Mabini: A silhouette

Abstract

When General Arthur MacArthur deemed it " absolutely essential" to deport Mabini, and Governor William Howard Taft refused to allow the patriot to return to the country without first taking the oath of allegiance, they unwittingly paid tribute to the man whom they distrusted and feared despite his physical handicap.

When General Arthur MacArthur deemed it "absolutely essential" to deport Mabini, and Governor William Howard Taft refused to allow the patriot to return to the country without first taking the oath of allegiance, they unwittingly paid tribute to the man whom they distrusted and feared despite his physical handicap. To the American authorities in the Philippines, Apolinario Mabini was a nemesis whose continued presence in the country constituted a great threat to the American sovereignty and to the pacification campaign. Born on July 23, 1864, in Talaga, Tanauan, Batangas, the man whose genius guided the Philippine Revolution in 1898 spent his youth in poverty and died a poor man on May 13, 1903, shortly after his return from exile in Guam.