Embattled Amigos: Filipino Revolutionaries and African American Soldiers at War, 1899–1902

African American soldiers in the Philippine-American War, having circulated through multiple sites of U.S. empire from the American West to the Caribbean and Pacific, uneasily embodied American imperialist agendas as they sought full citizenship rights while fighting Filipinos striving for independence from colonial rule.  Given Filipino resistance to 300-plus years of Spanish colonization culminating in the 1896 revolution, and considering black soldiers’ participation in expanding state-sponsored violence, the Philippine-American War forced African American soldiers and Filipinos to further imagine their role in a global system of racial stratifications, competing colonialisms, and overlapping empires.  Blacks and Filipinos interacted in highly contingent spaces of war spanning ten provinces, and many realized the potential for solidarity by reframing their views from a nationalist perspective to a position of racial subjugation.  Possibilities for alliance unevenly influenced black-Filipino exchanges, as both used race relations strategically and selectively while manipulating the strengths and weaknesses of the opposing military to their respective advantage.

This paper shows how African American soldiers and Filipinos blurred and shifted friend-enemy lines as they variously negotiated: the contradiction of the war’s violence alongside U.S. claims of benevolence; African American soldiers’ ambivalent position, given their service in an imperialist war while blacks confronted Jim Crow at home; and the possibilities of “amigo warfare,” when Filipinos befriended well-armed American soldiers but in actuality supported the resistance with information, supplies, and cover.  Diverse black-Filipino encounters ranged from killing and destruction, to calculated use or restraint of weapons, to amicable relations and marriages.  The character of amigo warfare changed when revolutionaries specifically appealed to African American soldiers to join the resistance, when black soldiers deserted to the revolutionaries, and when Filipinos served as spies and (sometimes fake) guides.  The possibilities for such shifting allegiances highlight the fraught intersections of U.S. imperialism, Jim Crow, and colonial resistance.