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I'm George Galloway and I'm Adam Geary
and together we are the history boys
every single week bringing you an
episode from a different perspective
sometimes two different perspectives on
great historical events great historical
personalities the clash of ideas and
events which brought us to the place we
are know and as I always say if you
don't understand how we got here you're
never gonna work out how we get out of
the state we are in this week we're
looking at the Philippines it's not an
area of expertise of mine during the
1980s I did make several visits there
under the dictatorship and just on the
cusp of the overthrow of President
Ferdinand Marcos I did learn a thing or
two but my fellow history boy knows a
thing or two million and so it's over to
you Adam tell us because we are looking
of course always the colonialist roots
of the state that countries are in in
the global south but also in the
imperialist countries themselves in this
case the Philippines was colonized more
than once more than twice tell us about
that well three is the magic number or
the unfortunate number to use a more
specific term first there was Spain the
great Spanish Empire the greatly brutal
Spanish Empire that is most well known
for colonizing what is now known as
Latin America but which also in
Southeast Asia conquered the Philippine
Islands then of course there was the
United States then after that a
particularly brutal Japanese occupation
then the United States again but only
briefly well we'll get into that and
then the modern Republic of the
Philippines as we kind of sort of know
it today I think for the purposes of
this discussion we should start in the
year eighteen
six because this was the year that one
of the great leaders of the Philippine
national awakening a scholar a poet a
political warrior one of the great minds
in Philippine history Jose Rizal was
executed by the Spanish colonial
authorities and a firing squad and a
black-and-white photograph exists of
this final moment where he uttered the
words of Jesus Christ on the cross it is
finished before the mortal bullets flew
into his head now Rizal remains a figure
of great national acclaim he's a hero in
the pantheon of great Filipino heroes
but it wasn't under his watch that the
first Philippine Republic was declared
to get to that we have to go to the
other side of the world or be it briefly
to a time when a an American Navy ship
called the main sunk off the coast of
Cuba if someone is wondering what on
earth this has to do with the
Philippines well that's what maritime
colonial empires do they make one event
on one side of the world have a ricochet
in areas that are otherwise totally non
related so the Spanish island of Cuba
because like the Philippines it was
still part of Spain in the late 19th
century in the Year 1898 an American
ship called the main sunk off the coast
of Cuba experts at the time thought
let's be cautious it's probably some
internal malfunction within the hull of
the ship but William Randolph Hearst who
was made famous infamous in the Orson
Welles film Citizen Kane which by the
way I recommend he launched and added
the anti Spanish campaign not that he
was Pro Cuban but he was saying America
as a young power that needs an empire
should kick out Spain which was by then
a force sicker man in terms of being an
empire than the Ottoman Empire at this
same time kind of widely held or felt
that this was the sinking of the main
wasn't was entirely manufactured in a
way it was a maritime
made to look like a cause of war
absolutely in William McKinley who was
the American president at the time he
didn't want to go to war with Spain he
was a traditional Republican before the
Republicans we know today where they
thought let's be business minded let's
keep to ourselves and let's not get
involved in this Empire thing that all
changed though after McKinley engendered
us we're still living we're still living
with these changes today some are living
under them but so were reluctant
McKinley was dragged by his feet by what
they called the yellow press which means
something different in the Philippines
than it does in America but both are
distinctly negative they were this
expression of the day was remember the
Maine to hell with Spain and so America
went to war with Spain and it was a very
brief war the Spanish were vanquished
quite quickly it was around this time
that the Philippines declared its
independence they saw that Spain was
losing on multiple fronts to the
Americans and a great hero possibly the
greatest ever Philippine hero Emilio
Aguinaldo general Emilio Aguinaldo on
the 12th of June 1898 declared the
Philippines an independent republic our
story would aim there but the Americans
had something to say about that they
stepped in where the Spanish left off
they wouldn't let the Philippines have
their independence even though they
declared it and even though Spain was de
facto out of the picture what happened
then was the philippine-american war
because the Filipinos resisted a new
colonizer the lost one fell by the
wayside and they'd be damned if they got
a new one but damned in many ways they
were that war didn't lost all too long
it ended in 1902 except for in Mindanao
in the South were the Muslim Filipinos
the morals continued to fight and resist
until 1913 and it was during this stage
of the battle that some of the worst
ever torture techniques
that were later implemented in other was
were pioneered a General Pershing who
Donald Trump quite likes is one of the
men who oversaw a lot of this torture
yet in 1913 this stage of the rebellion
ended and the Philippines officially
became what was soon to be called the
insular government meaning an American
colony so this war was a largely
maritime Philippines collection of
islands or that the u.s. actually
learned significant number of soldiers
significant enough to inflict damage
compared to the wars that we saw later
the numbers weren't all that great we're
not talking Vietnam no not at all but
compared but where the Vietnamese in the
1950s and they were fighting the French
and in the 60s and the 70s and they were
fighting the Americans they had the most
modern rifles that the Soviet Union
could give them the Filipinos in this
era were alone they were alone totally
alone and the America and it was it's
friendly to the credit of the morals
that they were able to fight for so long
and that fighting spirit of the morals
is a theme that we're going to see
throughout this discussion but indeed by
1913 all of the Philippines was subdued
and it was part of the American Empire
so you never called them they still
don't call themselves an empire so how
did they exercise their colonial control
over the Philippines well in much the
same way that France exercised its
control over places like Algeria and
what was then called Indochina or what
the British did - about a quarter of the
world etc it was said by gore Vidal and
we've mentioned this before that the
only original art form America invented
was marketing and in the American Empire
we really get to see this they never
called it an empire and to be fair there
were many members of the US Congress who
said what the hell are we doing we're a
nation out to make our own money not to
steal other people's money but the
confluence there quickly quickly led
people to say ok let's embrace Empire
it was managed from Washington and it
was at this time when many Filipinos
started to come to the United States
long before the more famous wave of what
is now called OFWs overseas filipino
workers in the 70s there's a catch
though in nineteen thirty four decades
after the overtly racist Chinese
Exclusion Act was passed the u.s. said
well we're eventually going to give the
Philippines independence so we're going
to make it that much harder for Filipino
workers to come to the University
there's always a catch in colonialism
always acknowledge so did it have the
same kind of status as Puerto Rico are
more informal than that in a way more
informal but compared to what let's say
Puerto Rico is today it was similar but
because times have moved on and Puerto
Ricans can somewhat exercise the
constitutional rights things weren't
quite as good in the Philippines even
though to be fair it was better than
let's say when the Japanese were to come
that was true true absolute brutality
this was perhaps the darkest night for
the Philippines what happened it was
possibly the darkest night for all of
Southeast Asia certainly the darkest
night for the Chinese in Northeast Asia
the Japanese formed a brutal empire in a
very short expanse of time and one of
the rules with colonialism is the
shorter a period of time in which an
empire forms and asserts itself as an
empire the more dangerous it is Europe
and Western Eurasia saw this with the
hip the Reich of the 30s and 40s and
South East and North East Asia saw this
with the rise of Tojo's Imperial Japan
the Filipino systems should be saluted
by the world their bravery is frequently
in the textbooks a footnote under the
American liberators who were more
heavily armed because they could afford
it the Philippine resistance was
remarkable in their ability to hold
Faust in the case of brutality the likes
of which frankly the world hadn't even
known until that time so the US and the
resistance throw off Japanese
colonialism what happens next well in
that fight
that's one of the reasons actually why
to this day in spite of the brutality of
the earth late 19th and early 20th
century many Filipinos to this day have
fond memories of MacArthur and the
Americans because they helped throw off
the Japanese and so here we see one of
the interesting paradoxes were the same
Filipinos who were bravely resisting the
Americans several decades before in the
40s and at UH prowling towards the
Americans mainly because the Japanese
were that much worse yeah so the the new
era opens nominal Philippines
independence but to great as I recalled
them a Subic naval base and Clark Air
Force Base probably the the biggest
American military installations in the
world at that time yes so America has
its forces in the Philippines and is
still exercising its power from behind
the throne in the Philippines area so
much so that even when the Philippines
became nominally technically and legally
independent in 1946 the America wouldn't
even let them have their own
Independence Day by some stroke of
wonderful marketing the day that the
Philippines was granted independence in
46 happened to be the 4th of July
aha when the real Philippine
Independence Day is the 12th of June
1898 and it was only decades later when
the Philippine government said no we're
going to celebrate the independence from
the US but a real declared independence
wasn't on the 4th of July it was on the
12th of June so that was when
Independence happened and the next great
and controversial political figure to
arise was the longest ever serving
president of the modern Philippines and
that was Ferdinand Marcos who first came
to power in 64
and Imelda Marcos unity for her wardrobe
her shoe collection as I recall it this
was like mo Bhutto in in the Congo
formulas I here this was a period of
massive looting of the Philippines
natural wealth national wealth I should
say by by a ruling family a ruling elite
well how you see it yes and no it's an
incredibly controversial time not just
because of what was done and won and
what wasn't done but because of how its
his how the historical memory has been
unobjective fide so that's not for in
the 1960s when the Marcos government was
actually seen generally University is
positive the economy was doing very well
compared to what the Americans were
doing to Vietnam and later to Cambodia
and Laos things were peaceful the
Philippines had one of the highest
living standards in all of Southeast
Asia this was before Maha tear in
Malaysia long before a bit before Lee
Kuan Yew really got going in Singapore
long before peace was brought to what
was still referred to popularly as
Indochina Vietnam Laos and Cambodia it
was more free than Suharto's Indonesia
and politically more stable than
Thailand things tended to change in the
1970s for both internal factors and
external factors the oil crisis of 1973
did not treat the Philippines well the
active participation albeit not so great
in terms of numbers but in terms of
prostration of the morgels government to
the US war on Vietnam that was Clark and
Subic were important to the u.s. they
were indispensable in many ways and
something the Pinot's were actually sent
to Vietnam and that was that was just a
horrific mistake the spirit of RC in
which now both Vietnam and the
beans are in is all about non-aggression
but in those days it was very much a
Cold War mentality which pitted
Southeast Asian against Southeast Asian
we saw internally last week in Indonesia
we saw with the limited but still
notable Filipino participation in
America's Vietnam War it was also at
this time that the NPA the New People's
Army a Maoist group began in proper
insurgency and a similar one from moral
nationalist upset with what many people
outside of the song called the rule of
Imperial vanilla it was in the 70s when
many of the worst aspects of this period
of Marcos the martial law period came to
the fore but not everything is as it
seems because as we see in the late
1980s while many Filipinos wanted change
in the 80s from what was happening under
Marcos just as they did in the Soviet
Union what people tend to find is that
sometimes the change is worse than the
situation they wanted to change it's
portrayed as a turn to democracy Aquino
the original leader Aquino assassinated
at the airport on his return his widow
becoming the president even their son I
think became the president didn't indeed
this is the crux that all modern
Philippine history has been defined by
and it's held historical memory captive
we live in an age now where the
mainstream media the mainstream schools
and the mainstream narrative in
Philippine history has been dictated by
the victors the akeno's were the victors
in the eighties this isn't to excuse any
of the unpleasantries and the frankly
subservient attitude to the us of the
Marcos period but when taken on the
whole the disaster of unstable
governments economic retardation
Filipinos having to force themselves
into migration there's an expression
a man who I think is one of the great
Philippine intellects of today
Orion Perez says most countries export
goods the Philippines exports people and
while that trend began in the mid-70s
nothing in the Akeno period after 1986
reversed that so I think the key to
understanding the 70s and the transition
into the 80s is to understand the
following points was the Marcos
government regime we call it in the
military pier in the Marshall opiod was
it imperfect incredibly imperfect but
was in many ways the Aquino personality
called that much more crooked that much
more Pro / cog that much more tied in to
the CIA because we can't forget well
Marcus was under the thumb of the United
States Ninoy Aquino who lived in exile
in the u.s. in the late 70s in the early
80s had many high-level contacts of the
CIA this wasn't known in the Philippines
at the time it's known now for those who
want to read what's being open from the
archives and so we're the Revolutionists
portrayed is going from dictator to
democrat or Tokra see to an open society
the economy got am i recalling this
right there was one of the LS color
revolutions yellow was their color
absolutely right and everything that we
now know about color revolutions the
most famous being the Arab Spring that
turned out to be the ISIS winter we
really solve the template for this in
the Philippines in the 1980s and the
most tragic element is that so many
Filipinos were let down they wanted
something better they wanted to move on
and all they got they traded one dynasty
from another only the economy got even
worse crime got even higher
neoliberalism privatization it was the
cold bath for most Filipinos was that
absolutely and the class of oligarchs
that arose under this period were some
of the most dingy and corrupt in the
world so what happened next
well the story that began with
difficulty whose middle period remains
virtual and whose most recent years were
difficult as for me what I think is not
only a happy ending but possibly one of
the most inspiring stories in all of
modern 21st century Asia even though
we're the history boys and the show is
the history boys sometimes a leader
comes along who's historic the moment he
takes office such a leader was Rodrigo
Duterte
who became president of the Philippines
in and I was going to say 1916 note he
became president in 2016 after being the
mayor of Davao in Mindanao for many
years he's the first-ever president of
the Philippines from Mindanao the only
one with a Muslim family background he
himself was raised a Catholic walked
away from the church after tragically
being molested by an american-born
priest
interesting factoid there and so he was
unique for his background but he was
even more unique for his policies one of
the first statements he made when he
became president was the following I am
the president of a sovereign state that
has long ceased to be a colony I have no
master but the Philippine people nobody
but nobody
I think that's possibly one of the most
important statements from any great
Philippine nationalists since Rizal
because even though colony colonialism
technically ended in 46 this colonial
mentality in terms of geostrategy in
foreign policy in terms of economics in
terms of social policy it remained tied
into the colonial mentality whether
under marcos whether under the yellows
who the liberals with the yellows we
call them in philippine caught in the
philippine context and Duterte turned
all of this around
he went to Beijing and he said to XI I
want to work with you rather than
against you he turned to Donald Trump
and he said well the Congress hates me
if we can develop a good relationship
that's great he has good relations with
Russia his storied history making
relations because
the Philippines had very few relations
with Russia previously opening up to
India to Japan making peace with
Malaysia over old colonial relic
territorial disputes in North Borneo
he's really been a man that's changed
his country for the better and he's a
man that realized that fighting
terrorism isn't only about fighting the
man who says Allahu Akbar it isn't only
fighting the man with a foreign flag it
is about fighting the terror that is the
plague of narcotics which in the
Philippine context means something very
this this has been of course the most
controversial aspect of the Duterte
period and you remind us it's only
actually two years though it feels much
longer Dean he's basically declared a
war on drugs like most of the world but
he's actually fighting a war on drugs
it's not just a paper declaration is it
it's it's a real war and the war wasn't
declared by duterte the war was declared
by terrorist organizations who fund
their mass murder their head shopping
their arson with the sale of drugs the
war was declared by the people who and I
don't even know if I wanted to name the
crimes but let the burning down of
people's homes offer you've tortured
them the raping of infant's and parts of
towns were young women and even young
men can't walk alone without facing
disaster a war was declared by the drug
users the drug dealers and the drug
traffickers long before anyone outside
of Mindanao knew the name Rodrigo
Duterte
Duterte has fought back and what he said
is while my opponents clamor on about
human rights I care about human life the
most important human right because
without that no other human right would
be possible and another rumor to quash
while we're at it
his opponents who become increasingly
hysterical have inflated the numbers of
those who have killed who have who have
been killed they say it's 20,000 it's
4,000 they say that he gives shoot to
kill
orders he specifically told law
enforcement only use a lethal weapon
if your life or the life of a civilian
is in danger he's offered medical
rehabilitation to all of those who have
taken advantage of an amnesty and
instead of pouring money into corrupt
policing and corrupt politicians who for
decades were on the take from the Norco
industry he's done something that the
United States hasn't been able to
achieve and offer a universal health
care package to all Filipinos which was
signed very recently it's been a
grueling two years and one regularly
hears reports that President duterte may
have had enough that he may not complete
his term that he won't run for another
term I'm one of the problems with such a
big figure a big personality as him is
that there's not to deter T's it's not
the kind of man who comes along three
four or five at a time
is everything dependent on him and if so
is he prepared to go on well duterte is
quite unique because while there are
many ethical politicians and many
austere politicians in terms of their
personal life I've never come across
anyone as personally austere and sincere
as Duterte Lee Kuan Yew was a man from
an intellectual background who was
nevertheless austere but duterte is a
man whose philosophy which is an
incredibly deep and wide philosophy it
comes from his experiences do tell his
biggest challenge which could also be
his biggest success is bringing
constitutional reform to the country
right now there are ports of Manila that
look as beautiful as Singapore but the
rest of the country is working for what
Filipinos today call Imperial Manila so
is this a fourth colonial power
previously - do tell previous - duterte
you could say so so he wants to
federalize the country while many of his
most ardent supporters both Filipinos
and those who love the Philippines want
to see a transition
from a chaotic American presidential
style system that frankly makes the
American system seem streamline and
that's saying a Martin 2018 they want to
shift to a Singapore or Malaysia style
parliamentary system which could be more
based on one's merit than on one's
connections to various oligarchs or to
various yellow barons and in this sense
there could be the next Duterte in fact
there is one and her name is Sarah
she is right now the mayor of Davao and
she may well be the next Duterte both
literally and in other ways hopefully
though as pricey daughter yes and she's
running and doing well in politics she's
very popular as she stepped into her
father's footsteps in Davao and many
people are saying in the near future she
may well become a leading figure whether
under a presidential system or a pro or
a possible parliamentary system but many
people are saying that she will she's
accompanied her father on some of this
most important foreign trips she's very
clever she's if anything even tougher
than her father's so she's a woman to
look out for she can really hold her own
well you've surprised me with that but
then the history boys usually it does
I'd been George Galloway and I'd been
Adam Geary we have been the history of
boys
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