filipino american experiences: war, empire, migration, and...

Filipino American Experiences: War, Empire, Migration, and Cultural ImaginariesAsian American Studies 151K / Social Science 178Professor Christine Balance || em: [email protected]

1Wednesday, October 28, 15

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

For today’s class:I. Review last week’s readings and classroom exercise

II. Poetics of history & memory

III. Politics of history & memory


How do we define CULTURE? [from Raymond Williams’ KEYWORDS]

(Latin, colere/cultura): “inhabit, cultivate, protect, honour with worship”

a. early use (as “noun of process”): the tending of something (crops/animals)

b. early 16th century: extended to process of human development

c. early 18th century: extended to “independent noun”—abstract process or product of that process

d. late 18th century: Heder (Germany) “cultures” as plural—“folk culture” vs. modernizing “cultured”

e. more recently, “culture”—“music, literature, painting and sculpture, theatre and film”—connected to “claims to superior knowledge” and distinction between high/low art and culture


The Philippines (on “Map of the Island World”)

The Philippines (on “Map of Asia”)


Philippines (on “Map of Manila Galleon Trade Route”) (upper)

2007 Galleon Trade Arts Exchange flyer (right) - www.galleontrade.org


http://www.galleontrade.org

http://www.galleontrade.org

What is FILIPINO?

• Spanish term, from King Philip II

• During Spanish colonial times (mid-1500s-late 1800s), Filipino=offspring of Spanish parents born in the Philippines and different from Spaniards from spain (other racial/ethnic types in Philippines: indios/natives, class groups of Spanish and Chinese mestizo, etc.)

• At the end of the 19th century (late 1800s), “Filipino” stood for the political spectrum of working-class as well as intellectual elite who were fighting for nationhood

• (As we will see in the next two weeks), at the beginning of the 20th century—during the U.S. war and occupation of the Philippines—“Filipino” became a derogatory term associated with primitivism, child-like or animalistic qualities, “little brown brother”—ways of characterizing/lumping together the inhabitants of the Islands in order to substantiate the need for war/occupation


Filipino (according to Nick Joaquin): “a mixture of cultures and blood starting as recently as 1521 (Legazpi) and named after Spain’s Don Felipe II. The term might actually be a reminder of the violence of colonization and the ‘family romance’ gone awry. According to Rafael, to think of the guava as Filipino is to remember the Philippines’ “impure origins and foreign genealogies”, a history coming from the outside that continues to arrive from the future.”


What would U.S. and even world history look like with the Philippines (and Filipinos) at the center?


Filipino as “performative” term :by identifying a person, place, event, phenomenon as “Filipino,” it adds to our understanding of what it means to be “Filipino”


What is Filipino America?

an “imaginative topography”—physical places, cultural sites and conceptual spaces created by the interaction between U.S. and Philippine nations and cultures. Filipino America is marked by an “alternative modernity,” a view of historical time where the past and present co-exist with each other, gracefully. Filipino America does not reject tradition but instead consists of the “complex amalgamation of historical and cultural elements.”


What is “American tropics”? according to Allan Isaac, it is “both discursive practice and place. As place, the tropics geographically describe the region between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. The qualifier ‘American’ refers to the proprietary claims of the United States over island nations around these latitudinal markers….Most of these island nations suffered and continue to suffer military occupation, cultural imperialism, and neocolonial underdevelopment….as a disciplinary practice, the American Tropics constitute a set of controlling metaphors or tropes of imperial tutelage and containment that separate the primitive from the civilized, chaos from order, property from the proper.” (2)


According to last week’s readings, Filipinos can “claim” certain types of relationship to history:

a) narrative of U.S. exceptionalismb) narratives of Filipino nationalismc) history/memory as episodic (not epic)d) plagued by amnesia/forgettinge) politics of remembering


Timeline from Vestiges of War1872 – Filipino clerics Jose Burgos, Mariano Gomez, and Jacinto Zamora are garroted by the Spanish for their alleged role in the Cavite Mutiny

1877 – Noli Me Tangere, Jose Rizal’s first novel and written in Europe, provokes controversy for its account of Spanish abuses and is immediately condemned by the authorities in Manila

1892 – On his return from Europe, Rizal is exiled to Mindanao. Andres Bonifacio founds the Katipunan, a revolutionary society dedicated to the overthrow of the Spanish

1895 – The Cuban revolution against Spain begins


FIRST MAJOR WAR IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY1896 – Bonifacio and the Katipunan start the Philippine revolution against Spain. Emilio Aguinaldo and his forces take Cavite. Accused by the Spanish of helping to foment the revolution, Rizal is shot at dawn on December 30

1897 – Aguinaldo takes over the revolution by deposing and ordering the execution of Bonifacio. He establishes the independent Republic of the Philippines in November at Biak-na-Bato

1898 – With the battleship Maine being blown up in Havana Harbor, the United States declares war on Spain. Commodore George Dewey and the U.S. fleet destroy the Spanish Armada in Manila Bay on May 1. Aguinaldo, back from exile in Hong Kong, declares independence on June 12. Refusing to surrender to Filipinos, the Spanish agree to a mock bottle with the American forces, and surrender Manila to them on August 13. In December, the Treaty of Paris is signed by Spain and the U.S., whereby the latter take over the Philippines and indemnifies Spain $20 million (US dollars).


SECOND MAJOR WAR IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY1899 – Refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Paris treaty, Aguinaldo is sworn in as the first president of the Philippine Republic on January 23. On February 4, Willy Grayson, a Nebraska volunteer, shoots and kills a Filipino soldier, starting the Philippine-American War.

1901 – Col. Frederick Funston, aided by Macabebe mercenaries captures Aguinaldo in his Palanan, Isabela hideout. Henceforth known as Thomasites, American teachers arrive aboard the USS Thomas on August 23.

1902 – The Philippine-American War declared over on July 4. Guerilla warfare continues in much of the country.

* Philippine War with Japan (1942-1945)* Hukbalahap Rebellion (led by Communist Party) (1947-???)* Moro/Muslim Wars


Notable notes on the Philippine-American War

• gave birth to the political term/national identity of the “Filipino”• “the first Filipinos”: Rizal, Aguinaldo, Bonifacio, Mabini• considered 1st Vietnam war • Philippine “insurrection” versus “Philippine-American War”• Philippines won this war of independence (from Spain) with U.S. help • for U.S.—Philippines was “stepping stone” to establishment of “trade and influence” in Asia• generals/soldiers – fought in Civil War and Indian Wars • popular discourses – Manifest Destiny, White Man’s Burden -- and policies-- Benevolent Assimilation• legal aspects – Treaty of Paris, insular cases, 1934 Tydings- McDuffie Act


“Many have said this before me: we cannot indefinitely pretend that the second great war—the Filipino-American War—never happened. A national narrative without this crucial event makes us merely an appendage of empire.” (Ileto, 218)


MONUMENTS & MEMORIALS


How else did the U.S. colonial government “establish the official memory of the two wars”?

• Americans specially promoted Rizal’s ideas

• Recognized the Filipino educated classes’ fight for independence but insisted that Filipinos (in 1898) were not fit for rule

• Philippine “rebellion” against U.S. occupation—“great misunderstanding”

• 1902 Sedition Act


“Many veterans of the Filipino-American War chose to keep alive these memories through veterans associations, patriotic societies, labor unions, and religio-political sects, just about all of which were illegal. Beneath the official cluster of memories about the two wars, we can identity such alternative modes or channels of memory.” (Ileto, 224)


“The White Man’s Burden (Apologies to Kipling)”Judge, Judge Publishing Company, New York, 1899

(artist: Victor Gillam)23Wednesday, October 28, 15

filipino american experiences: war, empire, migration, and...

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