In locating her own personal narrative into the event, Griggers removes any vestiges of “objectivism” and distancing, creating instead a very personal rendition of how she and presumably many unknown others have been made a subject of this colonial process.
The imagery and the narration, including disturbingly haunting singing and music, creates a liberating yet sad, heavy, rather dark and gory narration of the events of 1899. This is perhaps a device needed to put into the contrast the sheer absence of this episode of American history in school textbooks and, if indeed there are, it is a mere gratuitous paragraph about the “Philippine Insurrection” inserted among the few pages on the sinking of the battleship “Maine”. One can hardly imagine for a conflict which lasted a decade with a million Filipino casualties and 5,000 American soldiers dead, how American History can forget all about it. And yet the 40 years of American rule of the Philippines is described and praised by many writers as a period of peace, milk, honey and Hollywood. Is it truly unimaginable, given the violent entry of the United States into Filipino sensibilities and psyche, that a whole episode of such historical importance be forgotten?
A couple of insights come to light. In her narration, Griggers mentions the betrayal. The domestic treachery inflicted upon her personal memories of family suicide and husband abandonment and the political treachery inflicted by the American military and political strategists on the fledgling Filipino republic. In fact, Griggers excoriates this point for both combatants. Aguinaldo had blood in his hands for the execution of Andres Bonifacio, the founder of the Katipunan and who raised the banner of revolt against Spain. Seen from one angle, it was a coup d’etat, the revolution eating its own children. But it was a betrayal no less. Griggers does not mention this fact other than to state Bonifacio’s execution, a necessary filmic shortcut perhaps. But she also fails, understandably, considering the expanse of period she had to cover, to mention that betrayal was ‘done’ to Aguinaldo as well. The U.S in its desire to neutralize the Spanish ability to inflict damage on its troops, actively courted Aguinaldo, then in a Spanish-imposed exile in Hong Kong, by offering him arms and transport to Manila to re-kindle the revolution. Aguinaldo returns, liberates most of the Luzon and Visayas, declares a republic and corners the last vestiges of Spanish rule into the walled city of Manila. Spain and the U.S. sign a peace treaty without the representation of the Filipino government, ignoring the presence of Filipino ambassadors in Europe and Washington. The rest as they say is History. Who fired the first shot on February 4,1899 becomes irrelevant. Betrayal will color and plague the rest of Philippine history until today.
The other insight comes from the psychology of repressed memory. While not venturing into its controversial legal and scientific debates, it does suggest an explanation, among others, of why the victim, in this case the Filipino, repressed the memory of violence, and, in the case of the perpetrator the U.S. , denied the history of that memory. Griggers film triggers this recall in vivid reality because the photographic evidence is indisputable. She also delves deep into these memories through the emotional power of dramatization, wherein static photos become the outcome a portentous narrative, be it the hanging of 10-year-olds or the massacre of a whole Muslim village.
One might wonder how the apparatus of this amnesia became so prevalent and which until the emergence of Filipino nationalist historiography, was not a substantive topic in American and Philippine schools? Schooling undoubtedly is one instrument. Education as an instrument of political and cultural policies, would only promote its desired values with selective historical memories. Some Americans saw through the falsehoods. It took a while for the Japanese-Americans interred during WWII to get an apology from the US government. The African-Americans are still seeking an apology for centuries of esclavitude and the Filipinos are still battling with the state government of Wyoming to rightfully return the church bells that mourned the execution of those 10-year-olds in Samar province. Perhaps it is easier to admit to some egregious injustice as in the case of the Japanese Americans, but it is another thing to admit treachery and betrayal.
There is a disturbing imagery in Grigger’s film that parallel contemporary events. There are unmistakable similarities of the 1899 incident to what is happening in the Middle East — the manipulation of the media, the invention of newer and more terrifying weapons, the policy of bomb them first and democratize them later — similarities that one would think should have been discredited and made untenable in the history of U.S. foreign policy. Will we see villages turned into prisons as had happened in Batangas and in Vietnam? Empire repeats itself in even more sophisticated ways. The Empire remembers. Memory is the struggle. Watch the film.
Recommended readings.
Other works that cover the Philippine American War of 1899 are:
David Bain, Sitting in Darkness: Americans in the Philippines. Viking Press, 1986.
John R.M. Taylor, The Philippine Insurrection against the United States; a compilation of documents with notes and introduction, 5 vols., Pasay City, 1971.
Brian Linn, The Philippine War, 1899-1902. University Press of Kansas, 2000.
John Gates, Schoolbooks and Krags: the United States Army in the Philippines, 1898-1902. Greenwood Press, CT, 1973.
More info: http://www.carlow.edu/~griggers/html/memories.html
