  boastful man. Although it was the head of Major Marquez, which he brought to Captain Browne’s ship anchored in Datu Hassan’s island… I cannot remember now which one of the two, Lokas or Nipaan?

Jose Atilano: Did he really? Que barbaro!

Ramon Tenorio: Hó, o: as if I read it in Piantong Rivera’s journal as well as in Salas’s local newspaper La Verdad, a grandson of Don Salas, I believe... that the night before Artang got an old leather bag from his office, which was the bag of his hunter guide. Inside he would put the wild game’s tusks, boar’s head, you know. With leather tongs , which you simply pull both ends to open or close it and you swing it over your shoulder by the end of the knotted tongs. That way…very easy to carry whatever is inside it, you know.

Jose Atilano: Si, si, I recall reading that too… but not in Don Rivera’s booklet. I think in Salas’s La Verdad.

Ramon Tenorio:--- and how unconcerned, nonchalantly the mayor of Cabonegro carried the old leather bag over his shoulder going through his town, the bag swinging on his shoulder and nobody in town suspecting inside was Major Marquez’s severed head. And just as nonchalantly he cut across the plaza of Zamboanga before the Barrios’ pantalan where he took a small boat and sailed to Datu Hassan’s island … Dios mio, I have the island’s name at the tip of my tongue, ay, which one?

Anyway, that’s not so important... and asked permission to board the CSS Ohio, obviously the leather bag swollen with the Major Marquez’s severed head on his back still; carrying it without stopping even once as he went through the town toward the pantalan. You see, he had yet to find a boat to take him to Datu Hassan’s island. --- I’m sorry, but as if I am repeating myself, Mister Atilano?

Jose Atilano: That’s o.k. But did the American captain not suspect what was inside?

Ramon Tenorio: Apparently, not! Because I understand that Mayor Artang had vehemently objected being submitted to a body search before being allowed to board theOhio. Also, maybe Captain Browne thought no civilized and sane person would seriously carry out such a barbaric deed or promise….

Jose Atilano: Pues, afterwards---

Ramon Tenorio: Captain Browne was a veteran Indian fighter and must have seen many scalps in his Indian campaign. But cojones!… A human head, probably with blood-stains still on it suddenly popping out of a bag, as he opened it, si-si, likely following the advice of the mayor, who likely could not hold back his eagerness, urge, and was trembling all over with excitement expecting to see Captain Browne’s face fulminating with gratitude --- but instead turned into a cauldron of curses and anger.

Jose Atilano: No!

Ramon Tenorio: Cojones… el hombre was loco. Excrement went into his head. Pride and ambition blinded him. Just as if… (he abruptly burst out with laughter, his avocado-shaped belly rising and falling) Ha-ha-ha.

Jose Atilano: Was there something comical during the incident? I do not seem to...

 Ramon Tenorio: O, si; the alcalde was nearly shot by Captain Browne’s adjutant. Because they thought their captain was about to be harmed, when Artang abruptly launched forward, nearly knocking the American captain onto the deck, to retrieve the severed head which had slipped off the captain’s trembling hands, and that could have been (more laughter) the end of the collaborators, Americanistas… as if---

Jose Atilano:… and the other Americanista?

Ramon Tenorio: You mean Datu…

Jose Atilano: Si-si; him.

Ramon Tenorio: Datu Hassan was a crafty and clever hombre. After the U.S. marines had taken the Fortaleza dela Nuestra Señora Immaculada Concepción, the datu’s warriors appeared suddenly from the swamps of Santa Barbara. When Captain Browne told the datu’s warriors it was all over, that they could all return to their island with the datu, instead, through the datu’s insinuation, of course, they pretended to act as if they were fighting the Zamboangueño rebels before the Fort. Brandishing their bolos, the Moro warriors shook their spears threateningly, clanged their wooden shields, and made a lot of noise by swearing and screaming at an invisible and non-existent rebel enemy; as if---

Jose Atilano: A farcical comedy, an ‘opéra bouffé’, but for the tragedy in our history, ‘Ñor Tenorio.

Ramon Tenorio: Oo-o.

Chapter 29

General Tenorio then fled to Siocon barrio, hid there among the Subanon tribe of his concubine princessita from both traitors Artang and Hassan. ‘I am afraid I have to seek sanctuary with your people, princessita mia,’ said General Tenorio. ‘My people are proud to have you, my lover,’ said Juanita. ‘It is also my father’s wish.’ ‘Si-si, of course. I am afraid I will again depend on his loyalty and friendship.’ ‘It was my bad mouth that made this happen,’ said the sandile Juanita. ‘My ominous words and promise of a sanctuary for you, my lover.... Do you remember, that night?’ ‘No-no, it is not so,’ replied the General.

Later, when the North Americans joined the two traitors, known now as the collaborators Americanistas, in their pursuit to capture him, the Zamboangueño insurrecto General Tenorio then had to flee further up, up the hinterlands of Zamboanga peninsula. ‘I must have to leave you, mi querida’ said Tenorio. ‘No, stay. My father has many warriors.’ He shook his head. ‘I will only put you and your father in danger,’ he said. ‘The traitors Artang and Datu---’ he could not say, even then, his former childhood friend’s name. ‘They are worse than animals, and are crueler than our former enemy!’ ‘My father the thimuay will always welcome you,’ said Juanita. ‘I will remember... give my eternal thanks to the thimuay.Muchassissimas gracias, querida princessita mia.’ 

Constantly, he sought sanctuary among the Subanons. And sometimes, from the Samals of the coastline. ‘Ay, Datu Malai. May I ask a favor from you...?’ said Don Gueremon Tenorio by the shoreline of Taluksangay. ‘You need not say more,’ said Datu Malai, digging his toes into the wet sand. ‘Word has reached us that the traitors Americanistas are seeking your capture.’ ‘That is true.... Only for a few days, datu.’ He never stayed longer than a month with either tribe, Subanon or Samal. Often, he was no farther than an hour away from the traitors Artang and Hassan and the new colonizers, the North Americans. Who were now also hunting him like an animal.

But in the 1940s, with a new invader, the Japanese imperial forces, raiding and pillaging the peninsula, Artang and Hassan and the North Americans ceased pursuing and hunting him. Together they had to face this new threat, the barbaric enemy on their shores, the yellow, chink-eyed, Japanese invaders. ‘It is funny, do you not think so, princessita mia?’ said Don Tenorio. ‘It took another enemy to stop my treacherous enemies from trying to capture me.’ He was back among his sandile’s Subanon tribe in Siocon. ‘No, por favor, querido, do not say it is “funny.”’ ‘I did not mean it that way,’ said he, reassuring her. ‘But if it were not for the Japanese invaders, the collaborators Americanistas would not have stopped hunting me.’ ‘Ay, you have a home here, my lover,’ she it was that was reassuring him, then. ‘I know ...’ he said, gazing suddenly at her: thinking But will I ever see my hometown Zamboanga, again.

Some years later, el General died a pauper without seeing his country liberated from Japanese tyranny by the North American forces, which by some quirk were now both an ally and colonizer. He was last seen a year before his death with a Subana woman, probably in her sixties but still pretty, by Boholano (native of Bohol island in the Visayas region) portmanteaux merchants during tábu   market day deep, deep in the hinterlands of Zamboanga peninsula. They were not sure if the couple were alone or with others, since he was mixing quite freely with the market goers.

End

¡§Philippine Copyright "¶ 2006 by A. R.  Enriquez¡