Kapampanga

The two pictures below display a young Kapampangan boy and his mother, as well as a young Kapampangan woman scaling fish outside of her home. These photos were taken in Dolores and Angeles, both cities in the province of Pampanga, Philippines. The Kapampangan people originate in the plains of central Luzon, north of Manila. Kapampangan people make up one of the largest ethnic groups in the Philippines, and are represented in much of today’s politics and popular culture.

These photos were taken in the year 1900, shortly after the Spanish-American War, during which Spain ceded control of the Philippines over to the United States. With this new shift in colonial rulers, the Kampampangan community was divided in its response: as Kapampangan elites were largely in favor of American Occupation as a way of opening up means of industrialization, Kapampangan peasant farmers opposed American occupation in fear that they would lose their jobs to seasonal migrant workers. During this time, Americans were also in deep debate over whether or not to occupy the Philippines, with many arguing that annexation of the Philippines would either be a rare economic prospect or that colonizing the Philippines would not only go against the democratic ideals of the US, but would also be a slippery slope for native Filipinos to joining the US as citizens. 
 

Citations:

1. Rosaldo, M. Z. (1973). [Review of The Pampangans: Colonial Society in a Philippine Province, by J. A. Larkin]. American Anthropologist, 75(6), 1863–1865. http://www.jstor.org/stable/673673
2. Milestones: 1899–1913—Office of the Historian. (n.d.). Retrieved February 9, 2022, from https://history.state.gov/milestones/1899-1913/war