Cavite & Batangas Provinces
CAVITE CITY
Cavite paid its own high price for Filipino freedom, during the bloody years of the revolution against the Spanish. The city was first to openly clash with their colonial masters. It started January 20, 1872 when a Filipino sergeant named Lamadrid led a mutiny of some 200 Filipino soldiers in the Cavite arsenal who killed their officers in protest over the payment of tribute. They were themselves killed, wounded or executed when the uprising failed. The event is known as the Cavite Conspiracy. A strongarm policy followed which led to the execution of Fathers Jose Burgos, Mariano Gomez and Jacinto Zamora February 17, 1872 in a conflict over the secularization of clergy. The three priests died by the garrote, a capital punishment contrivance by which a victim is choked to death with a steel collar drawn tight by means of a screw. The furious manner in which the Spanish put down the mutiny and the execution of the priests angered the Filipinos and caused a tidal wave of Filipino nationalism.
After the discovery of the Katipunan in July of 1896, and frightened by successive local uprisings in Manila and neighboring provinces, the Spaniards began severe and cruel countermeasures. These actions included arrests, torture and executions in a veritable "reign of terror". On September 12 of that year, thirteen men from Cavite were summarily tried, sentenced to death and shot in the Plaza de armas. They were linked to the Katipunan and charged with plotting the overthrow of the Spanish government. In memoriam of this event, the capital town of Cavite province was named Trece Martires (thirteen martyrs).
During the revolution, because the port was the site of a Spanish military command, rebels had skirmishes with Spanish troops in Caridad.
The town had its Ladislao Diwa, one of the organizers and an officer of the Katipunan, as well as many patroits who joined Aguinaldo in the armed struggle against the oppressors. After the defeat of the Spanish it was the late Julian Felipe, of Cavite, who composed the Philippine National Anthem.
At about five in the morning of May 1, 1898 the people ran to the beaches at the sound of loud cannon fire. They watched Admiral Dewey's fleet end Spanish sovereignty over the Philippines at Manila Bay. After the Spanish naval squadron was wiped out, a white flag was hoisted over the arsenal. Formal surrender took place the following day at 14:00 in the Port of Cavite. On June 12, 1898, the declaration of independence of the Philippines from Spain was made in Kawit, Cavite.
The people quietly accepted the inevitable after the collapse of the Philippine independence movement when General Aguinaldo was captured. The new US masters established a navy yard at the arsenal as well as three pueblos (towns) outside its gates and appointed Jose Martinez San Agustin, a lawyer, mayor.
In 1900 under US military rule, Cavite held its first election. Zacarias Fortich was elected mayor of Cavite (the old puerto). In 1901, the Philippine Commission approved a municipal code as the organic law for all local governments in The Country . Thus Caridad, San Roque and Cavite were merged into one municipality Cavite.
The town became quite prosperous. The Cavite Navy Yard (16th US Naval District) gave employment to more than sixty percent of the heads of families, and there was a flourishing fishing industry as well.
The Japanese bombed the Cavite Navy Yard December 10, 1941 slightly more than a year after the municipality had become a city (Sept. 7, 1940). Its first appointed mayor was Col. Arsenio Natividad of Manila, aidedecamp of President Quezon.
More on Cavite and Batangas:
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