One prize of victory is that the winners get to write the history books. The degree to which Filipino false consciousness exists is the measure of American success in obliterating from popular consciousness knowledge of what American historians have chosen to call (when they refer to it at all, which is seldom) the "Philippine Insurrection." 1 This is true for many reasons, but it is especially true for one reason in particular. For the student of Philippine history, such a state of affairs is not merely discouraging or upsetting, it is tragic. One must reluctantly conclude that perhaps the most serious cancer of twentieth-century Philippine society has been the traumatizing effect of mystification and false consciousness regarding the American colonial period. For a myriad of reasons, American colonialism as perceived by Filipinos has been qualitatively different from, say, Vietnamese perception of their relationship with the French. Philippine nationalism has, historically, been poorly defined. ![]() These are comforting thoughts, but there remain some nagging doubts. It may well be that the statehood movement is a curio, a quirk in the Philippine body politic, a nostalgic last remembrance of colonialism, emerging now only to be inevitably and inexorably swept away by the tide of history. Although the "statehood movement" was understandably treated as something of a joke when it first surfaced several years ago, its popular reception and rapid growth, especially in the face of surging Philippine nationalist and anti-imperialist sentiments, demands that the movement and the ideology which it represents be carefully analyzed. ![]() One of the most startling phenomena of recent Philippine history has been the development of a popuiar movement calling for the relinquishing of Philippine sovereignty and for political re-union with the U.S. *With apologies to Mexicans, American Indians and other early victims of American imperialism.
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