A Glance at Selected Philippine Political Caricature in Alfred McCoy’s Philippine Cartoons: Political

Caricature of the American Era (1900-1941)

Political cartoons and caricature are a rather recent art form, which veered away from the classical art by
exaggerating human features and poking fun at its subjects. Such art genre and technique became a part
of the print media as a form of social and political commentary, which usually targets persons of power
and authority. Cartoons became an effective tool of publicizing opinions through heavy use of symbolism,
which is different from a verbose written editorial and opinion pieces. The unique way that a caricature
represents opinion and captures the audience’s imagination is a reason enough for historians to examine
these political cartoons. Commentaries in mass media inevitably shape public opinion and such kind of
opinion is worthy of historical examination.

In his book Philippine Cartoons: Political Caricature of the American Era (1900-1941), Alfred McCoy,
together with Alfredo Roces, compiled political cartoons published in newspaper dailies and periodicals
in the aforementioned time period. For this part, we are going to look at selected cartoons and explain
the context of each one.

The first example was published in The Independent on May 20, 1916. The cartoon shows a politician from
a Tondo, named Dr. Santos, passing his crown to his brother-in-law, Dr. Barcelona. A Filipino guy (as
depicted wearing salakot and barong tagalog) was trying to stop Santos, telling the latter to stop giving
Barcelona the crown because it is not his to begin with.

The second example was also published by The Independent on 16 June 1917. This was drawn by Fernando
Amorsolo and was aimed as a commentary to the workings of Manila Police at that period. Here, we see
a Filipino child who stole a skinny chicken because he had nothing to eat. The police officer was
relentlessly pursuing the said child. A man wearing a salakot, labeled Juan de la Cruz was grabbing the
officer, telling him to leave the small-time pickpockets and thieves and to turn at the great thieves instead.
He was pointing to huge warehouse containing bulks of rice, milk, and grocery products.

The third cartoon was a commentary on the unprecedented cases of colorum automobiles in the city of
streets. The Philippine Free Press published this commentary when fatal accidents involving colorum
vehicles and taxis occurred too often already.

The fourth cartoons depict a cinema. A blown-up police officer was at the screen saying that couples are
not allowed to neck and make love in the theater. Two youngsters looked horrified while an older couple
seemed amused.

The next cartoon was published by The Independent on 27 November 1915. Here, we see the caricature
of Uncle Sam riding a chariot pulled by Filipinos wearing school uniform. The Filipino boys were carrying
American objects like baseball bats, whiskey, and boxing gloves. McCoy, in his caption to the said cartoon,
Says that this cartoon was based on an event in 1907 when William Howard Taft was brought to the
Manila pier riding a chariot pulled by students of Liceo de Manila. Such was condemned by the nationalists
at that time.
The last cartoon was published by Lipang Kalabaw on 24 August 1907. In the picture, we can see Uncle
Sam rationing porridge to the politicians and members of the Progresista Party (sometimes known as
Federalista Party) while members of the Nacionalista Party look on and wait for their turn. This cartoon
depicts the patronage of the United States being coveted by politicians from either of the party.

Analysis of the Politcal Caricatures during the the American Period

The transition from the Spanish Colonial period to the American Occupation period demonstrated
different strands of changes and shifts in culture, society, and politics. The Americans drastically
introduced democracy to the nascent nation and the consequences were far from ideal. Aside from this,
it was also during the American period that Filipinos were introduced to different manifestations of
modernity like healthcare, modern transportation, and media. This ushered in a more open and freer
press. The post-independence and the post Filipino-American period in the Philippines were experienced
differently by Filipinos coming from different classes. The upper principalia class experienced economic
prosperity with the opening up of the Philippine economy to the United States but the majority of the
poor Filipino remained poor, desperate, and victims of state repression.

The selected cartoons illustrate not only the opinion of certain media outfits about the Philippine society
during the American period but also paint a broad image of society and politics under the United States.
In the arena of politics, for example, we see the price that Filipinos paid for the democracy modeled after
the Americans. First, it seemed that the Filipino politicians at that time did not understand well enough
the essence of democracy and the accompanying democratic institutions and processes. This can be seen
in the rising dynastic politics in Tondo as depicted in the cartoon published by The Independent. Patronage
also became influential and powerful, not only between clients and patrons but also between the newly
formed political parties composed of the elite and the United States. This was depicted in the cartoon
where the United States, represented by Uncle Sam, provided dole outs for members of the Federalista
while the Nacionalista politicians looked on and waited for their turn. Thus, the essence of competing
political parties to enforce choices among the voters was cancelled out. The problem continues up to the
present where politicians transfer from one party to another depending on which party was powerful in
specific periods of time.

The transition from a Catholic-centered, Spanish-Filipino society to an imperial American-assimilated one,

and its complications, were also depicted in the cartoons. One example is the unprecedented increase of
motorized vehicles in the city. Automobiles became popular a mode of transportation in the city led to
the emergence of taxis. However, the laws and policy implementation was mediocre. This resulted in the
increasing colorum and unlicensed vehicles transporting people around the city. The rules governing the
issuance of driver’s license was loose and traffic police could not be bothered by rampant violations of
traffic rules. This is a direct consequence of the drastic urbanization of the Philippine society. Another
example is what McCoy called the “sexual revolution” that occurred in the 1930s. Young people, as early
as that period, disturbed the conservative Filipino mindset by engaging in daring sexual activities in public
spaces like cinemas. Here, we can see how that period was the meeting point between the conservative
past and the liberated future of the Philippines.

Lastly, the cartoons also illustrated the conditions of poor Filipinos in the Philippines now governed by
the United States. From the looks of it, nothing much has changed. For example, a cartoon depicted how
police authorities oppress pretty Filipino criminals while turning a blind eye on hoarders who
monopolize goods in their huge warehouse (presumably Chinese merchants). The other cartoon depicts
how Americans controlled Filipinos through seemingly harmless American objects. By controlling their
consciousness and mentality, Americans got to control and subjugate Filipinos.

Revisiting Corazon Aquino’s Speech Before the U.S. Congress

Corazon “Cory” Cojuangco Aquino functioned as the symbol of the restoration of democracy and the
overthrow of the Marcos Dictatorship in 1986. The EDSA People Power, which installed Cory Aquino in
the presidency, put the Philippines in the international spotlight for overthrowing a dictator through
peaceful means. Cory was easily a figure of the said revolution, as the widow of the slain Marcos
oppositionist and former Senator Benigno “Ninoy’ Aquino Jr. Cory was hoisted as the antithes of the
dictator. Her iamge as a mourning, widowed housewife who had always been in the shadow of her
husband and relatives and had no experience in politics was juxtaposed against Marco’s statesmanship,
eloquence, charisma, and cunning political skills. Nevertheless, Cory was able to capture the imagination
of the people whose rights and freedom had long been compromised throuhghout the Marcos regime.
This is despite the fact that Cory came from a rich haciendero family in Tarlac and owned vast estates of
sugar plantation and whose relatives occupy local and national government positions.

The People Power Revolution of 1986 was widely recognized around the world for its peaceful
character. When former senator Ninoy Aquino was shot at the tarmac of Manila International Airport
on 21 August 1983, the Marcos regime greatly suffered a crisis of legitimacy. Protests from different
sectors frequented different areas in the country. Marcos’s credibility in the international community
also suffered. Paired with the looming economic crisis, Marcos had do something to prove to his allies in
the United States that he remained to be the democratically anointed leader of the country. He called
for a snap Election in February 1986, where Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, the widow of the slain senator
was convinced to run against Marcos. The canvassing was rigged to Marcos’s favor but the people
expressed their protest against the corrupt and authoritarian government. Leading military officials of
the regime and Martial Law orchestrators themselves, Juan Ponce Enrile and Fidel V. Ramos, plotted to
take over the presidency , until civillians heeded the call of then Manila Archibishop Jaime Cardinal Sin
and other civilian leaders gathered in EDSA. The overwhelming presence of civilian demonstration. The
thousands of people who gathered overthrew Ferdinand Marcos from the presidency after 21 years.

On 18 Semptember 1986, seven months since Cory became president, she went to the United States
and spoke before the joint session of the United States and spoke before the joint session of the U.S.
Congress. Cory was welcomed with long applause as she took the podium and addressed the United
States about her presidency and the challenges faced by the new republic. She began her speech with
the story of hr leaving the United States three years prior as a newly widowed wife of Ninoy Aquino.

She then told of Nnoy’s character, conviction, and resolved in opposing the authoritarianism of Marcos.
She talked of the three times that they lost Ninot including his demise on 23 August 1983. The first time
was when the dictatorship detained Ninoy with other dessenters. Cory related:

“The government sought to break him by indignities and terror. They locked him up in a tiny, nearly
airless cell in a military camp in north. They stripped him naked and held a treat of sudden midnight
execution over his head. Ninoy held up manfully under all of it. I barely did as well. For forty-three days,
the authorities would not tell me what had happened to him. This was the first time my children and I
felt we had lost him”

Cory continued that when Ninoy survived that first detention, he was then charged of subversion,
murder, and other crimes. He was tried by military court , whose legitimacy Ninoy adamantly
questioned. To solidify his protest, Ninoy decided to do hunger strike and fasted for 40 days. Cory
treated this event as the second time that their family lost Ninoy. She said:

“When that didn’t work, they put him trial for subversion, murder and a host of other crimes before a
military commission. Ninoy challenged its authorityand went on a fast. If he survived it, then he felt God
intended him for another fate. We had lost him again. For nothing would hold him back from his
determination to see his fast through to the end. He stopped only when it dawned on him that the
government would keep his body alive after the fast had destroyed his brain. And so, with barely any life
in his body, he called off the fast the 40th days” Ninoy’s death was the third and the last time that Cory
and their children lost Ninoy. She continued:

“And the, we lost him irrevocably and more painfully than in the past. The news came to us in Boston. It
had to be after the three happiest years of our lives together. But his death was my country’s
resurrection and the courage and faith by which alone they could be free again. The dictator had called
him a nobody. Yet, two million people threw aside their passitivity and fear and escorted him to his
grave”

Cory attributed the peaceful EDSA Revolution to the martyrdom of Ninoy. She stated that the death of
Ninoy sparked the revolution and the responsibility of “offering the democratic alternative” had “fallen
on [her] shoulders.” Cory’s address introduced us to her democratic philosophy, which she claimed she
also acquired from Ninoy. She argued:

“I held fast to Ninoy’s conviction that it must be by the ways of democracy. I held out for participation in
the 1984 election the dictatorship called, even if I knew it would be rigged. I was warned by the lawyers
of the opposition, that I ran the grave risk of legitimizing the foregone results of elections that were
clearly going to fraudulent. But I was not fighting for lawyers but for the people in whose intelligence, I
had implicit faith. By the exercise of democracy even in a dictatorship, they would be prepared for
democracy when it came. And then also, it was the only way I knew by which we could measure our
power even in the terms dictated by the dictatorship. The people vindicated me in an election
shamefully marked by government thuggery and fraud. The opposition swept the eletions, garnering a
clear majority of the votes even if they ended up (thanks to a corrupt Commission on Election) with
barely a third of a seats in Parliament. Now, I knew our power.”

Cory talked about her miraculous victory through the people’s struggle and continued talking about her
earliest initiatives as the president of a restored democracy. She stated that she intended to forge and
draw reconciliation after a bloody and polarizing dictatorship. Cory emphasized the importance of the
EDSA Revolution in terms of being a “limited revolution that respected the life and freedom of every
Filipino.” She also boasted of the restoration of a fully constitutional government whose constitution
gave ut most respect to the Bill of Rights. She reported to the U.S Congress:
“Again as we restore democracy by the ways of democracy, so are we completing the constitutional
structures of our new democracy under a constitutional structures of our new democracy under a
constitution that already gives full respect to the Bill of Rights. A jealously independent constitutional
commission is a completing its draft which will be submitted later this year to a popular referendum.
When it is approved, there will be elections for both national and local positions. So, within about a year
from a peaceful but national upheavel that overturned a dictatorship, we shall have to full constitutional
government.”

Cory then proceed on her peace agenda with the existing communist insurgency, aggravated by the
dictatorial and authoritarian measure of Ferdinand Marcos. She asserted:

“My predecessor set aside democracy to save it from a communist insurgency that numbered less than
five hundred. Unhampered by respect for human rights he went at it with hammer and tongs. By the
time he fled, tat insurgency had grown to more than seixteen thousand. I think there is a lesson here to
be learned about trying to stifle a thing with a means by which it grows.”

Cory’s peace agenda involves political initiatives and re-integration progrom to persuade insurgents to
leave the countryside and return to the mainstream society to participate in the restoration of
democracy. She invoked the path of peace because she believed that it was the moral path that a moral
government must take. Neverltheless, Cory took a step back when she said that while peace is the
priority of her presidency, she “will not waiver” when freedom and democracy are threatened. She said
that, similar to Abraham Lincoln, she understand that “force may be necessary before mercy” and while
she did not relish the idea, she “ will do whatever it takes to defend the integrity and freedom of {her}
country.”

Cory then turned to the controversial topic of the Philippine foreign debt amounting to $26 billion at the
time of her speech. This debt had ballooned during the Marcos regime. Cory expressed her intentiom to
honor those debts despite mentioning that the people did not benefiot from such debts. Thus, she
mentioned her protestation about the way the Philippines was deprived of choices to pay those debts
within the capacity of the Filipino people. She lamented:

“Finally may I turn to that other slavery,our twenty-six billion dollar foreign debt. I have said that we
shall honor it. Yet, the means by which we shall be able to do so are kept from us. Many of the
conditions imposed on the previous government that stole this debt, continue to be imposed on us who
never benefited from it.”

She continued that while the country had experienced the calamities brought about by the
corruptdictatorship of Marcos, no commensurate assistance was yet to be extended to the Philippines.
She even remarked that given the peaceful character of EDSA People Power Revolution , “ours must
have been the cheapest revolution ever.” She demonstrated that Filipino people fulfilled the “ most
difficult condition pf the debt negotiation ,” which was the restoration of democracy and responsible
government,”

Cory related to the U.S . Legislators that wherever she went, she met poor and unemployed Filipinos
willing to offer their lives for democracy. She stated:

“ Wherever I went in the campaign , slum area or impoverished village. They came to me with one cry,
democracy. Not food although they clearly needed it but democracy. Not work atlthough they surely
wanted it but democracy. Not money, for they gave what little they had to my campaign. They didn’t
expect me to work a miracle that would instantly put food into their mouths, clothes on their back,
education in their children and give them work that will put dignity in their lives. But I fell the pressing
obligation to respond quickly as the leader of the people so deserving all these things.”

Cory proceed in enumerating the challenges of the Filipino people as they tried building the new
democracy. These were the persisting communist insurgency and the economic deterioration. Cory
further lamented that these problems worsened by the crippling debt because half of the country’s
export earnings amounting to $2 billion would “go to pay just the interest on a debt whose benefit the
Filipino people never received. “ Cory then asked a rather compelling question to the U.S. congress:

“Has there been a greater test of national commitment to the ideals you hold dear than that my people
have gone through? You have spent many lives and much treasure to bring freedom to many lands that
were reluctant to receive it. And here, you have a people who want it by themselves and need only the
help to preserve it.”

Cory ended her speech by thinking America for serving as home to her family fopr what she refreed to
as the “ three happiest years of our lives together.” She enjoined America in building the Philippines as
a new home for democracy an in turning the country as a “shining teatament of our two nation.”
Commitment to freedom.”

Analysis of Cory Aquino’s Speech

Cory Aquino’s speech was an important event in the political and diplomatic history of the
country because It has arguably cemented the legitimacy of the EDSA government in the international
arena. The speech talks of her family background, especially her relationship with her late husband,
Ninoy Aquino. It is well-known that it was Ninoy who served as the real leading figure of the opposition
at that time. Indeed, Ninoy’s eloquence and charisma could very well complete with that of marcos. In
her speech, Cory talked at length about Ninoy’s toil and suffering of the hands of the dictatorship that
he resisted. Even when she proceeded talking about her new government, she still with back to Ninoy’s
legacies and lesssons. Moreover her attribution of the revolution to Ninoy’s death demonstrate not only
Cory’s personal perception on the revolution, but since she was the president, it also represents what
the dominant discourse was at the point in our history.

The ideology or the principles of the new democratic government can be also seen in the same
speech. Aquino was able to draw the sharp contrast between her government and of her predecessor by
expressing her commitment to a democratic constitution drafted by an independent commission. She
claimed that such constitution upholds and adheres to the rights and liberty of the Filipino people. Cory
also hoisted herself as the reconciliatory agent after more than two decades at a polarizing authoritarian
politics. For example, Cory saw the blown up communist insurgence as a product of a repressive and
corrupt government. Her response to this insurgency rooted from her diametric opposition of the
dictator (i.e., society). Cory claimed that her main approach to this problem was through peace and not
through the sword of war.
 Despite Cory’s effort, to hoist herself as the exact opposite of Marcos, her speech still revealed
certain parallelism between her and the Marcos government. This is seen in terms of continuing the
alliance between the Philippines and the United States despite the known affinity between the said
world super power and Marcos. The Aquino regime, as seen in Cory’s acceptance of the invitation to
address the U.S. Congress and to the content of the speech, decided to build and continue with the
alliance between the Philippines and the United States and effectively implemented and essentially
similar foreign policy to that of the dictatorship. For example Cory recognized that the large sum of
foreign debts incurred by the Marcos regime never been benefited the Filipino people. Nevertheless,
Cory expressed her intention to pay of those debts. Unknown to many people was the facts that there
was a choice of waving the said debt because those were the debt of the dictator and not of the
country. Cory’s decision is an indicator of her government intention to carry on a debt-driven economy.

Reading through Aquino’s speech, we can already take cues not just on Cory’s individual ideas
and inspiration but also the guiding principles and framework of the government that she represented.