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Telltale Signs: INSURRECTION NO MORE |
|
 Rodel Rodis, May 6, 2005
If the history books you studied in high school, whether in the Philippines or
in the US, referred to a certain turn-of-the-century conflict as “the Philippine
Insurrection”, then please take note: the US Library of Congress has made a
change. It is now officially known as “the Philippine American War”.
The change in terminology occurred after the Philippine government protested the
historical reference to the conflict as an “insurrection” and after the US
Library of Congress reviewed its own extensive records of the conflict.
“For it to have been an insurrection,” historian Patrick McSherry notes, “the
U.S. would have had to have been in some sort of basic control of the
archipelago when the conflict commenced. In fact, the U.S. only controlled
Manila, Cavite, Manila Bay, and the water surrounding the archipelago. It had no
troops, and no governmental control elsewhere. As a result, the action was, in
fact, a war.” And the US Library of Congress has officially acknowledged this
fact.
In his website, spanamwar.com, McSherry explains the difference between the
Spanish American War and the Philippine American War.
The Spanish American War was a global conflict which extended from Cuba and
Puerto Rico on the Atlantic and the Philippines on the Pacific but it also
spread to such disparate locales as Egypt and Hawaii. In this war, the Filipinos
were initially de facto allies of the US against Spain. The war lasted from
April 22, 1898, when the US Congress declared war on Spain, and ended on
December 10, 1898, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris between Spain and the
United States.
The Philippine American War began on February 4, 1899 with the San Juan Bridge
incident but it is unclear exactly when it ended. By one account, it ended with
the capture of the President of the Philippine Republic, Gen Emilio Aguinaldo,
in Palanan, Isabela in 1902. In other accounts, it ended with the capture of
Macario Sakay, head of the Tagalog Republic, in 1906. And still other accounts
point to 1915 as it marked the end of US hostilities against the Muslim
Filipinos in Mindanao.
“In short, the war was longer,” McSherry explains, “much more bloody, but was
not a global conflict. Significantly, the war was fought between the U.S. and
the Filipinos. Spain was not involved. It was a separate and different conflict
from the Spanish American War.”
Part of the confusion with the terminology has to do with pensions.
At the outbreak of the Philippine American War in 1899, the US forces sent to
the Philippines had either enlisted or were conscripted to fight in the Spanish
American War. When they were wounded or killed in the Philippines, pensions were
issued to them or their families from the Spanish American War Pension Fund.
Despite the fact that more than 100,000 US troops were eventually dispatched to
the Philippines after the Treaty of Paris was signed, the US troops wounded or
killed in the Philippines continued to receive pensions from the Spanish
American War Pension Fund because the US government never created a Philippine
American War pension fund.
Even US soldiers killed in 1906 in the Philippines had gravestones marking them
as veterans of the Spanish American War. “This is somewhat akin to listing all
Korean War vets as World War Two vets instead, which everyone would recognize as
being incorrect,” observes McSherry.
Perhaps it was also because the US never formally declared war on the
Philippines which appears to be a requirement for a conflict to be officially
termed a war.
Those who fought in the Spanish American War formed the United Spanish War
Veterans (USWV). Those who fought in the Philippine War/Insurrection created
their own organization – the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) - which still exists
today and which is the main veterans group opposing the return of the Bells of
Balangiga.
At a May 1 forum on the anniversary of the Battle of Manila Bay hosted by
Veterans War Memorial Commissioner Rudy Asercion, Filipino American history
buffs discussed the issue of the Dewey Monument in Union Square, which was
originally constructed in 1901 as a tribute to Admiral George Dewey.
When San Francisco officials announced plans in 1997 to spruce up the Union
Square plaza with $26-M in improvements, the only issue that remained unresolved
was the fate of the 90-foot tall cenotaph.
“What they didn’t take into account,” San Francisco Chronicle reporter John King
wrote in 1997,” was that for many Filipino Americans, the battle is nothing to
celebrate. To them, Dewey’s triumph set the stage for the United States
occupation of the Philippine Islands and a war of resistance.”
In King’s 1997 article, I was quoted as recommending that “the base of the
column be altered to allow for new text that touches on the struggles in the
Philippines after the United States took possession of the islands in 1899, and
the relationship between the two countries since then.”
In an op-ed column I wrote in the October 30, 2000 issue of the San Francisco
Examiner ("To the Filipinos, Dewey was no hero"), I proposed an alternative –
“install an informational plaque close to the monument to provide a more
detailed, and accurate history.”
I have since learned that there is historical precedence in San Francisco for my
suggestion.
Across from the San Francisco City Hall beside the main Public Library is the
Pioneers Monument which was erected in 1894 and dedicated to the Spanish
Catholic missionaries and pioneers who colonized California. According to the
American Indian Movement Confederation (AIMC), however, the statue “symbolizes
the humiliation, degradation, genocide and sorrow inflicted upon this country’s
indigenous people by a foreign invader, through religious persecution and ethnic
prejudice.”
Through the efforts of the AIMC, a bronze plaque was erected in front of the
monument in 1996 to “acknowledge the effects of the settlement on California
Native Americans,” whose population in 1767 was 300,000 but which, by 1900, had
dwindled down to just 15,377 as a result of massacres, malnutrition and disease.
A monument to the Spanish explorers in the Mission District also resulted in a
bronze plaque being similarly erected beside the monument to provide context to
the effects of Spanish colonization on the native Mexican people.
A third corrective bronze plaque will be erected in Union Square.
Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com.
**********************
Posted in Gutom.org with permission from Rodel Rodis.
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Posted on Friday, May 20 @ 12:22:07 CDT by don |
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