A lot of Filipinos fought with the Americans to topple the Spanish rule and hopefully get their freedom but when they found out that they were just replacing one colonial power with another, some revolted and took up arms against their former allies, of a sort. Can’t blame them for trying…sort of like the Vietnamese asking for their coun…
A lot of Filipinos fought with the Americans to topple the Spanish rule and hopefully get their freedom but when they found out that they were just replacing one colonial power with another, some revolted and took up arms against their former allies, of a sort. Can’t blame them for trying…sort of like the Vietnamese asking for their country back from the French in 1918 and getting rebuffed at Versailles by Wilson, Lloyd George, and Clemenceau. Then they got screwed again when the French came back into power after 1945, after thinking that the U.S. would finally end European colonialism in SE Asia…yeah…we never seem to learn.
It's my understanding from reading some detailed history of the American military in the Philippines, the U.S. initially promised independence to the people of the Philippines and then reneged. I have a very disturbing series of photos that someone in my cousin's family had of the hanging of two brothers, key leaders of the "insurgents" (or freedom fighters, if you will). The choice of hanging them was deliberately cruel. According to the author quoted below, there were, in fact, no more hangings.
Here is an excerpt I copied to file with the photos: Le Roy, James A. The Americans in the Philippines; a history of the conquest and first years of occupation, with an introductory account of the Spanish rule. With an introd. by William Howard Taft., 1914, vol. II, pp. 211-12 [footnote 1]:
“The first of these hangings (the first executions in the Philippines under American rule, beheld with considerable awe by the Filipinos, as the garrote had been in recent years the Spanish method of exectuion for civil crimes and shooting the method used in military executions) took place on March 30, 1900, at San Carlos, Pangasinan (Harper’s History, p.340). A number of other chiefs, bandits pure and simple, were tried in Pangasinan, Tarlak, and several other provinces, during the early months of the year, but only two other executions had taken place under General Otis as reviewing authority before his departure. See Sen.Doc. 331, pp. 1000-25 and 1340-50, for the records of the first trials of this sort, especially pp. 1344-47, the trial of Vicente and Innocencio Prado, in Pangasinan in June, 1900, they being convicted of murder and other crimes, both felonies and semipolitical and against Americans as well as Filipinos. They were hanged at Dagupan in December, 1900. Vicente Prado had been a member of the congress at Malolos; this is an indication of the character of the men the revolutionary leaders would sometimes employ, especially in regions of factional feeling like Pangasinan."
A lot of Filipinos fought with the Americans to topple the Spanish rule and hopefully get their freedom but when they found out that they were just replacing one colonial power with another, some revolted and took up arms against their former allies, of a sort. Can’t blame them for trying…sort of like the Vietnamese asking for their country back from the French in 1918 and getting rebuffed at Versailles by Wilson, Lloyd George, and Clemenceau. Then they got screwed again when the French came back into power after 1945, after thinking that the U.S. would finally end European colonialism in SE Asia…yeah…we never seem to learn.
It's my understanding from reading some detailed history of the American military in the Philippines, the U.S. initially promised independence to the people of the Philippines and then reneged. I have a very disturbing series of photos that someone in my cousin's family had of the hanging of two brothers, key leaders of the "insurgents" (or freedom fighters, if you will). The choice of hanging them was deliberately cruel. According to the author quoted below, there were, in fact, no more hangings.
Here is an excerpt I copied to file with the photos: Le Roy, James A. The Americans in the Philippines; a history of the conquest and first years of occupation, with an introductory account of the Spanish rule. With an introd. by William Howard Taft., 1914, vol. II, pp. 211-12 [footnote 1]:
“The first of these hangings (the first executions in the Philippines under American rule, beheld with considerable awe by the Filipinos, as the garrote had been in recent years the Spanish method of exectuion for civil crimes and shooting the method used in military executions) took place on March 30, 1900, at San Carlos, Pangasinan (Harper’s History, p.340). A number of other chiefs, bandits pure and simple, were tried in Pangasinan, Tarlak, and several other provinces, during the early months of the year, but only two other executions had taken place under General Otis as reviewing authority before his departure. See Sen.Doc. 331, pp. 1000-25 and 1340-50, for the records of the first trials of this sort, especially pp. 1344-47, the trial of Vicente and Innocencio Prado, in Pangasinan in June, 1900, they being convicted of murder and other crimes, both felonies and semipolitical and against Americans as well as Filipinos. They were hanged at Dagupan in December, 1900. Vicente Prado had been a member of the congress at Malolos; this is an indication of the character of the men the revolutionary leaders would sometimes employ, especially in regions of factional feeling like Pangasinan."
Note that the subtitle of Le Roy's book properly describes the American role as an occupation, not a liberation.