Déjà vu 2026-1898

Recent social media posts on the 1901 capture of Emilio Aguinaldo by a small band of United States soldiers and Macabebe Scouts under Frederick Funston were déjà vu in the context of the US invasion of Venezuela and the capture of its president. In 1901, Aguinaldo was president of the Malolos, or the First Philippine Republic, a government that was not recognized by the US and wanted to annex the Philippines following Spain’s disastrous defeat in the 1898 Spanish-American War.

The events in Venezuela reminded me of the engaging book “How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States” (Picador, 2019) by Daniel Immerwahr, which shows how US territory grew in 1898 following the acquisition of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, and Hawaii. He shows this graphically by comparing the current logo map of the US with that of the “Greater United States,” showing its vast territories from 1898 to 1945.

In the future, when all the data is in and passions have cooled, historians will be able to look clearly into the events that led to the joint military operation in Venezuela and the successful “extraction” of President Nicolás Maduro from the capital city of Caracas. US President Donald Trump branded Maduro as an “outlaw dictator” who was brought to justice in the US on charges of narco-terrorism and drug trafficking. In a press conference, Trump said:

“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition. So we don’t want to be involved with, uh, having somebody else get in, and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years. So we are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition … We can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela … We’re not going to let that happen … We’re there now, but we’re going to stay until such time as the proper transition can take place. So we’re gonna stay until such time as, we’re gonna run it, essentially, until such time as a proper transition can take place.”

Trump’s 2026 remarks in the context of another time and another president bring us back to Dec. 21, 1898 in the US when President William McKinley issued an executive order stating that “after the destruction of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay [on May 1, 1898] followed by the reduction of the city and the surrender of the Spanish forces [on Aug. 13, 1898], these events practically effected the conquest of the Philippine Islands and the suspension of Spanish sovereignty therein.”

McKinley’s executive order does not reference the declaration of Philippine Independence in Kawit on June 12, 1898, but underscores that following the peace negotiations between the US and Spain on Dec. 10, 1898: “The future control, disposition, and government of the Philippine Islands are ceded to the United States. In fulfillment of the rights of sovereignty thus acquired and the responsible obligations of government thus assumed, the actual occupation and administration of the entire group of the Philippine Islands become immediately necessary, and the military government heretofore maintained by the United States in the city, harbor, and bay of Manila is to be extended with all possible dispatch to the whole of the ceded territory.”

McKinley’s executive order continues for many paragraphs, detailing what we know today as his “Benevolent Assimilation” policy. The document concludes:

“Finally, it should be the earnest and paramount aim of the military administration to win the confidence, respect, and affection of the inhabitants of the Philippines by assuring to them in every possible way that full measure of individual rights and liberties, which is the heritage of free peoples, and by proving to them that the mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation, substituting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary rule. In the fulfillment of this high mission, supporting the temperate administration of affairs for the greatest good of the governed, there must be sedulously maintained the strong arm of authority to repress disturbance and to overcome all obstacles to the bestowal of the blessings of good and stable government upon the people of the Philippine Islands under the free flag of the United States.”

The American Anti-Imperialist League was organized in Boston on June 15, 1898, which is three days after Filipinos declared their independence from Spain in Kawit. Their aim was to oppose the annexation of foreign territories like the Philippines following the US victory in the Spanish-American War. While the league had prominent members like Mark Twain and Andrew Carnegie, they were not a match for US expansionist sentiment at the time.

While the events in Venezuela seem far from our shores, these become relevant when seen in the context of the US annexation of the Philippines in 1898, when we passed from Spain to the US, giving the Philippines a situation best described by Carmen Guerrero Nakpil as spending “400 years in a convent and 50 years in Hollywood.”

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