2025 marks 126 years since what is known as the Philippine-American War. But to characterize it as a war is deeply misleading, as it suggests a conflict between two roughly equal forces. In reality, it was a massacre of genocidal proportions conducted by US imperialism against the Filipino masses.

[Originally published on Marxist.com]

Yet, this event that claimed the lives of hundreds and thousands is seldom mentioned, if not consciously ignored, by US imperialism and the Filipino ruling class. The latter is especially interested in removing it from the memories of Filipino workers and youth. Instead, they foster the idea that the US is the Philippines’ benefactor, rather than its murderous imperialist master.It is therefore an important task for communists in the Philippines and abroad to learn from this historical experience.

The Philippine Revolution and the Katipunan

For over three centuries, the Spanish ruled over the Philippines. From 1565 to 1898, millions of Filipinos were slaughtered at the hands of the Spanish colonists. This brutal occupation only began to weaken in the late 19th century.

From 1896 to 1898, a revolution broke out against Spanish brutality and for the independence of the Philippines. At the head of this movement was the Katipunan.

This organization, which formed in the 1890s, earned huge authority among the masses because of its heroic struggle against Spanish occupation. What was initially a small, secretive revolutionary circle grew over the course of the revolution into a significant organization of tens of thousands. However, this was a revolutionary party of mixed class composition. Its soldiers were all fighting for different reasons.

The majority of the Katipunan was composed of peasants and early members of the developing working class, with urban workers like blacksmiths and laborers making up some of its early membership. Later, however, as it spread to the countryside, landless peasants, farmers, and sharecroppers joined too.

As it gained momentum, soldiers sympathetic to the movement also began to join. This was the bulk of the movement’s fighting force. Andrés Bonifacio, whom many in the Philippines consider to be the true leader of the revolution, was from a similarly humble background.

The movement also involved a layer of the petty bourgeoisie. Some small business owners, affected by excessive taxation and economic restrictions, were supportive of the Katipunan. The Ilustrados (the Filipino intelligentsia) also had some influence in the Katipunan. A few even actively joined the movement, though most Ilustrados preferred reform instead of revolution.

Finally, there were native capitalists and landlords, including some of the local elites who, for their own cynical reasons, secretly funded the Katipunan.

In the beginning, the organization was led by Andrés Bonifacio, who represented the proletarian and peasant rank and file. However in May 1897, Aguinaldo’s faction, which represented the native landlords and elites, seized control, executing Bonifacio in May 1897 on charges of “sedition and treason.”

This severely hampered the militancy of the Katipunan. After the execution of Bonifacio and other popular leaders like General Antonio Luna, the lower-class rank and file lost much of their motivation to fight. And why would they? In many regions of the Philippines, the resistance consisted of “patrons and their clients.” In other words, the ordinary soldiers and peasants were fighting for their landlords!

Unable to inspire the movement with a program of genuine national liberation, the landlord and capitalist leaders demoralized the movement, contributing to the fragmentation of the Katipunan along regional, linguistic, and religious lines.

Had the Katipunan won under the lead of Aguinaldo and the other Filipino elites, to the poor peasant and working class soldiers it would have just meant a change of masters, from the Spanish colonists to their own national bourgeois. As historian David J. Selby explained about Aguinaldo’s politics, “his leadership was never going to produce radical change. It might evict the Spanish but it would never remake Philippine society.” (A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1898-1902 David J. Silbey. Page 14)

Even before the arrival of the Americans, the Katipunan under Aguinaldo pursued a conciliatory strategy towards the Spanish. In 1897, he negotiated on behalf of the whole of the Katipunan with the Spanish government and signed the Pact of Biak-na-Bato. This pact agreed to end the revolution against the Spanish in exchange for Aguinaldo and company’s safe exile to Hong Kong with financial compensation.

The fall of Spanish colonialism and the beginning of US rule

The revolutionary nationalist movement was not the only threat to Spanish domination of the Philippines. At the same time, the USA was emerging as an imperialist rival to the Spanish Empire, and was eyeing up its vast possessions for itself.

In April 1898, the Spanish-American War broke out following the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana, Cuba. The war lasted less than four months, but extended far beyond Cuba and included an exchange of fire between US and Spanish forces in the Philippines, which the US planned on taking as a prize.

Only when it looked as though Spain would be defeated did Aguinaldo and his cohort seriously work towards independence again. Yet this time it was the American imperialists they chose to lean on. A deal with the Americans was struck, and the Katipunan agreed to help the US undermine Spain in the Philippines. Aguinaldo returned from his exile to the Philippines and reorganized the Katipunan. With help from American forces, the revolution resumed.

The Katipunan leaders hoped that this meant the US would help the Philippines become independent. Instead, the Americans were poised to become their new colonial masters.

The Americans defeated the Spanish at Manila Bay, with heavy support from Filipino nationalist fighters. But the terms of the Spanish surrender excluded the Filipinos.

The Spanish and the Americans came to a gentlemen’s agreement: a pretend “final battle” would be fought where the American troops could occupy Manila without Filipino involvement, while the Spanish could climb down “with honor.” The net result was to keep the capital of the Philippines out of Filipino hands.

At the conclusion of the war, the victorious Americans and the vanquished Spanish signed the Treaty of Paris in 1898, where Spain ceded many of its important territories, like Puerto Rico and Cuba, to US domination. All of the islands of the Philippines were annexed by the US under this treaty.

This marked the end of the Spanish Empire and the start of American imperialism as a powerhouse on the world stage. Of course, not a single Cuban, Puerto Rican, or Filipino person was consulted about this arrangement.

When the Treaty of Paris was signed and the US declared sovereignty over the Philippines, the Katipunan responded by declaring independence of the country, forming the first Republic of the Philippines with Aguinaldo as president. Soon, fighters of the Katipunan clashed with American troops, beginning the Philippine-American War.

The US troops quickly gained the advantage over the nationalist fighters. But the difference between the two sides was not in armaments, for the Katipunan soldiers used many of the same armaments that they had obtained from the Americans while fighting the Spanish. The difference was in morale.

In many skirmishes, the Filipino soldiers aggressively fought against the Americans at the first encounter, only to retreat when they felt as if they had done enough for their patron. As much as Aguinaldo wished for them to fight to the bitter end, many were not willing to sacrifice their lives for Aguinaldo’s war of independence, i.e. for the independence of their masters. The rank and file increasingly saw the war as that of their ruling classes, rather than their own.

On the other hand, the US forces were imbued with the zeal of expanding their rising new empire. From political leaders like Theodore Roosevelt, to the military command, down to many rank-and-file US soldiers who were promised rich rewards, the US invaders salivated over this large archipelago from which they could fly the Star Spangled Banner over the Pacific.

In this state, the Katipunan was no match for US imperialism. The rapid deterioration of their forces pushed them into a losing guerrilla war. In the process, the initial goodwill that the leaders of the Katipunan had enjoyed from the general population dissipated. The final nail in the coffin for the Katipunan was the capture of Aguinaldo in 1901, who declared his allegiance to the US weeks after his capture.

Thereafter, although armed struggles against the US continued until 1913, the end of the Katipunan meant that the resistance no longer had even the outward appearance of a unified leadership. Despite this, US forces still chose to inflict the most heinous crimes to subjugate their newfound colony, crimes that are vigorously downplayed by the American and Filipino ruling classes to this day.

US Imperialism’s crimes against the Filipino masses

As the US mowed down the declining Katipunan, it did not wage war only on the fighters, but on the whole population of the Philippines.

The US imposed a naval blockade on major ports in the Philippines, including Manila Bay. The aim of this was to cut off supplies to the revolutionaries. But, as in all blockades, civilians suffered too. The blockade contributed to the famine and disease that accompanied the brutality of the American army.

“Using gunboats … the American fleet effectively prevented the trade and movement of most contraband between the islands and with the larger world. Since contraband included many foodstuffs, the result of this interdiction included widespread shortages of food … and a general economic crisis.” (A War of Frontier and Empire- The Philippine-American War, 1898-1902 David J. Silbey. Page 115)

To monitor for guerrilla activities, US forces widely constructed concentration camps. These were cynically called “reconcentration camps” and “zones of protection,” and were surrounded by “free fire zones” where US troops fired at will at anybody they could find. Whole communities of people were forced into them, where they were made to carry out forced labor. They suffered collective punishment if a freedom fighter was found amongst them. The vast majority of civilian casualties took place in these camps.

Decades before the Nazis notoriously deployed the same techniques against the Jews and others, concentration camps were being used by the very same “champion of freedom and democracy” that claimed credit for the Nazi defeat.

There were even acts of biological warfare committed against the Filipino people. A US army surgeon remarked at the time:

I find excreta, dead animals. Slop, stable manure, and other filth made by the army have been dumped 100 to 300 yards from the spring which furnishes drinking water for the entire town.

This in turn caused a cholera epidemic among the Filipino population. A significant number of the victims were those crammed into concentration camps and dependent on these filthy water sources. Up to 200,000 died from this cholera epidemic.

In other instances, US forces directly conducted massacres. In the Balangiga Massacre, US general Jacob H Smith ordered his men to turn the area into a “howling wilderness,” burning down at least 200 homes and slaughtering children as young as 10. He famously told his subordinates:

I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn; the more you kill and burn the better it will please me … I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States.

In this massacre alone, up to 2,000 people were killed. The brutality of the US forces was nothing short of harrowing.

Throughout the war people were also subjected to various tortures, including an especially barbaric type of waterboarding. The method they used was called the “water cure” and involved them pouring water, sometimes mixed with salt, down the throats of prisoners. Their stomachs were then jumped on, causing extreme pain, vomiting, and sometimes even death.

Alongside physical torture, psychological torture was deployed. Threats of rape and murder against family members of the prisoners were frequent. All of these were well documented by American soldiers and journalists at the time, but have since been downplayed and wiped from the history books.

Cultural sites like historic churches and libraries were destroyed. The bells of the church in Balangiga were even seized by US troops, and were not returned to the Philippines until 2018!

In the three years of open warfare waged by the US against the Filipino masses, hundreds of thousands were slaughtered. Considering that the population of the Philippines at the time was between seven and eight million, even the conservative estimate of 200,000 killed meant that 2.5%of the population perished at the hands of the US. The less conservative estimate of up to one million would mean that the US murdered 12.5% of the population in the Philippines.

The “War” is in effect no different from the “counterterrorist,” “counterinsurgent” atrocities that the US went on to commit around the world a century later.

Ruling class complicity in the slaughter

What did the Filipino ruling class, the bourgeoisie and the landlords, do for their fellow countrymen in the face of this inhumanity wrought by an imperialist invader? As with the belated national bourgeoisies of colonial and oppressed countries everywhere, the Filipino ruling class was far more eager to welcome their new imperialist masters than carry out the task of national liberation—a bourgeois revolutionary task—let alone help the ordinary masses.

While many of these ruling class types were present at the founding ceremony of the Republic of the Philippines, they switched sides with lightning speed.

Pedro Paterno, who had previously convinced the Katipunan leadership to accept the deal with Spain in the hopes of being rewarded with a Spanish dukedom, at this time quickly called for acceptance of US rule. Felipe Buencamino, a Filipino who formerly served in the Spanish army as a colonel and only defected to the Katipunan after the Spanish were poised to leave, advocated for the acceptance of American rule barely four months after the declaration of independence. Needless to say, both men were extremely wealthy. They were far from alone among the Filipino bourgeoisie.

The Filipino landlords and capitalists saw profit in US domination, not in the liberation of the Philippines. From the Americans, they wished to gain access to world trade and modern technology. Moreover, they wanted to consolidate their own political and economic power, and desired stability.

Suing for the fullest implementation of bourgeois-democratic tasks—genuine national liberation, the redistribution of land, and democratic rights for all Filipinos—would have been the necessary precondition for the serious development of the productive forces in the Philippines. But the Filipino bourgeoisie found it much more beneficial to serve the interests of the imperialists, and crush any movements from below that threatened imperialist domination.

For example, from 1902–1907 a movement of former Katipuneros and thousands of peasants formed a movement called the Pulahanes. This movement against the landlords and colonizers was then crushed by the newly formed Philippine Constabulary (est. 1901) and the US military, the former being commanded by Filipino capitalists and landlords.

Later on in 1935, the Sakdalista Uprising drew support from the peasantry. It called for land redistribution, true independence, and an end to abuses by the landlords. This, again, was crushed by the Philippine Constabulary.

The national bourgeoisie of the Philippines, like all countries at the time suffering from imperialist domination and colonization, was entirely aligned with the interests of the imperialists. They had no interest in genuinely liberating the poor masses of their country. Trotsky made this key observation when developing his theory of the permanent revolution:

The bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation, as a class, is incapable of carrying through a consistent struggle against imperialism; it fears its own proletariat more than it hates the foreign oppressor.

The task of leading a revolution that could accomplish bourgeois-democratic tasks therefore could not be carried out by the national bourgeoisie. Instead, it required the working class to lead such a revolution in alliance with the peasantry. But once having taken power, this workers’ government would not stop at bourgeois-democratic measures. It would then take measures in its own interests as a class: to abolish capitalism and begin the transition towards socialism, and spread the revolution internationally, in order to defend its gains.

Tragically, the Philippine-American War took place more than two decades before the 1917 Russian Revolution, which validated this perspective. The RSDLP, the party of the Marxists in Russia, was itself in its infancy at the time of the Philippine-American War, and Marxism had barely reached the Philippines. The industrial proletariat was also only just beginning to develop, with port and trade workers in just a few cities only just gaining strength in society. It was thus impossible for a revolutionary proletarian party to be formed at the time.

Under these circumstances, in some ways it was a foregone conclusion that the Philippine-American War ended in the subjugation of the Philippines to US imperialism. In the same way, the Republican Revolution of 1911 in China, although it hastened the disintegration of the Qing Dynasty, did not free the country from backwardness, landlord-despotism, or imperialist domination. These were negative proofs of the theory of permanent revolution before it was positively verified by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia.

Nonetheless, the Filipino working class did eventually develop and gain strength. The toiling masses of the country continued the now hidden, now open struggle for national liberation, while the national bourgeoisie worked against them, as they do to this day.

The tasks that remain

The brutal American onslaught carried on for more than a decade. It finally ended with the last defeat of the southern Muslim “Moro” rebels in 1913. Although the US eventually granted the Philippines formal independence in 1946, it still kept the country closely leashed to its interests in Asia. Over the decades, it sponsored corrupt politicians, if not outright dictators like Ferdinand Marcos Sr.

The Filipino ruling class, the majority of whom remain deeply servile to US imperialism, have, in turn, moved might and main to remove any mention of American atrocities from the national curriculum, so as to create the impression that the US is a benefactor rather than the imperialist butcher of the Filipino masses.

On the other hand, the Filipino working class struggled against the system not a few times in the days since the war. The most heroic were the People Power Revolution that toppled Marcos Sr. in 1986, and the EDSA II movement that ousted corrupt president Joseph Estrada.

Yet today, the Filipino masses are still reeling in the legacy of imperialist domination, while world capitalism descends to a state of decay never seen before. The need for revolutionary communist leadership in the Philippines, Southeast Asia, and the world has never been more urgent, and a prerequisite to building one is to clarify this formative historical experience of the country.