120 years of America

These days find me wondering, what if, ano kayâ, kung hindi tayo sinakop nasakop ng America after we had won the war against Spain in 1898.  Ano kayâ kung hindi tayo masyadong naniwala sa pangako na ikaaangat, ikabubuti, ikagiginhawa, ng Pilipinas ang pagsuko sa Amerika. A century and some 20 years later, maliwanag na kalunus-lunos ang sinapit, tuluyang sinasapit, ng nakararaming Pilipino. Worse, nasabit na tayo nang bonggang-bongga sa hidwaang Amerika-Tsina. 

Sharing here excerpts from two opinion essays: ‘Separate and equal’ by Michael Lim Ubac and In the Philipines, Haunted by History by Gina Apostol. Good to be reminded what we’re up against, still.

‘SEPARATE AND EQUAL’ 
by Michael Lim Ubac
June 13 2024

… History tells us that neither Spain nor the US acknowledged the provisional government established by Aguinaldo in 1898 or the formal declaration of independence ratified by the Malolos Congress in 1899. Instead, Spain ceded the Philippine archipelago to the US for $20 million on Dec. 10, 1898, through the Treaty of Paris. The treaty relinquished Spain’s control of Cuba and gave away its other colonies, such as Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, to the US. It also sounded the death knell for over four centuries of the Spanish Empire, and provided the US with a renewed sense of confidence—a sense of manifest destiny, as it were, for its future as a Pacific power.

This still-evolving American foreign policy would logically undermine the goals for self-determination of the nascent Philippine republic. With virtually all of the Philippines outside Manila already under the control of Aguinaldo’s forces after shaking off the Spanish yoke, Filipino revolutionaries and at least seven million Filipinos were prepared to settle and enjoy the benefits of hard-fought freedom. But when Private William Grayson, a member of the Nebraska Volunteer Infantry Regiment, opened fire on Filipino soldiers at 9 p.m. on Feb. 4, 1899, that shot ignited what would become the Filipino-American War. The rest is history.

One vote. Strategically, the McKinley administration saw Manila as an ideal location to defend US interests in China against European interventions. The presence of the US could also increase American influence in the far east. But the Treaty of Paris had a polarizing effect on American politics. It was narrowly ratified by the Senate on Feb. 6, 1899, with just one vote more than the necessary two-thirds for approval.

In 2011, while researching at Harvard’s Widener Library, I stumbled upon a pamphlet that contains excerpts from a three-hour speech of US Sen. George F. Hoar on April 17, 1900, during the debate on the ratification of the treaty. Hoar vigorously opposed the conquest of the Philippines, describing the archipelago as “a nation entitled as such to its separate and equal station among the powers of the earth by the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” Hoar could not fathom why America had to civilize a country like the Philippines, which already had a “written constitution, a settled territory, an independence it has achieved, an organized army, a congress, courts, schools, universities, churches, the Christian religion, a village life in orderly, civilized, self-governed municipalities; a pure family life, newspapers, books.”

Hoar acknowledged the intellectual prowess and patriotic fervor of Filipinos, saying it had “statesmen who can debate questions of international law, like [Apolinario] Mabini, and organize governments, like Aguinaldo; poets like José Rizal; aye, and patriots who can die for liberty, like José Rizal.” He added: “No people can come under the government of any other people, or any ruler, without its consent.” Hoar then asked his colleagues whether it was justifiable to “crush that republic, despoil that people of their freedom and independence and subject them to our rule.”

“Is it right, is it just, to subjugate this people? To substitute our Government for their self-government, for the Constitution they have proclaimed and established? … Are these mountains of iron and nuggets of gold and stores of coal, and hemp-bearing fields, and fruit-bearing gardens to be looked upon by our legislators with covetous eyes?” he asked.

Hoar’s questions are still relevant today, even though the international context has evolved. Since 1946, the Philippines has had a trusted economic and military ally in the US. The Philippines remains valuable geopolitically to the US even as its economy is closely tied to China.

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IN THE PHILIPPINES, HAUNTED BY HISTORY
By Gina Apostol
April 28, 2012

THE Philippines is haunted by its relationship with the United States. I remember the day, in 1991, when the Military Bases Agreement between the two countries was rescinded. The headlines yelled, finally: Freedom! But worrywarts held on to their beads. Clark Air Force Base and Subic Naval Base were America’s largest overseas outposts — powerful vestiges of colonial rule decades after the American occupation, which lasted from 1899 to 1946, had ended. In American history books those decades have fallen into an Orwellian memory hole: lost or abridged.

On the Philippine side, however, the relationship with America looms like Donald Barthelme’s balloon, a deep metaphysical discomfort arising from an inexplicable physical presence. In Barthelme’s story “The Balloon,” a huge glob inflates over Manhattan, affecting ordinary acts of puzzled citizens for no apparent reason. American involvement in Filipino affairs sometimes seems like that balloon, spurring fathomless dread. Bursts of anxiety over the bases’ return pop up every time America finds a new enemy.

The high-level April 30 [2012] meeting between the United States and the Philippines in Washington occurs during a standoff between Beijing and Manila over disputed territories. Hillary Rodham Clinton has called the contested portion of the South China Sea “the West Philippine Sea,” fanning Chinese ire and Filipino nationalism alike over obscure islands known by most as the Spratlys. (They have oil, and China wants it, too.) And tensions have not been soothed by joint military training exercises featuring 6,000 American and Filipino troops practicing so-called mock beach invasions on the coast facing China. Indeed, as America pivots to Asia and China rattles Manila, old phantoms are rising.

… The bases haunt us because they emerged during a dreamspace, when we still believed in our capacity for revolution. America “friended” the Philippines during our 1896 war against Spain then “unfriended” us when it paid Spain $20 million dollars for the islands in 1899. The building of military installations began apace, in step with the trauma of our sense of betrayal.

We agitated against the Clark and Subic bases during the Marcos years, that conjugal dictatorship propped up by American good will. There are photographs of the Marcoses with every American president since 1965, many on Wikicommons: Imelda dancing with the sweaty and the suave: with Nixon, as the Vietnam War waxed, and Reagan, as the cold war waned. A brutal war against ill-equipped, proto-Maoist insurgents kept the Marcoses, and American guns, in business. It’s no surprise that the bases became a linchpin in our constitutional debates after we threw out the dictator in 1986.

… Our brand-new 1987 Constitution banned foreign bases, but America’s lease wasn’t up for four more years. Pundits quipped that only an act of God would kick the bases out. God obliged. Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, pulverizing Clark Air Force Base and devastating Subic. America abandoned Clark and moved to renegotiate the bases treaty. I remember the day the Senate rejected the treaty because my own child was newborn, of age with the country. President Corazon Aquino, a sugar heiress whose family made a fortune during World War II providing alcohol to American G.I.’s, reluctantly signed it in 1991.

A smoldering volcano, Mount Mayon, had heralded the arrival of American forces in 1899, and in a seismic mirror Pinatubo ushered them out — a nation foretold by tectonic shifts. In between the acts, rubble remains.

American policy has always benefited the Filipino elite — the Marcoses, the Macapagal-Arroyos and the current presidential family, the Cojuangco-Aquinos, are among the handful who have reaped a bonanza. The interests of the oligarchy are the ties that bind. Our spectral angst is not so immaterial: our dread is drenched in military dollars and haunted by civilian blood.

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