Archbishop Cruz and Independence Day

Filipinos are fighting again . . . with each other. That is what destroys this nation. Unless we recognize that infighting only makes us more vulnerable and an easy prey for control by external forces, we will continue to be losers.

Archbishop Oscar Cruz of Dagupan City, an arch critic of President GMA and her government, announced he would call a prayer rally against Charter change on Independence day. The inference is that Charter change, which he calls “morally and ethically objectionable” threatens our independence. It is the height of ignorance.

His political kibitzing and ignorant statements should be challenged. This latest one makes a mockery of the heroism of our forefathers when they resisted Spanish and American domination. Just because he is a “holy” man does not entitle him to make falsehoods and distort our history.

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More than any Filipino hero, we should honor Emilio Aguinaldo on Independence Day, June 12, 1898. It was he who issued a manifesto to protest American President McKinley’s Benevolent Proclamation through which America intended to rule the Philippines. Aguinaldo’s response to McKinley dated January 5, 1899 was to declare war.  

Here are some excerpts from that valuable document which ought to be contemporary reading:

 “General Otis styles himself Military Governor of these Islands, and I protest one and a thousand times and with all the energy of my soul against such authority…

“I proclaim solemnly that I have not recognized either in Singapore or in Hong Kong or in the Philippines, by word or in writing, the sovereignty of America over this beloved soil…

“...I hereby protest against this unexpected act of the United States claiming sovereignty over these Islands. My relations with the United States did not bring me over here from Hong Kong to make war on the Spaniards for their benefit, but for the purpose of our own liberty.”

This column commends to the good bishop to urge his constituents to reread our history before calling Charter change as “morally objectionable and ethically offensive” and relating it to the day we declared our independence.

On the contrary, our inability to shift our form of government from presidential (made under American duress) to parliamentary stems in part from events in 1899 when the American government snatched away our freedom in the guise of what is “good” for us. It goes on. We must awaken the bishop’s conscience and show him how wrong he is to say that Charter change as inimical to our freedom. On the contrary, it would enhance our freedom and self-determination.

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We must not forget the freedom loving Americans who were on our side in our struggle against imperialism. The most famous was Mark Twain who used satire in articles on the Philippine-American War.

Mark Twain became an ardent anti-imperialist when “America, after “liberating” the Philippines from Spain, occupied the archipelago and imposed its military might upon the “rebellious” indigenous people. Mark Twain’s Weapons of Satire has been edited by Jim Zwick and put in one book. Using archival material from the Mark Twain Project, letters, and speeches, Zwick put it together to capture a fascinating era and Twain’s role in helping to shape America’s national character. It also enlightens us on what President Obama calls its better history.

Twain lamented however that the public was ill served by a biased press. He points out that Americans were unable to understand his message against imperialism. Twain’s satire was lost on the greater audiences. His cause was not helped by enemies who portrayed him more as a humorist than as a humanist to be taken seriously.

Instead of limiting his reading to newspaper articles biased against Charter change, Archbishop Cruz should find time to read Philippine history before delving into politics. I believe more than anything McKinley’s declaration of benevolent assimilation in the Philippines, so far down in time, continues to stop us from shaping our own destiny.

Filipinos at the time did not recognize any American right of possession. They expected to receive their independence just as other former Spanish colonies (including Cuba) had received theirs.

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It is also worth remembering with an African-American in the White House today that thousands of African-Americans fought in the Philippine-American war but that some of them defected to the Philippine side.

Newspaper articles and leaders in African-American communities supported Filipino independence and felt it was wrong for the US to subjugate non-whites in the development of a colonial empire. Bishop Henry M. Turner called it “an unholy war of conquest.” Yet, most African-Americans, being also an oppressed community back home, saw the war in the Philippines as a way to enhance their cause in the US.

More interesting to us is how some of them resented being used in an unjust racial war. One African-American private wrote “the white man’s prejudice followed the Negro to the Philippines, ten thousand miles from where it originated.”

 Filipinos then were more aware. They took the opportunity to remind the African-Americans of their common oppression.

 They posted “posters and leaflets addressed to “The Colored American Soldier” describing the lynching and discrimination against Blacks in the US and discouraged them from being the instrument of their white masters’ ambitions to oppress another “people of color.”

 Many of them responded to the Filipinos’ appeal and deserted to the Filipino nationalist cause.

“One soldier related a conversation with a young Filipino boy: “Why does the American Negro come to fight us where we are a friend to him and have not done anything to him. He is all the same as me and me the same as you. Why don’t you fight those people in America who burn Negroes, that make a beast of you?”

“Another Black soldier, when asked by a white trooper why he had come to the Philippines, replied sarcastically: “Why doan’ know, but I ruther reckon we’re sent over here to take up de white man’s burden.”

The most famous of the African-American deserters was Private David Fagen of the 24th Infantry, who became known as “Insurecto Captain”. The New York Times described him as a “cunning and highly skilled guerilla officer who harassed and evaded large conventional American units.” From August 30, 1900 to January 17, 1901, he battled eight times with American troops. 

Brig. Gen. Frederick Funston put a $600 price on Fagen’s head and passed word the deserter was “entitled to the same treatment as a mad dog.”