Apolinario Mabini

Apolinario Mabini (1864-1903), Filipino nationalist and theorist of the Philippine revolution against Spanish colonial rule. Born into a peasant family in Batangas, Luzon Island, Mabini worked as a teacher before graduating in law from the University of Santo Tomás in 1894. He practiced briefly as a lawyer before joining the nationalist movement, led by Emilio Aguinaldo, in 1896. In the same year he was crippled by poliomyelitis, which may have saved him from execution by the Spanish, who arrested him that year. Mabini became the “brains of the revolution.” His hope was, when the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, the United States would help secure independence for the Philippines from Spanish rule. He cautioned Aguinaldo against making a hasty declaration of independence, although this advice was ignored and the declaration was made in June 1898. Inspired by the French and American revolutions, Mabini drafted a democratic constitution for the Philippines. His ideas were not, however, incorporated in the constitution adopted at Malolos in 1898. Mabini’s intention of giving strong powers to the executive was rejected by the wealthier supporters of independence. Nor were his ideas on the separation of church and state acceptable. Mabini’s hopes of abolishing lotteries, liquor, cock-fighting pits, and capital punishment (except for military insubordination) were also doomed.

Mabini was Aguinaldo’s chief adviser in 1898 and was appointed as the first prime minister of the independent republic early in 1899. He also served as Aguinaldo’s secretary of foreign affairs from 1898 to 1899 but his intransigent line towards the United States led to his fall in May 1899. The post of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was offered to him later that year but never confirmed by Aguinaldo. Mabini was captured by the Americans late in 1899, jailed, and then exiled to Guam after refusing to take an oath of allegiance to the United States. While in exile he wrote La Revolucíon Filipina (The Philippine Revolution). In 1902 he accepted the U.S. oath and returned to the Philippines where he died of cholera in 1903.