Nations and Nationalism 5 (2), 1999, 237±258.

# ASEN 1999

Women, nationalism and the

Philippine revolution
CHRISTINE DORAN
Faculty of Arts, Northern Territory University, Darwin NT0909, Australia

ABSTRACT. Filipino women participated actively in the Philippine Revolution

(1896±1902), performing a wide range of tasks essential to sustaining the revolu-
tionary challenge against Spanish and American imperialism. Though largely omitted
from mainstream histories of the nationalist revolution, women's involvement has
been recorded in several marginalised texts. However, these texts have invariably used
a limiting format based on presenting biographies of outstanding women. This article
suggests an alternative approach, by situating the history of revolutionary Filipino
women within a comparative framework. The article outlines key ideas of feminist
writers who have analysed women's participation in nationalist struggles from an
international perspective. Drawing on these ideas, some new approaches to women in
the Philippine Revolution are suggested.

Filipinos are at present commemorating the centenary of their nationalist

revolution, which lasted from 1896 to 1902. In August 1896 the Philippine
Revolution broke out against imperial Spain. It was the culmination of over
three centuries of revolt and resistance against the European intruders, who
began their colonisation of the islands in the mid-sixteenth century.
Revolution ignited in the region around Manila, but quickly spread to other
parts of the northern island of Luzon and to other islands, nationalist
sentiment providing by the end of the nineteenth century a sense of unity
among the many islands of the archipelago. Despite some military setbacks,
the Filipino revolutionary army made steady headway against the
Spaniards. However, their dreams of national independence were destroyed
by the intervention of American forces in the con¯ict, ®rst in alliance with
the Filipinos against Spain and then, from early 1899, denying the Filipinos'
right to rule their country.1 Filipino revolutionaries resisted the American
incursion, of®cially until 1902, and into at least the second decade of the
century by means of guerrilla ®ghting. Nevertheless, American imperial rule
was imposed, and lasted for nearly ®fty years. The Philippines achieved
formal independence in 1946, though signs of continuing American domina-
tion in economic, political, social and cultural life have been evident up to
the present. It is in this context that Filipinos often refer to their `un®nished
revolution'.
238 Christine Doran

Along with Filipino men, women took part in all of these major historical
transformations. During the nationalist revolution from 1896 to 1902, which
is the focus of this article, they acted in a wide variety of roles. Women of
all classes and backgrounds played an integral part in sustaining the
revolution as soldiers, messengers, nurses, guards, mothers, spies, fund-
raisers, strategists and so on. Yet in many ways women's contributions to
the Philippine Revolution have been minimised. Mainstream histories of the
revolution, for instance, have given little recognition to their involvement or
even presence.
In the few, more marginal texts which have recorded women's participa-
tion, the approach taken has been a limiting one. To date such historical
works have invariably taken the form of collections of short biographies of
outstanding Filipinas (e.g. Ancheta 1953; Guzman et al. 1967; Ancheta and
Beltran-Gonzalez 1984). As part of the centennial celebrations another
collection of biographies has recently been published, brie¯y recording the
lives of thirty prominent female participants in the revolution (Soriano
1995). Making available such biographical information is certainly impor-
tant, and all of the above studies make worthy contributions on their own
terms. However, these studies merely list the major events in the lives of a
number of outstanding women. These biographical accounts are purely
descriptive, making no attempt to analyse the issues arising from women's
involvement in the revolution. Use of the biographical approach as a
heuristic device, as with all such devices, has tended to restrict both research
methodology and researchers' thinking on the subject. The narrative form
of such biographies has discouraged analytical enquiry.
The aim of this article is to contribute to a more analytical approach
by broadening the focus on women in the Philippine Revolution. To do
this, a comparative perspective will be developed. There is already an
extensive international literature analysing the relationships between
women, nationalism and revolution. This topic has attracted increasing
scholarly attention in recent years, especially from feminist writers.
Insights offered by this analytical, comparative literature are suggestive of
new ways of approaching and assessing the experiences of Filipino women
in revolution.
In order to broaden the approach to women's participation in the
Philippine Revolution, the next section sets out the main conclusions of
several outstanding analyses of women's involvement in nationalist move-
ments and revolutions internationally. In the following section some of the
major ways in which women participated in the Philippine Revolution are
outlined. Drawing in part on available biographical data, this brief account
illustrates and emphasises the point that women did play an integral part in
the revolutionary outbreak. Finally, historical data from the Philippines are
considered in the light of the ideas emerging from the international
literature, in order to suggest new ways of understanding the history of
women and the Philippine Revolution.
Women and the Philippine Revolution 239

Analysing women, nationalism and revolution

Over the last twenty years or so increasing scholarly effort has been given to
analysing the relationships between women, nationalism and revolution.
Most of these studies have been approached from a feminist perspective.
This section brie¯y sets out the principal ideas of several in¯uential
contributors to this literature. In addition to general analytical studies
taking a comparative approach, a number of excellent studies have been
published dealing with revolutions in particular countries (e.g. Landes 1988;
Wolf 1985; Chatterjee 1993; Sen 1990; Collinson 1990). It is worth noting
that several relevant studies have focused on the Southeast Asian region in
particular (e.g. Daw Mya Sein 1972; Doran 1986; Tetreault 1994). Lack of
space makes it impossible to consider here all such area studies dealing with
nationalism and revolution in only one country, or to include all of the
general, comparative work of merit. The selection of texts discussed below
has been chosen because the authors have offered important new ideas and
have exerted signi®cant in¯uence on subsequent research in the ®eld. The
discussion will be arranged thematically, so as to emphasise the main
conclusions which have emerged from this literature.
The central texts which will be considered include Sheila Rowbotham's
Women, Resistance and Revolution (1974), ®rst published in 1972, a
pioneering investigation of the relationship between women and revolution
as a general phenomenon. It examined a gamut of revolutions from the
Puritan revolution in England to the French Revolution, the Russian and
Chinese revolutions and, of particular interest here, movements for
national liberation in Vietnam, Cuba and Algeria. Rowbotham's work
opened up a previously neglected area of study. Many of her signi®cant
ideas were taken up and extended by subsequent writers in the ®eld. In
Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World (1986), Kumari Jayawardena
focused on the involvement of women in nationalist struggles to achieve
political independence and assert a national identity. Approaching her
subject from a broad perspective, Jayawardena examined nationalist
liberation struggles in India, Sri Lanka, China, Japan, Korea, the Middle
East and Southeast Asia. In a collection of essays edited by Nira Yuval-
Davis and Floya Anthias, Woman-Nation-State (1989), the range of
enquiry was broadened so as to include not only women's participation in
nationalist movements and revolution, but their involvement in the
processes of forming and sustaining national communities. The work of
Cynthia Enloe (1983, 1990, 1995) on women, nationalist ideologies and
militarism has also offered important insights into the relationships
between women, nationalism and revolution. All of these in¯uential
authors approached the subject within a comparative framework, and from
an international perspective, attempting to ®nd common patterns, or
differences, and to draw, if possible, general conclusions. Their work has
created a new ®eld of knowledge, and has allowed us to understand a
240 Christine Doran

great deal about the historical interrelations between women, nationalism

and revolution, in a variety of different contexts.
Though differing in their emphases, there was a great deal of uniformity
in the conclusions they reached. Several key themes emerged clearly from
these analyses. One is that women have invariably played signi®cant roles in
nationalist movements, including the revolutions to which they often gave
rise. Furthermore, attempts have consistently been made to limit women's
participation at the time, and later, within post-revolutionary discourses, to
minimise their contributions. In the literature emphasis has also been placed
on the use of women as symbols in nationalist myth-making. Four common
tropes were identi®ed within these gendered myths of the nation: woman as
mother; as traitor; as sex object; and as victim of sexual degradation. Also,
rape within military contexts has emerged as a major theme of women's
experiences of nationalist revolution.
The ®rst important point to emerge from the general literature is that
women have consistently participated in, and have made signi®cant
contributions to nationalist movements and revolutionary outbreaks.
Jayawardena stressed that in every case women took an active part in the
movements for national liberation which she studied: `The most striking
factor about early nationalist and revolutionary agitation in all these
countries is that women of all classes went out into the streets to
demonstrate on issues of national concern' (1986: 22).
These authors evaluated women's participation positively, stressing both
the important contribution which women made to nationalist causes, and
also the generally liberating effect which nationalist participation could have
on women's position in society. Rowbotham's early work emphasised
women's victimisation under both class and patriarchal oppression; as well
as discussing external constraints imposed on women, she showed a strong
awareness of internalised obstacles to women's agency, such as feelings of
inadequacy, futility and demoralisation (Rowbotham 1974: 132). For
Rowbotham, one of the great values of revolution was its potential to
loosen these constraints and mobilise women: `It is only in the abnormal
circumstances of political revolt that it is possible for women to take
uncustomary actions' (1974: 204). In her chapter on nationalist revolutions
she underlined this general claim about the liberatory effects of revolution:
`It has been the national independence movements which have created the
impetus for the active involvement of women outside the small social elite'
(1974: 204). Like Rowbotham, Jayawardena highlighted the capacity of
nationalist movements to propel women from traditional privatised spaces
into the public arena: `nationalism pushed [women] into participating in the
political life of their communities' (1986: 257), becoming the `®rst arena in
which women as a group began to be involved in political action' (1986:
258). Indeed the nationalist struggle was, in Jayawardena's view, `a
necessary factor in pulling women out of the traditional domestic sphere
into the public and political sphere' (1986: 259). In the same way, Enloe
Women and the Philippine Revolution 241

recognised that many women had `broken out of the con®nes of domesticity
and carved out a space in the public arena through nationalist activism'
(1995: 14).
Nevertheless, despite these signi®cant emancipatory trends, it was clearly
recognised by all these authors that there were limitations on the nature and
extent of women's involvement. Rowbotham pointed out that a recurrent
feature of nationalist revolutionary movements was that constraints were
imposed on the ways in which women could participate. Women who joined
guerrilla units in Cuba, for instance, `mainly did traditional tasks like
cooking and nursing' (1974: 223); a small number of women stepped out of
traditional roles, but they were never fully accepted by the men guerrilla
®ghters and were easily dismissed as exceptional (1974: 224). Rowbotham
drew attention to the powerful impact of Catholicism in con®ning women's
revolutionary roles in Cuba (1974: 222±3). This insight has been supported
by other studies emphasising the role of religious ideologies ± whether
Christian (Pierson 1987: 21), Islamic (Moghissi 1994: 2), Hindu (Ratte 1985:
366) or others ± in restricting the options for participation available to
revolutionary women.
Jayawardena, too, drew attention to the constraints which continued to
limit women's political activity during the era of nationalist upheavals in
Asia and the Middle East. Though pointing out their involvement and
agency, she did not exaggerate their freedom of action:
in the period of nationalist struggles, men were the main movers of history. They
organized nationalist movements and political parties, set the parameters for the
struggle, even determined the role that women should play. In this sense, with a few
exceptions, the women worked within the boundaries laid down by men. (Jayawar-
dena 1986: 260±1)

Like Jayawardena, Enloe observed that women who took part in nationalist
movements did so largely within parameters and according to agendas set
out by men (1995: 16). Following Rowbotham, Enloe pointed out that
many armies of national liberation have been built on a sexual division of
labour, with women concentrated in support roles rather than combat roles.
She showed that they have tended to perform tasks ± such as supplying
food, nursing the wounded or carrying messages ± not far removed from
traditional feminine roles. Enloe argued that this has been one of the most
important reasons for the persistence of oppressive patriarchal structures
after the revolution, and advised that `the sexual divisions of labour
employed in a liberation army ± and the rationalisations used to justify
those divisions ± might be best resisted during the revolution' (1983: 168±9,
emphasis in original).
A major theme developed by all of these writers was that women's gains
during revolutionary upheavals were seldom consolidated in the post-
revolutionary period. Rowbotham stressed that whatever limited gains
women could achieve in revolutionary contexts, they were usually short-
242 Christine Doran

lived: the `spasmodic heroism of exceptional moments of revolutionary and

industrial militancy' could not provide a long-term solution for women's
problems. Rowbotham focused on movements for national liberation with
socialist agendas, but showed that even in those movements, despite their
liberation rhetoric, women have been given short shrift by male nationalist
leaders: `Perhaps they accept the participation of women actually while they
are ®ghting imperialism, but they tend to see the future society as one in
which women are put back ®rmly in their place' (1974: 205). Case by case
she traced how nationalist movements sought the allegiance of women with
promises of sexual equality in post-revolutionary society, only to betray
those promises afterwards.
In Jayawardena's view, there were several reasons why women's interests2
have often been neglected in post-revolutionary societies. She argued that,
in some cases, as an outcome of nationalist success, women achieved
moderate, reformist objectives, such as being granted the vote; apparently
satis®ed by such gains, women relapsed into domestic roles, their involve-
ment in political activity diminished, and women's groups declined in
strength and in¯uence. However, a more sinister trend also became evident
as men deliberately pressed for the redomestication of women: `Once
independence had been achieved, male politicians, who had consciously
mobilized women in the struggle, pushed them back into their ``accustomed
place'' ' (Jayawardena 1986: 259). This was achieved, in part, through the
reimposition of conventional concepts of femininity. Just as it often played
a signi®cant part in limiting the ways in which women could participate
during the revolutionary outbreak, religion has also proved to be a powerful
force in the process of redomesticating women after the revolutionary
cataclysm (Yuval-Davis 1989; Molyneux 1985; Lazreg 1994; Moghissi 1994).
One way of containing women's claims in post-revolutionary society has
been to erase or minimise memories of their nationalist contribution.
Jayawardena stressed that the participation and achievements of women
have been consistently suppressed in national histories. Their `courageous
activities have not been adequately recognized but unfortunately remain
con®ned to the footnotes of history. In many cases, their achievements are
barely known even in their own countries and their names are seldom
commemorated alongside male national heroes' (Jayawardena 1986: 23).
Jayawardena saw her own work as a contribution to the recovery of the
histories of Asian and Middle Eastern women's participation in movements
of national liberation. She concluded that this `in itself is important,
asserting that women have played a role that has been consistently ignored,
and correcting the picture of men as the only historical actors' (1986: 261).
Commenting on women as participants in nationalist struggles, Anthias and
Yuval-Davis also pointed out that despite the many different roles women
have played in nationalist movements, there is a consistency internationally
in the ways their participation has been marginalised and minimised, both
during the revolutionary period and in post-revolutionary societies.
Women and the Philippine Revolution 243

`Women's role in national liberation struggles, in guerrilla warfare or in the

military has varied, but generally they are seen to be in a supportive and
nurturing relation to men even where they have taken most risks' (Anthias
and Yuval-Davis 1989: 10). Anthias and Yuval-Davis supported Jayawar-
dena's claim about the absence of `heroines' to match the numerous `heroes'
of nationalist causes.
Enloe addressed the crucial question: `How have so many women been
persuaded that women's speci®c concerns could be put on the political back
burner for the sake of the newly emergent or politicized nation?' (Enloe
1995: 17±18). While recognising that different forces operated in each
historical situation, she was willing to suggest some underlying commonal-
ities: `Perhaps we will ®nd that for many women, less ``persuasive'' than
formal arguments about ideas and strategies have been the pressures of
family loyalties, sexual expectations or sheer exhaustion' (1995: 20).
In Woman±Nation±State Yuval-Davis and Anthias (1989: 7) considered
women's involvement in nationalist movements and revolution, but also
broadened the focus to the many ways in which women have taken part in
producing and reproducing national groupings. They identi®ed ®ve major
(though not exclusive) ways in which women have participated in national
processes:
(a) as biological reproducers of members of ethnic collectivities
(b) as reproducers of the boundaries of ethnic/national groups
(c) as participating centrally in the ideological reproduction of the
collectivity and as transmitters of its culture
(d) as signi®ers of ethnic/national differences ± as a focus and symbol in
ideological discourses used in the construction, reproduction and
transformation of ethnic/national categories
(e) as participants in national, economic, political and military struggles
They argued that in different historical contexts the content of these roles
has differed, as has their relative importance.
The work of Anthias and Yuval-Davis emphasised that women often
constituted the symbolic ®guration of national groups: `The nation as a
loved woman in danger or as a mother who lost her sons in battle is a
frequent part of the particular nationalist discourse in national liberation
struggles or other forms of nationalist con¯icts when men are called to ®ght
``for the sake of our women and children'' or ``to defend their honour'' '
(Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1989: 9±10). It was shown that nationalist
symbolism often focuses on speci®c characteristics ascribed to women,
especially their reproductive role and sexual nature. Almost invariably links
are made in nationalist discourse between the notions of `mother' and
`nation' and often special honour is bestowed on the `mother of the patriot'
(Anthias 1989: 151; see also Molyneux 1985: 229). Enloe referred to another
commonly accepted nationalist icon: woman-as-traitor to the cause, which
often constructs women as susceptible to the lures of foreign materialism
244 Christine Doran

(1995: 21). This nationalist trope is the obverse of woman-as-patriotic-

mother of the nation. Another metaphor frequently used in nationalist
discourses is that of the raped woman symbolising the denigration and
humiliation of the nation, appealing for male protection of her sullied
honour (Enloe 1995: 23).
Like Anthias and Yuval-Davis, Enloe has argued that gender is of
central importance in the process of national myth-making, a process which
creates the bases of national identity and points to appropriate nationalist
strategies. She stressed that feminist analysis can complicate previous
simplistic pictures of the structure and development of nationalist move-
ments (1995: 21). Attending to women's experiences within such movements
reveals formal and informal power struggles between women and men over
whose experiences would de®ne the nascent national community (Enloe
1990: 59).
In her work Cynthia Enloe has been keenly aware of `how nationalist
ideologies, strategies and structures have served to up-date and so perpetuate
the privileging of masculinity' (1995: 14). Frequently the connection between
nationalism and a privileged masculinity has been forged by militarism
which, Enloe stressed, almost invariably marginalises women. Enloe closely
analysed the interrelations between militarism, nationalism and women,
since nationalist movements often pursue their objectives in militarised
settings or by military means. She asserted that like nationalism, militarisa-
tion is inherently gendered: `no person, no community, no national move-
ment can be militarized without changing the ways in which femininity and
masculinity are brought to bear on daily life' (1995: 25). Along with
militarisation go changes in prevailing concepts of manliness, which are
accompanied by complementary transformations in constructions of femi-
ninity. This is demonstrated most dramatically by the rami®cations of rape
in warfare. Because of its close connections with both militarism and
masculinity, rape in military contexts demands, Enloe insisted, to be `taken
seriously, described accurately, explained fully, traced forward as well as
backward' (1995: 23). Thus Enloe emphasised the salience of women's
experiences of rape in warfare, an experience shared by both women who
participate actively in nationalist insurrections and those who do not.
The need to theorise rape in wartime, underlined by Enloe, was addressed
in a recent article by Carolyn Nordstrom. Nordstrom sought to understand
the ontology of rape and the politics of sexual violence by comparing rape
across war and peacetime, both internationally and cross-culturally (Nord-
strom 1996). She established that rape has been a widespread form of abuse
in wars throughout the world. Despite its ubiquity, she emphasised that it is
a cultural, not a natural or biological phenomenon. Nordstrom showed that
in warfare rape is used strategically to attack the core constructions of
identity and ontological security. It is not just a sexual or physical assault:
`Much more is attacked than a person's body. Their sense of home and
security; of self and self-worth; of power and interpersonal relationships;
Women and the Philippine Revolution 245

even of the potentialities of the future, are assailed' (Nordstrom 1996: 152).
Linking the personal and the political, rape is deliberately employed as a
military tactic to terrorise and destablise populations, to undermine social
cohesion, political will and resistance. Despite the widespread use of rape in
wartime and its damaging effects on identity, Nordstrom was able to sound
a note of optimism. She found in her ®eld research that victims were seldom
thoroughly cowed by their experiences of sexual violence: `Every attempt to
control people through terror, to destabilise personal and social identity in
order to effect political control, is met with creative acts to thwart
hegemonic processes and reconstitute self and society' (Nordstrom 1996:
153).
Four centrally important and recurrent themes emerge from this inter-
national comparative literature. First, women from all classes have
invariably been signi®cant participants in nationalist movements and
nationalist revolutions. Second, strenuous efforts have been made to curtail
their involvement at the time of the outbreak, and later to minimise the
extent of their contributions. Third, rape within military contexts has
repeatedly been an important element in women's experiences of nationalist
revolution. The fourth outstanding theme is the use of women, or the idea
of woman, in the construction of nationalist myths, especially their
positioning within four archetypal roles: as mother, as traitor, as sex object
and as rape victim.
Later in this article the main ideas, themes and generalisations developed
in this international comparative literature will be applied to the particular
case of women's participation in the Philippine Revolution. In order to set
the scene and contextualise the later discussion, the next section presents a
brief overview of the involvement of Filipino women in the nationalist
revolution.

Women's participation in the Philippine Revolution

Mainstream histories of the Philippine Revolution (e.g. Agoncillo 1956;

Sturtevant 1976; Ileto 1979; Schumacher 1991) have almost entirely over-
looked the participation of women. These histories have analysed in depth
issues of race and class as they affected the revolutionary experience, but
matters of gender have consistently been ignored. Outside the mainstream,
however, information about women's involvement was preserved and passed
on in occasional newspaper and magazine articles, usually written by
women journalists, unpublished academic theses by female scholars, and
brief treatments in a few marginalised history texts. It is notable that despite
its ready availability in the public realm, this information never found its
way into the mainstream, canonical histories. It seems that the involvement
of women in the revolution was simply not considered of suf®cient
importance to be mentioned in these major historical works.
246 Christine Doran

Women served the revolutionary cause in the Philippines in many ways.3

Some distinguished themselves on the battle®elds. Two Filipinas, Agueda
Kahabagan and Teresa Magbanua, achieved the rank of general in the
revolutionary army and led troops into combat. General Agueda was often
seen on the battle®elds dressed impressively in white:
Astride a horse, she held a revolver in her right hand and the reins and a dagger in the
left. Fearlessly and with head high, she charged against the enemy. She rallied the
others to do the same, and many did give up their lives valiantly. (Alvarez 1992: 161)
When the revolutionary forces entered Jaro in triumph in 1899, Teresa
Magbanua had the honour of riding into town on a prancing white horse at
the head of her dishevelled troops. In her memoirs Gregoria de Jesus
recalled her experiences of combat:
I had no fear of facing danger, not even death itself, whenever I accompanied the
soldiers in battle . . . and I was present in and witnessed many encounters. I was
considered a soldier, and to be a true one, I learned how to ride, to shoot a ri¯e, and
to manipulate other weapons which I actually used on many occasions. (Jesus 1964:
170)
Trinidad Tecson held the rank of captain; she took part in combat during
the entire revolutionary period, ®ghting in twelve major battles and serving
with ®ve Filipino generals. Other women risked and sacri®ced their lives in
more humble military ranks. American accounts of the Battle of Batac, for
example, described Filipino forces moving against the Americans with an
advance guard of women, who became the ®rst casualties of American
shooting (Scott 1986: 75). These female revolutionaries of Batac were
peasant women. However, Filipinas from all levels of society, including
those of the elite landowning class, joined in the revolutionary struggle ± a
pattern consistent with Jayawardena's ®ndings in her study of nationalist
movements in Asia and the Middle East.
Before the revolution began, female members of the Katipunan, the
Filipinos' revolutionary organisation, undertook the responsibility of
protecting secret documents from discovery by the Spaniards. As president
of the women's cell of the organisation, Gregoria de Jesus often risked her
life carrying secret papers hidden on her person: `I nearly clothed myself
with the Katipunan documents that were so dangerous to keep' (Jesus 1964:
167). After the revolution broke out, women often undertook spying and
smuggling assignments, since they were regarded with less suspicion by both
the Spaniards and Americans. Patrocinio Gamboa, for instance, supported
the revolution by espionage, gathering information and delivering critical
messages between various Filipino commanders. On one occasion she
smuggled the Filipino ¯ag, the three-cornered sun, which was of great
symbolic importance to the revolutionaries, from Jaro where it had been
sewn, to Santa Barbara, under the eyes of Spanish guards (Sonza 1962:
87±8).
Literary women contributed to the ideological work of revolution. Rosa
Women and the Philippine Revolution 247

Alvero and Florentina Arellano wrote inspiring articles for newspapers

which promoted the revolutionary cause, La Independencia and La Repub-
lica. Women raised funds and collected food, medicines, munitions and
other materials that were necessary to continue the revolutionary challenge.
Gliceria Marella used her wealth and social connections to enlist ®nancial
backing for the revolution, making it possible for armaments and equipment
to be purchased. In the Philippine Republic, proclaimed in January 1899,
President Aguinaldo appointed Trinidad Tecson as commissariat. Her
responsibilities included the supply of food to the troops, an essential
logistical task. Many women worked as nurses ministering to the wounded
and dying. Cresenciana San Agustin de Santos was one of the ®rst to
volunteer after the con¯ict erupted; she worked in the military hospital in
Cavite (Alzona 1934: 51). As well as her contributions on the battle®elds
and as commissariat, Trinidad Tecson nursed wounded soldiers after she
received a leg injury in combat.
Women also contributed to the nationalist cause by staying at home ± by
maintaining households, tilling ®elds, raising children, and thus freeing men
and other women to join the army or serve the movement in other ways.
Salome Llanera, for instance, the wife of General Llanera, sustained the
family during her husband's absences on the battle®elds. She stayed in
contact with him throughout, providing constant moral support. Like many
women known to have connections with the revolutionary army, Salome
became a target of Spanish harassment. She was frequently interrogated and
was imprisoned many times. Three of her children were born in Spanish
prisons (Soriano 1991: 250).
All over the islands women provided support and succour to the
revolutionary forces. Melchora Aquino, who is usually known as Tandang
Sora, offered refuge from the Spanish guards, provided food and nursed the
wounded. She was exiled to Guam by the Spanish authorities. Five women
from the Ilocos region organised a supply network which served the Filipino
forces for more than a year before they were arrested (Scott 1986: 73).
Hilaria Aguinaldo, wife of the president of the Philippine Republic, formed
a Red Cross association to coordinate women's humanitarian work
throughout the archipelago.
There is clear evidence, then, that Filipino women participated in all
phases of revolutionary action, carrying out a wide range of essential tasks.
They played an integral part in planning, initiating and carrying out the
nationalist revolution. They risked, and often gave, their lives in service to
the nationalist cause.

Analysing women and revolution in the Philippines

In this section some suggestions are offered about how women's involve-
ment in the Philippine Revolution might be analysed. The central ideas
248 Christine Doran

which have emerged from the international literature, as outlined above,

will be applied to the analysis of women, nationalism and revolution in the
Philippines. As might be expected from the conclusions reached in the
comparative, international literature, there has been a consistent pattern
whereby women's involvement in the Philippine Revolution has been
minimised, marginalised, restricted and domesticated. This trend was partly
a re¯ection of the prevailing gender system at the time of the revolution,
which limited the roles women were permitted to play as well as the
recognition given for action they did take. And partly it was the outcome of
a more or less conscious strategy to limit the potential for women to make
claims on the post-revolutionary social and political order. Many inter-
locking discursive and structural social features of both the revolutionary
and post-revolutionary periods contributed to this containment of women's
revolutionary contribution.
At the time of the revolution the attitudes of Filipino men towards
women were distinctly patriarchal. Filipino women might have been
accorded relatively high status in pre-colonial times, as some Filipino
feminists have argued, but three-and-a-half centuries under the in¯uence of
Marian Catholicism and Latin machismo had produced marked sexual
inequality (Mananzan 1989: 6±38). The views which male revolutionary
leaders held of women can be gauged by considering the code of ethics of
the Katipunan, the pre-eminent revolutionary organisation:
In the thorny path of life, the man leads the way and his wife and children follow . . .

Never regard a woman as an object for you to tri¯e with; rather, you should
consider her as a partner and a helpmate.

Give proper considerations to a woman's frailty and never forget that your own
mother, who brought you forth and who nurtured you from infancy, is herself such
a person. (Alvarez 1992: 190)

The code was addressed to a man and written from the male point of view,
despite the fact that the organisation included women members. Approxi-
mately one-quarter of the code dealt with relations with women, which
might suggest that this was an area considered in need of reform in Filipino
society; nevertheless the Filipino revolutionaries lacked a coherent pro-
gramme for the improvement of women's position. Male dominance was to
be preserved, as shown by references to men as leaders, women as
helpmates, to the frailty of woman and the value of motherhood. The
attitudes towards women of the leading nationalist intellectual, Jose Rizal,
were no more progressive. In his letter to the young women of Malolos in
1889, he had advocated greater education for girls and women, but his
rationale was that they would then raise a generation of independent-
minded sons who would work to improve Filipino society and liberate their
people (Rizal 1961: 12±18). Rizal shared the assumptions of the Katipunan
leaders that motherhood would remain the principal role and duty of
Women and the Philippine Revolution 249

women, and that the impetus and responsibility for change would come
from men.
Many Filipino women went with their husbands to the battle®elds in the
role which Enloe identi®ed as `camp followers' (Enloe 1983). There they
usually undertook the domestic tasks of cooking, cleaning and nursing
traditionally expected of them. There is evidence that during the revolution
in the Philippines women were actively discouraged from taking on military
roles, whether as ®ghters, spies or messengers. Santiago Alvarez, who was a
general in the revolutionary army, related several instances of pressure being
exerted on women to stay out of combat, incidents which were usually
accompanied by dismissive comments about women's inferior strength or
skill (Alvarez 1992: 48, 83, 267). Those women who did engage in combat
or espionage usually did so as a result of persistence in the face of strong
opposition from military authorities and male soldiers, as well as from
friends and family. Teresa Magabanua, for instance, who led troops into
many battles, ®rst had to insist on her ability to serve in a military capacity
over the protests of her husband and opposition from the local army
commanders (Sonza 1962: 83±4). As Enloe suggested, awareness of these
struggles between women and men in the revolutionary camp complicates
our picture of the nationalist movement and enhances our understanding of
it. Gender emerges as another important divide within the revolutionary
forces ± in addition to those of region, religion and class, upon which
historians have previously focused.
Signi®cant obstacles were put in the way of women wishing to step out of
their traditional roles, to climb over the sexual division of labour in the
revolutionary army and take on combat roles. The recognition given to
those exceptional women who surmounted the barriers was, at best,
ambivalent. By looking more closely at the biographies of some leading
female revolutionaries, the constraints and contradictions which the women
faced in negotiating their roles will become apparent. Teresa Magbanua, for
instance, was never of®cially given the rank of general by the military
authorities, although she was acknowledged as such by her troops, by the
Filipino population in the area, and even by the enemy. The claims of
Agueda Kahabagan were of®cially recognised in 1899, but she was given the
feminised title `generala' to mark her difference (Taylor 1971, 4: 617±18).
Indeed the feminisation of images of female military heroes has continued
beyond the revolutionary period. In an exhibition of recent work by
illustrators of children's books, General Agueda was represented bare-
footed, ri¯e in hand and with a dagger at her waist, but wearing a full-
length white dress with gauzy butter¯y sleeves ± a stark contrast with the
more practical men's clothing which she usually wore on the battle®elds.4
The treatment given to Trinidad Tecson is also revealing of contemporary
reactions to women's military achievements. As mentioned previously,
Tecson fought in twelve major battles over the whole revolutionary period,
demonstrating both personal bravery and strategic ability. Rather than
250 Christine Doran

being applauded for assisting the nationalist cause, her military successes
cast doubt on her femininity: `Because of her manly exploits, she came to be
known as a babaeng-lalaki (masculine woman)' (Zaide 1970: 612). After she
was injured in combat, however, Tecson spent some time in the military
hospital in Biak-na-Bato and, as she recovered from her own wounds,
helped with nursing other injured soldiers. It was for this work that she
received public applause, President Aguinaldo himself paying tribute to her
humanitarian efforts. She became known as the `Mother of Biak-na-Bato',
an epithet by which she is still remembered. Tecson later served as
commissariat of the Philippine Republican army and went back onto the
battle®elds, maintaining guerrilla resistance against incoming American
forces. Yet her efforts as a ®ghter earned little recognition and sometimes
calumny, directed especially against her sexuality; the brief period when she
worked as a nurse was the basis for an alternative image of her as gentle
and motherly, which brought her lasting public respect. She was, and has
continued to be, identi®ed in revolutionary mythology as a nurturer rather
than a ®ghter.
Writers such as Enloe and Nordstrom have emphasised the salience of
women's experiences of rape in military contexts. Enloe commented on the
impact of militarisation and wartime rape on male soldier's attitudes
towards women in general, including women on their side of the con¯ict
(1995: 23). Nordstrom pointed out that rape often constitutes a `public
secret', something everyone knows about, but which is seldom acknowl-
edged openly (1996: 147). As a result the historical record is usually silent
on this issue, as the early work of Susan Brownmiller emphasised (1975: 40).
It is rather unusual, therefore, that there is a considerable body of evidence
concerning rape during the Philippine Revolution. Moreover, the rapes of
which there are records were perpetrated against Filipino women by Filipino
soldiers.
An important example is an account produced by an `eye-witness' and
participant in the revolution, General Santiago Alvarez, who gave some
prominence to women's experiences of rape during the con¯ict. Apart from a
brief mention of Filipino women's fears of being raped by Spaniards, the
rapes which Alvarez recounted were assaults by Filipino army of®cers
against their countrywomen. According to Alvarez, these sexual attacks were
part of a violent machismo, acts of arrogant of®cers often not directed
exclusively against the women themselves, but also against their male
connections. In Alvarez's account the women were reduced to their relation-
ship to a man, either father, husband or brother, and the rape was interpreted
as an insult to the man (Alvarez 1992: 237). Women were repeatedly depicted
as passive victims or potential victims of rape. One woman, who was not
identi®ed, was portrayed meekly accepting her victimhood:

Unable to get up on her feet at once, she broke into another ®t of heart-broken
weeping when she ®nally got up. Then, before quitting the scene, with trembling lips
Women and the Philippine Revolution 251

and timorous voice, she respectively thanked the man who ravaged her! (Alvarez
1992: 183)

Alvarez did at least acknowledge the fact of wartime rape and dealt fairly
sympathetically with women's experiences of it, but in his account women
®gured mainly as meek victims of male violence. Alvarez certainly gave no
sense that any of the victimised Filipino women he depicted coped with
their experiences in the creative ways discussed by Nordstrom (1996: 153).
Even Gregoria de Jesus, a leader of the women's cell of the Katipunan,
and the wife of Bonifacio, the head of the revolutionary organisation,
became a victim of sexual attack and abduction during the revolution. At
the age of nineteen, she gave evidence to a Filipino military court of an
attempted rape by a Filipino of®cer:
[Colonel Intong] had me tied to a tree with a rope, after which he intended to abuse
me, which was prevented by his own soldiers. When I was taken to Indang he had
me tied to a tree again and endeavoured to assault me, which he failed to do.
(Taylor 1971, 1: 323)

In the judgment of the court Intong was pronounced guilty and

reprimanded, but no further action was taken against him; indeed he was
soon promoted within the revolutionary army. Nordstrom's analysis
provides assistance in interpreting the signi®cance of such incidents of
sexual assault. The rapes of Filipino women by of®cers of the revolutionary
army can be understood as assaults on their personal and social identity as
well as assertions of male power within a patriarchal social system. These
deliberate attacks against women's personal integrity de®ned the limits of
the bene®ts Filipino women could expect from nationalist liberation.
Many of the nationalist myths developed in the Philippines took the
archetypal forms identi®ed in Enloe's work, which emphasised the gendered
nature of the process of national myth-making. The ®gure of woman-as-
traitor appeared in stark relief in the popularly held historical distortion
that it was a woman who divulged the secrets of the Katipunan in
confession, thus alerting the Spanish authorities and precipitating the
revolution before planning was completed (Santiago 1995: 117). The motif
of a woman betraying the nationalist case, often for materialist gain,
reappeared frequently in the post-revolutionary period, such as in the stories
and novels of Nick Joaquin (Doran 1998b). Both during the revolution and
afterwards, the ®gure of the raped woman was regularly used to represent
the conquest and exploitation of the country by foreign intruders (Rafael
1993).
Anthias and Yuval-Davis pointed out that nationalist symbolism often
makes use of women by focusing on particular characteristics ascribed to
women, notably their reproductive role and sexual nature. Like restricting
the ways in which women could participate in revolutionary activity, linking
their involvement to prevailing gender constructs and thus to unequal
gender relations has frequently been a strategy to undercut any moves for
252 Christine Doran

equal consideration in post-revolutionary society. In the Philippines, a

predominantly Catholic country, women's involvement in revolution has
often been downplayed by representing it in terms of their roles as either
mothers or sex objects, as exemplars of the Virgin Mary or Mary
Magdalene.
The trope of motherhood runs strongly through representations of
Filipino women in revolution. Trinidad Tecson was called the `Mother of
Biak-na-Bato'; Melchora Aquino was known as the `Mother of the
Revolution'; Teodora Alonso was made a heroine because she was the
mother of the revolutionary martyr, Jose Rizal. Women have been
constructed as symbolic procreators of the nation in revolt. Feminine
images have also been used to describe the `motherland', thus linking
women symbolically with the land and the realm of nature. Rafael has
analysed many early examples of such gendered imagery in the in¯uential
nationalist works of Jose Rizal (Rafael 1995: 136±46). The identi®cation of
women with motherhood, and indeed with Marianism, could in some ways
be empowering for women (see Molyneux 1985: 228; Thapar-Bjorkert 1997:
503; Kaler 1997); however, as Micaela di Leonardo has argued persuasively,
the impact of such associations and imagery have, on the whole, been
detrimental to women's interests (Leonardo 1985). In the Philippines the
binding association with motherhood has acted as a signi®cant constraint
on the women's movement (Aguilar 1988). On the other hand, Filipino
women also served to represent the patria in the alternate guise of sex
objects. For instance, during the revolution the nationalist poet Fernando
Guerrero described the women of his native land as `houris', whose tender
and passionate looks `could melt even hearts of ice, whose kisses could
bring down heaven' (quoted in Bernad 1974: 87). Emotive images of
women, whether as mothers or mistresses, were used in divergent ways to
symbolise the nation.
Women have also been repeatedly linked to national symbols. Several
Filipinas, including Patrocinio Gamboa and Marcela Agoncillo, have been
recognised for their contributions to the revolution by sewing the nationalist
¯ag, the three-cornered sun. As mentioned before, Gamboa competently
performed a variety of revolutionary tasks, including espionage and
logistics, yet it is for her connection with the ¯ag that she is mainly
remembered. The associations between womankind and the ¯ag ran even
deeper. A contemporary poet likened the ®rst national ¯ag raised in Kawit
to an imperious woman, who in turn represented the newly-proclaimed
independent nation:
Look at it! That is our ¯ag.
The blue, like the sky,
waves like a queen
wherever it pleases. (Quoted in Bernad 1974: 83)

Imagery of women served as metaphor for the revolutionary Filipino

Women and the Philippine Revolution 253

nation. Identi®cation of woman with the nation continued beyond the

revolutionary era. In the popular `seditious' Filipino plays of the early
American period, for instance, the nation was personi®ed as a woman, and
the ongoing national struggle between Filipinos and Americans was cast in
terms of a male battle over this vulnerable feminised object (Rafael 1993:
207±12). Thus the potency of the defeated male Filipinos was protected,
and the ignominy of conquest displaced onto Filipino women. As in
Alvarez's memoir, women were again ®gured as property belonging to men.
It is clear from the above discussion that many of the conclusions of
international, comparative studies can be applied fruitfully to women in the
Philippine Revolution. There was, however, one notable feature of the
Philippine case which made it different from most of the examples
considered in that literature: the revolution did not succeed in establishing
national sovereignty, but instead was followed by ®fty years of foreign rule.
This makes it more dif®cult to assess the effects of the revolutionary
experience on the subsequent treatment of women in post-revolutionary
society. But this difference is not as decisive as it ®rst appears, since within a
few years of instituting the new colonial regime the American rulers started
the process of `Filipinization', gradually drawing the male elite of Filipino
society into the administrative and political system. On many issues of
social policy which did not con¯ict with American political or economic
interests, the administration sought and took advice from these Filipino
leaders.
In the period since the revolution, from 1902 to the present, women's
involvement has been minimised by discounting their participation in
activities integral to sustaining the rebellion. The most obvious example is
the almost entire omission of women from canonical histories of the
revolution. But the downplaying of women's agency runs through wider
popular discourses concerning the revolution as well. For example, novels
and short stories set in the revolutionary period have consistently repre-
sented women as passive victims of the social cataclysm, taking no decisive
part in events and leaving revolutionary action to the men (Doran 1998b).
The gulf is wide indeed between representations of revolutionary women in
mainstream history and literature, and what is known of their actual
participation in the con¯ict.
Enloe made the point that women can obtain political leverage as
veterans of revolutionary struggle, since participation in revolutionary
activity is generally recognised as a legitimate basis for subsequent claims
for a share in power; this is one reason why revolutionary organisations
have limited the ways in which women are allowed to participate, and
afterwards attempt to minimise the signi®cance of their involvement (Enloe
1983: 161). Filipino women did not receive citizenship rights in the form of
the vote until 1937, despite campaigning by women's organisations from the
®rst decade of the century. Women's suffrage had been promoted by several
American administrations, but blocked by male Filipino politicians.
254 Christine Doran

Women's previous and potential availability for military service, and in

particular their revolutionary contribution, were regularly discussed during
the long suffrage campaign, featuring in the arguments both of those
advocating votes for women and those against (e.g. Subido 1955: iii, 37;
Kalaw 1952: 23; Palma 1995: 107). As Genevieve Lloyd pointed out, there
are strong discursive connections between the masculinity of war and the
masculinity of citizenship (1986: 64), associations against which Filipino
suffragists had to contend in their campaign. Indeed to a large extent the
recording of information about women's involvement in the revolution is
attributable to the efforts of early Filipino suffragists to preserve and
publish their stories, and thus call public attention to women's contributions
to the nation.

Conclusion

The nationalist revolution of 1896±1902 was a historical moment of great

signi®cance for subsequent constructions of the identities of Filipino men
and women. Yet the participation of Filipino women in the revolution has
never been incorporated into mainstream histories of the period. Indeed
women are rarely, if ever, mentioned in these canonical works. Nevertheless,
Filipinas have resisted their erasure from history. Information about
women's involvement has been gathered and presented in more popular or
marginal forms such as newspaper and magazine articles, little-known
academic theses by women, and a few largely neglected works of biography
or history. These sources provide much useful material. But their signi®-
cance and analytical leverage have been limited by the invariant use of a
methodology based on presenting the biographies of outstanding women.
This article has suggested some new analytical approaches by drawing on
the work of a range of in¯uential feminist writers who studied the
connections between women, nationalism and revolution from a compara-
tive, international perspective. Analysing the Philippine case within such a
comparative framework draws attention to the basic pattern, consistent with
the international experience, whereby women's involvement in the revolu-
tion was curtailed at the time of the outbreak, and has been minimised and
contained within post-revolutionary discourses since then. The international
literature also provided guidance about both the reasons why this occurred
and the ideological strategies which were employed to produce this
outcome. By emphasising the ideological signi®cance of rape during
revolution and war, the international literature called attention to the ±
comparatively rare ± availability of evidence of rape during the Philippine
Revolution. It also offered suggestions about how that evidence should be
interpreted. A major focus of the wider literature is the incorporation of
women within nationalist myth-making, and much of the analysis offered is
directly applicable to the Philippines. As elsewhere, women have been used
Women and the Philippine Revolution 255

as national symbols. Common nationalist tropes of femininity, especially in

its maternal or sexualised guises, have appeared in their local variations. All
of these themes could be developed in greater detail and depth than has
been possible here, indicating the possibilities for further research.
Relating the case of the Philippine Revolution to the international
literature on women and nationalist revolution has thus suggested new
insights, as well as opening up new lines of enquiry. It has allowed women's
participation in revolution to be appreciated more fully. It has also enabled
some of the complexity of that involvement to be understood. Women were
no mere passive bystanders. Like Filipino men, they too struggled against
their colonial masters. At the same time, however, they also had to contend
with their internal colonisation in a patriarchal society. Recognising the
complexity of the forces against which Filipino women resisted enhances
our historical understanding of the nationalist revolutionary movement as a
whole.

Notes

1 For background on the history of the Philippine Revolution, see Agoncillo (1956), Sturtevant
(1976), Ileto (1979), Schumacher (1991).
2 I use this terminology despite Molyneux's attempt to re®ne the analysis of women's gains and
losses in post-revolutionary societies by distinguishing between `women's interests' (a term
Molyneux wishes to avoid because for her it suggests `a unitary category ``women'' with a set of
already constituted interests common to it'), `strategic gender interests' (objectives of a feminist
nature addressed to overcoming women's subordination in society) and `practical gender
interests' (which arise from immediate, practical needs, as de®ned by women themselves)
(Molyneux 1985: 232±3). The logical basis and theoretical purchase of these unwieldy
distinctions have been seriously questioned (see Westwood and Radcliffe 1993: 19±20). I use
the term `women's interests' to refer to many of the issues identi®ed by Molyneux as `strategic
gender interests', such as abolition of sexual division of labour, alleviation of burdens of
domestic labour and childcare, elimination of gender-based discrimination, political equality
and so on.
3 For more detail about and discussion of women's involvement in the Philippine Revolution,
see Doran (1998a, 1997). For further information about the lives of Filipina revolutionaries, see
the following biographical compilations: Ancheta (1953), Guzman et al. (1967), Ancheta and
Beltran-Gonzalez (1984), Soriano (1995).
4 `Generala Agueda' by Katti Santa Ana in `Eytinanyntisiks' (`1896'), a joint exhibition of the
INK (children's book illustrators) and KUTING (children's book writers) groups, Manila,
1997.

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