Copyright 2015 Marie T. Winkelmann
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship Repository Copyright 2015 Marie T. Winkelmann DANGEROUS INTERCOURSE: RACE, GENDER AND INTERRACIAL RELATIONS IN THE AMERICAN COLONIAL PHILIPPINES, 1898 - 1946 BY MARIE T. WINKELMANN DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2015 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Augusto F. Espiritu, Chair Professor Kristin Hoganson Professor Leslie J. Reagan Professor David Roediger, University of Kansas ABSTRACT “Intercourse with them will be dangerous,” warned the Deputy Surgeon General to all U.S. soldiers bound for the Philippines. In his 1899 pamphlet on sanitation, Colonel Henry Lippincott alerted troops to the consequences of becoming too friendly with the native population of the islands. From the beginning of the U.S. occupation of the Philippines, interracial sexual contact between Americans and Filipinos was a threatening prospect, informing everything from how social intercourse and diplomacy was structured, to how the built environment of Manila was organized. This project utilizes a transnational approach to examine a wide range of interracial sexual relationships -from the casual and economic to the formal and long term- between Americans and Filipinos in the overseas colony from1898–1946. My dissertation explores the ways that such relations impacted the U.S. imperial project in the islands, one that relied on a degree of social proximity with Filipinos on the one hand, while maintaining a hard line of racial and civilizational hierarchy on the other. This twinned but contradictory approach to imperialism created multiple meanings and implications for interracial intimacies, as interpretations varied between imperialist and anti-imperialist, colonist and colonized. These relations cannot simply be looked at as apolitical or as instances of cross- cultural acceptance, or even simply as sexual vice, but rather must be seen as routes through which both Filipinos and Americans in the Philippines could secure political, social, economic and cultural power in the new colonial order. More importantly, I argue that these uneven relations between colonist and colonized often helped to solidify American conquest over the islands, from legitimating American claims of benevolence to helping ensure the longevity of U.S. colonial rule and influence in the Asia-Pacific region. ii CONTENTS Introduction: Dangerous Intercourse: Colonial Times and Contemporary Considerations…………….…………………………………………………………………….....1 Chapter 1: Imagined Intimacies: Interracial “Gateways” and the Politics of Proximity, 1898 – 1907….…………………………………………………………………………………...20 Chapter 2: Moral Policing American Empire: Social and Sexual Intercourse and the Limits of Reform, 1898-1917…………………………………………………………………....57 Chapter 3: Men in the Bush: Interracial Intercourse in the Northern and Southern Philippines……………………………………………………………………………………...109 Chapter 4: The Chronicles of Sam and Maganda: Imperial Fiction, Fantasy and Nostalgia……………………………………………………………………………………......151 Chapter 5: Making Mestizos: Filipino American Mixed-Race Children and Discourses of Belonging, 1898 -1935…………………………………………………………………...….201 Conclusion: “My Filipino Baby,” Absolution, and the Aftermath of an Imperial Romance………………………………………………………………………………………..242 Bibliography……...……………………………………………………………………………250 iii INTRODUCTION Dangerous Intercourse: Colonial Times and Contemporary Considerations “You have an island as beautiful as your women,” stated William Howard Taft, the leader of the Taft Commission to the Philippines and the soon-to-be president of the United States. He was speaking to a delegation of Filipino representatives on the Philippine island of Marinduque in 1901, his speech a part of larger efforts to demonstrate America’s “benevolent” intentions and to secure the cooperation and loyalty of Filipinos around the archipelago in the cause of the U.S. imperial mission.1 Dr. Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera, a prominent Filipino intellectual traveling with Taft’s party, likewise stated in 1901 at a Commission dinner, “We found that Americans were not slow in making the acquaintance of our women; what was more, they did not smile only on the pretty ones, as was the wont of that class which formerly set up first claim to women’s smiles in this country.” 2 At the same time, Filipinos fighting for their independence and the approximately 100,000 American troops that were deployed to take control of the islands were engaged in a bloody war that would last well into the next decade of colonial rule. 3 Americans ignored the Filipino declaration of an independent Philippine Republic in June of 1898, instead pronouncing themselves as the new leaders of the nation after the defeat of the previous Spanish colonizers. So began the romance that is the United States and the Philippines colonial 1 James Leroy, Secretary of the Taft Commission, “Manuscript of Travelogue Account of Trip to the Philippine Islands,” March 14, 1901, 17. James Leroy Papers, Box 1. Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Spoken at a Taft commission meeting with a Filipino delegation representing the island of Marinduque, on the prospects of establishing their own civil government on the island. 2 James Leroy, Secretary of the Taft Commission, “Manuscript of Travelogue Account of Trip to the Philippine Islands,” 1901, 5-6. James Leroy Papers, Box 1. Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Spoken at a dinner with Taft commission members and Filipino delegation of leaders on commission visit to Lingayen, Pangasinan, in the Northern Philippines. 3 Statistics from, Brian M. Linn, The Philippine War, 1899 – 1902 (University Press of Kansas, 2000); Daniel B. Schirmer and Stephen Rosskamm Shalom, The Philippines Reader: A History of Colonialism, Neocolonialism, Dictatorship, and Resistance (South End Press, 1987). 1 relationship, a relationship wherein interracial intercourse and suggestions of social and sexual attraction veiled and sanitized various types of violence occurring across the archipelago. In this dissertation, I examine interracial intercourse between Americans and Filipinos during the period of formal U.S. colonial rule of the Philippines. Interracial intercourse, by which I mean the social and sexual relations that occurred between Americans and Filipinos in the colonial geography, took many different forms. Socially, Filipinos and Americans mingled and danced together in spaces like formal parties known as bailes, worked together in clubs, schools and charitable organizations, and even lived in close quarters as Filipinos came to be employed as cooks, drivers, maids, etc. in American homes. Filipinos and Americans traveling together for the Taft Commission for example, attended luncheons, bailes and meetings together and often shared close living quarters during their trips. Sexual intercourse too took on many different forms, from the short term and the economic, as in the sexual economy, to the more long term and formal, as in cohabitation and marriage. While some instances of intercourse, such as Commission leader Taft’s seemingly positive appraisal of Filipina women’s bodies and the suggestion of interracial sexual attraction, could be framed in a way to flatter and win support for the American presence and governance in the islands, other types of intercourse proved more of a hindrance to the consolidation of U.S. control. American soldiers brawling in red-light districts over women, for example, undermined American professions of their good intentions. Real and imagined interracial intercourse informed everything in the colonial Philippines, from how the built environment was organized to how politics and diplomacy were structured, and has been an understudied aspect of American colonial rule in the Philippines. 2 Interracial intercourse between Americans and Filipinos occurred immediately upon the arrival of the first U.S. troops in 1898, with the American military government taking its cues from the recently defeated Spanish regime in terms of how to approach interracial intimacies. For example, American officials often maintained rather than eradicated established red-light districts previously established and maintained by Spanish colonial authorities and quickly became acquainted with the social mores and practices regarding intimate sexual relationships. So, while Americans and Filipinos came to know each other through the violence of the Philippine American War (1899 – 1913) and military occupation, some Americans and Filipinos came to know each other in different ways. Army surgeons and medical personnel took note of the prevalence of interracial sexual intercourse very early on in the military occupation, one reporting that American soldiers had become, “Habituated to the repulsiveness of the native women.” This army surgeon was worried about troop efficiency being obstructed by the rising contraction rates of syphilis and continued his report for the year 1899 saying that, “sexual immorality is more common, with a notable increase in venereal disease.”4 Indeed, American troops deployed to the Philippines were often encouraged to familiarize themselves with the women of the islands, and lost no time in getting to know their “little brown sisters”