On Saturday, 28 September 2024, the province of Eastern
Samar will commemorate the 123rd anniversary of Balangiga Encounter Day.
Balangiga is one of the 22 component towns of the province (Borongan, the
provincial capital, is a city). Republic Act No. 6692 immortalizes the
significance of the celebration and has proclaimed September 28 as a special
non-working holiday in the whole province of Eastern Samar.
The celebration aims to honor the valor and patriotism shown
by the people of Balangiga in an uprising against American aggression. Hopefully
it may also serve as a guiding light and a beacon of hope for a generation of
Filipinos in need of another streak of heroism from their midst.
The Balangiga Encounter Day can be better appreciated with the
twin backdrop of the last few years of the Spanish colonial rule in the
Philippines as well as the Philippine-American war that raged from 1899 to
1902.
The Spanish colonial occupation started in 1521 when
Portuguese Ferdinand Magellan, sailing for the King of Spain, reached the
shores of Homonhon Island, which is also part of Eastern Samar. For more than
four centuries, Spain controlled and exercised sovereignty over the archipelago
that in 1542 another Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos had named
“Philippines” after Prince Phillip (who later became King Phillip II of Spain).
It took a while, a long while, but Filipinos, like all
peoples and races, had longed to be free. Self-educated Andres Bonifacio
co-organized the Katipunan with like-minded Filipinos who believed an armed
rebellion against Spain was inevitable. From a resistance movement, the
Katipunan eventually became a shadow revolutionary government. Its membership
expanded rapidly, with smaller groups established in other parts of Luzon, as
well as a few others in the Visayas and Mindanao. When an uprising did happen,
starting sometime in August 1896 when the Katipuneros tore their cedula in
Caloocan in what would be called “Cry of Pugad Lawin,” or “Cry of Balintawak,” the
march for freedom had crossed its Rubicon.
The revolutionaries succeeded in many of the local battles,
especially in the province of Cavite where Emilio Aguinaldo showed his military
and organizational skills. In 1897, the revolution lost some of its steam, at
least temporarily, when partisan conflicts between Aguinaldo’s Magdalo
forces and Bonifacio’s Magdiwang troopers led to the latter’s trial for
treason, among other trumped-up charges, before a tribunal sanctioned by
Aguinaldo. Bonifacio was eventually found guilty and executed. Before his death,
Bonifacio (obviously the more radical of the two) also accused Aguinaldo of
treason for trying to forge a peace agreement with the Spanish authorities.
In December 1897, Aguinaldo signed the Pact of
Biak-na-Bato to end the armed conflict with Spain. Aside from the
cessation of hostilities, the peace agreement required Aguinaldo to dissolve
his revolutionary government and for Spain to indemnify the revolutionaries in
the amount of close to a million Mexican pesos. Aguinaldo and several revolutionary
officials went on a voluntary exile to Hong Kong where they nevertheless
continued to reorganize the revolutionary government.
The sinking of USS Maine in Cuba (caused by an internal
explosion which the US government blamed on Spanish forces) ignited the
Spanish-American war in April 1898. Cuba was itself in the middle of a struggle
to free itself from the colonial rule of Spain, and the US, helping the cause
of Cuba, went into a war against Spain that spilled over across the globe,
reaching Spanish territories that included the Philippines.
The enemy of the enemy was a friend. In May 1898, Commodore
George Dewey of the US Navy Asiatic Squadron fished Aguinaldo from Hong Kong
and sailed for Manila to help the Filipinos crush the remnants of Spanish
military forces in the Philippines. Aguinaldo declared Philippine independence
a month later in Kawit, Cavite, his hometown, capping centuries of struggle for
consensus among Filipinos divided on the means by which to achieve self-rule
and the molding of a national identity. Dewey’s troops were among those who
witnessed the unfurling of the Philippine flag and public singing of “Lupang
Hinirang” (the Philippine National Anthem).
But the deception was yet to unravel. On 13 August 1898, the
US and Spain sparred in what came to be known as the mock battle of Manila.
Although there were a few casualties (sh*t happened, to borrow the words of
then Philippine National Police Chief, now Senator, Ronald De La Rosa, ruing the
death of an infant while waging then President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs)
it was staged to save Spain from the embarrassment of its surrender to the
Filipinos and to preempt Aguinaldo and his men from taking control of the colony’s
premier city. A few deaths from the ranks of Spanish forces were attributed to
Filipinos who thought the Spaniards were indeed battling the Americans.
Eight months later, in December 1898, the US and Spain
signed the Treaty of Paris to end their armed conflict with zero participation
by any Philippine representative during the negotiations. The treaty ushered in
the rise of the US as a global player and supplanted Spain as the world’s
imperial power. The peace agreement required Spain to relinquish its title and
sovereign claim over territories such as the islands of Puerto Rico, Guam, West
Indies and the Philippines. The discussion on what to do with the Philippines
was contentious. Spain hesitated to part the entire archipelago to the incoming
colonizer, but eventually relented when the US offered twenty million dollars
to sweeten the deal.
Voting 57-27, the US Senate barely passed the required
two-thirds vote to ratify a treaty. Senator Albert Beveridge, who voted in
favor of the treaty and one of the loudest American voices calling for the
annexation of the Philippines, opened one of his 1900 speeches on the floor of
the senate with these words:
“MR. PRESIDENT, the times call for candor. The
Philippines are ours forever, "territory belonging to the United
States," as the Constitution calls them. And just beyond the Philippines
are China's illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. We will not
repudiate our duty in the archipelago. We will not abandon our opportunity in
the Orient…”
Emilio Aguinaldo was clueless about the Treaty of Paris. He
did not know that Spain sold his country to the US like a piece of real estate
property. When he did know the whole scheme, the grand imperialist shebang, he
had no option but to wage another war.
Here then was a riveting sight of Aguinaldo fighting the
Spaniards one day and the Americans on the next day. This was getting tougher
and tougher for him and his valiant men. Superior enemy resources forced
Aguinaldo to mount a guerilla war from the fringes against the Americans.
Unfortunately for him and the cause of resistance against foreign invaders, the
Americans, with the help of Filipino collaborators, tracked him down in March
1901 in Isabela, leading to his capture. A month later, the first president of
the Philippine republic took his oath of allegiance to the new colonial master.
And yet, despite Aguinaldo’s arrest, pockets of rebellion
persisted in other parts of the country, notably in Samar Island (which
Congress in 1965 divided into three provinces—Northern Samar, Samar, and
Eastern Samar) and in Mindanao, where the Moro rebellion raged until 1913.
Although minimal in proportion to Filipino losses, the
protracted war continued to claim the lives of American soldiers (with
estimates of over 4,200 Americans and over 20,000 Filipinos having died in
combat).
The US could not accept belligerence, especially when the American
press was giving equal space to anti-annexation sentiments. To quote Beveridge,
the champion orator, again:
This war is like all other wars.
It needs to be finished before it is stopped. I am prepared to vote either to
make our work thorough or even now to abandon it. A lasting peace can be
secured only by overwhelming forces in ceaseless action until universal and
absolutely final defeat is inflicted on the enemy. To halt before every armed
force, every guerrilla band, opposing us is dispersed or exterminated will
prolong hostilities and leave alive the seeds of perpetual insurrection.
In August 1901, the American government sent Company C of
the 9th U.S. Infantry Regiment to Balangiga as part of a strategy to
consolidate its military positions throughout the Philippines. The Americans
employed carrot and stick approaches to win the loyalty of their subjects. But
the Samareños were hard to
please. In fact, they soon resented their being hosts to what turned out to be
overbearing guests. A month later, on 28 September 1901, hundreds of
able-bodied men of Balangiga and neighboring towns, armed with bolos and a few
locally made muskets, swarmed the Americans in a surprise early morning attack.
Thirty-six of 74 Americans were killed on the spot, 8 more died days later from
the wounds they suffered. This was, according to some historical accounts, the "worst
defeat of United States Army soldiers since the Battle of the
Little Bighorn in 1876."
The US Army’s response to the uprising was brutal. American
General Jacob H. Smith directed a “six-day killing and burning” spree in
Balangiga and neighboring towns that killed some 2,000 civilians on top of over
200 houses that were razed to the ground.
The Americans also carted away three church bells in
Balangiga as war mementos. The US kept these relics in its possession until
2018, way much longer than the antagonists had mended their relations, evolving
from foe to friend. During World War II, when in 1941 Japan attacked British
and US territories in Asia and the Pacific that included the Philippines, Filipino
soldiers fought side-by-side with Americans against the new aggressors.
In 1951, five years after the Philippines gained its
independence from the US, both countries signed a Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) that
required one to support the other in the event a third party militarily attacks
either of them. The Philippines was in good shape, at least in economic terms,
during much of the time that it enjoyed the initial years of its being an
independent and sovereign state. Until its political leaders lost their way, committing
their country and people to questionable debts that hardly serve the interest
of the public.
If Beveridge were alive today, he must be in for the shock
of his life to see how his 1900 vision had played out. Instead of America
exploiting the limitless China market, the Asian economy has grown as large as that
of his own country. It has now become almost impossible for American companies
to compete with their Chinese counter parts on a global scale. Eight of the ten
richest individuals in the Philippines and most ASEAN-member countries are
either Chinese or of Chinese descent.
In terms of both economic and military expansionism,
Beveridge’s America fumbled it. The MDT has not even prevented China from using
military and paramilitary means to grab pieces of the territories within the
Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone. Of course, much of the Philippine problem
lies within its government—because, sadly, gone are the heroism and patriotic
bent exemplified by Bonifacio, Aguinaldo, and the people of Balangiga in
1901.
Equally responsible for the economic and military decline of
the Philippines, in relation to its neighbors, are the voters who keep sending
clowns, quislings, and all sorts of misfits to high elective positions. What
Beveridge said in 1900 resonates until today:
The most enlightened among them [Filipinos]
declare that self-government will succeed because the employers of labor will
compel their employees to vote as their employer wills and that this will
insure intelligent voting. I was assured that we could depend upon good men
always being in office because the officials who constitute the government will
nominate their successors.
Let me quickly add that in today’s electoral landscape,
political dynasties which often also double as the employers—meaning, the
wealthy overlords—are instrumental in shaping how the voting will go.
Beveridge saw through the stuff that Filipinos were made of.
As a race, their general ability
is not excellent... in all solid and useful education they are, as a people,
dull and stupid. In showy things, like carving and painting or embroidery or
music, they have apparent aptitude, but even this is superficial and never
thorough… the common people in their stupidity are like their caribou bulls.
They will quit work without notice and amuse themselves until the money they
have earned is spent. They are like children playing at men's work.
His own race and his descendants are equally bums, of
course, if measured from how he saw the world during his time:
“The power that rules the Pacific… is the power that rules
the world. And, with the Philippines, that power is and will forever be the
American Republic… Where shall we turn for consumers of our surplus? Geography
answers the question. China is our natural customer.”
The way to reaping economic dividends through
the hegemony that Beveridge dreamed of just detoured from America to China. And
it looks like it will stay that way for a long while.
