Chapter 1 - Philippine Colonial Set Up On the Eve of WW II
American Plan for Neo-Colonialism
• Filipinos had national identity but with a steadily eroded sense of national consciousness
because:
• (1) of massive campaign of acculturation;
(2) of the process of miseducation;
(3) of the implantation of American political institutions and customs in the evolving colonial society.
• The set up that allowed the Americans to establish a colonial economy suited to their imperialist
motives with minimal objection from Filipinos who had little understanding of the operations of
imperialist exploitation and whose attention was in any case adroitly drawn to the prospect of
gradual expansion of their political autonomy:
• (1) The 1896 Revolution against Spanish colonialism had given the Filipino people
insufficient experience to cope with the more subtle techniques of American
imperialism;
• (2) Although the anti-Spanish struggle was rooted in economic exploitation, the
personal abuses committed by the Spaniards and their blatant denial of basic political
and civil rights became the principal subjects of ilustradoI articulation;
• (3) Andres Bonifacio and his group of revolutionarios did not go much beyond general
formulations for a more egalitarian society to be established after the Spaniards were
expelled;
• (4) The attention of the people was only focused primarily on the attainment of political
independence.
• Factors and impeded a correct understanding of colonial reality:
• 1. Miseducation;
• 2. Public School system;
• 3. The fairly rapid Fililpinization of the bureaucracy.
• An understanding of imperialism which is seen on the peoples’ awareness of the interrelation
between mass poverty and the colonial economy are evidenced by the slogans, programs of
action and demands by:
• 1.The Sakdal movement of the mid-1930s;
• 2. The labor unions of Central Luzon which came under the influence of both the
socialist movement of Pedro Abad Santos and the newly-established Communist Party
• Factors that impeded a correct understanding of colonial reality:
• 1. Miseducation;
• 2. American-oriented media; and,
• 3. Colonial politics.
• American economic policies, particularly free trade, had developed an economy based on
agricultural exports to the US and imports of manufactured goods which came overwhelmingly
from the same source—results:
• 1. Filipino landowners grew rich from the export of their sugar, copra, hemp and other
products to the US;
