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Great Experiment. American colonialism in the Philippines was a novel exercise in "enlightened imperialism." When the former Spanish colony dropped suddenly into Admiral Dewey's hands on May 1, 1898, President William McKinley was so surprised that, as he later said, "I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance." He needed it, for the Aguinaldo bolomen would have tried the patience of the most saintly President. Like the Viet Cong, the Filipino terrorists were experts at ambush, using bamboo cannon loaded with scrap iron in place of Charley's captured Claymore mines. Hatred for the "Flips" was reflected in a popular Army marching song, set to the tune of Tramp, Tramp, Tramp:
Damn, damn, damn the Filipinos!
Cut throat khakiac ladrones!
Underneath the starry flag
Civilize 'em with a Krag,
And return us to our own beloved homes.
Fortunately, that phase of "civilization" gave way quickly to the foresighted civil rule of such Governors General as William Howard Taft and Francis B. Harrison. "Colonialists with a conscience," as they have been called, Taft and his successors brought the tools of self-government to the Philippines: literacy (72% of all Filipinos can read and write, the highest percentage in Southeast Asia), medicine (Filipino life expectancy in 1900 was 14 years, today it is 60), civil liberties (the Filipino press is the freest in Asia, if not the world). At the same time, the great experiment in self-liquidating colonialism was planting seeds that would sprout into the problems Marcos faces today.
The U.S. colonizers did nothing to alter the compadre system under which a Filipino bureaucrat was permitted to skim the cream from his tax collections and distribute it to his poor friends and relations; as a result, graft and corruption are still the Manila way of life. Nor did the Americans break up the vast estates of the principalia, the Filipino elite; peasants today still pay up to 30% of their crop to absentee landlords, and the rest often goes to local loan sharks. By granting free tariffs to Philippine producers of sugar, lumber and hemp, the U.S. reinforced a backward primary-product economy; today, a major irritant between Washington and Manila is the Laurel-Langley Trade Agreement of 1956, which perpetuates that error. Still, when the date came for Philippine independence, the U.S. kept its word. On July 4, 1946, for better or worse, the philophilic strains of the Filipino national anthem rang out over war-battered Luneta Park, and the child of America's great experiment walked free.
"It's Classy." Twenty years later, the Philippines are an odd melange of American, Spanish and Asian influence, all edged with a ferocity and fecundity that is uniquely Filipino. The crooning of a tuko lizard in the night forests of Cavite is counterpointed by the rattle of gunfire as a cigarette-smuggling speedboat runs a customs blockade offshore. The big beat of jukeboxes in Manila's waterfront dives does not quite drown out the clink of cocktail glasses at the opulent Army-Navy Club. Manila newspapers splash crime news in Hechtian hyperbole across their front pages.