The bells tolled for Thee

Ask not for whom the bells toll, it tolls for thee. It may be merely symbolic but President Arroyo’s presence in a small town of Eastern Samar recently to commemorate the 107th anniversary of Balangiga Encounter Day sends a powerful message.

Without saying it in so many words, her attendance reminds us of the bravery of Filipinos during the Philippine wars of independence against Americans. The Balangiga massacre is a watershed in our history and deserves to be nationally celebrated.

Up to this day, there has been no full and proper vindication of those wars and the valiant Filipinos who fought it. It was enough that the Americans subsequently gave us our formal independence on July 4, 1946. Indeed, we were lulled into acceptance of their spurious claim that we needed to be taught how to govern. The war Filipinos fought against Americans was the same war they fought against the Spaniards. The Philippines rightfully claims to be the first country in Asia to fight against colonialists and, if only for a brief period, established constitutional government.

Every now and then when an opportunity arises, the Philippine government asks the Americans to please return the Balangiga bells to the country where it rightly belongs.

After all those bells symbolize Filipino bravery and their struggle against colonialism. The historical background is how the brave townsfolk of Balangiga rang the bells to call on every resident of their conquered town to attack American soldiers who had conquered their town.

Joseph Schott wrote about it in his book The Ordeal of Samar:

On the night of September 27, the American sentries on the guard posts were surprised by the unusual number of women hurrying to church. They were all heavily clothed, which was unusual, and many carried small coffins. A sergeant, vaguely suspicious, stopped one woman and pried open her coffin with his bayonet. Inside he found the body of a child. The woman hysterically cried, “El Colera!” The sergeant nailed the coffin again and let the woman pass. He concluded that the cholera and fever were in epidemic stage and carrying off children in great numbers. But it was strange that no news of any such epidemic had reached the garrison. If the sergeant had been less abashed and had searched beneath the child’s body, he would have found the keen blades of cane cutting bolo knives. All the coffins were loaded with them.

At 6:20 that morning, Pedro Sanchez, the native chief of police, lined up around 80 native laborers to start their daily cleanup of the town. The entire Company C, comprising of 71 men and three officers, was already awake, having breakfast at the mess tents.

There were now only three armed Americans out in the town — the sentries walking their posts. In the church, scores of bolomen quietly honed their gleaming blades and awaited a signal.

Pedro Sanchez walked behind a sentry and with casual swiftness, he grabbed the sentry’s rifle and brought the butt down in a smashing blow on his head. Then Sanchez fired the rifle, yelled out a signal and all hell broke loose.

The church bell ding-donged crazily and conch shell whistles blew shrilly from the edge of the jungle. The doors of the church burst open and out streamed the mob of bolomen who had been waiting inside. The native laborers working about the town plaza suddenly turned on the soldiers and began chopping at them with bolos, picks and shovels.

The mess tents, filled with soldiers peacefully at breakfast, had been one of the prime targets of the bolomen. They burst in screaming and slashing. A bolo swished through the air, made a sodden chunking sound against the back of a sergeant’s neck, severing his head.

As the soldiers rose up and began fighting with chairs and kitchen utensils, the Filipinos outside cut the tent ropes, causing the tents to collapse on the struggling men. The Filipinos then ran in all directions to slash with bolos and axes at the forms struggling under the canvas.

Surprised and outnumbered, Company C was nearly wiped out during the first few terrible minutes. But a small group of American soldiers, a number of them wounded, were able to secure their rifles and fight back, killing some 250 Filipinos.

Of the company’s original complement, 48 were killed or unaccounted for, 22 were wounded, and only 4 were unharmed. The survivors managed to escape to the American garrison in Basey.

Captain Bookmiller, the commander in Basey, sailed immediately for Balangiga with a force of volunteers in a gunboat. They quickly dispatched some bolomen on the shore with a gattling gun and executed 20 more they found hiding in a nearby forest. As the American soldiers were buried, Captain Bookmiller quoted from the Book of Hosea, “They have sown the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind.”

Thus ended the short-lived policy of benevolent assimilation in Balangiga.

Not satisfied with the murder of innocent civilians and razing the entire town on their return, the Americans took along the Balangiga bells with them and there they have stayed despite countless pleas from Philippine governments that these ought to be returned. What is behind this intransigence?

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To American writer and former New York Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer, the invasion of Iraq was driven by the same reasons that led them to the Philippines.

“This view is driven by a profound conviction that the American form of government, based on capitalism and individual political choice, is, as President Bush asserted “right and true for every person in every society”. It rests on the belief that Western style is the natural state of all nations . . . By implication, it denies that culture and tradition shape the human psyche, that consciousness changes only slowly and that even great powers cannot impose their beliefs on others by force.”