Arsenio H. Lacson of Manila

PROLOGUE

BORNAY AND BUGLAS

H otel Filipinas was one of the notable landmarks in Manila. In the waning days of the Japanese occupation, the hotel became one of the sanctuaries of the American forces liberating the city.

In post-war Manila and in the decades that came, it became a favorite spot for foreigners, likely owing to its name that drew hordes of patrons: Filipinas indeed sounded exotic apart from representing the nation.

One early November morning in 1977, at the height of a typhoon, a fire razed the hotel. A power outage had forced the guests to light candles, which started the fire. The death toll was astounding, the count reaching almost 50 even as the search for more bodies continued at dusk. The catastrophe spelled the demise of the structure, and likely also to bury in oblivion anything attendant to the structure’s history.

Not so in the case of Hotel Filipinas. Though long gone, its name and past existence are still well-entrenched in Manila’s rich history.

All because of one man. A great man. A legend.

On the day he suffered a fatal heart attack in his suite in Hotel Filipinas, Manila Mayor Arsenio H. Lacson was preparing for his radio program. It was there where he wrote his radio speech that tackled the North Borneo issue.

A letter had been sent to Lacson by one Princess Tarhata Kiram, seeking the help of the mayor. She was a direct descendant of Sultan Jamalul Kiram and heir presumptive to the Sultanate of Sulu. Deploring the Philippine government’s inaction, apathy, indifference, and criminal failure to act on that issue, Lacson urged immediate action. Tomorrow may be too late, Lacson had written.

It’s now or never! There was a sense of alarm in Lacson’s words. He was obviously aware that there would come a time when this unresolved issue might lead to something tragic—not only the loss of part of Philippine territory and sovereignty, but more so the loss of precious lives.

The issue involved a kinship between the people of the island of Borneo and those of the nearby Philippine islands. Some centuries back, a family of valiant warriors from Bornay sailed north to an island where they eventually settled.

In 1372, a descendant of this family rose as a chieftain to govern the island which would later be known as Buglas. Chieftain Mamagtal ruled his domain so fiercely against any conquering invaders. One such group, ten datus from Brunei led by Datu Puti and Datu Sumakwel, had to sail a different course until they settled on another island that would come to be known as Panay.

The kingdoms in Buglas and Panay were bound to be cut short. In the 16th century, a Spanish fleet led by a Portuguese navigator named Ferdinand Magellan landed in another island now known as Homonhon. From that time on, Spanish colonizers continued with their imperialist take-over, baptizing in the name of Christianity and colonizing the islands which they came to christen Filipinas in honor of Spain’s King Philip.

After about three centuries, the Spanish reign in the Filipinas archipelago would itself end. As it began to fade in the waning decades of the 19th century, another imperial power, the British, was firming its hold on the islands near and around Bornay, which by then had been renamed Borneo.

Gustavus Baron de Overbeck and Alfred Bent struck a deal in 1878 with Sultan Mahomet Jonal Al Alan, of the Sultanate of Sulu that ruled Borneo, whereby the British pair would lease for an annual sum of $5,000 the portion of the territory later to be known as British North Borneo.

At the turn of the century, the Spanish empire in the archipelagic islands of Filipinas started to crumble. There would rise a new republic in the island of Negros, the territory which Chieftain Mamagtal ruled several hundred years back.

Aniceto Lacson, the island-republic’s president, and his army had overthrown the Spanish might in the island, a feat which his counterpart revolutionaries in Manila and Luzon were unable to achieve. Destiny, however, would assert its will, and eventually, Lacson’s infant republic, as well as the revolutionaries all over the islands, embraced the authority of the new imperial power—the United States of America.

By this time, the scattered islands would come to be known by their English name, the Philippines, which, after decades of American colonization, would attain Commonwealth status.

On the other side of the archipelagic spectrum, something would disturb the otherwise peaceful affairs between the Sultanate of Sulu and the lessees of British North Borneo. In 1936, just a year after the birth of the Philippine Commonwealth, the British government, which took over the rights of Overbeck and Dent in 1903, halted the payment of the lease to the Sultanate owing to a supposed controversy among the Sultan’s heirs—as to who exactly was or were the heirs entitled to receive the rental payments. It was a unilateral act that breached the contractual relations of the parties. The Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia during World War II lengthened the disruption of the contractual affairs.

When the Philippines became a republic in 1946, the British government arrogated unto itself the North Borneo territory as its crown colony in complete derogation of the Sultan of Sulu’s ownership over the land. When time came for the British to leave their possessions in the region, North Borneo was among those that were included in, and which was federated as part of, the state of Malaysia in 1963.

Attempts had been made to lay the Philippine claim on the North Borneo territory. Notable of these efforts was the move in 1950 spearheaded by a group of young Filipino congressmen who sponsored a resolution in Congress that sought for the restoration of ownership of North Borneo. One of them became the president of the Philippines in 1961. By then he could have brought into reality what he had espoused to make the territorial integrity of the archipelagic islands of Filipinas intact and inviolable. But he never did for reasons only he himself knew.

But then there was this other man in the very same group whose unfailing devotion for nationalism continued despite the passage of time and the endless battles he fought in the name of good and honest government. Born in the island formerly known as Buglas, this man might be said to have been a descendant of the ferocious Chieftain Mamagtal whose ancestors came from the island of Bornay.

This man was Arsenio H. Lacson.

In 1962, he was at the peak of his career, his stature as an honest and effective government administrator unrivaled, his popularity at the very apex.

The collective prognostication then was that Lacson would demolish any foe come the presidential polls in 1965. That Lacson’s time was already at hand was then a universal consensus.

Had he gone through the elections, Lacson would have been the tenth president of the Philippines. And he would have undoubtedly paved the way for the return of North Borneo to his nation.

An Arsenio H. Lacson becoming the Philippine president in 1965 would have prevented the occurrence in 1968 of the Jabidah Massacre where scores of Filipino Muslims were senselessly killed when they tried to escape their covert training under the Armed Forces of the Philippines to reclaim the North Borneo territory, now known as Sabah.

And there would not have been the 2013 Sabah crisis, which took place half a century after Lacson’s demise, where some 200 Filipinos calling themselves the Royal Army of Sultanate of Sulu and North Borneo were sent by Jamalul Kiram III (a descendant of Sultan Jamalul Kiram) to Sabah to reclaim the land their ancestors owned. Dozens of Filipino lives were lost in the violence that took place. These tragic events had been foreseen by Lacson when he prophetically wrote on the day he died: Tomorrow may be too late.

A Lacson presidency in 1965 would have prevented the rise of a dictator in the person of Ferdinand E. Marcos, prevented the death of democracy, the murder and disappearance of thousands of Martial Law victims, and the merciless plunder of the nation.

And a Lacson in Malacañan Palace would have brought the Philippines grandeur and glory in much the same way a Lacson in Manila City Hall had brought Manila to its golden age in the 1950s.

The rogue side of fate, however, intervened, forcing history to deviate from what should have been its script.

Arsenio H. Lacson died unexpectedly on April 15, 1962 inside a room of a downtown Manila hotel ironically named Filipinas.

1

ORIGINS

O ne of the major islands that comprise the Visayas, the central region of the archipelago, is Negros, located about 500 kilometers south of Manila and surrounded by the islands of Panay in the northwest, by Mindanao in the south, and by Cebu in the east.

While the other islands appear to be formless or indistinct, the island of Negros catches notice for its outline. It roughly resembles a high ankle boot.

Another peculiarity is its name: Negros is the only island in Visayas named after its original inhabitants. Originally called Buglas, an old native word that is thought to mean cut-off, its first inhabitants were dark-skinned people, whom the Spaniards called Negritos. And for this reason the colonizers came to call the island Negros.

Negros generated little interest until the Spanish colonizers found the island to have the best type of soil for growing (sugar) cane in the Philippines.

In 1571, the Spanish navigator Miguel Lopez de Legaspi allotted certain concessions on the island to deserving Spanish soldiers—land grants with proprietorship and authority over a territory and the inhabitants therein, with the corresponding obligation on the grantees to convert to, or teach the inhabitants of the tenets of, Christianity. Later, the Spanish government, due to the sparse population in the island, halved Negros into two areas for purposes of administration: Occidental and Oriental.

In the last half of the 19th century, Negros underwent a transformation from a minor province to a major region. This was attributed to the opening of Philippine ports to world trade. Cane cultivation thrived even more. Sugar production soared from 100,000 piculs in 1856 to 2,000,000 piculs in the early 1890s. Large haciendas began to appear.

Sugar production was a flourishing industry in Negros when a revolt was mounted in 1898 by patriotic inhabitants that routed the Spaniards. The rebels, led by Gen. Aniceto Lacson and Gen. Juan Araneta, put up a revolutionary government which they called Cantonal Government of Negros or the Republic of Negros. When the American colonizers came and established order in the island, the infant revolutionary republic came to an end. In 1902, Negros Occidental was formally established as a province in the island.

The sugar industry continued to thrive. The town of Talisay, although also dotted with haciendas, never significantly figured in the island’s sugar production until the year 1912 when a momentous event would take place: the installation of the first centrifugal mills—the latest machinery in sugar production—which replaced the old wooden mills. This would signal the sugar boom that would lead to the flow of wealth in the island in the decades to come.

Yet another event, however unrelated, would take place in that somnolent town in the latter part of that year, specifically in the last week of December 1912. It was a day after Christmas and there was a tropical storm—typhoon signal number 7 was up at that time—that raged throughout the day. And this wrought fear among Talisay’s residents. They had ample reason to be worried. Just the previous month, two powerful typhoons had struck the central part of the Philippines, causing devastation and misery in the Visayas region (as well as parts of northern Mindanao and northern Palawan). Samar, Leyte and Panay bore the brunt of the destructive typhoons. One report stated that half of the 12,000 population of Capiz (on Panay island) were left dead by the latter storm.

Fear of a similar calamity gripped the residents in the house of Roman Lacson in Gusa Hacienda. Roman himself must have been gravely disturbed and asked, Why did this day have to be stormy when his wife was about to give birth?

The savage fury of the storm ripped the roof above them. Fortunately, that was all the typhoon caused. As the mother caressed her newborn infant, an odd thought came to her. This boy is going to be a typhoon, remarked Rosario Lacson.

More than half a century later, one could say that Arsenio H. Lacson’s mother was indeed prophetic when she made that remark. She foretold the sturdiness and ruggedness in the personality of her then infant son, qualities that would later on be the key to Lacson’s success in all the fields of endeavor he indulged in throughout his colorful life.

Arsenio H. Lacson’s father, Roman, was born in August 1882 to an unwed couple, Hilario Lacson and Aleja Ledesma.

A prominent ilustrado in Negros, Hilario, Arsenio’s grandfather, commuted to Iloilo as often as his business and social needs required. It was in the course of these travels when he met the lovely Aleja Ledesma, a fair-complexioned woman and with delicate features of an Oriental cast who hailed from Jaro, a district in Iloilo. Hers was a family of skillful weavers of sinamay and pineapple fiber.

Transfixed by the Ilongga’s beauty, Hilario or Yayoy immediately went to work in making Aleja fall victim to his charms. Soon, Aleja would give birth to Roman. It hardly had any effect on Hilario. Philanderer that he was, he refused to be held by any woman to a permanent commitment. He continued with his conquests. He would have relations with three women—Aleja Ledesma, Agueda Lizares and Rufina Dingcong.

At that time, a woman bearing a child out of wedlock was deemed immoral. Such "deliz or slip" instantly merited the community’s full censure, and the hapless female offender was destined to carry the stigma of disgrace all throughout her life.

The ignominy must have made Aleja an outcast from her own family. But fate would be kind to her. In the course of her struggle to raise her son, she met a hardworking Chinese in a trading firm in Talisay. Respectable, responsible and honest, the man fell in love with Aleja. As he was not one to be affected by the supposed stigma that Aleja carried, the Chinese married Roman’s mother and treated the small boy as if his own.

And so Roman grew up in a home with a loving stepfather and a devoted mother. Unfortunately, the stepfather he revered died ahead of his mother.

Meanwhile, Hilario met Agueda Lizares—the woman that he would eventually marry at some point when he was already on the verge of death. For the time being, their union was still one of common law marriage—that is, without the benefit of legal vows. They weren’t blessed with any child, so that Hilario decided to get Roman to live with him.

It was paternal recognition, an acknowledgment of a father’s own flesh and blood, as well as an express authority for the son to carry his father’s name. Thus, the name Roman Lacson came to be.

At this time, Roman was barely in his teens. He knew the stigma of his birth—which had caused him a great deal of despair. It was something that made him defiant, a rebellious young man determined to efface that stain of disgrace.

There lived in the same neighborhood a young woman, Maria Rosario Sison, the eldest daughter of Capitan Fermin Sison, one of the builders of the Negros community. Her brother, Capitan Juan Sison, was a companion and co-worker of Juan Araneta (they would both figure in the 1898 Negros revolt against the Spanish rule). When she became an orphan at the age of fifteen, Rosario’s uncle, Don Simeon Covarrubias (a priest), took her in his custody and provided her education.

As fate would have it, the young rebellious Roman and the virtuous Rosario developed a relationship and wound up married. It was in Hacienda Gusa in Talisay where they settled. Rosario bore three girls in succession—Soledad, Amparo and Estrella—and a boy—Arsenio—as their fourth and last child, born on December 26, 1912.

Commenting on her parents in later years, Soledad recalled, "To Mama, our father was un diamante en bruto to be treasured. The relationship between them was stable, cordial, affectionate—there was mutual respect and esteem. Both always presented a united front before us children. At times when Papa was in one of his predictable moods of depression and became dictatorial towards us, Mama would refrain from taking sides. She preserved dignified silence until he had calmed down. Mama was musical. On her own she learned to play the piano. She also learned English in her middle age. Her reading matter covered a variety of Dumas, Victor Hugo, Shakespeare, Kenilworth, Dickens…"

Soon after his son’s marriage, Hilario called on Roman, asking him to oversee the old man’s haciendas, some of which were way up in the hinterlands. The younger Lacson had other things in mind, though; he had set his sights on the properties inherited by his wife from her father. Roman turned down his father’s wish. If anything, it was a preview of what he would later on exhibit: his refusal to have to do anything with his father’s wealth. As to his entitlement to share in his father’s riches, Roman showed indifference, not minding even if he had been cheated on by the relatives of his father’s wife.

Roman would be proud of the fact that in raising his own family, he never relied on his father’s wealth. He told his children, I have, on my own, fed you, clothed you, raised you, given you education without counting on my legal inheritance. We can do without it.

Hilario suffered a near-fatal stroke that left him in a coma for some time. When he finally succumbed (he got killed when he stepped, in the words of his grandson Arsenio, on a cake of soap in the bathtub), all of his wealth went to his wife, and later on, to her nephews who squabbled among themselves in dividing the estate left by Hilario and his wife Agueda (they had no children).

It was a rather sad denouement for Hilario whose large estate and hard-earned riches never passed on to his children—Roman (with Aleja Ledesma) and Laurina Lacson (with Rufina Dingcong).

Hilario Lacson was one of the 11 children of Domingo Lacson and Fernanda Petronilla. They were originally from the Chinese district of Molo, Iloilo—the Lacsons belonged to the Chinese mestizo class (those born of Chinese fathers and Filipino mothers). Of Domingo and Fernanda’s offsprings, a pair—Lucio and his younger brother Hilario—would migrate in 1863 to Negros.

In their new home in the town of Talisay, the brothers became the Lacson pioneers in the island. They became beneficiaries of vast properties through Spanish grants, and began to engage in producing sugar.

Of the two, it was Lucio who would equal the number of offspring his father Domingo had sired. And out of Lucio’s 11 children, one of them, Aniceto Lacson, would carve out a niche in the history of Negros in the dying days of Spanish rule.

Like his cousin Roman Lacson, Aniceto Lacson was a sugarcane planter who owned large tracts of land in Talisay. He was born in 1857 and was sent to study in Ateneo Municipal de Manila.

Restive and audacious, the young Aniceto, owing to his constant stints during school holidays as a worker in his father’s sugarcane fields, quickly learned the tricks of the trade. Wanting to modernize and expand his father’s business, Aniceto acquired the latest machinery in sugar production. When his father suffered a stroke, Aniceto took over and turned his father’s trade into a flourishing business.

By 1890, the holdings of Aniceto had grown incredibly, even reaching the confines of Bacolod. Two years after, the 35-year-old Aniceto would receive a Spanish royal decree conferring upon him the title of a count.

It was in the year 1898, the time when Spain was starting to lose its hold in the archipelago, when Gen. Aniceto Lacson was elected as the president while Juan Araneta was chosen as the war delegate. It was on November 28, 1898 when Lacson proclaimed in the island the Philippine Federal Republic, Canton of Negros Island.

But the infant republic was destined to be short-lived.

After the Treaty of Paris was signed between America and Spain wherein all of the Philippines was ceded to the US, acceptance of the American rule over the island would soon be manifested. On February 12, 1899, the American flag was hoisted at the government building to the salute of 21 guns. The next month, American forces set foot on the island and were met by the Negrense officials and troops under a jolly atmosphere.

Though the local government would still function in the next weeks to come, it would hardly have any significant value. American rule finally ended the island’s provisional government with the issuance of General Order No. 30 by the American commander of the US forces in the Philippines.

And so, the reign of Gen. Aniceto Lacson, the president of Philippine Federal Republic, Canton of Negros Island came to an abrupt end.

As Aniceto Lacson faded into oblivion, a new Lacson would rise in the political horizon.

His son, Isaac, born in 1889, was elected as representative to the Philippine Legislature for the years 1925 to 1928, then as governor of Negros Occidental from 1928 to 1931. He was elected as senator from 1934 to 1935, representing the district comprising the provinces of Negros Occidental, Negros Oriental, Antique and Palawan.

But it was the offspring of Roman Lacson, Aniceto’s cousin, who would rise to even greater prominence in the world of politics.

Arsenio H. Lacson, born on that stormy December day, would eclipse whatever fame and glory his second cousin Isaac Lacson earned in his time.

He was the youngest child, and the only boy in the brood of four. His parents gave him two names, Arsenio Hilario, the first taken from a newspaperman (Arsenio Luz, who was greatly admired by Arsenio’s father) and the second from Hilario, Roman’s father.

Everyone in the family doted on the only boy, who was nicknamed Nene. What the family noticed, as the infant started to grow, was his weak physical constitution. Very often, the boy would get afflicted easily by some illness which his siblings avoided.

When Arsenio was about four years old, he exhibited fretful moods. When he launched into crying spells (often punctuated by coughing), it was a tough ordeal for everyone. Over time, Roman found a way to soothe his young boy’s agitation and halt his uncontrollable sobbing. Aware that the boy was already familiar with the tools or implements that he often carried in taking care of their hacienda, Roman found out that by hanging over his son’s small thin shoulders the bullet-loaded cartridge and belt and holster that carried the .38 caliber, young Arsenio would cease weeping and begin to show a better mood.

The boy was also very fond of dogs. He already kept two in the house, but he still had the habit of gathering dirty stray dogs in the neighborhood and bringing them home. His original pet dogs plus the newly arrived stray ones would mix and run around in the Lacson household. He would be found asleep with his small arms wrapped around an unwashed canine, which made his parents upset. The young Arsenio would get afflicted with diphtheria from the dirt and germs in the unwashed creatures’ bodies.

Roman would find himself concerned as he kept a watchful eye over his son. As is natural in every family, children are often engaged in games as their form of amusement. As there were three girls in the Lacson brood, most of the games which the siblings played were those suited for girls. And being the youngest, Arsenio naturally had to play along with his big sisters.

When they played dolls, I played with dolls, Lacson reminisced years later. When his sisters played with doll houses, with imaginary cooking or storekeeping, he also obliged.

Being the youngest also meant his big sisters often used him as a helping hand in the kitchen. Over time, his being made to pass this and to pass that allowed him to be familiar with his sisters’ cooking chores. Lacson would again say, When they cooked, I cooked.

Growing up, he eventually learned how to cook; his mother thought of no particular reason why her only son should be barred from the kitchen when she was teaching his sisters how to cook. Soon, Lacson was cooking more flavorful sinigang than any of his sisters.

His father became desperate: he had to stop his son from growing up to become a sissy. He had to devise a way to make his boy tough and masculine—something which would eventually shape the life of Arsenio H. Lacson.

Reeling back the years, Lacson recalled, "I was the only son, the youngest, and I had three sisters. Father was scared that I would grow up to be a binabae so he deliberately went out of his way to pick fights for me."

He added: Every other son in our neighborhood was in my father’s payroll. As soon as I poked my head out of our home, I had a fistfight with one of them.

One fight scene seemed etched indelibly in his memory. He was then eight years old fighting off a bigger kid in a brawl set up by no less than Roman. Heeding his father’s advice, Arsenio charged ahead and rained blows at his nemesis to the delight of the gathered crowd at Gusa Hacienda.

And the kiddie fistfights would turn out to be a normal activity he would venture into in his young life.

They would mold the boy’s character. He would become a leader among the gang of kids in the neighborhood. So recalled Soledad, Arsenio’s eldest sister (whom he fondly called Chols or Inday): Arsenio’s leadership qualities became evident to the family at an early age. He was always the ‘captain’ to his neighborhood playmates in Talisay.

Arsenio attended the San Agustin Elementary School in Iloilo. His elder sisters were already studying at the Assumption School in Iloilo, as there were no exclusive schools in Negros at the time, so it was only practical for the little boy to study in a school nearby. The Lacson brood became full-time boarders in Iloilo, with the older siblings looking after the young Arsenio.

Roman wanted to give his children the best education he could afford. It was his profound desire for his children to stand out among the Lacson clan. But Roman also knew when to exercise, as he certainly did, enough discretion to prevent the young Lacson from growing up spoiled.

Arsenio’s sister Soledad had some interesting tales about her small brother’s days in grade school. Some of the school’s teachers refused to include Arsenio in their class, since they had difficulty in winning any argument against the boy. Once they engaged him in an argument, it was difficult for him to yield. At a very young age, he already had the knack for coming up with the appropriate word either in response to, or in traversal of, any remark which his teachers would throw at him.

Though his family was well-off, Lacson never enjoyed the luxury of going to school without having to worry about paying tuition fees. Young Lacson had to work as a cowhand in his father’s farm to enable him to earn the money he needed for his matriculation fees for the next school year.

This was one of Roman’s ways of refusing to pamper his only son.

In the first summer of his employment, Arsenio demanded an increase in his daily salary, from four pesos to five pesos and fifty centavos. Rebuffed, the young Lacson abruptly left his father’s farm and started to work in another farm owned by an uncle who agreed to his asking price. The elder Lacson, swallowing his pride, appealed to Arsenio to come back.

Sorry, Papa, you have to pay me one peso better, Arsenio said. Instead of P5.50, now it will cost you P6.50. The price has gone up since the last time we haggled. Only when Roman agreed did Arsenio come back to work for his father.

One memorable caper had the young Lacson going one Sunday to the town church armed with a brand-new air rifle. Hunting for bats, he saw some of them hanging upside down from the cobwebbed rafters inside the church. He took aim and fired at the bats. Had the church been vacant, the young boy’s act would have passed unnoticed. However, there was a solemn service going on at that time. Those inside were thrown into panic and the service was dramatically interrupted.

One time his father caught him gulping down liquor he had purloined from the cabinet. Now, Roman said to his son, if you can drink this like a man and carry it like a gentleman, I shall allow you to drink. The elder Lacson poured enough whiskey to intoxicate Arsenio. After the boy guzzled the liquor, Roman waited for a while. Assuming that the alcohol had already taken effect on the boy, he ordered Arsenio to walk a straight line across the room and back. Arsenio obeyed as directed. He passed the test. I’ve never forgotten his advice, Lacson later said.

One day, Arsenio was told that he would next study at the Jesuit-run Ateneo de Manila. Now take the boat and enroll at Ateneo, his father said. He just thrust into his son’s pockets enough money for the matriculation fees and other expenses. Dumbfounded, Arsenio asked, But where is Ateneo? Roman, who was a taskmaster and who had seen fit not to spoil his only son, bluntly replied, Go find it, you’re a man now.

Roman Lacson’s choice of Ateneo was in keeping with the clan’s tradition, as majority of them had studied or were studying in Ateneo at that time. Apart from wanting to give his only son the best education possible, Roman knew that the Jesuit-run school was also a center for, and a good nurturer of, the spiritual life.

2

THE ATENEO YEARS

T he decade was the 1920s. Evidence of American colonization could be seen everywhere in the city: the Manila Hotel, the Army and Navy Club, Arcade Café, American Express, National City Bank, Kodak Philippines, Fords, Chevrolets, Studebakers, etc. Every vestige of the Spanish era was being discarded and replaced by everything that was American.

But the most significant change these new colonizers brought was the form of government. At the turn of the century, Manila was transformed into a city patterned after the District of Columbia in the United States. For the first time in its history it became governed by a mayor appointed by the American governor-general.

In the almost five decades of American rule, six mayors were appointed by the American colonial executive. The longest to hold the chief city post was Felix Roxas (12 years), while the briefest terms belonged to Justo Lucban and Miguel Romualdez (3 years each). Between the two, Lucban could be said to have held the mayoralty post with some measure of disgrace—though Lucban’s tenure was marked by peaceful cooperation between Filipinos and Americans, and by the construction of several bridges and public schools in the city.

It all started when Lucban tried to impose his own version of morality in the city—something that would later prove to be his undoing. Back then, there was a district known as Gardenia where prostitutes were allowed to ply their trade. The mayor, an uncompromising Protestant who was a member of a religious society called the Evangelical Union, closed all the houses of prostitution in Gardenia. Then, in conspiracy with the city’s American chief of police, Lucban seized around 170 prostitutes, and hustled them aboard the steamers in the Manila port to be taken to Davao, where they were to be met by unmarried men who had expressed their willingness to marry the women. It was Lucban’s way—which generated applause from the religious community—of purifying Manila.

The relatives of these women filed a case at the Supreme Court. An outraged court remarked that there was not, in the annals of juridical history, a case such as this one. But one can search in vain, the court said, for any law, order, or regulation, which even hints at the right of the Mayor of the city of Manila or the chief of police of that city to force citizens of the Philippine islands—and these women despite their being in a sense lepers of society are nevertheless not chattels but Philippine citizens protected by the same constitutional guaranties as are other citizens—to change their domicile from Manila to another locality. Thus rebuked by the court, Lucban saw the beginning of his downfall. He eventually resigned from his post in the early part of 1920.

That same year, Manila found itself with a new mayor, Ramon J. Fernandez, an engineer who studied in Ateneo de Manila. It was the start of a new decade, and Fernandez, wanting to cast to oblivion the ghosts left by his predecessor, spearheaded some measures to cleanse the city government of its ills, such as gambling, graft and corruption. He would soon earn the sobriquet, Terror of Gamblers and Grafters.

One of the big events that took place during Fernandez’s term was the arrival in 1922 of an American officer named Douglas MacArthur, then the most decorated officer in the American army. This was his second time in the islands, the first time some two decades back when the Americans and the Filipinos were enmeshed in a bitter war. By now, the animosity between the two peoples had disappeared, and it fell on MacArthur to strengthen the US military forces in the archipelago. Over time, he developed relationships with the Philippine leaders and the American governor-general, Leonard Wood.

Appointed just after Fernandez had assumed the post as Manila’s new mayor, Governor-General Leonard Wood would be instrumental in the departure of Fernandez as Manila’s chief executive. Fernandez would resign from his post after three years in protest over Wood’s act of reinstating an American detective, Ray Conley, in the Manila police department. He had been charged with bribery but was acquitted for lack of evidence. This was deemed as the great scandal—the Cabinet Crisis of 1923—that rocked the Philippine Islands in the early 1920s. Wood allowed Conley to get back to his post, nullifying the earlier act of his Secretary of Interior, Jose P. Laurel, who had dismissed Conley from service.

Offended at Wood’s interference, Laurel resigned from the Cabinet—an event that triggered the resignation of high-ranking Filipino officials from the Council of State, namely, Senate President Manuel L. Quezon,