LUKBAN fragmentation of Lukban’ s base that supported the revolutionary cause.
THIS book also tries to present the side of the Americans who were faced with the difficulty of having to sell the idea of American governance amongst a population that was at the onset antagonistic. After all, the new conquerors were coming to replace their erstwhile Spanish masters, and no amount of using the Treaty of Paris to justify their presence would suffice. It was not a mere guerrilla band that they were up against but a band that enjoyed the support of the people. This was something new to them. Most of their officers were products of the Indian wars at home that used a different set of strategies and tactics. Even their earlier interventions in Cuba and China’ s Boxer Rebellion did not prepare them for the people’ s war in Samar.
They had to use all the dirty tricks they knew to subjugate the thousands of unarmed natives living in villages, including food blockade and confiscation, food rationing and all sorts of cajoling, threats, harassment and intimidation to erode the support for Lukban’ s guerrillas. People were told to live in‘ protected’ camps, and those found outside were considered enemies and supporters of the guerrillas and, therefore, could be eliminated. Several villages were burned and farm animals killed because presumably they provided support to Lukban’ s guerrillas. This‘ kill-all’ policy was implemented by the Americans employing its most notorious general, Jake‘ Howling’ Smith and his faithful officers represented by the‘ butcher of Samar,’ Maj. Littleton Waller. Smith and Waller would later figure in a court martial that was more of a show to appease the irate American public.
Indeed, their dirty tactics would serve the Americans in good stead. They were finally able to capture the elusive Filipino guerrilla chief Vicente Lukban in his mountain hideout, using native scouts to track him. The lessons learned in Samar would become useful to them some 40 years later in their Vietnam military adventure. But that is a different story altogether. Lukban’ s capture ended a segment of the people’ s overall struggle for nationhood and independence. Less than a year later, a more vicious war emerged from the unsurrendered elements of Lukban’ s forces who had joined with the bolo-wielding cultists called the dios-dios, renamed as the pulajans.
Endnotes 1The Salt Lake Herald, Nov. 14, 1899
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