Hell in Samar paradise

"HELL is a summer resort beside Samar," wrote Rev. W.H.T. Squires, D.D., in an article published in The Virginian-Pilot (a newspaper in Norfolk, Virginia, USA) on April 30, 1942.

Squires quoted the US Marines epithet in a sympathetic tribute to former Maj. Littleton W.T. Waller, a local hero in Virginia who retired as major general in the US Marine Corps.

To the Filipinos, Waller was the "butcher of Samar," the commanding officer of a special battalion of US Marines that implemented the "kill and burn" campaign in southern Samar in the wake of the Balangiga Massacre in September 1901.

Squires derogated Samar at a time when captured Filipino fighters and their American comrades were still dying like flies in the aftermath of the Fall of Bataan weeks earlier on April 9, 1942. They had failed to defend America's interest in our country from the onslaught of the then mighty Japanese military machine.

A century after Balangiga and 60 years after Bataan, Samar remains a sinkhole of underdevelopment and neglect. Mother America hardly lifted a finger on Samar's behalf during her colonial years. The island was left as a jungle hell and belligerent towns, like Basey and Balangiga, were cut up into two and three towns, respectively, for more effective divide-and-rule.

Ironically, it was "Enemy Japan" which provided assistance that appeared to have lifted Samar out of its jungle hell conditions. The Samar section of the Maharlika Highway and the asphalt Taft-Guiuan Highway were earlier examples.

In recent years, the completion of the South Samar Coastal Road Project from Basey through the Balangiga corridor to Buenavista, Quinapondan, again with official development assistance from Japan, has perked up the economy of the southern part of Samar.

It must be noted that this road project was outside the wish of some influential Samar politicians, who instead wanted to cut a highway through the pristine forest from Basey to Borongan. This project may be considered a victory for the NGO community, which lobbied hard against the forest highway. Of course, they got a lot of help and boost from socially and environmentally concerned sectors of the donor government.

Given this background, the government endorsement of funding for the Help for Catubig Agricultural Advancement Project (HCAAP) during the Estrada administration was received with elation. Estimated to cost P2.2-billion, this project in Northern Samar was proposed for funding with a loan from Japan.

Like the long-neglected Balangiga, Catubig was also left to stagnate all these decades. Perhaps because, like Balangiga, Catubig was also the scene of a major Filipino victory against American troops during the Philippine-American War.

Known to Americans but hardly to Filipinos, the Battle of Catubig from April 14-18, 1900 caused the death of 19 American soldiers and was the first big defeat of US troops in Samar.

The New York Times called the battle at Catubig "one of the most thrilling and picturesque incidents of the entire Philippine war." But the US War Department used far less glowing terms, describing it as the "heaviest bloody encounter yet for American troops" in the colonial war against the Filipinos.

Three years after government endorsement, nothing much has been heard of the Catubig project. I hope this would still be pursued with multisectoral determination similar to the one that resulted in the South Samar Coastal Road Project. I also hope that this project would include connecting the northeastern Samar towns with a concreted highway, just like in the southern part of the island.

A good road network around Samar Island, not its remilitarization in the wake of recent attacks by the New People's Army (NPA) or the proposed gerrymandering of new provinces, provides the best hope for the island's economic progress in the near future.

The hellish neglect of specific areas of Samar, first by American colonialists and neo-colonialists, and later by their Filipino surrogates and lackeys, could be traced to the proud histories of these areas. Balangiga and Catubig were virtually left to the elements for doing the country proud during our shrouded past.

In a final ironic twist, it is Japan, a country that our "American miseducation" continues to present as an enemy, which provides Samar some taste of "heaven" from the hell imposed by Mother America.