[Looking Back: A century of US imperialist devastation] Filipino-American War (1899-1913) The first US imperialist intervention in the country
The Filipino-American War in the first decade and a half of the 20th century is now but a memory. The old pictures showing hectares of skeletal remains of Filipinos killed by US troops in this war are constant reminders of the grim and gory debauchery against Filipinos by the newly rising US imperialism. More than half a million Filipinos, including innocent children and women, were mercilessly killed by the American troops invading the country. The deployment then of 126,468 American troops aggressing upon and occupying the Philippines, was the largest by the military forces of the US in its first phase of expansionism.
Up to now, US imperialism with total arrogance refuses to account for or even just apologize officially for its innumerable crimes when it subjugated a people who have just won independence from Spanish colonialism.
To terrify and silence the Filipino people, US troops became experts in the use of torture, massacre, rape and all sorts of barbarism and brutality. They specialized in the use of "water cure" and "rope torture", a form of which was to hang babies upside down to force their parents to disclose the guerrillas� whereabouts.
Among their most notorious crimes was the merciless massacre of the whole town of Balangiga, Samar in 1901, in retaliation for the successful raid of an American base by guerrillas. The American troops did not leave a single person alive. To add insult to injury, to this day they refuse to return the church bells which were used to signal the raid of the camp of the American troopers and which they stole afterwards.
Zoning, hamleting, torching of entire barrios and food blockades became the policy in areas where there was fierce opposition from the people to another occupation by a foreign power. Armed uprisings against the US erupted and scattered all over the country, most of them spontaneous. Among these were the uprisings of the Pulahanes in Visayas, the Colorums and Lumads of Mindanao, and the Sakdalistas and troops of Macario Sakay in Luzon. To belittle their resistance, they were branded as "criminals and bandits".
At the same time as it sowed widespread and vicious terror, the US also used the local bourgeois liberals and established the puppet Philippine government, which passed such laws as the Sedition Law of 1901, the Brigandage Act of 1902 and the Reconcentration Act of 1903 to legitimize the US policy of genocide in the Philippines.
The mercenary Philippine Constabulary and Philippine Scouts were also mercilessly used against the Katipuneros and others who were fighting against US subjugation of the country. It was only in 1911 when guerrilla warfare was subdued in Luzon. Thereafter, the US shifted its forces against the fierce resistance of the people and intense fighting in Mindanao.
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