Guess where, and when, the following lines were written (in literal if not literary translation):

This unredeemed people
may perhaps succumb in the struggle,
but only its corpse
can be yoked by alien tyranny.

Yankee! If you defeat us
with the powerful weight of weapons,
you will not live happily, because you are hated
even by the air of my native land.

Yankee! If my verses
survive me, their words
will echo in the centuries to come
the eternal hate of the eternal outcast.

Is it Afghanistan in 2001? Iraq 2003?
Maybe Vietnam in 1965?

Try the Philippines, 1899 — America’s very first colonial adventure. (Probably not much of a surprise, actually, to anyone who pays any attention to what I normally post here.)

I’m sad to report that the US did not leave the Philippines until 1946 (and even then, not really), and that colonial officials did rather well for themselves. And I’m not sure Cecilio Apostol, the nationalist poet who wrote “Al Yankee,” would be comforted to know that his words do seem to have been echoed, again and again, for more than a century, as the march of U.S. imperialism spread across the globe. [Read more...]