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
passes away but the evil and the passions engendered do not pass away
so long as reforms are devoted solely to changing the names.
The wars with the Dutch, the inroads and piratical attacks of the
people of Sulu and Mindanao disappeared; the people have been
transformed; new towns have grown up while others have become
impoverished; but the frauds subsist as much as or worse than they
did in those early years. We will not cite our own experiences, for
aside from the fact that, we do not know which to select, critical
persons may reproach us with partiality; neither will we cite those
of other Filipinos who write in the newspapers; but we shall confine
ourselves to translating the words of a modern French traveler who
was in the Philippines for a long time:
"The good curate," he says with reference to the rosy picture a friar
had given him of the Philippines, "had not told me about the governor,
the foremost official of the district, who was too much taken up
with the ideal of getting rich to have time to tyrannize over his
docile subjects; the governor, charged with ruling the country and
collecting the various taxes in the government's name, devoted himself
almost wholly to trade; in his hands the high and noble functions he
performs are nothing more than instruments of gain. He monopolizes
all the business and instead of developing on his part the love
of work, instead of stimulating the too natural indolence of the
natives, he with abuse of his powers thinks only of destroying all
competition that may trouble him or attempt to participate in his
profits. It matters little to him that the country is impoverished,
without cultivation, without commerce, without, industry, just so
the governor is quickly enriched!"
Yet the traveler has been unfair in picking out the governor
especially: Why only the governor?
We do not cite passages from other authors, because we have not their
works at hand and do not wish to quote from memory.
The great difficulty that every enterprise encountered with the
administration contributed not a little to kill off all commercial
and industrial movement. All the Filipinos, as well as all those who
have tried to engage in business in the Philippines, know how many
documents, what comings, how many stamped papers, how much patience is
needed to secure from the government a permit for an enterprise. One
must count upon the good will of this one, on the influence of that
one, on a good bribe to another in order that the application be not
pigeonholed, a present to the one further on so that he may pass it on
to his chief; one must pray to God to give him good humor and time to
see and examine it; to another, talent to recognize its expediency; to
one further on sufficient stupidity not to scent behind the enterprise
an insurrectionary purpose; and that they may not all spend the time
taking baths, hunting or playing cards with the reverend friars in
their convents or country houses. And above all, great patience,
great knowledge of how to get along, plenty of money, a great deal of
politics, many salutations, great influence, plenty of presents and
complete resignation! How is it strange that, the Philippines remain
poor in spite of their very fertile soil, when history tells us that
the countries now the most flourishing date their development from
the day of their liberty and civil rights? The most commercial and
most industrious countries have been the freest countries: France,
England and the United States prove this. Hongkong, which is not worth
the most insignificant of the Philippines, has more commercial movement
than all the islands together, because it is free and is well governed.
The trade with China, which was the whole occupation of the colonizers
of the Philippines, was not only prejudicial to Spain but also to
the life of her colonies; in fact, when the officials and private
persons at Manila found an easy method of getting rich they neglected
everything. They paid no attention either to cultivating the soil
or to fostering industry; and wherefore? China furnished the trade,
and they had only to take advantage of it and pick up the gold that
dropped out on its way from Mexico toward the interior of China,
the gulf whence it never returned.
The pernicious example of the dominators in surrounding themselves
with servants and despising manual or corporal labor as a thing
unbecoming the nobility and chivalrous pride of the heroes of so many
centuries; those lordly airs, which the natives have translated into
tila ka castila, and the desire of the dominated to be the equal of the
dominators, if not essentially, at least in their manners: all this had
naturally to produce aversion to activity and fear or hatred of work.
Moreover, 'Why work?' asked many natives. The curate says that the rich
man will not go to heaven The rich man on earth is liable to all kinds
of trouble, to be appointed a cabeza de barangay, to be deported if
an uprising occurs, to be forced banker of the military chief of the
town, who to reward him for favors received seizes his laborers and
his stock, in order to force him to beg for mercy, and thus easily
pays up. Why be rich? So that all the officers of justice may have
a lynx eye on your actions, so that at the least slip enemies may be
raised up against you, you may be indicted, a whole complicated and
labyrinthine story may be concocted against you, for which you can
only get away, not by the thread of Ariadne but by Danae's shower
of gold, and still give thanks that you are not kept in reserve for
some needy occasion? The native, whom they pretend to regard as an
imbecile, is not so much so that he does not understand that it is
ridiculous to work himself to death to become worse off. A proverb
of his says that the pig is cooked in its own lard, and as among
his bad qualities he has the good one of applying to himself all the
criticisms and censures he prefers to live miserable and indolent,
rather than play the part of the wretched beast of burden.
Add to this the introduction of gambling. We do not mean to san that
before the coming of the Spaniards the natives did not gamble: the
passion for grumbling is innate in adventuresome and excitable races,
and such is the Malay. Pigafetta tells us of cock-fights and of bets
in the Island of Paragua. Cock-fighting must also have existed in
Luzon and in all the islands, for in the terminology of the game
are two Tagalog words: sabong, and tari (cockpit and gaff). But
there is not the least doubt that the fostering of this game is
due to the government, as well as the perfecting of it. Although
Pigafetta tells us of it, he mentions it only in Paragua, and not
in Cebu nor in any other island of the south, where he stayed long
time. Morga does not speak of it, in spite of his having spent
seven years in Manila, and yet he does describe the kinds of fowl,
the jungle hens and cocks. Neither does Morga, speak of gambling,
when he talks about vices and other defects, more or less concealed,
more or less insignificant. Moreover, excepting the two Tagalog words
sabong and tari, the others are of Spanish origin, as soltada (setting
the cocks to fight, then the fight itself), presto, (apuesta, bet),
logro (winnings), pago (payment), sentenciador (referee), case (to
cover the bets), etc. We say the same about gambling: the word sugal
(jugar, to gamble), like kumpisal (confesar, to confess to a priest),
indicates that gambling was unknown in the Philippines before the
Spaniards. The word laró (Tagalog, to play) is not the equivalent of
the word sunni. The word balasa (baraja, playing-card) proves that the
introduction of playing-cards was not due to the Chinese, who have a
kind of playing-cards also, because in that case they would have taken
the Chinese name. Is not this enough? The word tayá (taltar, to bet),
paris-paris (Spanish pares, pairs of cards), politana (napolitana,
a winning sequence of cards), sapore (to stack the cards), kapote
(to slam), monte, and so on, all prove the foreign origin of this
terrible plant, which only produces vice, and which has found in the
character of the native a fit soil, cultivated by circumstances.
Along with gambling, which breeds dislike for steady and difficult toil
by its promise of sudden wealth and its appeal to the emotions, with
the lotteries, with the prodigality and hospitality of the Filipinos,
went also, to swell this train of misfortunes, the religious functions,
the great number of fiestas, the long masses for the women to spend
their mornings and the novenaries to spend their afternoons, and
the night, for the processions and rosaries. Remember that lack of
capital and absence of means paralyze all movement, and you will see
how the native has perforce to be indolent for if any money might
remain to him from the trials, imposts and exactions, he would have
to give it to the curate for bulls, scapularies, candles, novenaries,
etc. And if this does not suffice to form an indolent character,
if the climate and nature are not enough in themselves to daze him
and deprive him of all energy, recall then that the doctrines of his
religion teach him to irrigate his fields in the dry season, not by
means of canals but with masses and prayers; to preserve his stock
during an epizootic with holy water, exorcisms and benedictions that
cost five dollars an animal; to drive away the locusts by a procession
with the image of St. Augustine, etc. It is well, undoubtedly, to
trust greatly in God; but it is better to do what one can and not
trouble the Creator every moment, even when these appeals redound
to the benefit of His ministers. We have noticed that the countries
which believe most in miracles are the laziest, just, as spoiled
children are the most ill-mannered. Whether they believe in miracles
to palliate their laziness or they are lazy because they believe in
miracles, we cannot say; but the fact is the Filipinos were much less
lazy before the word miracle was introduced into their language.
The facility with which individual liberty is curtailed, that continual
alarm of all from the knowledge that they are liable to secret report,
a governmental ukase, and to the accusation of rebel or suspect,
an accusation which, to be effective, does not need proof or the
production of the accuser. With that lack of confidence in the future,
that uncertainty of reaping the reward of labor, as in a city stricken
with the plague, everybody yields to fate, shuts himself in his house
or goes about amusing himself in the attempt to spend the few days
that remain to him in the least disagreeable way possible.
The apathy of the government itself toward everything in commerce
and agriculture contributes not a little to foster indolence. There
is no encouragement, at all for the manufacturer or for the farmer;
the government furnishes no aid either when poor crop comes, when
the locusts (23) sweep over the fields, or when a cyclone destroys
in its passage the wealth of the soil; nor does it take any trouble
to seek a market for the products of its colonies. Why should it do
so when these same products are burdened with taxes and imposts and
have not free entry into the ports, of the mother country, nor is
their consumption there encouraged? While we see all the walls of
London covered with advertisements of the products of its colonies,
while the English make heroic efforts to substitute Ceylon for Chinese
tea, beginning with the sacrifice of their taste and their stomach,
in Spain, with the exception of tobacco, nothing from the Philippines
is known: neither its sugar, coffee, hemp, fine cloths, nor its Ilocano
blankets. The name of Manila is known only from those cloths of China
or Indo-China which at one time reached Spain by way of Manila, heavy
silk shawls, fantastically but coarsely embroidered, which no one has
thought of imitating in Manila, since they are so easily made; but the
government has other cares, and the Filipinos do not know that such
objects are more highly esteemed in the Peninsula than their delicate
piña, embroideries and their very fine jusi fabrics. Thus disappeared
our trade in indigo, thanks to the trickery of the Chinese, which
the government could not guard against, occupied as it was with other
thoughts; thus die now the other industries; the fine manufactures of
the Visayas are gradually disappearing from trade and even from use;
the people, continually getting poorer, cannot afford the costly cloths
and have to be content with calico or the imitations of the Germans,
who produce imitations even of the work of our silversmiths.
The fact that the best plantations, the best tracts of land in some
provinces, those that from their easy access are more profitable
than others, are in the hands of the religious corporations, whose
desideratum is ignorance and a condition of semi-starvation for the
native, so that they may continue to govern him and make themselves
necessary to his wretched existence, is one of the reasons why many
towns do not progress in spite of the efforts of their inhabitants. We
will be met with the objections, as an argument on the other side,
that the towns which belong to the friars are comparatively richer
than those which do not belong to them. They surely are! Just as their
brethren in Europe, in founding their convents, knew how to select
the best valleys, the best uplands for the cultivation of the vine or
the production of beer, so also the Philippine monks (25) have known
how to select the best towns, the beautiful plains, the well-watered
fields, to make of them rich plantations. For some time the friars
have deceived many by making them believe that if these plantations
were prospering, it was because they were under their care, and the
indolence of the native was thus emphasized; but they forget that in
same provinces where they have not been able for some reason to get
possession of the best tracts of land, their plantations, like Baurand
and Liang, are inferior to Taal, Balayan and Lipa, regions cultivated
entirely by the natives without any monkish interference whatsoever.
Add to this lack of material inducement the absentee of moral stimulus,
and you will see how he who is not indolent in that country must
needs be a madman or at least a fool. What future awaits him who
distinguishes himself, him who studies, who rises above the crowd? At
the cost of study and sacrifice a young man becomes a great chemist,
and after a long course of training, wherein neither the government
nor anybody has given him the least help, he concludes his long
stay in the University. A competitive examination is held to fill
a certain position. The young man wins this through knowledge and
perseverance, and after he has won it, it is abolished, because
......... we do not care to give the reason, but when a municipal
laboratory is closed in order to abolish the position of director,
who got his place by competitive examination, while other officers,
such as the press censor, are preserved, it is because the belief
exists that the light of progress may injure the people more than all
the adulterated foods (26). In the same way, another young man won a
prize in a literary competition, and as long as his origin was unknown
his work was discussed, the newspapers praised it and it was regarded
as a masterpiece, but the sealed envelopes were opened, the winner
proved to be a native, while among the losers there were Peninsulars;
then all the newspapers hastened to extol the losers! Not one word
from the government, nor from anybody, to encourage the native who
with so much affection was cultivating the language and letters of
the mother country! (27)
Finally, passing over many other more or less insignificant reasons,
the enumeration of which would be interminable, let us close this
dreary list with the principal and most terrible of all: the education
of the native.
From his birth until he sinks into his grave, the training of the
native is brutalizing, depressive and antihuman (the word 'inhuman'
is not sufficiently explanatory: whether or not the Academy admit it,
let it go). There is no doubt that the government, some priests like
the Jesuits and some Dominicans like Padre Benavides, have done a
great deal by founding colleges, schools of primary instruction, and
the like. But this is not enough; their effect is neutralized. They
amount to five or ten years (years of a hundred and fifty days at most)
during which the youth comes in contact with books selected by those
very priests who boldly proclaim that it is an evil for the natives
to know Castilian, that the native should not be separated from his
carabao, that he should not have any further aspirations, and so on;
five to ten years during which the majority of the students have
grasped nothing more than that no one understands what the books
say, not even the professors themselves perhaps; and these five to
ten years have to offset the daily preachment of the whole life,
that preachment which lowers the dignity of man, which by degrees
brutally deprives him of the sentiment of self-esteem, that eternal,
stubborn, constant labor to bow the native's neck, to make him accept
the yoke, to place him on a level with the beast--a labor aided by
some persons, with or without the ability to write, which if it does
not produce in some individuals the desired effect, in others it has
the opposite effect, like the breaking of a cord that is stretched
too tightly. Thus, while they attempt to make of the native a kind of
animal, vet in exchange they demand of him divine actions. And we say
divine actions, because he must be a god who does not become indolent
in that climate, surrounded by the circumstances mentioned. Deprive a
man, then, of his dignity, and you not only deprive him of his moral
strength but you also make him useless even for those who wish to
make use of him. Every creature has its stimulus, its mainspring:
man's is his self-esteem. Take it away from him and he is a corpse,
and he who seeks activity in a corpse will encounter only worms.
Thus is explained how the natives of the present time are no longer
the same as those of the time of the discovery, neither morally
nor physically.
The ancient writers, like Chirino, Morga and Colin, take pleasure
in describing them as well-featured, with good aptitudes for any
thing they take up, keen and susceptible and of resolute will,
very clean and neat in their persons and clothing, and of good
mien and bearing. (Morga). Others delight in minute accounts of
their intelligence and pleasant manners, of their aptitude for
music, the drama, dancing and singing; of the facility with which
they learned, not only Spanish but also Latin, which they acquired
almost by themselves (Colin); others, of their exquisite politeness
in their dealings and in their social life; others, like the first
Augustinians, whose accounts Gaspar de San Augustin copies, found
them more gallant and better mannered than the inhabitants of the
Moluccas. "All live off their husbandry," adds Morga, "their farms,
fisheries and enterprises, for they travel from island to island by
sea and from province to province by land."
In exchange, the writers of the present time, without being better than
those of former times, neither as men nor as historians, without being
more gallant than Hernan Cortez and Salcedo, nor more prudent than
Legazpi, nor more manly than Morga, nor more studious than Colin and
Gaspar de San Agustin, our contemporary writers, we say, find that the
native is a creature something more than a monkey but much less than
a man, an anthropoid, dull-witted, stupid, timid, dirty, cringing,
grinning, ill-clothed, indolent, lazy, brainless, immoral, etc., etc.
To what is this retrogression due? Is it the delectable civilization,
the religion of salvation of the friars, called of Jesus Christ by
a euphemism, that has produced this miracle, that has atrophied his
brain, paralyzed his heart and made of the man this sort of vicious
animal that the writers depict?
Alas! The whole misfortune of the present Filipinos consists in that
they have become only half-way brutes. The Filipino is convinced that
to get happiness it is necessary for him to lay aside his dignity
as a rational creature, to attend mass, to believe what is told him,
to pay what is demanded of him, to pay and forever to pay; to work,
suffer and be silent, without aspiring to anything, without aspiring to
know or even to understand Spanish, without separating himself from his
carabao, as the priests shamelessly say, without protesting against
any injustice, against any arbitrary action, against an assault,
against an insult; that is, not to have heart, brain or spirit:
a creature with arms and a purse full of gold ............ there's
the ideal native! Unfortunately, or because the brutalization is not
yet complete and because the nature of man is inherent in his being in
spite of his condition, the native protests; he still has aspirations,
he thinks and strives to rise, and there's the trouble!
V
In the preceding chapter we set forth the causes that proceed
from the government in fostering and maintaining the evil we are
discussing. Now it falls to us to analyze those that emanate from
the people. Peoples and governments are correlated and complementary:
a fatuous government would be an anomaly among righteous people, just
as a corrupt people cannot exist under just rulers and wise laws. Like
people, like government, we will say in paraphrase of a popular adage.
We can reduce all these causes to two classes: to defects of training
and lack of national sentiment.
Of the influence of climate we spoke at the beginning, so we will
not treat of the effects arising from it.
The very limited training in the home, the tyrannical and sterile
education of the rare centers of learning, that blind subordination of
the youth to one of greater age, influence the mind so that a man may
not aspire to excel those who preceded him but must merely be content
to go along with or march behind them. Stagnation forcibly results
from this, and as he who devotes himself merely to copying divests
himself of other qualities suited to his own nature, he naturally
becomes sterile; hence decadence. Indolence is a corollary derived
from the lack of stimulus and of vitality.
That modesty infused into the convictions of every one, or, to
speak more clearly, that insinuated inferiority, a sort of daily and
constant depreciation of the mind so that, it may not be raised to
the regions of light, deadens the energies, paralyzes all tendency
toward advancement, and at the least struggle a man gives up without
fighting. If by one of those rare accidents, some wild spirit, that
is, some active one, excels, instead of his example stimulating, it
only causes others to persist in their inaction. 'There's one who will
work for us: let's sleep on!' say his relatives and friends. True it
is that the spirit of rivalry is sometimes awakened, only that then
it awakens with bad humor in the guise of envy, and instead of being
a lever for helping, it is an obstacle that produces discouragement.
Nurtured by the example of anchorites of a contemplative and lazy
life, the natives spend theirs in giving their gold to the Church
in the hope of miracles and other wonderful things. Their will is
hypnotized: from childhood they learn to act mechanically, without
knowledge of the object, thanks to the exercises imposed upon them
from the tenderest years of praying for whole hours in an unknown
tongue, of venerating things that they do not understand, of accepting
beliefs that are not explained to them to having absurdities imposed
upon them, while the protests of reason are repressed. Is it any
wonder that with this vicious dressage of intelligence and will the
native, of old logical and consistent--as the analysis of his
past and of his language demonstrates--should now be a mass of
dismal contradictions? That continual struggle between reason and
duty, between his organism and his new ideals, that civil war which
disturbs the peace of his conscience all his life, has the result, of
paralyzing all his energies, and aided by the severity of the climate,
makes of that eternal vacillation, of the doubts in his brain, the
origin of his indolent disposition.
"You can't know more than this or that old man!" "Don't aspire to
be greater than the curate!" "You belong to an inferior race!" "You
haven't any energy!" This is what they tell the child, and as they
repeat it so often, it has perforce to become engraved on his mind
and thence mould and pervade all his actions. The child or youth
who tries to be anything else is blamed with vanity and presumption;
the curate ridicules him with cruel sarcasm, his relatives look upon
him with fear, strangers regard him with great compassion. No forward
movement! Get back in the ranks and keep in line!
With his spirit thus moulded the native falls into the most pernicious
of all routines: routine not planned, but imposed and forced. Note
that the native himself is not, naturally inclined to routine, but
his mind is disposed to accept all truths, just as his house is open
to all strangers. The good and the beautiful attract him, seduce and
captivate him, although, like the Japanese, he often exchanges the good
for the evil, if it appears to him garnished and gilded. What he lacks
is in the first place liberty to allow expansion to his adventuresome
spirit, and good examples, beautiful prospects for the future. It is
necessary that his spirit, although it may be dismayed and cowed by
the elements and the fearful manifestation of their mighty forces,
store up energy, seek high purposes, in order to struggle against
obstacles in the midst of unfavorable natural conditions. In order
that he may progress it is necessary that a revolutionary spirit,
so to speak, should boil in his veins, since progress necessarily
requires change; it implies the overthrow of the past, there deified,
by the present; the victory of new ideas over the ancient and accepted
ones. It will not be sufficient to speak to his fancy, to talk nicely
to him, nor that the light illuminate him like the ignis fatuus that
leads travelers astray at night; all the flattering promises of the
fairest hopes will not suffice, so long as his spirit is not free,
his intelligence not respected.
The reasons that originate in the lack of national sentiment are
still more lamentable and more transcendental.
Convinced by the insinuation of his inferiority, his spirit harassed
by his education, if that brutalization of which we spoke above can
be called education, in that exchange of usages and sentiments among
different nations, the Filipino, to whom remain only his susceptibility
and his poetical imagination, allows himself to be guided by his fancy
and his self-love. It is sufficient that the foreigner praise to him
the imported merchandise and run down the native product for him to
hasten to make the change, without reflecting that everything has its
weak side and the most sensible custom is ridiculous in the eyes
of those who do not follow it. They have dazzled him with tinsel,
with strings, of colored glass beads, with noisy rattles, shining
mirrors and other trinkets, and he has given in return his gold,
his conscience, and even his liberty. He changed his religion for the
external practices of another cult; the convictions and usages derived
from his climate and needs, for other usages and other convictions
that developed under another sky and another inspiration. His spirit,
well-disposed toward everything that looks good to him, was then
transformed, at the pleasure of the nation that forced upon him
its God and its laws, and as the trader with whom he dealt did not
bring a cargo of useful implements of iron, hoes to till the fields,
but stamped papers, crucifixes, bulls and prayer-books; as he did
not have for ideal and prototype the tanned and vigorous laborer,
but the aristocratic lord, carried in a luxurious litter, the result
was that the imitative people became bookish, devout, prayerful; it
acquired ideas of luxury and ostentation, without thereby improving
the means of its subsistence to a corresponding degree.
The lack of national sentiment brings another evil, moreover, which is
the absence of all opposition to measures prejudicial to the people and
the absence of any initiative in whatever may redound to its good. A
man in the Philippines is only an individual, he is not a member
of a nation. He is forbidden and denied the right of association,
and is therefore weak and sluggish. The Philippines are an organism
whose cells seem to have no arterial system to irrigate it or nervous
system to communicate its impressions; these cells must, nevertheless,
yield their product, get it where they can: if they perish, let them
perish. In the view of some this is expedient so that a colony may
be a colony; perhaps they are right, but not to the effect that a
colony may flourish.
The result of this is that if a prejudicial measure is ordered,
no one protests; all goes well apparently until later the evils are
felt. Another blood-letting, and as the organism has neither nerves
nor voice the physician proceeds in the belief that the treatment
is not injuring it. It needs a reform, but as it must not speak, it
keeps silent and remains with the need. The patient wants to eat,
it wants to breathe the fresh air, but as such desires may offend
the susceptibility of the physician who thinks that he has already
provided everything necessary, it suffers and pines away from fear of
receiving scolding, of getting another plaster and a new blood-letting,
and so on indefinitely.
In addition to this, love of peace and the horror many have of
accepting the few administrative positions which fall to the Filipinos
on account of the trouble and annoyance these cause them places at the
head of the people the most stupid and incapable men, those who submit
to everything, those who can endure all the caprices and exactions of
the curate and of the officials. With this inefficiency in the lower
spheres of power and ignorance and indifference in the upper, with the
frequent changes and the eternal apprenticeships, with great fear and
many administrative obstacles, with a voiceless people that has neither
initiative nor cohesion, with employees who nearly all strive to
amass a fortune and return home, with inhabit, ants who live in great
hardship from the instant they begin to breathe, create prosperity,
agriculture and industry, found enterprises and companies, things
that still hardly prosper in free and well-organized communities.
Yes, all attempt is useless that does not spring from a profound
study of the evil that afflicts us. To combat this indolence,
some have proposed increasing the native's needs and raising the
taxes. What has happened? Criminals have multiplied, penury has been
aggravated. Why? Because the native already has enough needs with his
functions of the Church, with his fiestas, with the public offices
forced on him, the donations and bribes that he has to make so that
he may drag out his wretched existence. The cord is already too taut.
We have heard many complaints, and every day we read in the papers
about the efforts the government is making to rescue the country
from its condition of indolence. Weighing its plans, its illusions
and its difficulties, we are reminded of the gardener who tried to
raise a tree planted in a small flower-pot. The gardener spent his
days tending and watering the handful of earth, he trimmed the plant
frequently, he pulled at it to lengthen it and hasten its growth,
he grafted on it cedars and oaks, until one day the little tree died,
leaving the man convinced that it belonged to a degenerate species,
attributing the failure of his experiment to everything except the
lack of soil and his own ineffable folly.
Without education and liberty, that soil and that sun of mankind,
no reform is possible, no measure can give the result desired. This
does not mean that we should ask first for the native the instruction
of a sage and all imaginable liberties, in order then to put a hoe
in his hand or place him in a workshop; such a pretension would be
an absurdity and vain folly. What we wish is that obstacles be not
put in his way, that the many his climate and the situation of the
islands afford be not augmented, that instruction be not begrudged
him for fear that when he becomes intelligent he may separate from
the colonizing nation or ask for the rights of which he makes himself
worthy. Since some day or other he will become enlightened, whether
the government wishes it or not, let his enlightenment be as a gift
received and not as conquered plunder. We desire that the policy be
at once frank and consistent, that is, highly civilizing, without
sordid reservations, without distrust, without fear or jealousy,
wishing the good for the sake of the good, civilization for the sake of
civilization, without ulterior thoughts of gratitude, or else boldly
exploiting, tyrannical and selfish without hypocrisy or deception,
with a whole system well-planned and studied out for dominating by
compelling obedience, for commanding to get rich, for getting rich
to be happy. If the former, the government may act with the security
that some day or other it will reap the harvest and will find a
people its own in heart and interest; there is nothing like a favor
for securing the friendship or enmity of man, according to whether
it be conferred with good will or hurled into his face and bestowed
upon him in spite of himself. If the logical and regulated system of
exploitation be chosen, stifling with the jingle of gold and the sheen
of opulence the sentiments of independence in the colonies, paying
with its wealth for its lack of liberty, as the English do in India,
who moreover leave the government to native rulers, then build roads,
lay out highways, foster the freedom of trade; let the government heed
material interests more than the interests of four orders of friars;
let it send out intelligent employees to foster industry; just judges,
all well paid, so that they be not venal pilferers, and lay aside all
religious pretext. This policy has the advantage in that while it may
not lull the instincts of liberty wholly to sleep, yet the day when
the mother country loses her colonies she will at least have the gold
amassed and not the regret of having reared ungrateful children.
1. Sancianco y Goson, Gregorio: El progreso de Filipinas. Estudios
económicos, administrativos y políticos. Parte económica. Madrid,
Imp. de la Vda. de J M. Perez, 1881 Pp XIV-260.
An eminent student of Philippine life and history, James A. LeRoy in
his "The Philippines, 1860-1898--Some comment and bibliographical
notes" published in volume 52 of Blair and Robertson, Philippine
Islands 1493-1898, praises this book (p. 141) as "especially
valuable on administrative matters just prior to the revision of
the fiscal regime in connection with the abolition of the government
tobacco monopoly", and for its "data on land, commerce, and industry"
2. Before 1590, one of the Spanish officers in the Philippines,
commenting on the climate of the Islands, declared, with considerable
acumen, that Europeans could stand life and work here if they observed
continence in regard to the use of alcoholic beverages.
3. See Morga's "Report of conditions in the Philippines (June 8,
1598)" in Blair and Robertson vol. 10. pp. 75-80, in which various
abuses of the friars are set forth. This should be compared with the
following pages of the same relation (pp. 89-90) on secular affairs,
from which it will be recognized that the condition was not so much
the resultant of one class as of Spanish national character. Cf. also,
Anda y Salazar B. and R, vol. 50, pp. 137-190; and Le Gentil, Voyage
(Paris, 1779-81), vol. 1, pp. 183-191. It would be hardly fair
not to call to mind that the Filipinos are debtors to the friars in
many ways, and the Filipinos themselves should be the last to forget
this. For a good exposition from the friar point of view, see Zamora,
Las Corporaciones-Religiosas en Filipinas: Valladolid, 1901.
See also Mallat, Les Philippines (Paris, 1846), vol. 1, pp. 374-389.
4. The history of the Philippines is full of references to Chinese
who came here for the reasons assigned by Rizal. The antiquarian
will be interested in consulting a small work entitled Notes on
the Malay Archipelago and Malacca, compiled from Chinese sources,
by W. P. Groeneveldt.
5 See B. and R., vol 34, pp. 183-191 for a description of the
early Chinese trade in the Philippines, also translated by Hirth from
Chinese sources, but evidently not the same as referred to by Rizal,
6. This citation is translated directly from the original Italian
Ms. Rizal's account is seen to be slightly different and arises from
the fact that he made use of Amoretti's printed version of the Ms.,
which is wrong in many particulars. Amoretti attempted to change
the original Ms. into modern Italian, with disastrous result. It is
to be regretted that Walls y Merino followed the same garbled text,
in his Primer viaje alrededor del Mundo (Madrid, 1899).
Dr. Antonio de Morga's book is perhaps the most famous of all the
early books treating of the Philippines. Its full title is as follows:
"Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas: Dirigido á Don Cristoval Gomez de
Sandoval y Rojas, Duque de Cea, Mexico, En casa de Geronymo Balli,
1609." The original edition is very rare, and is worth almost its
weight in gold. The manuscript circulated for some years before the
date of publication.
The second Spanish edition of the work was published by Rizal himself,
who was always a sincere admirer of the book. It bears the following
title-page: "Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas por el Doctor Antonio de
Morga. Obra publicada en Mejico el año de 1609 nuevamente sacada á luz
y anotada por José Rizal y precedida de un prólogo del Prof. Fernando
Blumentritt. Paris, Libreria de Garnier Hermanos, 1890." Shortly
before Rizal began work on his edition, a Spanish scholar, Justo
Zaragoza, began the publication of a new edition of Morga. The book
was reprinted, but the notes, prologue, and life of Morga which
Zargoza had intended to insert, were never completed because of that
editor's death. Only two copies of this edition, so far as known, were
ever bound, one of which belongs to the Ayer collection in Chicago,
and the other by the Tabacalera purchase to the Philippine Library,
in Manila. Still one other Spanish edition has appeared, namely:
"Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas por el Dr. Antonio de Morga. Nueva
edición enriquecida con los escritos inéditos del mismo autor ilustrada
con numerosas notas que amplian el texto y prologada extensamente por
W. E. Retana, Madrid, Libreria General de Victoriano Suarez, Editor,
1909." Retana adds a life of Morga and numerous documents written by
him. An English edition was published as follows: "The Philippine
Islands, Moluccas, Siam, Cambodia, Japan, and China. at the close
of the sixteenth century. By Antonio de Morga. Translated from the
Spanish, with notes and a preface, and a letter from Luis Vaez de
Torres, describing his voyage through the Torres Straits, by the
Hen. Henry E. J. Stanley, London, Printed for the Hakluyt Society,
1868". However, Stanley's translation is poor, and parts of passages
are not translated at all. [It was this edition then in preparation by
the Hakluyt Society, which Sir John Bowring, a director of the society,
mentioned on his visit to Rizal's uncle in Biñan, so that to make the
book available to Spaniards and Filipinos became an ambition from
childhood with Rizal.-C.] A second English translation appears in
B. and R. vols. 15 and 16. A separate copy of this translation was
also published in a very limited edition, with the title: "History
of the Philippine Islands from their discovery by Magellan in 1521 to
the beginning of the XVII century; with descriptions of Japan, China
and adjacent countries, by Dr. Antonio de Morga, alcalde of criminal
causes, in the Royal Audiencia of Nueva España, and counsel for the
Holy Office of the inquisition. Completely translated into English,
edited and annotated by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson. Cleveland,
Ohio, The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1907." See B. and R. vols. 9-12
for other documents by Morga, and vol. 53 (or Robertson's Bibliography
of the Philippine Islands, Cleveland, 1908), for bibliographical
details regarding Morga and titles to documents. Perhaps the most
famous of all his writings outside of his book is his relation
mentioned ante, note 3.