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Defense Secretary Jim Mattis welcomed Philippine Ambassador Jose Manuel G. Romualdez to the Bells of Balangiga during a visit Wednesday to F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. (Blaine McCartney / Wyoming Tribune Eagle / AP) (Blaine Mccartney / AP)
SINGAPORE – The bells rang on September 28, 1901, to report a morning attack on US troops just as they were having breakfast. The attack almost wiped out the company of US soldiers, killing 48 of them during a rare victory in a war that the Philippines would eventually lose.
The response of the American commander was swift. He ordered the assassination of all Filipino men over the age of 10 involved in the fight against US forces. The Americans razed the town of Balangiga, which had been abandoned, and took the three church bells as spoils of war.
More than a century after one of the most horrific clashes of the Philippine-American War, the "Balangiga Bells" are officially returned to the Philippines.
Speaking at an air force base near Cheyenne, in the Wyo., Where are two of the three bells, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said that the return of the bells "would weaken the links that were tested but never broken by the war".
"Put those bells back home, trusting that the American alliance between the United States and the Philippines is stronger than ever," said Mattis to the Philippines' ambassador to the United States, José Manuel Romualdez, attending the meeting. ceremony. The last of the three bells, located in a US Army Museum in South Korea, has already been prepared for his return.
The two Wyoming ringtones will first be shipped to a Philadelphia facility before joining the third ring in South Korea. The three are expected in the Philippines by the end of the year.
The Philippines, close allies of the United States, have urged the United States for decades to make the bells a symbol of national pride. Activists who lobbied for the bells to be returned to Philippine TV stations, indicating that US veterans' organizations had come to believe that the bells belonged to the Philippines and that their support had facilitated their eventual return.
But the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte, the strong Filipino leader who tried to pull his country out of its traditional alliance with the United States, has already begun to claim victory.
Duterte lobbied for the return of the bells and said he would not travel to the United States before they returned. Speaking at a press conference on the sidelines of the regional summits in Singapore, Foreign Secretary Teddy Locsin Jr., his country's former ambassador to the United Nations, said that he had raised the question with Nikki Haley, outgoing US ambassador to the United Nations.
He also told Haley that Duterte would not travel to the United States until the bells had been ringed.
"Later, all year long, she called me aside and said," OK, I talked to Mattis about it, and Mattis said that, to the extent that the Department of Defense was leaving, we were fine, "said Locsin, recounting: a conversation he had with Haley earlier in the year.
The diplomatic gesture comes at a pivotal moment for relations between the Philippines and the United States. The populist president, Duterte, has joined China since being elected in 2016. He will welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping to Manila at the end of the month, during his first visit to the country. Meanwhile, Duterte called the US "ugly" and vowed never to go during his tenure. His political style marked a major turning point for the United States in the Philippines, a country that was once its most trusted ally in the region.
Now that the bells are on their way home, Locsin said, Duterte may have to travel to Washington after all.
"They come back, so he'll have to go, to the United States, if that was the condition he's made," Locsin said. he added that he had reminded the Philippine president of the exchange with Haley. Duterte simply laughed [and] smiled, said Locsin.
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