Antonio Luna, Hero of the Philippine-American War

Antonio Luna (October 29, 1866–June 5, 1899) was a soldier, chemist, musician, war strategist, journalist, pharmacist, and hot-headed general, a complex man who was, unfortunately, perceived as a threat by  the Philippines  ruthless first president  Emilio Aguinaldo. As a result, Luna died not on the battlefields of the Philippine-American War, but he was assassinated on the streets of Cabanatuan. Fast Facts: Antonio Luna Known For: Filipino Journalist, musician, pharmacist, chemist, and general in the fight for Philippine independence from the U.S.Born: October 29, 1866 in the Binondo district of Manila, PhilippinesParents: Laureana Novicio-Ancheta and Joaquin Luna de San PedroDied: June 5, 1899 in Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija, PhilippinesEducation: Bachelor of Arts from the Ateneo Municipal de Manila in 1881; studied chemistry, music, and literature at the University of Santo Tomas;  licentiate in pharmacy at the Universidad de Barcelona; a doctorate from the Universidad Central de Madrid, studied bacteriology and histology at the Pasteur Institute in ParisPublished Works: Impresiones (as Taga-Ilog), On Malarial Pathology (El Hematozorio del Paludismo)Spouse(s): NoneChildren: None Early Life Antonio Luna de San Pedro y Novicio-Ancheta was born on October 29, 1866, in the Binondo district of Manila, the youngest child of seven of Laureana Novicio-Ancheta, a Spanish mestiza, and Joaquin Luna de San Pedro, a traveling salesman. Antonio was a gifted student who studied with a teacher called Maestro Intong from the age of 6 and received a Bachelor of Arts from the Ateneo Municipal de Manila in 1881 before continuing his studies in chemistry, music, and literature at the University of Santo Tomas. In 1890, Antonio traveled to Spain to join his brother Juan, who was studying painting in Madrid. There, Antonio earned a licentiate in pharmacy at the Universidad de Barcelona, followed by a doctorate from the Universidad Central de Madrid. In Madrid, he fell obsessively in love with local beauty Nelly Boustead, who was also admired by his friend Jose Rizal. But it came to nothing, and Luna never married. He went on to study bacteriology and histology at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and continued on to Belgium to further those pursuits. While in Spain, Luna had published a well-received paper on malaria, so in 1894 the Spanish government appointed him to a post as a specialist in communicable and tropical diseases. Swept Into the Revolution Later that same year, Antonio Luna returned to the Philippines where he became the chief chemist of the Municipal Laboratory in Manila. He and his brother Juan established a fencing society called the Sala de Armas in the capital. While there, the brothers were approached about joining the Katipunan, a revolutionary organization founded by Andres Bonifacio in response to the 1892 banishment of Jose Rizal, but both Luna brothers refused to participate—at that stage, they believed in a gradual reform of the system rather than a violent revolution against Spanish colonial rule. Although they were not members of the Katipunan, Antonio, Juan, and their brother Jose were all arrested and imprisoned in August 1896 when the Spanish learned that the organization existed. His brothers were interrogated and released, but Antonio was sentenced to exile in Spain  and imprisoned in the Carcel Modelo de Madrid. Juan, by this time a famed painter, used his connections with the Spanish royal family to secure Antonios release in 1897. After his exile and imprisonment, understandably, Antonio Lunas attitude toward Spanish colonial rule had shifted. Due to the arbitrary treatment of himself and his brothers and the execution of his friend Jose Rizal the previous December, Luna was ready to take up arms against Spain. In his typically academic fashion, Luna decided to study guerrilla warfare tactics, military organization, and field fortification under the famous Belgian military educator Gerard Leman before he sailed to Hong Kong. There, he met with the revolutionary leader-in-exile, Emilio Aguinaldo, and in July 1898 he returned to the Philippines to take up the fight once more. General Antonio Luna As the Spanish/American War came to a close and the defeated Spanish prepared to withdraw from the Philippines, Filipino revolutionary troops surrounded the capital city of Manila. The newly-arrived officer Antonio Luna urged the other commanders to send troops into the city to ensure a joint occupation when the Americans arrived, but Emilio Aguinaldo refused, believing U.S. naval officers stationed in Manila Bay would hand over power to the Filipinos in due course. Luna complained bitterly about this strategic blunder, as well as the disorderly conduct of American troops once they landed in Manila in mid-August 1898. To placate Luna, Aguinaldo promoted him to the rank of Brigadier General on September 26, 1898, and named him chief of war operations. General Luna continued to campaign for better military discipline, organization, and approach to Americans, who were now setting themselves up as the new colonial rulers. Along with Apolinario Mabini, Antonio Luna warned Aguinaldo that the Americans did not seem inclined to free the Philippines. General Luna felt the need for a military academy to properly train the Filipino troops, who were eager and in many cases experienced in guerrilla warfare but had little formal military training. In October 1898, Luna founded what is now the Philippine Military Academy, which operated for less than half a year before the Philippine-American War broke out in February of 1899 and classes were suspended so that staff and students could join the war effort. The Philippine-American War General Luna led three companies of soldiers to attack the Americans at La Loma, where he was met with a ground force and naval artillery fire from the fleet in Manila Bay. The Filipinos suffered heavy casualties. A Filipino counterattack on February 23 gained some ground but collapsed when troops from Cavite refused to take orders from General Luna, stating that they would obey only Aguinaldo himself. Furious, Luna disarmed the recalcitrant soldiers but was forced to fall back. After several additional bad experiences with the undisciplined and clannish Filipino forces, and after Aguinaldo had rearmed the disobedient Cavite troops as his personal Presidential Guard, a thoroughly frustrated General Luna submitted his resignation to Aguinaldo, which Aguinaldo reluctantly accepted.  With the war going very badly for the Philippines over the next three weeks, however, Aguinaldo persuaded Luna to return and made him commander-in-chief. Luna developed and implemented a plan to contain the Americans long enough to construct a guerrilla base in the mountains. The plan consisted of a network of bamboo trenches, complete with spiked man-traps and pits full of poisonous snakes, which spanned the jungle from village to village. Filipino troops could fire on the Americans from this Luna Defense Line, and then melt away into the jungle without exposing themselves to American fire. Conspiracy Among the Ranks However, late in May Antonio Lunas brother Joaquin—a colonel in the revolutionary army—warned him that a number of the other officers were conspiring to kill him. General Luna ordered that many of these officers be disciplined, arrested, or disarmed and they bitterly resented his rigid, authoritarian style, but Antonio made light of his brothers warning and reassured him that President Aguinaldo would not allow anyone to assassinate the armys commander-in-chief. To the contrary, General Luna received two telegrams on June 2, 1899. The first asked him to join a counterattack against the Americans at San Fernando, Pampanga and the second was from Aguinaldo, ordering Luna to the new capital, Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija, about 120 kilometers due north of Manila, where the Philippines revolutionary government was forming a new cabinet. Ever ambitious, and hopeful of being named Prime Minister, Luna decided to go to Nueva Ecija with a cavalry escort of 25 men. However, due to transportation difficulties, Luna arrived in Nueva Ecija accompanied only by two other officers, Colonel Roman and Captain Rusca, with the troops having been left behind. Death On June 5, 1899, Luna went alone to the government headquarters to speak with President Aguinaldo but was met by one of his old enemies there instead—a man he had once disarmed for cowardice, who informed him that the meeting was canceled and Aguinaldo was out of town. Furious, Luna had started to walk back down the stairs when a rifle shot went off outside. Luna ran down the stairs, where he met one of the Cavite officers he had dismissed for insubordination.  The officer struck Luna on the head with his bolo and soon Cavite troops swarmed the injured general, stabbing him. Luna drew his revolver and fired, but he missed his attackers. Still, he fought his way out to the plaza, where Roman and Rusca ran to help him, but Roman was shot to death and Rusca was severely injured. Abandoned and alone, Luna sank bleeding to the cobblestones of the plaza where he uttered his last words: Cowards!  Assassins!  He died at 32 years old. Legacy As Aguinaldos guards assassinated his most able general, the president himself was laying siege to the headquarters of General Venacio Concepcion, an ally of the murdered general. Aguinaldo then dismissed Lunas officers and men from the Filipino Army. For the Americans, this internecine fighting was a gift. General James F. Bell noted that Luna was the only general the Filipino army had and Aguinaldos forces suffered disastrous defeat after disastrous defeat in the wake of Antonio Lunas murder. Aguinaldo spent most of the next 18 months in retreat, before being captured by the Americans on March 23, 1901. Sources Jose, Vivencio R. The Rise and Fall of Antonio Luna. Solar Publishing Corporation, 1991.Reyes, Raquel A. G. Antonio Lunas Impressions. Love, Passion and Patriotism: Sexuality and the Philippine Propaganda Movement, 1882–1892. Singapore and Seattle : NUS Press and University of Washington Press, 2008. 84–114.Santiago, Luciano P.R. â€Å"The First Filipino Doctors of Pharmacy (1890–93).† Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society 22.2, 1994. 90–102.

US Immigration Act of 1917

The Immigration Act of 1917 drastically reduced US immigration by expanding the prohibitions of the Chinese exclusion laws of the late 1800s. The law created an â€Å"Asiatic barred zone† provision prohibiting immigration from British India, most of Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and the Middle East. In addition, the law required a basic literacy test for all immigrants and barred homosexuals, â€Å"idiots,† the â€Å"insane,† alcoholics, â€Å"anarchists,† and several other categories from immigrating. Key Takeaways: Immigration Act of 1917 The Immigration Act of 1917 banned all immigration to the United States from British India, most of Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and the Middle East.The Act was spurred by the isolationist movement seeking to prevent the United States from becoming involved in World War I.The Act required all immigrants to pass a basic literacy test administered in their native language.The Act also barred certain â€Å"undesirable† individuals, such as â€Å"idiots,† the â€Å"insane,† alcoholics, â€Å"anarchists† from entering the United States.Though President Woodrow Wilson initially vetoed the Immigration Act of 1917, Congress overwhelmingly overrode his veto, making the act a federal law on February 5, 1917. Details and Effects of the Immigration Act of 1917 From the late 1800s to the early 1900s, no nation welcomed more immigrants into its borders than the United States. In 1907 alone, a record 1.3 million immigrants entered the U.S. through New York’s Ellis Island. However, the Immigration Act of 1917, a product of the pre-World War I isolationism movement, would drastically change that. Also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, the Immigration Act of 1917, barred immigrants from a large part of the world loosely defined as â€Å"Any country not owned by the U.S. adjacent to the continent of Asia.† In practice, the barred zone provision excluded immigrants from Afghanistan, the Arabian Peninsula, Asiatic Russia, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, and the Polynesian Islands. However, both Japan and the Philippines were excluded from the barred zone. The law also allowed exceptions for students, certain professionals, such as teachers and doctors, and their wives and children. Other provisions of the law increase the â€Å"head tax† immigrants were required to pay on entry to $8.00 per person and eliminated a provision in an earlier law that had excused Mexican farm and railroad workers from paying the head tax. The law also barred all immigrants over the age of 16 who were illiterate or deemed to be â€Å"mentally defective† or physically handicapped. The term â€Å"mentally defective† was interpreted to effectively exclude homosexual immigrants who admitted their sexual orientation. U.S. immigration laws continued to ban homosexuals until the passage of the Immigration Act of 1990, sponsored by Democratic Senator Edward M. Kennedy.   The law defined literacy as being able to read a simple 30 to 40-word passage written in the immigrant’s native language. Persons who claimed they were entering the U.S. to avoid religious persecution in their country of origin were not required to take the literacy test. Perhaps considered most politically incorrect by today’s standards, the law include specific language barring the immigration of â€Å"idiots, imbeciles, epileptics, alcoholics, poor, criminals, beggars, any person suffering attacks of insanity, those with tuberculosis, and those who have any form of dangerous contagious disease, aliens who have a physical disability that will restrict them from earning a living in the United States..., polygamists and anarchists,† as well as â€Å"those who were against the organized government or those who advocated the unlawful destruction of property and those who advocated the unlawful assault of killing of any officer.† Effect of the Immigration Act of 1917 To say the least, the Immigration Act of 1917 had the impact desired by its supporters. According to the Migration Policy Institute, only about 110,000 new immigrants were allowed to enter the United States in 1918, compared to more than 1.2 million in 1913. Further limiting immigration, Congress passed the National Origins Act of 1924, which for the first time established an immigration-limiting quota system and required all immigrants to be screened while still in their countries of origin. The law resulted in the virtual closure of Ellis Island as an immigrant processing center. After 1924, the only immigrants still being screened at Ellis Island were those who had problems with their paperwork, war refugees, and displaced persons. Isolationism Drove the Immigration Act of 1917 As an outgrowth of the American isolationism movement that dominated the 19th century, the Immigration Restriction League was founded in Boston in 1894. Seeking mainly to slow the entry of â€Å"lower-class† immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, the group lobbied Congress to pass legislation requiring immigrants to prove their literacy. In 1897, Congress passed an immigrant literacy bill sponsored by Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, but President Grover Cleveland vetoed the law.   Be early 1917, with America’s participation in World War I appearing inevitable, demands for isolationism hit an all-time high. In that growing atmosphere of xenophobia, Congress easily passed the Immigration Act of 1917 and then overrode President Woodrow Wilson’s veto of the law by a supermajority vote. Amendments Restore US Immigration The negative effects of drastically reduced immigration and the general inequity of laws like the Immigration Act of 1917 soon become apparent and Congress reacted. With World War I reducing the American workforce, Congress amended the Immigration Act of 1917 to reinstate a provision exempting Mexican farm and ranch workers from the entry tax requirement. The exemption was soon extended to Mexican mining and railroad industry workers. Shortly after the end of World War II, the Luce-Celler Act of 1946, sponsored by Republican Representative Clare Boothe Luce and Democrat Emanuel Celler eased immigration and naturalization restrictions against Asian Indian and Filipino immigrants. The law allowed the immigration of up to 100 Filipinos and 100 Indians per year and again allowed Filipino and Indian immigrants to become United States citizens. The law also allowed naturalized Indian Americans and FilipinoAmericans to own homes and farms and to petition for their family members to be allowed to immigrate to the United States. In the final year of the presidency of Harry S. Truman, Congress further amended the Immigration Act of 1917 with its passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, known as the McCarran-Walter Act. The law allowed Japanese, Korean and other Asian immigrants to seek naturalization and established an immigration system that placed emphasis on skill sets and reuniting families. Concerned by the fact that the law maintained a quota system drastically limiting immigration from Asian nations, President Wilson vetoed the McCarran-Walter Act, but Congress garnered the votes needed to override the veto. Between 1860 and 1920, the immigrant share of the total U.S. population varied between 13% and nearly 15%, peaking at 14.8% in 1890, mainly due to high levels of immigrants from Europe. As of the end of 1994, the U.S. immigrant population stood at more than 42.4 million, or 13.3%, of the total U.S. population, according to Census Bureau data. Between 2013 and 2014, the foreign-born population of the U.S. increased by 1 million, or 2.5 percent. Immigrants to the United States and their children born in the U.S. now number approximately 81 million people or 26% of the overall U.S. population. Sources and Further Reference Bromberg, Howard (2015). â€Å"Immigration Act of 1917.† Immigration to the United States. Chan, Sucheng (1991). â€Å"The Exclusion of Chinese Women, 1870-1943.† Temple University Press. ISBN 978-1-56639-201-3Chung, Sue Fawn. â€Å"Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America, 1882–1943.† Temple University Press, 1991.Powell, John (2009). â€Å"Encyclopedia of North American Immigration.† Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4381-1012-7.Railton, Ben (2013). â€Å"The Chinese Exclusion Act: What It Can Teach Us about America.† Pamgrave-McMillan. ISBN 978-1-137-33909-6.

Compare and Contrast Cataract Operation, About his person, Poem Free Essays

Simon Armitage was born in 1963 and lives in West Yorkshire. Simon Armitage has taught at the University of Leeds and the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, and currently teaches at Manchester Metropolitan University. He writes biographical poems, which are based on things, which he has experienced in his life. We will write a custom essay sample on Compare and Contrast: Cataract Operation, About his person, Poem or any similar topic only for you Order Now In this essay I will be comparing and contrasting three of Simon Armitage’s poems, Cataract Operation, About His Person and Poem. The subject matter in Cataract Operation is about the poet looking out of his window and seeing things in a way he has never seen them before, like pigeons in the yard, washing on a line, and hens pecking for food. This is because a cataract operation clears the lens of his eye’s, which has become unclear, so the poet is affectionate to his new way of seeing things to having had a difficulty in front of his eyes cleared away by surgery. The subject matter is a happier and more enjoyable compared to About His Person. About His Person lists all the items that a dead man had upon him when he was discovered. It reads like a police officer’s report. The following quotations â€Å"an analogue watch, self-winding, stopped†, â€Å"but beheaded in his fist†, and â€Å"a ring of white unweathered skin† all show a sign of a wrecked and finished life. Poem could be similarly compared to the two other poems. The reason being is as it shows signs of affectionate love and signs of tragedy and deceitfulness. Poem is about a husband and a father who has a serious problem with his frame of mind. † And if it snowed and snow covered the drive he took a spade and tossed it to one side, and always tucked his daughter up at night, and slippered her the one time that she lied. This quote shows us that he had a mixed personality and proves sometimes he did this, and sometimes he did that. The language used in Cataract Operation can be very misleading, as the poet creates phrases, which could mean a number of things and is left to the reader to decide. â€Å"A pigeon in the yard turns tail† is an example of the misleading language used because we imagine the bird turning around so that its tail faces the poet in the window, while at the same time we can read turns tail as ‘runs away from’ or ‘turns its back on’, as if it is snubbing the poet. Simon Armitage also uses a mixture of metaphors and personifications so that every item of drying laundry takes on a characteristic movement of the country or place that we might associate that item with. For example, the shirt is doing â€Å"monkey business†, as if the shirtsleeves were the monkey’s arms and the handkerchief waves cheerio as the original type of British man who wears a handkerchief in his chest pocket might do. The poem is laid out in ten couplets, but they are not rhyming couplets as we observe in About His Person. There is no steadiness in the length of the lines, to highlight that everything the poet sees is new and irregular. The language used in About His Person is very similar to the language used in cataract operation. Again the poet uses a number of misleading expressions, like the title itself. It could be a formal way of saying, â€Å"he had on him†, but if you look at it in a different manner then it could also suggest that the poem is about the dead person whom is the subject of the poem. About His Person written in ten two-line stanzas called rhyming couplets. They are short and accurate, just like the notes that a detective might make if he or she was investigating a dead body. The language used in Poem is different compared to the other two poems, as the words are simple. There is no misleading phrases used and the language could be considered as straight forward and formal. â€Å"And every week he tipped up half his wage. And what he didn’t spend each week he saved. And praised his wife for every meal she made. And once, for laughing, punched her in the face. † This language is easy to understand and is uncomplicated compared to About His Person and Cataract Operation. Poem is a sonnet, which is often the figure used for love poetry. Maybe, this highlights the lack of love in the man’s life. It is divided into three regular stanzas with a couplet to finish. This might help to underline the steadiness and ordinariness of the man’s life. The Ideas and attitudes of cataract could be very difficult to understand. We do not know what it was that made the Simon Armitage suddenly see all the objects he talks about in a new manner. Perhaps he did have a cataract operation or maybe he was imagining what it must be like to have one or he could even use the idea of a cataract operation as an image of what it is like to open your eyes. One thing is for sure, that he is trying to explain that we should appreciate our world and see the inner beauty that it possesses. The poet for example saw the images according to his situation and saw the magic in the simplest way and opened his eyes towards it. This cannot be compared to About His person as in this poem a man is being revived within the poem and the poem could be called as a memorial to him. In this poem Simon Armitage creates a misleading story and we are not totally sure of what happened. The police do not get emotionally involved in cases like these, as they gather the bare facts and leave the feeling out, but we sympathise for the man as we believe he was forced to kill himself and we see him as a victim of love and deceit. Poem can in a way be similarly compared to Cataract Operation because it tries to prove a point and produce a moral. The way Simon Armitage tried to make people aware of the beauty of our world in Cataract Operation is similar to the way he tries to make the man in Poem represent the ordinary gentlemen and set a message that sometimes you might do this, and sometimes you might do that. In this poem Simon Armitage does not actually condemn the man for all the things he did wrong; he simply lists the mistakes and leaves us to represent them. Overall I think that About His Person and Poem are similar because they both include the story of a man, whom is involved in marriage and both men have suffered from a problem and in this essay I have fully compared and contrasted all three of Simon Armitage’s poems. How to cite Compare and Contrast: Cataract Operation, About his person, Poem, Papers