ON BASI REVOLT AND AN ATTEMPT TO A COHERENT NARRATIVE OF ILOCOS MOVEMENTS (1)
Looking for earliest available document that could possibly lead to the narrative of Basi Revolt, one could check this quote from the Montero y Vidal’s Historia de Filipinas (as included in The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 51, 1801-1840) a Spanish historian: “In the summer of 1807, there arose a rebellion in the mountains of Ilocos Norte, begun by certain Spanish deserters from Vigan in conjunction with some vagabond Indians; afterward it spread to many of the Ilocanos, who resented the government monopoly of wine and prohibition of native manufacture of basi (a liquor produced by the fermentation of the juice of sugar cane).” Aside from this report, no other document would say the fighters and the leaders really use the term “Basi Revolt” to call their movement. And possibly it was just coined from a report of Spanish historian Montero y Vidal. No wonder, Vigan-based historians like Benaventura Bello El Alzamiento de Ambaristo in his essay published in the Indep
