This story
was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly
newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. V, No. 8, April 3-9, 2005
Big White Brother, Little Brown Brother and
Two vs Three Bells of Balangiga:
According to Couttie, the
Balangiga Raid as a deliberate attack on the American occupation and on Empire
was an act of terrorism. Terrorism is defined as deliberate and systematic harm
in the form of deaths and injuries inflicted on unarmed civilians. The Balangiga
Raid simply does not fall under this category.
By Ricco Alejandro
Santos In November 2004, Bob
Couttie, British author of Hang the Dogs: The True Tragic History of the
Balangiga Massacre (New Day, Quezon City) and co-founder of the Balangiga
Research Group, sent a review of The Untold People’s History: Samar
Philippines, a work of mine and Bonifacio Lagos and published by Sidelakes
Press, California. The following essay is a rejoinder to Couttie’s review. Bob Couttie begins his
review by denouncing “Marxist versions of history”, the “Marxist/Constantinist
paradigm” and the “reactionary”“status quo in Philippine history founded on the
writings of Renato Constantino and Teodoro Agoncillo in the face of an
increasing shift of historical writing away from the paradigms established in
the late 1960s and 1970s.”
He implies that it is
instead the type of historiography his book represents that is revolutionary. This description as
“reactionary” of the type of history writing found in Untold People’s History
is the first of three basic labels he tries to pin on the book. This first
attempt at mislabelling however betrays a major facet of his mind-set:
mechanical thinking. The very reason that Couttie offers for branding Untold
as reactionary is that it allegedly belongs to the dominant anti-imperialist
school of history that began with Agoncillo in the 1960s and continued with
Constantino in the 1970s.
To tag these books as
“reactionary” just because they became dominant in the academe is pure
mechanical thinking. This misrepresentation flows out of a complete disregard
for the context in the rise of works like Agoncillo’s and Constantino’s in the
classroom. The anti-imperialist trend in historical scholarship emerged with
Jose Rizal and reemerged after nearly 400 hundred years, during which Spanish
friars and secular historians, American academics and later Filipino historians
influenced by them would propagate to Filipino students a conventional history
justifying colonization from 1571 to 1946 and then despite formal independence,
the colonial worship of foreign capital, dictation (as in International Monetary
Fund policies) and models of social change.
That such nationalist works
were able to gain headway during those decades points to the intellectual and
persuasive power of the nationalism that reemerged then. But in no way did this
nationalism as a whole in both theory and practice become the status quo in
Philippine society to a point that it would begin to even become a reactionary
or conservative force. It is in fact the anti-nationalism and pro-imperialism
that has dominated more than 400 years of Philippine historiography and history.
That there is a wave of new historical writings in step with the resurgence of
pro-imperialism packaged as globalization and represented by works such as those
by the American historian Glenn Anthony May, which is a demolition job on
Bonifacio praised by Couttie, does not mean at all that they are revolutionary.
They are new in form but basically old in substance: neo-reactionary because in
support of the dominant colonial mentality perpetuated by the colonizers and
their present-day counterparts, these new historical writings are directed at
countering the developing Filipino nationalism pioneered by Jose Rizal,
popularized by Andres Bonifacio and pursued in contemporary times by various
patriotic scholars and activists.
A second label of Couttie
against Marxist writing is “de rigueur”, according to Webster’s,
“required by fashion or etiquette”. What he aims here is to paint a stereotype
of Marxism as monolithic and lacking in creativity and innovation. This reflects
a Cold War ignorance of genuine Marxism. Mature Marxism, as propounded in Marx’s
later works, is not only distinctly anti-imperialist. It also puts a premium on
recognizing new developments and discontinuities in society as well as in the
continuities in fundamental social relations; hence, this book conforms
definitely to this principle. For this reason, the book
is one with Constantino in supporting the general Marxist tenets that class
relationships basically define historical change and social reality and that a
critical history of a people such as the Filipinos who still need to be
liberated as a nation must be above all anti-imperialist. Indeed, our book hews
to Constantino’s requirements for a people’s history: In studying these
struggles, a true people’s history discovers the laws of social development,
delineates the continuities and discontinuities in a moving society, records the
behavior of classes, uncovers the myths that have distorted thought and brings
out the innate heroism and wisdom of the masses. On the other hand, a
sharper look into the book’s contents would show that it contains some
contentions that based partly on interpretations of Marx’s ideas, that conflict
with some of Constantino’s assertions in The Past Revisited and the
Continuing Past. First of all, Untold maintains that the development
of merchant capital in Spain and in the Philippines was and is basically a
feudal, not capitalist, phenomenon. Secondly, that data point to the conclusion
that under the impact of imperialist underdevelopment, the Philippines has
remained basically feudalistic, rather than advanced to a capitalist stage.
The lesson of the story is
that the Marxist tradition is not a monolithic one, as Couttie claims. On the
contrary, Marxist writing of history requires a specific interpretation,
hopefully correct, interpretation of Marx’s basic theory, and a creative
selection and interpretation of the most relevant facts
But obviously, Couttie
prefers to flaunt his ignorance and caricaturing of Marxism in Cold War fashion. The third label pasted by
Couttie on Marxist analysis is lack of “objectivity”. To support this claim, he
asserts that: The Marxist/Constantinist
paradigm, however, as admitted by Constantino in his groundbreaking
‘The
Philippines: A Past Revisited”,
is that ‘objective’
history must be suppressed until the
‘people’
have acquired a sense of appropriately politicized nationalism, only then may
they be allowed the freedom to open the book of the past and read the often ugly
warts that lay within it. This is however what
Constantino wrote in The Past Revisited: “The advances of society,
the advent of civilization, the great artistic works were all inspired and made
possible by the people who were the mainsprings of activity and the producers of
the wealth of societies. But their deeds have rarely been recorded because they
were inarticulate…. “Philippine historians can
contribute to this important stream of thought by revisiting the past to
eliminate the distortion imposed by colonial scholarship to redress the
imbalance inherent in conventional historiography by projecting the role of the
people… “In pursuing this task, the
present work may appear to overstress certain betrayals and may seem to
exaggerate the importance of certain events while paying scant attention to
others customarily emphasized. This is necessary today in the face of the still
predominantly colonial view of our past. We need to emphasize what is glossed
over. “When intellectual
decolonization shall have been accomplished, a historical account can be
produced which will present a full, more balanced picture of reality.” Couttie thus misses the
point of Constantino entirely. He completely fails to understand that the
balance that Constantino wanted achieved through intellectual colonization was
not countering the “overstress” on betrayals and individuals ignored by colonial
historians by restoring the monopoly of historical focus on the actions and
statements of the colonizers and their puppets. This would simply mean
reproducing the old bias of colonial history. What Constantino meant, and this
Couttie simply failed to get, was that a more balanced account could only be
achieved with a study of the political economy of society, especially the labor,
production and productivity of the working people.
And this is precisely a
focus of Untold People’s History. For that alone, it fulfils
Constantino’s prescriptions of a people’s history, which he admits for lack of a
sufficient political economic discussion of the labor and productivity of the
people, was not achieved in the Past Revisited: “This work [the past
Revisited] is a modest step in this direction. It does not claim to being a
real people’s history although the process of demythologizing Philippine history
and exposing certain events and individuals is part of the initial work toward
restoring history to the people.” This point exemplifies the
express failure and inability of Couttie to synthesize the most penetrating and
illuminating conclusions from the facts. But he clings to his flawed
interpretation of Constantino and the Marxist tradition to set the tone for his
attempt to discredit the entire book by questioning the accuracy of certain
statements of facts. He proposes: Look, these Marxists like Constantino in the
first place don’t care for balance and objectivity. Then, he lines up a list of
alleged inaccuracies in fact which he expects will destroy the whole edifice of
the conclusions of Untold. To establish the claim that
these inaccuracies are part of a systematic attempt to distort and subvert the
truth, he resorts to the Cold War tactic of describing the book as a
totalitarian conspiracy by labelling the alleged inaccuracies as Newspeak.
Newspeak was the process of doctoring facts by redefining words into their
opposite meanings under the regime of Big Brother, a parody by George Orwell of
the Soviet regime in his book, Animal Farm. Doublespeak under Big Brother
meant slogans like, “Freedom is Slavery”. But what does Newspeak and
Big Brother best symbolize in Philippine history and society? Let’s return to
that a little later.
Couttie contests five
assertions as to accuracy in facts, some based on the conclusions and research
of historian Rey Imperial, and one, based on that of Rolando Borrinaga, author
of Balangiga Conflict Revisited and co-member of Couttie in the Balangiga
Research Group. In the case of the
occurrence of water cure, Couttie cites the testimony before a U.S. Congress
hearing of a Private William Gibbs to refute the inaccuracy of this point cited
by Imperial in “Balangiga and After”. Couttie hammers on this point. However,
even if it were shown to have not taken place in Balangiga before the Raid, this
fact could only be minor and peripheral, considering that many Balangignons were
subjected to many other equally abusive forms of physical and mental torture, a
fact which he does not dispute. He also contests other
points raised by Imperial and two other facts pointed out both by Imperial and
Borrinaga, either questioning the authenticity of documents or citing what he
claims the lack of evidence. For one, he dismisses
Imperial’s assertion that the mayor of Balangiga sent a letter to U.S. officials
requesting troops there, thus setting them up for a guerrilla raid. He claims no
evidence exists in spite of the testimony of a Private George Meyer cited by
Borrinaga in Balangiga Conflict Revisited. Then, he doubts the
authenticity of a letter of Mayor Abayan to General Lukban that outrightly
revealed the plan of the guerrilla forces to trap and attack the American forces
in Balangiga. Thus, he contradicts both Borrinaga and Imperial. His doubts are
based on the shallow reason that the original letter is missing, and the naïve
and absurd notion that the trap “served no militarily tactical or strategic
purpose”. The success itself of the Balangiga Raid is proof enough that the trap
served such a purpose. Nearly a hundred years after the Raid, Couttie is in
complete denial mode about the military ingenuity and guerrilla skills of the
Balanginons, a quality acknowledged by many Spanish and American colonizers as
applying to Filipinos in general.
Then, Couttie seeks to take
us, authors of Untold, to task for “[considering Private William] Denton
a suitable hero for Filipinos to admire and emulate”. He contradicts Borrinaga’s
own description of William Denton as a deserter “to the Philippine side”. He
denies that Denton is a “voluntary deserter” and speculates that he simply fell
into Filipino hands. He is simply bewildered and flabbergasted at how any
American soldier could in his right imperialist mind and with a good moral
character could defect from the side of the colonizers to the resisting natives
and take up the anti-imperialist cause. He scrambles to discredit Denton as not
to be trusted and cowardly. This, in spite of the description by Private Gibbs
of Denton as “a good soldier, of good repute and of good character who would not
do ‘do anything of that (rape} [of which he was accused by some, apparently to
rationalize his defection] because he was in sympathy always with the natives”.
Couttie cannot simply believe Americans themselves can be anti-imperialist, as
in the case of Denton and in fact of Mark Twain, often considered the greatest
American writer in history, and of many others then and now. Couttie also disputes the
conclusion in Untold that the Lukban revolutionary army joined forces
with the Pulahanes in Samar. This, despite the fact that the Lukban guerrilla
army operated in the interior areas, where the Pulahanes had long held sway. In
the book, the authors also pointed to the fact that in “welcoming the American
occupation troops”, the Balangignon men wore hats with red bands, certainly an
article of wear directly linked to the red turbans wore by the Pulahanes. He
claims that being rivals, the Lukban army and the Pulahanes could not have
joined forces against the American invaders. But even a cursory history of
guerrilla warfare in the country reveals otherwise. Numerous references point to
the cooperation of rival guerrillas against the common foreign invader, such as
during the Japanese occupation. He cannot take the fact that peasant and artisan
masses on one hand and the patriotic principalia elite can unite in a common
anti-imperialist struggle.
And finally, Couttie is
bent on downplaying the casualties of the imperialist rampage. He questions the
figure of 25,000 deaths in an island where the official policy of the U.S.
invasion force was to take no prisoners and implement famine-friendly “scorched
earth” measures such as ransacking food supplies in the interior. But so much for the data
contested. Let us proceed to the major conclusions that Couttie contraposes to
those in Untold People’s History.
The first is found in the
following excerpts: …this was not only the
case for American imperialism but Tagalog imperialism, too.
Imperialism transcends nationality, race and skin colour…. In December 1898, Vicente
Lukban, inarguably a member of the cacique class and loyal to the Tagalog-ruled
State which intended to suppress even the Visayan language, was sent to Samar to
colonize and acquire the island, which was farther from the Tagalog region than
Britain is from France or Germany, and as far culturally from the Tagalogs as
Baghdad is from London’sChelsea.
The authors do not look at
the class structure of Balangiga and its influence on the attack. Little
happened in Samar unless it benefited the economic and political elite and it
seems hardly likely that the Balangiga attack was any different. When Company
C. closed the town’s
port it hurt the economic elite. They could no longer make money exporting
produce to Basey, Tacloban or Catbalogan, nor could they turn a profit by
importing food stuffs and selling them to the townspeople.
Did this influence the decision by the elite to drive the Americans out of town? Thus, the first tack of
Couttie is to denigrate the Philippine national liberation movement as
imperialist. In other words, revolutionary nationalism equals imperialism.
Wasn’t this uncannily similar to Big Brother’s slogan “Freedom is Slavery”? This contention strikingly
mirrors the thesis of Fr. Arcilla in Kasaysayan that the Spanish
oppression and yoke on the Filipino really weren’t new at all. So based on the
equation that the old local oppression equaled the new foreign oppression, then
we get the implied conclusion that, then, what’s so bad about Spanish or
American imperialism? But the Untold People’s
History debunks this neo-colonialist revisionist thesis. Tagalog imperialism
was never an objective reality in Philippine history and is a mere figment of
Couttie’s imagination. Even when Anglo-American corporations already dominated
Samar society and siphoned out the bulk of the income and true value created by
the Samarnons, only a minority portion went to local merchants based in Manila
and Cebu. The big feudal-merchant elite in Manila and Cebu were mere adjuncts or
subalterns of the Anglo-American firms and Manila and Cebu were merely
transshipment points or entrepots in this unfair trade. The notion of Tagalog
imperialism falls under the classic stratagem of colonial divide and rule:
pitting one ethno-linguistic native group against another in order to build and
maintain a real Empire, such as the British Raj in India and the American Empire
in the Philippines and other areas in the Pacific. Wasn’t this precisely the
method used by the Spanish conquistadors to defeat the Sumuroy-led rebellion, by
deploying 700 Lutao warriors from Zamboanga? The concoction that is
Tagalog imperialism is a shallow ploy to pander to the feudal regionalism of
local elites. Such a regionalism has served as a negative factor in the
historical epic drive to create the Filipino nation. It was this regionalism
that genuine nation-states today such as England itself needed to defeat,
against the disunity among the Welsh, Breton, Anglo-Saxon, Cornish, Middle
English and Old French speaking groups, in order to arrive where they are today.
It was this same regionalism and ethnocentrism that was employed by the
Aguinaldo group based in Cavite to usurp the leadership of the Katipunan from
Bonifacio. And now, Couttie attempts to stir up this same feudal regionalism in
his feeble effort to rationalize the American invasion of the Philippines. Even
this attempt is pathetic if not comic, as he argues in his mechanical way that
Samar is farther than the Tagalog region than Britain is to France and Germany.
This is as if, there is no point in an American nation that spans from
California to New York. And then, he tries to
bolster his argument by claiming that Samar was as far culturally from the
Tagalogs as Baghdad from London’s Chelsea. On the contrary, Untold People’s
History argues that the case for building socio-political unity across
the archipelago was strong precisely because of the strong ethno-linguistic ties
and burgeoning trade-marriage networks in the island.
The example of the Samarnon
migrant to Manila, Second Lt. Benidicto Nijaga, who embraced the cause of
national liberation spearheaded by the Katipunan initially based in the Tagalog
region, is a case in point. Another is that of the two printing workers from
Aklan, Candido Iban and Francisco Castillo, who stole types for publishing the
Kalayaan, and who later returned to Aklan and other areas in Panay to
lead the nationalist revolution there.
The efforts of Couttie to
devalue the Philippine revolutionary movement as a mere Tagalog state,
imperialist at that, is parallel to the efforts of American historian Glenn
Anthony May, whom he praises, to denigrate Bonifacio and the Katipunan. He dogmatically and
sweepingly lumps together the local elite, as some monolithic oppressive and
reactionary force. In contrast, Untold People’s History clearly
delineates from the time of Lapu-lapu onwards a division between a patriotic
segment of the local feudal elite and a colonial, corrupt segment, especially
among the richest, merchant lords. The book traces the tradition of such
patriotism among the local elite from Lapu-lapu to Rizal to Lukban. The lessons
of world history provide that segments of the elite, usually the lower levels,
are able to transcend their conservative tendencies and aspects, and become
anti-imperialist and anti-feudal or progressive. We can only point to the
patrician Washington and the enlightened samurais who led the Meiji
Restoration, Japan’s capitalist revolution.
Untold People’s History
recognizes Mila Guerrero’s thesis
that the big merchant-landed elite’s hegemony of the struggle led to abuses.
Among the book’s arguments in fact is that it is this elite’s usurpation of the
Katipunan’s leadership role that facilitated the cooptation by the American
colonizers of the principalia and later the defeat of the revolution. After battering the entire
local elite, Couttie conveniently omits the fact that it was precisely this
colonial corrupt segment, with its feudal warriors and mercenary troops, that
served as the both Spanish and American colonizers’ appendage and main force for
crushing resistance to colonial invasion and rule. Couttie even goes to the
outrageous extent of castigating us from not coming out with a class structure
of Balangiga, a stance of out-“Marxing the Marxists”. Obviously he is in total
denial mode about the comprehensive class analysis that pervades the book.
Shades of Doublespeak!
But what he really wants us
to do is to be selective and myopic as his treatment of classes and limit
ourselves to the local elite, while casting a blind eye on the foreign elite,
who are in fact the prime beneficiaries and overlords of the unfair foreign
trade in Samar and the rest of the country.
Couttie seeks to revive a
pro-colonial revisionism of the imperialist reality by redefining imperialism;
in his words, “Imperialism transcends nationality”. In truth, imperialism in the
modern context is in fact the suppression by an overgrown and overreaching
nation of an emerging nation. Eventually, it involves exploitation and plunder
because it is directed at the transfer of unpaid wealth from one country to
another. This plunder is not only the supreme objective of the plundering nation
but it is also the primary means to weaken its victim country and sap the
victims’ resistance. But Couttie’s ultimate
thrust becomes clearer in his second thesis, as expressed in the following
excerpts: The Americans also
usurped the power of the local political elite, reducing its ability to exploit
the people of the town and limiting its power to rule. Aye, there’s the rub, in
the words of Shakespeare, the foremost writer of Couttie’s native country. Here
is the secret of his argument:
Okay, I, Couttie, admit
that the American invaders were imperialist; but still, they were benevolent,
you see, they even “reduced the ability [of the local political elite] to
exploit the people of the town”. Indeed, the American occupation forces were
“good” imperialists, in fact, liberators; and that the rise of the American
Empire in the Philippines was actually liberation for the Filipino people and
masses. What Couttie’s review boils
down is a perfect rationalization of American colonialism and imperialism as the
savior, guardian and gendarme of third world peoples such as the Filipinos from
their local, feudal elites. In short, Big White Brother to the Filipinos’ Little
Brown Brother. Now it is revealed that
Couttie’s analysis in effect was not as truthful or candid as he projected it to
be in claiming that “Lukban’s
occupation of Samar, with the help of an officer corps that largely excluded
Samarenos, was just as much an act of imperialism as the American occupation of
the archipelago”. In other words, a case of equal imperialisms. On second
thought, in Couttie’s mind, they are not equal at all: Tagalog imperialism is
inimical to Filipino interests, while American imperialism is protective of
Filipino interests. And yet, this blissful
picture of benevolent patronage and protection is belied by the human rights
record of the American occupation. Indeed, to voice out any opinion against
Empire under the American occupation was simply illegal and subject to punitive
action by virtue of the Anti-Sedition Law. Meanwhile, Filipinos underwent a
systematic process of miseducation and unlearning of their Katipunan-cultivated
nationalism, a colonial form of Big Brother totalitarianism, that inculcated the
central belief that colonial bondage was liberation, Slavery was Freedom. The propaganda message of
the American empire-builders in the Philippines then to both the Filipinos and
American public was: we are conquering you, natives, to “civilize” and
“democratize” you because you are incapable of governing and protecting
yourselves. This is precisely Couttie’s contemporary spin on events in the
archipelago a century before. But the harsh truth and
reality, spelled out in Untold People’s History, is that the American
corporations led the plunder of Samar and the rest of the Philippines through
unfair trade, and at the same time, assisted by the U.S. colonial government and
the local colonial politicians, kept the ground fertile for plunder by restoring
tenancy and merchant profiteering. Moreover, to perpetuate
that plunder, imperialism coopted, developed and protected this anti-modernizing
elite, especially the big comprador-merchant elite. The Untold People’s
History itself not only shows how tenancy and merchant profiteering built up
under American colonial occupation. It also explains why. Moreover, the book
reveals that American Empire in the Philippines did not reduce exploitation, but
in fact magnified it. Couttie is so much in
denial that he ignores the data and conclusions in the book that reveal that it
is precisely the entry of Anglo-American corporations in the 19th
century that dealt a final blow on local coconut oil processing and textile
production in Samar. Instead he goes on to claim: “After a brief economic boom
in the latter years of the 19th century it reverted back to its traditional
poverty”. In reality, as the book
points out, only the American and British corporations and their Manila and Cebu-based
trading partners enjoyed this boom from exporting abaca fiber to foreign
navy-ship building industries (whereas these were previously processed into
local textile) and copra to foreign soap-and-explosives-manufacturing factories.
Of course, for Couttie, the comprador type of impoverishment, underdevelopment
and de-industrialization = economic boom, in good Big Brother Doublespeak. What Couttie also mistakes
for benevolence, in his words, “apparent acts of kindness” is colonial
patronage, a process whereby the colonizer grants a relatively small amount of
money, resources and privileges to the colonized, more exactly a section of
them, in exchange for an attitude of dependency, submissiveness and acceptance
of powerlessness, subjugation and exploitation. Untold People’s History
points that it is the local big feudal landed-merchant elite that received this
patronage in exchange for their collaboration with the colonizing power. It is this systematic and
systemic underdevelopment of Samar and the Philippines that is the book’s major
thesis. And it is this thesis which Couttie ignores and glosses over with his
crude recycling of Cold War rhetoric that demolishes his myth of a benevolent
American imperialism in Samar and the Philippines.
In a review of Borrinaga’s
book, the Balangiga Conflict Revisited, Couttie makes this anti-Filipino
claim with this statement: “The Balangiganon were the 'piggy in the middle' in a
war they wanted no part of.”
Couttie’s fourth major
conclusion in his review is:
“The authors wish to
believe, despite contrary evidence, that the Balangiga town mayor, Pedro Abayan,
invited American authorities to send a garrison to the town in order to kill
American soldiers. If so, since this served no militarily tactical or
strategic purpose, it reduced the Balangiganons to mere terrorists,
about as clever as the folk who smuggled box-cutters onto the aircraft
involved in the 9/11 attack.” In short, according to
Couttie, the Balangiga Raid as a deliberate attack on the American occupation
and on Empire was an act of terrorism.
Terrorism is defined as
deliberate and systematic harm in the form of deaths and injuries inflicted on
unarmed civilians. The Balangiga Raid simply does not fall under this category.
The targets of the raid itself were armed combatants and participants of a force
that in fact violated international law by invading, occupying and plundering
the Philippines. In fact, these troops, the 9th Company , in
particular, had just arrived from China, where they had participated in the
quelling of the Boxer Rebellion, a campaign marked by much brutality.
That they were caught off
guard by an ingenious ruse, much like the Trojan Horse stratagem of the Iliad,
or by their own drunkenness, whether or not induced by the Balanginons
themselves, as conjectured by Borrinaga, does not exempt them as targets of a
national liberation army fighting for the freedom of the motherland. Despite the
protestations of Couttie, ruses have been part and parcel of the arsenals of
methods available and used by guerrilla fighters throughout history, including
patriots of the American revolution against the Empire of Great Britain. To
mechanically brand as terrorists freedom-fighters resorting to the tried and
tested guerrilla modes of warfare simply parallels the way the Spanish and
American colonizers branded Filipino guerrilla patriots as “ladrones” or
bandits. Couttie’s biased regard for
the Balanginon Raiders as terrorist is exposed in his insistence on using the
word “massacre” to describe the raid in spite of BRG co-founder Borrinaga’s
preference for the more neutral term “conflict”. Couttie’s antipathy toward
the guerrilla resistance is even more pronounced in the case of the Pulahanes,
whom he had virulently and outrightly branded as terrorist, even in opposition
to Borrinaga’s view that the Pulahanes were patriots.
In his essay “Comments on
House Resolution 268.”, he writes: “During the Pulahanes
period, from approximately 1903, many of those Balangiganons who fought Co. C.
fought alongside American forces against terrorism in Samar.” In fact it is the mode of
conduct of the American occupation forces toward the civilian Filipino
population in and outside Samar that lives up to the classification of
terrorism. Untold People’s History describes the extreme brutality and
contempt for civilian lives in the no-prisoner and scorched earth strategy of
the U.S. invasion forces in Samar.
The fifth major conclusion
of Couttie is expressed in these excerpts: “The island’s
penury will not be resolved by finding ‘others’
to blame for its situation but by creating an
‘us’
to redeem it through the traditional values expressed in the pintakasi. It
certainly won’t
be redeemed by divisive politics or politicking of the kind represented in this
book… “That said, somewhere
lurking beneath the locks and bars of its heavy political overburden there may
be a much needed history of Samar yearning to be set free….
A conspiracy theorist would point out
that the book claims to be part of an effort to get the Balangiga bells returned
to the town yet it intentionally presents a hectoring anti-American position
not shared by the people of Balangiga that will ensure that the bells remain in
Wyoming and Korea. Given that the return of the bells would have a
positive effect on Philippine-American relations, one cannot help but wonder
if the authors of The Untold Peoples History intend the bells to stay exactly
where they are.” In other words, Couttie
reiterates his continuing denial of history and its painful but real lessons it
has to offer, even as these are already staring him in the face through
Untold People’s History. But as a Filipino proverb goes, Mahirap gisingin
ang nagtutulug-tulugan. (It’s hard to awake those who pretend to be asleep).
And then, he enjoins the public to follow in the footsteps of his denial. Finally, he berates us for
an attitude of “anti-American hectoring,” threatening that the Filipino people
will not get their bells if we carry on as such.
As for anti-Americanism,
the label equates being anti-American with anti-imperialism, as if the United
States itself was not created by the American revolution against the British
Empire in 1776. It therefore seems as if Couttie remains in the time warp of the
Empire of his native country, Great Britain. While falsely accusing the authors
of being anti-American, Couttie exposes himself to be genuinely anti-Filipino
for his views alone on the American occupation of the Philippines. Webster’s defines
hectoring, as “bullying”. We can’t imagine how a critic of the American Empire
from a small underdeveloped archipelago, considered to be in the orbit of
American business, can be pictured as bullying an Empire. If there is any
bullying that is being done, it is the Empire that is in a position to do so,
whether in Iraq or in the Philippines. Of course, this reversal is par for the
course in a mode of Doublespeak.
Finally, Couttie calls for
a pintakasi (or a bayanihan, or cooperative undertaking) for the
bells. Pintakasi is inherently an exercise in equality. What Couttie
however wants in practice is an exercise in continuing inequality.
Back to reality mode, what
Couttie wants us to do is adopt a stance of mendicancy and docility toward the
Bush administration, which is now holding three bells and one lantaka
(cannon) in exchange for the patronage of returning this war booty.
But Couttie fails to
understand and dignify the Filipino quest for the three bells and the cannon.
Filipinos do not want patronage from the American holders of the bell; they want
justice. For them, it is not a privilege, but a right. It is a right that
addresses not only the injustice of snatching the freedom that Filipinos won at
the cost of so much blood, sweet and tears from the Spanish, but only the
injustice of perpetuating the country’s underdevelopment through unfair trade.
In fact, Couttie poses as
wanting the three bells for the Philippines. But actually is proposing an
altogether different scenario: “The 9th Infantry situation
is very different. The bell in their care is well looked after and is an
important part of the regiment's history and culture. “It is therefore suggested
that both Wyoming bells should be returned to Balangiga, to be replaced by a
replica to be donated to Warren AFB. Warren AFB to retain its cannon and thus
still have one original relic which is more appropriate.” In effect, Couttie is
proposing only the return of two bells and the retention of a bell in a U.S.
military base in Korea and the cannon in Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming,
ostensibly to commemorate the history and culture of the 9th Infantry
- a history and culture of invasion, occupation and plunder in the Philippines
and China. Moreover, Couttie wants
only the two Filipino bells returned as a measure and token of colonial
patronage: …as a mark of gratitude for
the help and support given to the United States by the people of Balangiga, to
wit: Many Balangiganons have
served in the US military forces, Navy and Army, in Vietnam and today in Iraq.
During World War Two,
Balangiganon guerrillas fought the Japanese on behalf of the United States;
During the Pulahanes
period, from approximately 1903, many of those Balangiganons, who fought Co. C
fought alongside American forces against terrorism in Samar.
In other words,
Balangiganons have been fighting terrorism under the US Flag for a century and
are doing so today. Surely that should count far more than 20 minutes of bloody
conflict in September 1901.
For Couttie, after all, the
return of only two bells is a reward for service to the American flag, and not a
means to reclaim Filipino justice and the Filipino national heritage, what
rightly belongs to the Filipino people in the first place. It is the quid pro
quo for submission to the Bush’s administration’s folly of colonial
adventurism in Iraq, packaged as “anti-terrorism”. For Couttie, such a gesture
might even serve as a carrot to return Filipino soldiers to Iraq - a formula of
Filipino blood for bells, just like American blood for Bush oil. What Couttie
reveals here is a consistent worship of Empire from Samar in 1901 to Iraq in
2004. Meanwhile, in the face of
Couttie’s persistent denial and rabid imperial mindset, a people’s history must
continue to be told. Only then can all three bells and a cannon be returned as
an act of justice for the Filipino. Bulatlat © 2004 Bulatlat
■
Alipato Publications Permission is granted to reprint or redistribute this article, provided its author/s and Bulatlat are properly credited and notified.
Colonial versus Nationalist Writing of Philippine History
Bulatlat
Lukban’s
occupation of Samar, with the help of an officer corps that largely excluded
Samarenos, was just as much an act of imperialism as the American occupation of
the archipelago. The conflict on Samar was a conflict between two colonizing
powers.…
The third thesis is that since
American occupation in the Philippines was benevolent after all, the Balangiga
Raid could have been prevented if the American soldiers in the town had just
“behaved”. In Couttie’s words, “Company C.’s
actions only become relevant if a different set of behavior would have altered
the outcome and stopped the attack happening.” Again as stated in Untold
People’s History, this assessment reduces and denigrates the patriotism of
the Balangiganons who are made to appear capable and desirous of fighting only
the human rights abuses and not the American occupation itself and the colonial
bondage of their motherland.