• Why was guerilla warfare not implemented at the outset? (Tommy Matic)
• Insurrectos Shift to Guerrilla Warfare (Robert D. Ramsey III)
• Guerilla War Historiography (Stephen Huggins)

Why was guerilla warfare not implemented at the outset?

Aguinaldo, Mabini, Agoncillo, etc. realized that once the Spaniards were ejected, other colonial powers would move in like vultures over a corpse. Their only chance lay in presenting the Filipinos presenting themselves as a modern, civilized European-Asian state with a professional army that was ready to fight in their defense. As such, Aguinaldo hired Luna to ‘professionalize’ the Filipino army but primarily in the areas of dress, discipline and European organization – mass-produced uniforms instead of ragged semi-civilian attire, standing straight on parade and maneuvering in formation, rather than milling-about as a mob, battalions and brigades instead of warlord’s warbands. No, this wasn’t in any way sufficient to fight a war but given the time element and the needs of the international situation it was the best that could be done within the time that they had.

This is also why Aguinaldo sent out Felipe Agoncillo, Juan Luna and Mariano Ponce among others in a desperate attempt to garner international support and protection for the newly established Filipino republic.

Aguinaldo and Mabini knew, more than modern Filipinos do apparently, that would easily be characterized as banditry, brigandage and local insurrection. Guerrilla warfare would not help the Filipino image as a civilized state. Guerrilla warfare would be used as a last resort.

Insurrectos Shift to Guerrilla Warfare

Forced to accept the superiority of American forces in conventional operations, Aguinaldo convened a council of war at Bayambang on 2 November 1899 that led to a major change in strategy by the insurrectos. The remnants of the Army of Liberation were to disband and return to their provinces. Henceforth, the insurrectos would revert to guerrilla warfare. Employed against the Spanish in 1897, guerrilla units had assisted the Army of Liberation against the Americans. This shift required a decentralization and localization of operations. Guerrilla districts were created under a general officer who divided it into zones under the commands of majors or colonels. A local organizational structure with a linkage to local leaders had been created in 1898 when the revolutionary militia was formed and other local forces were required of each town.

The 1887 Spanish regulations provided guidance to the insurrectos for conducting guerrilla war. Guerrilla leaders were informed that:

The object of the guerrillas will be constantly to fight the Yankees in the towns occupied by them, attacking their convoys, inflicting all the injury they can upon their patrols, their spies and their small parties, surprising their detachments, destroying their columns when they pass by places favorable to our attacks, and inflicting exemplary punishment on traitors to prevent the people of the towns from unworthily selling themselves for the gold of the invader; but in addition they will protect the loyal inhabitants and will watch over their property and defend them from bandits and petty thieves.

The guerrillas should make up for their small numbers by their ceaseless activity and their daring. They shall hide in the woods and in distant barrios and when least expected shall fall upon the enemy. . . but they shall be careful to never rob their countrymen. We repeat that we must not give or accept combats with such a powerful foe if we have not the greatest chance of success . . . even as should we route him three times or five times, the question of our independence would not be solved. Let us wait for the deadly climate to decimate his files and never forget that our object is only to protract the state of war.

The purpose of guerrilla warfare was not to win the war. It was to drag the war out to “wear the Americans down, relying on disease, terrain, and frustration to demoralize the soldiers.” Aguinaldo and his advisers placed their short-term hope on the anti-imperialist movement in the United States and the glowing descriptions of the heroic Philippine resistance in some American newspapers. Having as little understanding of the United States and its political system as Americans had of the Filipino situation, it is understandable that they “not unreasonably, placed undue importance . . . [on] them.” Consequently, for Aguinaldo the best-case scenario was that Filipino guerrilla warfare, with the resulting American demoralization, would secure a victory of the Democratic candidate and anti-imperialist William Jennings Bryan in the upcoming November presidential elections. Only time would tell both the accuracy and the wisdom of his strategy.

What Otis and most American commanders saw as routine lawlessness was actually the beginnings of the Filipino version of low scale, organized guerrilla warfare. Even in early 1900 when the Americans became aware of Aguinaldo’s decision to go to guerrilla warfare, they failed to understand what it meant, what it looked like, or how it worked. They remained predisposed to view it as a ladrone problem. For the US Army this was understandable because:

. . . living among such a large, hostile, and culturally alien people was a new experience. The Indian campaigns were not analogous. In the Philippines the army never had the railroads, buffalo hunters, and the push of white settlement to uproot and degrade their primitive foe. The Indian wars were amateur melees compared with the insurrection waged in 1900.

National figures like MacArthur and Aguinaldo would continue to provide guidance and inspiration, but guerrilla war became close, personal, and local. Filipino guerrilla leaders would come to the fore—Tinio, Malvar, Juan Villamor, Father Gregorio Aglipay, and Juan Cailles—to resist American occupation. How effectively the Americans responded depended on how quickly they understood the nature of the insurrecto threat and then on how quickly they developed effective countermeasures. This varied from place to place.

Aguinaldo’s Decision to Engage in Guerilla Warfare

Many historians such as Timothy Deady have criticized Aguinaldo for not adopting the strategy of a guerilla war much earlier. In this vein, Max Boot observes that “Aguinaldo made the fatal mistake of trying to fight the U.S. Army in a conventional war.” Similarly, Stanley Karnow says “Aguinaldo and his staff were egregiously inept. Had he begun by pursuing an unconventional strategy, he might have prolonged the struggle, and ultimately exhausted the patience of the U.S. public – whose ardor increasingly waned as the war dragged on.” Karnow makes a direct comparison with the strategy of the North Vietnamese in their later war against the Americans, and compares Aguinaldo unfavorably with Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap.

The weakness of the Philippine force is apparent only in hindsight. On the surface, an objective assessment at the beginning of the conflict would have rated the opposing forces as matched. The Regular U.S. Army had imploded after the Civil War and by 1875 it could muster about 25,000 men. U.S. troops were outnumbered more than 3 to 1. The Americans did not have extensive training, but the Army of Liberation did. And except for sea power the Americans did not have an edge in weapons. Certainly, naval gunfire was significant in some early engagements, but if the U.S. Navy was thoroughly modern, the U.S. Army was “hopelessly antique.” The insurrectionists also had better interior lines of supply and better local intelligence. Regardless, during the period of conventional warfare, the Filipinos repeatedly folded under a determined American attack. Victories were excessively lopsided.

Brian Linn agrees that the Army of Liberation should have performed much better than it did. The leadership consistently failed to act on American mistakes. The army proved incapable of maneuver, and suffered from “an appalling lack of marksmanship.” But “there was no lack of courage and determination.”

A few historians have assumed that the Americans possessed superior firearms, but rifle technology was equivalent, with a possible advantage to the Filipinos. Brian Linn points to the “deadly” marksmanship of the Americans, while according to David Silbey, a noteworthy factor was that “Philippine ammunition was inferior and often home-made. Many of the insurgents had no rifles and used bolos. They had no artillery. But that is not quite enough.” Rather than a technological explanation for the inequality of results, Silbey posits a social factor. “The client-patron relationship still dominated Filipino society. [If patrons were not available] the insurgents would fight for a certain amount of time, and then make individual retreats. Silbey also speculates that “many Filipinos…had a different cultural conception of what war meant and how far to take the fighting.”

While the Army of Liberation had more field experience in the Philippines, the Americans had better training. An officer in the Pennsylvania volunteers noted that "the Filipinos often fired early and maximum range while the Americans waited. Their fire had been high and wild."

David Silbey calculates that even before declaring guerilla war, Aguinaldo had in effect made the decision by moving into the mountains, where he could not defend the Revolutionary government. His official decision came in November 1899. “It had been ten months since the war started, and the Philippines Republic had essentially ceased to exist.”

Aguinaldo met with his commanders on November 13, 1899 and thereafter announced his decision to suspend conventional warfare, saying “Guerillas cannot hope to defeat the enemy in the open field; they must wear down the occupying army until it finally tires of the struggle.” But Aguinaldo had no way of controlling events across the islands. His subordinate commanders – and those who had their own local revolutionary endeavors – had almost complete autonomy. In many provinces the guerillas created their own government structures, burning down whole towns if they refused to pay “taxes.” But in half of the provinces there was no fighting at all.

The war now became a series of regional struggles. Brian Linn estimates that there were seldom more than a few hundred insurgents in any province, a proportion typical of guerilla phenomena. As a practical example of the effects of this decision, the supreme commander for Southern Luzon would later report that he had not heard from his president for six months. The decision to convert to guerilla warfare reduced the prestige of the insurgents and by mid-1900, it was necessary to order that Americanista civil officials were to be dealt with as traitors. The result was that, as Brian Linn states, “horrific internecine warfare raged throughout the archipelago.”