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= The History of Philippine Independence =

CULTURAL A blend of traditional Filipino and Spanish Catholic traditions, with influences from America and other parts of Asia, comprises the culture of the Philippines. The first Spanish settlement in the Philippines took place during the island's Spanish colonial era. The first Spanish settlement was founded by the conquistador Miguel López de Legazpi in Cebu in 1565, and Manila was later established as the capital of the Spanish East Indies. The Philippine Islands are named after King Philip. Filipinos refer to Spaniards as "Kastila" (Castilian), named after the former Kingdom of Castile, which is now a territory of Spain. The majority of Filipinos of Spanish descent are of Spanish heritage, while Latin American descent is a very small minority. Spanish Filipino is another word for them.

HISTORICAL We, Filipinos, are considered as mixed races because we are product of East and West marriage. We were colonized by three races which are the Spaniards, Japanese, and, American.

Lapu-Lapu proves to the world that Philippines is for Filipinos only. He is a man who strives to defend his territory's sovereignty from foreign invaders. We can imagine how they lined, scattered and positioned themselves for an attack in order to defeat the invaders.

On December 30, 1896, Dr. Jose Protacio Rizal, the greatest man of the Malayan race, was shot to death at Bagumbayan (present day Luneta or Rizal park), Manila, by a firing squad of native soldiers, on the accusation of political conspiracy and sedition, and rebellion against the Spanish government in the Philippines. He wrote about the discrimination of Spain's colonial rule. He was exiled due to his desire for reform. Rizal was convicted of sedition and executed although he supported peaceful change. In 1901, when the Americans took control of the country, Governor-general William Howard Taft named Rizal as the Philippine national hero. A year later, on February 1, 1902, the Philippine Commission enacted Act No. 345, which made December 30, a public holiday, Dr. Jose P. Rizal day

Andres Bonifacio, a Filipino revolutionary hero founded the Katipunan. It is a secret society that spearheaded the revolt against the Spanish and laid the basis for the first Philippine Republic. Cry of Pugad Lawin was the beginning of the Philippine Revolution against the Spanish Empire.

Gregorio del Pilar was a Filipino general of the Philippine Revolutionary Army who commanded the Battle of Tirad Pass on December 2, 1899.

Antonio Luna was also a Filipino army general who fought in the Philippine-American War. He considered as one of the fiercest generals of all his time. He organized professional guerilla soldiers, to be known as the "Luna Sharpshooters" and the "Black Guard". He was killed by President Emilio Aguinaldo's guards but the killers were not arrested.

Emilio Aguinaldo was elected the first president of the new republic under the Congress of Malolos. He gained independence of the Philippines from Spain in 1898. He also led the Philippine-American War against the resisitance of the United States to independence of the Philippines.

Manuel Quezon is the first president of the Philippine Commonwealth and leader of the independence movement. He fought for the passage of Tydings-McDuffie Act(1934), which gave the Philippines full independence for 10 years after the creation of a constitution and establishment of a Commonwealth Government that would be the predecessor of an independent republic.

POLITICAL

Philippines was politically controlled during the Spanish and American colonial eras. We, Filipinos, was labeled Indio by the Spaniards to underscore our inferiority. In the eyes of Americans, we belonged to the lowest class of civilization simply because we are Filipinos.

The Cry of Balintawak
(Filipino: Sigaw ng Balíntawak, Spanish: Grito de Balíntawak) was the beginning of the Philippine Revolution against the Spanish Empire. At the close of August 1896, members of the Katipunan secret society (Katipuneros) led by Andrés Bonifacio rose up in revolt somewhere in an area referred to as Caloocan, wider than the jurisdiction of present-day Caloocan City which may have overlapped into present-day Quezon City.

Originally the term cry referred to the first clash between the Katipuneros and the Civil Guards (Guardia Civil). The cry could also refer to the tearing up of community tax certificates (cédulas personales) in defiance of their allegiance to Spain. The inscriptions of "Viva la Independencia Filipina" can also be referred as term for the cry. This was literally accompanied by patriotic shouts.

Because of competing accounts and ambiguity of the place where this event took place, the exact date and place of the Cry is in contention. From 1908 until 1963, the official stance was that the cry occurred on August 26 in Balintawak. In 1963 the Philippine government declared a shift to August 23 in Pugad Lawin, Quezon City.

Lakandula and Sulayman Revolt
The Lakandula and Sulayman Revolt, also known as the Tagalog Revolt, was an uprising in 1574 by Lakandula and Rajah Sulayman in Tondo, Manila. The revolt occurred in the same year as the Chinese pirate Limahong attacked the palisaded yet poorly defended enclosure of Intramuros. Sulayman and Lakandula revolted because Miguel Lopez de Legazpi reneged on his side of the deal. In exchange for accepting Spanish sovereignty, Legazpi promised that Soliman and Lakandula and their subjects would retain some of their local authority, be exempted from paying tribute, and be treated fairly. Legazpi did not fulfill his promises.

Battle of Mactan
The Filipinos have always cherished their freedom. Far before the world began to know them as such, the Filipinos had always wanted to be free. Whether under the control of foreign invaders or their own people, they have always fought for the right to lead their lives without dictatorship. The Battle of Mactan gives a glimpse of the Filipinos' first fight for independence, undoubtedly achieved by the ancestors of the Filipinos of today. In the history of the Philippines, the Battle of Mactan is one of the most important events in history. It revealed how fearless the Filipinos were in their war against the invaders who had conquered the country. The Filipinos helped each other to protect their country from the invaders.

The Battle of Mactan was fought in the Philippines on 27 April 1521. Warriors of Lapu-Lapu, a native chieftain of Mactan, overpowered and defeated a Spanish force fighting for Rajah Humabon of Cebu under the command of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who was killed in the battle. The outcome of the battle resulted in the departure of the Spanish crew from the archipelago, and delayed the Spanish colonization of the Philippines by 44 years until the conquest by Miguel López de Legazpi in 1564–1565. Lapu-Lapu is widely celebrated as the first Filipino hero to defeat Portuguese conquistador Ferdinand Magellan and his army in their attempt to colonize Mactan Island.

= Filipino Traits =

Each nation has its contrasting qualities and generalizations, and the country Philippines is no special case. Despite the fact that we have been colonized by a few nations, many fundamental beliefs from our ancestors stayed unblemished are as yet respected right up 'til the present time. We Filipinos solidly accept that our nation has the best qualities in this world we are living in. Filipinos still remain and connect to each other. Filipinos have incredible attributes and characteristics all of us ought to be glad for.

There are plenty of good habits, and characteristics that make Filipinos incredible individuals and the Philippines an extraordinary nation. Let us give a valiant effort to purely inherit and maintain it.

= I am a Filipino by Carlos P. Romulo = I am a Filipino–inheritor of a glorious past, hostage to the uncertain future. As such I must prove equal to a two-fold task–the task of meeting my responsibility to the past, and the task of performing my obligation to the future.

I sprung from a hardy race, child many generations removed of ancient Malayan pioneers. Across the centuries the memory comes rushing back to me: of brown-skinned men putting out to sea in ships that were as frail as their hearts were stout. Over the sea I see them come, borne upon the billowing wave and the whistling wind, carried upon the mighty swell of hope–hope in the free abundance of new land that was to be their home and their children’s forever.

This is the land they sought and found. Every inch of shore that their eyes first set upon, every hill and mountain that beckoned to them with a green-and-purple invitation, every mile of rolling plain that their view encompassed, every river and lake that promised a plentiful living and the fruitfulness of commerce, is a hallowed spot to me.

By the strength of their hearts and hands, by every right of law, human and divine, this land and all the appurtenances thereof–the black and fertile soil, the seas and lakes and rivers teeming with fish, the forests with their inexhaustible wealth in wild life and timber, the mountains with their bowels swollen with minerals–the whole of this rich and happy land has been, for centuries without number, the land of my fathers. This land I received in trust from them and in trust will pass it to my children, and so on until the world is no more.

I am a Filipino. In my blood runs the immortal seed of heroes–seed that flowered down the centuries in deeds of courage and defiance. In my veins yet pulses the same hot blood that sent Lapu Lapu to battle against the first invader of this land, that nerved Lakandula in the combat against the alien foe, that drove Diego Silang and Dagohoy into rebellion against the foreign oppressor.

That seed is immortal. It is the self-same seed that flowered in the heart of Jose Rizal that morning in Bagumbayan when a volley of shots put an end to all that was mortal of him and made his spirit deathless forever, the same that flowered in the hearts of Bonifacio in Balintawak, of Gergorio del Pilar at Tirad Pass, of Antonio Luna at Calumpit; that bloomed in flowers of frustration in the sad heart of Emilio Aguinaldo at Palanan, and yet burst fourth royally again in the proud heart of Manuel L. Quezon when he stood at last on the threshold of ancient Malacañan Palace, in the symbolic act of possession and racial vindication.

The seed I bear within me is an immortal seed. It is the mark of my manhood, the symbol of dignity as a human being. Like the seeds that were once buried in the tomb of Tutankhamen many thousand years ago, it shall grow and flower and bear fruit again. It is the insignia of my race, and my generation is but a stage in the unending search of my people for freedom and happiness.

I am a Filipino, child of the marriage of the East and the West. The East, with its languor and mysticism, its passivity and endurance, was my mother, and my sire was the West that came thundering across the seas with the Cross and Sword and the Machine. I am of the East, an eager participant in its spirit, and in its struggles for liberation from the imperialist yoke. But I also know that the East must awake from its centuried sleep, shake off the lethargy that has bound his limbs, and start moving where destiny awaits.

For I, too, am of the West, and the vigorous peoples of the West have destroyed forever the peace and quiet that once were ours. I can no longer live, a being apart from those whose world now trembles to the roar of bomb and cannon-shot. I cannot say of a matter of universal life-and-death, of freedom and slavery for all mankind, that it concerns me not. For no man and no nation is an island, but a part of the main, there is no longer any East and West–only individuals and nations making those momentous choices which are the hinges upon which history resolves.

At the vanguard of progress in this part of the world I stand–a forlorn figure in the eyes of some, but not one defeated and lost. For, through the thick, interlacing branches of habit and custom above me, I have seen the light of the sun, and I know that it is good. I have seen the light of justice and equality and freedom, my heart has been lifted by the vision of democracy, and I shall not rest until my land and my people shall have been blessed by these, beyond the power of any man or nation to subvert or destroy.

I am a Filipino, and this is my inheritance. What pledge shall I give that I may prove worthy of my inheritance? I shall give the pledge that has come ringing down the corridors of the centuries, and it shall be compounded of the joyous cries of my Malayan forebears when first they saw the contours of this land loom before their eyes, of the battle cries that have resounded in every field of combat from Mactan to Tirad Pass, of the voices of my people when they sing:

Land of the morning,

Child of the sun returning–



Ne’er shall invaders

Trample thy sacred shore.

Out of the lush green of these seven thousand isles, out of the heartstrings of sixteen million people all vibrating to one song, I shall weave the mighty fabric of my pledge. Out of the songs of the farmers at sunrise when they go to labor in the fields, out of the sweat of the hard-bitten pioneers in Mal-lig and Koronadal, out of the silent endurance of stevedores at the piers and the ominous grumbling of peasants in Pampanga, out of the first cries of babies newly born and the lullabies that mothers sing, out of the crashing of gears and the whine of turbines in the factories, out of the crunch of plough-shares upturning the earth, out of the limitless patience of teachers in the classrooms and doctors in the clinics, out of the tramp of soldiers marching, I shall make the pattern of my pledge:

“I am a Filipino born to freedom, and I shall not rest until freedom shall have been added unto my inheritance—for myself and my children and my children’s children—forever.”