THE Spanish and American colonizers were dependent on Filipino talent, skills and labor but did not concede freedom to Filipinos until pushed to the brink of irrelevance.

From the time that Spain inaugurated the Manila Galleon Trade route in 1565 until the independence movements emerged in Latin America, the Spanish colonizers harbored and exploited the shipbuilding and navigating techniques of maritime craftsmen, artisans and seafarers to keep the spice- and Asian merchandise-laden ships afloat.

Inland, the encomiendas granted to military officials — who replaced the friar crosses with blood-draining swords — kept the local populace paralyzed with fear of death and excommunication.

The imperial expansionist efforts in the New World and to the Far East were dependent on the Spanish Crown and the church.

From the Americas to the Philippines, territorial claims and the ensuing tutelage were based on the Christianizing mission. The Spanish kings exercised royal patronage over the church. After landing and subjugating the natives — by force or fraud — the church keeps the populace docile with the fear of hell.

The cross needed the swords on ships to land, the sword depends on the cross to rule.

To this day, the center of any town or city in the Philippines bear witness to the twin towers of colonial rule — the church and the municipal or city hall in the town center. The Philippines remains the only Catholic nation in Asia and Filipinos the only Asians with Spanish-sounding surnames. Even the names of the elected presidents from the Commonwealth to the first and second Marcos dynasty have Spanish roots: Quezon, Roxas, Quirino, Aquino, Ramos and Estrada.

Macapagal is the Hispanized version of Maka-pagal, while Duterte, according to the genealogy project, “appears to be a Hispanic version of the French term du tertre, which signifies one as coming ‘from a hillock’ or ‘of rising ground.’” Entiendes?

‘Brutalization’ of the Filipino

The Treaty of Paris and the perceived independence from Spain did not liberate the Philippines from being a country passed from one colonizer to another.

However, in contrast to how Spain kept the Filipino “ignorant,” Uncle Sam did the opposite, starting with introducing an educational system, with the English language supplanting (what was then already a decaying) Spanish.

Rizal in “A Century Hence,” describes the role of the church (“brutalization of the Malayan”) and the subjects’ “valiant efforts to thwart such unholy deeds:

“Brutalization of the Malayan Filipino has been demonstrated to be impossible. In spite of the dark horde of friars, in whose hands rest the instruction of youth, which miserably wastes years and years in the colleges, issuing therefrom tired, weary and disgusted with books; in spite of the censorship, which tries to close every avenue to progress; in spite of all the pulpits, confessionals, books and missals that inculcate hatred toward not only all scientific knowledge but even toward the Spanish language itself; in spite of this whole elaborate system perfected and tenaciously operated by those who wish to keep the Islands in holy ignorance, there exist writers, freethinkers, historians, philosophers, chemists, physicians, artists and jurists.”

“A Century Hence” was originally published from September 1889 to January 1890 as “Filipinas dentro de cien años,” serialized in

the Filipino fortnightly review La Solidaridad in Madrid.

Malolos Republic

Nine years after the last of Rizal’s treatise was published, Philippine revolutionaries under Emilio Aguinaldo promulgated the Malolos Constitution on Jan. 22, 1898 and established the First Philippine Republic, characterized in various accounts as the first proper constitutional republic in Asia.

From exile in Hong Kong, Aguinaldo returned to the Philippines after the mock Battle of Manila and issued the Philippine Declaration of Independence on June 12, 1898. The short-lived Malolos Republic ended when the superior American forces declared victory on July 2, 1902.

In the case of the American colonizers, the sword and the word came as the instruments of colonization.

With victory on hand during the Philippine-American War, America dispatched their “word warriors.”

The US government under Theodore Roosevelt sent about 600 teachers from the United States to the Philippines on board the US Armed Transport Thomas with the purpose of establishing an educational system. English became the medium of instruction.

The Thomasites arrived on Aug. 21, 1901 and became the powerful force of expansion, “introducing and educating” the Filipinos into the American culture with the official enforcement starting with the Commonwealth of the Philippines, an administrative body created by the US government to “prepare the Philippines

toward full independence.”

Following the approval of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of the Philippines in 1935, the Commonwealth of the Philippines was inaugurated on Nov. 15, 1935. Manuel L. Quezon’s Nacionalista Party ruled the day winning 64 out of 98 seats in the House of Representatives.

On Dec. 9, 1939, confronted by the dilemma of independence or continuing official dependence on the United States, Quezon proudly proclaimed:

“I would rather have a government run like hell by Filipinos than a government run like heaven by Americans.”

Forty-four years to the month and day, the Philippines was “granted full independence” by the United States of America on July 4, 1946.

From the first president of the new “independent” Republic until the first Macapagal presidency, the Philippines and the United States celebrated July 4 as each country’s “independence day.”

July 4 to June 12

Whether it was nationalism that prompted Diosdado Macapagal to revoke the declared grant of independence of July 4 and move the independence day commemoration to June 12, or his “way of registering his unhappiness with the US Congress which had turned down a $73-million aid package to the

Philippines,” as Vicente Rafael, a Washington professor of history, alludes to the fact is July 4 is no longer the official “Independence Day” of the Philippine Republic. June 12 is. Fast-forward to the present. The United States may be the Philippines’ third-largest trading partner with over $18.9 billion in goods and services traded in 2020. But when its independence is threatened, the Philippines cries “Uncle.”

While the US bases are no longer there, the Visiting Forces Agreement remains in place — and the two countries hold their annual large-scale military drill, a “hallmark” of the two countries’ 71-year-old alliance.

In March this year, US and Philippine troops displayed this show of strength as China grows increasingly assertive in the disputed South China Sea and Russia’s war with Ukraine rages on.

When President Rodrigo Duterte assumed office on June 30, 2016, he proclaimed “independence from foreign powers,” but showed his card by official fealty to communist China.

The next month, Mr. Duterte declared that the hard-won international court victory of the Philippines against his friend Xi Jinping was “nothing but a s**t of paper.”

Will Ferdinand Marcos Jr. show his dependence days ahead — to whom? — and will he, as Quezon foretold, have a government run like hell?