Chapter Four
2. The Second Cry of Kalookan
As it happened, Aguinaldo's faith in the "humanitarianism" of the United States turned out to have been sorely misplaced. On August 13, 1898, while his troops guarded the periphery of the nation's capital, the Americans, without even consulting him on possible terms, accepted the surrender of Spanish forces in Manila. Barred from participating in this final victory, Aguinaldo still hoped that his supposed allies would eventually hand over the government to the Filipinos, and on September 14, to avoid clashes between his disillusioned troops and the Americans, he transferred his headquarters and the seat of the Revolutionary Government to Malolos.
Inexorably, Kalookan was once more being drawn into a place in history. It now lay between the Americans inManila and the capital of a Republic that would soon find
itself in a grim struggle for survival.
Dark forebodings of war with an earstwhile friend loomed as the Treaty of Paris of December 10, 1898 formally concluded Spanish-American hostilities. Spain ceded to the United States sovereignty that it no longer had in the Philippines, and it had at last become clear that the Americans would occupy the country by brute military strength.
In Kalookan, the need for national solidarity in the face of a common enemy overshadowed personal feelinga against Aguinaldo. On January 11, 1899, in what could have been another Balintawak, a big crowd gathered at the plaza to denounce American duplicity. Brandishing shining bolos, they made known their datermination to preserve the Republic and the independence for which Kalookan had shed its share of tears and blood.
[The demonstration was reported in the January 11, 1899 issue of La Independencia.]
As if in response, an American guard shot a Filipino soldier crossing roming San Juan Bridge on the night of February 4, igniting a war that would be fought, in its initial but most decisive phase, in Kalookan.
