Gomburza
[3] Mutiny by workers in the Cavite Naval Yard was the pretext[4][5] needed by the authorities to redress a perceived humiliation from the principal objective, José Burgos, who threatened the established order.
The arrival of the liberal de la Torre was opposed by the ruling minority of friars, regular priests who belonged to an order (Dominicans, Augustinians, Franciscans, etc.)
It was supported by the secular priests, most of whom were mestizos assigned to parishes and far-flung communities, who believed that the reforms and the equality that they wanted with peninsular Spaniards were finally coming.
[citation needed] Mariano Gómes de los Angeles was a well-known Roman Catholic priest during their time,[6] part of the trio accused of mutiny by Spanish colonial authorities in the Philippines in the 19th century.
On February 17, 1872, he was one of the priests executed due to the false accusations of treason and sedition, taking a supposed active role in the Cavite Mutiny.
After being given ministerial and priestly authority, Zamora was able to establish parishes in Marikina, Pasig, and Batangas and was also assigned to oversee Manila Cathedral on December 3, 1864.
However, their tragic end led to the dawn of Philippine Nationalism in the 19th century, intensified by Dr. Jose P. Rizal, in dedicating his second novel entitled El Filibusterismo which condemned the Spanish rule and the elite Filipinos.
The church, by refusing to degrade you, has placed in doubt the crime that has been imputed to you; the government, by surrounding your trials with mystery and shadows causes the belief that there was some error, committed in fatal moments; and all the Philippines, by worshiping your memory and calling you martyrs, in no sense recognizes your capability.
In so far, therefore, as your complicity in the Cavite Mutiny is not proved, as you may or may not have been patriots, and as you may or may not cherish sentiments for justice and liberty, I have the right to dedicate my work to you as victims of the evil which I undertake in combat.
Their alleged crimes included treason and sedition for being the supposed masterminds of the insurrection of Indios (native Filipinos) working in the Cavite arsenal.
The Execution of Gomburza was documented by a Spanish historian named Jose Montero y Vidal who wrote a book entitled Historia General de Filipinas that centers on a Spaniard's perspective of the Cavite Mutiny.
The clergy supposedly wanted to end the hold of Spain over the Philippines to elect a new hari who would rule the land and named Fathers Jose Burgos and Jacinto Zamora to be the ones responsible.
The accounts of these two Spaniards supported one another, thus pointing to a planned conspiracy among educated leaders, mestizos, abogadillos, Manila and Cavite residents, and native clergy.
The reports stated that the Spanish prosecutors bribed a witness to testify against the three priests who were charged with sedition and treason, which led to their death by garrote.
Moreover, according to Edmund Plauchut, as quoted by Jaime Veneracion, late on the night of February 15, 1872, the three priests were found guilty of treason as instigators of mutiny in the Cavite Navy yard and were sentenced to death by Spanish Court martial.
[13] The so-called Cavite Mutiny of workers in the arsenal of the naval shipyard over a pay reduction produced a witness willing to implicate the three priests, each of whom was summarily tried and sentenced to death by garrote on February 17, 1872.
[citation needed] In 1978, the remains, believed to belong to the trio, were discovered at the Paco Park Cemetery by the Manila City Engineers Office.
