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Why use the Katipunan faction's name Magdalo?


Invoking a Katipunan faction with a questionable legacy further discombobulates the confused message of the mutineers. Rebel soldiers led by Senator Antonio Trillanes and General Danilo Lim were on the march today in Makati, again invoking the Magdalo name of the Aguinaldo faction of the Katipunan. The rebels who took over the Oakwood in Makati also used that name. I find it strange -- some might even say dim-witted -- that any idealist would brandish this name, knowing Magdalo's questionable legacy in history. According to Trillanes campaign material published before the last senatorial elections, "The name 'Magdalo' is homage to Emilio Aguinaldo’s faction of the Katipunan Chapter in Cavite that supported and pushed for a revolutionary government as a replacement for the Katipunan. Is Trillanes, then, the Aguinaldo of this time?" There is an irony in this boast that Trillanes and company probably did not intend. Magdalo was one of the quarreling factions in Cavite that Andres Bonifacio tried to reconcile. But in leaving his bailiwick in the hills around Montalban, the Katipunan's Supremo eventually lost his life. Some history buffs believe that enticing Bonifacio to unfamiliar territory was a Caviteno plot to grab power. It remains suspicious to this day that a reconciliation meeting in Tejeros, Cavite suddenly turned into a snap election, in which Bonifacio lost the leadership of the revolutionary movement to the absent Aguinaldo. When Bonifacio refused to accept the results of what historians today believe was a fradulent vote, he was hunted down with his brother Procopio, tried and convicted of treason by a military tribunal appointed by Aguinaldo, and executed. After initial battlefield victories, Aguinaldo's Magdalo forces lost territory to the reinforced Spanish Army, partly due to the non-cooperation of their Magdiwang bretheren allied with Bonifacio. Aguinaldo would eventually flee towards the slain Bonifacio's former strongholds in what is now Rizal province. He would strike a deal with the Spaniards and agree to exile in Hong Kong.