4. Blackmailed to Accept Flag Independence

THE AMERICAN COLONIAL government initially banned the display of the Philippine tricolor, which was first unfurled during the 1898 Declaration of Philippine Independence. The ban was later lifted, and our flag was allowed to fly alone at the top of the pole. It happened in July 1946, the day we were granted our flag independence. By that time, enough of the Filipino elite had been developed and trained, and were ready to take over the largely ministerial function of being the formal and visible rulers of the Islands.

This could only be "independence" under effective foreign domination because it came not from a successful defense of liberty won in struggle. Our victory, our liberty, had been snatched at the last minutes of our struggle against the Spain. And liberty granted us later by this new colonizer could never be real. And so, our beloved Philippine Islands, the colony, had become the "Republic of the Philippines," the semi-colony.

That we were "so generously bestowed" this formal status by the United States came to pass on account of a number of factors. For one thing, our people desired to be free, at least in the sense they were taught by the Americans to understand national freedom. The politicians periodically seeking their votes had to behave in a fairly credible advocacy of this popular will. For another, the United States had by then fully prepared itself and the local elite for a vertical partnership that would insure effective domination of our country minus the economic and political costs. Having established herself as the unchallenged and unscathed capitalist country power after the Second World War, the United States simply had to get the colonial formal agreements signed by the "independent" Republic and insure its full control of the local state, and US semi-colonialism was "in business" for decades (now nearing half a century) afterwards.

The image of a beautiful partnership, a brotherhood, between the US and the Philippines was indelibly etched in our people’s collective psyche, by playing up on the events of the last weeks of the global war, where American troops who had previously abandoned the country to the Japanese Imperial Army (which had suffered defeats in the Asian mainland and Indonesia as well as at the hands of the Filipino guerillas), overbombed Manila and threw chocolate bars and cigarettes at hungry crowds.

The country’s economy was then prostrate as aggravated by the overbombing of Manila by its "liberators," and the US government made it clear that war damage payments could come to the country only if certain agreements were signed. Moreover, the Roxas government had an added reason to accede to American dictates. When the Americans returned to "liberate" (read: reconquer) our country, they chose to sponsor for national leadership those politicians who were quite vulnerable to charges of collaboration with the Japanese, charges that would hang like the Damocles’ sword over the heads of President Roxas and his court. If that was not blackmail, I pray thee tell me what is!

Thus with the acquiescence of the blackmailed officials of the new Philippine Republic, our independence was effectively circumscribed to mere formality by treaties on military bases and general relations. The high-handed maneuvers, including the unseating of elected legislators, forced the Filipinos to amend their own Constitution just so the American Big Brother could enjoy parity rights, went largely unchallenged.

The barbaric invader of half a century before came to enjoy the image of beloved liberator. By this time, America was singing praises no longer to "exceptional natives" but to the Filipino people proven in the drama of battlefield as a nation of heroic and worthy allies of America supposedly in defense of everything that is good and against everything that is evil. This assault on our national psyche was highly successful, coming as it did after forty years of effective American colonial education and after a short period of gross tyranny suffered by our people at the hands of the "less-handsome invaders" from the Land of the Rising Sun. No one would remember afterwards that the barbaric atrocities and casualties we suffered under the Japanese could only be dwarfed in scale by the forcible pacification of the Philippines by the American Krag, torch and torture just several decades earlier.

Uncle Sam had succeeded where both the Spanish Crown and the Japanese Imperial Shogun had failed miserably – he had won the hearts and minds of the majority of Filipinos. This level of endearment, though largely undeserved, has enabled the US government and American big business to enjoy the continuation of effective colonial ties opposed initially by a mere handful of nationalists like Claro M. Recto and Lorenzo Tañada.

With the subordination of the local rulers to their colonial masters arranged with subtlety, in sharp contrast to the obvious puppetry of the three-year "Philippine Republic" under the Japanese, and with the United States enjoying a favorable image bordering on mass adulation for the White "Big Brother," members of the local elite found it easy and even favorable to agree to accept token independence. They misrepresented it, even claimed credit for it, as the fulfillment of our people’s aspirations for emancipation. Moreover the arrangement guaranteed for these collaborators a bigger share in the spoils in terms of economic and political power. For this reason they cared little that they were being blamed for all the country’s woes, with our people regretting that an earlier Philippine president had said: " A government run like hell by Filipinos is better than one run like heaven by the Americans."23

And so our country came to acquire flag independence, while official acts of treason have also been justified as acts of "pragmatism."

NOTE:

²³President Manuel L. Quezon did not include a third scenario which was what eventually played out: a Philippines run like hell by the Filipino elite on behalf of American and other foreign interests.

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