Introduction

The night before 28 September 1901, in Balangiga, Samar, in the Central Philippines, the American guards in the plaza were startled to see a hurried throng of heavily dressed Filipino women entering the Catholic church, some carrying small coffins. The sergeant of the guard warily demanded that one of the coffins be opened for inspection. Inside was a dead child. Underneath the dead bodies, however, were sharp bolo (machete) knives of the native men who, stripping themselves of women's clothes inside the church, were gearing themselves for a surprise attack on the American army garrison early in the morning of the next day. On that day, a mad rush of Filipino men carrying knives and bolos emerged from the church and started hacking every American in sight. They were resisting the presence of the Americans on the island who had begun to carry out President McKinley's 'benevolent assimilation' campaign in the Philippines.

Filipinos paid very dearly for what they did. In his infamous words of retribution, Brigadier General Jacob H. Smith said, 'I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better you will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States' (in Schott, 1964: 71).

The Balangiga massacre was a defining moment in the country's resistance against US colonisation. Yet today, it only flickers in and out of collective memory. In rare flashes of good memory, it is dismissed as an unfortunate incident that should not overshadow 'the fact' that American colonisation of the country was a blessing for which Filipinos must be forever grateful. Through what Connerton (2008: 60) refers to as repressive erasure, 'encrypted covertly and without apparent violence', American colonial state apparatuses, especially the school system, activated its project of forgetting the brutal beginnings of Philippine–American relations.