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HONEST MISTAKE OR ACT OF VINDICTIVENESS?
Tarlac omitted from Aguinaldo’s list of ‘8 rays of the sun’

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WAS the omission of Tarlac in Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo’s list of eight provinces to represent the eight rays of the sun in the national flag an honest mistake or an act of vindictiveness?

This question is expected to crop up again as the province celebrates its 136th founding anniversary.

At the height of the feud between Aguinaldo and Gen. Antonio Luna, Tarlac’s foremost hero, Gen. Francisco Macabulos, was said to have sided with the Luna camp.

Shortly after the outbreak of war between the Filipinos and the Americans in 1899, Luna was assassinated by Aguinaldo’s men in Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija.

According to a document titled “Act of Proclamation of Independence by the Filipino People,” the eight rays of the sun in the Philippine flag “symbolize the eight provinces of Manila, Cavite, Bulacan, Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Bataan, Laguna and Batangas.”

It was penned in Spanish by Don Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista, Aguinaldo’s adviser, who then read it on June 12, 1898, in Kawit, Cavite, during the proclamation of Philippine Independence.

The document also said these provinces “were declared (by then Gov. Gen. Ramon Blanco) in a state of war almost as soon as the first insurrectionary movement was initiated.”

But in his declaration, Blanco placed under martial law Manila, Bulacan, Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Tarlac, Laguna, Cavite and Batangas.

In Aguinaldo’s “Declaration of Independence,” Tarlac was replaced by Bataan.

Dr. Lino Dizon, director of the Tarlac State University’s Center for Tarlaqueño Studies, said the mistake could be “nothing more than a typographical error.”

“But because of the bad blood between Luna and Aguinaldo, and because of Makabulos’ close association with Luna, historians and ordinary people alike could not help but conclude that Aguinaldo deliberately ignored Tarlac when he declared independence,” he said.

He said Tarlac’s late reaction to the Cry of Pugadlawin on August 23, 1896, was immaterial.
“True, Makabulos raised the standard of revolt against Spain on January 24, 1897, several months after Andres Bonifacio’s cedula-tearing cry, but the flag’s eight rays were meant to represent the eight provinces Gov. Blanco placed under martial law,” he said. “Not the first eight provinces that revolted against Spain.”

Besides, Dizon said, even before Dr. Jose Rizal was killed by firing squad, a number of Tarlaqueños were already executed in Bagumbayan.

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