According to subsequent initial American reports, USA columns or forces "marched across the island, destroying homes and shooting people and draft animals. Littleton Waller, in a report, stated that over an eleven-day period his men burned 255 dwellings, shot 13 carabaos and killed 39 people." However, Anti-imperialist American congressmen, Mark Twain, and many Filipino historian claim that more than 300 Filipinos (men, women and children) were massacred by the forces acting under Gen. J.H. Smith's obscene orders. Others were simply tortured
Throughout the novel, the two main female protagonists subsequently vie to recreate the "real" history on paper (as a manuscript of film) throughout most of the novela novel, which is set in present (President Rodrigo Duterte's ) Philippines, where as in the day of Dictator Ferdinand Marcos (50 years earlier), Filipinos have been being killed (apparently on whims) by run-amok vigilantes and police forces.
Peter Gordon has observed of Apostol's novel, INSURRECTO: "The use of movie-script framing allow passages to be cinematic; the sections that take place in Balangiga in 1901 are particularly, evocatively and dramatically so. The boredom of the soldiers and the their obliviousness to the situation is oppressively palpable. Apostolor it is Chiara?creates the character of the well-bred and well-connected pioneer photographer Cassandra Chase, on location in Balangiga and a thorn in the side to the military establishment."
This book is more than a fun read. Often it is a tour d'force of post modern literary techniques and on par with many of Latin America's works. (Occasionally, allusions to Spanish and New Spain's occupation of the Philippines are made by Apostol, whose name is certainly Spanish for "Apostle", like in those who followed Jesus. Further, allusions are sometimes made to ancient Filipino heritage and/or lost memories and culture passed down through the strong position in the home, in the workplace and even in government leadership.)
This novel is also a feminist work as the two main protagonists in the fictional work are in constant discussion as to how a modern feminist might approach the narration of the Balinga Massacre for modern audiences. Likewise, in the two screen plays developed by the two protagonists in a sort of modern dual of words and memory, both women writers have chosen to focus on woman protagonists (for the final version of the screenplay.)
Finally, as in the Latin American literature, such as Manuel Puig's (1976) KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN, the author, Gina Apostle, rewrites the role of "reference notes", which she has used to manipulate the usage of Endnotes at the end of her novel. . (In contrast, Manuel Puig had manipulated the reader, audience, memory and authoritative scientific positivism in KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN by playing with the authority of footnotes.).
For its play on Latin American literature and film, the novel INSURRECTO is to be recommended. When you combine it with intra-feminist arguments and the role back of private and public memories of colonialism while making a contrasting tale to Copolla's Apocalypse Now, Gina Apostol's work is a must readeven though one wishes it could be of a meatier length, like Gabriel Garcia's Love in the Time of Cholera or 100 Years of Solitude (both running well-over 400 pages.)
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