Apolinario Mabini

Biography

Apolinario Mabini rose from a peasant family in Batangas to the finest legal mind of the revolution — and did his greatest work after polio paralyzed both his legs in 1896. Carried in a hammock to Aguinaldo's side in 1898, the 'Sublime Paralytic' became the intellectual architect of the Republic: he drafted its decrees, designed its government, and as first prime minister fought to keep the revolution honest against the landowners who dominated the Malolos Congress. He opposed premature war with the United States but, once it came, became the Republic's most unbending voice against surrender. Captured in December 1899, he refused the oath of allegiance and kept writing from Manila until the Americans deported him to Guam in 1901 with the other 'irreconcilables.' He finally swore the oath in February 1903 — only so he could come home to die. Cholera killed him three months later, at 38. His memoir, written in exile, remains the revolution's most searching self-criticism: it blames the Republic's fall less on American guns than on its own leaders' ambition.