The Reign of Greed
abá: A Tagalog exclamation of wonder, surprise, etc., often used to
introduce or emphasize a contradictory statement.
alcalde: Governor of a province or district, with both executive and
judicial authority.
Ayuntamiento: A city corporation or council, and by extension the
building in which it has its offices; specifically, in Manila, the
capitol.
balete: The Philippine banyan, a tree sacred in Malay folk-lore.
banka: A dugout canoe with bamboo supports or outriggers.
batalan: The platform of split bamboo attached to a nipa house.
batikúlin: A variety of easily-turned wood, used in carving.
bibinka: A sweetmeat made of sugar or molasses and rice-flour, commonly
sold in the small shops.
buyera: A woman who prepares and sells the buyo.
buyo: The masticatory prepared by wrapping a piece of areca-nut with a
little shell-lime in a betel-leaf—the pan of British India.
cabesang: Title of a cabeza de barangay; given by courtesy to his wife
also.
cabeza de barangay: Headman and tax-collector for a group of about
fifty families, for whose “tribute” he was personally responsible.
calesa: A two-wheeled chaise with folding top.
calle: Street (Spanish).
camisa: 1. A loose, collarless shirt of transparent material worn by
men outside the trousers. 2. A thin, transparent waist with flowing
sleeves, worn by women.
capitan: “Captain,” a title used in addressing or referring to a
gobernadorcillo, or a former occupant of that office.
carambas: A Spanish exclamation denoting surprise or displeasure.
carbineer: Internal-revenue guard.
carromata: A small two-wheeled vehicle with a fixed top.
casco: A flat-bottomed freight barge.
cayman: The Philippine crocodile.
cedula: Certificate of registration and receipt for poll-tax.
chongka: A child’s game played with pebbles or cowry-shells.
cigarrera: A woman working in a cigar or cigarette factory.
Civil Guard: Internal quasi-military police force of Spanish officers
and native soldiers.
cochero: Carriage driver, coachman.
cuarto: A copper coin, one hundred and sixty of which were equal in
value to a silver peso.
filibuster: A native of the Philippines who was accused of advocating
their separation from Spain.
filibusterism: See filibuster.
gobernadorcillo: “Petty governor,” the principal municipal
official—also, in Manila, the head of a commercial guild.
gumamela: The hibiscus, common as a garden shrub in the Philippines.
Indian: The Spanish designation for the Christianized Malay of the
Philippines was indio (Indian), a term used rather contemptuously, the
name Filipino being generally applied in a restricted sense to the
children of Spaniards born in the Islands.
kalan: The small, portable, open, clay fireplace commonly used in
cooking.
kalikut: A short section of bamboo for preparing the buyo; a primitive
betel-box.
kamagon: A tree of the ebony family, from which fine cabinet-wood is
obtained. Its fruit is the mabolo, or date-plum.
lanete: A variety of timber used in carving.
linintikan: A Tagalog exclamation of disgust or contempt—“thunder!”
Malacañang: The palace of the Captain-General: from the vernacular name
of the place where it stands, “fishermen’s resort.”
Malecon: A drive along the bay shore of Manila, opposite the Walled
City.
Mestizo: A person of mixed Filipino and Spanish blood; sometimes
applied also to a person of mixed Filipino and Chinese blood.
nakú: A Tagalog exclamation of surprise, wonder, etc.
narra: The Philippine mahogany.
nipa: Swamp palm, with the imbricated leaves of which the roofs and
sides of the common native houses are constructed.
novena: A devotion consisting of prayers recited for nine consecutive
days, asking for some special favor; also, a booklet of these prayers.
panguingui: A complicated card-game, generally for small stakes, played
with a monte deck.
panguinguera: A woman addicted to panguingui, this being chiefly a
feminine diversion in the Philippines.
pansit: A soup made of Chinese vermicelli.
pansitería: A shop where pansit is prepared and sold.
pañuelo: A starched neckerchief folded stiffly over the shoulders,
fastened in front and falling in a point behind: the most distinctive
portion of the customary dress of Filipino women.
peso: A silver coin, either the Spanish peso or the Mexican dollar,
about the size of an American dollar and of approximately half its
value.
petate: Sleeping-mat woven from palm leaves.
piña: Fine cloth made from pineapple-leaf fibers.
Provincial: The head of a religious order in the Philippines.
puñales: “Daggers!”
querida: A paramour, mistress: from the Spanish “beloved.”
real: One-eighth of a peso, twenty cuartos.
sala: The principal room in the more pretentious Philippine houses.
salakot: Wide hat of palm or bamboo, distinctively Filipino.
sampaguita: The Arabian jasmine: a small, white, very fragrant flower,
extensively cultivated, and worn in chaplets and rosaries by women and
girls—the typical Philippine flower.
sipa: A game played with a hollow ball of plaited bamboo or rattan, by
boys standing in a circle, who by kicking it with their heels endeavor
to keep it from striking the ground.
soltada: A bout between fighting-cocks.
’Susmariosep: A common exclamation: contraction of the Spanish, Jesús,
María, y José, the Holy Family.
tabi: The cry used by carriage drivers to warn pedestrians.
tabú: A utensil fashioned from half of a coconut shell.
tajú: A thick beverage prepared from bean-meal and syrup.
tampipi: A telescopic basket of woven palm, bamboo, or rattan.
Tandang: A title of respect for an old man: from the Tagalog term for
“old.”
tapis: A piece of dark cloth or lace, often richly worked or
embroidered, worn at the waist somewhat in the fashion of an apron; a
distinctive portion of the native women’s attire, especially among the
Tagalogs.
tatakut: The Tagalog term for “fear.”
teniente-mayor: “Senior lieutenant,” the senior member of the town
council and substitute for the gobernadorcillo.
tertiary sister: A member of a lay society affiliated with a regular
monastic order.
tienda: A shop or stall for the sale of merchandise.
tikbalang: An evil spirit, capable of assuming various forms, but said
to appear usually as a tall black man with disproportionately long
legs: the “bogey man” of Tagalog children.
tulisan: Outlaw, bandit. Under the old régime in the Philippines the
tulisanes were those who, on account of real or fancied grievances
against the authorities, or from fear of punishment for crime, or from
an instinctive desire to return to primitive simplicity, foreswore life
in the towns “under the bell,” and made their homes in the mountains or
other remote places. Gathered in small bands with such arms as they
could secure, they sustained themselves by highway robbery and the
levying of black-mail from the country folk.
NOTES
[1] The Spanish designation for the Christianized Malay of the
Philippines was indio (Indian), a term used rather contemptuously, the
name filipino being generally applied in a restricted sense to the
children of Spaniards born in the Islands.—Tr.
[2] Now generally known as the Mariquina.—Tr.
[3] This bridge, constructed in Lukban under the supervision of a
Franciscan friar, was jocularly referred to as the Puente de Capricho,
being apparently an ignorant blunder in the right direction, since it
was declared in an official report made by Spanish engineers in 1852 to
conform to no known principle of scientific construction, and yet
proved to be strong and durable.—Tr.
[4] Don Custodio’s gesture indicates money.—Tr.
[5] Duck eggs, that are allowed to advance well into the duckling
stage, then boiled and eaten. The señora is sneering at a custom among
some of her own people.—Tr.
[6] The Jesuit College in Manila, established in 1859.—Tr.
[7] Natives of Spain; to distinguish them from the Filipinos, i.e.,
descendants of Spaniards born in the Philippines. See Glossary:
“Indian.”—Tr.
[8] It was a common saying among the old Filipinos that the Spaniards
(white men) were fire (activity), while they themselves were water
(passivity).—Tr.
[9] The “liberal” demonstrations in Manila, and the mutiny in the
Cavite Arsenal, resulting in the garroting of the three native priests
to whom this work was dedicated: the first of a series of fatal
mistakes, culminating in the execution of the author, that cost Spain
the loyalty of the Filipinos.—Tr.
[10] Archbishop of Manila from 1767 to 1787.—Tr.
[11] “Between this island (Talim) and Halahala point extends a strait a
mile wide and a league long, which the Indians call ‘Kinabutasan,’ a
name that in their language means ‘place that was cleft open’; from
which it is inferred that in other times the island was joined to the
mainland and was separated from it by some severe earthquake, thus
leaving this strait: of this there is an old tradition among the
Indians.”—Fray Martinez de Zuñiga’s Estadismo (1803).
[12] The reference is to the novel Noli Me Tangere (The Social Cancer),
the author’s first work, of which, the present is in a way a
continuation.—Tr.
[13] This legend is still current among the Tagalogs. It circulates in
various forms, the commonest being that the king was so confined for
defying the lightning; and it takes no great stretch of the imagination
to fancy in this idea a reference to the firearms used by the Spanish
conquerors. Quite recently (January 1909), when the nearly extinct
volcano of Banahao shook itself and scattered a few tons of mud over
the surrounding landscape, the people thereabout recalled this old
legend, saying that it was their King Bernardo making another effort to
get that right foot loose.—Tr.
[14] The reference is to Noli Me Tangere, in which Sinang appears.
[15] The Dominican school of secondary instruction in Manila.—Tr.
[16] “The studies of secondary instruction given in Santo Tomas, in the
college of San Juan de Letran, and of San José, and in the private
schools, had the defects inherent in the plan of instruction which the
friars developed in the Philippines. It suited their plans that
scientific and literary knowledge should not become general nor very
extensive, for which reason they took but little interest in the study
of those subjects or in the quality of the instruction. Their
educational establishments were places of luxury for the children of
wealthy and well-to-do families rather than establishments in which to
perfect and develop the minds of the Filipino youth. It is true they
were careful to give them a religious education, tending to make them
respect the omnipotent power (sic) of the monastic corporations.
“The intellectual powers were made dormant by devoting a greater part
of the time to the study of Latin, to which they attached an
extraordinary importance, for the purpose of discouraging pupils from
studying the exact and experimental sciences and from gaining a
knowledge of true literary studies.
“The philosophic system explained was naturally the scholastic one,
with an exceedingly refined and subtile logic, and with deficient ideas
upon physics. By the study of Latin, and their philosophic systems,
they converted their pupils into automatic machines rather than into
practical men prepared to battle with life.”—Census of the Philippine
Islands (Washington, 1905), Volume III, pp. 601, 602.
[17] The nature of this booklet, in Tagalog, is made clear in several
passages. It was issued by the Franciscans, but proved too outspoken
for even Latin refinement, and was suppressed by the Order itself.—Tr.
[18] The rectory or parish house.
[19] Friends of the author, who suffered in Weyler’s expedition,
mentioned below.—Tr.