Philippine-American War

The Philippine-American War, the first national liberation war of the 20th century, It was a warlike conflict that occurred between the Philippines and the army of the United States of America from February 4, 1899 to April 16, 1902.

This conflict is also known as the Philippine insurrection or the Tagalog insurrection, downplaying its importance in international affairs. This name was historically the most commonly used in the United States, but Filipinos and a considerable number of American historians refer to these hostilities as the Philippine-American War, and in 1999 the US Library of Congress reclassified its references to use this term. Most modern historians put the death toll of the war at between 200,000 and 250,000.

Origins of War

A photograph of the end of the centuryXIX with Filipino katipuneros.

The US government had assured the Philippine rebels that their only interest lay in defeating Spain and, in the process, helping the Filipinos achieve independence. US President McKinley had publicly declared that the annexation of the Philippines "would have been, according to our moral code, a criminal assault." But after Spain's defeat in the Spanish-American War, the United States turned on the Filipinos, who had provided important military aid and logistical information, and took over the Philippines as a US colony. McKinley would explain that "the Filipinos were incapable of self-government, and that God had indicated to him that they could do nothing more than "educate and Christianize them," despite the fact that the Philippines had already been Christianized by the Spanish over several years. centuries.

In December 1898, the United States acquired the Philippines and other territories from Spain for US$20 million, through the Treaty of Paris. However, the Filipinos, who had already declared independence on June 12 of that year, opposed the terms of the treaty. On August 14, a troop of 11,000 soldiers was sent to occupy the islands. On January 1, 1899, Emilio Aguinaldo was declared the first president. He later he organized a congress in Malolos, Bulacan, to draft a constitution.

Development

Tensions between Filipino and US soldiers on the islands arose from anti-colonization independence movements, compounded by feelings of betrayal on the part of Aguinaldo, who had been brought to the islands by the US Navy. Hostilities began on February 4, 1899, when a US soldier shot a Filipino soldier who was crossing a bridge in the US-occupied territory of San Juan del Monte; an incident that historians now consider the start of the war. US President William McKinley would later tell reporters "that insurgents had attacked Manila" in order to justify the war in the Philippines.

The administration of US President McKinley labeled Aguinaldo a "fugitive bandit," without ever issuing any declaration of war. Two reasons have been given for this: one is that by calling for war, the Philippine insurrection would appear to be a rebellion against a legal government, even though the only part of the Philippines under US control was Manila; the second was to allow the US government to avoid compromising veterans' stock claims. In June 1900, Galicano Apacible, the first Philippine ambassador to the United States, who had fled to the city of Toronto (Canada) the previous year to avoid possible arrest by the United States authorities, wrote an impassioned letter in English to the American people, urging them to stop the aggression against his country.

On March 28, 1901, Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy, the first president of the Philippines, was captured by United States forces. The guerrilla fight continued: on September 5, 1903, Simeón Ola was captured.

In September 1901, 34 American soldiers were killed in a Nationalist resistance action near the town of Balangiga. The town's population was massacred a month later in a retaliatory US military operation.

The war lasted three years and was very unequal. Filipino commander Pedro Alcántara Monteclaro, fighting to recapture his native city of Miagao, wrote:

"It's not enough with the machetes and the requisados máuseres of the Spaniards... against the gatling machine guns and the fast-loading rifles of the powerful American army... I fear that if this fails, it will be a unilateral battle: another massacre of my men and the innocent in the city. How can a handful of rifles, spears and bullets from Máuser win against Gatling machine guns, which throw 600 bullets per minute? Your naval cannons can spray the city from a safe distance"..

Macario Sacay assumed the Philippine presidency after the capture and house arrest of President Aguinaldo, but on July 17, 1906, he was deceived by the American governor with a false offer of amnesty and the promise of a seat in the projected National Assembly (in a democratic republican framework). Sacay and his guerrillas were hanged by order of the governor on September 13, 1907.

During the war, the torture technique of the toque, euphemistically called water cure / water cure (keeping a prisoner immobile on the ground and almost suffocating him with plenty of water) was used massively to make Filipino prisoners talk.

Consequences

Press image showing the infamous order given by General Smith "MATAD TO THE MAYORS OF TEN (years)" New York Journal5 May 1902.

During the war, 20,000 Philippine soldiers and 4,234 Americans died. Most modern historians put the number of civilian deaths from the war at between 200,000 and 250,000, mostly from famine and disease.

According to American political journalist James B. Goodno, the number of Filipino civilian men, women, and children who died as a direct result of the fighting exceeded one-sixth of the country's total population (that is, between 1.2 million and 1.5 million).

In 1908, Catholic priest Manuel Arellano Remondo estimated that there were a little over a million Filipino civilian men, women, and children killed by the war:

The population fell due to the war. In 1895 it is estimated that some 9 million people lived in the Philippines, and today [1908] the inhabitants of the archipelago do not exceed 8 million people.

At the end of the war, the official 1903 U.S. census counted 7,635,426 people for the entire country.

Defending US imperialism in the Philippines, Rudyard Kipling wrote his poem "The White Man's Burden" in 1899, originally published in the popular magazine McClure's with the subtitle "The United States and the Philippine Islands".

It is to be hoped that a huge proportion of these casualties will be Spanish-speaking Filipinos, as they were those of this speech who best understood the concepts of independence and freedom and those who wrote works in the Spanish language on those ideas.

Luciano de la Rosa, Philippine: origin and connotation (1960)

Burning of villages, torture and rape by US soldiers were also rampant.

American historian Paul A. Kramer notes that the behavior of American soldiers sparked outrage among anti-imperialists, who openly denounced the burning of churches, the desecration of cemeteries, and the execution of prisoners. The Americans practiced torture called "water cures", in which they forced the prisoner to ingest a large amount of liquid, which often caused death by collapse.

After the defeat, the Philippines became a colony of the United States, which promoted its culture and language on the islands. To save appearances, a "Philippine Bill" was sanctioned and a National Assembly elected by the Filipinos was established, which began operating in 1907. However, it is precisely the occupant who implements a regressive tax regime that favors the concentration of large domains, the current latifundia. After a very relative autonomy agreed in 1916, in July 1946 independence will be proclaimed. However, Washington will continue to intervene in the affairs of the new State, especially at the time of the elections (from which the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos arose, from 1965 to 1986). The United States will abandon its gigantic military bases in 1992.