As before, the Filipino rebels did not do well in the field. Aguinaldo and his government escaped the capture of Malalos on March 31, 1899 and were driven into northern Luzon. Peace feelers from members of Aguinaldo’s cabinet failed in May when the American commander, General Ewell Otis, demanded an unconditional surrender.
Aguinaldo disbanded his regular forces in November and began a guerrilla campaign concentrated mainly in the Tagalog areas of central Luzon. Aguinaldo was captured on March 23, 1901. In Manila he was persuaded to swear allegiance to the United States and called on his soldiers to put down their arms. The United States declared an end to military rule on July 4, 1901. Sporadic resistance continued until 1903. These incidents were put down by the Philippine Constabulary.
American Colony and Philippine Commonwealth 1901 – 1941President McKinley’s Schurmann Commission (1899) recognized the determination of the Filipino people to gain their independence and recommended the establishment of the institutions for a civilian domestic government as soon as practical.
Even though on March 16, 1900 the fighting in the War of Independence was still far from over, President McKinley appointed the Second Philippine Commission (Taft Commission) and gave it the legislative and executive authority to put in place the civilian government the Schurmann Commission had recommended.
In 499 statutes issued between September 1900 and August 1902, the Taft Commission swept away three centuries of Spanish governance and installed in its place the laws and institutions of a modern civil state. It established a code of law, a judicial system and elective municipal and provincial governments.
The Philippine Organic Act of 1902 extended the protections of the United States Bill of Rights to Filipinos and established a national bi-cameral legislature. The lower house was the popularly elected Philippine Assembly and the upper house was the Philippine Commission appointed directly by the President of the United States.
Following American practice, the Philippine Organic Act imposed the strict separation of church and state and eliminated the Roman Catholic Church as the official state religion. In 1904 the administration paid the Vatican US$7.2 million for most of the lands held by the religious orders. The lands were later sold back to Filipinos. Some tenants were able to buy their land but it was mainly the established estate owners who could afford to buy the former church lands.
The first elections to the Philippine Assembly were held in July 1907 and the first session opened on October 16, 1907. The Nacionalista Party of Manuel Quezon and Sergio Osmena won the election and continued to dominate Philippine electoral politics until World War II.
The political success of the Nacionalista Party was the skill of Quezon and Osmena in tying the traditional patron-client relations (utang na loob) to the new institutions of the modern civil state. It was also their worst mistake. The Nacionalista Party was a network of overlapping patron-client relations that were more concerned with particular local and personal interests and little inclined to address the larger national issues of social reform; land ownership, tenancy rights, population growth and the distribution of wealth. The Party built the power and influence of the old landed elite into the new institutions of democratic governance.
And what is the same thing stated differently, the new party politics excluded the non-elites from the rewards and benefits of representative institutions. The failure of democratic politics in the Philippines to represent its non-elites and mitigate their grievances has been the recurrent cause of violent discontent and the desperate resort to revolt and insurrection.
The Jones Act of 1916 carried forward the Philippine Organic Act of 1902. An elected Philippine Senate replaced the appointed Philippine Commission and the former Philippine Assembly was renamed the House of Representatives. As before, the Governor-General, responsible for the executive branch, was appointed by the United States President.
The Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934 established the Commonwealth of the Philippines which at the end of a ten year transition period would become the fully independent Republic of the Philippines. A plebiscite on the constitution for the new Republic was approved in 1935 and the date for national independence was set for July 4, 1946.
World War II and Japanese Occupation 1941 – 1945Japan had already been at war in Manchuria (1931) and China (1937) long before the Second World War started in Europe when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. By 1941, Japanese military expansion in the Asia-Pacific region had made confrontation and war with the United States increasingly certain.
In preparation for war, on July 26, 1941, General Douglas MacArthur brought the 12,000 strong Philippine Scouts under his command with the 16,000 American soldiers stationed in the Philippines. Even these combined forces were poorly trained and equipped for an adequate defence of the islands against a Japanese invasion.
The attack on the Philippines started on December 8, 1941 ten hours after the attack on Pearl Harbour in Hawaii. As at Pearl Harbour, the American aircraft were entirely destroyed on the ground. Lacking air cover, the American Asiatic Fleet in the Philippines withdrew to Java on December 12, 1941.
Japanese troops landed at the Lingayen Gulf on December 22, 1941 and advanced across central Luzon towards Manila. On the advice of President Quezon, General MacArthur declared Manila an open city on December 25, 1941 and removed the Commonwealth government to Corregidor. The Japanese occupied Manila on January 2, 1942.
MacArthur concentrated his troops on the Bataan peninsula to await the relief of reinforcements from the United States that, after the destruction at Pearl Harbour, could never come. The Japanese succeeded in penetrating Bataan’s first line of defense and, from Corregidor, MacArthur had no alternative but to organize a slow and desperate retreat down the peninsula. President Quezon and Vice-President Osmena left Corregidor by submarine to form a government in exile in the United States. General MacArthur escaped Corregidor on the night of March 11, 1942 in PT-41 bound for Australia; 4,000 km away through Japanese controlled waters.
The 76,000 starving and sick American and Filipino defenders in Bataan surrendered to the Japanese on April 9, 1942. The Japanese led their captives on a cruel and criminal Death March on which 7-10,000 died or were murdered before arriving at the internment camps ten days later.
The 13,000 survivors on Corregidor surrendered on May 6, 1942.
For over three years and right to the day of Japan’s surrender, the Philippines were to suffer grievously under the depredations of military occupation.
General MacArthur discharged his promise to return to the Philippines on October 20, 1944. The landings on the island of Leyte were accomplished massively with an amphibious force of 700 vessels and 174,000 army and navy servicemen. Through December 1944, the islands of Leyte and Mindoro were cleared of Japanese.
On January 9, 1945 the Americans landed unopposed at the Lingayen Gulf on Luzon and closed on Manila. The Japanese fought desperately, street by street, to hold the city. From February 3 to 23, its liberation took almost a month. When at last the fighting ended in the old Spanish citadel of Intramuros, Manila was in ruins.
Even after the capture of Manila, the Japanese fought on to the bitter end. The Americans made landings to remove the Japanese garrisons on Palawan, Mindanao, Panay and Cebu. The Japanese made their last stand entrenched in northern Luzon. General Yamashita, the Tiger of Malaya, did not surrender in Baguio until September 2, 1945; the same day as General Umezu surrendered formally for Japan on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
The liberation of the Philippines was costly. In the Philippines alone, the Americans lost 60,628 men and the Japanese an estimated 300,000. Filipino casualties are estimated at over a million and, sadly, these occurred mainly in the last months of the war when the final outcome had long been decided in any event.
The most serious long term consequence of World War II on the Philippines was to aggravate and embitter its internal social divisions. Prior to his departure for exile in the United States, President Quezon had advised Dr. Jose Laurel to stay behind and cooperate in the civil administration of the Japanese occupation. Whether it was good advice or not, President Quezon had hoped that with the cooperation of Filipinos, the occupation might be less severe. Following Laurel’s morally ambiguous example, the Philippine elite, with regrettably few exceptions, collaborated extensively with the Japanese in their harsh exploitation of the country. President Laurel and his wartime government was despised.
On the contrary, the great majority of the Philippine people mounted a remarkably effective resistance to the Japanese occupation. Investigations after the war showed that 260,000 Filipinos had been actively engaged in guerrilla organizations and an even larger number operated covertly in the anti-Japanese underground. By the end of the war, the Japanese had effective control in only twelve of the country’s forty-eight provinces.
The largest guerrilla organization was the Hukbalahap (People’s Anti-Japanese Army) led by Luis Taruc. He had armed some 30,000 guerrillas who controlled most of Luzon.
By war’s end, the members of the resistance firmly believed that the widespread collaboration and corruption of the well-to-do had discredited the ruling elite and that they had thereby forfeited any moral authority to govern.
The United States intended to restore the pre-war Commonwealth government. Luis Taruc and the Huks had well known socialist sympathies and communist associations. Despite their political affiliations, the Huks fully expected the American forces to treat them as allies and war heroes in recognition of their resistance and contribution to the war effort. Instead, the U.S. Army military police set out to disarm them as dangerous insurgents. MacArthur had Taruc arrested and jailed
Republic of the Philippines 1946 – 1965President Quezon died in exile in Saranac Lake, New York on August 1, 1944. Sergio Osmena became President of the Philippine Commonwealth and came ashore at Leyte with MacArthur.
Osmena’s Nacionalista Party had split with Manuel Roxas leading the newly formed Liberal Party. Roxas had served in Laurel’s government and a bitterly divisive election campaign centered on his conduct during the war. Roxas won the election on April 23, 1946 to become the first President of Republic of the Philippines on July 4, 1946.
Relations between the Republican government and the Hukbalahap were confrontational and often violent in the post-war years, especially as landlords returned to reclaim the estates they had abandoned during the occupation. Roxas was in turns conciliatory and repressive in his dealings with the Huks. In 1948 he extended a general amnesty to all those arrested for collaboration with the Japanese and, in the same year, declared the Huks a subversive and illegal organization.
Roxas died of a heart attack in April 1948 and was succeeded by Elpidio Quirino. Quirino attempted to negotiate with the Huk leader Taruc but the effort came to nothing. Huk strength reached its peak with as many as 15,000 armed men during and for a time following the 1949 presidential election campaign. Quirino and the Liberals were returned to office.
Quirino’s Secretary of Defense, Ramon Magsaysay, succeeded in his policy to put down the Huks militarily and gain popular support for the civil authority. He imposed strict discipline on the military police to restrain their abuses of civilians. At the same time, the Huks lost their popular support through their indiscipline. Many had become nothing more than common robbers and bandits. The Huks finally lost the sympathy and respect of the people with the murder of President Quezon’s widow and her family.
Magsaysay ran for the Nacionalista Party in 1953 and took two-thirds of the vote to defeat Quirino. Magsaysay enjoyed a popular presidency. He started many small but important local projects building roads, bridges, wells and irrigation canals. He established special courts to resolve landlord-tenant disputes. Taruc surrendered to the government in May 1954 signalling the decline of the Huk threat.
Carlos Garcia became President when Magsaysay died in an airplane crash on March 17, 1957. Garcia was reelected President in 1957 in the warm afterglow of Magsaysay’s popularity. The Liberal Party recovered its strength under Diosdado Macapagal who won the 1961 presidential election.
Soon after taking office, President Macapagal proclaimed June 12 a national holiday in celebration of Philippine Independence. General Emilio Aguinaldo, who first proclaimed Philippine Independence on June 12, 1898, was the guest of honour at the first Independence Day celebrations held on June 12, 1962.
Marcos Dictatorship 1965 – 1986Ferdinand Marcos ran for the Nacionalista Party in 1965 and delivered Macapagal a resounding defeat. Marcos initiated an ambitious spending program on public works; building roads, bridges, health centers, schools and urban beautification projects. He maintained his popularity through his first term and in 1969 was the first President of the Philippine Republic to win a second term in office. His popularity declined precipitously in the second term.
The criticism of Marcos grew directly from the dishonesty of the 1969 campaign and his failure to curb the bribery and corruption in government. There was also a more general discontent because the population continued to grow faster than the economy causing greater poverty and violence. The Communist Party of the Philippines formed the New People’s Army and the Moro National Liberation Front fought for the secession of Muslim Mindanao. Marcos took advantage of these and other incidents such as labour strikes and student protests to create a political atmosphere of crisis and fear that he later used to justify his imposition of martial law.
The popularity of Senator Benigno Aquino and the Liberal Party was growing rapidly. Marcos blamed communists for the suspicious Plaza Miranda bombing of a Liberal Party rally on August 21, 1971. A staged assassination attempt on the Secretary of Defense, Juan Ponce Enrile, supplied the pretext for the declaration of martial law on September 21, 1972. Benigno Aquino was amongst the first of the 30,000 some opposition politicians, journalists, critics and activists detained under martial law.
With civil rights and the Philippine Congress suspended and his enemies in detention, Marcos brought in a new constitution in 1973 that replaced the Congress with a National Assembly and extended the term of the President to six years with no limit on the number of terms. With pay raises and selective promotions, he made the armed forces under General Fabian Ver his personal political machine. With his wife and friends, he established monopolies and cartels in the agricultural, construction, manufacturing and financial sectors that extracted billions from the Philippine economy. By the time Marcos was finally forced from power in 1986, the Philippines was a poorer country than when he first took office in 1965.
After five years in detention, a military court found Benigno Aquino guilty of subversion in November 1977 and sentenced him to death. Aquino, though, was too well-known and prominent to execute. He developed heart disease in prison and in May 1980 he was released for treatment and exile in the United States.
In order to gain the implicit endorsement of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church for his regime, Marcos ostensibly lifted martial law on January 17, 1981 – although all of the orders and decrees issued under martial law remained in effect. Pope John Paul II visited the Philippines in February 1981. A new election was scheduled for June 16, 1981. The opposition boycotted the election and Marcos won a huge majority for another six year term as President.
After three years in exile, Benigno Aquino decided to return to the Philippines. On his arrival at Manila International Airport from Taiwan on August 21, 1983, a military escort took Aquino from the aircraft and shot him in the back of the head as he came down the stairs to the tarmac.
Lakas Ng Bayan: The People’s Power/EDSA Revolution 1986The murder of Benigno Aquino was the beginning of the end for the Marcos dictatorship. The brazen assassination of the Philippine’s foremost opposition leader was headline news around the world. It went almost unreported under the Marcos controlled media in the Philippines. The media silence was deafening and accusation enough by itself.
Despite the limited news coverage, two million mourners attended the funeral ceremonies in the largest political demonstration to that time in Philippine history. Something had snapped in the Filipinos’ passive acceptance of the dictator’s repression. Aquino’s murder brought together the different elements of the opposition in a common cause to reclaim their political freedom and dignity.