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<\/a><\/p>\nIt may be said that the U.S. engagement with the Philippines can be traced to the Treaty of Paris of 1898. At 8:50 pm on December 10 of that year, just two days short of six months since revolutionary forces under Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo proclaimed our sovereignty and independence from Spain, that same European colonizer ceded the Philippines to the U.S. for the measly sum of 20 million dollars. That effectively ended the U.S. vs. Spain conflict. That also started a hate-love relationship between the Americans and their new possession until 1942 when another colonizer, Japan, subjugated the Philippines again.<\/p>\n
For sure irritants existed then and continue to exist now between the U.S. and the Philippines. There are still those who harbor grudges for the inequities of that long ago years such as whether or not the well-armed Americans were justified in perpetrating massacres of Filipino people such as happened in Balangiga in Samar, Mabitac in Laguna Province, Bud Bagsak in Sulu and others. Why was it that the supposed gift of independence in 1946 had to bestow U.S. sovereignty over dozens of military bases? Why did the Bell Trade Act dictated what the Philippines could and couldn\u2019t produce and granted U.S. citizens and corporations equal access to Philippine minerals, forests and other natural resources. Worse, it was inflicted at a time when much of the country was laid to waste, the nation\u2019s coffers were empty and the people agonizing as a result of the just concluded war.<\/p>\n
And other questions persist: Was the U.S. colonial domination of the Philippines really a \u201ccivilizing mission,\u201d which presupposes that we were not civilized in the first place? Was it a matter of brute-force subordination or, as harped, the furtherance of a \u201cBenevolent Assimilation\u201d policy? Why was it that the US, being the colonizing country, wanted to be called the Motherland but at the same time did not want to bestow citizenship on the inhabitants?<\/p>\n
At this time of our nationhood we may have the luxury of sitting back and reflect that, yes, history is replete with conflicts and injustices of all kinds and that trying to divine the thread and intricacies of every fine web that enmeshed civilization from the beginning of time would be an endless pursuit. It is in this context that people of discernment had deemed fit to craft a term to denote a relationship that takes into account esteem, respect and affection for each other: Friendship.<\/p>\n