Ninguna fuente exagera tanto la cifra, dejando a un lado que el umbral es muy abultado por la falta de estimaciones demográficas fiables (100.000-1.500.000 muertos.)
Desde luego si en algo coinciden todas es que gran parte de las víctimas civiles se debieron al cólera, dos oleadas epidémicas que se produjeron tras el fin de las hostilidades. Obviamente no ayudaron ni la estrategia estadounidense de concentración de civiles y los desplazamientos masivos (hacia la red de "fortalezas" y ciudades fortificadas estadounidenses) debidos a la ruptura de las líneas de abastecimiento, que contribuyeron a debilitar a la población civil junto al acoso guerrillero, y las malas prácticas militares de los norteamericanos (algo bastante habitual en esa época en absolutamente todos los países occidentales).
Pero aseverar tan ligeramente que fue un genocidio, pues bueno, es eso, muy gratuito.
...For example, General J.M. Bell, wrote in December 1901
I am now assembling in the neighborhood of 2,500 men who will be used in columns of about fifty men each. I take so large a command for the purpose of thoroughly searching each ravine, valley and mountain peak for insurgents and for food, expecting to destroy everything I find outside of towns. All able bodied men will be killed or captured. ... These people need a thrashing to teach them some good common sense; and they should have it for the good of all concerned....
...The good Lord in heaven only knows the number of Filipinos that were put under ground.
Our soldiers took no prisoners, they kept no records; they simply swept the country, and wherever or whenever they could get hold of a Filipino they killed him. The women and children were spared, and may now be noticed in disproportionate numbers in that part of the island...
General Smith in the Manila Times on November 4, 1901. During this interview, Smith confirmed that these had truly been his orders to Major Waller.
"'
I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn: the more you kill and burn, the better you will please me,' and, further, that he wanted
all persons killed who were capable of bearing arms and in actual hostilities against the United States, and did, in reply to a question by Major Waller
asking for an age limit, designate the limit as ten years of age. ... General Smith did give instructions to Major Waller to 'kill and burn' and 'make Samar a howling wilderness,' and he admits that he wanted
everybody killed capable of bearing arms, and that he did specify all over ten years of age, as the Samar boys of that age were equally as dangerous as their elders.
A detailed estimate of both civilian and American military dead is offered by historian John Gates, who sums up the subject as ***ows:
"Of some 125,000 Americans who fought in the Islands at one time or another, almost 4,000 died there. Of the non-Muslim Filipino population, which numbered approximately 6,700,000, at least 34,000 lost their lives as a direct result of the war, and as many as 200,000 may have died as a result of the cholera epidemic at the war's end. The U. S. Army's death rate in the Philippine-American War (32/1000) was the equivalent of the nation having lost over 86,000 (of roughly 2,700,000 engaged) during the Vietnam war instead of approximately 58,000 who were lost in that conflict. For the Filipinos, the loss of 34,000 lives was equivalent to the United States losing over a million people from a population of roughly 250 million, and if the cholera deaths are also attributed to the war, the equivalent death toll for the United States would be over 8,000,000. This war about which one hears so little was not a minor skirmish."[24]
Yet another estimate states, "
Philippine military deaths are estimated at 20,000 with 16,000 actually counted, while civilian deaths numbered between 250,000 and 1,000,000 Filipinos. These numbers take into account those killed by war, malnutrition, and a cholera epidemic that raged during the war."
US War Crimes in the Phillipines
y esta otra pagina tambien muy interesante sobre el genocidio:
U.S. GENOCIDE IN THE PHILIPPINES AND THE URGENT NEED TO PREVENT ITS REPETITION
https://philcsc.wordpress.com/2008/07/31/on-genocide-the-us-record-in-the-philippines/
y si bien es cierto que la mayoría de fuentes hablan de entre 200000 y 600000 civiles muertos, lo cierto es que esas fuentes en su gran mayoría no dejan de ser estadounidenses, lo cierto es que la comparación de censos de la era española con los censos post ocupación colonial usana arrojan una disminución de la población mucho mayor que la de las cifras oficiales.
Cierto es también que la epidemia de cólera tuvo parte de culpa, pero las condiciones para que el cólera se den las trajeron los usanos con su guerra, no por nada Filipinas era el país con la segunda mayor rente per capita de Asia, el mejor sistema sanitarios, el primer sistema de educación publico de Asia, la población mejor educada de Asia y en definitiva el estándar de vida mas elevado de la región...hasta que los usanos llegaron.
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