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... ...Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948 -- "A Cause for Celebration" ... 'Demands of Dignity' 'Demands of Dignity' <DEVELOPING THE DISCOURSE ON OUR DECEMBER 1Oth DECLARATION>
On-Line Edition of the Book by Ed Aurelio C. Reyes Appendix 5-- A: Open Letter to the American People |
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CONTENTS OF THIS BOOK: Response
to the Spanish Response Response to the American Non-Response Demands of Dignity
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Chapter Five ------------------------
Appendix 5-A Open Letter to the American People [This is an open letter signed by "Emil A. Gamat," the penname being used by Ed Aurelio C. Reyes during the period of the Marcos martial law dictatorship. It was dated December 10, 1985, exactly the 87th anniversary of the purchase of the Philippines by the United States from Spain through the Treaty of Paris. Copies of this were mailed to some members of the U.S. Congress, including Sen. Gary Hart, Edward Kennedy, Richard Lugar and John Glenn, and Rep. Stephen Solarz, to Rev. Jesse Jackson, and to a number of US newspapers.] FOUR
SCORE and seven years ago, the policymakers among your forefathers brought
forth upon the Asian continent the destruction of its first republic, and
commitment genocide against a new nation to deny it its hard-earned
liberty, indeed a most abominable violation of the proposition that all
men are created equal. Specifically,
the Filipinos were declared unfit for self-government and were thus denied
the final act of triumph which they had earned in country-wide victorious
armed struggle against Spanish colonialism. On August 13, 1898, the
Filipino troops were kept out of the walled capital city as their American
"allies" marched in to raise the Stars and Stripes, keeping out
our own tricolor. This
great injury was coupled with a great insult on December 10, 1898, the US
government bought the Philippines for $20 million from the Spanish
colonialists that the Filipinos had already defeated.
It was like buying the Thirteen States from the British after 1776.
The US wanted not really the Filipinos but the Philippines -- the country's location and resources. Perhaps that can account for the scale of killing done. In those years at the turn of the century, our country was bathed in blood for refusing to recognize that illegitimate sale. Treacherously
provoked by US troops one day in 1899 with the sudden shelling of Filipino
positions that claimed 10,000 lives, our forefathers resumed the people's
war for national liberation. But
since they were up against a rising and ruthless world power, they were
only able to delay, not frustrate, the new colonization. The
US was determined to acquire the Philippines as a stepping stone to the
markets of the Asian mainland, and it had even then an immensely superior
military force to back up such a bid. Callous brutality was shown in such
orders as "I want you to kill and burn -- the more you (do) the
better you will please me" and "Kill everyone above ten"
from the likes of Gen. Jacob Smith. The
genocide that followed resulted in 600,000 accounted deaths (roughly 10
percent of the Philippine population then). The mass killings, savage
torture, and forced evacuations and hamletting perpetrated here can only
be comparable perhaps to the US misadventure in Indochina six decades
later. (The My Lai carnage in Vietnam was but a minor replay of the
massacres perpetrated in my country then.)
And Gen. Arthur MacArthur, in a bid to cover up, claimed that what
they waged was "the most legitimate and most humane war ever
conducted on the face of the earth." That
episode in our history was effectively erased from memory by the
US-devised education system and prolonged US control and sophisticated use
of international and local mass media, including cinema.
That role of the US in our history was in fact even reversed in the
public mind. This reversal was completed when Gen. Douglas MacArthur (son
of Arthur) returned as promised towards the very end of the Second World
War, and the GIs, after bombing and shelling Manila beyond necessity and
driving away their "less handsome" rival conquerors, began
throwing chocolates and cigarettes at hungry crowds. Recently,
we had a number of Japanese visitors over.
They asked around about the atrocities committed by the Japanese
Imperial Army during the last World War, and apologized profusely for the
harm done by their compatriots. It
is not surprising that I have yet to hear a single American expressing
regret over the wider-scale mass slaughter of Filipinos at the turn of the
century. I understand that
very few among you know that it ever happened. Aware that you are too busy to be concerned over what is
happening beyond your immediate family and business circles, over what is
happening halfway cross the globe, or, much less, what happened in our
faraway archipelago almost a century ago.
I do not expect that many of you would know of those tragic years
in our nation's history. You'd
be surprised many Americans of Filipino origin and many Filipinos here
know practically nothing about the Philippine-American War that cost us
roughly a million lives. You
may be wondering why a Filipino would now be sending you an open letter 87
years after you bought us. Eighty-seven
years is a long time, and that long time should have healed the wounds,
you might say, and I would agree. That
should have healed the wounds of our brutal annexation as a colony of the
United States, if there had been a rectification or even an effective
withdrawal afterwards. The
trouble is we are still suffering under unofficial but no less effective
domination by US policymakers, big business and military brass, which we
lump under the term "US imperialism."
Before you misread that as simplistic anti-Americanism, let me add
quickly that we consider the American people our brothers and sisters and
draw a clear distinction between you and the US imperialists who count
even you (yes, Virginia, including you!) among their victims worldwide. The
advance of national liberation movements in the colonies during and
immediately after the Second World War rendered obsolete direct colonial
rule as the style of global domination.
It marked the emergence of indirect (or semi-) colonial rule. Erstwhile
colonies have been granted formal independence to force indigenous
governments to bear the post-war economic problems, while effective
foreign control was maintained over production, trade, banking and
finance, the armed forces, diplomacy, civilian politics, culture and the
entire social order. Detailed
facts of effective US domination as experienced up to now by the
Philippines have been well documented and are in fact public knowledge.
This domination is very real, and in fact decisive, even as the
reigning dictatorship is aptly personified by a native tyrant. The
biggest crime of US imperialism against our people in the last 13 years
has been its sponsorship of a tyrannical regime under its dependable ally,
President Ferdinand Marcos. While
it has tried to distance itself publicly from the Marcos regime,
especially since the (former Senator Benigno) Aquino assassination, US
imperialism has continued supporting this regime.
Tanks, helicopters, machineguns, and high-powered rifles sent by
the US as aid are being used against innocent civilians, peaceful
demonstrations and the people's defenders. Simply
put, it is your tax money that bankrolls the (Marcos) regime as it kills
and maims us. The
Marcos regime has only had to continue invoking rabid anti-communism (a
magic formula?) to go on that indirect, perhaps even half-conscious, but
nevertheless very effective support from you.
Jointly,
US imperialism and the Marcos clique have maintained the dictatorial rule
that accounts both for the continued US domination of Philippine society
and for the institutionalized violation of our democratic rights. Although
these partners find it expedient for their respective self-interests to
publicly dissociate from each other from time to time, US imperialism has
been the biggest sponsor of Marcos' prolonged regime and has been the
biggest beneficiary -- economically, politically and militarily -- of the
laws and programs this regime has enforced. Notwithstanding
its usurpation of near-absolute powers, the Marcos dictatorial regime has
conspicuously failed to crush the popular nationalist and democratic
movement and even aggravated the social ills that draw the people to the
path of armed revolution. The strategic and long-term interests of US imperialism, not
really those of the American people, are therefore threatened. As
far as the US government is concerned, this necessitates a reversion to
some trappings of a "working democracy" and the projection of
the US in the role of "pressing for reforms," to allow US
policymakers more options in directing the course of establishment
politics in the Philippines well into the post-Marcos era and long after
the projected extension of the military bases agreement beyond 1991. US
imperialism has maintained its effective domination over many countries
worldwide by a combination or succession of methods.
It has employed outright aggression to the extent of genocidal war,
as we ourselves have experienced. It has resorted to commonwealth,
trusteeship or similar arrangements; puppet republics with effective US
politico-economic control but with local politicians absorbing all the
censure; open tyranny with the numerous martial law puppet regimes of the
"Free World"; and transitions and hybrids between these. US
power play and meddling that respects no national boundaries have drawn
the ire of the people of the world. And the American people, collectively
and as individuals, suffer the ill-will and even reprisal especially from
those who fail to distinguish the US warmongering and monopolist
policymakers and the ordinary Americans who are merely cajoled, deceived,
or even forced to give their taxes and political support. It
is heartening to note, though, that there is a growing number of US
citizens who have had enough and are now trying to rein in the likes of
Reagan and Rambo. Please
do not resent my parody of the opening lines of Lincoln's address.
Far from desecrating his words, I am trying to uphold their noble
content beyond memorized articulation, especially as you would apply the
equality-of-all-men proposition to our people. I
am urgently calling upon our brother and sister Americans, some of them
are my own relatives, to press the US government, military strategists and
business and financial giants to let our country be: to stop siphoning out
our country's resources, to stop using our homeland as a mere outpost and
launching pad in a deadly geopolitical gameplan, to stop all support to
the totally unpopular Marcos regime, and to desist from installing another
puppet whether a more tyrannical one or a more deceptive one. US
identification with Marcos has not been the only cause for the growing
anti-imperialism of my people. We have seen through the subtle and insidious means and
motives US imperialist designs in our country which would not
exclude as an option another all-out invasion of our country if only to
secure the US military bases. This
is your brother somewhere in the Philippines crying out to be heard.
Please exert all the pressure you can muster in order to prevent a bloody
repetition of the first invasion, and counter all subtle preparation of
public opinion to make you countenance such an act.
Please remember this appeal whenever you recite Lincoln's
Gettysburg Address. Thank
you, Merry Christmas, and God bless America! back to top of this page. back to main chapter text.
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ANNOUNCEMENTS: Demands of Dignity THE HARDCOPY EDITION, in about 180 regular sized bookpaper pages with full-color paperback cover FREE ACCESS FOR ALL to the ON-LINE EDITION until February. 4, 2009, 110th Anni- versary of the Fil-Am War.
APPENDICES: App 5-A: Open
Letter to the American People App 5-B: Dear Whites, I Am No Racist! App 5-C: Mark Twain's 'The War Prayer'
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