On Feb. 17, 1872, three secular priests, found guilty of treason by a Spanish military tribunal, were executed by garrotte at Bagumbayan. Known more popularly by their portmanteau Gomburza, they were Jose Burgos from the Manila Cathedral, Mariano Gomes de los Angeles of Bacoor, and Jacinto Zamora of Marikina.
Condemned to the gallows with them was the soldier Francisco Zaldua, who was said to have been bribed to implicate the priests with the Cavite Mutiny that broke out a few weeks before, on Jan. 20, 1872, involving 200 Filipino soldiers and workers at Fort San Felipe, the Spanish arsenal in Cavite.
The mutiny was crushed in no time, but its impact proved lasting. By tagging Gomburza as the masterminds of the uprising, the Spanish authorities hoped to nip the call for governmental reforms in the bud. In a plot twist, however, it served ultimately to promote the nationalist cause.
Without Gomburza, it would have taken longer to stir up a clamor for some kind of national identity, which fueled the revolt against Spain.
Without Gomburza, there would have been no Noli Me Tangere, much less El Filibusterismo, which Jose Rizal dedicated to the memory of these rebel priests.
Without Gomburza, there would have been no Jose Rizal even.
In his letter to Mariano Ponce on April 18, 1889, he went as far as saying that without Gomburza he would have been a Jesuit instead of writing incendiary novels. In fact, there would not have been Rizal as we know him now. He had to drop the family name Mercado because his brother Paciano, like all the student sons the rich provincial families sent to Manila, was under close watch by the Spanish authorities. There was cause to worry, enough to justify the name change. Paciano was not only a student at Colegio de San Jose in Intramuros and, in fact, “a known card-carrying revolutionary,” as Nick Joaquin put it in a biography he wrote on Rizal, “but this Mercado scion was actually living under the same roof as the dangerous Father Burgos and was reputedly his disciple and adjutant.”
A secret pact between the brothers Paciano and Rizal was a direct result of the 1872 execution. Paciano soon dropped out of college, resolved to stay home and take care of the family, and thus, as Joaquin wrote, “set Rizal free to go forth and do the activist patriot labors.”
And yet, still reeling from the shock of the Gomburza execution and the subsequent persecution of the Mercado family on account of his reputation as a Burgos ally, it was Paciano who dreamed up, orchestrated, and financed Rizal’s expatriation to Europe.
Later, as Rizal accepted his destiny, in the letter he sent to Mariano Ponce from Paris in 1889, he called Gomburza his eye-opener. “At the sight of those injustices and cruelties, though still a child, my imagination awoke, and I swore to dedicate myself to avenge one day so many victims,” he wrote.
Little did Rizal know that he would suffer the exact same fate as Gomes, Burgos, and Zamora. He too would die in the hands of Spain at Bagumbayan and, sparking the Philippine revolution and the eventual rise of the Filipino, fulfill his promise.