NAGA CITY — After an American soldier fired the first shot that started the Filipino-American War On February 4, 1899, a year later, in the same month of February, the power of the guns of the invading Americans resounded here with brutality as the war of subjugation started to clear areas of resistance in Camarines Sur.

        Evelyn Caldera Soriano, author of “Bicolano Revolutionaries” (published by National Communication for Culture and Arts), unraveled brutal tactics of the American war of subjugation as she pieced together letters and memoirs the unfolding historical events at the turn of 20th century. The letters and memoirs, with several of them she traced in Europe, belonged to his two granduncles.

        Soriano’s granduncles, brothers Tomas and Ludovico Arejola, were leaders of the resistance movement in

        Camarines Sur. Tomas was a member of the propaganda movement in Madrid, Spain, in the circle of Dr. Jose Rizal and the Luna brothers who maintained correspondence with his friend Austrian ethnologist Ferdinand Blumetritt.

        Ludovico was a military officer of the revolutionary government under Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo, appointed Coronel de la Milicia Territorial and tasked to organize the milicias in Ambos Camarines (two Camarines provinces) and Catanduanes.

        Soriano, in her conclusion, has challenged the American written historical account in Bicol that “tended to belittle and discredit the Filipinos, particularly the Bicolanos’ fight for independence.”

        She questioned the Americans’ historical accounts that “contended that the people willingly left their villages and were attracted to the Americans’ ‘policy of attraction’”.

        Soriano showed that the people of Camarines Sur had proclaimed their independence and formed a revolutionary government even as the resistance movement went underground, after the resistance fighters led by Ludovico retreated from a four-day battle with the American soldiers, from Feb. 19-23, 1900. On accounts of war memoirs, American soldiers by the thousands were unloaded by warships at the shores of Calabanga, Camarines Sur on Feb. 19, 1900.

        On March 10, 1900, some 10,000 Bicolanos assembled in Taban, Minalabac, Camarines Sur, decided to dismiss all chiefs and officials who capitulated and showed cowardice. They elected Ludovico as the commander-in-chief.

        The Camarines Sur resistance force against the American colonization also included an eight-woman core called Damas Benemeritas de la Patria who helped the injured and the sick, bring clothes and provisions and medical attention to the Bicolano resistance fighters.

        The resistance force in Camarines Sur against the colonizing Americans had been an organized one with defined authority, roles and functions of individuals who assumed.

        With the war of subjugation concentrated here after the Filipino-American War sparked in Silencio and Sociego Streets in Sta. Mesa, Manila, Soriano found evidence of war brutality that victimized women and children.

        Showing the brutality of the American war of subjugation, the author cited an incident on Dec. 17, 1900 at “the height of application of stronger repressive measures under the guidance of Gen. MacArthur against Filipino resistance forces.”

        Based on a manuscript journal, a certain Captain Vasquez, one of the military officers of the revolutionary government in Camarines Sur, reported that the American soldiers burned houses in the town of Minalabac while in the village of Concepcion (Naga City formerly Nueva Caceres) people were rounded up, tied their necks with wires attached to the horses and were dragged like animals.

        In 1901 at the final stage of Filipino-American War, the author said, the American military operation in Camarines Sur further heightened and widened and crept to several towns to remote places at the slopes of Mt. Isarog where most of the men were suspected hiding.

        The war memoirs also showed instances of women being harassed and beaten by American soldiers who failed to extract from them information of the whereabouts of men in the villages.

        The tactic of reconcentration of women and children aimed at depriving the Bicolano resistance force of their means of popular support has been used earlier in Camarines Sur than the passage of the law that legitimized it—the Reconcentration Act in force beginning June 3, 1903, according to the author.

        Soriano wrote: “On (Dec. 29, 1900), Captain Blancada reported that in the barrios of Pili, 300 women and children were brought to Pili proper. Those in San Felipe were brought to Magarao while the men were arrested and the carabaos were confiscated. The people of Mabatobato were rounded up and brought to Partido.”

        In January 1901, the American soldiers were launching ambuscades and terrorizing villages by burning houses and arresting people at night, according to several accounts in war memoirs.

        With sheer force and strength in terms of number and war materiel, the Bicolano resistance force of three military companies with no guns were defeated easily by the advancing American soldiers.

        Full armored American soldier’s edged several notches in military might against the Bicolano resistance forces armed with machete, poisoned arrows and a number of guns and pistols.

        Overpowered, the American soldiers finally forced the Bicolano resistance force to surrender in late 1901 at the time when all possible means of sustaining the war of resistance failed.