12 APRIL

1899 - Gen. Licerio Geronimo y Imaya appoints a foreigner, Arthur Howard, as a Captain of Infantry of the Philippine army and orders his forces, as well as civil and military authorities, to accord the new captain the respect due his rank 21/1 months into the bloody and protracted Filipino-American War (1899-1914), Geronimo's division, his Tiradores de la Muerte (Sharpshooters of Death) troop in particular, will be responsible for felling imperialist American Gen. Henry Ware Lawton eight months later during a historic battle in San Mateo, then wholly part of Rizal province; Howard, said to have been a  deserter from the enemy American ranks (1st California Volunteers),  supposedly trained the Filipino snipers that will tenaciously and courageously kill Lawton, the highest-ranking Bald Eagle military officer killed in action by freedom-fighting Filipinos;  the invading Americans would later appoint Geronimo to the Philippine Constabulary [read:imperialist police force] after a number of U.S. officers found Lawton's killer to be "the most honest, straightforward native that they have ever known"; the Phil-Am War was precipitated by the vile  American soldiers' shooting at some Filipino soldiers crossing the Sta. Ana bridge in Manila on secret orders from  U.S. regimental commanders who were implementing imperialist U.S. President William McKinley's 'pre-arranged plan' to blame the hostilities on the Filipinos so as to push their Senate into approving the Treaty of Paris and, thus, allow the military funding for the annexation of the Philippines; the army and guerrilla forces of the fledgling Philippine Republic will eventually lose to the North American imperialist and future superpower U.S. that set its sights on the Southeast Asian nation for its rich natural resources, including very fertile plains and valleys and "mountains of coal," projected potential markets and its strategic position in the Pacific. 


 Raw photo credit: Macky Hosalla