AN EXCLUSIVE STORY BY GMA INTEGRATED NEWS DIGIDOKYU
Ang galing ng mga Pilipino sa entablado, kayang makipagsabayan sa buong mundo.
Pero alam n’yo ba na 1899 pa lamang ipinamamalas na ito ng isang grupo ng mga Pilipino nang ma-recruit sila para sa Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show sa Amerika?
Kilalanin ang Filipino Rough Riders —ang mga unang Pilipino na naging artista sa Amerika.
Ang galing ng mga Pilipino sa entablado, kayang makipagsabayan sa buong mundo.
Pero alam n’yo ba na 1899 pa lamang ipinamamalas na ito ng isang grupo ng mga Pilipino nang ma-recruit sila para sa Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show sa Amerika?
Kilalanin ang Filipino Rough Riders —ang mga unang Pilipino na naging artista sa Amerika.
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NewsTranscript
00:00The year is 1899, back then, a group of Filipinos were recruited to perform at the Buffalo Bill's Wild West show in America.
00:22But their long career as performers abroad seems to have been forgotten in history.
00:52This is the story of the first Filipinos to become artists in America.
01:22When there was this question about Filipinos in the American West, we eventually took a trip to the Buffalo Bill Museum in Grave in Golden.
01:32And that's when the story began to really take off.
01:36We located one photo from 1900, and it was of the full Filipino troop taken from Madison Square Garden.
01:46At the center of the photo is Isadora, who is flanked by these other Filipino performers.
01:55There's actually an inscription on the back that says, Remember to the Buffalo Bill's Wild West Troop.
02:01It really struck us as they're asking for a remembrance, right? Who is to remember?
02:06Are they asking us as future audience to remember this group that has been forgotten?
02:17The Rough Riders were actually a group of American soldiers, almost all of them were volunteers.
02:25They were called the Rough Riders because their definition of rough living in the field as soldiers.
02:32Most of them were actually cavalry.
02:35The Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.
02:39Using reenactments and other events such as relay race,
02:44that will show the skills of those who are working in the field.
02:49The Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.
02:52The Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.
02:56Using reenactments and other events such as relay race,
03:01that will show the skills of those who are working in the field.
03:09So the show covered 11,111 miles.
03:15Over about 200 days, there were over 300 performances in over 130 cities.
03:24The show itself starts bringing in a number of different troops that were often referred to as Rough Riders.
03:30The Wild West Show is a form of popular entertainment, but it was also this effort to blend fiction and reality.
03:38And so there would be reenactments that had conflicts between cowboys and Indians.
03:45Just like in the ancient history of the Philippines,
03:49there were also indigenous people in America before it was subdued by the colonial power of the British Empire.
03:57Foreigners' approach to Native Americans became more intense.
04:03In the sort of the later part of the 19th century,
04:07there's essentially the westward expansion, you know,
04:11from the east coast out towards the west and sort of the occupying of indigenous lands in the United States.
04:18This is where the maritime expansion of the United States began,
04:22as well as the expansion of U.S. presence in the Pacific.
04:28This is also where the concept of the Wild West was born.
04:33On April 21, 1898, the war between Spain and the United States began.
04:41Spain was defeated and some of its territories were moved to America,
04:47including the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guam.
04:53Since becoming a colony of Spain,
04:56the Philippines was in the hands of the United States before the turn of the century.
05:01Under this new colonial power,
05:05Filipinos began recruiting for Buffalo Bill's Wild West show.
05:12That was the first time I heard, when I saw the article of the two researchers.
05:18These are Philippine-Americans in the United States.
05:21And I was surprised that they were included because Wild Bill Hickok was popular.
05:27James Butler Hickok, also known as Wild Bill Hickok,
05:33is a legendary figure of the American Old West.
05:44So there were three performers in 1899.
05:48So there were three performers in 1899.
05:52Their names are Isidore Alcantara, Felix Alcantara, and Jeronimo.
05:57In the rap book, it's Jeronimo Momo.
05:59Later we learned that he's Jeronimo Inocencio.
06:02But he has multiple names.
06:04In being Filipino, they would participate in these arena shows,
06:09and they would ride horses, and they would be present for the audience to see.
06:18The Battle of San Juan Hill
06:23So the Battle of San Juan Hill was actually kind of a finale, all-hands-on-deck performance.
06:30And it takes place in Cuba, and it's essentially the United States defeating Spain.
06:39And since it was an all-hands-on-deck performance, that means they needed all the performers.
06:44And then somebody had to play the Spanish.
06:47Some other performers, other brown performers, would have been asked.
06:50And then the Filipinos.
06:52But when it came to this task, they drew a line.
06:56And they decided, you know what?
06:58We are not going to play the role of the oppressors, or the colonizers, the former colonizers.
07:06We think about this as one of the earliest forms of collective organizing.
07:11Almost like a labor strike, where they were withholding their labor from these performances,
07:17as a quiet form of resistance.
07:20The big show, the Rough Rider show, was used in the Battle of San Juan Hill, which was a part of the big exhibit.
07:28That's not our story.
07:30That's why you saw the reactions in the article of the Filipinos.
07:36That's not us. Why would the Filipinos participate in that?
07:40One of the most famous multi-purpose indoor arenas in the world,
07:46is the Madison Square Garden in New York City.
07:50The Madison Square Garden show was the premiere show.
07:54And as soon as the Filipinos enter the arena, they are basically greeted with hisses and boos.
08:01You can think of one person or two people hissing and booing,
08:04but when you think of an arena, Madison Square Garden, maybe 15,000 people,
08:10I don't know if it was upwards of 20,000,
08:12but that many people that it was audible that they were the villain,
08:17and that they were still in the arena.
08:25Following the success of 1899,
08:28Buffalo Bill Cody decided to expand the number of Filipino Rough Riders from three to eight.
08:36So five more Filipino Rough Riders were added to the show in that second year.
08:43What's surprising is given just the sheer volume of scholarship that exists on the Wild West show,
08:50how infinitesimal the mention of Filipinos are in it.
08:54I mean, Isadora Alcantara is, we think she's an interesting individual.
09:00Part of it is she's the only woman among the troop.
09:03She fell from her horse.
09:05There's all these stories that document her,
09:09it's probably some severe concussion that she got.
09:12So somebody who has a near-death experience on a horse,
09:15literally gets back on the horse,
09:18and at least in the retelling of it,
09:21is kind of running her heart out,
09:22and winning those relay races over and over again.
09:25Yeah, so we might say loli, you know, like idol.
09:30In contrast to Buffalo Bill Cody, the white male figure at the center stage,
09:37we have a Filipino woman who is seeing the world,
09:40who is traveling and riding at full speed on this horse,
09:45and it's quite an incredible story.
09:47It also became important for us to try to trace back her story back to the Philippines,
09:54to bring her home, to bring her back to Cavite,
09:57to the last known address that we have for her before she came to the United States.
10:04In the continued exploration of Emanuel and Yumi in the life of Filipino Rough Riders,
10:10they found an important piece of information about the woman who was alone in the group.
10:18What I love is back in the old days in newspapers,
10:21is they used to just say, you know, they would write somebody's address down.
10:25And so, you know, we're not going to write anybody's address down,
10:30is they used to just say, you know, they would write somebody's address down.
10:34And so, we read this, they introduce Isadora, and they say,
10:3834 Street Royal.
10:59This is my grandfather's book, his manuscript in Spanish, which is now translated into English.
11:04Here, you can see in San Rafael, the name Alcantara.
11:10And here, this is the name Alcantara.
11:13There, in San Rafael.
11:17Yes, in San Rafael.
11:19But in the center of San Rafael, there is also the word Alcantara,
11:23Familia Alcantara.
11:24But they don't have an explanation.
11:27It means that they are not well-known or well-known people.
11:31Because if they are, then this is what explains to them why they went to America.
11:38But maybe they didn't come back here.
11:41This is part of our effort to recenter them, and to reimagine them from a Filipino perspective.
12:02Our search for Isadora, first here in the Philippines, but then coming to a place like Cavite,
12:08is about bringing a particular specificity to the participants' lives.
12:38In the same way that Jose Rizal landed in San Francisco and made his way across the continental US,
13:01we imagined the three Filipino rough riders landing in San Francisco
13:06and following a similar path.
13:15The question is, was that just a job?
13:18Did they want to stay there?
13:20Maybe that's what's missing from their history.
13:22Why did they go there?
13:24And why did they join?
13:26One thing I see there is that they started their recruitment before the Philippine-American War broke out.
13:35The creation of the Filipino Rough Riders was called the We Are Coming Project by Emanuel and Yumi.
13:44It is a part of the various activities to bring the history of the Filipino Rough Riders to life in the Wild West Show.
13:54Aside from displaying the names of the Filipino Rough Riders,
13:58they also collaborated with several Filipino artists to create signages.
14:29There were not many Filipinos traveling.
14:45Because of the We Are Coming Project,
14:48Filipino-American Sheila DeForest learned the story of the Filipino Rough Riders.
14:55So, it was the first time I came to the Buffalo Bill Museum in 2010 when I visited Golden, Colorado.
15:05But I didn't know that there were Filipino Rough Riders during the show.
15:13But through this project, I was able to learn that Filipinos have been in the entertainment industry that early in the United States.
15:24Personally, as a Filipino-American, it makes myself proud to be part of the diaspora and the community.
15:34And this will help inspire our creatives and artists in the modern Filipino-American community.
15:43Yes, it's a forgotten piece of history.
15:46And we're trying to, I guess, rectify that, uncover that, understand it.
15:51Also, understand why it was forgotten.
15:55So, this is one of the first group images that we encountered of the Filipino performers from 1900.
16:04So, this would have been the first group of Filipino performers.
16:08This is an image in Madison Square Gardens.
16:11These are the eight performers themselves.
16:14You can see they've been put in what's perceived as somewhat traditional Filipino clothes, but modified for riding.
16:21That photograph has always been interesting to us.
16:24This other image that we uncovered tells another story.
16:27They're looking directly at the camera.
16:30There's an affection between them.
16:33They have their hands on each other's legs.
16:35They have their hands on each other's legs or their knees.
16:40And they feel close to one another, like a close group of friends, like a barkada.
16:46In contrast to the negative representations in the paper, this group of performers,
16:52they were displaying themselves as alive, as organized, as a collective.
16:59They were carrying the Philippine flag, which was unheard of at the time.
17:03This is still in the midst of the Philippine-American War.
17:07And to carry that flag was an act of rebellion, an act of displaying this revolutionary spirit.
17:14It's important to see this, because even though it's a small story,
17:21we can see how other countries recognize us.
17:33I think, one, it's important because it's telling a story that hasn't been told.
17:37Especially in that part of that period of time,
17:41how Filipinos were being presented in exhibitions like World's Fairs.
17:52And so, in some ways, this is fulfilling their wish to be remembered,
17:58both as a group, but also individually.
18:02And they're not lost to history.
18:08The Philippine-American War
18:12The Philippine-American War
18:16The Philippine-American War
18:37The Philippine-American War