Uncovering the
Forbidden Truth
Review of The Forbidden Book by Abe Ignacio,
Enrique de la Cruz, Jorge Emmanuel, and Helen Toribio (T’boli Publishing
and Distributor, U.S.)
172 pages
Philippine selling price: P1,400.00
The relevance of The Forbidden Book
lies not only in the wealth of historical information and insights that it
provides. It comes at a time when the U.S. is engaged in another
imperialist war, this time in Iraq. Leafing through the book, one finds
himself or herself confronted by similarities between the
Philippine-American War and the Iraq War.
BY ALEXANDER MARTIN REMOLLINO
Bulatlat
In his famous
article, “The Miseducation of the Filipino,” the late historian and social
critic Renato Constantino wrote about the Philippine-American War of
1899-1914 being hidden from the textbooks that we in the Philippines are
made to read in school.
The American forces
sent to the Philippines in the late 19th century were here to
liberate the country from the Spanish colonizers, these books say, and the
Filipinos are depicted as having willingly accepted American rule which
had the purpose of teaching Filipinos the art of self-government. Buried
in the official histories is the fact that the U.S. waged a 15-year war
against Filipino freedom fighters who had just won their freedom from
Spain with negligible “help” from American troops – as confirmed by
British lawyer Richard Brinsley Sheridan who was working in the
Philippines when the war broke out.
Recent papers show
that nearly 1.5 million Filipinos died in the war against U.S. colonial
occupation.
The miseducation
about the Philippine-American War, however, started much earlier in the
United States. This miseducation of the American people about the
Philippine-American War is the subject of The Forbidden Book by
Filipino-American scholars Abe Ignacio, Enrique de la Cruz, Jorge
Emmanuel, and the late Helen Toribio – launched in the Philippines at the
Popular Bookstore Feb. 5, a day after the war’s 106th
anniversary.
The book takes its
title from a 1900 cartoon showing then U.S. President William McKinley
preventing Uncle Sam from reading “The Forbidden Book” on “the true
history of the war in the Philippines.”
On Feb. 4, 1899, the
U.S. engaged the Philippines in a war on the pretext that Filipino
soldiers had fired at American troops at the San Juan Bridge. It was
actually the other way around: an American soldier named Willie Grayson
had fired shots at four Filipinos crossing the bridge.
“Halto!”
The late historian
Teodoro Agoncillo, in his classic History of the Filipino People,
recounted the incident, quoting Grayson himself thus: “I yelled
‘Halt!’...the man moved. I challenged with another ‘Halt!’ Then he
immediately shouted ‘Halto!’ to me. Well I thought the best thing
to do was to shoot him.”
The Forbidden Book
collects political cartoons in the period of the Philippine-American War
which appeared in various American newspapers and magazines. Of these
there are 88 colored cartoons and 133 black-and-white cartoons.
In their selection of
the cartoons, the authors present both sides of the Philippine-American
War: the “pros” and the “antis.” It is clear from the way they explain the
book, however, where they stand on the issue.
The authors speak of
an “economic transformation” in the U.S. characterizing the period between
the end of the U.S. Civil War in 1865 and the beginning of the
Philippine-American War in 1899.
“One important
consequence of the economic transformation was the need for overseas
markets to sell American manufactured goods,” the authors write.
“Concerned that the domestic market area was not enough to absorb the
products of industry and agriculture, powerful interests lobbied to keep
overseas markets open to U.S. business.”
They didn’t make that
up. They merely explain the words uttered in 1897 by leading capitalist
expansion advocate Sen. Albert Beveridge: “American factories are making
more than the American people can use; American soil is producing more
than they can consume. Fate has written our policy for us; the trade of
the world must and shall be ours.”
By highlighting that
point, the authors set the tone for the reading of the book, thereby
giving the reader pointers on how to make sense of those cartoons that
justify the occupation of the Philippines based on McKinley’s “Manifest
Destiny” slogan, based on the claim of “(Taking) up the White Man’s
burden--/...(Among) new-caught, sullen peoples,/Half-devil and
half-child,” to paraphrase British pro-imperialist poet Rudyard Kipling.
Negroes as savages
The cartoons were
illustrated at a time when the Negroes were looked upon by the white
Americans as savages, if not beasts, and there are many cartoons included
in the book which depict the Filipinos as African tribal babies. One of
the cartoons even compares the killing of Filipinos to “killing niggers.”
However, there are
cartoons which unveil the lies behind the “Manifest Destiny” slogan,
portraying the war as one that is in the interest of the U.S. capitalist
establishment but not of the American people and certainly not of the
Filipino people.
The relevance of
The Forbidden Book lies not only in the wealth of historical
information and insights that it provides.
It comes at a time
when the U.S. is engaged in another imperialist war, this time in Iraq,
which is being justified along the same messianic claims – a war
supposedly intending to dismantle tyranny in Iraq, only to replace Saddam
Hussein’s tyranny with the tyranny of a clique of leaders ready to
accommodate U.S. economic interests in Iraq’s rich resources. Leafing
through the book, one finds himself or herself confronted by similarities
between the Philippine-American War and the Iraq War.
It is very good that
being based in the U.S. did not take the Filipino out of the book’s
authors. In coming out with this book, the authors secure for themselves a
place in history with other Filipino expatriate intellectuals who
continued or have continued to be Filipino – and fight for the Filipino –
even “in the belly of the beast,” like Carlos Bulosan and Dr. E. San Juan,
Jr.
Author De la Cruz, a
former University of the
Philippines professor, is now with
the California State University’s Asian American Studies. A former
professor himself, Emmanuel is with Asia for Asian Studies in California
while Toribio taught at San Francisco State University’s Asian American
Studies. The book is available in the Philippines at Popular Bookstore
along Tomas Morato Street (near the corner of Timog Avenue), Quezon City;
or contact Ms. Joy Soriano at (63-2)4557738. Bulatlat
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