Philippine Volcano

Some Filipinos like me now living in the United States view the devastating eruption of Mt. Pinatubo as God’s divine message not only to the Filipinos and Americans alike, but also to the world. It has brought worldwide attention to a long neglected issue of American dominance in all aspects of life in my native country.

A number of Filipinos I have talked to likened Mt. Pinatubo’s eruption to that of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible. Angeles City where Clark Air Base is located and Olongapo City, host to Subic Naval Base, have long been known in the Philippines as “sin cities” because of the perversion and open-season prostitution (note: U.S. servicemen brought AIDS to the Philippines, remember?) in and around those two bases--to satisfy the lust of women-hungry U.S. sailors and other military personnel either stationed there or simply on a rest and recreation tour.

Still, others look at it as a divine providence that Mt. Pinatubo chose to erupt a few days before Filipinos were to celebrate their 93rd year of the declaration of the First Philippine Republic, which was brutally subjugated by the United States. Mt. Pinatubo’s fury also surfaced the year the lease on those two U.S. bases expires, which is September.

Filipinos have been subjected to ridicule, abuse, oppression and domination by Imperial Spain for more than 300 years and more than 90 years by the United States.

Perhaps Mt. Pinatubo is really a blessing in disguise. Now that this has happened, we don’t need another bloody civil war against the Yankees to let them know they are no longer wanted by the Filipino people. And if my great-grandfather, a Yankee named Zeller H. Shinn of the Arkansas Regiment, who went to the Philippines with 7,000 other Americans as part of President William McKinley’s “Expeditionary Force” in the early 1900s, were alive today--he would have felt the same way I do.

JOHN L. SHINN III, Executive Editor, Philippine Nation News Service