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
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