THE FAILED ASSASSINATION OF MANUEL A. ROXAS

By Philip M. Lustre Jr.

(Author's Note: This article was originally published in the Philippine Catholic Veritas, June 1-15, 2014 issue. This is for millennials, who seem to have a limited knowledge of our history, and my new friends.)

FIFTY year-old barber Julio Guillen Corpuz was a man with a not-so-ordinary mission. 

While attending to his customers in the barbershop he owned along Juan Luna St. in the Manila working men's district of Tondo two years after World War II, Guillen could not contain his overflowing and lingering anger over what he perceived as one-sided and unfair the Bell Trade Act of 1946, which was then facing ratification in the Senate. 

For him, the Bell Trade Act was the ultimate insult to the Filipino people.

The Bell Trade Act of 1946, or the Philippine Trade Act of 1946, was among the conditions the U.S. colonial rulers had imposed on the Philippines before it could get its independence. 

While Manila felt alive and buoyant over the prospect of independence, Washington wanted to exact tons of flesh from its former colony, which was then recovering from the massive destruction and savagery of World War II. 

In brief, it did not want to give independence without getting many things in return, or without ascertaining that the old colonial ties would remain in the years to come.

From all indications, Guillen was an upright man who learned many things from his interaction with his coterie of educated customers and friends. 

He had all the reasons for his blood pressure to shot up. The treaty contained what could be described onerous provisions, which he felt would only deepen the country's dependence on the U.S. 

Guillen apparently imbibed the nationalistic ferment of his time, as he grappled with the intricacies of the country's relations with its colonial ruler.

'Travesty of Justice'

According to critics, the treaty provisions provided a system of preferential tariffs and quotas like sugar, a major export, virtually weakening Manila's control over its imports and exports. 

Meanwhile, those provisions that pegged the peso to the dollar and eliminated restrictions on currency movements wiped out any flexibility in Manila's management of the peso, its currency.

Critics said the parity clause that granted U.S. citizens and corporations with equal access as Filipinos' in the exploitation and management of the Philippine minerals, forests and other natural resources, violated the 1935 Constitution, which said only Filipinos could own, manage, and exploit the country's resources. 

For many political leaders and nationalists in those days, the Bell Trade Act was a "one-sided insult" or "travesty of justice" that would only deepen the country's subservience to U.S. interests.

It was obvious that Guillen was influenced by the leading nationalists of those days - Claro M. Recto and Jose P. Laurel, who stood to express their opposition to the treaty. 

It did not take long for Guillen to decide and plan his next move. He decided to take the matter into his own hands. 

After grappling with his conscience, he decided to make what he considered the supreme sacrifice. 

He planned to kill President Manuel A. Roxas even if it would mean his own life. Guillen thought Roxas was the leader responsible for the impending ratification in the Senate of the onerous Bell Trade Act.

Breakaway faction

On January 19, 1946, Roxas led the breakaway of the liberal wing of the Nacionalista Party, which advocated immediate independence for the Philippines, to form the Liberal Party. 

He ran for president and won on April 23, 1946 on a platform that called for unabashed political collaboration with the Americans. 

His main opponent, Nacionalista Party candidate, Sergio Osmena, Sr., who replaced Manuel Quezon as president after the latter died of tuberculosis in 1944, refused to go out and campaign.

Roxas was the last president of the Commonwealth era, a transition period for autonomy from a colony to an independent state. After his victory, he facilitated the transition to independence. On July 4, 1946, Roxas declared the first Philippine Republic.

(Actually, it was the second Philippine Republic. The first was the so-called "Malolos Republic," which Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo had initiated, but it was stillborn.) 

Roxas worked closely with his team to hasten the monumental task of reconstruction, as Manila was reputed to have been the most bombed and destroyed after Warsaw in the last world war. 

Roxas put in place two treaties: first, the treaty of general relations between the U.S. and the Philippines outlining their relations; and second, the controversial military bases agreement allowing the U.S. military bases here to stay for a period of 99 years.

Guillen felt that the two treaties undermined the country's interest because of their onerous provisions. But it was the Bell Trade Act, the third treaty that broke the camel's back. 

He decided that he could no longer take Washington's insistence to what he felt was its strangulation of the Philippine economy.

Constitutional violation

Because the Bell Trade Act was seen as a violation of the 1935 Constitution, Roxas and his LP supporters felt that its ratification by the Filipino people could be viewed as their virtual renunciation or withdrawal of the constitutional provisions that were contrary to the treaty. 

Roxas and his supporters decided that, upon ratification by the Filipino people, the Bell Trade Act was to be appended as an ordinance to the 1935 Constitution. This was what they did.

In early 1947, Roxas barnstormed the major cities to lead the campaign for the ratification of the Bell Trade Act. Roxas talked and cajoled the people to vote for its ratification, stressing that the country needed the treaty to rise from the ashes of the last war. 

Many nationalists perceived him as a "U.S. lackey." Hence, his pro-American stance irritated many people, who preferred self-reliance over dependence on the U.S.

Highly opinionated

Julio Guillen, a widower, was not poor. During those days, he owned and run a barbershop in the heart of Tondo and three houses, from where he collected rent money that sustained him and his 15-year-old adopted daughter. 

Guillen earned an average of twenty pesos a day, which was considered a tidy sum in those days.

Guillen went to a Spanish school founded in Tondo and Calle Alcantara, but he did not study English. He was a self-made man; his personal relations with his educated customers and friends allowed him to enrich his intellectual life through his frequent discussions with them. 

Guillen was highly opinionated; He was never afraid to express his views on many burning issues.

He was described as "a man of strong will and conviction," who upon "arriving at a decision, he executes it, [regardless] of consequences." 

Before he became a barber, he worked as an employee of La Clementina Cigar Factory, where was said to have engaged in a boxing bout with a certain Mr. Manzano, a Spanish executive, who was said to have been abusive of women cigar makers. 

Guillen felt "it was his duty to defend them."

In another instance, he chased a policeman with a knife in hand after he was provoked to a fight several times. He challenged Manila Rep. Jose Topacio Nueno to a fight, when the latter was running for a seat in the Municipal Board of the City of Manila. 

This was after Nueno heard him deliver one of his apparently outspoken speeches. He appeared to possess what could be considered a messianic complex.

His barbershop teemed with professionals. Lawyers, state employees, teachers, engineers, and retirees gathered there daily to exchange views and news about the latest developments. 

This enabled him to learn the intricacies of the burning issues. A Nacionalista Party supporter, Guillen voted Osmena in the 1946 elections.

At that time, Tondo was reputedly the hotbed of dissidence. Andres Bonifacio founded the Katipunan in Manila. Its leaders had the likes of Serrano Laktaw, Leandro Ibarra, and several others, who were from the Tondo. 

The Communist Party of the Philippines had its founding rally on May 1, 1930 at Plaza Moriones in Tondo. This district is known for nurturing the labor class, or ordinary workers.

Assassination plot

Because of his anger over the way Roxas rammed the Bell Trade Act into the Filipinos' collective throat, Guillen conceived the plot to kill the President - all by himself. 

He obtained two grenades from an American GI shortly after the Liberation in 1945 in exchange for two bottles of whiskey and bought a handgun from an underworld source.

Guillen wanted to shoot Roxas, but he changed his mind when a robber stole his gun before he could use it. 

Soon, Guillen started practicing how to use the two grenades.

Guillen stalked Roxas on his pro-Parity Act tours. He tried to follow him to Lucena City, but hesitated because of the difficulties. 

He tried to break into Malacañang Palace but he was unsuccessful. He went to places where he thought the President would speak in pro-Parity Treaty rallies. 

He went to the meeting in Plaza Dilao in the Manila district of Paco, bringing with him the hand grenades but Roxas did not show up.

Guillen saw his only chance on the eve of the March 11, 1947 referendum for the ratification of the Bell Trade Act. 

This was to drumbeat for support for the controversial treaty in Quiapo's fabled Plaza Miranda, who was at that time, evolving to become the center of political discourse in Manila.

Hitches

But his assassination plot did not happen without hitches. 

Thinking that the Plaza Miranda rally was on March 9, Guillen went there, but went home early upon learning that the affair was for the next day. 

On the early morning of March 10, 1947, he returned to conceal the two hand grenades in a gasoline drum that served as a flowerpot, five meters from the west side of the speaker's platform.

By nightfall, Guillen waited for Roxas. Guillen saw his chance to assassinate Roxas when he alighted from his car upon arrival in Plaza Miranda, but he considered the lives of many bystanders. 

When the President was speaking on the platform, he squeezed his frail body through a cordon of intelligence operatives and Palace guards near the gasoline drum, where the grenades were concealed.

At around 10:45 pm, when Resident Commissioner to the US Carlos P. Romulo was about to congratulate the President at the end of his speech, Guillen took one of the grenades from the flowerpot and stood on a rattan chair. 

But the chair broke and he fell to the ground. Back on his feet at once, Guillen hurled the grenade to the platform, landing behind the President and between Manila Mayor Valeriano E. Fugoso and Army Brig. Gen. Mariano N. Castañeda.

At the sound of the explosion, Guillen did not take out the other grenade but dashed through the panicky crowd to Quezon Boulevard and took a passenger jeepney for home. 

While running away, a bystander chased him and held him by his left hand. But he was able to free from a scuffle, leaving his wristwatch and resulting in a gash on his left wrist.

Unscathed and unharmed

Guillen threw a hand grenade that exploded on the stage about three or four feet away from Roxas, but the latter escaped injury. 

He was on stage with First Lady Trinidad and daughter Ruby Roxas, Senate President Jose Avelino, Sen. Geronima Pecson, Manila Rep. Hermenigildo Atienza, Romulo, Fugoso, Castaneda, and several others. 

Initial press accounts said six persons, including Malacanang photographer Emilio "Fatso" Manalang, were injured. A day later, Simeon Varela, one of the six, died after an unsuccessful surgery.

What transpired on that night had two versions. According to Manila Rep. Jose Topacio Nueno, he saw the grenade hurled on the stage, but Senate President Jose Avelino, upon seeing the grenade hissed, instantly kicked it. It rolled to the stairs, where it exploded. 

But this was negated by another version, which was more believable.

This version said the grenade was stealthily shoved on the floor to avoid catching the attention of the President and party. It emitted smoke, surprising the people on stage. 

Gen. Castañeda saw the grenade and, without losing his presence of mind, kicked it away to the stairway. Covering Roxas with his body, he shouted to the crowd to lie down. 

It fell to the ground and exploded in the middle of a group, who stood near the platform, causing pandemonium and injuring six persons.

Arrest

Immediately after the explosion, Roxas and his entourage returned to the Palace, where the President gave instructions to attend to the wounded. 

Two hours later, the Manila Police Department (now the Western Police District) arrested Julio Guillen in his Manila residence on the basis of a statement of a rally participant, who saw him lobbing the grenade to the stage.

Angel Garcia, who stood beside Guillen during the rally, said he saw him, "hurling an object at the platform" and, after the explosion, ran away towards a barber shop across Plaza Miranda. 

Garcia suspected Guillen threw the grenade and he went after him. They had a scuffle, but Guillen managed to escape.

Garcia pursued him, but some detectives mistook the former for the criminal and placed him under arrest. 

While police were investigating the incident, Manuel Robles, a bystander who saw the scuffle, volunteered the information that the person with whom Garcia had wrestled was Julio Guillen. 

Robles told the police he knew Guillen for the past ten years and he saw each other in Plaza Miranda before the explosion took place.

After the interrogations of Garcia and Robles, police operatives arrested Guillen in his home in 1724 Juan Luna Street, Tondo. 

At the police headquarters, Garcia positively identified Guillen as the person who threw the grenade to the platform and whom Garcia tried to hold when he was running away.

For his part, Guillen readily admitted to police investigators his responsibility, but, at the same time, attempted to justify his action, expressing his opposition to the Bell Trade Act. He led his captors police to the place where he hid unsigned copies of his last will. 

Guillen expressed regret for his failure to kill the President, saying that he would make another try, if he escaped or was freed. 

He showed no compunction over the wounded persons caused by the hand grenade he intended for Roxas.

Follow-up operations

In follow-up operations, police arrested Guillen's nephew, Leonardo de Jesus, 23, who admitted that he typed Guillen's last testament using the typewriter of Municipal Treasurer Manuel Quimson of Caloocan. 

Police also arrested Amado Hernandez, the newspaperman and literary writer in the vernacular (he later became a national artist), whom Guillen said knew his plan to assassinate the President and wrote his farewell note.

Guillen told Major Eduardo Quintos, chief of the Detective Bureau, that Hernandez was his old acquaintance. 

He saw Hernandez on March 9, 1947 at the Manila Jockey Club, when they attended the anti-Parity Treaty rally held there with Laurel, the wartime president. 

Guillen talked to Hernandez and, after informing of his plans, Hernandez asked him to write his farewell letter to the people.

Unsigned copies of his farewell were found in Guillen's other house in 288 Nepomuceno St., Tondo after his arrest by the police. Its English translation:

"FOR THE SAKE OF A FREE PHILIPPINES

"I am the only one responsible for what happened. I conceived it, I planned it, and I carried it out all by myself alone. It took me many days and nights pondering over this act, talking to my own conscience, to my God , till I reached my conclusions. It was my duty.

"I did not expect to live long, I only had one life to spare. And had I expected to have lives to spare, I would not have hesitated either to sacrifice it for the sake of a principle which was the welfare of the people.

"Thousands have died in Bataan; many more have mourned the loss of their husbands, of their sons, and there are millions now suffering. Their deeds bore no fruits, their hopes were frustrated.

"I was told by my conscience and by my God that there was a man to be blamed for all this: he had deceived the people, he had astounded them with no other purpose than to entice them; he even went to the extent of risking the heritage of our future generations. For these reasons he should not continue any longer. His life would mean nothing as compared with the welfare of eighteen million souls. And why should not I give up my life too if only the good of those eighteen million souls?

"These are the reasons which impelled me to do what I did and I am willing to bear up the consequences of my act. It matters not, if others will curse me. Time and history will show, I am sure, that I have only displayed a high degree of patriotism in my performance of my said act. "

Insanity plea

Police investigators immediately filed charges of murder and frustrated murder charges against Guillen before the Manila Court of First Instance. 

But before Guillen entered his guilty plea lawyer Romeo Perfecto, son of Supreme Court Associate Justice Gregorio Perfecto and Guillen's counsel de officio, filed a motion to dismiss the murder and frustrated multiple murder against Guillen, claiming it was not possible to have more than one charge against his client. 

But Judge Buenaventura Ocampo did not give way to his motion.

Perfecto requested the court to send Guillen to the state mental hospital for evaluation in preparation for the filing of an insanity plea. But the psychiatrists did not find anything wrong with his mental state. 

In the end, the judge ruled that Guillen was psychologically fit to undergo a trial court.

The Congress of Labor Organizations, of which Amado Hernandez was its acting chair, deplored Hernandez's arrest and attack on Roxas, saying "it has never sanctioned terrorism or violence." 

But the CLO expressed its confidence that the innocence of Hernandez, who was detained for questioning. 

Hernandez was known in the resistance movement as a member of Andersons' Guerillas. He was editor of the Mabuhay, a DMHM paper, from 1935 to 1941. 

He was one of the best known writers and poets in Tagalog having won a prize in the Commonwealth contest of 1940.

For his part, Hernandez denied that he wrote Guillen's farewell note and that the latter was merely his acquaintance. 

"I took notice of him in 1946 in an anti-Parity Act meeting because of his enthusiasm on the issue and I had a hard time recollecting who he was when I saw him again," Hernandez said.

A week after the incident, Hernandez was cleared of complicity. Lawyer Emmanuel Pelaez, who later rose to national prominence, represented Hernandez.

Court trial

In the subsequent court trial, Guillen entered a guilty plea, which was enough for smooth court proceedings. 

Upon presentation of relevant pieces of evidence, Judge Ocampo Buenaventura meted out a death sentence to Guillen for the crimes of murder and frustrated murder. 

He was jailed at the National Bilibid Prison and waited for the Supreme Court decision either affirming or commuting his death sentence to life imprisonment.

On January 18, 1950, the Supreme Court reaffirmed his death sentence, as it acknowledged the fact that the prosecution and defense panels did not have disagreements on the essential facts of the murder case.

In its review, the Supreme Court said: "According to Guillen, he became disappointed in President Roxas for his alleged failure to redeem the pledges and fulfill the promises made ​​by him during the presidential election campaign, and his disappointment was aggravated when, according to him, President Roxas, instead of looking after the interests of his country, sponsored and campaigned for approval of the so-called 'parity' measure. Hence he was determined to assassinate the President.

"After he had pondered for some time over the ways and means of assassinating President Roxas, the opportunity presented itself on the night of March 10, 1947, when at a popular meeting held by the Liberal Party and Plaza Miranda, Quiapo, Manila attended by a big crowd, President Roxas, accompanied by his wife and daughter and surrounded by a number of ladies and gentlemen prominent in government and politics, stood on a platform erected for that purpose and delivered his speech expounding and trying to convince his thousands of listeners of the advantages to be gained by the Philippines, should the constitutional amendment granting American citizens the same rights granted to Filipino nationals be adopted.

"Guillen stated that he did the act voluntarily; his purpose was to kill the President, but that it did not make any difference to him if there were some people around the President when he hurled that bomb, because the killing of those who surrounded the president was tantamount to killing the president, in view of the fact that those persons, being loyal to the president being loyal to the president, were identified with the latter. in other words, although it was not his main intention to kill the persons surrounding the president, he felt no compunction in killing them also in order to attain his main purpose of killing the president. "

Days after the SC decision, Guillen was executed by electric chair at the National Bilibid Prisons. 

He was composed to the end. Doctors even discovered that his blood pressure was normal. He did not regret what he did. 

As his parting shot, Guillen expressed his genuine wish for the Philippines to free itself from the bondage of the United States and opportunistic politicians.