By Fred C. Wilson III
The Dirty Little War - Part Two
“If you want to overcome your enemy you must match your effort against his/her power of resistance, which can be expressed as the product of two inseparable factors, viz. the total means at his/her disposal and the strength of his/her will.”
– General Karl van Clausewitz — ON WINNING
War brings out the best and worst in people. Combat veterans rarely speak of their service records though all have stories to tell. Most good. Many morbid. I’m reminded of the ex-marine who I served with as public school teacher who would laugh when he would tell me of a sick little game he and his buddies played on Communist prisoners during the Korean Conflict. He told me how they would bet cans of beer seeing which prisoner would slump or jump to his feet as bullets entered their brains. Their game: Slumper & Jumper.
Then legions of Viet-Nam era veterans who would brag about the many young girls and women they raped, of their enemy dead body counts, the ears and testicles they would slice off enemy troops fashioning bloody borrowed body parts into necklaces as sick souvenirs or barter them among fellow soldiers for drugs, prostitutes, and other desired ‘goods and services.’
Then there were certain bar games played during that same war on women how they would have sex with them on barroom stage floors betting against their buddies as to which woman would get pregnant first with the ‘door prize’ being a free abortion. The list of wartime atrocities is as endless as war itself. (Search: Vietnam War Atrocities.)
Was US foreign policy during the 19th and early 20th Centuries as bad as all that?
• Yes it was bad as ‘all that.’ Reader you must remember that lynching’s reached its peak during the turn of the 19th Century, there was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, a time when factory and mill workers were beaten and shot down like rabid animals by police, union busting goons, the National Guard for speaking out and striking against unjust working conditions. Paid-off politicians enacted ‘law’s which kept the poor poorer. Remember reader those industrial serfs were being paid slave wages for working as much as 12 – 15 hours per day, six days a week, in unsanitary and unsafe working conditions with female workers constantly being sexual harassed at will by lecherous bosses. (Read: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.) By the twisted logic of that time one could safely assume that this barbaric treatment was extended to the newest members of the American fold Filipinos. So why should these Asian ‘niggers’ be treated any differently from the rest of the wage slaves of that bygone era-they weren’t. I think it’s safe to conclude that the atrocities committed during that war were actualized as Little Brown Brother postulated. The ‘Gilded Age’ was opulent for the few but an age of oppression for the many the newly subdued Filipinos were no exception. (Read: Autobiography of Mother Jones by Dover Publications.)
Why did Filipinos wanted out from the Spanish Empire?
• Historically Spain had the well-earned reputation of being among the worst colonizers of all times. The colonized were divided and segregated along racial and blood lines and force fed a subservient devotional Catholicism that placed more emphasis on serving Spain, the white race, but giving lip service to Jesus Christ.
It was a time when such niceties as public education, proper catechetic (religious) instruction, decent medical care, gainful employment, and a host of other essentials we moderns take for granted were denied average Filipinos living under the Spanish yoke. The people wanted to be rid of Spain so they did the logical thing-they rebelled. (Read: Little Brown Brothers by Leon Wolff.)
What roles did organized religion play before, during, and after that conflict?
• The Catholic Church arrived in the Archipelago along with Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan in Cebu on April of 1521. In the service of King Charles I of Spain, Magellan was trying to find a trade route to the Spice Isles. Magellan persuaded Rajah Humabon and his wife Hara Amihan to sign-up for Spain. They did and were both later baptized into the Catholic faith. Taking their new Christian names Carlos and Juana, the explorer gave the miraculous statute of Santo Nino to the royal couple as a sign of their alliance with Spain. Thanks to Spanish duplicity hero-chief Lapu Lapu killed Magellan in the Battle of Mactan which later rendered the Philippine-Spanish treaty null and void. After Humabon and Hara’s conversion the new religion grew.
• Martyred during the Spanish Civil War by the Communists, the recently beatified Spanish Augustinian Fr. Gabino Olaso Zabala when working in the Archipelago gleefully joined in and encouraged jail guards and fellow order priests to stomp Filipino priest Fr. Mariano Decanay nearly to death after the native cleric was incarcerated during the 1896 Katipunan inspired uprising. This was an age when even men of faith behaved like savages! The list of clerical abuses was legion.
Not all the Spanish clerics were rascals. Quite a few bishops, priests, monks, and nuns during that time lived exemplary lives; but as with today’s global clergy sex abuse scandal the ‘bag apples’ spoiled it for the good religious who loved the Philippine people and in turn were genuinely respected and loved by them. One such notable was the recently venerated Mother Ignacia del Espiritu Santo. This sainted woman was born in Manila in 1663. The daughter of Jusepe Luco her Chinese father and Maria Geronima a native Filipina, Venerable Ignacia was bi-racial. (Go to: Wikipedia- Mother Ignacia del Espiritu Santo.) As a child she must have had a hard life. Being a woman in mucho-macho Spanish dominated Philippines didn’t contribute to her overall happiness either. She achieved holiness and fame as the founder of a order of helping sisters the first of their kind in the Philippines since then existing religious orders didn’t accept native Filipinos unless they were scions of families high up on the ‘food chain;’ in short no non-whites needed apply.
Large traces of this anti-Christian attitude towards non-whites are very much alive even in modern American Catholicism. Soon-to-be-sainted Ignacia del Espiritu Santo a ‘silent revolutionary’ lived a quiet life or so people thought. In her own gentle and humble way she changed her society at a time when women were thought of as little more than baby makers, cooks, servants, human ‘punching bags,’ and sex objects.
”…a people without vision must perish, a people without faith cannot accomplish great things, a people without reverence for its own past builds without a secure foundation.”
-Rabbi Dr. Joseph Stodz-
What did ordinary Filipinos benefit from the Philippine-American War?
• Though the Roman Catholic Church was disestablished by the incoming Americans who purchased large tracts of former church lands, the overwhelming bulk of redistributed church land went to American companies and the landed gentry; ordinary Filipinos got little for their bloodshed.
• At war’s end anti-Catholic America introduced a fundamentalist brand of Protestantism which further divided the people this time along religious lines.
• As with the American Revolution the Philippine version was a Masonic inspired revolt which was why when I studied Tagalog and Philippine History at the Jose Rizal Center a popular Chicago Philippine-American community institution, during the history segment of our three hour course our instructor exhibited authentic relics of that Revolution. Most of these objects were Masonic in symbolism. Reader you must remember that the Philippine Revolution was a revolt against a corrupt Spanish government and the equally corrupt elements of the then Spanish friar dominated Catholic Church a revolt largely modeled largely on the American version.
• The hated Spaniards were replaced by a then equally despised America though the situation appeared to have gotten better as the American occupation set in. If you were to research the overall situation of Filipinos during the stagnant Spanish years, the American occupation, Japan’s incursion, Philippine self-rule, ordinary Filipinos had it much better under the Stars and Stripes than any other time in their long and tortured history of foreign domination; just my opinion.
• The United States brought in American teachers with then modern educational techniques. Modern American technology and business methods entered the country. During centuries of Spanish misrule the ‘peasants’ were taught to kow-tow to their Spanish ‘masters.’ America made universal education possible in the Philippines.
Next time we’ll conclude with an examination of the aftermath of the ill-fated Philippine-American War and its continuing effects among modern Filipinos. To enrich your knowledge Philippine history this writer suggests that you read the following related titles: ‘The Philippine War, 1899-1902’ by Brian Linn, New York Times Review (Philippine-American War), Wikipedia-mock battles (Battle of Manila Bay), and Wikipedia-Emilio Aquinaldo (Philippine-American War). Again any comments, questions, or criticism please email me at: vamaxwell@yahoo.com. I read and reply to all my emails-promptly. Till then GOD bless you and know-your-history!!
“Freedom lies in being bold!” –Robert Frost
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