Yrong-Yrong's Cry of Sta. Barbara mimics Pugad Lawin

Yrong-Yrong's Cry of Santa Barbara, its version of Cry of Pugad Lawin, merely invites laughter if not mirth.

Pugad Lawin was done August 23, 1896 when the revolutionary movement was in its infancy. A year later, Yrong-Yrong's illustrados dispatched a batallion of "voluntarious", not to support the revolution but to suppress it in defense of Spanish colonialism.

The Cry of Santa Barbara, Yrong-Yrong's mimicky of Pugad Lawin (that is, if you buy the yarn of mercenaries disguised as "historians") took place on November 17, 1898, seven or eight months into the final defeat of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines.

Which means, the anti-Spanish revolution was already over eight months before these self-proclaimed heroes of Yrong-Yrong regaled us with the "cry" of Santa Barbara.

Pugad Lawin signals the birth of an anti-colonial revolution, a national liberation movement to rid this country of Spanish colonialism; Santa Barbara heralds none.

Despite the treachery, not to say, opportunism of Yrong-Yrong's elite and the betrayal by the Cavite faction led by the traitor Emilio Aguinaldo, the Katipunan plodded on, crushing Spanish colonial forces until what was left of the colonizers was a tiny nook called Intramuros under siege by the Katipuneros by May 1898, exactly the time when US imperialism taking traitors Aguinaldo and his ilk on board its flotilla, beat the Spanish navy in a mock battle in Manila Bay, May 1, 1898.

The dramatis personae of the Cry of Santa Barbara are the same bunch of ruffians dispatched to Tondo and Cavite in early 1897 to crush the Katipunan.

They mimicked, and crudely at that, the Pugad Lawin by marching from Yrong-Yrong to Santa Barbara to tear their cedulas and declare war on their patron Spain. Kuno.

These charlatans made their "cry" on November 17, 1898, which is a bold display of retroactive courage. Spanish colonialism was effectively crushed in the Philippines as early as April 1898. The arriving Americans on May 1898, merely gave Spanish troops a graceful exit, following the US war on weakened Spain April 1898 that was firmed up in the treaty in Paris, December 1898. The Cry of Santa Barbara came far too late, more than seven months after the last Spanish governor-general fled to Yrong-Yrong preparatory to his final flight to Mexico.

No less than the Iloilo Provincial Government peddles the Cry of Santa Barbara yarn. You can find its history-twisting in its exhibits at the ground lobby of the six-floor Capitol Building which still continues, now to its sixth month. Is Iloilo Capitol that desperate to act as premier sales agent of this false narrative?