Gomburza or GOMBURZA is an acronym for Fathers Mariano Gómez, José Apolonio Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora, three Filipino priests who were executed on February 17, 1872 at Bagumbayan in Manila, Philippines by Spanish colonial authorities on charges of subversion arising from the 1872 Cavite Mutiny. Their execution left a profound effect on many Filipinos; José Rizal, the national hero, would dedicate his novel Noli Me Tangere to their memory.
The uprising by workers in the Cavite Naval Yard was the pretext needed by the authorities to redress a perceived humiliation from the principal objective, Father Jose Burgos, who threatened the established order.
The so-called Cavite Mutiny of workers in the arsenal of the naval shipyard over pay reduction owing to increased taxation produced a willing witness to implicate the three priests, who were summarily tried and sentenced to death by garrote. The bodies of the three priests were buried in a common, unmarked grave in the Paco Cemetery, in keeping with the practice of burying enemies of the state.[2] Significantly, in the archives of Spain, there is no record of how Izquierdo, himself a liberal, could have been influenced to authorize these executions. The aftermath of the investigation produced scores of suspects most of whom were exiled to Guam in the Marianas. Except for a few who managed to escape to other ports like Hong Kong, most died there.