The Filipino State (Another way of looking at Philippine history): Part 5
April 18th, 2008By Guillermo Gomez Rivera
5. Maturity of the Filipino State in 1898
Thus, after 337 years, the FILIPINO STATE became so rich and so vibrant that from a mere missionary outpost it went on to become a colony, in the Spanish sense of the word. It went on to become an over-sea Spanish province under a Ministerio de Ultramar until it graduated into the 1898 Republica Filipina which the invading American forces of the 1900s literally destroyed with an unjust war by murdering one sixth of its total population (see: “The Philippines, Land of Broken Promises” by James B. Goodno, page 33) and plundering from it its reserve in gold and silver worth, according to witness Soledad Vital de Luna (in her 1952 letter), over one hundred billion U.S. dollars.
From the full-fledged STATE that it was, the Filipino State was grossly demoted into a servile U.S. neo-colony ridden, from the start, with graft and corruption as aptly described by the El Renacimiento Editorial of 1907, “Aves de Rapida” (Birds of Prey).
The Republica Filipina of 1898, as the legitimate owner of the Filipino STATE, gallantly defended itself against the U.S. WASP invasion in a protracted war that began in the Santa Mesa-San Juan bridge, with one Captain Grayson being the first to treacherously open fire upon Filipino soldiers.
The Filipino-American war formally ended with the capture and execution of the second President of the Republica Filipina, Macario Sakay, in 1907.
*** Webmaster’s Note: Guillermo Gomez Rivera is a Premio Zobel awardee, a member of the Academia Filipina and former National Language Committee Secretary, Philippine Constitutional Convention 1971-73.
