Seditious Crimes and Rebellious Conspiracies: Anti-communism and US Empire in the Philippines

Abstract

This article details how US colonial policymakers and Filipino political elites, intent on fostering a non-revolutionary Philippine nationalism in the late 1920s and 1930s, produced an anti-communist politics aimed at eliminating or delegitimizing radical anti-imperialism. Communist-inspired, anti-imperial activists placed US imperialism in the Philippines within the framework of western imperialism in Asia, thereby challenging the anti-imperial ideology of the US empire. Americans and elite Filipinos met this challenge by repressing radical, anti-imperialist visions of Philippine independence through inter-colonial surveillance and cooperation, increased policing, mass imprisonment, and the outlawing of communist politics in the Philippines.

Carceral and Colonial Memory During Pandemic Times in the Philippines

“…Filipino craft and industry workers organised themselves informally as early as the 1870s, developing into a 20,000-member strong nationwide labour union in 1902 under the leadership of newspaperman Isabelo de los Reyes, later jailed with other union leaders for sedition (Sibal 2004). 8 In collusion with Filipino landowning elites, U.S. colonial administrators in the Philippines repressed anti-imperialist ideology by establishing a non-revolutionary framework for Philippine nationalism (Woods 2018). Local leaders inspired by communist ideologies were seen as a threat 'because their critique situated the United States of America as part of the oppressive world-wide system of the white colonial rule over non-white peoples' (Woods 2018, 62).…”