IMPERIALISM AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE PHILIPPINES

1. IMPERIALISM AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE PHILIPPINES “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

2. Facing West (Richard Drinnon) • Manifest Destiny against Native American nations • Kept going across Pacific Ocean • Overseas imperialism

3. Spanish-AmericanWar, 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 • GuamCeded by Spain, 1898

4. 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

7. “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)

10. “White Man’s Burden”

12. Paternalism againstnoble 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)

13. President McKinleywashes “dirty”Filipino with“civilization” (Thanks to Terrie Mount for scanning.)

14. 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.

15. 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)

16. 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.

18. 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.

19. 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)

21. “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….

22. “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)

23. “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 self-government 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)

25. 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)

27. “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

28. 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)

29. Igorot rice terraces in Cordillera, N. Luzon

30. Navajos meet Igorots at St. Louis World’s Fair, 1904

31. Moro Crater Massacre, March 1906

32. Mark Twain on the Philippine-American War “The completenessof 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.”

33. “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

35. Indian & Filipinoself-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)

36. 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

43. Bataan Export Processing Zone

44. Fishing community relocated

45. Workers’ “boxcar” housing

46. Labor strikes forbetter working conditions

47. Morong nuclear plantWestinghouse plant on volcano, quake fault wouldpower EPZ, U.S. military bases

48. Bataan fishing community of Morong

49. Fishermen opposenuclear plant,educate nuclear workers Shootings, disappearances

50. “Sweatshop” workersplan anti-nuclear strike