Indio:Bravo//

“People are not to be bought and sold like horses and houses. If the aim has been to abolish the traffic of Negroes because it meant the sale of persons, why is there still maintained the sale of countries with inhabitants?”

General Antonio Luna (1866-1899), a Filipino revolutionary general, in his article in the daily, La Independencia, in reaction to the Treaty of Paris of 1898 and on Black slavery and imperialism.

The 1898 Treaty of Paris held on December 1898 was the conclusion and end to the Spanish-American War wherein the United States bought the remaining Spanish colonies (the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Spanish West Indies) from Spain for $20,000,000.00–that was, despite the fact that the Philippines and Cuba have been waging their War of Independence against Spain. The Philippine Revolution that began in 1896 against Spain had indeed defeated the Spanish forces, effectively establishing the Philippines’ own government (through the Malolos Congress) and declared its independence from Spain. With a working Revolutionary Government led by President Emilio Aguinaldo, the Philippines sent a Filipino lawyer, Felipe Agoncillo, as the country’s Minister Plenipotentiary, to Washington D.C. and later on, to Paris, France where the Treaty was being concluded. However, Agoncillo was deliberately set aside until the treaty’s conclusion.

By February 4, 1899, a shot fired by an American Private William Grayson against Filipino Corporal Anastacio Felix in Manila triggered the Philippine-American War. That war used to be called “Philippine Insurrection” by the American authorities. Historians now agree, both American and Philippine, that the war involved the entire Philippine archipelago wherein civilians took arms against the U.S. before they were “pacified.” All historians therefore agreed that it be called the “Philippine-American War."