He had begun life as a fatherless boy (Sakay was his mother’s surname) in congested, urban-poor, Tondo on Tabora St., earning a living doing odd jobs as a blacksmith or as occasional tailor, also as an actor in street theater and comedias, but mostly as a barber. When he made his commitment to Philippine Independence by joining his friend, Andres Bonifacio’s Katipunan, he made hair the symbol of resistance and vowed he would cut his only after he had defeated the Americans.
During his brief lifetime, Sakay became the scourge of all his country’s oppressors — the Spaniards, the Americans, the misguided half-bloods and compatriots — trying in every way he knew to secure freedom from injustice for his people. He was more determined than Rizal, more fortunate than Bonifacio, purer than Aguinaldo, more lyrically mysterious than Mabini. If Filipinos had won the war with America, he would probably have been our Simon Bolívar or our Ho Chi Minh.
Instead, because most history is written by the victors and their partisans and in the American years, Filipino schoolbooks and acceptable public opinion followed the black propaganda of the American annexation and “pacification,” several generations of Filipinos lived and died, believing that Sakay was a criminal with lunatic pretensions, a brigand and a ludicrous bandit. In the late 1930s Lamberto Avellana, my brother Leoni’s chum from the American Jesuit Ateneo, movie director and National-Artist-to-be, made a film about Sakay where he was portrayed as the villainous bandit, with the Philippine Constabulary officer playing hero and leading man (Leopoldo Salcedo.)
What a little research can undo. After Independence, scholars intent on writing history from a Filipino viewpoint began to review the colonial versions and examine old records. They came to the conclusion that Sakay was an authentic hero in the best tradition of Bonifacio, Emilio Jacinto and Apolonio Samson who were his comrades-in-arms in the Katipunan. Far from being a bandit, he was a glorious die-hard, incredibly brave and tenacious, a heroic hold-out for Philippine Independence.
In 1952, Antonio K. Abad, a member of the Philippine Historical Society, published the definitive biography, General Macario L. Sakay: — the only President of the Tagalog Republic. Was He a Bandit or a Patriot? The foreword by Prof. Teodoro A. Agoncillo, read, “No Filipino has been so maligned in history as General Macario Sakay…Sakay and his men lived dangerously and thus invited the hatred of the early Americans who started a double-barreled campaign of imperialism and liquidation. The Americans called them bandits and outlaws… Mr. Antonio K. Abad has recreated the hero out of a mass of documents…His work is a vindication of the much maligned man who dared posterity to emulate his deep devotion to the ideals of independence.”
UP Prof. Renato Constantino also published his findings in the 1960s, demolishing the American colonial libel about Sakay. But colonial propaganda and its lies have a long shelf-life. Only last week I was painfully surprised when a couple of my Manileño friends, in reply to my remark that I was writing about Sakay, replied dismissively, “Oh, that bandit.”
After a hundred years, we still need the backstory of the Revolution against Spain in 1896 and our war with America in 1899 to understand Sakay and his generation.
The day Rizal was exiled to Dapitan, in July 1892, a group of middle-class Manileños met at a private residence on Azcarraga (now Recto) and founded the Katipunan (Ang Kataastaasang Kagalanggalangan Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan), the secret society that planned and initiated the armed struggle against Spain. In four years, the K.K.K.’s membership rose to almost 30,000: students, workers, merchants, farmers from the eight provinces that started the Revolution. Sakay was an early joiner.
After that disastrous first battle in San Juan in August, 1896, Sakay joined the forces that encamped in the hills of Marikina and Montalban and fought in the Katipunan battles, including the victory at San Mateo. After several reverses, the Manila Katipuneros retreated to Cavite where a new general, Emilio Aguinaldo, turned the tide, defeated Bonifacio in a power struggle (Aguinaldo’s Caviteño Magdalo vs. Bonifacio’s Manileño Magdiwang) and went on to win many encounters. The Spanish government called a truce and negotiated the Pact of Biyak-na-Bato.
The heads of the Revolutionary Army retreated to Hongkong, from where they spent the Spanish indemnity money on arms, befriended the US Consuls in Hong Kong and Singapore and resumed the Revolution in 1898 at the height of the Spanish-American War, assuming that the Americans were their allies and protectors. Aguinaldo proclaimed Philippine Independence in Cavite in June, 1898, with the revolutionary forces 80,000 strong, laid successful siege to Spanish Manila, proceeded to liberate Luzon and expected to enter the beleaguered capital and install a Philippine Independent Republic.
