Neocolonialism in the Philippines
Popular media has characterized the relationship between the United States and the Philippines as a connection built on democracy, mutually beneficial trade, and shared cultural values. But this propagandized image conceals a violent colonial history and an exploitative socio-political-economic dynamic in the present day. For the purposes of this article, colonialism can be defined as one state engaging in direct political control of another society, while neocolonialism can be defined as the indirect political and economic influence of a state over another society without explicit control (Go, 2015). Though the Philippines is recognized as a sovereign state, the extensive military power and presence of the U.S., extractive economic practices, and socio-political disempowerment of the Filipino people in the Philippines itself speak to the survival of colonial features which perpetuate a neocolonial connection between the Philippines and the United States.
The colonial relationship between the U.S. and Philippines begins with the end of the Spanish-American War, when the U.S. purchased the Philippines and Cuba from Spain through the Treaty of Paris in 1898. This ownership came after promises of sovereignty for the Filipino people in exchange for fighting the Spanish – a promise the U.S. reneged upon, resulting in the Philippine-American War which claimed the lives of 20,000 Filipino soldiers and 200,000-1 million Filipino civilians (De Leon, 2022). The pacification of the Philippines was defined by brutal military tactics and racist characterizations of the Filipino people by the U.S. Army. During and after the war, many Filipino communities across the islands rejected the Army forces and often refused to give up information on the remaining guerillas, sometimes actively aiding them through supplies and shelters. In response, the military sanctioned the use of scorched earth tactics, torture, and concentration camps to put down what they saw as an insurrectionary colony of savage fighters, a lens through which military forces viewed Filipino civilians and communities as uncivilized and in need of pacification for their own good (Francisco, 1973; Clem, 2016). Filipinos were compared to and equated with other racial minorities in the mainstream American media, adding a racial component to the violence visited upon the Filipino people. In Batangas, U.S. Major Gen. Franklin Bell constructed concentration camps where communities from the region were forced into imprisonment and starvation while his forces destroyed crops and barrios. Hostages were killed arbitrarily for the actions of guerillas outside the camp borders. In Samar, U.S. Gen. Jacob H. Smith became infamous for his scorched earth approach to the pacification of the region and for ordering the killing of any Filipino older than 10 years of age in his operations (Francisco, 1973). The use of concentration camps, scorched earth tactics, and torture speaks to a brutal subjugation of a racialized minority on what was considered to be American property. What wasn’t accomplished with military might was accomplished through a colonial education which taught English and American socio-cultural values to the Filipinos, creating subsequent generations in the Philippines that were sympathetic and grateful to Western teachers and soldiers for bringing perceived education and social mobility (McMahon, 2000). In its own way, United States-sponsored education assisted in pacification with a greater degree of success than the gun and the sword. Decades of colonial education have erased the history of violence that lay at the heart of U.S.-Philippine relations even today.
The ongoing colonial relationship between the Philippines and the United States can be further defined through the economic exploitation of Filipino laborers. One modern-day form of this neocolonial exploitation is through the labor brokerage of Filipino laborers throughout the international and national economy going back to the Marcos regime. The Philippines has been training and exporting laborers to fill labor needs in other countries, where Filipinos often occupy low-paying jobs under degrading conditions (Rodriguez, 2010). Specifically, Filipino migration to the United States has roots in this neocolonial system, as most of the waves of Filipino migration was driven by a need to fill specific labor demands that White citizens were not expected to fulfill. In the early 20th century, Filipino migration at this stage was largely composed of single, male Filipinos who were almost exclusively employed as factory and farm workers for White business owners alongside other racialized minorities (Espiritu, 2003). Through U.S. state policy, immigration laws regarding Filipino migration was relaxed to allow migrant workers to flock to the country’s shores, but other policies prevented non-white persons from owning land while Filipinos were denied full citizenship because of their status as U.S. nationals (Espiritu, 2003). Thus, immigration was encouraged to provide a disposable minority workforce that was prevented from moving up in the socioeconomic hierarchy by denying Filipinos the ability to become citizens or own land. Though later in the 20th century immigration laws were relaxed, the migration of Filipinos has always reflected the labor needs of the United States, whether the Navy recruited Black and Filipino soldiers to be cooks, stewards, and attendants or when the U.S.-backed the training and exportation of Filipino nurses to fill a domestic need for medical personnel and ambassadors Western culture (Espiritu, 2003). Specifically, the Philippines is one of the largest exporters of trained nurses to the United States – an exportation driven by recruitment and training programs in the Philippines that is designed to send trained medical personnel to the states to supply their market. In the present day, many Filipino-Americans can tie their family’s immigration to one of the large migration waves produced by the neocolonial influence the U.S. has on the Philippines.
Another mechanism of neocolonialism that enforces the unequal Philippines-U.S. power dynamic today is the U.S. support and education of a politically and economically empowered Filipino upper class that supports colonial, extractive policies. Beginning with the pensionado program in the early 20th century where wealthy, upper class Filipinos were sent to study in the U.S., there has always been a vested interest in the production of Filipinos sympathetic to the system which generates profits for Western interests (Espiritu, 2003). Furthermore, the colonial education system instituted during the early colonization efforts continues to bear fruit in the universities in the Philippines, as students are taught to adhere to the neocolonial economic system that prizes reliance on foreign capital investment and fiscal austerity; the reliance on foreign investments keeps the controlling economic interests and resources in the pocket of the U.S. and policies of fiscal austerity prevent the implementation of programs for social infrastructure (Mahajani, 1974). In fact, in 1972 the United States controlled 75% of all foreign investment in the Philippines, a significant percentage of control greased by the actions of policy makers sympathetic to the U.S. and for their own profit margins (Mahajani, 1974). The actions of this empowered upper class in the Philippines reproduces an unequal economic hierarchy that resembles the relationship between a colonial power and its colony. Today, economic treaties between the United States and the Philippines grant the corporate and state powers of the U.S. trade rights and control of natural resources, a hold that is enforced by the presence of military bases and ground forces (De Leon, 2022).
Neocolonialism is also further enabled in the Philippines by the heavy presence of American military forces and the powers granted to them over Filipino communities through various pieces of legislation. Many supporters of the present Philippine-U.S. relationship argue that access to American military resources is, and remains, a path to upward socio-economic mobility or immigration for many impoverished Filipinos. While this has historically been the case for both Filipinos living around military areas and for Fil-Am children of the diaspora, both of these reasons for Filipino involvement in the Navy and the effect it has had on the Philippines must be interrogated. Though Western military forces have been in the Philippines since the Spanish-American War, the passing of the Military Bases Agreement Act in 1947 at the onset of the Cold War established no less than twenty-three military bases in the Philippines (Brenes, 2021). The ubiquitous presence of these military bases provided many opportunities for Filipinos to either be employed by the military, or provide services such as food, lodging, goods, and sex work so that military service members became linchpins to local economies. Working as part of the military machine has allowed Filipinos the opportunity to gain access to social programs and wages previously denied to them while the U.S. used the Philippines as a landing base for interventions and wars in Asia such as in Vietnam and Korea (Brenes, 2021). While Filipinos were still impoverished and their economy tied to American investment and military presence under this arrangement, they continued to rely on the U.S. for jobs and upward social mobility. This was the only way provided for them to secure better lives for themselves – at the cost of further entrenching themselves in an unequal military and economic deal. Though the People’s Power revolution which overthrew the U.S.-backed Marcos regime also resulted in the removal of foreign military presence from the last two military bases at Subic Bay and Clark Air Base in 1991, the 1998 Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) allowed American forces in for training exercises and has become a re-occupation as Subic Bay, Clark, and other smaller outposts are now controlled by the U.S. once again (Vine, 2019).
The VFA legally protects American soldiers who commit crimes on Philippine soil, creating a protected colonial military class that sometimes exploits and abuses the local Filipino people. In 2014, the murder of transgender woman Jennifer Laude by U.S. Marine Daniel Pemberton resulted in a protracted legal case which saw Pemberton sentenced to 12 years in a Philippine prison for homicide (Raval, 2022). However, American forces refused to submit Pemberton to the Philippine authorities and detained him in a military prison, where he was released early. In another case in 2006, another Marine was sentenced to 40 years in a Philippine prison for the rape of a young woman, but was transferred to the U.S. embassy and released after three years (Wong et al., 2021). In both cases, American military members were accused and sentenced according to Philippine law, but the U.S. stepped in to protect the soldiers under rights granted to them under the VFA, sidestepping Philippine law. Moreover, these two incidents also speak to a sexually exploitative relationship between local Filipina women and American servicemen; such cases happen often in towns built up around military installations, but most locals lack the economic resources to bring such cases to the inside of a courtroom (Raval, 2022). These cases point to direct exploitation of local Filipino labor and Filipino bodies by protected U.S. nationals in the Philippines, effectively recreating the colonial dynamic.
These examples of social, political, and economic exploitation are indicative of a continued neocolonial dynamic between the Philippines and United States, an ongoing process reinforced through historical erasure and deep economic and cultural flows between the two countries.
Work Cited
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Espiritu, Y. L. (2003). Home Bound: Filipino Lives Across Cultures, Communities, and Countries. University of California Press.
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Reyes, V. (2020, February 22). Perspective | after more than a century, did the Philippines finally break free from the United States? The Washington Post. Retrieved October 25, 2022, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/02/21/after-more-than-century-did-philippines-finally-break-free-united-states/
Vine, D. (2019). No bases? assessing the impact of social movements challenging US foreign military bases. Current Anthropology, 60(S19). https://doi.org/10.1086/701042
Wong, A. C., Jardine, M., Pillai, P., & Harcourt, T. (2022, May 30). Duterte's back-down on US forces in Philippines. Lowy Institute. Retrieved October 25, 2022, from https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/duterte-s-back-down-us-forces-philippines
