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extracted text: Pre - Revolution Philippines By Fr. Horacio de la Costa, S.J. A n incident in the Seven Years’ War was the cap ture and occupation of Manila by the British in 1762. By the terms of surrender the colonists promised to pay a ransom of four million pesos, in consideration of which the British guaranteed that their lives and property would be respected and the free practice of the Catholic religion allow ed. Less than a million of the ransom money was collected in Manila itself. The local authori ties signed a draft on the Ma drid government for the rest, but it was not honored. One of the members of the governor’s council, Simon de Anda, escaped capture by flee ing to Bulacan. There, with the ur aid of friars stationed in the parishes, he succeeded in keep ing the provinces of central Luzon loyal to Spain. He ob tained possession of the silver bullion brought by the incoining galleon of that year, heat ing the British to it by a hair’s breadth. Thus provided with the sinews of war, he was able to contain the invader within Manila, its suburbs, and the port of Cavite. However, a formidable na tive broke out in the llocos re16 PANORAMA gion under the leadership of Diego Silang, to whom the Bri tish sent arms and encourage ment; it was put down, but with difficulty. The Muslim Sulus and Magindanaus, embold ened by the apparent eclipse of Spanish power, redoubled their piratical raids on the Visayan settlements, while guer rilla bands and plain bandits ravaged the farms and cattle ranches of Luzon. When the British abandoned their conquests in accordance with the Treaty of Paris (1763), the colony was in a very critial condition. The public treasury was empty, private fortunes had been wiped out, there was hun NOVEMBER 1958 17 ger in the land, and the dangerous notion was spreading among the native population that the Spaniards were not, after all, invincible. The attorney-general of the Philippines at the time, Fran cisco Leandro de Viana, pre sented the problem to Madrid in the clearest terms. Either the Philippines should be giv en up altogether, or measures should immediately be taken to build up its economy. Further more, this build-up should go beyond the point which had been reached before the Bri tish occupation, for the mother country was now in no position to make good the colony’s an nual deficits, as it had hitherto done. But could the Philippines be come self-supporting? Viana was confident it could, provid ed the Crown was willing to take the necessary steps: to in crease the tribute, reduce graft, organize government monopo lies in certain designated pro ducts, and form a state-sponsored commercial company which would exploit the possi bilities of direct trade between Spain and the Philippines and invest part of its profits in the agricultural development of the country. J1 HESE proposals found favor with the ministers of Charles III, who derived their ideas of government from the philoso 18 phies of the French Enlighten ment. The tribute was raised from 10 to 16 rials (two pesos) per native household. In 1785 a Royal Philippine Company was organized with an authorized capital of eight million pesos and a monopoly of all trade be tween Spain and the Philip pines by way of the Cape of Good Hope. It was not, how ever, a success. The Manila merchants loooked dourly upon trade from which they derived such fantastic, if unpredicta ble profits. Moreover, the Phil ippines produced little at the time to interest the European market, in spite of the valiant efforts of an Economic Society of Friends of the Country to stimulate and indigo. Thus, the Company ships had perforce to lade China goods for the return voyage; but since the Company bought these goods at Manila rather than at the source, it could not com pete with the more enterpris ing merchants of other nations who went directly to Canton. In 1792 the Company began to show a steady loss, and in 1843 it went out of business. However, it did serve at least in its early years of operation to inject new life into the al most petrified commerce of Manila, and a small proportion of its earnings was invested in agricultural development ac cording to the terms of its char ter. What eventually balanced the colony’s budget was neither direct taxation nor trade expan sion but the revenues derived from government monopolies, especially that of tobacco. This was organized by an energetic governor, Don Jose Basco y Vargas, in 1782. The weed, which the Spaniards had brought over from Mexico, had long been familiar to Filipinos, but up to that time was grown chiefly for home consumption. Basco now forbade its culti vation save in certain designat ed areas such as Gapan, in the present province of Nueva Ecija, and the Cagayan Valley. The planting, picking, drying and grading of the leaf was subjected to the most minute government control. The entire produce could be sold only to the government, at the gov ernment’s price; what the gov ernment agents rejected was burned. The baled tobacco was then transported under guard to the government factory in Manila, where it was manufactured into cigars and cigarettes. The bet ter grades of these were reserv ed for export; the rest was sold in monopoly stores or estanquillas throughout the country' from which alone tobacco could be legally purchased. bviously, a whole army of employees and revenue agents was required to operate the system; in spite—or pos sibly because — of which, spe culation, bribery, extortion and enormous leakages took place at every step. Contraband trade in tobacco flourished, carried on by tulisanes or outlaws with the connivance of the law-abid ing but tobacco-using popula tion. Nevertheless, imperfect though it was, crushingly un: fair to the consumer and harm ful to civic discipline, the mo nopoly did provide the govern ment with a revenue more than sufficient to balance its budget. This obvious advantage coun terbalanced the vigorous pro tests of thoughtful and publicspirited men, such as the dis tinguished Augustinian savant Fray Joaquin Martinez de Zuni ga, and the monopoly was not finally abolished until 1882. D esides putting an end to the chronic embarrassment of the colonial treasury, the tobacco monopoly contributed to the economic development November 1958 19 of the country in a larger sense, namely, by helping to develop commercial agriculture. Until the second half of the eigh teenth century agriculture in the Philippines was almost en tirely one of subsistence. Each region—one might almost say each town—produced what it needed for its own consump tion. What trade there was con sisted chiefly in supplying farm products to the non-producers of Manila and the larger towns in exchange for imported manu factures. The tobacco monopoly, by in troducing agricultural speciali zation on a significant scale, created a demand for staples, such as rice, and hence stimulat ed their production for the mar ket. But it was not the only fac tor in this change. The British occupation of Manila, brief though it was, had called the attention of British traders, and subsequently of their Ame rican and French competitors, to the possibilities of the Phil ippines both as a market and as a source of agricultural pro duce, especially sugar. Spain had consistently kept the ports of her colonies closed to foreign trade, but in the eighteenth century this was no longer pos sible. After a period of unof ficial intercourse (British trad ing vessels were admitted to Manila under Syrian or Indian registries if they paid a sui table fee to the right officials), the law was adjusted to the realities of the situation and Manila was thrffwn open to world trade in the same year that the Royal Philippine Com pany was liquidated. Even before 1834, however, agents and factors for foreign trading companies had been al: lowed to reside in the Philip pines, and it was to their entre preneurial activities that the nascent sugar and hemp indus tries of the country owed much of their development. The provinces around Mani la were the first to feel the impact of the agricultural “re volution.” Here, large tracts of uncultivated land were held by the religious orders or by edu cational and social service in stitutions administered by them. They had been acquired in some cases by purchase or legacy, but chiefly by royal grant, land being the most con venient form at the time in which to provide a hospital or a school with an endowment. Thus the Hacienda de Buenavista in Tambobong constituted the endowment of the hospital of San Juan de Dios, while Dominican haciendas of Binang and Calamba helped to sup port the faculty and bursaries of the royal and pontifical Uni versity of Santo Tomas. 20 Panorama ^his is how it came about that when the growth of commercial agriculture de manded new areas to be put under cultivation, it was prin cipally these estates, or “friar lands,” as they came to be known, which provided the ne cessary land for development. As a rule it was not the estate owners themselves who under took the development. They pre ferred to lease the undeveloped portions of their haciendas at a fixed ground rent, called canon, to the more enterprising families of the surrounding towns. These lessees (inquilinos) then got together a group of cultivators (kasamahan); lit., association) to help them clear the land and put it un der the plough, the harvest of each field being equally divided between inquilino and kasama after the canon had been de ducted. Some inquilinos, such as Paciano Rizal of Calamba, went out with their kasama and per sonally directed the work on the farm; others were content to play the part of absentee landlords, leaving the actual farm work to their kasama while they devoted themselevs to trade or moneylending. In any case, the inquilinos prospered steadily, and at least by the middle of the nineteenth century they formed a fairly distinct provincial upper class with enough resources to pay for an education beyond that of the generality of Filipinos. Some of them even sent their sons or younger brothers stu dy in Europe; with what results we shall see in due course. Meanwhile, the profits de rived by the inquilinos from their leased land did not pass unnoticed by the hacienda own ers, who began to increase the canon at regular intervals on the plea that land values were rising. This was deeply resent ed by the inquilinos, who ar gued that since any increase in the value of the land had been due solely to their efforts, they were in effect being penr alized for their enterprise and industry. The hacienda owners pointed out that prescinding from the fact that the land was theirs to rent out to whomsoever they pleased, the credit for its dev elopment was actually due not to the inquilinos but to the kasama, ,whom the inquilinos were deriving an unearned in come by applying the labor of others to land that was not theirs, and still had the gall to complain that they were be ing oppressed. The kasama took no part in this argument; or if they did they invariably sided with the inquilinos whom they knew and understood and to whom they were usually indebted. Thus, while the agricultural expan sion of the late eighteenth and November 1958 21 early nineteenth centuries led to hacienda development and growing prosperity in the pro vinces of central and southern Luzon, it also resulted in an antagonism between the ha cienda owners on the one hand and the inquilinos and their kasama on the other, an anta gonism which grew more and more bitter with the years. ince, as was said above, most of the haciendas were own ed by religious corporations or institutions controlled by them, this antagonism inevitably took on a definite anticlerical color ing. But the regular clergy in the Philippines were by this time under attack from more than one quarter. The minis ters of the Bourbon Charles III (1759-1788) derived from the French Enlightenment not only their interest in adminis trative efficiency and economic progress but also their hostility to the Church as an obstacle to state absolutism. The religious orders especial ly had, in their view, entirely too much power both at home and in the colonies. These overmighty subjects needed to be taught a lesson which would render them powerless to act as a check on the royal power, while remaining useful instru ments of the royal will. It was against the Society of Jesus, committed in a spe cial manner by its constitutions to the service of the papacy, that the government of Charles III moved first. In 1767 a royal decree went forth expelling the Jesuits from all the Spanish dominions; this decree was faithfully executed in the Phil ippines the following year. The remaining religious or ders took over as best they might the parishes and missions vacated by the Jesuits. But the government had designs upon them too. A court prelate sym pathetic to the official policy, Don Basilio Sancho, was * ap pointed to the metropolitan See of Manila. By reviving an old controversy regarding epis copal visitation he forced the friars to resign many of their parishes, which he immediately filled with secular priests. And since there was only a handful of Spanish clerics in the colony, he obtained the ne cessary personnel by hastily or daining a number of insuffi ciently trained Filipino candi dates for the priesthood. The Dominican encyclopedists Buzeta and Bravo have preserved the pleasantry which then be came current in Manila, that "there were no oarsmen to be found for the river boats be cause the archbishop had or dained them all.” As was only to be expected, many of these Filipino priests turned out badly, and the gov ernment was compelled some years later to revise its policy 22 Panorama of secularization. Filipinos con tinue to be educated for the priesthood and ordained, but they were not often given par ishes of their own. The majority were more or less permanently assigned to serve as assistants to the religious parish priests, and it was brought home to them in various ways that sub ordinate position was all they were believed to be capable of. By the middle of the nine teenth century the Filipino clergy were becoming dissatis fied with their being thus de liberately and, in their view, unjustly held down; and they tended to blame the friars for this as well as their other trou bles. The return of the Jesuits in 1859 made matters worse. They were given the spiritual admin istration of the island of Min danao, where the Recollects held a number of mission pa rishes. In order to compensate the latter for vacating these posts in favor of the Jesuits, they were given an equivalent number of parishes near Manila which the government took away from the secular clergy. The Filipino priests quite na turally protested this move, and in the anti-friar agitation which ensued among the most promi nent were Fathers Gomez, Bur gos and Zamora. J t is not quite clear what con nection these priests had with the mutiny which occurred in 1872 among the native troops stationed at Cavite. A military tribunal found them guilty of sedition and condemned them to death; but among Filipinos generally there was no doubt that their execution was judi cial murder. As Rizal was to say later, the very fact that the ecclesias tical authorities, who had no cause to look upon them with favor, refused to degrade them, was clear enough proof that they had done nothing serious ly unbecoming their priestly character. In any case, the up shot was that the inquilinos of the friar lands were now joined by a considerable segment of the Filipino secular clergy in their hostile attitude towards the religious corporations. This anti-friar sentiment was stimulated and stiffened, strangely enough, by certain elements in the Spanish com munity itself. The number of lay Spaniards in the Philippines steadily rose in the course of the nineteenth century due to the increased opportunities for trade and the expansion of the colonial bureaucracy. Immigra tion from the Iberian peninsula became especially significant after 1869, when the opening of the Suez Canal cut the length of the voyage from Cadiz to Manila to a month. Many of November 1958 23 the immigrants were needy of fice seekers with liberal sym pathies, for the Liberal govern ments which succeeded one ano ther with amazing rapidity from 1868 used colonial assignments as an inexpensive method of rewarding their faithful sup porters. Spanish liberalism being strongly anticlerical, the hostil ity to the friars among upperclass Filipinos received enthu: siasitc support from this unex pected quarter. Spanish liberals established the first Masonic lodge in the Philippines, and the famous Petition of 1888 which called for the expulsion of the friars would not have been pos sible without their encourage ment and active particfpation. It was, however, the Filipino liberals who suffered the conse quences, either by imprison ment or deportation. Some of the deportees found their way to Spain, where they conducted the campaign for a thorough going reform of the Spanish ad ministration of the Philippines known in our history as the Propaganda Movement. J * hat reforms were needed is undeniable. The Bourbon re forms of the eighteenth century brought a measure of prosperity to the country, as we have seen; but the economic and social changes which they entailed gave rise to fresh problems and made the surviving institutions of an earlier colonialism even more demoralizing than were the liquor, areca-nut and cock pit monopolies. The interminable searches, seizures and arrests necessary for their enforcement, and the opportunities they gave for ex tortion of every sort, won for revenue agents and especially for the Guardia Civil the cor dial hatred of the common people. At a higher level of admin istration, the alcaldes mayores or provincial governors were paid so poorly that it was practically an open invitation to them to supplement their in come at the expense of the na tive population. Nor did the al calde mayor lack the means to do this. He was in a particular ly favorable position to make handsome profits by dealing in local products. He could buy cheap and sell dear, and he could “requisition” labor. No one could say him nay, for he combined in his own person the powers of civil governor, mili tary commander and judge of first instance. For this reason the Laws of the Indies wisely forbade provincial officials un der the severest penalties from engaging in trade during their tenure of office. But this ordinance was more honored in the breach than in the observance; so much so that in the nineteenth century the royal government put aside all 24 Panorama pretense of enforcing it and al lowed alcaldes mayores upon their appointment to purchase an indulto de comercio or li cense to trade. On the other hand they were deprived of their judicial powers when se parate provincial courts were instituted; but this reform came too late in the nineteenth cen tury to be of much effect. The only provincial residents who could afford some kind of protection to the people against extortionate alcaldes were the friars in charge of parishes. They often did so, much to their credit. But while their courage in this matter won them the gratitude of humble folk, peo ple who could leave no tangi ble record of their sentiments, it made them the objects of active dislike among a class of people who could and did ex press that dislike; both in Spain and the Philippines, through the printed word; and the printed word endures. Unfortunately, nothing like a consistent policy of colonial reform could be expected from the central government. The Napoleonic wars were merely the blazing prelude to a “time of troubles” which held Spain in its grip throughout the whole of the nineteenth century. While constitutional conven tions alternated with royal res torations, and liberal govern ments dissolved before military pronunciamientos, the proud empire which had been won by conquistador and missionary began to disintegrate. Rebels and liberators smashed Spanish America into independ ent republics, and the storm they raised sent ripples and ed dies all the way across the Pasific to lap at the shores of the Philippines. ut while no stable govern ment existed to undertake a long-range program of plan ned reform, it is nevertheless true that a number of partial reforms were undertaken, mo tivated not only by a growing concern lest Filipinos go the way of the Spanish-American people, but also by a sincere desire to extend even to the poor indio some of the bless ings of liberalism. The opening of Manila to foreign trade in 1834 has al ready been mentioned. Between 1855 and 1877 foreign vessels were also admitted to a number of provincial ports. In 1851 the Banco Espanol-Filipino was es tablished by the government in response to the needs of Mani la’s growing commerce. Until the 1860’s the only sys tem of public education in the Philippines was that established and maintained by the Church. Every settled parish and many of the mission stations had a school for boys and girls in which, besides the catechism, the elements of reading, writ November 1958 25 ing, arithmetic and music were taught. Doubtless some of these pa rish schools were of the type satirized by Rizal in his Noli me tangere; but it is quite un fair to judge the system as a whole on the basis of a chapter in a work of fiction. Recent re searches such as those of Father Fox have shown that these schools were on the whole much better run, and the instruction given in them much more ef fective, than is generally be lieved. The medium of instruction used was usually the language of the region in which the school was situated. Every now and again, as far back as the seventeenth century, colonial officials would agitate for the use of Spanish instead of the native languages, and when no thing happened, would accuse the parish clergy of sheer ob structionism. That some of the religious parish priests opposed the teaching of Spanish to Fili pinos was undoubtedly true. In the nineteenth century es pecially it was feared that a widespread knowledge of Span ish would merely serve as a vehicle for ideas unsettling to the religious faith of a simple people and to the hitherto un questioning allegiance which they gave to Spain. The fear was not entirely unfounded, as subsequent events proved. However, this was not the principal difficulty. There were many competent educators among the clergy who were thoroughly in favor of making Spanish the medium of instruc tion. The principal difficulty was the lack of trained teachers and of funds to expand the school system beyond the primary lev el. The passage of the educa tional laws of 1863 and the es tablishment of a normal school under Jesuit direction two years later represent a serious effort to meet the difficulty. fortunately, administra tive reforms failed to keep pace with economic and social progress. It may well be argued whether they could have done so even if conditions in the Peninsula had been less trou bled than they were. In a cer tain sense all colonial regimes are self-liquidating, and the Spanish colonial system was no exception to this rule. Coloniza tion, where it is not merely a process of ruthless exploitation, is an educative process; sooner or later the point is reached where the subject peoples achieve a degree of self-cons cious maturity which makes them resentful of their bonds and avid for freedom and the responsibilities that go with it. As early as 1843 a perceptive observer, Sinibaldo de Mas, set up the terms of the problem for the ministers of Isabella II to consider. He said, in effect, 26 Panorama that given the stage of develop ment which the Philippines had reached, a policy of salutary neglect was no longer possible. Spain now had to choose one of two courses. If she meant to retain the Philippines perma nently, then she had to arrest all changes tending to the fur ther political and cultural im provement of the Filipinos. All schools save the most elemen tary should be abolished, the islands sealed off from all con tact with the outside world, and a colonial administration insti tuted which, while completely just, should also be completely autocratic. If on the other hand Spain meant at some future time to grant the Filipinos their free dom, then she should adopt a policy directly contrary to this. Filipinos should be educated to the full extent of their abili ties, all obstacles to the free exchange of ideas should be removed, and the people should be prepared for eventual self rule by a gradually increasing participation in government. It does not appear that Isa bella’s ministers or the parlia mentary cabinets which suc ceeded them gave much atten tion to Mas’ dilemma. Oppor tunities continued to be given to Filipinos to improve them selves, but never quite enough to satisfy them; they continued to be kept in subjection, but the subjection was never iso complete as to preclude all hope of its being done away with altogether. By the end of the century even the most moderate reform ers were beginning to think that nothing but a clean sweep would put things to rights. Ibar ra was getting ready to join Elias. J1 he deportees of 1872 and those of subsequent pro scriptions were joined in Europe by a number of student patriots who believed, somewhat naive ly, that extensive political and social reforms could be achieved within the framework of the existing colonial system. It is doubtful whether their propa ganda made much of an im pression on Madrid; but the en thusiasm which they aroused at home cannot be overestimated. Nor was it only the educated upper class to which they be longed that followed their ac tivities with hope and anxiety. Even the common people re garded them with a devotion akin to worship; for if many of the propagandists’ ideas were beyond their comprehen sion they could understand this much, that here at least were men of their own race who could deal with the Spaniard on equal terms. The Spanish government re jected the proposals of these moderate nationalists and dra matized its refusal by the exe November 1958 27 cution for sedition of their most eloquent and respected spokes man, Jose Rizal. As was to be expected, the leadership of the national movement thereupon possed on to more radical hands, to Andres Bonifacio and the Katipunan; and the attempt to nip sedition in the bud mere ly enlarged it into a revolution. The narrow compass of this paper precludes even a sum mary treatment of the Revolu tion. But this is no great loss; there is no period in Philippine history that has received such detailed treatment. So much so that we have tended to neglect the antecedents which led to it, and so run the risk of fail ing to grasp the essence of a movement with whose details we are so familiar. It is for this reason that 1 have preferred to devote this slight essay not to the climax of the story, but to those initial complications which alone make that climax understandable, both in its glory and its tra gedy.—1957 Progress. The Need to Work C OUTHEAST Asia needs “a wholesale revolution in the attitude of men toward work” before it can supply the skilled laborers needed for modern industrial production. This is the opinion of scholars from 12 countries quoted in a recent report published under the auspices of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization. The scholars from Japan, Britain, the Philippines, Thai land, 1 New Zealand, Pakistan, the United States, India, France, South Viet Nam, Canada and Borneo met in Bang kok, Thailand, early this year to study the question of how fast the southeast Asian nations can transform centuries-old agricultural economies into modem technological societies. “Scientific and technological progress,” the scholars con cluded, “has little prospect of being applied at short notice, on a large scale, in most of these countries.” In measuring the impact of Western technology on southeast Asia, the scholars found some disturbing aspects. Industrialization, they said, has destroyed courtesy in the Philippines, cheapened art in Thailand and weakened family ties all over Asia. None of them, however, suggested that the programs of industrialization in these nations be stopped. “No nation can keep out of the way of technological progress,” they stated in their report. “The process of industrialization and automation is irreversible.” The scholars agreed that southeast Asia needs progress, and that the alternatives are stagnation and back-sliding. 28 Panorama
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