IMPERIALISM AND SOCIAL
MOVEMENTS IN THE PHILIPPINES
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
“Hindî Ako Si Joe!”
(My Name Isn’t Joe)
Dr. Zoltán Grossman, Member of the Faculty, Geography/
Native American and World Indigenous Peoples Studies,
The Evergreen State College, Olympia WA
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz
Facing West (Richard Drinnon)
• Manifest Destiny against
Native American nations
• Kept going across
Pacific Ocean
• Overseas imperialism
SpanishAmerican
War, 1898
• Philippines
Liberated from Spain 1898, turned on
rebels 1899; colony until 1946
• Cuba
Occupied 1898, but not annexed
• Puerto Rico
Annexed 1898; still a Commonwealth
• Guam
Ceded by Spain, 1898
Hay on westward expansion
The Spanish-American War was a “splendid little
war,” part of a “general plan of opening a field
of enterprise in those distant regions where the
Far West becomes the Far East.”
-- John Hay,
Secretary of State
1898-1905
“The Pacific is our natural property. Our great coast borders it for a
quarter of the world…we need to keep the passage open to eastern
Asia, the future battleground of commerce.” -- Henry Adams (p. 249)
“White Man’s Burden”
Paternalism against
noble or violent “savages”
In Samoa, “the natives…are children, and have the
charms of childhood, as well as the faults of the
small boy.”
-- Henry Adams (p. 249)
In the Philippines, the
“natives are entirely unfit
for self-government.”
--Dean Worcester (p. 279)
President
McKinley
washes “dirty”
Filipino with
“civilization”
(Thanks to Terrie Mount for scanning.)
Philippine-American
War, 1899-1913
U.S. “liberated” islands
from Spain, 1898; turned
on Tagalog rebels led
by Emilio Aguinaldo, 1899;
annexed islands as colony.
War fought until 1913, with
4,000+ U.S. soldiers,
20,000+ Filipino insurgents,
250,000+ civilians dead.
Granted independence 1946;
held bases until 1992.
Warnings of resistance
“We will withdraw to the mountains
and repeat the North American Indian
warfare. You must not forget that.”
--Aguinaldo spokesman to
General Marcus Miller (1899)
“The insurgent government of the Philippine Islands
cannot be dealt with as though they were North
American Indians, willing to be removed from one
reservation to another at the whim of their masters.”
--U.S. consul in Hong Kong
Rounseville Wildman (1899)
Human rights abuses
“The extensive burning of barrios in trying to lay waste the
country so that the insurgents cannot occupy it, the
torturing of natives by the so-called ‘water cure’ and other
methods in order to obtain information, the harsh
treatment of natives generally…”
--Major Cornelius Gardener,
U.S. Civil Governor,
Tabayas province (1902)
Difficult to distinguish
civilians from rebels in
a guerrilla war.
Concentration camps
In retaliation for rebellion, troops burnt villages, destroyed
crops in Batangas province, 1901. Herded survivors into
concentration camps in reservation-like stockades,
ostensibly to isolate insurgents.
Easier to control peasants
and use their labor, and turn
depopulated rural areas into
“free-fire” zones. Model for
rest of the Philippines.
Anti-Imperialist League
opposes Philippine war
“I would not exchange the glory
of this republic for the glory
of all the empires that have risen
and fallen since time began.”
--Democratic presidential nominee
Wiliiam Jennings Bryan (1900)
Republic or Empire: American
Resistance to the Philippine War
by Daniel Boone Schirmer (1972)
“Barbarians”
vs. “Civilized”
“Of course our whole national history has been one of
expansion…. While we had a frontier the chief feature
of frontier life was the endless war between the settlers
and the red men. Sometimes the immediate occasion for
the war was to be found in the conduct of the whites and
sometimes in that of the reds, but the ultimate cause was
simply that we were in contact with a country held by
savages or half-savages….
“that the barbarians recede or are conquered, with the
attendant fact that peace follows their retrogression or
conquest, is due solely to the power of the mighty
civilized races which have not lost the fighting
instinct, and which by their expansion are gradually
bringing peace into the red wastes where the
barbarian peoples of the world hold sway.”
-- Theodore Roosevelt
The Strenuous Life (1901)
“The presence of troops in the Philippines…has
no more to do with militarism and imperialism
than had their presence in the Dakotas,
Minnesota, and Wyoming during the many
years which elapsed before the final outbreaks
of the Sioux were … put down.”
“To grant self-government to Luzon under
Aguinaldo would be like granting selfgovernment to an Apache reservation under
some local chief…”
“The Seminoles, who had not been consulted in
the [Spanish] sale [of Florida], rebelled and
waged war exactly as sons of the Tagals have
rebelled and waged war in the Philippines….”
-- Theodore Roosevelt (1900)
Officers’ letters to newspapers
“We exterminated the American Indians, and I guess
most of us are proud of it…and we must have no
scruples about exterminating the other race standing
in the way of progress…”
“Our men have been relentless, have killed to
exterminate men, women and children, prisoners
and captives…from lads of ten up, an idea
prevailing that the Filipino was little better than a
dog.” (pp. 314-15)
“I want no prisoners….The more you kill and the more you
burn, the better you will please me….The interior of Samar
must be made into a howling wilderness.”
--General Jacob Smith, 1902
“We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux,
even to their extermination, men, women and children.
Nothing else will reach the root of this case.”
--General William T. Sherman, 1866
“Our future security will be in [Iroquois] inability to injure
us…and in the terror with which the severity of the
chastizement they receive will inspire them.”
--General George Washington, 1779
Philippine Ethnic/Religious Groups
Pink: Lowland Catholics
on Luzon (north),
Visayas Is. (central)
Green: Lowland Muslims
(Moros) on Mindanao (south)
Yellow: Highland tribal peoples
(sometimes used against rebels)
Igorot rice terraces in Cordillera, N. Luzon
Navajos meet Igorots at
St. Louis World’s Fair, 1904
Moro Crater Massacre, March 1906
Mark Twain on the
Philippine-American War
“The completeness of the victory is established by this fact: that of
the six hundred Moros not one was left alive. The brilliancy of the
victory is established by this other fact, to wit: that of our six
hundred heroes only fifteen lost their lives. General Wood was
present and looking on. His order had been, ‘Kill or capture those
savages.’ Apparently our little army considered that the ‘or’ left
them authorized to kill or capture according to taste, and that their
taste had remained what it has been for eight years, in our army out
there--the taste of Christian butchers. . . .The enemy numbered six
hundred--including women and children--and we abolished them
utterly, leaving not even a baby alive to cry for its dead mother.
This is incomparably the greatest victory that was ever achieved by
the Christian soldiers of the United States.”
“It kept leaking down from sources above that the Filipinos
were ‘niggers,’ no better than Indians, and were to be
treated as such.”
-- A.L. Mumper, 1st Idaho Regiment
“We had been taught (the devil only knows why) that the
Filipinos were savages no better than our Indians.”
--Returned officer in Congressional Record
“The boys go for the enemy as if they were chasing
jackrabbits…. Apply the chastening rod…until they
come into the reservation and promise to be good ‘Injuns’ ”
-- Colonel Funston, Kansas Regiment Commander
Indian & Filipino
self-government
“It is possible for us to govern them as we govern the
Indian tribes.”
-- Governor-General of Philippines
William Howard Taft (1902)
“We have acted on the theory for a hundred years with
regard to the American Indians, that no matter what
they wish or what government they desire, we will
hold them by force.”
--Methodist Bishop
James Thoburn (1902)
B.I.A.
Bureau of Indian
Affairs (BIA)
War Department to
Interior Department
1849
Bureau of Insular
Affairs (BIA)
Interior Department
to War Department
1900
Bataan Export Processing Zone
Fishing community relocated
Workers’ “boxcar” housing
Labor strikes for
better working conditions
Morong nuclear plant
Westinghouse plant on volcano, quake fault
would power EPZ, U.S. military bases
Bataan fishing community of Morong
Fishermen oppose
nuclear plant,
educate nuclear workers
Shootings,
disappearances
“Sweatshop” workers
plan anti-nuclear strike
Workers, fishers, farmers
blockade roads
“People’s strike” barricades
Military brings in soldiers
Standoff of soldiers, protesters
Stalemate
Military prepares for attack
Military attacks with light tank
Aftermath
of attack
Protesters don’t budge
Strikers win,
nuclear plant canceled
The Cordillera, Northern Luzon
Bontoc tribal rice culture
Ancient rice terraces
Chico River dam proposal
Rice terraces near Chico River
Belwang village
Militarization of Chico River
Tribute to slain tribal leader
On the way to the rebel zone
New People’s Army tribal rebels
Tribal rebel priest
Women in rebel army