Quezon, Manuel Luis, 1878-1944

<p>Manuel Luis Quezon y Molina, KR (19 August 1878 – 1 August 1944), also referred to by his initials MLQ, was a Filipino statesman, soldier and politician who served as president of the Commonwealth of the Philippines from 1935 to 1944. He was the first Filipino to head a government of the entire Philippines (as opposed to the government of previous Philippine states), and is considered to have been the second president of the Philippines, after Emilio Aguinaldo (1899–1901), whom Quezon defeated in the 1935 presidential election.</p>

<p>During his presidency, Quezon tackled the problem of landless peasants in the countryside. His other major decisions include the reorganization of the islands' military defense, approval of a recommendation for government reorganization, the promotion of settlement and development in Mindanao, dealing with the foreign stranglehold on Philippine trade and commerce, proposals for land reform, and opposing graft and corruption within the government. He established a government-in-exile in the U.S. with the outbreak of World War II and the threat of Japanese invasion.</p>

<p>It was during his exile in the U.S. that he died of tuberculosis at Saranac Lake, New York. He was buried in the Arlington National Cemetery until the end of World War II, when his remains were moved to Manila. His final resting place is the Quezon Memorial Circle.</p>

<p>During a career that spanned the length of America’s colonial rule in the Philippines, Manuel L. Quezon held an unrivaled grasp upon territorial politics that culminated with his service as the commonwealth’s first president. Although he once fought against the United States during its invasion of the islands in the early 1900s, Quezon quickly catapulted himself into a Resident Commissioner seat by the sheer force of his personality and natural political savvy. Young and brilliant, Quezon, according to a political rival, possessed “an ability and persistence rare and creditable to any representative in any parliament in the world.” Quezon was wary of immediate independence, but in the U.S. House of Representatives, he worked tirelessly to secure his nation a greater level of autonomy. He met privately with the President and powerful committee chairmen alike, gauging the issues and crafting legislative solutions, which culminated in perhaps his savviest political victory, the Jones Act of 1916. “Considering the time I have been here, the character of the subject, and the influences I had to fight, I feel inclined to say that I am almost surprised that I have secured so much,” he said. Long after he left Washington as a Resident Commissioner, he continued to shape the office by choosing and sometimes discarding his successors.</p>

<p>Manuel Luis Quezon was born on August 19, 1878, in Baler, a town on the island of Luzon in Tayabas Province, Philippines, to Lucio, a veteran of the Spanish Army and a small-business owner, and Maria Molina Quezon. The family lived in the remote “mountainous, typhoon-plagued” swath of the province that hugged much of the eastern coastline of Luzon. Quezon’s parents eventually became schoolteachers, which allowed the family to live comfortably in Baler. Manuel, the eldest of three sons, and his brothers, Pedro and Teodorico, were taught at home by a local parish priest. In 1888 Quezon left Baler to attend Colegio de San Juan de Letran in Manila, graduating in 1894. Shortly after, he matriculated to the University of Santo Tomas, also in Manila, to study law.</p>

<p>About a year later, however, Quezon left school and returned home during the Philippines’ revolution against Spain. He resumed his studies in 1897, but when hostilities began between the United States and the Philippines in February 1899, Quezon joined General Emilio Aguinaldo’s forces. Commissioned as a second lieutenant, he saw little action, but rose to captain and served on Aguinaldo’s staff. After surrendering to U.S. forces in 1901, Quezon spent six hard months in prison, where he contracted malaria and tuberculosis. He suffered from complications of the diseases for the rest of his life.</p>

QUEZON, Manuel L., a Resident Commissioner from the Commonwealth of the Philippine Islands; born in Baler, Tayabas Province, Luzon, Philippine Islands, August 19, 1878; attended the public schools in Tayabas Province; graduated from the Colegio de San Juan de Letran, Manila, P.I., 1894; attended the University of Santo Tomas, Manila, P.I., 1894-1895, 1897-1899; L.L.B., University of Santo Tomas, Manila, P.I., 1903; was admitted to the bar in April 1903; Philippine Army, 1896-1897, 1899-1901; lawyer, private practice; fiscal, Mindoro Province, Luzon, P.I., 1903-1904; fiscal, Tayabas Province, Luzon, P.I.; Governor of Tayabas Province, P.I., 1906-1907; member of the first Philippine assembly, 1907-1909, majority floor leader, 1907-1908; elected as a Nacionalista to the Sixty-first Congress; appointed to the Sixty-second Congress per P.L. 61-376 in 1911; reelected to the Sixty-third and to the succeeding Congress for a three-year term, and served until his resignation on October 15, 1916 (May 11, 1909-October 15, 1916); member and president of the Philippine senate 1916-1935; chairman of the Philippine independence missions to the United States in 1919, 1922, 1924, and 1927; chairman of the Philippine independence commission, 1931-1933; chairman of the Philippine joint legislative committee, 1933-1934; elected President of the Commonwealth of the Philippine Islands on September 17, 1935, and served from the inauguration of the commonwealth on November 15, 1935, until his death; escaped from Luzon, P.I., on February 20, 1942, in a United States submarine after the Philippines had fallen to the Japanese; died in Saranac Lake, N.Y., on August 1, 1944; remains interred temporarily in a mausoleum at Arlington (Va.) National Cemetery; subsequently reinterred in Cementerio del Norte, Manila, P.I.