In the case of my own family, blood is not the only thing that binds. We have taken in many friends into the family and refer to them as “auntie” or “uncle”. So if the reason I wasn’t accepted at first in the village wasn’t because of my skin color, what was it? I further researched this online by reacquainting myself with the Philippines-United States relationship. The Philippines had been sold to the United States by Spain in 1898 for $20,000,000.00. Initially, the Philippines saw this relationship with the U.S. as an alliance of two nations joined in the struggle against Spanish rule. Filipinos began providing American forces with intelligence and military support, yet over time, the U.S. began distancing itself from the interests of the Filipinos. The Philippine-American War broke out in 1899 after two American privates killed three Filipino soldiers in a Manila suburb. Of course, the U.S. had much more fire power than the Filipinos, but the Filipinos were known for their very effective guerrilla warfare. The war proved to be more costly and took many more lives than the Spanish-American War. While the Philippines had technically declared themselves independent in 1898 from Spain, the Untied States never fully recognized them as independent until 1946 when a Treaty of General Relations had been signed between the two governments. Up to that point, the United States had taken on a project to help the Philippines gain “eventual independence”. In 1899, President William McKinley had said, “The Philippines are ours, not to exploit, but to develop, to civilize, to educate, to train in the science of self-government.” The policy of “the Philippines for the Filipinos” was thus put into place. However, it became increasingly clearer that United States was ignoring Filipino history before that point and was only interested in “Americanizing” the country. After such research, I began to understand why the Filipinos I had met in the village, especially those of the older generations, were weary of my presence. The Filipino resentment of America lasted for years and is arguably still present today. After visiting the Philippines at an older age, and taking into consideration their history with Americans and American rule, I really do see how much their specific culture, faith, and way of life means to them. They pride themselves on the traditions they have maintained throughout the centuries even after being a territory of someone else’s nation for so long.
JSTOR 1952 “The Philippine-American Experiment: A Filipino View,” Electronic
Document, http://www.jstor.org/stable/view/2752800?seq=1, accessed April
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