The Indolence of the Filipino
a future, free and respected, while the poor colonist, the indolent
colonist, is badly nourished, has no hope, toils for others, and
works under force and compulsion! Perhaps the reply to this will be
that white men are not made to stand the severity of the climate. A
mistake! A man can live in any climate, if he will only adapt himself
to its requirements and conditions. What kills the European in hot
countries is the abuse of liquors, the attempt to live according to
the nature of his own country under another sky and another sun. We
inhabitants of hot countries live well in northern Europe whenever
we take the precautions the people there do. Europeans can also stand
the torrid zone, if only they would get rid of their prejudices. (2)
The fact is that in tropical countries violent work is not a good
thing as it is in cold countries, there it is death, destruction,
annihilation. Nature knows this and like a just mother has therefore
made the earth more fertile, more productive, as a compensation. An
hour's work under that burning sun, in the midst of pernicious
influences springing from nature in activity, is equal to a day's
work in a temperate climate; it is, then, just that the earth yield
a hundred fold! Moreover, do we not see the active European, who has
gained strength during the winter, who feels the fresh blood of spring
boil in his veins, do we not see him abandon his labors during the
few days of his variable summer, close his office--where the work
is not violent and amounts for many to talking and gesticulating in
the shade and beside a lunch-stand,--flee to watering places, sit
in the cafés or stroll about? What wonder then that the inhabitant
of tropical countries, worm out and with his blood thinned by the
continuous and excessive heat, is reduced to inaction? Who is the
indolent one in the Manila offices? Is it the poor clerk who comes
in at eight in the morning and leaves at, one in the afternoon with
only his parasol, who copies and writes and works for himself and
for his chief, or is it the chief, who comes in a carriage at ten
o'clock, leaves before twelve, reads his newspaper while smoking and
with is feet cocked up on a chair or a table, or gossiping about all
his friends? Which is indolent, the native coadjutor, poorly paid
and badly treated, who has to visit all the indigent sick living in
the country, or the friar curate who gets fabulously rich, goes about
in a carriage, eats and drinks well, and does not put himself to any
trouble without collecting excessive fees? [3]
Without speaking further of the Europeans, in what violent labor does
the Chinaman engage in tropical countries, the industrious Chinaman,
who flees from his own country driven by hunger and want, and whose
whole ambition is to amass a small fortune? With the exception of some
porters, an occupation that the natives also follow, he nearly always
engages in trade, in commerce; so rarely does he take up agriculture
that we do not know of a single case. The Chinaman who in other
colonies cultivates the soil does so only for a certain number of
years and then retires. [4]
We find, then, the tendency to indolence very natural, and have to
admit and bless it, for we cannot alter natural laws, and without
it the race would have disappeared. Man is not a brute, he is not
a, machine; his object is not merely to produce, in spite of the
pretensions of some Christian whites who would make of the colored
Christian a kind of motive power somewhat more intelligent and less
costly than steam. Man's object is not to satisfy tile passions of
another man, his object is to seek happiness for himself and his kind
by traveling along the road of progress and perfection.
The evil is not that indolence exists more or less latently but that
it is fostered and magnified. Among men, as well as among nations,
there exist not only aptitudes but also tendencies toward good and
evil. To foster the good ones and aid them, as well as correct the
evil and repress them, would be the duty of society and governments,
if less noble thoughts did not occupy their attention. The evil is
that the indolence in the Philippines is a magnified indolence, an
indolence of the snowball type, if we may be permitted the expression,
an evil that increases in direct proportion to the square of the
periods of time, an effect of misgovernment and of backwardness,
as we said, and not a cause thereof. Others will hold the contrary
opinion, especially those who have a hand in the misgovernment, but
we do not care; we have made an assertion and are going to prove it.
II
When in consequence of a long chronic illness the condition of the
patient is examined, the question may arise whether the weakening
of the fibers and the debility of the organs are the cause of the
malady's continuing or the effect of the bad treatment that prolongs
its action. The attending physician attributes the entire failure of
his skill to the poor constitution of the patient, to the climate, to
the surroundings, and so on. On the other hand, the patient attributes
the aggravation of the evil to the system of treatment followed. Only
the common crowd, the inquisitive populace, shakes its head and cannot
reach a decision.
Something like this happens in the case of the Philippines. Instead of
physician, read government, that is, friars, employees, etc. Instead
of patient, Philippines; instead of malady, indolence.
And, just as happens in similar cases then the patient gets worse,
everybody loses his head, each one dodges the responsibility to place
it upon somebody else, and instead of seeking the causes in order
to combat the evil in them, devotes himself at best to attacking
the symptoms: here a blood-letting, a tax; there a plaster, forced
labor; further on a sedative, a trifling reform. Every new arrival
proposes a new remedy: one, seasons of prayer, the relics of a saint,
the viaticum, the friars; another, a shower-bath; still another, with
pretensions to modern ideas, a transfusion of blood. "It's nothing,
only the patient has eight million indolent red corpuscles: some few
white corpuscles in the form of an agricultural colony will get us
out of the trouble."
So, on all sides there are groans, gnawing of lips, clenching of fists,
many hollow words, great ignorance, a deal of talk, a lot of fear. The
patient is near his finish!
Yes, transfusion of blood, transfusion of blood! New life, new
vitality! Yes, the new white corpuscles that you are going to
inject into its veins, the new white corpuscles that were a cancer
in another organism will withstand all the depravity of the system,
will withstand the blood-lettings that it suffers every day, will
have more stamina than all the eight million red corpuscles, will
cure all the disorders, all the degeneration, all the trouble in the
principal organs. Be thankful if they do not become coagulations and
produce gangrene, be thankful if they do not reproduce the cancer!
While the patient breathes, we must not lose hope, and however late we
be, a judicious examination is never superfluous; at least the cause
of death may be known. We are not trying to put all the blame on the
physician, and still less on the patient, for we have already spoken
of a predisposition due to the climate, a reasonable and natural
predisposition, in the absence of which the race would disappear,
sacrificed to excessive labor in a tropical country.
Indolence in the Philippines is a chronic malady, but not a hereditary
one. The Filipinos have not always been what they are, witnesses
whereto are all the historians of the first years after the discovery
of the Islands.
Before the arrival of the Europeans, the Malayan Filipinos carried
on an active trade, not only among themselves but also with all the
neighboring countries. A Chinese manuscript of the 13th century,
translated by Dr. Hirth (Globus, Sept. 1889), which we will take
up at another time, speaks of China's relations with the islands,
relations purely commercial, in which mention is made of the activity
and honesty of the traders of Luzon, who took the Chinese products
and distributed them throughout all the islands, traveling for nine
months, and then returned to pay religiously even for the merchandise
that the Chinamen did not remember to have given them. The products
which they in exchange exported from the islands were crude wax,
cotton, pearls, tortoise-shell, betel-nuts, dry-goods, etc. [5]
The first thing noticed by Pigafetta, who came with Magellan in 1521,
on arriving at the first island of the Philippines, Samar, was the
courtesy and kindness of the inhabitants and their commerce. "To honor
our captain," he says, "they conducted him to their boats where they
had their merchandise, which consisted of cloves, cinnamon, pepper,
nutmegs, mace, gold and other things; and they made us understand by
gestures that such articles were to be found in the islands to which
we were going." [6]
Further on he speaks of the vessels and utensils of solid gold that he
found in Butuan, where the people worked mines. He describes the silk
dresses, the daggers with long gold hilts and scabbards of carved wood,
the gold, sets of teeth, etc. Among cereals and fruits he mentions
rice, millet, oranges, lemons, panicum, etc.
That the islands maintained relations with neighboring countries and
even with distant ones is proven by the ships from Siam, laden with
gold and slaves, that Magellan found in Cebu. These ships paid certain
duties to the King of the island. In the same year, 1521, the survivors
of Magellan's expedition met the son of the Rajah of Luzon, who,
as captain-general of the Sultan of Borneo and admiral of his fleet,
had conquered for him the great city of Lave (Sarawak?). Might this
captain, who was greatly feared by all his foes, have been the Rajah
Matanda whom the Spaniards afterwards encountered in Tondo in 1570?
In 1539 the warriors of Luzon took part in the formidable contests
of Sumatra, and under the orders of Angi Siry Timor, Rajah of Batta,
conquered and overthrew the terrible Alzadin, Sultan of Atchin,
renowned in the historical annals of the Far East. (Marsden, Hist. of
Sumatra, Chap. XX.) (7)
At that time, that sea where float the islands like a set of emeralds
on a paten of bright glass, that sea was everywhere traversed by junks,
paraus, barangays, vintas, vessels swift as shuttles, so large that
they could maintain a hundred rowers on a side (Morga;) that sea
bore everywhere commerce, industry, agriculture, by the force of the
oars moved to the sound of warlike songs (8) of the genealogies and
achievements of the Philippine divinities. (Colin, Chap. XV.) (9)
Wealth abounded in the islands. Pigafetta tells us of the abundance
of foodstuffs in Paragua and of its inhabitants, who nearly all
tilled their own fields. At this island the survivors of Magellan's
expedition were well received and provisioned. A little later, these
same survivors captured a vessel, plundered and sacked it, add took
prisoner in it the chief of the Island of Paragua (!) with his son
and brother. (10)
In this same vessel they captured bronze lombards, and this is the
first mention of artillery of the Filipinos, for these lombards were
useful to the chief of Paragua against the savages of the interior.
They let him ransom himself within seven days, demanding 400 measures
(cavanes?) of rice, 20 pigs, 20 goats, and 450 chickens. This is the
first act of piracy recorded in Philippine history. The chief of
Paragua paid everything, and moreover voluntarily added coconuts,
bananas, and sugar-cane jars filled with palm-wine. When Caesar
was taken prisoner by the corsairs and required to pay twenty five
talents ransom, he replied; "I'll give you fifty, but later I'll