Masantol

Originally named San Miguel de Masantol and a part of the town of Macabebe, Pampanga, three of the town's leading patriarchs - Manuel Fajardo, Gregorio Bautista, and Juan Lacap - filed a motion on June 26, 1877 to separate the barrios of Bebe, Bulacus, Caingin and Nigui from Macabebe thereby creating a new Spanish pueblo called San Miguel. This new pueblo was approved by Spanish Governor General Domingo Moriones y Murillo and was inaugurated on May 1, 1878. On November 30, 1893, the Catholic Parish of San Miguel was formally acknowledged through a Royal Decree.[[1]]( BY NOW, Kapampangans should be totally convinced that the derogatory term dugong aso is not derogatory at all. Its original meaning was "fierce and fearless" (the British general William Draper wrote that Pampangos fought like mad dogs "gnawing at our bayonets") and "loyal to a fault" (the Spaniards called Kapampangans the "loyal companions of our disgraces and our glories"). It was only later when people started interpreting dugong aso as "treacherous," which is totally the opposite of what dogs are. I will not make excuses for their acts; I will just say that when you are colonized, you are forced to make compromises to survive. We never lived in those times and therefore never know their sufferings and the moral dilemmas they faced every single day of their tortured lives. Besides, non-Kapampangans were just as traitorous. The Macabebe soldiers were only following orders. A Tagalog, Hilario Tal Placido, and an Ilocano, Cecilio Segismundo, defected on their own from Aguinaldo's camp and revealed his hiding place to the Americans. All these thoughts about traitors and heroes come to mind because today, November 30, is Bonifacio Day. In life and in death, Andres Bonifacio was tormented by traitors-from fellow Katipuneros who abandoned, humiliated and executed him, to those who, after his death, disarranged, destroyed, and covered up evidence in an attempt to diminish his role in history. At Tejeros where Katipuneros convened to choose between Aguinaldo who wasn't there and Bonifacio who was there, the electors who were mostly upper-class Caviteños chose the absentee as their new president. When they proceeded to vote for vice president, they ignored Bonifacio again and chose another Caviteño (Mariano Trias). And when they finally, reluctantly gave him the crumbs (the position of interior secretary), someone objected and had the gall to say that the Katipunan founder was not educated enough for the position. It was obvious the whole proceeding had been scripted from the start. When the split occurred, Aguinaldo ordered Bonifacio arrested. You'd think that with Bonifacio's stature the arresting party would politely salute him before putting on the handcuffs. Instead, they barged into his headquarters and mauled him and his two brothers Ciriaco and Procopio (some say they also raped his wife Gregoria de Jesus). The mauling was so extreme that Ciriaco died on the spot. Andres was stabbed in the neck before being hauled off. In life, Bonifacio was shut out because he was poor, unschooled and an outsider in the circle of Caviteño elites who controlled a bloc in the Katipunan. In death, Bonifacio was sidelined because the American colonizers considered the elite, educated and pacifist Rizal as a worthier role-model for Filipinos, and also because Bonifacio's nemesis, Aguinaldo, lived long enough to perpetuate only his version of events (he died in 1964 at age 95). Some historians are saying that Bonifacio, not Aguinaldo, should be considered first President of the Philippines for heading the first revolutionary government before Aguinaldo's Tejeros convention replaced it. Others are suggesting that Bonifacio should be equally ranked with Rizal for launching Asia's first anti-colonial revolution that Rizal merely inspired and Aguinaldo merely continued. Regala says he cannot find hard evidence about Andres Bonifacio's birth in 1863 in Masantol because all church