SUPAG Insights - March 2025

HEGEMONY AND AMERICAN IMPERIALISM IN THE PHILIPPINES: A CRITICAL REFLECTION ON CONTEMPORARY PHILIPPINE ECONOMICS

LJ ZAPHAN B. LAMBOLOTO

ABSTRACT

           The enduring neo-colonial influence of American Imperialism in the Philippines pervasively transformed its politics and economy in the 20th century. The adaptation of American parity rights and the promotion of laissez-faire economic paradigm, which is thought to possess the gravity to develop local industries through technological transfers and a free market economy, only made the Philippines subservient to foreign powers. In this work, I argue that the inability of the post-EDSA administrations to fulfill its promise of economic and political development could be traced to the failure of the Philippine government to strengthen the political structure and financial independence of the country through its pro-American policies, i.e., Bell Trade Act of 1946 and the Laurel-Langley Agreement to name its most notorious representatives. This paper will, therefore, reconstruct a critique of American Imperialism in the Philippines through a retrospective analysis of Alejandro Lichauco’s work entitled The Lichauco Paper: Imperialism in the Philippines through the lenses of Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebook and Louis Althusser’s Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus. By appropriating the rich political and economic analysis of Lichauco, this work aims to provide a synthesis of how American imperialism and neo colonialism oppressed and hegemonized not only the Philippine market economy, but more fatally, the Filipino consciousness. In turn, this work also examines the current plight of the Philippine economic landscape seventy-eight years after the entry of American neocolonial exploits.

Keywords: American Imperialism, Political Economy, Hegemony, Philippine Politics, Filipino Consciousness