Among the essential steps Aguinaldo took shortly after the
declaration of Philippine independence on June 12, 1898, was the creation of
the diplomatic corps to work for the recognition of the new Philippine Republic
by the foreign governments.
Galicano Apacible
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Galicano Apacible was appointed as head of the foreign service on June 23, 1898, along with prominent propagandists such as Rafael del Pan, Antonio Regidor, Sixto Roxas, Mariano Ponce, and Jose Basa as members.
Apacible's credentials were impressive even by contemporary standards. A Filipino patriot and propagandist from Balayan, Batangas, and a cousin of Dr. Jose Rizal, he was a physician trained at the University of Barcelona and an active member of the La Solidaridad in Spain. He collaborated with the likes of Marcelo H. del Pilar and Graciano Lopez Jaena and organized the Comite Central Filipino, a Filipino propaganda group in Hong Kong during the revolution against Spain.
The diplomatic work was distributed with Apacible concentrating in Europe to give way to Felipe Agoncillo, who was handpicked by Aguinaldo to be the plenipotentiary to the United States. Ponce was stationed in Japan, while del Pan and Lopez assisted Agoncillo in the United States, Regidor in Spain, and Basa, in Hongkong.
On September 5, 1899, Apacible advised the Revolutionary Government that there were two ways open, one was to continue the struggle until Bryan was elected United States president, and the other was to deal directly with President McKinley. It was decided to try both ways. (Kalaw-Maximo[Development], 242)
Apacible himself went to Toronto, Canada, by way of Europe. With the help of Rafael del Pan and Sixto Lopez, he continued the work left behind by Agoncillo in North America, hoping to negotiate with the McKinley administration or with the leading figures of the Democratic Party.
From Canada, he issued an appeal to the American people, that they listen to the voice of the Filipinos; he reaffirmed that the Filipinos were not savages as heretofore presented to the American people and were fit for self-government; he decried the unequal treatment from the McKinley administration which granted the Cubans their independence but denying the same to the Filipinos.
"What would America do with nine million Filipinos?" asked Apacible in his leaflet, To the American People, an appeal. Would America allow them to become citizens, or would the Filipinos be held as subjects in an American colony? Apacible said that in the former case, Filipinos would compete for jobs with native and black Americans, and the cheaper labor could be utilized by American corporations to undersell similar products manufactured in the United States. On the other hand, if the Philippines were kept as a colony, it would smear America's image as a bastion of freedom and democracy.
Apacible's APPEAL did not produce any positive results because the American public believed and even reelected President McKinley. The latter's victory signaled the defeat of Philippine independence because it signified the American people's affirmation of McKinley's claim that Divine Providence had placed upon the United States a sacred mission, that of civilizing and preparing the Filipinos for self-government.
However, despite the press censorship in Manila, the American public slowly came to realize the real situation in the Philippines through the letters of American soldiers to their families describing the horrors and atrocities of the war, which were published in local newspapers. Some U.S. senators began to take an interest in Philippine affairs and initiated Senate investigations on the conduct of the war. Their findings confirmed what Apacible and the Anti-Imperialist group in the U.S. had been complaining about.
The last part of the APPEAL states that the war in the Philippines will immediately end if the Americans will respect the aspirations of the Filipinos for their independence. In exchange for this recognition, the Filipinos offered to do the following: pay back the $20 million that the United States paid to Spain under the treaty of Paris, give the Americans suitable coaling stations, and conclude a treaty of mutually-beneficial commercial relations.
Apacible's proposed settlement was ignored by the McKinley administration, and
the Philippines became a U.S. colony for 50 years. Right after World War II,
the Philippines signed with the United States what looked like Apacible's
proposal 50 years before - a military bases treaty to keep and hold Subic and
Clark Field, to name only the major ones, for 99 years as U.S. naval and air
force facilities; and, the so-called "parity rights" under the
Laurel-Langley trade agreement that gave the Americans equal rights as
Filipinos in commerce as well as in the exploitation of natural resources of
the country.
Apacible's arguments that the United States would not benefit by retaining the Philippine islands was echoed by a critic of the American imperialist policy, viz:
"To sum up —the islands are a source of
expense and trouble to the American people as a whole, and our occupation thus
far, has been injurious to the native inhabitants. There is no advantage
accruing to us from their retention which cannot be gained through reasonable
trade and military arrangements with our possible successors. The only possible
economic argument for continuing in the administration of the islands is found
in the interests of those who want especially favourable terms for getting
access to the lands, mines, etc., of the archipelago. To give any weight
whatever to this argument would be to place the interests of a very limited
class of moneyed commercial exploiters above those of the American nation as a
whole." (Willis,
440)
Apart from its historical value, the "Appeal" is a literary masterpiece in superb prose. Many Filipinos who went through high school during the fifty's and sixty's would recall how their brighter classmates would memorize Lincoln's address at Gettysburg for a provincial declamation or oratorical contest. Perhaps their minds had been so accustomed to American arts and literature that it never occurred to them that somewhere in the dustbins of history, a passionate, patriotic cry - Apacible's "To the American People an Appeal" - lay unnoticed and unread, waiting to be exhumed from ignominy and laid to rest in the minds of the Filipino youth, where it deserves its rightful place.
Felipe Agoncillo
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On August 26, 1898, Felipe Agoncillo, the head of the Filipino
junta in Hongkong, was instructed by Aguinaldo to proceed to Washington to gain
the support of President William H. McKinley for the new Philippine government.
In a separate mission, Felipe Agoncillo was tasked with participating in the Paris peace negotiations between the United States and Spain, but he needed U.S. President William McKinley's accreditation as the official Filipino government representative.
The mission was doomed from the very start because Agoncillo was going to deal with the administration of U.S. President William McKinley, whose policy favored the acquisition and colonization of the Philippines. Agoncillo was not received by McKinley in Washington as a duly constituted representative of the Philippine government, nor was he accorded official representation to enable him to participate in the Paris conference.
Failing to get accreditation from McKinley, he rushed to Paris to present the case of the Filipinos before the peace commissioners. However, he was barred from participating. After submitting the OFFICIAL PROTEST AGAINST THE PARIS PEACE TREATY to the peace commissioners on behalf of the Philippine government, which was ignored and not acknowledged, Agoncillo went back to Washington and met with several United States senators and prominent Americans who were sympathetic to the Filipino cause. He submitted to the State Department a document entitled “MEMORIAL TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES” (Kalaw-Maximo[Case], 64-78).
This document suffered the same fate as the protest Agoncillo submitted in Paris. It was not acknowledged nor received by the State Department and was ignored by the McKinley administration. He stayed in Washington a few days more, then suddenly disappeared before the outbreak of the war on February 4, 1899, having left hurriedly for Europe to escape what he thought was a threat of arrest by the Americans. According to Felipe Buencamino, Agoncillo telegrammed Aguinaldo that he was not received by President McKinley and advised that preparations be made for war. (Buencamino, 2)
The two documents, the MEMORIAL, and PROTEST prepared by Felipe Agoncillo and
the APPEAL prepared by Galicano Apacible, are presented in Appendices II, III,
and IV, respectively, which can be accessed through the link provided for the purpose.
