Pasya, Pagpupunit and Unang Labanan

The debate has long been clouded by a lack of consensus on terminology. The “Cry” has been defined in
different ways. Soledad Borromeo-Buehler, for example, claims the “Cry” traditionally meant the
Katipunan’s “first encounter” with Spanish forces, and adopts this definition herself. Isagani R. Medina,
on the other hand, equates the “Cry” with the tearing of cedulas, and not with either the decision to revolt
or the first encounter. Many, perhaps most, of the older sources do not say precisely what they mean by
the terms “Cry,” “grito,” and “sigaw,” and often we can only guess.

The official definition of the “Cry,” as spelt out in a report written by a Panel appointed by the National
Historical Institute in 2001, is “that part of the Revolution when the Katipunan decided to launch a
revolution against Spain. This event culminated with the tearing of the cedula.” These notes adopt the
same definition, but where possible and appropriate a distinction will be made between the two elements
of the “Cry”:
 the “pasya” – the decision to revolt; and
 the “pagpupunit” – the principal occasion on which cedulas were torn.

The NHI Panel report does not discuss the date and location of the first encounter - the “unang labanan” -
and that aspect of the controversy will likewise not be addressed in these notes.

“Report and Recommendation on The First Cry to the Honorable Chairman and Members of the National Historical
Institute,” October 24, 2001, 6. [Hereafter NHI Panel, “Report.”]

“Pugad Lawin near Pasong Tamo”

The case against “the Cry of Balintawak” was first pressed in the late 1920s, the lead apparently being taken
by Pio Valenzuela. He had spoken about the matter publicly before, when testifying in a court case in
1917. The decision to revolt, he recalled on that occasion, had been taken at Melchora Aquino’s house on
the road known as Daan Malalim, in Pasong Tamo, Caloocan. He said the location was “also known as
Pacpac-lawin.”

In 1928, Valenzuela went to commemorate the “Cry” at a site reportedly “in Pasong Tamo” together with
four other well-known KKK veterans – Gregoria de Jesus (Bonifacio’s widow), Briccio Pantas and the
brothers Alfonso and Cipriano Pacheco. The newspaper La Opinion carried this photograph of the group,
who according to the caption were standing around the exact spot (marked with an “X”) where “el famoso
grito” had been raised.

“Testimony of Dr Pio Valenzuela in the Case of U.S. vs Vicente Sotto for Libel,” [1917] in Minutes of the Katipunan,
234.
La Opinion, January 11, 1930 (when the paper reprinted its 1928 photo), reproduced in Guerrero et al,
“Balintawak,” as cited. The photo is also reproduced, together with its 1930 caption, in Borromeo-Buehler, The Cry
of Balintawak, 76.

At around the same time as this commemoration, in either 1928 or 1929, Valenzuela, Pantas and Cipriano
Pacheco issued a joint statement to the effect that the “Cry” had taken place not in Balintawak, where the
monument had been erected, but in “the place known by the name of Pugad Lawin”. This is the statement,
as published in the Philippines Free Press :-
 ISANG PAGUNITA

Upang Matuwid ang Paniwala sa Unang Sigaw sa

Panhihimasik Kaming Naguing Kasanguni ng Pangulo ng
Kataas taasan, Kagalanggalang Katipunan ng mga
Anak ng Bayan na si Andres Bonifacio.
Kaming nalalabi pang Kasama sa unang labanan iyon.
Alang-Alang sa Ikapapanuto ng mga Mananalaysay at ng hinaharap
ay Nagpapahayag :-

NA HINDI SA BALINTAWAK NGYARI ANG UNANG

SIGAW NG PANHIHIMAGSIK SA KINALALAGUIAN
NGAYON NG BANTAYOG, KUNG DI SA POOK NA
KILALA SA TAWAG NA PUGAD-LAWIN.

Briccio Pantas C. Pacheco Pio Valenzuela.

As may be seen, the veterans do not say where Pugad Lawin was located, but given the proximity in time
to their 1928 visit to the spot described as being in Pasong Tamo, we can only assume they were referring
to the very same place. The veterans likewise do not explicitly say the place they remembered as Pugad
Lawin was where, or near where, Melchora Aquino had lived in 1896, but with hindsight there is no doubt
it was. Valenzuela, as just noted, had already testified back in 1917 that the decision to revolt had been
taken at Melchora Aquino’s place in Pasong Tamo. On that occasion, it is true, he is recorded as having
said the exact spot was known as “Pac-pac Lawin” rather than “Pugad Lawin,” but surely it would be too
unlikely a coincidence to suppose he recalled two different “Cry” sites with “Lawin” in their name.

José P. Santos, “Rectificaciones históricas,” Philippines Free Press, November 30, 1929.

Pio Valenzuela’s “Memoirs”

Serrano’s account, written in 1962, is significant not solely because it records how Valenzuela still
associated Pugad Lawin with Melchora Aquino’s house in 1940, as he had in 1917. It is also significant
because a few years after the 1940 expedition Serrano came to be the translator of Valenzuela’s brief
“Memoirs,” which Agoncillo says date from the early 1920s.

In his “Memoirs,” in a single line that has muddied the whole Pugad Lawin issue, Valenzuela relates that
the “Cry” was raised in the “house, storehouse and yard” of

Luis Serrano, “Event observed on wrong date,” Manila Times, August 26, 1962.
Valenzuela wrote part of his “Memoirs,” the section recounting his famous meeting with Rizal, in 1914, and
citations often ascribe this date to the work as a whole. The other sections, however, including the lines on the
“Cry,” were written later. E. Arsenio Manuel, “Did Rizal Favor the Revolution? A Criticism of the Valenzuela
Memoirs,” Philippine Magazine, 31:1 (December 1934), 540; 562; 566; Gregorio F. Zaide, History of the Katipunan
(Manila: Loyal Press, 1939), 16; Teodoro A. Agoncillo, “More on the ‘Cry’ of 1896,” Historical Bulletin, IV:4
(December, 1960), 19.

Melchora Aquino’s eldest son, Juan A. Ramos. In recent decades, as we shall see, some have argued that
this means the “Cry” site was not at Melchora Aquino’s own place (as Valenzuela said elsewhere), but at a
completely different location, in Bahay Toro, three or four kilometers to the south west of Pasong
Tamo. And yet Luis Serrano, who personally went with Valenzuela to Pasong Tamo in 1940, and who
translated the veteran’s “Memoirs,” did not draw such an inference. The crux of the matter, Serrano
doubtless believed, was that Valenzuela specified in his “Memoirs,” as elsewhere, that the “Cry” site was in
Pugad Lawin, meaning the wooded knoll (a likely place for a hawk’s nest) to which they had hiked together
from Pasong Tamo. Valenzuela did not expressly repeat in his “Memoirs” that Pugad Lawin was near
Pasong Tamo, but neither did he specify any other location, so there was no reason for Serrano to suppose
Valenzuela’s mental map of the area had ever changed. Who actually owned the house and yard near
Pasong Tamo where he remembered cedulas being shredded, mother or son, was just an incidental point
of detail, not basic geography.

The advocates of the “Pugad Lawin in Bahay Toro” position have presented Pio Valenzuela as their star
witness, and his “Memoirs” as their prime document. But he does not mention Bahay Toro in his
“Memoirs,” and there is no evidence he ever did. Not even a whisper. It is ironic, to put it mildly, that
Valenzuela is now presented as the star witness for a version of events – the official “Pugad Lawin in
Bahay Toro” version - to which he did not himself subscribe.

Teodoro Agoncillo – initiator of Pugad Lawin’s relocation

Valenzuela’s telling of the “Cry” story, we need to remind ourselves, was just one version amongst
several. It gained a particular weight for a number of reasons – his seniority in the Katipunan, his status as
a physician, his political career, his prominence at commemorations of the revolution, his contacts with
historians, and so on. Pugad Lawin, his name for the “Cry” site, acquired even greater currency with the
publication in 1956 of Agoncillo’s Revolt of the Masses, which remains to this day the standard work on the
Katipunan. Agoncillo acknowledged that he had “relied mostly” on Valenzuela’s testimony when writing
about the “Cry.” He justified his decision by saying that Valenzuela had been an eyewitness to the historic
event, that his “Memoirs,” though written many years afterwards, had been “based on notes scribbled in
1897,” and that “events, complete with details” were still vivid in Valenzuela’s memory even in his old
age.

Pio Valenzuela, “Memoirs,” 102.

Teodoro A. Agoncillo, “Four Girls and a Man,” Part IX, Manila Times, October 27, 1956. This was the final
instalment in Agoncillo’s serialized response to a critique of Revolt by Nicolas Zafra. The “four girls” of Agoncillo’s
title, who had collaborated with Zafra on the critique, were Prof. Guadalupe Fores-Ganzon, Prof. Josefa M. Saniel,
Donata V. Taylo, and Justina A. Saltiva. Nicolas Zafra, "The Revolt of the Masses": Critique of a Book,” Philippine
Studies, IV:4 (December 1956), 493-514. For further expressions of skepticism about Agoncillo’s treatment of the
Pugad Lawin story, see Gregorio F. Zaide, The Philippine Revolution, revised edition (Manila: Modern Book Co.,
1968), 111-2; Ambeth R. Ocampo, “Heads Balintawak, Tails Pugad Lawin: Where did Bonifacio utter the first
‘Cry’?” [1989] in Ambeth R. Ocampo, Looking Back (Pasig: Anvil), 78; Borromeo-Buehler, The Cry of Balintawak, 7-8;
and Guerrero et al, “Balintawak,” as cited.

When narrating the story of the “Cry” in Revolt, however, Agoncillo does not adhere completely to
Valenzuela’s version of events. In the present context, one of his departures is especially pertinent.
Agoncillo follows the “Memoirs” that Valenzuela wrote in the 1920s in saying the “Cry” was raised at Juan
Ramos’s place in Pugad Lawin. But he does not mention Valenzuela’s 1917 court testimony that the “Cry”
site was at Melchora Aquino’s place, or his visits there with other veterans to commemorate the “Cry” in
1928 and 1940. Valenzuela, we saw, evidently believed Ramos and his mother both lived in “Pugad Lawin
near Pasong Tamo.” Agoncillo, on the other hand, says that Ramos lived in Pugad Lawin but his mother
lived in Pasong Tamo, and that the two places were a significant distance apart. Immediately after the
tearing of cedulas in Ramos’s yard in Pugad Lawin on August 23, Agoncillo writes in Revolt, the
Katipuneros got word the Guardia Civil were approaching, and so they hastily marched off in the dark to
Pasong Tamo, arriving at Melchora Aquino’s house the next day. Agoncillo repeats this story in an article
he wrote in 1960, saying that from Pugad Lawin the “rebels walked pell-mell through the night to Pasong
Tamo.”

Agoncillo does not explain why his narrative differs from Valenzuela’s recollections. Nor does he offer any
clue in his notes. The only sources he cites alongside Valenzuela at this juncture in Revolt are two other
KKK veterans, Guillermo Masangkay and Francisco Carreon, neither of whom ever acknowledged the
existence of a place called Pugad Lawin at all.

Agoncillo candidly admits that his reconstruction of events is “speculative.” He does not indicate in Revolt,
or in his 1960 article, exactly where he thought Pugad Lawin was situated, merely that it was some distance
to the west of Pasong Tamo. Later, in 1962, he claimed he had identified the exact spot where Juan
Ramos’s house once stood, and he placed a marker there together with members of the UP Student
Council. When he revisited the locality in the early 1980s, however, he found it had disappeared. Nobody
now remembers where it was, and nobody knows what documentary or oral evidence had persuaded
Agoncillo he had found the right spot.

It is very unlikely Agoncillo placed his marker in the same place as the present-day “Sigaw ng Pugad
Lawin” marker in Bahay Toro. The present marker and memorial are about two kilometers from
Balintawak – less than half an hour’s walk along a road or track, perhaps an hour across fields or
grassland. Agoncillo, though, says Pugad Lawin was a “big distance” from Balintawak. It took the rebels
the best part of a day, he indicates, “to negotiate the distance between the two points.” It is therefore
reasonable, he concludes, “to suppose that the ‘Cry’ occurred at a place very much farther from Kalookan
[than Balintawak].” All this strongly implies that Agoncillo located Pugad Lawin somewhere much closer
to Pasong Tamo than to Bahay Toro.

Isagani Medina’s case for “Pugad Lawin in Bahay Toro”

The other evidence Medina presents to support his “Pugad Lawin in Bahay Toro” position might be
described as equally insubstantial. But that would be too kind. His other evidence, to be blunt, borders on
the spurious.

Medina claims his position is corroborated by the recollections of five Katipunan veterans who actually
witnessed the “Cry” and one other who was very close to the events of August 1896. This is what he
writes, very clearly and precisely, about four of the witnesses: “Ang pagpupunit ng sedula... nga’y nangyari sa may
sityo Pugad-lawin, sa nayon ng Bahay-Toro sa bayan ng Kalookan... noong Agosto 23, 1896. Ito’y pinatutunayan ng apat
na saksi: Dr Pio Valenzuela, Briccio Brigido Pantas, Cipriano Pacheco at Domingo Orcullo.” The fifth “saksi sa mga
pangyayari sa Pugadlawin,” he says, was Mariano Alvarez.

In reality, not a single one of these five men left any written testimony to the effect that Pugad Lawin was
situated in the barrio of Bahay Toro. Valenzuela, Pantas and Pacheco, as we saw, commemorated the
“Cry” near Pasong Tamo in 1928, and Valenzuela did so again in 1940. Orcullo, the delegate sent by the
Magdalo council in Cavite to the decisive meeting of the KKK Supreme Assembly, did not leave a memoir
himself, and the little we know about his mission comes from Emilio Aguinaldo’s Mga gunita. Aguinaldo
says the meeting that Orcullo attended was summoned in “Balintawak,” and does not refer to either Pugad
Lawin or Bahay Toro. Nor does Mariano Alvarez, the leader of the Magdiwang council. He too
remembers only the place name “Balintawak,” recalling that he journeyed from Cavite to attend a “pulong ng
mga pangulo ng Katipunan sa Balintawak sa araw ng Agosto 24, 1896.”
Medina’s creative handling of the evidence is again manifest in a remark he makes about the memoir of
Francisco Carreon, another KKK veteran. Medina studied the weather conditions in Manila in August
1896, and found it had been mostly wet. But the day the cedulas were shredded, says Medina, it must have
been dry, because Carreon’s memoir relates that ‘namuti ang harapan ng bahay at looban ng mga cedulang punit’
nangangahulugan na tuyo ang lupa sa bakuran ni Juan Ramos.” All that needs to be said here is that Carreon’s
testimony is again being misrepresented. Sun or rain regardless, Carreon’s memoir does not locate the
cedula shredding in the yard of Juan Ramos.

Medina, in short, renders every reference to Pugad Lawin as meaning “Pugad Lawin in Bahay Toro,” and
when drawing upon Carreon’s testimony he even transports the pagpupunit to Bahay Toro from another
place. Medina, we are sadly forced to conclude, persistently distorts the veterans’ testimony to make it
bolster his own version of events.

“Pugad Lawin in Bahay Toro” reaffirmed

The publications of Medina and others around the time of the 1996 centennial thus helped to clarify the
debate to some extent, but did nothing to resolve it. Five years later, in 2001, the National Historical
Institute decided to review the evidence again. To conduct the review it constituted a special Panel,
comprising three historians – Bernard Karganilla, Doroteo Abaya and Rene Escalante - and (as chair) a
retired Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. The Panel members read some of the voluminous
literature on the subject, and heard testimony from some of the main protagonists. After due deliberation,
the Panel submitted a 15-page report to the Institute which concluded as follows:-

“In its search for the truth, the Panel did not find any document that could challenge the decision
that was rendered by the Philippine Historical Committee in 1963. Therefore, the Panel respectfully
recommends that the National Historical Institute re-affirm said position that the ‘First Cry’ took
place in Pugadlawin on August 23, 1896.”
The wording here is slightly inaccurate. In 1963, as noted, the Philippine Historical Committee had not in
fact identified the supposed site of the “Cry.” It had agreed only that the location should be shifted from
Balintawak to “Pugad Lawin, wherever it was.” It is however clear from the body of the 2001 report that
the Panel’s recommendation is really that the NHI should reaffirm the later, 1984, position of “Pugad
Lawin in Bahay Toro.” This might seem like a petty and pointless quibble. In isolation, it would indeed
not be worth mentioning. Regrettably, though, the slight inaccuracy is emblematic of a fundamental
misrepresentation of the “Cry” debate’s long backstory: in the Panel’s perfunctory retelling of the saga,
Pugad Lawin’s first incarnation as a spot near Pasong Tamo is never mentioned. The report cites the
testimony of Valenzuela and other veterans who spoke about Pugad Lawin in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s,
but is completely silent about where they located the site in those decades.

This omission is startling, not least because the NHI was descended from the Philippine Historical
Committee, and so had presumably inherited its records. Yes, most of the pre-war records might have been
destroyed or lost. But the photograph of the 1940 expedition to Pugad Lawin survived. Not only did it
survive, it was printed in one of the NHI’s own publications, the bogus Minutes of the Katipunan. Printed
and reprinted, together with the caption saying unequivocally that it shows Valenzuela and the others
gathered at Pugad Lawin in barrio Banlat, “where once stood the house of Melchora Aquino.”

Did the NHI Panel miss out the initial Pasong Tamo chapter of the saga for the sake of brevity, or had
they not researched the subject in sufficient depth? Either way, the result is that the Panel skews the
evidence, as Medina had done, in favor of the current “Pugad Lawin in Bahay Toro” official status quo.
The NHI Panel cites the historian José P. Santos as being a proponent of Pugad Lawin in 1929, for
example, without adding the necessary caveat that nobody had situated Pugad Lawin in Bahay Toro back
then. In later years, the Panel also omits to say, Santos avoided taking a position for or against any version
of the Pugad Lawin story, being content to present the range of different versions and to leave the
question open: “Samantala’y maghintay tayo ng lalong maliliwanag na ulat at mga patibay ng iba pang nangakasama sa
unang sigaw ng Himagsikan sa Pilipinas.” On another page, the Panel says the KKK veterans Alfonso
Pacheco, Sinforoso San Pedro, and Genaro de los Reyes corroborated the Pugad Lawin position because in
1928, together with Gregoria de Jesus and Monica Ramos (the granddaughter of Melchora Aquino) they
“pinpointed to Eulogio Rodriguez and Luis Serrano of the National Historical Commission the spot in
Pugadlawin where the Katipuneros tore their cedulas.” Here again there is not a word to suggest the spot
the veterans pinpointed was near Pasong Tamo, not in Bahay Toro. This passage, it may

be noted, is garbled. Adding to the unfortunate impression the report gives of institutional amnesia within
the NHI, it mistakenly conflates the 1928 and 1940 commemorations at Melchora Aquino’s place into a
single event. The Panel also misconstrues the memoir of the veteran Francisco Carreon as a “corroborative
account.” In reality, not one of the veterans cited by the Panel ever located the “Cry” site in Bahay Toro.

These mistakes and elisions matter because the 2001 report is in effect the basis of the official position as it
now stands. As the Panel recommended, the National Historical Institute reaffirmed its existing position
on Pugad Lawin, and there the matter has officially rested to this day.

It is worth looking again at the wording of the recommendation: “In its search for the truth, the Panel has
not been able to find any document that could challenge [the existing position]….” If the word
“document” is broadly interpreted to mean “pertinent written evidence,” then the obvious comment to
make is that the Panel should have looked harder, should have taken more time, should have taken more
care. If on the other hand the word “document” is narrowly interpreted to mean “a primary source from
the 1890s,” then it may sadly be true that such a document will never be found, however exhaustive the
search. But logic then demands that the same criterion must be applied to the existing “Pugad Lawin in
Bahay Toro” position. The Panel did not find any contemporary document to challenge the existing
position, but nor did it find any such document to corroborate the existing position, to validate the Bahay
Toro site.

“Pugad Lawin in Bahay Toro,” in other words, retains its official status not because there is a case for that
place, but because nobody has yet made a good case for anywhere else. The “Cry” now continues to be
marked in Bahay Toro almost by default, by the force of inertia.

Kangkong

Let us look again at what the veterans actually said, specifically in relation to the “pasya” element of the
“Cry,” the formal decision taken by the Katipunan’s Supreme Assembly to launch the revolution. Some
veterans who placed their recollections on record, of course, did not specify any of the possible “Cry” sites
mentioned in these notes. They referred in vaguer terms to “Caloocan,” meaning “somewhere in the
municipality of Caloocan,” or to “Balintawak,” meaning “some distance to the east of Caloocan población, in
the general area where Balintawak is the best-known place.” For the present purpose, these vaguer sources
must be put to one side in favor of those that are more specific.
The tabulation below summarizes the testimony of veterans who referred specifically to one or more of the
three locations that have been mentioned as possible “Cry” sites – Kangkong, Bahay Toro, and Pasong
Tamo (in barrio Banlat).

Source Locations Notes

mentioned

Pio Valenzuela Kangkong Says the “Cry” took place at Kangkong on August 23.
(1911) Quoted in Guerrero et al, “Balintawak”; source not cited.

Pio Valenzuela Pasong Tamo Says the decision to revolt was taken by the General Assembly
(1917) on August 23 at the house of Melchora Aquino on Daan-
malalim, “in Pasong Tamo, also known as Pacpac-lawin.”
“Testimony of Dr Pio Valenzuela in the Case of U.S. vs Vicente Sotto for
Libel,” [1917] in Minutes of the Katipunan, 234.

Labi ng Kangkong Says the decision was taken at Kangkong on August 23 - “Sa
Katipunan, pook na ito...ipinasya ng KKKNMANB ang paghihimagsik noong ika-
marker (1917) 23 ng Agosto 1896”.
Medina in Ronquillo, Ilang talata, 208.

Tomas Remigio Kangkong Says the decision was taken at Kangkong –“nandito’y amin na
(1917) ngang pinasiyahang ituloy ang revolucion...”
Tomas Remigio, Untitled memoir [c.1917] in Borromeo-Buehler, The Cry
of Balintawak, 178.

Pio Valenzuela Pugad Lawin Says the revolutionists met in Kangkong on August 22, but the
(c.1920s) [location not decision was taken on August 23 at Juan Ramos’s place at
specified] Pugad Lawin, and the “Cry” followed the decision.
Pio Valenzuela, “Memoirs,” [c.1920s] translated by Luis Serrano, in
Minutes of the Katipunan, 102.

Julio Nakpil Kangkong Says the “primer grito” was raised at Kangkong on August 26.
(1925) Julio Nakpil, “Apuntes para la historia de La Revolución Filipino de Teodoro
M. Kalaw,” in Julio Nakpil and the Philippine Revolution, with the Autobiography
of Gregoria de Jesus (Manila: Heirs of Julio Nakpil, 1964), 43.

Ramon Bernardo Bahay Toro Says the decision was taken and affirmed (“pinagkaisahan at
[attrib. JR] in pinagtibay”) on August 24 at Bahay Toro, but says the place
Alvarez (1927) belonged to Melchora Aquino.
Alvarez, The Katipunan and the Revolution, 254.

Guillermo Kangkong Says in 1929 and 1957 that the decision was taken at
Masangkay Kangkong, giving the date as August 26. Agoncillo’s notes of
(1929-57) an interview with Masangkay in 1947, however, say he recalled
the date was August 24.
1929: Guillermo Masangkay, draft article written in response to a
statement by Pio Valenzuela that had been published in La Vanguardia,
n.d., in Borromeo-Buehler, The Cry of Balintawak, 102; 112.
 1947: Teodoro A. Agoncillo, “Pakikipanayam sa Kgg. Guillermo
Masangkay, noong ika-11 Oktubre 1947,” in Borromeo-Buehler, The Cry of
Balintawak, 182.
1957: Arturo Ma. Misa, “Living Revolutionary Recalls Freedom ‘Cry’,” The
Saturday Weekend Mirror, August 24, 1957, cited in Borromeo-Buehler, The
Cry of Balintawak, 36-7.

Cipriano Pacheco Kangkong and Says the decision was taken at Kangkong, (“nang ipahayag na ang
(1933) Pugad Lawin pinagkasunduan...”) but that the revolutionists then went to a
(location not place “nearby” known as Pugad Lawin (location not specified),
specified) where Bonifacio announced the decision and cedulas were
torn.
José P. Santos, “Ang kasaysayan sa paghihimagsik ni Heneral Cipriano
Pacheco,” Lingguhan ng Mabuhay, Disyembre 3, 1933, cited by Medina in
Ronquillo, Ilang talata, 675-6.

Briccio Pantas Kangkong Says he witnessed the debate in Kangkong on whether the
(c.1935) revolution should be launched, but left before the decision was
made.
Briccio Pantas, Undated declaration [c.1935] given to José P. Santos and
included in his unpublished manuscript, “Si Andres Bonifacio at ang
Katipunan,” 1948, in Borromeo-Buehler, The Cry of Balintawak, 144.

Francisco Kangkong Says the decision was taken at Kangkong – “kaya lumabas ang
Carreon (1936) Supremo at inihayag ang pinagkaisahan sa mga kapatid na nag-aantay
ng pasya.”
Francisco Carreon, Untitled memoir, in José P. Santos, Ang tatlong
napabantog na tulisan sa Pilipinas (Tarlac, 1936), in Borromeo-Buehler, The
Cry of Balintawak, 158.

Vicente Samson Kangkong Says the decision was taken at Kangkong on August 26.
(1961) Ernesto A. Flores, “He was There: Man recalls first Cry,” The Evening
News, August 26, 1961, in Gregorio F. Zaide, Documentary Sources of
Philippine History, vol.8 (Manila: National Bookstore, 1990), 310-3.

This tabulation shows that a very clear majority – 7 out of the 9 individuals who mentioned either
Kangkong, Bahay Toro or Pasong Tamo - recalled the decisive meeting and/or the “grito” as having taken
place in Kangkong. This was the location specified by Tomas Remigio, Julio Nakpil, Guillermo
Masangkay, Cipriano Pacheco, Briccio Pantas, Francisco Carreon and Vicente Samson. Kangkong was
also identified as the location where the “pasya” was taken by the KKK veterans’ organization, the Labi ng
Katipunan, whose members erected a memorial there, at the site of Apolonio Samson’s house on the
Kaingin Road, in 1917.

Only one veteran – Pio Valenzuela – ever maintained that the decisive meeting took place at Melchora
Aquino’s place near Pasong Tamo, and even he reputedly once recalled the “Cry” had been raised in
Kangkong.

One other veteran – probably Ramon Bernardo – remembered the decision as having been taken in Bahay
Toro, but he did not say “Juan Ramos’s place in Pugad Lawin, Bahay Toro.” He said it had been at
Melchora Aquino’s place, “sa pook ng Sampalukan, Bahay Toro.”
Unless and until any solid evidence is found to the contrary, the only possible conclusion to be drawn from
the veterans’ testimony is that “pasya” was taken by the Supreme Assembly at the house of Apolonio
Samson in Kangkong.

The writer Nick Joaquin described the spot in the early 1960s, a time when it was still:

“lonely, obscure, isolated, and very hard to find. It’s in an ‘interior’ reached by no street; you have to
use a footpath, And the place itself is pure provincial countryside: giant thick-boughed mango and
tamarind and santol trees keep guard over the marker, which is always in shadow, and one guesses
that this was deep woods in those days.”

Today, of course, the “provincial countryside” has been obliterated by Metro Manila’s relentless sprawl,
not just in Kangkong but in every other locality mentioned in these notes.

Ceremony at the Kangkong marker. The Labi ng Katipunan was headed by the veterans Pio H. Santos (who had
participated in the “Cry”) and Claudio P. Carreon. The association commemorated the event at Kangkong
through the 1920s, perhaps longer, but the site later became neglected and the marker fell into disrepair.

Cipriano Pacheco
If anybody wanted to know the exact location of this field, Pacheco said in 1933, he would be happy to
accompany them: “Ang sinumang ibig makakita ng pook na tinutukoy ko, ay sasamahan ko roon, at may mga
nabubuhay pang tagaroon na makapagpapatunay sa mga pangyayaring iyan.”

The place, Pacheco said, was known as Pugad Lawin. This is surprising, but it is what he said. It is
surprising because in 1928 he had joined Valenzuela and others in commemorating the “Cry” at Melchora
Aquino’s place near Pasong Tamo, where Valenzuela located Pugad Lawin. A few years later, Pacheco
remembered Pugad Lawin not as being near Pasong Tamo, but as a spot five kilometers or so to the
southwest, close (“malapit”) to Samson’s house in Kangkong. In this telling, Pugad Lawin was not a place
in the sense of a barrio, sitio, an isolated farmhouse, or even a prominent wooded knoll, but just a field,
where there might have been a dried-out carabao wallow (into which Vicente Samson, a relative of
Apolonio, recalls the torn cedulas being thrown and burnt), and perhaps a dap-dap tree (which figured in
the debate in the 1980s).

Even among the three veterans who initiated the Pugad Lawin controversy in the 1920s, therefore, there
was no unanimity about where it was, or what happened there. Valenzuela located both the “pasya” and
the “pagpupunit” at “Pugad Lawin near Pasong Tamo,” whereas Pacheco located the “pasya” at Kangkong
and the “pagpupunit” in a nearby field – “Pugad Lawin near Kangkong.” Briccio Pantas, the third signatory
to the “Isang Pagunita” statement of 1928/9, subsequently made it clear he had left for Manila before the
meeting in Kangkong even finished, and so had not personally been gone to Pugad Lawin in any of its
incarnations.

José P. Santos, “Ang kasaysayan sa paghihimagsik ni Heneral Cipriano Pacheco,” Lingguhan ng Mabuhay, December
3, 1933, quoted by Medina in Ronquillo, Ilang talata, 676.
Ernesto A. Flores, “He Was There: Man recalls first Cry,” The Evening News, August 26, 1961, reprinted in Gregorio
F. Zaide, Documentary Sources of Philippine History, vol.8 (Manila: National Bookstore, 1990), 310-3. [Interview with
Vicente Samson.]
Findings of the Pugad Lawin Historical Committee (created by Quezon City Mayor Adelina S, Rodriguez), 1983.
National Historical Institute files, cited by Guerrero et al, “Balintawak,” as cited.
Briccio Pantas, Undated declaration [c.1935] given to José P. Santos and included in his unpublished manuscript, “Si Andres
Bonifacio at ang Katipunan,” 1948, in Borromeo-Buehler, The Cry of Balintawak, 145-7.

Conclusion

Ideally, fresh documentary evidence will someday come to light that will settle every aspect of this
controversy. If the borador of the KKK Supreme Council could be found, say, our understanding of the
pivotal events of August 1896 would be massively enhanced. Even then, though, we might still not be
much wiser about exact locations, for the Supreme Council’s communications, like the lone example we
have, might all be simply datelined “Kalookan.”

Pending the discovery of fresh evidence, we can conclude as follows:-

 It is almost certain that the decision was taken by the Supreme Assembly of the Katipunan.

 It is highly probable that the Supreme Assembly meeting was held at the house of Apolonio
Samson in Kaingin Road, barrio Kangkong, Caloocan.

 It is likely the principal occasion on which cedulas were torn was shortly after the Supreme
Assembly meeting ended, when Bonifacio announced its “pasya” to the waiting crowd. This
suggests that the site of the principal “pagpupunit” was not far from Samson’s house in Kangkong.

 Pugad Lawin has not been found on any contemporary map or document. It was remembered by
one veteran (Cipriano Pacheco) as an open field near Samson’s house in Kangkong, and by others
(Pio Valenzuela et al) as a wooded knoll near Pasong Tamo. It will probably never be known
whether either of these recollections was correct. If Pacheco remembered rightly, the main
shredding of cedulas occurred in a place known locally as Pugad Lawin, and if Valenzuela et al were
correct it is likely the Supreme Council was quartered (together with many other Katipuneros) at a
place known locally as Pugad Lawin whilst it took the vital decisions needed to put the Supreme
Assembly’s strategic “pasya” into effect. Valenzuela’s recollection that the “pasya” was itself taken at
Pugad Lawin is most probably mistaken, because it cannot be reconciled with the testimony of
other veterans.
 No evidence has ever been published to support the official position that the “Cry” was raised
where the “Sigaw ng Pugad Lawin” memorial now stands in Bahay Toro. No nineteenth-century
document has ever surfaced that refers to Juan Ramos’s place in Bahay Toro. Not a single
Katipunan veteran, or any other witness to the events of 1896, ever mentioned Juan Ramos’s place
in Bahay Toro. By the time the NHI installed the marker at Bahay Toro in 1984, the veterans had
all passed away, and could not demur. And not a single historian has ever written that both the
“pasya” (as the marker declares) and the “pagpupunit” took place in Bahay Toro.