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In late December of 1901, twenty-six-year-old Clemencia López abruptly left Hong Kong to travel over ten thousand miles to Boston, in the company of an American man. This was an unusual, even unprecedented, voyage for a young Filipina woman of her generation. The wealthy, well-educated López men had directed family business and politics. Clemencia served mainly as "the general correspondent and factotum," assisting her mother and elder sister in managing domestic matters. She had no public role, nor did she overtly take sides as the United States turned from military ally to colonizer. Clemencia's previous journeys from Balayan to Manila and back and from the Philippines to Hong Kong traced family networks, and she undertook those journeys in the company of relatives, mindful of social propriety.
Both the particular demands of her family and the broader context of imperialist politics changed the domestic compass of López's life. Circumstances in 1901 called on her to act as an emissary for her family, to plead with the U.S. government against her brothers' unjust imprisonment. Having entered the mouth of the lion, she then proceeded to champion Filipino sovereignty through the American press--a bold act, considering that anti-imperialist activism by her own brother Sixto and others had already branded them as treasonous against the United States.
Scholars have recently come to recognize López as a contributor to American anti-imperialism. Historians cite Clemencia's most important speech, delivered in 1902 to a gathering of American suffragists, as a rare instance of articulate resistance by a colonized woman, a public statement by one who was doubly silenced by her sex and her race. The few scholars who press further have noted how the radical potential in López's powerful words of protest went unfulfilled. 2
Clemencia López's errand to America comprised more than one speech, however. Her brief public career is indicative of the transformation in Filipino ideas about gender that American colonization set into motion. War and occupation called forth a redoubled Filipino independence movement with ambivalent repercussions for women's domesticity. At the same time, the United States introduced different assumptions about women's place in society and encouraged Filipina women's entry into an Americanized public sphere. Clemencia tacked back and forth between these...