Never an Empire (34 page)

‘Are you sorry for your sin?'

‘What?'

‘I have to know that you are sorry.'

‘Look at me, for God's sake. Look at me. It's been killing me for eight years.'

The gun was still pointed so Father Enrique raised his hand in blessing and began.

‘Ego te absolve … I absolve you …'

The American watched and listened until Father Enrique fell silent.

‘Is that it? I've been forgiven?'

‘Yes.'

‘Forgiven. Thank God. And thank you, Father.'

And the gun went off.

The bullet hit Father Enrique just above the left eye and blew part of the back of his head off as it exited, spattering his brains across the stone flags. His body sprawled out of the overturned chair onto the floor. A dark pool immediately began to form under his head.

The American sat back and looked at the body.

‘All you had to do was say the words, Father, that's all I wanted, to be forgiven so I could finish it tonight. Why in hell did you have to know what they were for? Why? Don't you see, Father, it made you, like me, a loose end.'

And he raised the gun to his temple, pulled the trigger and, like Father Enrique, was thrown to the floor where a dark pool of his blood began to form under his shattered head.

Postscript

The American had not lied to Father Enrique. As a result of a meeting with Dominador Gomez, General Macario Sakay agreed to surrender on certain conditions: that a general amnesty be declared for all of his men, that they be allowed to bear arms when they were led in from the mountains. He wanted it made clear that his army had not been defeated but had accepted a negotiated end to hostilities. That he and his officers be allowed to leave the Philippines. That the Philippine National Assembly, when convened, would be to act as a ‘gate of freedom'.

Sakay sent General Leó Vilafuerte as his emissary to gain confirmation that these conditions would be agreed by the Americans. This Vilafuerte did, obtaining full and unconditional acceptance for them directly from the Governor General, Henry Clay Ide.

Sakay, Vilafuerte, and senior officers duly led their men out of the mountains then travelled to Manila. Once in the capital it was exactly as the American had said: they were allowed to wear their uniforms and carry side-arms, were treated almost as royalty, and invited to various banquets and receptions. However, when the army had dispersed the general and his inner circle of officers received an invitation from the constabulary chief, Colonel Harry H. Bandholtz, to attend a reception. As the party was at its height armed US soldiers entered, Sakay and his officers were disarmed, arrested, and taken to the military barracks. The whole splendid façade of welcome had been a carefully planned deception ensuring that Sakay's army were disbanded before arresting Sakay and his officers without provoking any significant opposition or unrest.

It was widely held among the American community, though never confirmed officially, that the plan had been orchestrated by a senior US Secret Service Treasury agent specially assigned to the task by Washington with the full knowledge and agreement of President Theodore Roosevelt.

With the dispersal of the army, the arrest and detention of General Macario Sakay the last serious armed opposition to American colonial rule of the Philippines had been removed.

At the subsequent trial of Sakay and his officers the accusation laid against them was that of ‘bandolerismo', a capital offence under the Brigandage Act, instituted by the American government of the Philippines in 1902. This act held that all and any armed resistance to American rule were acts of banditry. Sakay and his officers were found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. This verdict was upheld by the Philippine Supreme Court and on 13 September 1907 the execution took place.

Before he died General Macario Sakay made the following statement:

Death comes to all of us sooner or later, so I will face the Lord Almighty calmly. But I want to tell you that we are not bandits and robbers, as the Americans have accused us, but members of the revolutionary force that defended our mother country, the Philippines. Farewell. Long live the republic and may our independence be born in the future. Long live the Philippines.

The story of General Macario Sakay almost disappeared from the history books of the Philippines and certainly never appeared in any US history texts covering the American annexation and occupation of the Philippines. His name, when it was remembered at all, was only to refer to a man with long hair who needed a haircut.

However, the truth has a way of finding the light no matter how well or deeply it gets buried by those who would wish it forgotten. Today the story of Philippine armed resistance to American colonial rule is being told and learned. Filipinos are now able to look on men such as Macario Sakay as heroes deserving of remembrance.

On 13 September 2008, the hundred and first anniversary of his execution, a life-size statue of General Sakay was unveiled by the Manila Historical Heritage Commission. In the same month the Philippine Senate adopted two resolutions honouring him and his fellow freedom fighters for giving their lives in the cause of Philippine Independence.

And then …

The Philippine Assembly
convened and peace prevailed, except in the Provinces of Mindanao, Sulu, and Palawan where the Catholicism brought by the Spanish hadn't displaced the Muslim faith which had been planted before their arrival. The struggle of the Moro people begun against the Spanish and continued with the occupation of the country by the Americans is referred to by Western historians as the Moro Rebellion, and lasted until 1913. In 1934 the Tydings-McDuffie Act produced a procedural framework for the independence. There would be a two-year period for the drafting of a constitution for the Commonwealth of the Philippines. This, subject to certain conditions such as the approval of the new constitution by the US president, would then lead to a ten-year transition period. Had the act been allowed to run its course Philippine Independence, subject to certain conditions concerning US naval requirements, would have been granted by 1946. However, the Second World War intervened and Japan invaded and occupied the country. America recaptured the country in 1945 and honoured its commitments on the cessation of hostilities. On July 4 1946 the United States formally recognised the independence of the Republic of the Philippines.

Dominador Gomez
, having negotiated the surrender of General Macario Sakay, entered political life and in 1909 was elected to the National Assembly. He died peacefully in 1929, remembered as a successful and respected political figure and tireless worker for Philippine independence.

Governor Henry Clay Ide
served only ten months as governor general of the Philippines. On his departure the
Manila Times
praised Ide as one who, ‘in his social relations re-established the good times of Taft which the latter's successor tried to make us forget'. He died at his home in St Johnsbury, Vermont, on 13 June 1921.

The
Maine
Enquiries.
The tragic loss of the
Maine
was followed up by several enquiries. The Spanish commissioned two naval officers to look into the likely causes of the explosion which sank it. They collected evidence from officers of naval artillery who concluded that the cause of the explosion of the munitions store which ripped the ship apart had been the result of a combustion in the coal bunker adjacent to the store. They were unable to identify what had caused this combustion. They discounted the idea that the ship could have been mined as no column of water had been observed, as should have been the case had a mine been used; also a mine would have to be detonated by electricity using cables and none were found; no dead fish were found in the harbour which would have been the case had an explosion happened in the water. The conclusions of this Spanish enquiry were not reported in the American press.

The United States ordered its own board of inquiry which was convened under Captain William T. Sampson. The board took evidence from witnesses, survivors, and their own divers. It also took expert testimony from Commander George Converse of the Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island. The Board concluded that the
Maine
had been blown up by a mine which in turn had detonated the reserve store of six-inch ammunition.

In 1911 another inquiry was set up by the US: the Vreeland Board of Inquiry. This board of inquiry instituted the recovery of the
Maine
. A coffer dam was built round the wreck to facilitate the recovery. The intact aft portion of the
Maine
was made watertight and towed out to sea where she was scuttled on March 16 1912. The newly recovered bodies found during the operation were taken back to the US and buried at Arlington National Cemetery. The examination of the hull carried out during this operation provided evidence which conflicted with that of the Sampson Inquiry. In 1974 Admiral Hyman G. Rickover began his own private investigation. From his reading of contemporary reports, newspaper articles, personal papers and plans of the construction of the Maine he concluded that there had been no mine and the explosion of the ammunition store had been the result of a spontaneous combustion in the adjacent coal bunker. He published a book of his findings in 1976:
How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed
.

In 1998, to commemorate the centennial of the sinking, the
National Geographic
magazine commissioned an analysis of the incident by Advanced Marine Enterprises. AME used computer modelling and other advanced techniques but finally declared its findings inconclusive. A fire could have caused the explosion but there was also some evidence of another detonation which may have been a mine.

In 2002 The History Channel produced an episode entitled, ‘
Death of the USS Maine
', as part of its ‘Unsolved History' series. The conclusion of this documentary was that there was a weakness in the bulkhead separating the coal store from the ammunition store and a fire caused the explosion.

Apart from official and unofficial inquiries there have always been persistent rumours that the sinking was the result of ‘black ops' or a ‘false flag' operation carried out by the US government to create a pretext for initiating war with Spain. This remains the official view of the Cuban government. A monument to the dead of the
Maine
was erected in 1926. On 18 January 1961, after the Cuban Revolution when the Communist government led by Fidel Castro came to power, the eagle with outstretched wings, the busts of Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt and that of Leonard Wood, first military governor of Cuba, were removed and the following inscription added to the monument:

A las víctimas de El Maine qui fueron sacrificadas por la voracidad imperialista en su afán de apoderarse de la isla Cuba.

To the victims of the Maine who were sacrificed to imperialist voracity and its desire to annexe the island of Cuba.

The sinking of the
Maine
remains an open and ongoing question.

As for the other possessions the US acquired from Spain …

Cuba
After the Spanish-American War and a period of US occupation the Platt Amendment laid down how Cuba would be allowed to function as an independent country, securing US commercial and military priorities. This was replaced in 1934 by the Teller Amendment which effectively made Cuba a vassal state of the US confirming the continuing American position that Cuba was within America's legitimate sphere of influence and therefore liable to a strong element of control. This attitude did not change when Fidel Castro came to power and the US embargo of the country began.

Guam
remains an important strategic military base and is designated an ‘unincorporated territory' by the US. Quite what that means in terms of international law is beyond me.

Puerto Rico
came under US military control as a result of the Treaty of Paris. In 1917 President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Jones Act which made the country an ‘organised but unincorporated territory'. This meant that Puerto Ricans could be conscripted: 20,000 were sent to fight in Europe in the First World War, but were not allowed to vote in such things as the US presidential election. From 1948 to 1952 it was a crime to display the Puerto Rican flag in public. The only flag permitted was the Stars and Stripes. Puerto Rico has a population of almost four million people yet it remains, like tiny Guam, in an international limbo. Its future is uncertain.

And what, meanwhile, of the American Secret Service?

The outbreak of WWI created a security crisis for the United States. Joseph C. Grew, undersecretary of state, in his book,
Turbulent Era: A Diplomatic Record of Forty Years 1904-45
, described the pre-war period as ‘a fool's paradise'. While Europe was at war and America remained neutral it still suffered considerably from German espionage and sabotage. Among other things, a German naval attaché, Karl Boy-Ed, with the knowledge and support of the military attaché at the German embassy, Captain Franz Von Papen, were suspected of masterminding explosions at ten factories across the US which produced munitions for the Allies. Secretary of the Treasury, and therefore head of the Secret Service, William McAdoo admitted that the Secret Service, the FBI, and the Post Office Inspection Service were failing to co-ordinate and share information on incidents sponsored by foreign agents and by not doing so were unable to deal with German espionage, fraud, and sabotage.

In response secretary of state, Robert Lansing, moved to create a new inter-agency body, the Bureau of Secret Intelligence, which would act as a co-ordinator and clearing house of information. His proposal met with a mixed response. It was supported by the Treasury, reluctantly supported with reservations by the postmaster general, and actively opposed by the attorney general's office. By 1917 President Woodrow Wilson had still not made a decision as to whether the new bureau should go ahead, not that it mattered so very much because on April 4 1916 Lansing, on his own initiative, had created the Secret Intelligence Bureau which he admitted was, to use his own term, ‘extra legal'. He appointed Frank L. Polk, counsellor of the Department of State, as director.