The brutal slaughter: Philippine-American War of 1899
Workers World
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 18, 1999
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
PHILIPPINE-AMERICAN WAR OF 1899:
THE BRUTAL SLAUGHTER
IGNORED IN U.S. TEXTBOOKS
By Lydia Bayoneta
The Philippine-American War of 1899 is remembered by
Filipinos and by working class and progressive people around
the world as the first national liberation struggle fought
in Asia against the United States. It serves as an example
of how U.S. imperialism, even in its infancy, practiced
genocide of a monstrous proportion.
Little or nothing can be found about the Philippine-
American War in public school textbooks in the United
States. In the Philippines, the schools were reorganized by
U.S. colonial administrators to make sure that an entire
generation of Filipinos was miseducated about the war. This
is remarkable in view of the tremendous resources committed
to the war by the U.S. government and the high number of
casualties suffered by both sides.
The U.S. military budget was increased at the time to a
record high $400 million. And 126,468 U.S. troops were
deployed in the war. Of these, 4,234 were killed--almost
twice as many as had died in the preceding Spanish-American
War.
There were at least 20,000 Filipino battle casualties, by
the U.S. count. No official records were kept of civilian
casualties. However, in 1901 the New York Times interviewed
Gen. Franklin Bell, who was responsible for setting up
concentration camps in the province of Batangas. He
estimated that 600,000 Filipino civilians had been killed as
a direct or indirect result of the war on the island of
Luzon alone.
The entire population of the Philippines at that time was
6.5 million. Although most organized fighting had ceased by
1902, sporadic rebellions continued until 1913 with
additional casualties occurring on both sides, mostly of
civilians. The carnage and racist humiliation of this war
was second to none.
U.S. IMPERIALISM: 100 YEARS OLD
In the last quarter of the 19th century, the U.S. had
become a powerful industrial country. Big business had begun
to dominate the economy and government. The big U.S.
capitalists looked overseas for new markets and the export
of capital. These were the driving forces behind the
Spanish-American War, and the conquest of Spain's colonial
possessions.
"The first real foreign war of the U.S. [the Spanish-
American War] took place almost simultaneously with the
first real expansion in U.S. foreign investment. And that is
the real secret of understanding that war, as it is of
understanding all subsequent U.S. wars," wrote Vince
Copeland in "Expanding Empire," a history of U.S.
imperialism (see Workers World web page, www.workers.org).
There is evidence that sections of the U.S. ruling class
had the conquest of the Philippines in mind even before the
beginning of hostilities with Spain. In February 1898,
Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt ordered
Commodore George Dewey to take his fleet to Hong Kong and
prepare to capture the Philippines in the event of a war
with Spain.
The Spanish-American War was used by the U.S. government
not only to establish a protectorate over Cuba, but to grab
Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines.
While negotiations for a treaty with Spain were going on
in Paris, the U.S. Congress formally annexed Hawaii. This
was obviously a war of expansion, but this knowledge did not
prevent U.S. officials from lying to both the Filipino
patriots and to their own people.
U.S. BETRAYAL
As in other cases in its history, U.S. imperialism was
ready and willing to use a legitimate struggle for national
liberation to further its own imperialist goals. The
Filipinos had already carried out an unsuccessful revolution
against Spain in 1896.
In November 1897, over five months before the outbreak of
war between the U.S. and Spain, the U.S. consuls-general in
Hong Kong and Singapore, along with Commodore Dewey, met
with the revolutionary government in exile. They assured
Emilio Aguinaldo, the Filipino leader, of U.S. support.
When war broke out, Dewey cabled the U.S. consul-general
asking that "Aguinaldo come as soon as possible." (Stuart
Miller, "Benevolent Assimilation," Yale University Press,
1982, p. 36)
The Filipinos took the opportunity to renew the
revolutionary struggle against Spain. By May 1898--when
Dewey fought his famous battle of Manila Bay and defeated
the outmoded Spanish navy--the Filipinos were vigorously
fighting the Spanish all over the archipelago.
By Aug. 12, 1898, when the Spanish-American War ended,
they had issued a Declaration of Independence. Filipino
freedom fighters were in control of almost the entire
country, with the exception of the walled city of Manila.
The Spanish colonial government begged the U.S. military
authorities to be allowed to surrender to them rather than
to the Filipinos. The U.S. military secretly agreed, without
notifying the revolutionary government.
Following a bloodless "battle" to preserve the "honor" of
the Spanish imperialists, U.S. forces occupied the city.
They soon set up a military perimeter to keep out the
Filipino forces surrounding Manila.
At the Paris peace conference, which ended the war with
Spain, representatives of the Filipino government were
refused admission. Their representatives in Washington were
likewise rebuffed.
On Dec. 10, 1898, the Treaty of Paris was signed. It ceded
the entire Philippines to the United States. Twenty million
dollars were given to Spain and the property and business
rights of Spanish citizens were guaranteed.
A RACIST WAR OF CONQUEST
The Philippine-American War began in February 1899 when
the U.S. forces assaulted the Philippine positions
surrounding Manila. Because they were within range of the
guns of the U.S. fleet, casualties were high for the
Filipinos.
A campaign during the next month forced further retreats,
but U.S. Gen. Elwell S. Otis soon realized that he needed
more troops. By the summer of 1899, the U.S. had 60,000
troops in the Philippines. A year later the number had grown
to more than 75,000--three quarters of the entire U.S. Army.
Although the Filipinos fought bravely, they eventually
realized that without the huge battalions and equipment of
the U.S. military, fighting in large units was ineffective.
They then turned to guerrilla warfare.
The U.S. response to the guerrilla war was genocide and
racism. Villages were systematically burned and civilians
were slaughtered in reprisals against guerrilla attacks.
Anticipating tactics that would later be used in Vietnam,
the U.S. sent its troops on "search and destroy" missions.
"Our soldiers here and there resort to terrible measures
with the natives. Captains and lieutenants are sometimes
judges, sheriffs and executioners. `I don't want any more
prisoners sent into Manila' was the verbal order from the
Governor-General three months ago. It is now the custom to
avenge the death of an American soldier by burning to the
ground all the houses, and killing right and left the
natives who are only suspects." (New York World, Feb. 5,
1901)
Torture, such as the "water cure," was used to interrogate
captives. "[The `water cure'] consisted of forcing four or
five gallons of water down the throat of the captive whose
body becomes an object frightful to contemplate, and then
squeezing it by kneeling on his stomach. The process was
repeated until the `amigo' talked or died." (Philippine-
American War Centennial Initiative, Internet Archive, 1998,
pa...@home.com) Villagers were herded into concentration
camps called "reconcentrados" surrounded by free-fire zones
called "dead lines."
The conditions in these camps were dreadful. They were
overcrowded and filled with disease. Death rates were very
high.
In Batangas province, a correspondent covering an
operation called it "relentless." The U.S. soldiers killed
"men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active
insurgents and suspected people, from lads of 10 and up, an
idea prevailing that the Filipino ... was little better than
a dog" who belonged on "the rubbish heap." (Stanley Karnow,
"In Our Image, American Empire in the Philippines,"
(Ballantine Books, 1989, p. 188)
After a U.S. platoon was wiped out in an ambush, Brig.
Gen. Jacob W. Smith--a veteran of the Wounded Knee massacre
of Native peoples--issued orders to kill "all persons of 10
years and older."
"The interior of Samar must be made a howling wilderness,"
Smith said. "I want no prisoners, I wish you to kill and
burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please
me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing
arms [10 years of age and above] in actual hostilities
against the United States." (Teodoro A. Agoncillo, "A Short
History of the Philippines," New American Library, 1969)
Racism was an important part of the U.S. war of genocide.
As in other wars, the U.S. rulers attempted to demonize
their enemy in order to justify their actions. Racial
epithets were commonly used to refer to Filipinos by members
of the U.S. government, press and military personnel.
The racism inculcated by the U.S. ruling class can be seen
in the statement by Theodore Woolsey, a Yale law professor:
"Filipinos are incapable of gratitude, profligate,
undependable, improvident, cruel, impertinent,
superstitious, and treacherous; all are liars even in the
confessional. Granting such people constitutional rights
would be a `reductio ad absurdum,' and military rule was the
only possibility." (PAWCI)
Also suffering from racism were the 12,000 African
American troops who served in the Philippines. Black anti-
imperialists identified closely with the Filipinos. That was
evident in the opposition of most of the Black press to
President William McKinley's Philippine policies and in the
high rate of desertion of Black troops serving in the
Philippines, some of whom went over to fight on the Filipino
side.
An example was David Fagen of the Colored 24th Infantry,
who accepted a commission as an officer in the Filipino
army. The press heaped all sorts of invective on him and a
$600 bounty was placed on his head.
A meeting of African Americans in Boston in 1899 adopted a
formal protest to the "unjustified invasion by American
soldiers in the Philippines":
"Resolved, That while the rights of colored citizens in
the South ... are shamefully disregarded; and, while
frequent lynchings of Negroes who are denied a civilized
trial are a reproach to republican government, the duty of
the President and country is to reform these crying domestic
wrongs and not to attempt the `civilization' of alien
peoples by powder and shot." (The Boston Post, July 18,
1899)
Other voices were raised against the U.S. war in the
Philippines. The Anti-Imperialist League was founded in
November 1898 to oppose the acquisition of the Philippines
by the United States.
As the war dragged on year after year, as the casualties
mounted, and as news of U.S. military atrocities filtered
through the official censorship, the opposition grew.
However, the anti-war movement--seriously flawed because it
relied on ruling-class figures such as Andrew Carnegie for
its leadership--was unable to do more than expose some of
the horrors of the conflict.
Although Commissioner William Howard Taft officially
proclaimed an end to the Philippine "insurrection" in 1902--
there had been several similar previous declarations--
resistance continued for over a decade, particularly in the
southern islands. It was this resistance, combined with more
organized resistance during the 1930s and during World War
II, that led the U.S. to turn to a policy of neocolonialism.
In 1946, a sham independence was granted to the
Philippines, giving formal independence but reserving vital
economic and military rights to the U.S. This method of
control through "military assistance" and economic
domination, by U.S. corporations and such agencies as the
International Monetary Fund, has continued down to the
present day. The liberation struggle has also continued and
today reflects the growth of the Filipino working class.
Filipinos, along with other oppressed and exploited
peoples around the world, look forward to the day when U.S.
imperialism will be smashed and they can at last achieve
true national liberation.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint
granted if source is cited. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
w...@workers.org. For subscription info send message to:
in...@workers.org. Web: http://www.workers.org)