Vigilance

Colonel Pedro Sumayo of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (Isafp) missed his rendezvous with destiny when he burned the original wiretapped recordings and transcripts of alleged phone conversations between former president Gloria Macapaga-Arroyo and elections commissioner Virgilio Garcillano during the 2004 national elections.

One cannot say the same of the unnamed Spanish general who kept 5,506 pages of intelligence reports and photographs gathered between 1896 and 1898 by the “Cuerpo de Vigilancia,” forerunner of the Isafp, about Katipuneros and those suspected of being enemies of Spain in Manila and its adjacent provinces. Those same papers were eventually bought by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) in 1996 and for over a decade indexed and summarized in English, eventually ending in a 707-page guide launched by the NCCA together with the Philippine National Historical Society last Sept. 28.

One can just imagine the horror had the Spanish general decided to do what the colonel did and burn those papers as he began packing his things for the sad and final return journey to Spain. As it happened, he, like many of his compatriots, brought papers to Spain and exactly a hundred years later, his collection was up for grabs to the highest bidder, authenticated by renowned historians from the Philippines and Spain.

The years have numbed the pain, the injustice and the brutality that unfolded even as these reports in the so-called “Vigilancia” were filed day after day. Today, we have reconciled with Spain, even as we celebrate our heroes of the Revolution (including Andres Bonifacio whose 148th birthday happened yesterday), and those papers have become more of a treasure providing glimpses of those tumultuous years and snippets of the collaboration of some of our compatriots who were loyal to Mother Spain. They also serve as an important source of information for historians.

Sadly, there is very little about Cebu in the collection, no firsthand eyewitness reports about the Katipunan here. Instead there are three entries, one of which was filed by a certain agente, Tito David, explaining the “Tres de Abril” (April 3, 1898) uprising in Cebu City as being due in part to the massacre of  Visayan sailors at Calle Calamba in San Nicolas, Manila sometime around March 26, 1898 (Informe #63, Manila, April 6, 1898, p. 415). Another entry is a report by Filipino informant Don Antonio Cabangis that the Spanish residents had taken refuge at Fort San Pedro during the uprising and that the friars and Spanish residents outside the poblacion of Cebu were killed by the rebels or by their Filipino household helpers who were members of the Katipunan (Informe #65, Manila, 13 April 1898, p. 513). The third report is of the suspicion that the U.S. Asiatic Fleet was not going to attack Manila but was instead heading for Cebu to load coal from Compostela. This report was filed by Spanish “Inspector Jefe” (Chief Inspector) Federico Moreno, who headed the Cuerpo de Vigilancias himself.

The absence of documents filed about Cebu gathered by Cebuanos and Spanish residents suggests that there may yet be a similar set of dossiers waiting to be found in Spain, or, more dreadful, that these were burned either by Spanish officers before they left Cebu on Dec. 24, 1898. Or maybe they were kept all along at the municipio of Cebu until termites or the American liberation bombs of 1945 rained down and eventually pulverized City Hall.

The lesson to be learned is simple: Do not burn those intelligence reports; they will come in handy once the generations are distanced from the actual event. Now, I wonder if those dossiers about me and my other activist friends during the Marcos years are still kept somewhere at Camp Lapu-Lapu or Camp Sotero Cabahug. Perhaps in about 60 years or so, those, too, will fetch millions? I doubt it.

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My thanks to Archbishop Jose Palma, Archbishop Emeritus Ricardo Cardinal Vidal, Vice Gov. Agnes Mapale, Mayor Michael Rama, Mayor Jay L. Olivar, Fr. Fritz Malinao, Fr. Aleks Gaut, SVD, Fr. Brian Brigoli, Ricky Jose, Loy and Rudy Alix, Zona Amper, and all the curators, heritage advocates, students, museum workers and enthusiasts as well as friends from both the print and broadcast media for gracing the unveiling of the travelling exhibit titled “The Iron Age in Cebu: Significant Finds from San Remigio” last Saturday,  Nov. 26 at the Cathedral Museum of Cebu, on the occasion of its 5th anniversary. The exhibit continues till next Saturday after which we will move this to Museo Sugbo, the Cebu Provincial Museum, until the end of December. In January, it will move to USC Museum and then onto San Remigio. The Cathedral Museum is open Tuesdays to Sundays. Please find time to drop by and view the finds dated to around AD 410-550.