Insurgency Wars

American soldiers fighting in Manila

Gulf Refugee Crisis

The **Insurgency Wars** was an armed conflict fought between Cuban and Filipino insurgents in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. The civil unrest and subsequent pacification of newly occupied American territory cost the United States a great deal of money and by the end of the war the American public was sick of fighting while tensions flared up between Black Americans, White Southerners and White Farmers. While the public became firmly anti-war, a new war began in the Philippines against the American army, which fought a brutal guerrilla war for a couple more years.

The Insurgency War proved to be one of the major catalysts for post-1900s political instability within the continental United States, being one of the main reasons the far-right National Dignity Party was founded.

## The Spanish-American War

Initially, the Spanish-American War seemed to be a quick and easy gamble for the United States to exert its influence over the Pacific and Caribbean. American-Spanish relations had been rocky in the time leading up to war with Cuban calls for independence and the sinking of the USS Maine. Since late April and the declaration of war the United States had quickly poached off the Spanish from Guam, Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines with the help of revolutionaries and the Philippine Revolution which weakened Spanish rule over the colony.

By late August, the Spanish government surrendered to Washington D.C., and several months later the 1989 Treaty of Paris was signed, formally ending the war, though its implications would be felt for years.

## Military and civilian tensions

In the months after all fighting had ceased, tensions began to grow with American soldiers and the general public within the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico. Concerns were raised when in early 1897 reports began to filter out of Cuba over abuse by American soldiers committed against civilians in Havana, primarily against Afro-Cubans. The president at the time, William McKinley, dismissed pressure from the Cuban public to remove American troops from Cuban soil, leading to growing anti-American sentiments, not just in Cuba but in the Philippines as well.

As rumors circulated around Manila over American exploitation, opposition guerrilla groups were formed which worried many commanders and generals from the United States. Again, McKinley dismissed any concerns the military had at the moment, an action he would later deeply regret.

## Massacres in Cuba and the Philippines

### Philippines

After addressing public concerns in February, 1899 through a highly publicized speech in Washington D.C., American soldiers caught wind of a supposed location where anti-American guerrillas were operating from, in a small village just outside of the capital, where American soldiers targeted dozens of suspects for conspiring against the United States government. The men were notorious in their use of force to subjugate those who didn't comply, resulting in 2 civilian deaths. Thereafter however, the news of the States' brutality was widespread across the Philippines, igniting anti-American sentiment all throughout the country. Riots broke out in Manila while soldiers across 7 cities were ruthlessly attacked, taking the United States off guard.

### Cuba

Similarly, the lynching of five Cubans by the American military in late January over grounds of terrorism and treason inflamed the tenuous military occupation. A cycle of violence was born as out of the lynching came a Cuban nationalist guerrilla force keen on expelling American influence across the island, which targeted American soldiers which then targeted civilians. Cuba became an unsafe place to live in especially with fear of the guerrillas, known as the Havana Coalition or the American military. For the next 10 years Cuba was in this cycle, with notable killings and massacres all throughout the 1900s, prompting thousands of Cubans to flee mainland Cuba to the American Gulf Coast or even to Mexico.

## Political instability

Ongoing violence within Cuba and the Philippines was controversial across the American political scene. News reports of civilian and military massacres rallied thousands against the United States' occupation in the early 1900s, tarnishing the reputation of then president McKinley, who was famously neutral about the situation.

At the same time, Cuban migrants reaching American shores unleashed a whole host of political troubles. In 1901, the first major waves of Cuban migrants reached New Orleans, numbered anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 people, which became a hot topic of debate across the country. Many people in the South were unwilling to negotiate or accept Cuban refugees on account of the brutality American soldiers endured on the island against the Havana Coalition, with Cuban migrants experiencing heavy amounts of xenophobia mostly by White Southerners.

For the next two years xenophobic pushback in the South evolved into protests and occasionally riots, as old race wounds and anti-American prejudice was reignited over a disgruntled Southern population who increasingly felt that the Northern states and Federal authority were the reason the South was dealing with a refugee crisis, culminating in the founding of the National Dignity Party in 1903, the same year the president declared the refugee crisis to be over.

Originally, the National Dignity Party was a far-right party, made up of white supremacists and Southern separatists who wished to usurp Federal Authority, before splitting in 1908. Those who wished for the South to be independent formed the People's Rights Party, while those still within the NDP gradually relocated to the rural northwest.