THE ROLE OF MASONRY IN THE FILIPINO INDEPENDENCE

José ANDRÉS-GALLEGO
Center for Historical Studies of the CSIC

On 10 and 12 June 1899, when the Spanish Cortes proceeded to establish

themselves for the first time after the disaster, a group of traditionalist
deputies gave parliamentary status to the possible responsibility of
Freemasonry in the loss of the Philippine archipelago. In the elections, the
Republican politician and great master of the Gran Oriente Español, Miguel
Morayta, had been elected deputy and a group of traditionalist
parliamentarians tried to be rejected by the accusation (1).

The denunciation took place at the very moments when anti-clericalism once
again raised its head and began to begin what was to be a ten-year campaign-
the one that culminated in 1910 and around the Government of José Canalejas-;
Campaign that was directed especially against the religious. A few days
later, on the 26th and 27th June 1899, from the ranks of the Liberals, and
also in the Cortes, the first speeches were to be pronounced in that
direction (2).

Was there a relationship between the one and the other? A "semantic"
relationship, yes, without doubt. The civil administration of the Philippines
had been in the hands of the Spanish missionaries, that is, of religious,
until the very moment of independence, and the separatist propaganda had
been, therefore, propaganda against the friars (3).

On the other hand, as soon as the anticlerical campaign of the peninsula

began, against the Spanish religious and without mention of the Philippines,
there would be voices who would attribute this beginning to the work of the
lodges (4).

But that both facts were voluntarily united (that is, that the anti-clerical
campaign of 1899-1910 was a reply to that accusation or a continuation of the
island's independence) is not a sure thing, much less proven. And if it was,
it was treated in the best of cases with one more reason to develop some
approaches that actually had more to do, on the one hand, with the mere logic
of the development of liberalism and, immediately, with what almost
The same days had begun to occur in France. For those same days, do not
forget, the adventure began to unite the French Republicans in defense of the
republic, around the Waldeck-Rousseau Government and to the common flag of
the reduction of the influence (and of the number) of the institutes of
perfection. And it should not be forgotten that the main political
influences, which inspired the Spanish programs of governments and parties
continued to arrive in France (5).

Let us reduce, then, the question: What was true in the accusation that
Spanish Masonry had to do with the independence of the archipelago?

The answer is more than difficult. The testimonies are insecure, by their
nature, and the search for sources has not been exhausted. Here I gather the
testimonies that were adduced in the Cortes and in the republicanism of the
environment of 1900. I will try to assess them to the maximum; But I would
like to insist that, in so doing, the result cannot be given any character
other than that of a well-founded hypothesis.

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The origins of the introduction of Freemasonry in the Philippines are
obscure, like so many other things that refer to this organization. Nor can
the facts offered by the Masonic testimonies themselves, which are subject to
the interests of the various obediences or the political moment in which they
are formulated, cannot be considered true. In any case, it is Morayta himself
who tells us that it was taken in 1856 by what was then General Malcampo and
continued in 1859 by the sailor Méndez Núñez (7).

This installation - and those that had previously occurred according to other
sources - had little to do with the matter we studied. They were lodges
created solely and exclusively to channel what we could say "demand" of
organization of the Spanish masons destined in the archipelago; In fact,
according to concrete testimonies, authorities and employees of Spain. Still
in 1883 - Pedro Reig assures us at the end of the century, and in a writing
of this:

"They carried the apron, as directors of the masonic movement, an

alcalde mayor, two military men, one marine and the prosecutor of the
Audiencia (8)”

It has also been argued that perhaps the doctor Mariano Martí, also Spanish,
installed some ephemeral lodges there in 1854 and that himself, with Don
Rufino Pascual Torrejón, organized in 1875 another ten, who depended on the
Great East of Spain and who Same time with other five of the Great East
Spanish and four of foreign orients or different rites. But the sources are
late and have not been examined with the necessary care and, in any case, did
not break the peninsular framework as far as the associates are concerned.
The first Filipino masons would have to begin in Paris, London and Madrid,
where they would have been directed mainly by studies (9).

Certainly in Freemasonry there were precedents of participation in the

emancipatory processes, concretely Americans; Had to do with what appears to
be the case in the uprising of the Filipino Cavite, a pro-independence party
in 1872 (10), and a few years later he would also be accused of working in
the Antilles with similarly fully separatist intentions. Called "little war"
of 1879 (11). But, apart from the fact that such accusations were somewhat
hasty, it should be noted that at least that which concerns the Philippines
and in 1872 refers concretely to the probable influence of foreign lodges,
mainly Anglo-Saxons, and not to Spanish Masonry.

From an organizational point of view, the situation began to change

substantially in 1889, when the statutes of lodges already created in the
Philippines were reformed in order to allow the natives to be ascribed. Until
then they had been full of restrictions, according to the dominant elitism of
old in the Masonic organization. And so, the reform of 1889 had nothing to do
with an opening that today we would say democratic, but was restricted to the
natives who by their social position (outside economic or cultural roots)
could be equated with the Spaniards.

"In the shadow of the clubs and in the mystery of the lodges," said
Rear Admiral Montojo (12) at the end of the century, "the mestizo race,
which hates the white man who despises the Indian, nevertheless relies
on This as an indispensable auxiliary to obtain independence."

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We will return to this peculiar nexus. Earlier, let us say that the opening
of 1889 was probably related to the legalization of peninsular lodges under
the 1887 Associations Act (13). In any case, it was the maturation of a
cultured Filipino minority, essentially Creole or mestizo, and what seems to
have formed in those years in European universities and related in Europe
with Freemasonry, which influenced the decision:

"By this time it is said in a report of the Civil Guard Commander veteran of
Manila that Maura would read in the Cortes the Philippine colony resident in
Madrid, Hong Kong and Paris, in which exalted Jose Rizal and many others,
made active efforts near Don Miguel Morayta (...), with whom they maintained
close relations, so that the statutes were formed in the sense that
indigenous elements could be affiliated to the formation of lodges (14).

Miguel Morayta had been appointed Grand Master of the Oriente Español in
1887. Rizal's qualification as an exalted separatist was otherwise
subjunctive.

From that moment on, the Masonic propaganda multiplied on the basis of a
close relationship between the laborers of the metropolis and those of the
archipelago, and it was frankly directed against the friars. The Filipinos
established in Madrid and related to the Masonic organization López Jaena,
Marcelo Hilario del Pilar, among others, begin to edit here the newspaper La
Solidaridad, with which they would develop in the islands an active
proselytism that cannot be described as explicitly and publicly separatist
But of liberal, at most nationalist, and anti-friar. On the organic nexus
between the laborers of the metropolis and those of the islands, Morayta
himself would make in the Cortes a revelation between important and amusing:

"It being impossible in the Philippines to meet with any political

object, the arch-brotherhood of San Cassiano was formed, whose
archbishops gave money for religious functions, reserving a share for
the expenses of Solidarity, but it is the case that La Solidaridad,
Like El Diluvio as La Publicidad and like so many other newspapers that
made reformist politics and enemy of the friars, entered the
Philippines with a lot of work.To avoid these inconveniences, it
happened to the Filipinos to send these papers under a sash that said:
Apostolado de The press, and those copies circulated with perfect
freedom (15).

Something had to be known, however, because at the beginning of December 1889

the police of Barcelona, where Lopez Jaena preferred to act, discovered a
good stash of propaganda against the missionaries. General Luis Manuel de
Pando warned him on the 13th in the Congress, of which he was a part (16),
and the Diario de Barcelona added to the diminished voices that insisted on
the need to repress it (17). But nothing else was done.

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Simultaneously, and according to the late sources - and biased interpretation
(18) - to which we alluded at the beginning, the Filipino activists who work
in Spain take an organizational step forward of great importance, which leads
them to articulate in the peninsula an own masonic community - without
disassociating itself from the Gran Oriente Español - and then extending it
to the Philippines. From that moment on, we insist that without renouncing
organic links with Spanish Masonry, they will have at least one autonomous
instrument: According to this version, in the same year 1889, López Jaena had
managed to establish in Barcelona under the mastery of Morayta the lodge
Revolution, to which his compatriots would be incorporated; The following
year, those of Madrid would have formed the Solidaridad lodge, of the same
obedience, and it would have been incorporated all the island Masons residing
in the metropolis, including those of Revolution, which would have been
dissolved in a row. In the following years, several of these masons passed to
the archipelago and began to work in the Philippines to articulate the
masonry: with very rapid success and very remarkable, that allows them to
get, always within the Gran Oriente Español, to form with the Philippine
lodges Gran Consejo Regional de los Valles de Filipinas ya en 1893(19).

"... in 1892," Pi and Margall and Pi and Arsuaga explain, "the next
Filipino rebels were already completely masonically organized.
The lodges had multiplied in extraordinary proportions. They were, no
doubt, the first mold in which Philippine thought was emptied.
As the characteristic note in the young Filipinos was anticlerical,
because they had the greatest ills in their country afflicted by the
predominance of the friar, they were easily accessible to Freemasonry,
composed mostly of young republicans who are all radicals."

And an observation of even greater interest:

"There is no reason why those who claim that Philippine masonry found
great heat in Spain, but it is not attributable to Spanish Masons
spiritual connivance with the separatists.
The Filipinos did not speak here (in Spain) of independence, but of his
love of freedom and his hatred of clericalism.
(...)
Thus, for the generality of the peninsular initiates, the Filipinos
aspired only to shake off the yoke of the friars, an ideal which the
peninsular was very sympathetic, without realizing that the realization
of such a purpose was so close, or that Could coincide with the loss of
the Philippines to Spain (20)."

In the same sense the affected Filipinos (like Isabelo de los Reyes) (21) and
Spanish (the main one, Morayta) would manifest themselves.

Certainly peninsular Masonry of the nineties is not the strong organization

of the first decades of the nineteenth century. But, "although he spent his
great age, he would excuse Menendez Pallares in the Congress of Deputies, in
the last debate on the responsibility of the movement in the separation of
the Philippines, that of 1904, in which he influenced glorious works and
revolutions, The Italian unity, regular Freemasonry still fulfills a worthy
and plausible end (22). " And above all it is important whether or not true,
another question is the appreciation of Pi and Margall and Pi and Arsuaga,
who were sympathizers of the emancipating island movement:

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 "Declining already in Europe, the Masonic organization was, however,
very purposeful to captivate the imaginations of the simple people of a
young people, eager to conquer their liberty (23)."

The connection between the militancy of the first Filipino Masons on the
peninsula and the opening of the island lodges to the natives in 1889 seems
to be sufficiently clear. The importance of this second line of ascription
and activity Would have been secondary: They must have been those, installed
in Spain, who, on the basis of those specialized peninsular lodges that
emerged in Barcelona and Madrid in 1889-1890, encouraged the development of
the Masonic organization in the archipelago, assimilating this yes the
impulse Initiated with the opening of the same year 1889.

The historiographical problem, however, is centered on what we may call

parallel associations: those which, moved by the very people who gave life to
these lodges (this is fundamental), were dedicated to anti-liberal and
liberal propaganda, then autonomist and later independence , On the one hand,
and on the other, to the preparation of the revolt against Spain. In
distinguishing between these three facets (masonry, political propaganda and
with what content and rebellion) lies the problem. That, let's face it, known
sources do not solve at all.

In the islands, the first parallel organization to the Masonic one must have
been of the type represented by that congregation of San Casiano, if this was
not the first precisely. In the peninsula, on the other hand, the evolution
of these associations was more complex and repeated to a certain extent the
process of autonomy that we saw in the lodges. Let us also say that the first
dates are unfortunately imprecise, in the testimonies we know:

In the eighties a society was established in Barcelona; Association or

Hispano-Filipino Circle that moves to Madrid (to the street of Rapporteurs,
24). With her are related men like Morayta its president and Jose Rizal. In
1896 he is accused of being related to that anti-religious propaganda
discovered in the city of Barcelona in December 1889 and with the final
outbreak of the insurrection. For this reason it was closed by a governmental
order in 1896 and the members of the board of directors were detained, except
Morayta, who was not in Madrid (24).

It may have been in 1892 (25), already in the Philippines and parallel to the
return of Masons initiated in the metropolis, when a propaganda committee was
formed, led by several of the characters we have seen, among them Marcelo
Hilario del Pilar and Dedicated to the dissemination of autonomist books,
pamphlets and proclamations (26).

And in the same year - always according to sources, not entirely sure, which
I know of - is the Philippine League, an association for purposes related to
the progress of the archipelago, to which other seditious aims are concretely
attributed, and specifically, secret statutes of separatist orientation. The
work of the League would be stopped in 1893 with the deportation of several
patriots and would end with the disappearance of the same in 1894.

On July 7, 1892, the decree in which the deportation of Rizal to one of the
southern islands and the prohibition of his writings is arranged, as long as
the proceedings against him are followed, The same day the Katipunan is
constituted:

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Kaastaasang Katipunan Nang Manga Anac Nang Bayan: Most Exalted Society of the
Children of the People (27).

Was Katipunan related to the League first, as if it had been his

continuation? Knowing these dates, it is difficult to be such. According to
some version that we will say, they could have been masons and people related
also with the League who configured the movement. But even that personal
coincidence is not clear.

Linked or not organically to the League, the new association also had an
essentially different mission, which represented a further step in the
articulation of the movement, already fully independent: It was a matter of
preparing with it precisely the rebellion and, for this, the Katipunan
already Was not satisfied, as the Philippine League, with grouping the
leaders but intended to unite to all, including the most humble natives. Thus
Pi and Margall and Pi and Arsuaga interpret, following Marcelo Hilario del
Pilar, the fact that there was no demand for an entrance fee more than fifty
cents and a strong real per month.

"The operation of the Katipunan," he added, was similar to the League,

and its initiation formulas similar to those of the Freemasonry (28)."
"(...) was the Katipunan," Morayta said in 1904, "one Plebeian society,
composed of people of little prestige and of little consideration
(29)."

In relation to Freemasonry less than what the League could be? Of the
Katipunan, despite what was said and discussed in the following years,
Morayta would affirm in the Congress that:

"Had absolutely nothing to do with Freemasonry, and so it was something

other than it, that Katipunan only belonged at first to a physician who
had been a Mason, and who by his conduct was expelled from the Order
(...).
Between Katipunan and Freemasonry, between the Katipunan and the
Philippine Society, as between the Katipunan and the Philippine League,
which I had nothing to do with, there were no relations of any kind. It
is not, it was not the Katipunan consequence of anything that these
Societies were (30)."

In 1896, when the Hispano-Filipino Association was closed for presumed

complications in the preparatory work for the rebellion against Spain, and
Had published from Bourg-Madame the own great master of the Great East
Spanish a note written in these terms (31):

"I strongly protest against the infamous assumption that there are
filibusterous works in the societies presided over by me. Aside my part only
the unconditional Spaniards fit in. The Hispano-Filipino association, has
been meager time, was always Spanish. In the Philippines there is an
association called Oriente Español that never made any policy in the
Philippines: if there are filibustering Freemasons, they are not from the
Oriente Español, and if they were, without the oath, the weight would fall on
them of the law."

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Was there even that personal relationship that we insinuated, reduced to the
coincidence between several of the promoters and leaders? Between Freemasonry
and the League itself. And not only - perhaps - with Morayta's obedience. In
the same year of 1896, and after the insurrection of the archipelago, it was
confirmed that Jose Maria Pantoja, rapporteur of the Supreme Court, and
Caballero de Puga, grand master and secretary respectively of the Grand
National Orient, had signed the title of venerable of the Philippine Patria
League in favor of doctor Faustino
Villarroel (32).

But with regard to the Katipunan, I have already advanced that the various
versions of their definition leave an important doubt about the importance
not only of nexus but of mere influence. Ultimately, the only thing they make
clear is that the very birth of the katipunera organization is something
completely obscure, being as it is the capital for the knowledge of the final
independence process (33): Marcelo Hilario del Pilar would concretely
attribute the paternity of the Clandestine association and, as I have just
noticed, its version would be the collection by Pi and Margall and Pi and
Arsuaga in History that was published with his name, died the first, in 1902;
Del Pilar would have designed the Katipunan while still in Madrid and
referring the organizational bases to his coreligionists in the Philippines
(34). Two years later, however, in 1904 and in the Cortes, Morayta endorses
and glosses with his own testimony the version prologged by himself and
published in 1899 in Isabelo delos Reyes's Sensational Remembrance of the
Philippine Revolution of 1896 Which the author was deported to the castle of
Montjuich; De los Reyes, who denied in his memory his belonging to
Freemasonry, would have drafted the statutes of the Katipunan in the
Philippines and in the prison, very advanced and the insurrection of 1896,
that is to say when the association had four years of life:

"Isabelo de los Reyes was in the prison of Bilibid, where it was

because several statements were made that committed to him by force of
torments.
There he met a considerable number of members of the Katipunan, and
with them he became intimate. By virtue of the relations he held with
these Katipunan members, he found out what the Katipunan was and then
wrote a memoir, which is what constitutes part of this book, addressed
to General Primo de Rivera, give him an account of what in reality It
was the insurrection, and proving to him how an insurrection which had
been born only as a protest against the friars, had become an enemy of
Spain, and then it was when Isabelo de los Reyes gave statutes to the
Katipunan; Because the Katipunan, a society purely plebeian, as the
book says, and as we have repeated all those who had knowledge of those
things, did not think of its beginnings in anything he supposed
Statutes (35)."

The repression had pointed out slightly in 1894, when the traditionalist
Sanz Escartín again denounced before the Cortes the works of the lodges to
undermine the prestige of religious orders that in the Philippines (36).
Solidaridad was suspended.

But there was no full awareness of the danger until the following year.
Wenceslao Emilio Retana, a well-known journalist from the Philippines, where
he had spent several years as an official of the Treasury, began to form the
press, repeatedly complaining to General Blanco, then military governor of
the Philippines, to put an end to the machinations Masonic Far from checking
them, the military, in disaffection with the archbishop of Manila, Fra

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Bernardino Nozaleda, ignored the denunciations, in which he did not believe,
and it seems that even managed to make it difficult for the publication of
Retana's publications.

On April 22 of the same year in El Imparcial, in Madrid, he also began to

write documentarily on the progress of island separatism, and in the
following days he pointed out a certain journalistic campaign, of
heterogenous political affiliation, as the Diario de Sevilla, The Navarre
tradition and the commercial newspaper of Zaragoza among others (37).

In July 1896, from Heraldo de Madrid, where the liberal candidacy of Jose
Canalejas was defended, the Masonic lodges were also attacked:

"(••) are taking in their networks many Filipinos, who begin

emancipating themselves from the Church and end up rebelling against
the State (38).

In August the existence of the Katipunan is discovered and soon the

insurrection breaks out. In September, El Liberal, a Republican, also
participated in the defense of the religious, and in Heraldo it is said that

"In the Philippines, they have been no more than the poor friars, who
come, years ago, warning of the danger.
It was not wanted to see that they spoke for the interest of Spain but
that its advice was rejected as inspired in the usefulness of the
friars and in anxieties of dominions.
That is why after every warning they gave to the blind in Madrid, a law
or decree or government provision used to come (39), diminishing the
privileges and franchises of the Orders, a true and almost sole support
of our sovereignty in the Philippines. "
"There," insists in October of 1896 from the same newspaper, "there are
only two systems: either moral force (missionaries) or material force
(arms)."

In the Cortes, in July, Retana had once again claimed the government's action
against the Hispano-Filipino Association (which we said was closed that same
year, and imprisoned its leaders) and against Freemasonry. And the Overseas
Minister, Tomas Castellano, assured him that Blanco had orders from him

"By no means consented to the existence of secret societies, which are

prohibited by the Penal Code, and, above all, to persecute the Masonic
lodges, under whose name S. S. says that they are concealed, and it is
true, the separatist germs. For this reason official communications
were exchanged between the governor-general of Philippines and the
Overseas Minister, communications that have continued to be
confidentially transmitted, and the result of this steady management
(...) (is) that many lodges have disappeared And if there is any, it is
because, in the face of persecution, have concealed much more than they
were concealed before (40)."

Still on August 21, 1896, Castellano himself was able to interrupt the
Congress to announce the discovery of the Katipunan and to insist on
In the Government's forward policy (41).

But that forecast was, in the best of cases, late: Only eight days later, on
the 30th, the total insurrection began, which was to put an end to the power
of Spain. With less optimism, the Overseas Minister himself had to defend his

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repressive policy and that of Blanco on September 2 before the Cortes (42).
In the end, the general would be replaced in the government of the islands,
thanks, among other things, to the efforts of some ecclesiastics, by Camilo
Garcia de Polavieja, who during the winter of 1896 to 1897 had to incarnate,
at last, the energetic action they wished and which was about to completely
contain the insurrection (43).

In that session of September 2, 1896, Carlist Zubizarreta recalled that in

the register made in the Philippine newspaper La Paz were letters from Don
Miguel Morayta, where he recommended reading them (44). On the third day
Vázquez de Mella brings to Congress an exhibition of Granadine Catholics
against Freemasonry (45). In June 1899, as we have already seen, after the
separation is complete, the accusations are intensified and the
traditionalist deputies try to reject the deputation in favor of Morayta.

They would come back to acquire really violent tones in the debate of January
and February of 1904 on the appointment of Fray Bernardino Nozaleda for the
miter of Valencia (46). There and then Maura read that report of the Command
of the Civil Guard veteran of Manila that concluded in 1896:

"It is well established that Freemasonry has been the main factor for the
main development in these islands, not only of advanced and antireligious
ideas, but mainly for the foundation of secret societies with essentially
separatist character." This conviction, added the informant - I acquired it
with the examination of the countless documents and correspondence found by
this Body, after impotent work and research, (...) (47).

He would be better acquainted with Maura himself in concluding on his part -

with the best example of his tormented oratory – that

"It was a universal testimony, or at least the most extensive and

authoritative testimony, that, in the end, whatever would have been the
intention, and saved the intention and the good will, the interference in the
Philippines of Freemasonry and The secret associations, and the habit of
gathering all together, and understanding by their own forms and solemnities
to impress the imagination of that race, had been at least the weapon with
which the heart of the Fatherland had been pierced (48)."

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