A few years ago I submitted an op-ed to a US-based magazine which holds a reputation as being progressive. The piece revolved around human rights abuses and repression in the Philippines and was largely inspired by a powerful report by the Philippines human rights group known as Karapatan [http://www.karapatan.org/]. Much to my surprise the piece was rejected by the editor. I have to confess that I was a bit stunned on several grounds, but I inquired as to the reasons for the rejection. Among other things s/he stated that the audience for this particular magazine would not be very interested in the issue. On top of that, the editor claimed that I used too many acronyms.
I was sincerely uncertain how to respond to this. How could a progressive magazine in the USA not be interested in the Philippines, I wondered. I dismissed the allegation about acronyms as a ridiculous afterthought by the editor given that each acronym was defined. Actually it felt that the editor’s stated concern about acronyms represented an objective marginalization of the significance of the popular democratic movement in the Philippines, which has loads of organizations.
The more that I thought about the response to this op-ed the more that I realized that it reflected what I would call “imperial ignorance.” By this I mean that side-lining a story about the Philippines as not being of interest to the readers of a progressive magazine amounts to a failure to understand the particular relationship that has existed between the USA and the Philippines for more than one hundred years.
1898
The US connection to the Philippines originates in the context of the Spanish-American War when US forces seized the Philippines from Spain, thereby undermining a nearly successful Philippine independence movement. When the Filipino people refused to accede to US domination, the USA launched a racist war of aggression in which more than one million Filipinos were killed over the course of more than a decade of fighting.
The Philippines was granted nominal independence in 1946 but was nothing more than a neo-colony and military base for the United States. A left-led insurgency in the 1940s was defeated with the assistance of the USA and in the late 1960s, the infamous Ferdinand Marcos instituted a more open dictatorship sparking an insurrection led by the Communist Party of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front (which it leads).
For many people in the USA who at all followed developments in the Philippines, the situation seemed to come to a happy ending with the 1986 People Power insurrection that ousted Marcos and returned the Philippines to alleged democratic rule. The problem was that the new regime, then led by Corazon Aquino, though offering many promises, did not address any of the fundamental challenges that had led to either the CPP/NDF uprising or the Moro secessionist movements on the large island of Mindanao. Instead, over the course of the decades, the neo-colonial reality of the Philippines has been shrouded for many of us in the USA through the form of democracy, whereas the content is anything but democratic.
Not on our news screen
I was reminded of this recently by a conference, held in Washington, DC. Identified as the “International People’s Tribunal on Crimes against the Filipino People” [http://
For many people in the USA, if there is any thought about or concern with Filipinos, it takes the form of nurses. Specifically, much like other countries that have made their chief export their own people (e.g., the history of Ireland’s relationship to the world in the aftermath of their colonization by the British), the Philippines trains and exports highly qualified medical personnel, most especially nurses. Due to economic impoverishment, Filipinos migrate around the world in search of a better life. In the early 20th century, the face of the Filipino in the USA was that of an agricultural and/or cannery worker (primarily on the West Coast). More recently it is that of the medical professional. And, as is also typical in the USA, few people ask the question as to why Filipinos leave their country in droves.
US foreign policy
The on-going repression and wars in the Philippines would be unsustainable were it not for the direct involvement of the USA. In addition to various forms of economic assistance to corrupt and undemocratic administrations, in 2002 the USA complicated the Philippine conflicts through its post-9/11 behavior. As the USA has done throughout the world, every conflict is viewed through the lens of the so-called war against terrorism. In the case of the Philippines, the conflict between the government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines was recast by the then Bush administration as a war against terrorism, in which the CPP (and their military arm, the New People’s Army) were reclassified as “terrorists” rather than being domestic insurgents. The Moro resistance was directly tied—by the USA—to Al Qaeda, despite evidence that only one group, Abu Sayyaf, may have ties to Al Qaeda, though it actually has ties to elements of the Philippine military. Thus, rather than assisting in a process of peaceful reconciliation and the addressing of legitimate popular grievances, the USA has, once again, inflamed the situation.
Added to this, of course, one must mention the territorial conflict between China and the Philippines over a host of islands in which the USA has decided to intervene on the side of the Philippines and, again, treat this situation as a potential military conflict. Through their actions, along with an anticipated return of US military bases, the Philippines becomes—again—a launch pad for east Asian adventures by the USA.
Which bring us back to the beginning of this story…
I earlier mentioned “imperial ignorance.” My point was not to chastise anyone for not knowing about the Philippines. Rather, in the USA complicity with aggression frequently follows on our ability to entirely ignore situations overseas and to plead lack of knowledge. Specifically, we are able to suggest a lack of knowledge about or interest in the Philippines precisely because of the nature of the relationship that has existed between the USA and the Philippines since 1898, a relationship of racial/imperial domination.
The response I received from this progressive magazine to the op-ed on the Philippines reminded me of a story I was told about a young German girl who, after World War II, asked her elders how they could have sat back and watched the Holocaust against the Jews and done nothing. She was told by her elders that they were unaware of what the Nazis were doing. “We did not know,” they claimed. The young girl replied: “You knew as much as you wanted to know!”
And so it can be said of too many people in the USA when it comes to the historical horrors perpetrated against the Filipino people in “our name.” We have known as much as we have wanted to know. The postscript to this, of course, reads like this: And we wanted to know so little so that we could hide behind our ignorance and claim not to be complicit in the suppression of democracy in our former colony.
Bill Fletcher, Jr. is the host of The Global African on Telesur-English. He is a racial justice, labor and global justice activist and writer. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and at www.billfletcherjr.com.
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2 Comments
Actually, this editor’s stated concern about acronyms which really represented an objective, deliberate systematic marginalization of the significance of the popular democratic movement in the Philippines, which has numerous diverse organizations.representing the labor movement, agrarian movement, student movement, the environmental movement, and so forth goes back to 1898 when US forces seized the Philippines from Spain, crushing brutally its nearly successful independence movement; and consequently launched not just a launched a racist war of aggression but really a racist genocidal war of aggression in which definitely, more than one million Filipinos were killed over the course of more than a decade of fighting. The worst part of this genocide took part in Samar in which the American military leader of this savagery declared that he would make Samar a “howling wilderness” through a campaign of systematic extermination because of the significant Filipino resistance to this racist genocidal war of aggression. Unfortunately, this type of racist war of aggression has now evolved into a low intensity conflict of selective extermination, disappearances, harassment and torture by certain segments of the Filipino military, paramilitary groups, private armies of land owners, politicians, businessmen, and transnational companies and corporations throughout the Philippines in varying degrees of repression that has been noted and documented extensively by human rights groups like Karapatan…
Even more tragically, this imperial ignorance in America is rooted in our history in which in our schools, colleges, and universities, it was never mentioned in my history courses that the US was guilty of colonial and imperial aggression. It was never mentioned that the US was guilty of having perpetrated a racist, genocidal war of aggression and that it had thwarted Filipino independence. In my American history courses, it was only mentioned that the US had heroically defeated Spain in the Philippines and liberated the Philippines from Spain, thereby giving them independence, although the opposite was true All o this ignorance is really a combination of a lack of knowledge and interest due to the deeply rooted in the relationship of racial and imperial domination between the US and the Philippines that is perpetuated by US military and economic aid to the Philippines for the so-called war on terror that just perpetuates the systemic injustices, inequities, and conflicts in this besieged country.. Actually, the infamous strategic hamlets that the US set up in Vietnam during the Vietnam were originally begun by the US in its racial imperial war of aggression in the Philippines that began in 1898.
It must also be understood that the US is deeply involved in its effort to systematically control the Philippines through a massive systematic program of surveillance, including a network of spies and indirect, covert influence of the mass media. It is very subtle and sophisticated. Professor Alfred McCoy, a History Professor of the University of Wisconsin and a former Fulbright Scholar in the Philippines, wrote a book about this, entitled “Policing the Empire: The Surveillance State – America and the Philippines”..Thus, one must really read that book to understand clearly how the Philippines is the invisible neo-colony of the US and why and how this destructive relationship is becoming much more entrenched.
The problem is with U.S imperialism is nobody (in America) are really aware of it. If you actually go in to the details, graphic details at what the American’s did to the Philippines, I think few people would be able to read it because it is so awful, it is the same with Haiti, Laos, Cuba and so on. This “progressive” magazine you speak off, are, I suppose just playing along with the old Stalinist theory of freedom.
I think a lot of it has to do with what Orwell would call “unpeople”, these Filipino’s do not matter, we are not told that but it is clear from the almost zero reporting we get from the country. It is the same in my own country, England.
When Churchill starved to death 6 million Indians in Bengali, and he was told about the awful damage was done, all he could say was “is Gandhi dead”, in fact those were not his exact words, but what he said was so disgraceful I have no desire to repeat it. So imperialism is not just exclusive to the U.S, and the U.S does not burn all its internal records; people will never know the truth about Churchill. America on the other hand…