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2.9. Alfred McCoy and Alejandro Roces. Political Caricatures of the American Era (Editorial cartoons)
A. Is the Police Force Bribed? (The Independent, June 09, 1917), p. 32.
THIS CARTOON DEPICTS THE FIRST of Manila's periodic police scandals. In 1917 a mysterious informant name Pedro Chua wrote the Philippines Free Press alleging that senior police were accepting bribes from Chinese gambling houses in Binondo and Quiapo districts. Demonstrating the power of M anila's leading weekly newspaper, publication of Chua’s letter sparked allegation s that led eventually to "the suicide of a police chief." After a series of sensational charges and counter charges, the Free Press finally withdrew its illegal allegations.
Despite the free press retreat, Vicente Sotto's Independent insisted, in this editorial cartoon, that Chua charges were accurate. Such allegations of police corruption in gambling law enforcement were a constant theme in cartoons throughout the American period. Several times a year, cartoon showed the Manila Police protecting gambling clubs patronized the Filipino politicians , taking bribes from Chinese clubs or failing to break up the city's criminal gangs.
The cartoonist, Fernando Amorsolo, gives the illustration his usual racist edge. While the corrupt Filipino policeman is sh own with normal features, the Chinese are caricatured as emaciated, leering creatures more rodent than human. Although Amorsolo was more extreme than most, cartoonists often showed Chinese corruptors or opium smugglers in a similarly racist manner.
B. New Bird of Prey (The Independent, 17 january 1920), p. 34.
As Manila ’s population began to pilot upward during World War I, housing became scarce and rents escalated. Rising rent combined with high food prices to reduce the Manila working class in sudden poverty.
Eventually the protests reached Malacanang Palace and Governor-General Francis B. Harrison made a tentative move towards reform. In a letter to the Director General of the Civil Service, the Governor denounced "the rapacious demands of the landlords" he suggested passage of a bill which set rents at 12 percent of assessed value of the property.
Although the Independent's cartoon depicts Harrison as a hero, his suggested reform was hardly heroic. Despite the stern rhetoric, which obviously appealed to the paper's p enchant for hyperbole,
Harrison’s suggested reform was little more than a temporary palliative. A more fundamental reform would have required allocation of government revenues for public housing construction, something that liberal governor Harrison never considered.
Although collected from all Filipinos, government taxes were used to rewards the Filipino elite for their loyalty, not to advance the mass. Lucrative government appointments went to educated children of the elite, and infrastructure development profited planters and merchants who used the highways and the waterfronts. With exception of public education, the mass had little access to any of the new government programs or services. Believers in the ideology of the free market, colonial American loath to intervene as food and rent speculators pushed the mass to the breaking point. In the end the marketplace resolved the food crisis when world market cereal prices crashed in the early 1920's.
The cartoon's caption "New Bird of Prey" is an allusion to the most famous libel case in the history of Philippine journalism. In 1908 the nationalist weekly El Renacimiento published an editorial titled Aves de Rapina (Birds of Prey) which attacked the Philippines commission's secretary of the interior, Dean C. Worcester, for abusing his office to exploit the country. Worcester sued for libel and, two years later, won a judgment of P60,000 against El Renacimiento, a colossal sum that forced closure of the paper and sale of its assets.
C. While the Priest Lives Alone in a Big Building (The Independent 1 May 1920), p. 35.
Like many nationalist of his day, Vicente Sotto, the publisher of The Independent, never missed a chance to attack the Catholic Church. The editorial below this cartoon urged the government to confiscate the large priests’ residence attached to SantaCruz parish church. The people should not be made to share the painful congestion of Plaza Goiti and Plaza Santa Cruz while a single priest sit midst a sprawling residence.
The question of Church property was a particularly sensitive one for nationalists In 1906 the Philippine Supreme Court had ruled that the Roman Catholic Church was the legal owner of all disputed properties,
E. “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” “Libertad, Igualdad, Fraternidad” ((Philippines Free Press, Feb. 12, 1921), p. 41.
The Philippine Assembly passed a law authorizing all legislators, active or retired, to bear firearms. The Manila press was outraged, but the legislators ignored the opposition and promulgated the law over the screams of protest.
In its mocking editorial of February 1921 the Free Press commented: "Now, with our legislatorS and officialS able to strut around with a gun or two guns strapped about their manly waists, they will have to be respected. Now there will be no question as to who is running this show, no affront to their personal dignity, no danger of being threated just like ordinary people …
"It matters not that of late the director of Constabulary has been urging greater and greater restrictions of the license to carry arms… All that matters…i s that the official have a chance to show that he is somebody and must be respected."
F. The Returning Student – El Estudiante Vuelve (Philippine Free Press, April 6, 1929), p. 99.
When Manila emerged as the national center for university education during the 1920s, the annual March ritual of the city-wise student returning home to his village was played out in barrios across the archipelago. Although graduation and tertiary degree often allowed a villager to leave the barrio for a city civil service post, while still a student he had to return to the village for summer holidays. Having survived the shock of transition from country to city, he could now return home, urbane and smartly dressed, to reap the reward of administration and envy.
The Free Press description of this annual ritual in 1929 captures something of its flavor: “These are the days of the returning student -- the days when he comes into his own. Behold him as he struts along Main Street of his little town or barrio, the cynosure of all eyes, the observed of all observers, a king In his own right, a sort of collegiate Caesar. The arbiter elegantiarum , also, he is. Does he not come from the great city, with all the latest there is in dress and fashion? His clothes are studied, his shoes are
studied, his hat and how he wears it-- everything about him becomes the object of emulation and envy. Even his manner of walking, of carrying himself, are studied and aped.
“ Is it any wonder that, under the incense of such flattery, he feels himself a superior being, a conquering hero? Nor let us blame him.
For after all the student, like the rest of us, is human, and all of us expand in an atmosphere of homage and hero-worship. Nor do student days and these joyful homecomings last for ever. All too soon comes the stern battle of life with its trials and sorrows and tribulations. So, carpe diem, and be joyful while we may.”
G. Brothers Under The Skin – Hermanos En El Fondo (Philippines Free Press, June 18, 1938) p. 106.
As social conflict and socialist ideology spread in Central Luzon during the 1930s the Free Press was forced to deal with social substance instead of bucolic trivia in its provincial reportage.
Brothers Under the Skin urges Filipinos, in the name of Rizal whose birthday was following day, to end social conflict and deal with each other fairly. As the Depression worsened, Central Luzon peasants mounted strikes and demonstrations to win tenancy reforms. Refusing concessions, landlords in Pampanga, Tarlac, and Nueva Ecija provinces responded with goon squad repression.
cronies to buy out Vicente Madrigal’s Debate-Mabuhay-Herald chain and install protégé Carlos P. Romulo as editor in chief….
Through ruthless reprisals against opponents, Quezon gradual ly broke the opposition. As in The Latest (above), the Philippine Legislature, now under his control, voted to reject the H-H-C Bill in October 1933. It could have been a fatal victory. For unless Quezon accomplished the near impossible and return from Washington with a better bill, he would be rejected by a people angry at being denied their independence. In November Quezon led a new mission to Washington and returned five months later with the same bill by a different name, just in time to crush his rivals in the June 1934 legislative elections. As hero of the independence battles, Quezon’s leadership for the rest of the decade was assured.
