Flaws in Filipino character, 1899

THE lightning rally that paralyzed traffic on Edsa yesterday was a failure of intelligence that left the police unprepared. If the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) applied for a permit, they could have protested while Edsa keeps moving. The INC could have chosen Luneta, but blocking Edsa with people and buses was meant to inconvenience people going to work on a Monday morning. Watching all this in real time on my social media channels reminded me of late 1899, when Filipinos realized it was futile to resist a better-equipped and armed enemy in a regular war. Emilio Aguinaldo and his war council decided to disband. Filipino forces would return to their homes and, following designated leaders, engage the enemy anew with general resistance through guerrilla warfare.

For this, they discarded their military uniforms and insignia, leading the United States military governor in the Philippines to report:

“The practice of discarding the uniform enables the insurgents to appear and disappear almost at their convenience. At one time they are in the ranks as soldiers, and immediately thereafter are within the American lines in the attitude of peaceful natives, absorbed in a dense mass of sympathetic people, speaking a dialect of which few white men, and no Americans, have any knowledge.”

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Unlike fighting a conventional war, where uniforms, flags, positions, and trenches made the two opposing sides clear, the war moved to towns and townspeople. The enemy looked on any Filipino with justified suspicion, they knew that the Filipino forces had not retreated, but were in towns supported by townspeople in cash, kind, hospitality, or sympathy. When pursued by the enemy, Filipino soldiers just had to get to a barrio, where after dumping his uniform: “the Filipino soldier is transformed into the appearance of a peaceful native.”

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It seems that the Filipino rayadillo uniform was better suited to the tropical weather than the enemy’s standard issue, which was a dark blue, that made them easy targets for snipers. Worse, they had a wool coat, flannel shirt, kersey pants, wool socks, and heavy leather shoes that were very uncomfortable in the hot and humid months and disastrous during the rainy season. In time, they had to adapt, and the wool was later replaced by khaki cotton uniforms. This bit of information will help people be more accurate when they digitally colorize archival photos in sepia or black and white. Manolo Quezon’s recent posts are daily doses of colorized archival photographs. He also supplies the original, so one can see how much artificial intelligence (AI) has retouched or even revised the image before applying color. History on social media is now written by AI with little or no regard for archival authenticity.

Rereading the first of a multivolume “Annual Report of Major General Arthur MacArthur … Military Governor in the Philippine Islands” (Manila, 1900), I was floored by the data on the conduct of the pacification of the islands. Then there was the bias. It belittled military engagements or Filipino attacks as “isolated” and merely as “minor affairs, some of which reached the dignity of combats.” It was not the “splendid little war” they expected, troops had to be spread thinly over a wide, unknown terrain. From 53 stations on Nov. 1, 1899, it increased to 413 stations by Sept. 1, 1900. Within that period, the enemy suffered: 268 killed, 750 wounded, and 55 captured, compared to the Filipinos with: 3,227 killed, 694 wounded, and 2,864 captured. Do these numbers include Filipino noncombatants forced out of the countryside into hamlets where they suffered and died from lack of food as well as disease from overcrowded, unsanitary conditions?

Enemy sources described Filipinos as: “… not a warlike or ferocious people. Left to themselves, a large number [perhaps a considerable majority] would gladly accept American supremacy, which they are gradually coming to understand means individual liberty and absolute security in their lives and property.

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“The people of the islands, however … have been maddened by rhetorical sophistry and stimulants applied to national pride, until the power of discriminating in behalf of matters of public concern or private interest [never very strongly established among them], has for the time being been almost entirely suspended … the people seem to be actuated by the idea that in all doubtful matters of politics or war, men are never nearer right than when going with their own kith and kin, regardless of the nature of the action, or of its remote consequences.”

That sounds familiar, like we have not changed much since the Philippine-American War. Another notable flaw in our character was the “inability to organize on a large scale, or for any purpose requiring unity of action or a prolonged effort; … personal animosities were given full scope to the exclusion of public interests …” It was also clear that “insurgent guerrillas are not soldiers in the true sense of the word, but it is a mistake to classify them as ladrones or armed robbers,” who have also preyed on insurgent leaders.

Textbook history oversimplifies the Philippine-American War, robbing us of a mirror to see what we were and how we in the present can change for the better.

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