He worked as a teacher in the local school before joining the Katipunan, whose activities in Cebu were led by a young Negrense, León Kilat.

On April 2, 1898, KKK President of the Cebu charter Luis Flores appointed the general as Captain of the Army and took charge of the western coast of the island.

After learning about Kilat's betrayal by Carcar authorities and his brutal assassination, Maxílom and Flores continued the revolution in Cebu City.

Maxílom is best remembered for stubbornly refusing to surrender to the American forces even as his fellow revolutionaries in Manila and Cebu were starting to capitulate or collaborate with the new invaders and was the last Cebuano general to accept defeat.

On March 18, 1902, five months after his surrender, General Maxílom was arrested by an American constabulary officer named Lt. McCarthy in his own hometown.

While his fellow contemporaries would find some semblance of political leverage during the early American occupation, Maxílom gradually faded away into the background.

When Maxílom was campaigning in Cebu City, the American-installed municipal president of Tuburan, Bonifacio Alburo, conspiring with Felix Estrella and several others with the help of Lt. McCarthy and American constables by means of force and intimidation, took the carabaos from the hacienda of the general, while both his wife and the latter's father were defenseless against the perpetrators.

Maxílom won in the lower court, with defendants Demetrio Ouano, Felix Estrella, Severino Mercado, and Julio Villarin were ordered to pay ₱775 for the value of the carabaos.

His funeral cortège, joined in by leading revolutionary figures including Emilio Aguinaldo, stretched some four kilometers, in what remains to this day the longest in Cebu's history.

In 2019, the Cebu Provincial Police Office in Sudlon, Lahug was renamed Camp General Arcadio Maxílom with the unveiling ceremony attended by a few of his descendants.