<figure class="image-550">
<img src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-30/rafael-izquierdo-gutierrez.webp" alt="Black-and-white studio portrait of Rafael Izquierdo y Gutiérrez, Spanish governor-general of the Philippines from 1871 to 1873, shown from the chest up against a plain light background. He is a middle-aged man with a receding hairline, dark hair combed back, heavy brows, and a full, pointed beard and mustache. He wears a dark double-breasted civilian coat with wide lapels over a white shirt and dark necktie, and looks slightly to the viewer’s left." loading="lazy" />

<figcaption>
Rafael Gerónimo Cayetano Izquierdo y Gutiérrez (Santander, September 30, 1820 – Madrid, November 9, 1883), governor-general of the Philippines from April 4, 1871 to January 8, 1873. Studio portrait, late 1860s or early 1870s. Photograph often associated with the José Suárez albumen print issued for the Constituent Cortes of 1869.
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</figure>

<p>
He would become the Spanish governor-general who reversed the brief liberal opening of <a href="/kauswagan/articles/1197/today-in-philippine-history-june-23-1869-carlos-maria-de-la-torre-started-his-term-as-the-new-governor-general" class="news_link">Carlos María de la Torre</a>, imposed an <strong>"iron fist"</strong> administration, and presided over the <a href="/articles/3310/the-1872-cavite-mutiny-and-gomburza-martyrdom" class="news_link"><time datetime="1872">1872</time> Cavite Mutiny</a> and the execution of the three secular priests remembered as Gomburza - an episode that later generations of Filipinos treated as a turning point in the making of a national consciousness.
</p>
<h2>
Soldier of the Carlist and African wars
</h2>
<p>
Izquierdo entered the army young. In <time datetime="1835">1835</time> he enlisted as a cadet in the Infantry Regiment of Gerona and was sent almost at once to Navarre and the Basque provinces, where the First Carlist War (<time datetime="1833/1839">1833–1839</time>) was being fought. He rose by combat merit. At seventeen he was already a captain. In <time datetime="1836-03">March 1836</time> he was wounded at Urizá and received the Cruz Laureada de San Fernando; he was wounded again the following year at Lecumberri.
</p>
<p>
He later fought in the Second Carlist War and in the Hispano-Moroccan War in Africa (<time datetime="1859/1860">1859–1860</time>). By the opening of the African campaign he was a lieutenant colonel; by its close he was a brigadier general. Decorations accumulated over the years: the Gran Cruz of Isabel la Católica, the Gran Cruz of San Hermenegildo, the Gran Cruz of Military Merit with red distinction, the Real y Militar Orden de San Fernando, and, in <time datetime="1867">1867</time>, the Gran Cruz of Carlos III.
</p>
<p>
In <time datetime="1861">1861</time> he served as military governor of Lugo. Early the next year he was posted to Puerto Rico as lieutenant general and, from <time datetime="1862-02">February</time> (some lists say <time datetime="1862-03">March</time>) to <time datetime="1862-04">April 1862</time>, acted as governor of the island, succeeding Rafael Echagüe y Bermingham and preceding Félix María de Messina Iglesias. In <time datetime="1864">1864</time> he commanded a brigade in Spain's doomed reoccupation of Santo Domingo. Under Marshal José de la Gándara and Field Marshal Rafael Primo de Rivera, Brigadier Izquierdo led the second brigade in the Montecristi operations of <time datetime="1864-05">May 1864</time>, including the battalions of La Habana and Cazadores de la Unión.
</p>
<h2>
Revolution of 1868 and the Cortes
</h2>
<p>
Back in Spain he aligned with the Glorious Revolution of <time datetime="1868-09">September 1868</time> that overthrew Isabel II. He was second in command of the captaincy general of Andalusia when the rising broke and supported the movement there. The new regime promoted him to lieutenant general, seated him in the Cortes, and for a time made him captain general of New Castile (Castilla la Nueva). He sat as deputy for Antequera (Málaga) from <time datetime="1869/1871">1869 to 1871</time> and later, after returning from Manila, for Villajoyosa (Alicante) in <time datetime="1873">1873</time>. In <time datetime="1869">1869</time> he published a short treatise, <em>Algunas ideas sobre la reorganización del ejército</em>.
</p>
<p>
He had a reputation, in Madrid, as a man of the Liberal Union rather than of the most advanced Progressives. That reputation would not survive his two years in Manila.
</p>





<h2>
Appointment to the Philippines
</h2>
<p>
After the assassination of General Juan Prim and the accession of Amadeo I of Savoy, the crown named Izquierdo governor and captain-general of the Philippines. He took possession on <time datetime="1871-04-04">April 4, 1871</time>, replacing Carlos María de la Torre y Nava Cerrada, whose twenty-two-month administration (<time datetime="1869-06-23/1871-04-04">June 23, 1869–April 4, 1871</time>) had been the high-water mark of Spanish liberalism in the islands: public association, a more open press, mixed receptions at Malacañan, and the hope - among ilustrados and secular clergy - that reform might still come from Spain.
</p>
<p>
Izquierdo's proclamation of <time datetime="1871-04-04">April 4, 1871</time>, promised “justice and morality,” “reflective circumspection,” and “unconquerable firmness” both in defense of his authority and against the enemies of Spain. He described the archipelago as a “valuable pearl of the Orient” that Spain had civilized and Christianized. To the troops he praised the army his predecessor had disciplined and asked them to keep that spirit.
</p>
<p>
The contrast with de la Torre was immediate. Izquierdo rolled back the liberal measures. Public demonstrations were discouraged. Press and association were tightened. Filipino participation in civil, ecclesiastical, and military posts was viewed with suspicion. He is the governor later writers summed up in a single phrase: government by the <strong><em>mano dura</em></strong>, the iron fist.
</p>
<h2>
Steamers, telegraph, schools - and the withdrawal of privilege
</h2>
<p>
The same administration that closed political space also pushed material modernization. Izquierdo is credited with expanding interior and exterior mail-steamer (vapor-correo) service, including a southern interisland line with fixed schedules and a merchant steamer connection toward Singapore, which freed naval vessels for patrol in Jolo waters. He pressed the extension of the electric telegraph. A first line had already linked Manila and Corregidor; under his government additional land lines were built, so that by the time he left office in <time datetime="1873">1873</time> telegraph service reached more towns on Luzon. He circulated provincial chiefs asking for practical proposals on moral and material progress and is recorded as increasing outlays for schoolhouses and teachers' pay - while leaving untouched the explosive question of secularization of parishes.
</p>
<p>
The measure that detonated in Cavite was fiscal and military, not educational. Soldiers and workers of the Engineering and Artillery Corps at the Cavite arsenal had long enjoyed exemption from tribute and from <em>polo y servicio</em> (forced labor). Izquierdo ended those exemptions and required the men to pay personal taxes and to render ordinary labor like other subjects. Edmond Plauchut and later Filipino accounts treat this peremptory order as the immediate grievance. Spanish official accounts treated it as the pretext for a wider plot.
</p>
<h2>
The Cavite Mutiny, January 20–22, 1872
</h2>
<p>
On the night of <time datetime="1872-01-20">January 20, 1872</time>, about two hundred Filipino soldiers, sailors, arsenal workers, and townspeople seized Fort San Felipe in Cavite Puerto (now Cavite City). Their leader was Sergeant Fernando La Madrid (also written Lamadrid). Spanish officers were killed or taken. The mutineers appear to have mistaken fireworks from the feast of Our Lady of Loreto in Sampaloc, Manila, for a prearranged signal that Manila would rise at the same hour. The expected rising inside Intramuros did not come.
</p>
<p>
Izquierdo ordered General Felipe Ginoves (Ginovés) to reinforce the Spanish positions. After fighting on the <time datetime="1872-01-21">21st</time> and an assault at dawn on the <time datetime="1872-01-22">22nd</time>, the fort was retaken. La Madrid was killed. Izquierdo then used the mutiny as the occasion for a broad purge.
</p>
<p>
In a long confidential report to the Ministro de Ultramar, written about ten days after the fighting, he described the affair not as a local labor mutiny but as a frustrated separatist conspiracy that had been meant to include large parts of Regiments 1 and 2 and the Manila artillery. He blamed native clergy, mestizos, and lawyers; he also blamed a "unruly" Spanish press for feeding Filipino readers seditious ideas. He told Madrid that the rebels wanted a new <em>hari</em> in the mold of Fathers <a href="/kauswagan/articles/923/today-in-philippine-history-february-9-1837-father-jose-burgos-was-born-in-vigan-ilocos-sur" class="news_link">José Burgos</a> and <a href="/kauswagan/articles/485/today-in-philippine-history-august-14-1835-jacinto-zamora-was-born-in-pandacan-manila" class="news_link">Jacinto Zamora</a>.
</p>



Rafael Izquierdo: Iron-Fist Governor of 1872

Who was Rafael Izquierdo? Soldier of the Carlist wars, brief governor of Puerto Rico, and the man in Malacañan when Gomburza died at Bagumbayan.

September 30, 1820: Governor General Rafael Izquierdo was born in Santander, Spain