The Indolence of the Filipino
a galleon, according to the assertion of the Franciscans, and I heard
the governor of the province where they were cut, which is Lacuna de
Bay, say that to haul them seven leagues over very broken mountains
6,000 natives were engaged three months, without furnishing them food,
which the wretched native had to seek for himself!"
And Gaspar de San Agustin says: "In those times (1690), Bacolor has
not the people that it had in the past, because of the uprising in
that province when Don Sabiniano Manrique de Lava was Governor of
these islands and because of the continual labor of cutting timber
for his Majesty's shipyards, WHICH HINDERS THEM FROM CULTIVATING THE
VERY FERTILE PLAIN THEY HAVE." (17)
If this is not sufficient to explain the depopulation of the islands
and the abandonment of industry, agriculture and commerce, then
add "the natives who wore executed, those who loft their wives and
children and fled in disgust to the mountains, those who were sold
into slavery to pay the taxes levied upon them," as Fernando de los
Rios Coronel says; add to all this what Philip II said in reprimanding
Bishos Salazar about "natives sold by some encomendoros to others,
those flogged to death, the women who are crushed to death by their
heavy burdens, those who sleep in the fields and there bear and nurse
their children and die bitten by poisonous vermin, the many who are
executed and left to die of hunger and those who eat poisonous herbs
............ and the mothers who kill their children in bearing them,"
and you will understand how in less than thirty years the population
of the Philippines was reduced one-third. We are not saying this:
it was said by Gaspar de San Agustin, the preeminently anti-Filipino
Augustinian, and he confirms it throughout the rest of his work by
speaking every moment of the state of neglect in which lay the farms
and fields once so flourishing and so well cultivated, the towns
thinned that had formerly been inhabited by many leading families!
How is it strange, then, that discouragement may have been infused
into the spirit of the inhabitants of the Philippines, when in the
midst of so many calamities they did not know whether they would see
sprout the seed they were planting, whether their field was going to
be their grave or their crop would go to feed their executioner? What
is there strange in it, when we see the pious but impotent friars of
that time trying to free their poor parishioners from the tyranny
of the encomenderos by advising them to stop work in the mines,
to abandon their commerce, to break up their looms, pointing out to
them heaven for their whole hope, preparing them for death as their
only consolation? (18)
Man works for an object. Remove the object and you reduce him to
inaction The most active man in the world will fold his arms from
the instant he understands that it is madness to bestir himself, that
this work will be the cause of his trouble, that for him it will be
the cause of vexations at home and of the pirate's greed abroad. It
seems that these thoughts have never entered the minds of those who
cry out against the indolence of the Filipinos.
Even were the Filipino not a man like the rest; even were we to suppose
that zeal in him for work was as essential as the movement of a wheel
caught in the gearing of others in motion; even were we to deny him
foresight and the judgment that the past and the present form, there
would still be left us another reason to explain the attack of the
evil. The abandonment of the fields by their cultivators, whom the
wars and piratical attacks dragged from their homes was sufficient
to reduce to nothing the hard labor of so many generations. In the
Philippines abandon for a year the land most beautifully tended and
you will see how you will have to begin all over again: the rain will
wipe out the furrows, the floods will drown the seeds, plants and
bushes will grow up everywhere, and on seeing so much useless labor
the hand will drop the hoe, the laborer will desert his plow. Isn't
there left the fine life of the pirate?
Thus is understood that sad discouragement which we find in the friar
writers of the 17th century, speaking of once very fertile plains
submerged, of provinces and towns depopulated, of products that
have disappeared from trade, of leading families exterminated. These
pages resemble a sad and monotonous scene in the night after a lively
day. Of Cagayan Padre San Agustin speaks with mournful brevity: "A
great deal of cotton, of which they made good cloth that the Chinese
and Japanese every year bought and carried away." In the historian's
time, the industry and the trade had come to an end!
It seems that these are causes more thorn sufficient to breed indolence
even in the midst of beehive. Thus is explained why, after thirty-two
years of the system, the circumspect and prudent Morga said that the
natives "have forgotten much about farming, raising poultry, stock
and cotton, and weaving cloth, as they used to do in their paganism
and FOR A LONG TIME AFTER THE COUNTRY HAD BEEN CONQUERED!"
Still they struggled a long time against indolence, yes: but their
enemies were so numerous that at last they gave up!
IV
We recognize the causes that, awoke the predisposition and provoked the
evil: now let us see what foster and sustain it. In this connection,
government and governed have to bow our heads and say: we deserve
our fate.
We have already truly said that when a house becomes disturbed and
disordered, we should not accuse the youngest, child or the servants,
but the head of it, especially if his authority is unlimited, he
who does not act freely is not responsible for his actions; and the
Filipino people, not being master of its liberty, is not responsible
for either its misfortunes or its woes. We says this, it is true,
but, as will be seen later on, we also have a large part, in the
continuation of such a disorder.
The following, among other causes, contributed to foster the evil
and aggravate it: the constantly lessening encouragement that labor
has met with in the Philippines. Fearing to have the Filipinos deal
frequently with other individuals of their own race, who were free
and independent, as the Borneans, the Siamese, the Cambodians, and
the Japanese, people who in their customs and feeling's differ greatly
from the Chinese, the Government acted toward these others with great
mistrust and great severity, as Morga testifies in the last pages of
his work, until they finally ceased to come to the country. In fact,
it seems that once an uprising' planned by the Borneans was suspected:
we say suspected, for there was not even an attempt, although there
were many executions. (19) And, as these nations were the very ones
that, consumed Philippine products, when all communication with them
had been cut off, consumption of these products also ceased. The only
two countries with which the Philippines continued to have relations
were China and Mexico, or New Spain, and from this trade only China
and a few private individuals in Manila got any benefit. It, fact,
the Celestial Empire sent, her junks laden with merchandise, that
merchandise which shut down the factories of Seville and ruined the
Spanish industry, and returned laden in exchange with the silver that
was every year sent from Mexico. Nothing from the Philippines at that
time went to China, not even gold, for in those years the Chinese
traders would accept no payment but silver coin. (20) To Mexico went
little more: some cloth and dry goods which the encomendoros took
by force or bought from the natives at, a paltry price, wax, amber,
gold, civet, etc, but nothing more, and not even in great quantity,
as is stated by Admiral Don Jerónimo de Bañuelos y Carrillo, when
he begged the King that "the inhabitants of the Manilas be permitted
(!) to load as many ships as they could with native products, such
as wax, gold, perfumes, ivory, cotton cloths, which they would have
to buy from the natives of the country ............... Thus the
friendship of those peoples would be gained, they would furnish New
Spain with their merchandise and the money that is brought to Manila,
would not leave this place," (21)
The coastwise trade, so active in other times, had to die out, thanks
to the piratical attacks of the Malays of the south; and trade in
the interior of the islands almost entirely disappeared, owing to
restrictions, passports and other administrative requirements.
Of no little importance were the hindrances and obstacles that from
the beginning were thrown in the farmers's way by the rulers, who were
influenced by childish fear and saw everywhere signs of conspiracies
and uprisings. The natives were not allowed to go to their labors,
that is, their farms, without permission of the governor, or of his
agents and officers, and even of the priests as Morga says. Those who
know the administrative slackness and confusion in a country where the
officials work scarcely two hours a day; those who know the cost of
going to and returning from the capital to obtain a permit; those who
are aware of the petty retaliations of the little tyrants will well
understand how with this crude arrangement it is possible to have the
most absurd agriculture. True it is that for some time this absurdity,
which would be ludicrous had it not been so serious, has disappeared;
but even if the words have gone out of use other facts and other
provisions have replaced them. The Moro pirate has disappeared but
there remains the outlaw who infests the fields and waylays the farmer
to hold him for ransom. Now then, the government, which has a constant
fear of the people, denies to the farmers even the use of a shotgun,
or if it does allow it does so very grudgingly and withdraws it at
pleasure; whence it results with the laborer, who, thanks to his means
of defense, plants his crops and invests his meager fortune in the
furrows that he has so laboriously opened, that when his crop matures,
it occurs to the government, which is impotent to suppress brigandage,
to deprive him of his weapon; and then, without defense and without
security he is reduced to inaction and abandons his field, his work,
and takes to gambling as the best means of securing a livelihood. The
green cloth is under the protection of the government, it is safer! A
mournful counselor is fear, for it not only causes weakness but also
in casting aside the weapons strengthens the very persecutor!
The sordid return the native gets from his work has the effect of
discouraging him. We know from history that the encomenderos, after
reducing many to slavery and forcing them to work for their benefit,
made others give up their merchandise for a trifle or nothing at all,
or cheated them with false measures.
Speaking of Ipion, in Panay, Padre Gaspar de San Agustin says:
"It was in ancient times very rich in gold, ............... but
provoked by the annoyances they suffered from some governors they have
ceased to get it out, preferring to live in poverty than to suffer
such hardships." (Page 378). Further on, speaking of other towns,
he says: "Goaded by the ill treatment of the encomenderos who in
administering justice have treated the natives as their slaves and
not as their children, and have only looked after their own interests
at the expense of the wretched fortunes and lives of their charges
..............." (Page 422) Further on: "In Leyte, where they tried
to kill an encomendero of the town of Dagami on account of the great
hardships he made them suffer by exacting tribute of wax from them
with a steelyard which he had made twice as long as the others"
This state of affairs lasted a long time and still lasts, in spite of
the fact, that the breed of encomenderos has become extinct. A term