A Caramoanon was one of the first three delegates of the province to the Philippine Assembly in 1907. A newspaper editor who was allowed to practice law, he hobnobbed with Filipino leaders like Manuel L. Quezon and Sergio Osmenia.
On July 30, 1907, the American colonial government conducted elections in the various provinces of the Philippines for a representative in the Philippine Assembly as mandated by the Cooper Act of 1902. This Asamblea Filipina would serve as a Lower House to the American dominated Philippine Commission and would gather eighty elected Filipino delegates from the different provinces. It was the first such election for a national office in the history of the Philippines and the provincial elites from the different regions competed for the offices that had been allotted to them.
Among the young leaders who emerged triumphant from these elections were the two men who would lead and shape the politics of the Philippines under American rule for the next 40 or so years. They were Sergio Osmena, former governor of Cebu, who was elected Speaker of the Assembly; and Manuel Quezon, former governor of Tayabas, who was elected as the majority leader. Much has been written about how the Philippine Assembly experience paved the way for Osmena and Quezon to make their mark on the national scene after previous stints in their respective provincial governments (Culllinane 1989;1984).
The Assemblymen from Ambos Camarines Elected delegates to represent Ambos Camarines in the Philippine Assembly were Tomas Arejola, Manuel Rey and Francisco Alvarez.
Although these men were not as prominent in the public eye or in the national scene as Osmena and Quezon, their ascendancy to the Philippine Assembly set them apart form the rest of the Bikolano provincial elites who had been competing for local positions since 1902. The seats in the Assembly gave them an opportunity to extend their influence beyond their own provinces and the Bikol region. More importantly, the positions provided vehicle for political and career advancement, as they could now aspire for higher positions at the national level, having been exposed to the workings of American colonial government in Manila.
Easily the most senior and experienced from among the assemblymen were those from the province of Ambos Camarines. All of them belonged to the Partido Nacionalista and had somehow been involved with the revolutionary movement at the turn of the century. The most senior among them was Francisco Alvarez, age 55, born in 1852 in Caramoan, representing the district in Camarines Sur also known as “Partido.” Alvarez was an escribano auxiliar of the Court of First Instance in Camarines Sur in the 1880’s and was a councilor of the first ayuntamiento formed in Nueva Caceres. Because of his prominence and advocacy of liberal ideas, he was implicated in 1896 by some envious Spaniards who denounced him as one of the personas suspechosas in the province who may have been involved with recently uncovered Katipunan. He was arrested and deported to Fernando Poo in Africa and could return to the Philippines only after the Treaty of Biak-na-Bato had been signed late in 1897 (Tuohy 1908, p.19 Ataviado 1938).
Upon his return, Alvarez became a member of the provincial government of Ambos Camarines under the auspices of Aguinaldo’s revolutionary government in Malolos. He served as Consejero de Justicia under this regime and became an associate editor of La Union, a revolutionary weekly published in Nueva Caceres. There is no record of him bearing arms against the Americans who arrived in Bikol in 1900 and he is portrayed as having actively advocated for peace through another periodical La Paz which he edited until 1902. In the 1903, he had his license to practice law revalidated by the Supreme Court and had a thriving practice in Ambos Camarines and Albay before being elected to the Philippine Assembly. His election was with some controversy as Andres Garchitorena, a prominent Spanish resident from Lagonoy in the Partido area filed a protest against Alvarez, claiming that he was no longer a resident of the Partido area since his law practice forced him to reside periodically in Nueva Caceres or even in Albay. Apparently, the protest did not prosper, as Alvarez completed his term until 1909 (Tuohy 1908, p. 19; Villamor 1911).
This article was excerpted from the paper of Stephen Henry S. Totanes, Ph.D., Associate Professor, history Department, Ateneo de Manila University, delivered at the 21st National Conference of Local and National history of the Philippine National Historical Society (PNHS) at Ateneo de Naga University, Naga City, October 26-27, 2000.
