UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies

Processing the papers of Boone Schirmer was a wonderful experience for an undergraduate. The papers provided a memorable education both about a unique individual, and about an important period in history. Some of Schirmer's quirks also were revealed in the process.

Daniel Boone Schirmer had a lasting impact on the movement in the United States to oppose martial law in the Philippines from 1972 until his death in 2006. He was active in several AMLM institutions such as the Philippines Information Bulletin, Friends of the Filipino People, and the Philippines program of the Goddard-Cambridge Graduate Program in Social Change.

I am honored to pay tribute to Daniel Boone Schirmer. Others already mentioned Boone’s important role during the Martial Law period, especially his critique of US policies in support of the Marcos dictatorship and the role of U.S. military bases. I will use this occasion to share some personal stories about Boone for those who did not know him personally.

U.S. policymakers and pundits have often trumpeted U.S. policy in the Philippines as a model -- of colonialism, of democracy, of counter-insurgency -- that could be applied world wide. In fact, however, the Philippine model was always based on misrepresentation, and the lessons that we should take from the Philippine case are rather different from those usually mentioned. The Philippine model is examined during the period of the conquest at the turn of the last century; in 1946, when formal independence was achieved; during the anti-Huk campaign of the early 1950s; during martial law; and during the People Power revolt of 1986. In all these versions, the U.S. government stood as an opponent of the democratic aspirations of the Philippine people.

Philippine-U.S. relations appear to be on the verge of a radical and retrogressive shift -- re-instating U.S. military dominance of the island nation after it had been seriously challenged by the Philippine Senate's defeat of the bases treaty in 1991 -- and returning the Philippines once again to a limited role on the world stage as Washington's military subordinate, a part first thrust upon it by U.S. colonization nearly one hundred years ago. The pivot of this threatening reversion is an "Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement" (ACSA). However, opposition is growing to the proposed agreement, especially in the Philippines.

For one who would like to see U.S. relations with the Philippines democratic in form and content, the landing of General Douglas MacArthur at Leyte in October 1944 inspires feelings that are decidedly ambivalent. On the one hand the landing signifies the defeat of Japanese rule in the Philippines, and so can be seen as an important link in the global victory over the fascist axis. So much is positive. But in moving from a consideration of the general and global meaning of the event to its more particular and local significance for the Philippine people, the picture becomes darker, more negative. Viewed from this standpoint the MacArthur landing bears a striking resemblance to an earlier U.S. military incursion in Philippine affairs, Admiral George Dewey’s entry into Manila Bay in 1898.

A brief overview of the history of the group Friends of the Filipino People from the vantage point of twenty-one years since its founding. Framed in answer to questions submitted by researchers.

Talk delivered by Daniel Boone Schirmer in Manila, Philippines celebrating the 1991 vote in the Philippine Senate that rejected the renewal of the treaty between the United States and the Philippines to allow the continuation of U.S. military bases in the Philippines. The bases were closed in 1992, a year after the treaty was rejected.

U.S. military domination of the Third World -- its role as global policeman -- serves to compensate on the international scene for its relative economic decline. This provides the context in which to understand the U.S. attempt to keep Subic Naval Base in the Philippines.

The wars of foreign intervention waged by the United States in the 20th century have made the struggle against war the over-arching moral issue facing the nation. This struggle against war and imperialism upholds the best democratic traditions of the U.S. embodied in the revolution against British imperial rule.