Remembering Tres de Abril

Exactly a 115 years ago, a group of Katipuneros under Mr. Pantaleon Villegas a.k.a. Leon Kilat (it was a Palm Sunday then), irked by the arrest of his friends by the Guardia Civil, made a move against the Spaniards at the corner of Guadalupe Road (V. Rama Ave.) and Gen. Weyler St. (Tres de Abril) who were under the command of Sgt. Royo. They were so close to each other; they were shouting insults at one another. But the Spaniards asked them to go home because Leon Kilat's men only had bolos and no guns.

But instead of going home, they dared the Spaniards to fight them, so the Spanish troops started firing at Leon Kilat's men, all of whom dropped to the ground, then while the Spaniards were reloading their weapons, Leon Kilat's men jumped on the Spaniards and overwhelmed them. Then the Spanish troops started to make a hasty retreat all the way to the bridge at the end of Colon St. where they were reinforced by other Spanish troops, but it was too late, all they could do was to cover their retreat to Fort San Pedro.

This day is called “Tres de Abril” where Cebuano Katipuneros proudly routed the Spanish troops. Some 30 troops were killed or wounded in that encounter. When the sun came down, Cebu and later in the night, Talisay, was in the hands of the Katipuneros. Meanwhile, Gen. Adolfo Montero tried to appease his mean, telling them that the “indios” are fools for attacking the Spanish troops and he sent for reinforcements.

With Leon Kilat and his men in control of Cebu, he was faced with the problem that majority of the Cebuano populace did not rise up with him. Perhaps they were scared that this was just a skirmish where the vastly superior Spanish force would eventually win the fight. Having no artillery to pound the walls of Fort San Pedro, Leon Kilat decided to circle the fort and starve the men holed out inside. After all, the Spaniards did not expect anything like this to happen, so there wasn't really much food or water inside the Fort.

A few days later, Leon Kilat was on his horse to check his troops surrounding the Fort, when a shot rang out from a Spanish sniper. Leon Kilat fell on the ground motionless. But a few seconds later, he stood up to the cheers of his men that his “anting-anting” protected him from being killed. The people who saw that incident really believed that Leon Kilat had some kind of supernatural power.

However on April 7,1898 on Holy Thursday, just when the Spanish troops were already tired and weary of being holed out in Fort San Pedro, things started to turn their way when the Spanish Cruiser Don Juan Austria arrived in Cebu with fresh troops, which sent Leon Kilat and his men running for their lives. As the story goes, Leon Kilat went to the town of Carcar and hid there with his men. However, his men turned against him, got him drunk and stabbed him to death. They thought that by doing so, the Guardia Civil would give them clemency for their crimes against the Spaniards. But the Juez de Cochillo spared none of Leon Kilat's men.

Thus ended the only successful military engagement done by the Katipuneros based in Cebu. Yet, thanks to nationalistic historians who only write the history of the Philippines from the view point of the Tagalogs, none of what I'm writing here ended in our history books when I was still in high school because of those so-called Tagalog nationalists who only cared to promote the Tagalog culture. While the Tagalogs started the Katipunan Revolution, they only had minor victories. But like it or not, the short-lived victory of Tres de Abril should be a lesson for us Cebuanos that we can do better than our Tagalog “colonizers.”

Indeed, few people realize that the Philippines is an archipelagic country with diverse cultures and people who speak different languages. It has been that way since we Cebuanos killed the first tourist, Ferdinand Magellan. But the Tagalogs under the Malolos Constitution had other plans and that is to establish the Tagalogan Republic in this country.

This is why after the end of World War II, when the Americans gave us our Independence on July 4, 1946, we were never truly free from our colonizers because it only ushered into power a new set of colonizers, the Tagalogs. Yes, as the late Sir Max Soliven used to write: The Philippines was under the Spanish convent for 400 years and 50 years under Hollywood. Yet when we got our independence, another ethnic group still wanted to colonize us Cebuanos and turn us into Tagalog speakers. Today, while our local candidates are campaigning for their elective post, I hope that they will remember this important date 115 years ago when Cebuanos rose up to fight for the very freedom that we enjoy today…at the sacrifice of our forefather's lives.

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