Finding Bonifacio: Readings, Reflections, Resources

IN 1921, largely through the efforts of poet-politician Lope K. Santos, an official holiday to mark the birthday of Katipunan Supremo Andres Bonifacio was celebrated in the country for the first time (it came a generation after his execution at the hands of Emilio Aguinaldo’s men). The day before the new holiday, labor leader Hermenegildo Cruz later recalled, his school-age children asked him: “Sino ba iyan si Bonifacio (Who is that [man] Bonifacio)?” “Wari ako’y natubigan (I felt like I had been doused),” the pioneer labor organizer and nationalist writer wrote. After he recovered, he began to tell his children about Bonifacio and the Katipunan: “Sa maiikling pangungusap, ay aking ipinatanto sa mga anak ko ang buong kabuhayan ni Andres Bonifacio at ang sanhi’t katwiran kung bakit siya’y ibinubunyi ng ating lahi’t Pamahalaan. Akin ding ipinakilala sa kanila ang mga aral ng ‘Katipunan’; at isinaysay ang kapakinabangang natamo ng Bayang Pilipino sa paghihimagsik na pinamatnugutan ng kapisanang yaong itinatag at pinanguluhan ni Andres Bonifacio. (In simple words, I made my children understand the whole life story of Andres Bonifacio and the roots and reasons why he was being honored by our race and government. I also introduced to them the principles of the Katipunan; and narrated the benefits gained by the Philippine nation through the revolution directed by that society founded and headed by Andres Bonifacio.)”

The Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office, as part of the year-long commemoration, will be publishing a series of online features until Bonifacio’s 150th birth anniversary next year with emphasis on the Supremo, the Katipunan, and the Philippine Revolution of 1896. These will be: March 22, 2013: The Tejeros Convention April 28, 2013: The Trial of Andres Bonifacio June 12, 2013: Araw ng Kalayaan July 6, 2013: Establishment of the Katipunan August 23, 2013: The Cry of Pugad Lawin August 30, 2013: National Heroes Day November 30, 2013: The Andres Bonifacio Sesquicentennial The online effort marks a partnership between PCDSPO, the NHCP, the National Library and National Archives, the Presidential Museum and Library, and Filipino and foreign scholars all united towards one goal: to spark a lively, useful, and illuminating national conversation on the Supremo, the Katipunan, and the Revolution.

When he realized that these disorderly and ill-coordinated efforts yielded little, Rizal thought of organizing a society called Liga Filipina, which was inaugurated a few, days before his rustication to Dapitan in Mindanao. The statute of this association was limited to the establishment by the votes of its members of people’s councils in the towns, a provincial council in every province, and a supreme council for the whole archipelago, but did not define the objectives of the association. I do not know if these objectives were defined in the inaugural meeting over which Rizal himself personally presided because I was not present and because I never had close relations with the illustrious doctor. I can only say that the society was dissolved a few days after its inauguration because of the banishment of its founder, and that, when it was reorganized later on the initiative of Don Domingo Franco, Andres Bonifacio, and others, they gave me the post of secretary of the supreme coun cil. We then fixed the objectives of the society in a short program couched in the following or equivalent language: to contribute to the support of La Solidaridad and the reforms it asked; to raise funds to meet the expenses not only of the periodical but also of the public meetings organized to support such reforms and of the (Spanish) parliamentarians who would advocate them; in brief, to have recourse to all peaceful and legal means, thus transforming the society into a political party.

The association did not have a better fate this time for it had to be dissolved after a few months of life. However, it had promising beginnings: the majority of the members of the supreme council were persons known for their learning, patriotism and social status; thanks to the efforts of Andres Bonifacio and others, people’s councils were soon organized in Tondo and Trozo, and others were being organized in Santa Cruz, Ermita, Malate, Sampaloc, Pandacan, etc. Subsequently a small monthly contribution was required from every member, the proceeds of which were applied to the expenses of La Solidaridad, which were the most urgently to be met. The members paid their dues at first; later they stopped doing so on the pretext that they did not agree with the society’s objectives because the Spanish government paid no attention to the periodical nor in fact would do so to any lawful activity. Upon investigation it then transpired that those commissioned to organize the people’s councils had not required previous assent to the society’s program as a condition for membership in the society; and that, on the contrary, Andres Bonifacio, who had recruited more members for the society with his tireless activity, was firmly convinced of the uselessness of peaceful means. The supreme council, which was more of an organizing committee because its members had not been elected by vote, saw clearly that, as soon as the rank and file elected their leaders according to the by-laws, the program, would be changed. The council understood f or the first time that the masses, whom the Spaniards believed to be br utish or at best indifferent, were in the vanguard where political aspirations were concerned. Realizing that the work of conciliation and compromise was bringing no results, the council declared the dissolution of the society so that the disagreements among its members should not lead to its discovery by the authorities. Those who were in favour of keeping up the fortnightly publication formed one group, called the Compromisarios because each one engaged to pay a monthly contribution of five pesos to meet its expenses. Andres Bonifacio, for his part, reorganized the society under the name of Katipunan ng manga Anak ng Bayan (Association of the Sons of the People), already with independence as its objective.

Sasagi kaya sa inyong loob ang panlolomo at aabutin ang panghihinayang na mamatay sa kadahilanang ito? Hindi, hindi! Sapagka’t nakikintal sa inyong gunita yaang libolibong kinitil na buhay ng mapanganyayang kamay ng kastila, yaong daing, yaong himutoc at pananangis ng mga pinapangulila ng kanilang kalupitan, yaong mga kapatid nating nangapipiit sa kalagimlagim na bilanguan at nagtiis ng walang awang pagpapahirap, yaong walang tilang pag agos ng luha ng mga nawalay sa piling ng kanilang mga anac, asawa at matatandang magulang na itinapon sa iba’t ibang malalayong lupa at ang katampalasanang pagpatay sa ating pinakaiibig na kababayan na si M. Jose Rizal, ay nagbukas sa ating puso ng isang sugat na kailan pa ma’y di mababahaw. Lahat ng ito ay sukat ng magpaningas sa lalong malamig na dugo at magbunsod sa atin sa pakikihamok sa hamak na kastila na nag bibigay sa ating ng lahat ng kahirapan at kamatayan.

It is authority that provokes revolution. Certainly, it does not do so consciously. Yet its style of life and way of ruling finally become a provocation. This occurs when a feeling of impunity takes root among the elite: We are allowed anything, we can do anything. This is a delusion, but it rests on a certain rational foundation. For a while, it does indeed look as if they can do whatever they want. Scandal after scandal and illegality after illegality go unpunished. The people remain silent, patient, wary. They are afraid and do not yet feel their own strength. At the same time, they keep a detailed account of the wrongs, which at one particular moment are to be added up. The choice of that moment is the greatest riddle known to history. Why did it happen on that day, and not on another? Why did this event, and not some other, bring it about? After all, the government was indulging in even worse excesses only yesterday, and there was no reaction at all. “What have I done?” asks the ruler, at a loss. “What has possessed them all of a sudden?” This is what he has done: He has abused the patience of the people. But where is the limit of that patience? How can it be defined? If the answer can be determined at all, it will be different in each case. The only certain thing is that rulers who know that such a limit exists and know how to respect it can count on holding power for a long time. But there are few such rulers.

This manifesto is for all of you: It is absolutely necessary for us to stop at the earliest possible time the nameless oppressions being perpetrated on the sons of the country who are now suffering the brutal punishment and tortures in jails, and because of this please let all the brethren know that on Saturday, the 29th of the current month, the revolution shall commence according to our agreement. For this purpose it is necessary for all towns to rise simultaneously and attack Manila at the same time. Anybody who obstructs this sacred ideal of the people will be considered a traitor and an enemy, except if he is ill or is not physically fit, in which case he shall be tried according to the regulations we have put in force. Mount of Liberty, 28th August 1896. Andres Bonifacio

Revolution must be distinguished from revolt, coup d’etat, palace takeover. A coup or a palace takeover may be planned, but a revolution -never. Its outbreak, the hour of that outbreak, takes everyone, even those who have been striving for it, unawares. They stand amazed at the spontaneity that appears suddenly and destroys everything in its path. It demolishes so ruthlessly that in the end it may annihilate the ideals that called it into being. It is a mistaken assumption that nations wronged by history (and they are in the majority) live with the constant thought of revolution, that they see it as the simplest solution. Every revolution is a drama, and humanity instinctively avoids dramatic situations. Even if we find ourselves in such a situation we look feverishly for a way out, we seek calm and, most often, the commonplace. This is why revolutions never last long. They are a last resort, and if people turn to revolution it is only because long experience has taught them there is no other solution. All other attempts, all other means have failed.* Every revolution is preceded by a state of general exhaustion and takes place against a backdrop of unleashed aggressiveness. Authority cannot put up with a nation that gets on its nerves; the nation cannot tolerate an authority an authority it has come to hate. Authority has squandered all its credibility and has empty hands, the nation has lost the final scrap of patience and makes a fist. A climate of tension and increasing oppressiveness prevails. We start to fall into a psychosis of terror. The discharge is coming. We feel it.

“In addition, news reports and slogans that virtually spread by themselves assume the forms of legend in this country. Before the insurrection, it was rumored in Tondo that around six in the evening people would see the apparition of a woman whose head was crowned by serpents; everyone interpreted this vision to mean that the fatal hour was approaching. Another report had it that in Biak-na-bato a woman had given birth to a child dressed in a general’s uniform —which meant that arms had been landed. These tales and apparitions over-excite the people’s imagination, which soon drops the supposedly hidden meaning and gets lost in pure fantasy. Someone has written that the Spanish conquest robbed the subdued peoples of their original poetic imagination and impoverished their souls. A time always comes when the spirit of a race is reborn and impatiently seeks to know life. The very earth nourishes it with fresh vigor. Today the Spaniards have not only peoples to contend with but also, and above all, the phantoms of the past, nature awakened from slumber, legends descending from the mountains, the dead rising from their graves. And that is why the soldier, overwhelmed by his task, fights indifferently while the insurgents go into battle with such courage that they actually have been observed, rushing, bolo in hand, across firing lines and returning to camp bloody but alive.”

As for the technique of the struggle, history knows two kinds of revolution. The first is revolution by assault, the second revolution by siege. All the future fortune, the success, of a revolution by assault is decided by the reach of the first blow. Strike and seize as much ground as possible! This is important because such a revolution, while the most violent, is also the most superficial. The adversary has been defeated, but in retreating he has preserved a part of his forces. He will counter-attack and force the victor to withdraw. Thus, the more far-reaching the first blow, the greater the area that can be saved in spite of later concessions. In a revolution by assault, the first phase is the most radical. The subsequent phases are a slow but incessant withdrawal to the point at which the two sides, the rebelling and the rebelled-against, reach the final compromise. A revolution by siege is different; here the first strike is usually weak and we can hardly surmise that it forebodes a cataclysm. But events soon gather speed and become dramatic. More and more people take part. The walls behind which authority has been sheltering crack and then burst. The success of a revolution by siege depends on the determination of the rebels, on their will power and endurance. One more day! One more push! In the end, the gates yield, the crowd breaks in and celebrates its triumph.

The Katipunan grew very rapidly because the insolent and provocative way in which the friars carried out their campaign (against reforms) had exasperated the masses. But if the organization of political associations had been permitted in the archipelago, and if the middle class, which was the most educated and influential, had been able to move freely, it could have undoubtedly calmed the people’s anger and obstructed the growth of the Katipunan since that class was resolutely in favour of the Liga’s program, even after having endured most cruel sufferings, and even more after the Pact of Biak-na-Bato.

Less than a year afterward I heard that the Katipunan had spread all over the province of Manila and was beginning to branch out into Cavite and Bulacan. I foresaw the horrors which would follow its discovery by the authorities, but, having been unable to obstruct (its activities) before, much less could I do so now when I was already ill and was, besides, considered by the society’s leaders as a very lukewarm patriot. In August 1896 the head of the printing press of the Diario de Manila, having discovered that some of his employees belonged to a secret society, handed them over to the constabulary for the corresponding investigation. Recourse was had to the usual methods of torture, and not only the Katipunan but also the Masonic brotherhood and other societies already dissolved, like the Liga and the Cuerpo de Compromisarios, were discovered. Warned in time, Bonifacio and his followers were able to flee to the mountains, and from there ordered the people’s councils to rise or join them so as not to fall in the hands of the constabulary. The Spanish authorities, following the advice of the friars, decided to teach a terrible exemplary lesson and for this purpose seized not only the katipuneros but the Masons as well and all those who had belonged to the dissolved societies. Convinced that the insurrection could not be the work of the unlettered but rather of the country’s educated class, they also ordered the arrest of all the prominent Filipinos in every province. The fate of the captured was cruel and horrible. The katipuneros had managed to put themselves beyond reach of the persecution in time, and only those who were not, were arrested. Since the latter were tortured to compel them to admit their complicity in the insurrection, and they knew nothing about it, they could not escape these sufferings. Many died as a result; many were executed under sentence of courts-martial; many others, shot without any trial at all; and still others, suffocated in grim dungeons. Those who suffered only imprisonment and deportation were lucky. Rizal was shot on the 30th December 1896 as the principal instigator of the movement, and those really guilty of giving cause for the Filipinos to hate the very name of Spaniard were praised for their patriotism.

His father had served as Tondo’s teniente mayor (vice mayor). His parents had enough means to send him to private tutor in the locality…As a young man, Bonifacio was literate enough in Spanish to be employed successively by two multinational firms then operating in Manila, Fleming and Co. and Fressel and Co., as an ‘agent’ and ‘broker.’ Bonifacio’s wife, Gregoria de Jesus, was the daughter of a landed gobernadorcillo of Caloocan.

In the absence of a complete roster – clearly an impossibility at this distance in time – the fullest listing is to be found in an interview given by the KKK veteran Guillermo Masangkay to the Manila newspaper Bagong Buhay in 1952.1 In this interview, Masangkay recalled the names of 56 men who had met in Balintawak prior to the first encounters with Spanish forces. In the great majority of cases, he also recalled their occupations, and it is fascinating to note that nearly half the patriots on his list worked in some capacity or other for branches of the Spanish administration.

How, then, does the occupational profile of the KKK compare and contrast with that of the working population at large?  Table 1, as mentioned, lists the occupations of 136 activists, and the first point to make is that they do indeed reflect the wider pattern of diversity and fragmentation.  Numerous occupations only figure once or twice – there is a cook, a postman, a lottery ticket seller, a pharmacist, two mechanics, two bookkeepers and so on.  There are three barbers, three tailors and three waterworks employees.  In aggregate, these occupations that figure only once, twice or three times on the list account for 45 of the total cohort.  The remainder – 91 – can be assigned more readily into definite categories, each segmented by many gradations of rank and status, but categories nonetheless.  The largest category, by a clear margin, is that of clerks (escribientes), of whom there are 32, including nine who worked in courts of law.  The second largest category comprises another 21 activists whose occupations might be described in other times and climes as white collar, and for which the contemporary Spanish terms were dependiente (employee or, again, clerk) and personero (agent, representative).  Two categories, by the same token, could definitely be described as blue collar – there are 15 tabaqueros and 11 workers in the printing trades.  And lastly, the list includes 12 Katipunan members who served in the Spanish army, the Manila police force (the Guardia Civil Veterana) or the customs and excise guards (carabineros).   Most commonly and typically, therefore, the Katipunan activists were clerks, employees, agents, tobacco workers, printers and service personnel.  They were indubitably proletarians in the Marxist sense, because they did not own any means of production and had to sell their labour in order to earn a living.

The Katipunan was founded, Agoncillo’s classic account tells, on the night of July 7, 1892, immediately after news had spread that Jose Rizal was to be deported to Dapitan and his writings banned.  The founders included Andres Bonifacio, Deodato Arellano, Valentin Diaz, Teodoro Plata, Ladislao Diwa and Jose Dizon.[15]  Agoncillo mentions that Bonifacio was a Mason, but neglects to observe that all the others were too, and that all except Arellano probably belonged to the same Masonic triangle (later a lodge), Taliba.[16]  And the reason for this omission, one can only suspect, is that such an observation would throw into relief the inadequacy of the simplistic class analysis that Agoncillo presents.  For the Masons of the time, he relates, were “intellectuals and middle-class Filipinos, [who] were rather careful in their demands for liberty.”[17]  The fact that the men he names as the founders of the “lower class” Katipunan were all Masons is thus mightily awkward, and he chooses the easy solution of leaving it unsaid.   Including the six already mentioned, a total of twenty-two men listed in Table 1 are recorded as being Masons, and many more could be added if the table were to be expanded to include KKK members who did not hold office in the local sections.  At least twelve members of Walana Lodge, for instance, are known to have joined the Katipunan, and eleven members of Taliba.  Spanish intelligence agents believed that two other lodges, Modestia and Dalisay, also counted many Katipuneros amongst their members.  And at least six women who were active in the Katipunan, including two of the most prominent members of the women’s section – Josefa Rizal and Marina Dizon – were active as well in Semilla, the women’s “Lodge of Adoption” that was linked to the all-male Masonic lodges.    It is indisputably correct, though, to identify the lodges as essentially “middle class” in their appeal and composition.  “Masonry is not in need of the well to do,” stipulated the Masonic rules of the time, “but it does not admit one who does not have a profession, an art, a trade or an income that will enable him to support his family and, in addition, to help defray the expenses of Masonry and assist the needy.”

Agoncillo’s discussion of the Liga does nonetheless contain a kernel of truth.  He is wrong to talk of a caste system, wrong to assert that commoners were excluded.  But it is valid to say in broad terms that within the Liga a schism developed between the wealthier members and the less wealthy, and that those who joined the Katipunan fell into the latter bracket.  Of the 24 Katipuneros shown in Table 1 to have been sometime Ligueros, no fewer than 13 can be categorised as escribientes; five as blue-collar workers (two warehousemen, a tabaquero, a barber and a cook); two as professionals (both bookkeepers); one as a personero; one as a customs official; and one as an artisan.  The occupation of the other is not known.  However, if for comparative purposes a list is made of the Ligueros who did not join the Katipunan (and hence do not figure in Table 1) a strikingly different picture emerges.   Among the thirty-seven such individuals whose occupations are known, there are just five escribientes and not one blue-collar worker.   Six, contrarily, are businessmen (comercios), five are manufacturers (industriales) and three are property owners (propietarios) – all categories that are completely unrepresented in the list of Ligueros who did join the Katipunan.  No fewer than eleven are professionals (five lawyers, two physicians, a teacher, a notary, a dentist and a bookkeeper), and the remainder comprise two contractors, two employees, a silversmith, an infantry officer and a student.[25]

The disparity between these two groups – the Ligueros who joined the KKK and those who did not – is too wide to have been a matter of chance. Whilst the Liga won adherents from right across the intermediate social strata, the Katipunan’s founders belonged solidly to the “lower-middle” and “middle-middle” strata; virtually none came from the “upper middle” layer.  And sometimes the tensions within the Liga were undoubtedly interpreted by the protagonists in what might loosely be seen as class terms.   Some of the Katipuneros detected and resented a deep-seated elitism amongst the industriales, propietarios and abogados who belonged to the Liga.[26]  These wealthy men, it was felt, disdained ordinary people, failed to understand their grievances, and feared that any revolution “from below” would lead either to dictatorship or chaos.   The founders of the Katipunan, not so remote from the ordinary people, had fewer assets and privileges to worry about losing.  They had greater confidence in the masses, and therefore had fewer reservations about seeking separation from Spain immediately rather than at some indefinite date in the future when the “pobres y ignorantes” would have acquired sufficient education and civic sense to be “ready” for independent nationhood.  And linguistically they had the ability to engage more directly with the masses, to adopt Tagalog as the language of patriotic resistance in place of the Spanish that prevailed in the Masonic lodges and the Liga Filipina.

The Katipunan, its founders envisaged, would before long govern the entire archipelago, expanding to all areas and embracing all classes.  Conscious that the elite and substantial sections of the middle class were frightened by the prospect of revolution and separation from Spain, the Katipunan responded not by shutting them out but by seeking to win them over.  Jose Dizon and Pio Valenzuela, KKK activists who themselves came from well-to-do backgrounds, were assigned specifically to contact “personas de posición oficial y de distinción de los pueblos”, and by mid-1896, Valenzuela later recalled, there were about a hundred middle class members in Manila and the provinces.[29]  The majority of Katipuneros, observed Domingo Franco, the former president of the Liga Filipina, came from “la plebe ó pueblo bajo”, but their leaders were “people of a certain status, or who held or had previously held municipal positions [personas de cierta representación ó que han ejercido ó ejercen cargos municipales].”[30]   By actively seeking middle class recruits in the provinces, the city-based Katipuneros themselves sowed the seed of the subsequent ascendancy of rural-based leaders in the revolutionary movement.

Writing in the 1970s, the inimitable Nick Joaquin gently mocked Marxist historians for wrangling about exactly when the “proletarian uprising” of August 1896 had been “captured” by the bourgeoisie.  At first, he noted, it was said that the capture was effected at the Malolos Congress in late 1898, but then the date was brought forward and it was said to have taken place at the Tejeros Convention in March 1897.  Some future egghead theorist, Joaquin predicted, would advance the date still further and declare that the capture was accomplished right in Balintawak, at the moment the revolution was launched.[31]    It is tempting to claim that this present piece has fulfilled Joaquin’s prophecy, and even gone further back, finding “el elemento medio” in the Katipunan from the very outset.  But in the city, as we have noted, the majority of the middle-class Katipuneros were not “bourgeois” in the Marxist sense.  Class relations in the countryside, though, were very different.  There, a much larger proportion of the middle class could legitimately be called “bourgeois” because they owned land, employed wage labourers, or both.  Many of the principales, the municipal office holders whose support was specifically solicited by Katipunan leaders like Jose Dizon and Pio Valenzuela, fell into this category themselves.     It is common knowledge that in 1896 principales came to head many KKK sections in the provinces surrounding Manila, and that when the main locus of the revolution shifted to Cavite the principalia faction led by Emilio Aguinaldo took control of the movement and had Bonifacio executed.   The case advanced here does not seek to deny or minimise the significance of the changes in revolutionary leadership and direction that took place both at Tejeros, or later at Malolos.  Much less studied, barely even remarked, however, is the prominence of principales in the Katipunan within the province of Manila.  The debate at which Nick Joaquin poked fun, in other words, could have more life in it yet.

In the KKK sections based in the city itself, only two activists are known to have held municipal positions – Julian Nepomuceno was at some time teniente tercero of the gremio de mestizos in the district of Santa Cruz, and Valentin Diaz, before moving to the capital, had reportedly held office in the town of Tayug, Pangasinan.  In the province of Manila, however, principales are recorded as being active in the local KKK branches in virtually every town for which information is available, including Caloocan, Mandaluyong and Pasig, the three towns where support for the organisation was strongest.    In Caloocan, where Bonifacio’s father-in-law had once been the capitan municipal, the KKK council was headed in 1896 by the then incumbent of that post, Silverio Baltazar, and according to local histories the very first fatality of the revolt was a cabeza de barangay in barrio Dulong Kalzada, Simplicio Acabo.  Among the leading activists of the Mandaluyong-based Makabuhay council were Sinforoso San Pedro, who is said to have been a capitan municipal pasado[32]; Romualdo Vivencio, whose appellation “Kapitan Maldo” suggests he might also have held the office; and Buenaventura Domingo, who was a teniente mayor (chief deputy to the capitan) in the town.  In Pasig, the secretary of the Nagbangon council, Francisco de la Paz, was a past teniente mayor, and Valentin Cruz, the president of the Santolan branch, had been a cabeza de barangay.  Principales active elsewhere in the province included Ramon Bernardo, a past capitan municipal in Pandacan who was the KKK pangulo in the town and later became a general in the revolutionary army; “Kapitan” Tomas Montillano, who was the KKK pangulo in Muntinlupa; Apolonio Samson, a teniente who headed the branch in Novaliches; and Pio del Pilar, a teniente who was the secretary of a branch in Makati.

Table 1 – Katipunan activists in Manila, 1892-96   Table 1 lists over 200 KKK activists by name and another 40 or so by alias, ordered according to whether they were members of (i) the Kataastaasang Sangunian (Supreme Council); (ii) the Sangunian Bayan (Sb., Popular Council), Balangay (By., Branch) or women’s section in Manila and the suburbs; and (iii) the Sb. and By. in the province of Manila.  Within each section the activists are ranked more or less according to seniority, the Pangulo (presidents) being placed first, Kalihim (secretaries) second and Tagausig (fiscals) third, though some Tagausig might have disputed this order of precedence.  Most sections elected a president, secretary, fiscal and treasurer, but other offices varied in number and nomenclature between sections.  On the Supreme Council those designated as Kasanguni (councillors) held specific posts with that title, but in some of the Sangunian Bayan and Balangay the term may have been used to refer to any council or branch member.   The first column lists the activist’s name, their Katipunan alias, and the position they held within their section.  For the members of the Supreme Council, birth and death dates have also been given where known.  The second column lists the activist’s occupation in 1896, previous occupations and (in a few cases) the positions they held within the structure of local government.  The third column lists their place(s) of residence and their known inter-relationships and connections with other leading KKK members.  The fourth and final column summarises whatever information is available about attendance at college and university; membership in Masonic lodges and/or the Liga Filipina; reprisals suffered – imprisonment, deportation or execution in reprisal for revolutionary activity; and involvement in later attempts to reignite the Katipunan flame.

Table 2  – Councils and branches of the Katipunan in Manila, 1892-96   In order to minimise the risk of detection, veterans later recalled, the KKK was initially built as a network of three-person “triangles”, with activists each having a duty to enlist two new adherents from among people they knew sufficiently well to trust.  The rate of growth achieved by this method was very slow, however, and by 1894 the organisation was beginning to build the two-tier structure of councils and branches – Sangunian Bayan (Sb.) and Balangay (By.) – that it was to retain until the revolution.  A few successful Balangay expanded to become Sangunian Bayan with affiliated Balangay of their own, and sections that did not thrive, both Sb. and By., were dissolved.  The months immediately prior to August 1896, in particular, were a time not only of rapid growth for the Katipunan, but also of internal tension and flux.    Table 2 lists the names of all known Sb. and By. according to district (for Manila and its suburbs) and town (for the province of Manila), and where possible specifies the dates they were formed.  The names of the councils and branches are embodied also in Table 1, but here the overall structure is set out more clearly, unencumbered by other detail.  The geographical classification should not be interpreted too rigidly.  The sphere of operation of some Sangunian Bayan – Sb. Dimahipo in Malabon, for example – was more or less coterminous with the boundaries of a municipality, but in others it was not.  In the city, for instance, Sb. Katagalugan was rooted in Tondo, but at one time it had an affiliated Balangay in the neighbouring district of Santa Cruz and another beyond the suburbs in the town of Caloocan.  In the province of Manila, similarly, activists within Sb. Makabuhay, which was principally based in Mandaluyong, also sought recruits in the neighbouring province of Morong and as far afield as Bulacan.