Marlon Meyer
Northwest Asia Weekly
If you’ve been to Volunteer Park, you’ve probably unknowingly been exposed to American propaganda about some of its worst behaviors.
A panel of scholars from the University of Washington met on May 7 to defend the city’s decision last year to remove the memorial plaque. They describe the park as steeped in America’s history of racism and imperialism.
“Volunteer Park is one of Seattle’s most important public spaces, but like many public spaces in Washington and the United States, it is full of the legacy of the American Empire,” said Vicente Rafael, a professor of Southeast Asian studies and historian of History and American Colonialism.
Christoph Giebel, associate professor of history at the Jackson School of International Studies and focused on colonialism and imperialism in Asia, moderated the May 7 panel. In a press release, referring to the plaque, he said: “This kind of misrepresentation simply cannot be resolved.”
Giebel’s May 2021 op-ed in this article, along with community complaints, led to the decision to remove the plaque, which referred to America’s conquest of the Philippines between 1898 and 1906 as one of liberation.
More than 250,000 Filipinos were slaughtered in the most brutal ways, panelists said, and racism justified the violence, repeating the racism inherent in the United States at the time.
The speech and the panel discussion that followed were so disturbing that the audience in the Stimson Auditorium at the Asian Art Museum in Seattle was incensed.
“We’re the only empire in history that plundered land, and the people didn’t even know about it,” one man said.
“Will Volunteer Park itself change its name?” another asked during a chat discussion.
For the most part, the moderators and panelists laid out a simple history of American “volunteers” looting committees in the Philippines, making Russian atrocities in Ukraine appear less singular.
Panelists, experts on colonialism, also put a perspective on brutal conquest: as part of a “long story” ingrained in the West about the desirability of empire and the need to transform people seen as inhuman.
Abe Ignacio, co-author of a political comic book about war, begins by pointing out that history is one of the “most forgotten” of all American wars.
The reason for the 50-fold reduction in deaths compared to the Spanish-American War at about the same time, he said, was “just a footnote on the insurgency.”
Some of the atrocities he cited — including soldiers hunting thousands of Filipinos in “rabbit shooting” and cutting off women’s arms for bracelets — were driven not only by racism, but by the dominance of the 13 colonies since their founding Promoting the idea of westward expansion. : White supremacy.
Giebel said when he first saw the plaque and its false narrative, he thought of the parallels between the conquest of the Philippines and the Vietnam War, “especially the racialized agenda.”
Meanwhile, Ileana M. Rodríguez-Silva, an associate professor of Latin American and Caribbean history and a historian, said U.S. interests were motivated by the desire to obtain a coal refueling station for steamships and a starting point for access to the Chinese market.
The United States bought the Philippines from Spain for $20 million, securing the Philippines for itself, while also hoping and expecting access to an exclusive market.
As the people of the island became “civilized,” the United States hoped to be able to sell them a wide variety of products, Garcia described the calculations.
However, there are records of protests. Black soldiers sent to fight in the Philippines wrote to American newspapers with harrowing reports of Filipinos being looted and burned alive.
Of the 127,000 U.S. troops deployed, 6,000 are black.
Figures such as Mark Twain spoke out against the war, marking it as a turning point for the United States to become an imperialist power.
Even the presidential election at the time was hanging over the war as William Jennings Bryan campaigned on an anti-imperialist platform. He lost.
Still, Giebel said there was no excuse for supporting such a war, given the opposition.
“No one can hide behind an argument that people didn’t understand at the time,” he said.
Rafael said this period should also be understood as part of a “continuum” of Philippine independence. He described the uprising against the American invasion as Asia’s first revolution against Western imperialism.
After the Spanish defeat in 1898, the Philippines established a divided republic and sent ambassadors to other countries, including the United States
But American propaganda at the time, rooted in the social underpinnings of genocide and racism, lashed out at the inability of “Orientals” to govern themselves.
U.S. troops provoked minor reprisals from the Filipinos and then declared that their troops had been subjected to “unprovoked attacks” shortly before Congress voted on whether to annex the Philippines. It passed by one vote.
Vicente argues that U.S. imperialism is deeply rooted in the Christian narrative of the need to convert others. Responding to questions about the role of the Catholic Church, he said it played a major role in oppression by leaving people uneducated. But he said it was already challenged to help end the dictatorship in the Marcos era.
One of the goals of understanding Western colonial history, he said, is to question the claim that the only safe world is an empire led by the West.
He describes the process of becoming aware of our own biases that further drive narratives such as the quest to “decolonize” our minds.
Asians are still considered “permanent immigrants” here.
“And the wrong type,” he said.
Mahlon can be contacted by info@nwasianweekly.com.
