LUKBAN
forbade his men to follow Lukban’ s subsequent instructions. Thus the Americans sent envoys to Guevarra’ s camp to negotiate his surrender. Initially, Guevarra agreed, and a general armistice started on March 18, 1902, after which Guevarra said he would assemble his forces on the Gandara River on April 15. The Americans kept communicating with him until Gen. Jacob Smith was relieved and temporarily replaced by Colonel De Russy. For some reasons, the surrender was postponed as Guevarra had made several demands, which to the Americans, were not totally acceptable. So the adjutant-general of the 7 th Infantry, Capt. J. A. Penn, had to make a trip to the insurgents’ camp to clarify matters.
In Calbayog, Penn learned from Lieut. S. T. Ansell, Eleventh Infantry, who had been keeping in touch with the insurgent leader as the representative of the brigade commander, about Guevarra’ s complaint to Colonel De Russy that the armistice had not been observed. Penn suspected that Guevarra and his troops were either preparing to go back to the mountains or were forcing them to terms favourable to them.
The situation was volatile. Failure in handling this could lead to a fresh outbreak of hostilities, which the Americans did not want to happen. After all, the insurgents’ leader was captured, which was in itself a great victory to them. In any event, the situation appeared critical. So from Calbayog, Penn took a gunboat and started up the Gandara river, arriving at the American post of Erenas, and proceeded the next day on another launch to Guevarra’ s camp. Capt. Peter Traub, an excellent Spanish scholar, accompanied him from Erenas, serving as interpreter in the subsequent talks with Guevarra.
The camp was located several miles above Erenas on the same fork of the Gandara. On arrival there, Penn said they were received with proper honors by the insurgents,“ albeit with surly looks.” An interview with Guevarra followed, lasting several hours. As he stated in his complaint, Guevarra said the armistice had not been observed by the Americans, and that a company of his troops in northeastern Samar, on their way to join him on the Gandara, had been fired upon by native police and soldiers from Laguan or Catubig, and several of them were killed.
This, he said, caused restlessness among his people and, since many of them did not like to surrender, it was difficult to control them. Penn assured him that the incident would be investigated at once, and if anyone had violated the armistice, he was going to be punished. He added that suspicion on both sides was a“ natural consequence of a long armistice.” Guevarra intimated then that his subordinates were more or less opposed to surrender except under terms giving them political guarantees and the return of money captured or derived from the sale
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