Pinili
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Pinili was once a forested hilly part of the towns of Paoay, Badoc, and Batac. Pinili is both a Tagalog and Ilokano word for 'chosen '.
Then vicar of the Philippine Revolution Gregorio Aglipay and his Sandataan guerrilla chose the then thickly forested hilly area of Pinili to be his and his guerrillas’ last stand against the advancing American troops who are out to subdue President Emilio Aguinaldo and his followers north of the capital Manila. Some are romanticizing that it was Aglipay who selected the name Pinili, but in fact it was the area's elders themselves who chose to unite and be one municipality after the Philippine-American War for unity and closer cooperation.
Pinili was made an independent town on January 20, 1920, after then Governor General Francis Burton Harrison signed on Dec. 20, 1919 his Executive Order No. 92. Felipe Arcangel was appointed by townmate Aglipay as the first town chief executive.
Later on during the Japanese occupation in the 1940s, bolomen from the town, headed by Mariano Gamatero, with three subordinate officers ranked major, Agustin Cabie, Cecilio Vermudez, and Florencio Tacub, fought guerrilla warfare using military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, raids, petty warfare, hit-and-run tactics, and mobility, to fight the larger and less-mobile Japanese troops.
On the first day of 2020, Pinili's history is re-enacted at the town square after a Thanksgiving Mass in Kullabeng, the site where Aglipay used to meet up with elders of the area before it became a town. It was also there where Aglipay, then no longer a Catholic, celebrated what was to be called the first Aglipayan Mass.
Map - Pinili
Map
Country - Philippines
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| Flag of the Philippines | |
Negritos, some of the archipelago's earliest inhabitants, were followed by successive waves of Austronesian peoples. Adoption of animism, Hinduism and Islam established island-kingdoms called Kedatuan, Rajahnates, and Sultanates. The arrival of Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer leading a fleet for Spain, marked the beginning of Spanish colonization. In 1543, Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos named the archipelago Las Islas Filipinas in honor of Philip II of Spain. Spanish settlement through Mexico, beginning in 1565, led to the Philippines becoming ruled by the Spanish Empire for more than 300 years. During this time, Catholicism became the dominant religion, and Manila became the western hub of trans-Pacific trade. In 1896, the Philippine Revolution began, which then became entwined with the 1898 Spanish–American War. Spain ceded the territory to the United States, while Filipino revolutionaries declared the First Philippine Republic. The ensuing Philippine–American War ended with the United States establishing control over the territory, which they maintained until the Japanese invasion of the islands during World War II. Following liberation, the Philippines became independent in 1946. Since then, the unitary sovereign state has often had a tumultuous experience with democracy, which included the overthrow of a decades-long dictatorship by a nonviolent revolution.
Currency / Language
| ISO | Currency | Symbol | Significant figures |
|---|---|---|---|
| PHP | Philippine peso | ₱ | 2 |
| ISO | Language |
|---|---|
| EN | English language |
| TL | Tagalog language |