Читать книгу The Philippines - Past and Present (Vol. 1&2) - Dean C. Worcester - Страница 17

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Our travellers next visited Pampanga. Here they apparently overlooked the fact that Aguinaldo did not have “his whole people a unit at his back.” The citizens of Macabebe seem not to have approved of the Aguinaldo regime, for the Insurgent records show that:—

“Representatives of the towns of Pampanga assembled in San Fernando on June 26, 1898, and under the presidency of General Maximino Hizon agreed to yield him complete ‘obedience as military governor of the province and representative of the illustrious dictator of these Philippine Islands.’ The town of Macabebe refused to send any delegates to this gathering.”13

It may be incidentally mentioned that Blount has passed somewhat lightly over the fact that he himself during his army days commanded an aggregation of sturdy citizens from this town, known as Macabebe scouts, who diligently shot the Insurgents full of holes whenever they got a chance. He incorrectly refers to them as a “tribe or clan.”14 It is absurd to call them a tribe. They are merely the inhabitants of a town which has long been at odds with the neighbouring towns of the province.

Things had come to a bad pass in Pampanga when its head wrote that the punishment of beating people in the plaza and tying them up so that they would be exposed to the full rays of the sun should be stopped. He argued that such methods would not lead the people of other nations to believe that the reign of liberty, equality and fraternity had begun in the Philippines.15

When it is remembered that persons tied up and exposed to the full rays of the sun in the Philippine lowlands soon die, in a most uncomfortable manner, we shall agree with the head of this province that this custom has its objectionable features!