9 February 1901: The Burning of the Pueblo of Balete

There is a curious entry about Balete in Elkanah Babcock's "A War History of the Sixth U.S. Infantry (Illustrated): from 1798 to 1903, with Rosters and Memorials of the Cuban and Philippine Campaigns". Copyrighted in 1903 by the author herself, the 194 pages book is revised and edited by S.T. Fisk, Jr. and introduced by Rev. J.A. Randolph, all of the Sixth Infantry and published in 1093 by Hudson-Kimberly Publishing Co. based in Kansas City, Missouri. On page 94, paragraph 4, she wrote that a seventy-two strong enlisted men of Company K left station on February 6, 1901 on a "reconnaissance to Balet and Jimeno". Then on 9th of February of that year, they destroyed the town of Balet (Balete) and in the same day had a skirmish with the insurgents on the road outside of the town.

 One would wonder why they need to destroy the town of Balete and left Jimeno (Altavas) untouched. What did the Americans found out or encountered in Balete on that fateful day that they had to set it to the torch? Did those enlisted men acted on the order of their commanding officer prior to their reconnaissance or was it done at the spur of the moment given the hostile residents that they encountered? Amnesty was already proclaimed on June 1900 and that the backbone of the insurrection was already broken not only in Panay but in the entire Philippine archipelago. So how come that the usually astute illustrados of Balete turned out too dull (or rebellious?) to read the signs of the time?

Whatever the Americans found out on their reconnaissance to Balete on the 9th of February 1901, the fact remains that it took us 20 years later to regain back our status as a municipality. The Luzurriaga clique succeeded in wiping Balete out of the map by fusing it with Batang and Jimeno to create New Washington with the tacit intention of supplanting Calivo by making it the new economic and political hub in the Aclan valley. To create new by wiping out the old, New Washington became the paradigm of the new power rising in the West in this part of Panay and Luzurriaga and company saw it as an opportunity to advance their interests.

The irony of it however was that in their first election for its Presidente Municipal in 1904, the voting principalias of New Washington elected Juan Oquendo, a Baleten-on, as its first local chief executive.