LUKBAN
immediate locality was continued consecutively from the time we went there in July until the massacre occurred in September.
The Senate aptly summarized the episode thus:
In a word, this Captain Connell came to a quiet village, and forced every man in the place, from forty-five to thirteen years of age, to work for months at cleaning the town with soldiers over them, while he destroyed all their food and confined them at night for the time and in the manner described by the witness. Suppose we had heard that a Spanish officer had done this. Truly, it was a strange way to assure them“ that full measure of individual rights which is the heritage of free peoples,” or to prove that the mission of the United States was“ one of benevolent assimilation, substituting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary rule.”
On September 23, 60 prisoners were released. These included the old men, sickly ones and those below 18. Duran must have been included too because he was able to attend the meeting that plotted against the Americans. But 80 males remained confined inside the tents.
On Tuesday, 24 th, the American soldiers with by 10 prisoners went around to do a house-to-house search to confiscate all deadly weapons, weeding bolos and sundang( long bolos with sharp edge. The sharp pointed sundang were placed inside sacks, filling seven in all, and brought to headquarters. The blunt bolos were to be used by the prisoners to clear the surroundings of plants that obstructed their view of the surrounding terrain. Thus bananas were cleared, and rice confiscated and burned or thrown away because, in the mind of the Americans, these were being smuggled to the mountains to feed the guerrillas of Lukban. This only further incensed the seething rage of the native population.
The plot is hatched
In the meantime, on the night of the 23 rd, the leaders of Balangiga met in the barrio of Tarusan, north of Balangiga, to finalize plot to overthrow the garrison. The attack would proceed and be moved from October 6 to September 28. The October date was too distant, and the people were running out of food after the forcible confiscations. The group included Eugenio Daza, the chief of police Abanador and his assistant, Mariano Valdenor, the president municipal Pedro Abayan and his vice-mayor Andronico Balais and Duran who was a sergeant under Daza, and one
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