By Guillermo Gomez Rivera

6.   1900: The Filipino people was deprived of its own State

When the American WASPs had, at last, succeeded in imposing their military and neo-colonial rule, one of them, James Leroy, concluded that the Filipinos became stateless as a result of U.S. expansionism. (See: “Filipinas para los Filipinos”, a book written by Epifanio de los Santos Crist�bal /EDSA/ edited in 1908).

Indeed, the Americans claimed the Philippine Islands as a “territory of the United States of America” but never gave any American citizenship status to the Filipinos as Spain did from the start of her rule.

Thus, while it was the Spaniards who started for all Filipinos the organization of what was later to become their own Filipino State, the basis of their national patrimony and rights, the American WASPs took away from the Filipinos, their own STATE.

This explains what James Leroy said.

This is the reason why the fact about Filipinos having been Spanish citizens is deliberately being silenced in any present history text book of this country.

And this all because our servile educational authorities of today are afraid to recriminate the American WASPs for having withheld the U.S. citizenship due to the Filipinos in lieu of the latter’s loss of their status as Spanish citizens and, later, their own loss as citizens of their own independent 1898 Rep�blica, —which the same U.S. WASP invaders brutally destroyed and robbed.

This is why a famous newspaper writer, Tirso Irrureta Goyena, who was also a lawyer, a political science professor, a poet and a friend of Claro M. Recto, wrote the following critique in 1916 against the unjust American take-over of the Filipino State at the great expense and loss of the Filipino people.

Wrote Goyena:

“The American occupational Government in the Philippines ought to make it known that the Filipinos now live under the American flag but are not American citizens nor can they call themselves Filipinos since no Filipino State is presently allowed to exists; that this people therefore are like the Jew, robbed of National personality; but that under the Spanish rule the Filipinos were Spanish citizens and could occupy, as many occupy still, important posts in the Motherland.

“It ought to make it known that now the Filipino cannot command American troops, white troops, because the brown color of his skin forbids it, but that this color never was an obstacle under Spanish rule to keep a native Filipino from commanding white Spanish troops, as several of them actually continue to do up to now in Spain.

“It ought to make it known that the Filipino, on account of the color of his skin, can neither be a member of a white association of Christian young men, now being organized as such into a common  center but in a separate building for Filipino associates, when there already exists one for Americans and foreign whites.

“This is a reflection of what occurs in the Southern States where the Negroes have to form, if they can, their own circles, their own clubs and societies apart from the whites.

“It ought to make it known that the present U.S. government here is not like that of unfortunate Spain, the old Spanish one being “by and for Filipinos” with the aggravating circumstance that the presently best figs in the budget, the best positions and the best salaries, are, in their majority, primarily being enjoyed by Americans, whilst the inferior posts of clerks, messengers and porters are exclusively reserved for Filipinos, even if better educated and instructed than the Americans.

“It ought to make it known that, formerly, Spanish missionaries used to evangelize the savage tribes of the interior, forming them into village and town communities, converting them to Christianity and infusing into their souls the spirit of civilized beings; but now, a Worcester puts himself to “civilizing” those same tribes with glass toys and with cinematic projections, to get them to fashionably part their hair in the middle, whilst in their interior they remain savages like before; “It ought to make it known that now many more millions of pesos are extracted from the Filipino people than in Spanish times, and a pile of money is spent in Public Instruction only to have those thousands of supposedly instructed young men, that yearly come out of those schools, find themselves unemployed because the have not been given, in reality, any other future in their own country save that of dependents and petty clerks in American concerns that economically exploit the Filipino natural resources; that the lucky student who is sent to America with money wrested from the Filipino people, has to pay for what they tell him is a U.S. privilege when, in reality, the money that was spent for him he really owes to his own people, whom he later betrays when he makes over his personality to become a half-baked American that has to give undue thanks to the American administration.

“It ought to be known that in many public employment positions, competent and intelligent Filipinos are put below incapable Americans, and have to obey American superiors whom these Filipinos must instruct because they really know nothing of their charge.

“It ought to be made known that the miserly pay which the Filipino school master gets in the public schools is a pittance when compared to the splendid salaries drawn by principals, supervisors, superintendents and high American functionaries in the department of education funded by tax money arbitrarily collected from Filipinos.

“It ought to make known that here, it is the American Government itself that functions to the detriment of the interests of individuals, because it is the American government here that goes into the business of freighting vessels, of supplying ice, of manufacturing furniture and of printing textbooks; And that in public bidding and awards, the bid of “the local firms” are accepted, but Filipino money still leaves the country because those bidding firms are, in fact, American companies since the companies which first enjoy franchises and privileges are the American ones, or those enjoying American patronage, whilst the enterprises of Filipinos and other foreigners are without any protection.

“Finally it should make known that all, absolutely all Filipinos who now occupy high positions in the Assembly (Philippine House of Representatives) in the Courts, in commerce, in the arts, and in the administration are products of the Spanish education which the Americans and their lackeys here treacherously attack in newspapers and school textbooks at every turn.

“It is but a fact that all the Spanish-speaking Filipinos who are today’s honored statesmen, noted writers, distinguished priests and recognized artists, —–which is an impressive intellectual phalanx of greatness—–, are precisely the ones who do so much honor to the Filipino nation thereby vindicating for it a high place among the most civilized nations and not the miserably confused lot that have now graduated from this colonial system of mal-education; that, in order to provide intelligent pupils for these present day American schools of reinforced concrete now being built upon American orders, but at the expense of Filipino money, Spain had to first succeed in giving existence here to a cultured, Christian and civilized society; —–And that if Spain had not accomplished this gigantic and sublime work, America would not need to build schools of concrete now, but would have been forced to erect barracks of wood and strongly fenced iron pens to herd in them an uncivilized Filipino people, like they often do to this day with the Red-skins that are still penned up in the so called U.S. State Reservations, because in contrast to what the present Spanish educated Filipinos are in this first decade of the 1900s, Anglo-Saxon Protestant civilization has reached absolutely nothing higher with the original natives of the American continent.” (See P.122: “Por el Idioma y Cultura Hispanos”, Tirso de Irrureta Goyena, UST Press, Manila, 1917).

*** 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.

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