 Content:

o Such accounts in Philippine History need to be understand the politics and society and
understood not only through text but also cartoons or caricatures. Political cartoons
and caricature are a rather recent art form, which veered away from the classical art by
exaggerating human features and poking funs at its subjects. This is a graphic with
caricatures of public figures, expressing opinions in every significant event in our
history. This is a combination of artistic skill, hyperbole and satire in order to
question authority and draw attention to corruption, political violence and other social
ills that is worthy of historical examination.

o In his book Philippine Cartoons: Political Caricature of the American Era (1900-
1941). Alfred McCoy, together with Alfred Roces, compiled political cartoons
published in newspaper dailies and periodicals in the aforementioned time period.
For this part, we are going to look at selected cartoons and explain the context of each
one.

o The first example is the Manila: The Corruption of a City. If the nationalism was
the ideology of the Manila press, then the city was its reality. The editors, artists
and writers all lived and worked in Manila, and so expressed their frustrations with
its discomforts and decadence in some of the angriest cartoons of the American
period (1899-1941). Costumes and characters have changed in the half century
since their publication, but Mania’s constant urban problems – poverty,
corruption and prostitution --- give these cartoons an almost timeless quality.
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o This second cartoons is situated at the Distant Provinces that the

provinces began at Manila door’s step, but for the city press they were
a world apart.

o The third example is the Colonial Condition: that for Sophisticated

Filipino nationalist, colonialism was not a simple matter of who
occupied the executive offices in Malacanang Palace. They saw
colonialism as a pervasive condition that had penetrated the whole of
their social fabric – influencing their culture, politics, economy, and
class relations.

o The fourth example is the situation of Uncle Sam and Little Juan:
During the decades of U.S. colonial rule. Uncle Sam underwent a
striking transformation in the pages of the Philippines press. In the
early years when Filipino nationalism was at its height, Uncle Sam
often appeared crafty and predatory in his relationship with the
 virginal maiden. Filipinos, During the Harisson administration,
however, Uncle Sam metamorphized into a wise, kindly looking man
with a paternalistic concern for the boyish figure of Juan de la Cruz, who
had largely supplanted the maiden Filipinas as the nation’s symbol.
These images are thus a cameo of changing Filipino attitudes towards
America and Americans.

o The transition from the Spanish Colonial period to the American

Occupation period demonstrated different scenario of changes and shifts
in culture, society, and politics. The selected cartoons illustrate not only
opinion of certain media outfits about the Philippine society during the
American period but also paint a broad image of society and politics
under the United States.