Homage to The Viper
A 12-HOUR ROAD TRIP through the plains and highlands of Luzon, over smooth and rocky roads steadily heading north, brought our hardy group to the town of Hungduan in Ifugao province. The scenery was breathtaking, the elevation as we climbed the mountains gave a little respite from the summer heat.
In the company of members of the Philippine Army, we were on a journey to get reacquainted with a revolutionary general whose role in the Philippines’ struggle for independence is sometimes cloaked in controversy. How well do you know Gen. Artemio Ricarte? History books might have given us a glimpse of his life as one of the Filipino heroes who fought the foreign occupants, especially the Americans, during both the country’s liberation from Spain and the Second World War. However, some historians regarded him as a traitor due to his alliance with the Japanese forces. To shed light on the issues surrounding Ricarte’s role in the Philippines’ struggle for freedom, the Philippine Army remembered the institution’s first commanding general with a tour to Hungduan, where Ricarte was believed to have been buried after his death on July 31, 1945 due to dysentery. Discovered by treasure-hunters in the 1950s, his remains were later
exhumed, cremated and interred in two places – at the Libingan ng Mga Bayani in Taguig, and in Batac, Ilocos Norte where he was born on Oct. 20, 1866.
The simple marker identifying his first burial site is located beside the Hungduan municipal hall, designed in the form of the traditional Ifugao house.
Brig. Gen. Ramon Yogyog, deputy commander of the Philippine Army’s Special Operations Command who is from Hungduan, proudly told his comrades and the media how Ricarte upheld his principle of fighting for the country’s independence.
“He was the consistent revolutionary as he truly aimed for the independence of the Philippines, especially from the Americans,” Yogyog said.
He pointed out in particular Ricarte’s steadfast defiance against swearing alliance to the United States, which then occupied the country since the fall of Spain until the Second World War.
He also took note of the time when Ricarte took sides with the Japanese forces during the Second World War.
Was it betrayal on the part of the Philippines? “I don’t think so,” Yogyog said, “as he believed that Japan, a fellow Asian country, could be trusted to help the country in its pursuit of freedom.”
Ricarte, nicknamed “Vibora” or “Viper” for being quick in battle and a lethal leader according to Yogyog, was regarded by the country’s armed forces as its first chief of staff, serving from March 22, 1897 to Jan. 22, 1899.
According to the archives of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, he was famously attributed for the fall of the Spanish forces when his troop of revolutionists attacked the Spanish garrison in San Francisco de Malabon after the start of the Philippine Revolution on Aug. 31, 1897.
After that victory, he was unanimously elected as captain-general of the country’s armed forces under the Tejeros Convention, and was promoted to brigadier general in the army of Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo. He also successfully led various battles in Cavite, Laguna and Batangas.
Ricarte so earned Aguinaldo’s trust that he was assigned to remain in Biak-na-Bato in Bulacan to supervise the surrender of arms, which both Aguinaldo’s and the Spanish forces complied with through the Pact of Biak-na-Bato.
When the Americans succeeded in occupying Manila in 1898, Ricarte thought it would lead to the country’s full independence. However, the Americans refused to recognize the role of Filipinos in the siege of the capital and even refused to open the city gates to Filipinos. The US Congress then decided to place the Philippines
as a US colony.
This prompted Ricarte to revolt against the Americans. According to Teodoro Agoncillo’s “A Brief History of the Filipino People,” he tried to infiltrate the American lines to enter Manila but was captured by the Americans. He was locked up in prison for six months, and was ordered to swear allegiance to the United States but stubbornly refused. This cost him exile to Guam, along with Apolinario Mabini and other rebels, for two years.
In 1903, Ricarte still refused to take his oath of allegiance to the US, so though he was freed he was banned from returning to the Philippines, and was instead transported to Hong Kong.
In December of that year, disguised as a seaman Ricarte came back to the Philippines and met with former members of the army throughout Central Luzon and discussed plans to rekindle another revolution, this time against the Americans.
However, his plan failed when an officer turned against him and told the local constabulary of his location. This led to his arrest in Mariveles, Bataan in 1904, and led to another six years in prison. While he was well-received by his friends from the Philippine revolutionary forces and as well as American officials, he still refused to swear to the American flag.
This refusal had costed him deportation to Hong Kong, and finally to Yokohama, Japan where he would spend the next 26 years of his life.
According to Yogyog, he taught Spanish, Philippine and Asian history and culture in a school in Yokohama, and set up a mini-restaurant with his wife Agueda. His being a teacher may have brought him influence among both Japanese and Filipino social circles in Japan as he was well respected for his insights on past revolutions in the Philippines.
At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1942, the Americans surrendered their key military points in Bataan and Corregidor to Japan. The Imperial Army was looking for a Filipino adviser to help in its pacification campaign that would maintain peace and order in the occupied islands, especially those controlled by the guerrilla forces.
Japanese officials who knew ‘El Vibora’ referred him to then prime minister Hideki Tojo. Ricarte agreed to be the diplomat between Japan and the Philippines, then under the leadership of president Jose Laurel, and would help in controlling insurrection against the Japanese in the Philippines.
Tojo promised Ricarte, then already 76 years old, that the Philippines would achieve independence as soon as he became successful in Japan’s efforts to control insurrection.
When he came back to the Philippines, his fellow Ilocano generals tried to convince him to fight the Japanese. But Ricarte refused, as Yogyog believed he wanted to keep his word of supporting Japan in its efforts to bring peace and order amid uprisings.
However, he never saw the result of such a campaign as he died along the way to the Cordilleras from Manila with the Japanese forces led by Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita. He died a month before Yamashita surrendered to American forces in 1945.
General Artemio Ricarte was indeed a fighter, a revolutionary for more than half of his life. Despite doubts on his role in the history of the Philippines, he ever wanted to see the Philippines free from colonial rule, which he never got the chance to see.
Yogyog believed that General Ricarte never gave up in fighting for Philippine independence, as he sustained his stubbornness in never swearing allegiance to the United States and kept on organizing collective efforts to fight the Americans.
“He felt that the Americans cheated our country then, that was why he was so dedicated in protecting our sovereignty against the United States from the Philippine-American War, to the Commonwealth, and until World War II,” he said.
“General Artemio Ricarte was indeed a consistent revolutionary,” he noted.