LUKBAN
“ Kill Every One Over Ten – Gen. Jacob H. Smith” Editorial Cartoon from the New York Journal, dated May 5, 1902
their misfortune had been aggravated by the treachery of native porters accompanying the patrol. The Marines suspected the porters of conspiracy to mutiny, believing the porters could have foraged more aggressively for food. But evidence of the porters’ mutiny is contradicted by their performance during the patrol, and by the very fact of the porters’ voluntary return to base bearing the hapless Marines’ rifles and ammunition. 23
While Waller and his Marines were running in circles in the uncharted jungles of southern Samar, rumors of a conspiracy to repeat the Balangiga affair in Basey circulated in the town, prompting Major Edwin F. Glenn, the brigade provost marshal and judge advocate responsible for counterintelligence, to arrest several noted town personalities, including the presidente municipal Joaquin Cabañas, parish priest Nicanor Acevedo, tax collector Petronillo Jacosalem, and a prominent businessman Nicolas Acevedo. The three of them- Cabañas, Jacosalem and Nicolas Acevedo – were subjected to torture known as the water cure 24 and died on January 5, 1902, while the priest Nicanor Acevedo was thrown into prison.
The water cure however produced nothing. It was Marcelino Apolinar, the replacement of Cabañas as presidente municipal, who turned in a spy to Waller when he arrived from the exhausting march on January
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