The Philippine-American war is a historically forgotten event. The analysis I wish to provide on current Philippine historical dynamics will be based on the way in which its history has been told. What I suggest is that the wartime conflicts coupled with the forgetting of historical events has created a muddled nationalism founded in a resistance against oppression but that misplaces its criticisms.
As Ileto (1998) analyzes the war, “the myths of the ‘splendid little war’ can be challenged effectively only by resurrecting local events and knowledges that have been marginalized or forgotten” (p. 6). What can be specifically addressed is the perception of the leaders coming out of the war. I will personally be advocating to think about the ilustrados who represent an elite class that lead the Philippine Republic as those who collaborated with the US, but this reading of the war follows a narrative of the Republic leaders as those who still sought the liberation of the Philippines.
Ileto (1998) describes the ilustrados as having “been punished in history owing to the ‘capitulation’ in 1899 of many wealthy, highly educated, and mestizo legislators and officials of the republic” (p. 8). To an extent, they were considered sell outs who were put into high government positions to serve both their own and United States’ interests. Emilio Aguinaldo, the first president of the Malolos Republic fit the bill of this description.
In hearing from my relatives own telling of various war heroes, Aguinaldo is far from revered as the likes of Jose Rizal or Andres Bonifacio, Filipinos who are considered national heroes. He suffered from the same criticisms as many of the government representatives throughout the Philippine-American conflict. The Aguinaldo shrine itself in my own experience of it not only showed him as a man with extravagant taste but also as a US crony of sorts. The colors of the Filipino flag are described near at the shrine as one that allegedly symbolizes US solidarity. In Zinn’s (2008) pictorial depiction of the wartime events, Aguinaldo is not only shown as resentful towards American occupation but is said to have been “forced to pledge allegiance to the US government” (p. 74).
The reality is that the Filipinos, elite class included, were forced to bend the knee after forcefully having to assimilate to the US interests. In order to maintain the interests of Philippine independence while under American occupation, amigo warfare was a common tactic that presumed to American forces a trusted ally ship but one that at its core was secretly resisting US forces. The US colonizer a oversaw democratic elections for example, but the ilustrados went along with the elections (Ileto 1998) “to see to it that they got the right officials in place, meaning ‘those who knew best how to get around the heads of the Americans” (p. 9).
In sum, what we can learn from this history is that the scrutiny of the Philippine Republic officials may need revisiting since they were not as entirely complicit as is often thought. What has been forgotten through a structured narrative that depicts a tight ally ship is that there was in fact heavy resistance on the part of the elite class of Filipinos who seemed to be on the American side. The fact is that the Filipinos played the game that the United States played with them.
As colonizers, this was their role, globalization as the need to enlighten the ones who sit in the dark as Mark Twain (2002) put it. They wanted to bring forth their ideas to the Filipino people and thus they awoke the Filipinos from their darkness to this supposedly enlightened view of the world. So, as a people in on this game, it's in the US’ interests to structure history as a means to forget the internal strife that plagued American occupation. Now with exposure to the game, social unrest can only be settled so as long as the conflict is buried. Thus we should ask how exactly we should restructure the history of the Philippine-American conflict. What will be the consequences of remembering the war and what is it really that needs to be uncovered in the buried Philippine history?
References
Ileto, R.C. (1998). The Philippine-American War, Friendship and Forgetting. In Shaw, A.V. & Francia, L.H. Vestiges of war. (pp. 3-21). New York: New York Press.
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