Big White
Brother, Little Brown Brother and Two vs Three Bells of Balangiga:
Colonial versus Nationalist Writing of Philippine
History
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
Bulatlat
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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