Open Up Your Mind: American Colonization
The Philippines used to be an American colony, if you didn't know but I hope you did. "American Colony", that sounds so patriotic and grand, but behind the glitters and sparkles lies a dark, hidden past that not many Pilipin@s truly know about today.
Our friend, akoaykayumanggi, breaks down our history by elaborating on the American colonization of the Philippines and the effects it has created that can still be felt to this day. Subjects that are gone over include the brutalities of the Philippine-American War, the colonization of our Pinays, and the ties we have to Native Americans and Native Hawaiians who were colonized by the US as well. However, this is only a brief amount of information about our past as a colony so I hope this inspires you to do your own research as well and learn a little more about the Philippines. For our UCLA student followers, don't worry as we will update this tumblr with information on classes you can take in the fall quarter that relate.
Mind you this is a rant directed to a tumblr user posting their grievances about the Philippines, their content is highlighted so, so please excuse the language. However, akoaykayumanggi's post is very informative with many links and highlights the spirit of a true Pinay.
Ok ahiddensanctuary I’m going to break this down for ya, you colonial minded, undeserving to be called Filipin@ twat. If our ancestors were alive today, they would have cut off your head with no shame in your disgrace.
Curse the commonwealth era. Curse the people who insisted for the Philippines to have it’s freedom. Curse the president who took oath that time.
I’m sorry. You don’t know about our colonial history do you? DO YOU? You do not know about what the U.S. did to our people when they colonized do you? Let’s see let me make a list of all the shit they did to us in their 48 years of colonial rule. Shall we? Ya? Ok let’s go.
Instituting schools based on the American school system and punishing those who spoke their native languages.
-The racist and degrading remarks and cartoons of us during the U.S. colonial era and their thinking that we were “savages” and “uncivilized” to be “saved” by the white Americans.
U.S. Notions of Manifest Destiny in the Philippines
The Kill Everyone Over Ten Order and the Balangiga Massacre.
The Example of Samar: A “Howling Wilderness”
Early in the morning on September 28, 1901 the residents of the small village of Balangiga (located in the Samar Province) attacked the men of U.S. Army Company C, Ninth U.S. Infantry, who were stationed in the area. While the Americans ate breakfast, church bells in the town began to peal. This was the signal for hundreds of Filipinos armed with machetes and bolos to attack the garrison. Forty-eight U.S. soldiers, two-thirds of the garrison, were butchered, in what is called the Balangiga Massacre. Of the Filipinos who attacked, as many as 150 were killed.
American troops began retaliating as soon as the next day by returning to Balangiga in force and burning the now abandoned village. General Jacob H. Smith, however, sought to punish the entire civilian population of the Samar province. Arriving in Samar himself toward the end of October, Smith charged Major Littleton Waller with responsibility for punishing the inhabitants of Samar. Smith issued Waller oral instructions concerning his duties. These were recounted as follows (see below) in Smith and Waller’s court martial proceedings the following year in 1902. These proceedings, indeed attention to the entire matter of U.S. Army conduct in the Philippines, were driven by the appearance of an interview with General Smith in the Manila Times on November 4, 1901. During this interview, Smith confirmed that these had truly been his orders to Major Waller.
”’I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn: the more you kill and burn, the better you will please me,’ and, further, that he wanted all persons killed who were capable of bearing arms and in actual hostilities against the United States, and did, in reply to a question by Major Waller asking for an age limit, designate the limit as ten years of age. … General Smith did give instructions to Major Waller to ‘kill and burn’ and ‘make Samar a howling wilderness,’ and he admits that he wanted everybody killed capable of bearing arms, and that he did specify all over ten years of age, as the Samar boys of that age were equally as dangerous as their elders.”
Smith carried out his mission by having U.S. troops concentrate the local population into camps and towns. Areas outside of these camps and towns were designated “dead zones” in which those who were found would be considered insurgents and summarily executed. Tens of thousands of people were herded into these concentration camps. Disease was the biggest killer in the camps, although precisely how many lives were lost during Smith’s pacification operations is not known. For his part, Major Waller reported that over eleven days between the end of October and the middle of November 1901 his men burned 255 dwellings and killed 39 people. Other officers under Smith’s command reported similar figures. Concerning the overall number of dead, one scholar estimates that 8,344 people perished between January and April 1902.
The Balangiga bells are still held after being taken, in the U.S. at to commemorate those U.S. soldiers lost in this battle despite our many attempts of gaining them back to where they rightfully belong.
U.S. War Crimes in the Philippines
The Pacification of the Philippines
At the outset of the fighting, American troops in the Philippines numbered around 40,000, but by 1902 this number had risen to 126,000. During the first phase of the war, Aguinaldo’s men fought and lost a succession of formal battles against the U.S. Army. In 1900, however, Aguinaldo abandoned head-on conflicts with the Americans and resorted to the guerrilla warfare tactics that had served him and his men so well against the Spanish.
For all the talk of bringing “civilization” to the Philippines, American commanders responded to the Filipino “insurgency” with the utmost brutality. Over the course of the next decade, and especially in the first few years of the conflict, it became commonplace for entire villages to be burned and whole populations to be imprisoned in concentration camps. No mercy was accorded to Filipino prisoner, a large number of whom were shot. This certainly was not in keeping with the spirit of “benevolent assimilation” proclaimed by President McKinley.
From Liberators to Killers: American Attitudes Toward Filipinos
The attitudes of American commanders involved in pacifying the Philippines are remarkable for both their disdain for the people they had allegedly “liberated” and their willingness to resort to the most ruthless methods in suppressing resistance. For example, General J.M. Bell, wrote in December 1901:
“I am now assembling in the neighborhood of 2,500 men who will be used in columns of about fifty men each. I take so large a command for the purpose of thoroughly searching each ravine, valley and mountain peak for insurgents and for food, expecting to destroy everything I find outside of towns. All able bodied men will be killed or captured. … These people need a thrashing to teach them some good common sense; and they should have it for the good of all concerned.”
The Concentration Camps and the Filipin@ genocide.
Filipino villagers were forced into concentration camps called reconcentrados which were surrounded by free-fire zones, or in other words “dead zones.” Furthermore, these camps were overcrowded and filled with disease, causing the death rate to be extremely high. Conditions in these “reconcentrados” were inhumane. Between January and April 1902, 8,350 prisoners of approximately 298,000 died. Some camps incurred death rates as high as 20 percent. “One camp was two miles by one mile (3.2 by 1.6 km) in area and ‘home’ to some 8,000 Filipinos. Men were rounded up for questioning, tortured, and summarily executed.”
The Water Cure Torture in which President Theodore Roosevelt agree upon.
The rape and U.S. bases such as the one in Subic Bay that implemented prostitution and comfort women. and the fact that this still goes on today.
Do you want me to go on even more? Because I could, oh I could and make an even longer rant and call out your colonial bullshit. Or are you that desperate to have us as a 51st state and don’t give a shit on our recent past and what would happen if we became a state and colonized by the U.S. again? And if that is the case, don’t call yourself a Filipin@ because you aren’t one and our ancestors have disowned you a long time ago.
As you read my introduction, you already knew that I am pro to this issue. Yes, I want the Philippines to be an American Colony.
Ya, sure. Ok. Let’s make it so our people lose land like Hawai’ians currently are. Let’s make it so white tourists take our land and pollute it, disrespect it, call it THEIRS. Let’s go back to their colonization of Filipina’s being made as prostitutes for the U.S. military. Let us go back to people dying and being raped by those white foreigners who will take our lands. Yes LETS. Want to know what has happened to the Hawai’ians since they were illegally made to be the 50th state? Ok here are some more links for ya to know HOW they became an illegal state until this very day, how it’s their colonization has effected them, and how many want to be free from the U.S. to be their own nation.
The Overthrow of Queen Lili`uokalani and the illegal acts of making Hawai’i “a state”.
The Impact of U.S. Military presence in Hawai’i.
Hawa’ians fight for sovereignty.
Hawai’ians losing lands for the sake of white Americans taking them for their own uses.
The Struggle for Hawai’ian Sovereignty
I want the Philippines be part of the stars in the flag of America. I want to be an American citizen. I want to be part of the world’s greatest country.
I’m sorry? The U.S. is the greatest fuckin’ country in the world? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Ya. Fuckin’ right. Look here, I’m a U.S. citizen by birth. I was born here to immigrant Filipin@ parents. I was raised here. I live here. It ain’t all pretty sparkles, rainbows, wealth and glory trust me. And here is a newflash for ya. The U.S. is starting to come to its end of a powerful country, just like the U.K. did and Spain did in the past. Get that U.S. is a hero and the best in the world mentality out of your thick fuckin head.
And most of all, I want a better life ahead of me and for me to attain that, I need to embrace to the high hopes that one day the Philippines will eventually be a part of the United States.
You want a better life ahead of you? Really? Because *looks around* you aren’t going to find here, sorry. You want a better life? WORK FOR IT. Have faith in our damn country and do whatever it takes to improve it. Get educated on our past. Get educated on our cultures. Get educated on what is happening in the Philippines in terms of politics and social issues. And from that do something about it. Those who come to the U.S. to study, go back to the Philippines and take back what you learned and use it to help improve the country. Stop buying into all what the media says and lies. Look at South Korea for example. South Korea was one of the most impoverished countries only several years ago and looked up to the Philippines at one point. The people got motivated, worked hard, and got themselves out of that poverty fairly quickly and now look at them now. They believed in themselves and country. They sent their people to the U.S. and elsewhere to get a better education than they can give them in the country at that time and they returned back to help their people and country to the point they became the most fast growing country in terms of economy and wealth. You want the Philippines to get out of its poverty state? Take example of what South Korea did and take pride in your people, your country, and WORK HARD FOR IT.
Do you know how much I want to go back to the Philippines so I can do the same? A Filipina born in New York City, one of the greatest and well known cities in the world, and I want to leave it all. I want to live and work and stay in the Philippines and help improve it and the lives of my people in anyway I can. Why? Because I have faith in my homeland and people and THAT is something a lot of Filipin@’s like you, lack.
But this is my stand. This is, what I believe, for the betterment of our country. I am already sick of reading articles about patriotism and being nationalistic but people keeps on despising or even condemning fellow countrymen if they were subjected to shameful issues.
Again for the betterment of our country. Ok righttt. Nahh, because majority of the people are being patriotic and nationalistic for the wrong reasons, because the majority, like you, have no clue what to be nationalistic on. There are however a lot who are and that gives me hope that these people will start doing something and waking everybody else up like I try to do.
I am already tired of seeing headlines printed in capital letters saying bad things toward this nation. I am already tired of hearing gossips about the fast-rising economy of this country and yet no one in the lower class can feel it.
Again, DO something about it. Talk about it. Fight for it. What do you think all those who fight for our people and country do? What do you think of all those militant groups like Bayan and Anakbayan do every single day? Sleep? Nah, they do what they do because they are fighting for our country and people but all the media does is claim them as rebels and trouble makers because the media is influenced by the elite again anyway. Want to break that down? Fight for it. Fight for our struggles and help educate others on issues and speaking out on the lies the media and people of power spit right back to the people.
We cannot eliminate corruption because corruption is already part of our system since academe. We are bound to use power to acquire money and other things.
If only we surrendered and let the American people guide us to success, then claiming the islands in our West Philippine Sea would’ve been easier than this.
Then stop voting for corrupt politicians and again fight and help wake up those who are so brainwashed and fuckin colonized. Take them down and stop buying into what the media says and again fight.
And if we let the U.S. people “guide us to success”, we would just be where Native Americans and Hawai’ians stand today. Losing lands, losing jobs, being discriminated against, being seen as nothing more than “the little brown people of Asia”, losing our languages and cultures, people missing and raped left and right and the government not doing a thing.
Maraming Salamat sa iyong gawa, akoaykayumanggi. Mabuhay!