Forever Slaves to Foreigners

Hist 1 (Philippine History) Brief Essay Number 3

The Philippines has a somewhat special but underrated place in the history of Asia in general, being the longest colonized country under a Western power, and also the first to dare to oppose them through a nationwide revolution. A 333-year rule under the Spanish crown is

already quite lengthy for a colonized country, but then came along the Americans and the Japanese. They thought that the Filipino people did not suffer enough and continued their exploitation of the country anyway. Historian Renato Costantino pointed out that the Philippines have the misfortune of being “liberated” by these colonizers: the US wanted us to be “free” from Spanish control, while Japan wanted us to be “free” from American control (Constantino 1975). The Filipinos must ask themselves: are we truly independent or are we still pawns under the hegemony of the West?

Apple Pie Imperialists Versus Sushi Imperialists

Despite ruling the Philippines for just a half of a century, both the United States and Japan did more physical and psychological damages to Filipinos compared to Spain. The Philippine-American War alone already took the lives of 20,000 Filipino soldiers and more than 200,000 civilians (Office of the Historian n.d.), while 527,000 of them were killed during the Japanese occupation (Gruhl 2007). All of these barbarisms were done with good intentions if one will see their perspectives. Americans thought that Filipinos were not yet fit to rule themselves and needed to be “trained” how to create a just and free government (Jernegan 1908); which is funny considering how the US is anything but just and free.

Meanwhile, Japan justified its imperialistic desires by introducing the doctrine of “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” that Asia is for Asians only, and they want to be the one that would “liberate” these countries from Western control (Constantino and Constantino 1978). The evilest acts in history were mostly done by people who thought that they are doing the right thing, and that becomes truer the moment we dig deeper into the past.

American sympathizers may say that the Philippines was better off with the United States unlike other colonizers, but the most devastating damage that they caused was not militarily, but mentally. The best way to conquer a nation is to control its people’s way of thinking (Constantino 1970). By killing our nationalistic pride and indoctrinating us with the American way of life being the standard, the US education system forever poisoned the minds of the Filipino people with colonial mentality. Japan, however, aimed to eradicate that by highlighting Asian culture and language and banning anything remotely American or Western. This was not, however, done from genuine intentions, but to hide their selfish desires of becoming the West of the Far East.

Unlike during the Spanish colonization when we were more rebellious, there are more Filipinos in the American and Japanese era that were more compliant and sympathizing; like the pro-American ilustrados and the Japanese collaborators who all benefited from their rule. But of course, there were ones who still held up to their principles of desiring Philippine independence and kept fighting. Macario Sakay’s Tagalog Republic and Benigno Ramos’ Sakdalista Movement were among great examples. But perhaps the most prominent resistant movement that was produced by the American and Japanese imperialism was the rise of the Philippine Left.

While Americans were busy spreading capitalist propaganda in our education system, other Filipinos who witnessed the state of labor and poverty in our country started to demand worker’s rights and labor reforms, which gave rise to socialist and communist movements such as the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas on 1930 (Richardson 2011). Its armed wing, Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon (HukBaLaHap), became one of the main Filipino guerilla groups who fought against the forces of fascistic Japan. Until now, Filipino socialists and communists are continued to be demonized for merely wanting change for our society, and it was the by-product of the American red-tagging culture that strengthened during their Cold War with the Soviet Union.

Do You Get Déjà vu?

Policy-wise, the United States and Japan were not actually that different from the Spanish Empire. After all, anything that they did to the Philippines was ultimately for the sake of their national interests. Spain conquered our archipelago to compete with Portugal’s spice trade in Southeast Asia; the US “assimilated” us in their territory to have an economic and naval stronghold in the Pacific, and Japan invaded us to expand their militaristic and economic dominance in the Far East. None of them was for the benefit of the Filipino people.

The obvious parallels, of course, can be seen in how that handled resistances. Exempli gratia, the Sedition Law of 1901. The Americans declared that anyone that would dare to speak, write, or fight for Philippine independence was punishable by either death, long imprisonment, or extremely high fines; and because of the Brigandage Act of 1902, anyone who still fights for independence would be deemed as bandits (Uckung 2012). On the other hand, the Japanese kempeitai forces also conducted mass arrests and executions for anyone who would dare oppose their regime (Guillermo and Win 2005). In retrospect, the Spaniards also, in a way, did the same thing, especially during the height of the Secularization Movement and the Philippine Revolution. The Spaniards killed Hermano Pule, GomBurZa, the Trece Martires, and Jose Rizal; and so did the Americans to Macario Sakay, and the Japanese to Jose Abad Santos, Vicente Lim, and Josefa Llanes-Escoda.

Censorship was another one. The Spaniards banned Rizal’s novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo for their criticisms against the church and government. Meanwhile, although Filipinos may have relatively more freedom of speech and press under the American occupation compared to Spain, any subversive writings were not tolerated because of the Sedition Law. As a result, the pro-independence newspaper El Renacimiento was closed down in 1908 by the Americans for their open criticism of Governor William Howard Taft’s policies (Cano 2011). The Japanese, on the other hand, banned any kind of publications written in English. Every newspaper, except for Manila Tribune, Taliba, and La Vanguardia, was also closed, and even those who were allowed to publish were heavily regulated and filtered (Tuazon n.d.).

The Reconcentration Policy of the Americans was also eerily familiar, as it somewhat resembled the reduccion practice of the Spaniards, albeit for different purposes. While the Spaniards encouraged (or forced) the native Indios to settle down inside the pueblos for them to be easily converted to Christianity and to be easily controlled by the government (Koller and Acabado 2018); the Americans forcibly relocated villagers in a town to hunt down Filipino revolutionaries, and put them inside concentration camps, with harsh and devastating results (Cullinane 2009).

Liberty is an Illusion

When did the Philippines become independent? Was it the moment when we declared it ourselves? Or was it when the international community recognized it? What would make a country independent? Territorial sovereignty? Autonomous government? A ratified constitution? We are wasting our time debating on whether the Philippines became a free nation on June 12, 1898, or July 4, 1946, because this country was never free in the first place.

Let us entertain first the notion that the Philippine independence was on June 12, 1898. Despite having a legislative body through the Malolos Congress, a ratified constitution, and an executive branch from President Aguinaldo, all of the efforts of the revolution were in vain

because of the Treaty of Paris. Spain gave our territory to the United States for $20 million (Yale Law School 2008) and even staged a mock battle with them in Manila just to save its face. President William McKinley said that the US territorial expansion was a moral issue, that giving back the Philippines to Spain was immoral (Ocampo 2017). But where exactly did we enter the picture? Never. These Western superpowers decided the fate of the Philippines while not allowing to express the side of the Filipinos. It is unfortunate that we have to ask the permission of a more powerful country just to have recognition of our sovereignty.

And besides, Americans never recognized Aguinaldo’s authority. Dean Worcester, the American Secretary of the Interior of the Philippines, explained in his biased book The Philippines: Past and Present that the First Philippine Republic was nothing but a Tagalog military oligarchy that did not share by a great mass of people, since what they only did was “to give soldiers for the army and labourers for the fields, and to without question the orders they received from the military heads of their provinces” (Worcester 1914). “There is no cause for vain regrets. We did not destroy a republic in the Philippines. There never was anything there to destroy which even remotely resembled a republic,” he added. Can we really call our country independent if we let other dominant countries bully us? We looked like a beginner chess player trying to go against Gary Kasparov.

Now let us look at the July 4, 1946 claim. We finally had an autonomous government that is not attached to the United States whatsoever. Or is it? Through the Bell Trade Act, the US basically controlled the flow of the Philippine peso, the import tariffs only benefited them, and their citizens and corporations still have the authority to use our own natural resources for themselves (Jimenez 2020). Not to mention that most of our post-war presidents were lapdogs of Uncle Sam. It seems that the Philippines is independent only on paper, and we did not even talk about the real elephant in the room, and those are the Filipino bourgeois elites who let our country be in the hands of the US. Why? For their own financial interests, of course. (Agoncillo 1990). That is why the real losers here were the Filipino masses. It was not about Filipinos versus the West, but the working class against the capitalists. If there is one thing that the communists got right, it was when Vladimir Lenin said that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism (Lenin 1917).

Conclusion

True liberation will only come at the moment when we have economic independence from the gripping hands of capitalism. It is when we start to stand up for ourselves and do not let the other countries oppress us. It is when the elite lets go of their greed and choose to serve the people. It is when we start to reform our education system by departing from the colonial style and replacing it with something that will awaken our sense of national solidarity. It is when we correctly study our own history to reflect on the mistakes of the past and avoid repeating them in the future. But seeing the current situation that the Philippines is in right now, that is not going to happen anytime soon. We are still not independent, because the revolution was not even done yet.

Bibliography

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Passed on Decembere 13, 2021