Slavery in the Philippines

Many decades after my journey through Philippine elementary and high school education, I now realize how inadequate my education has been about Philippine history. We who grew up in the Philippines learned world history and American history rather early in our lives, but we learned very little about our own history. The historian I grew up with was Gregorio Zaide, who in retrospect was a historian who wrote Philippine history with a decidedly western world view. Either that, or my history teachers were mere parrots owned by the West.

We were taught - in the 50s - that the Spaniards had burned books about the Philippines because those books allegedly were pagan books and were works of the devil. This was why there was very little historical information about the Philippines prior to the arrival of the Spanish cross and Eskrima.

Turns out there was a wealth of information about Philippine life, social and political structures. The scholar-historians had to do some digging, but this they did and all the juicy information about the Philippines in pre-Spanish colonial era burst into the surface. I was already in college - a full-time working student - when new research about pre-Spanish Philippines found their way into Philippine history textbooks.

The result is that there are gaping holes in my knowledge of Philippine history. I suspect that there are many in my generation who have this problem.

I was therefore very happy, in fact deliriously happy to discover the blog http://mananalaysay.blogspot.com where the excerpt below can be found.

CHANGES IN SOCIAL STRUCTURE IN 17TH CENTURY IN THE PHILIPPINES

by
Roel Cantada

"Take a look at the figure above and compare the 16th century social structure of the Philippines with that of the 17th century. What changed? What happened to the Datu? Timawa? Alipin? Who occupied the highest and lowest social statuses?

"These questions are what we will try to answer in this lesson. Notice that the highest social status is now occupied by the Spaniards and all the natives are below them. This means that wealth is not the only basis of the social classes but race as well. The implication is that no matter how wealthy a native gets he will never be equal or higher than a Spaniard in the colonial society. The racial barrier is something that will never be overcome unless the Spaniards are removed from the country.

"What if a native marry a Spaniard will their children be considered Spaniards? The answer is no, the Spaniards consider only pure blooded Spaniards, and half-breeds whom will be called mestizos later on (creoles in Latin America) will not be accepted equal to Spaniards. But in the 17th century there is not enough half-breeds to constitute a separate class.

"During this time the Spaniards coined three terms to refer to the natives of the Philippines. They called the natives who had converted to Catholicism indios, the muslim moros, and the pagans of the Cordilleras in Luzon, igorots. All three terms had bad connotations and should be avoided today. Both the datu’s family and the timawa are now called indios which when translated in the native languages would be equivalent to Tagalog, Visaya, Bikolano etc. The word indio is a word used by the Spaniards to refer to the natives of Latin America, wherein Columbus I think made a mistake when he thought that he was in India when in fact he was in another continent. In English it is the same as calling the natives of North America Indians. It is also related to the terms Indonesia, East Indies (Philippines and Indonesia) , and West Indies (Cuba, Haiti etc.).

"Returning to our figure, you would have noticed that the lowest class is now occupied by the timawas. What happened to the alipins? They were freed or natimawa by the Spaniards. The King of Spain issued a proclamation banning slavery (esclavitud in Spanish), and the Pope also issued a bull stating the same and even threatening excommunication for anyone keeping a native slave. But these proclamations where not automatically enforced because there was one curious thing about the implementation of Spanish laws in the Philippines: the governor general can decide which laws to implement and when given the current conditions and because of the distance from Spain. It takes months before communication with Spain arrives and consultation would have been impossible for emergencies. It probably took a hundred years before slavery disappeared. Until the 17th century some Pampangan datus were reported to have filed cases in Manila against their slaves who had escaped. The Spaniards being weak and under threat from Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch and muslims tribes from the south did not want to alienate their datu allies. Rather it was the next generation who had converted to Catholicism and integrated the values of Christianity taught by the church that had resulted in the freeing of slaves.

"Of course for the Timawa the implication was not good, they had become the lowest class and lost prestige. In fact by the 17th century the word timawa is no longer associated with being free or freedom, something positive, but with being destitute, poor, and always hungry. Today no one wants to be called timawa, because it has been equated with being a slave rather than being free. But as late as 1896 during the Philippine revolution Andres Bonifacio used it in his poem to mean free. Later on they would coin the new word malaya (free) to avoid the negative connotations of the word timawa.

"The datus did not go unscathed by the freeing of the slaves. The power of the datus in the 16th century was based on slavery. The slaves did the extra farm work that provided more crops and they served as rowers in the balangay boat for warfare. Without the slaves the datus lost prestige, wealth and military power. Later on we will talk about how the Spaniards substituted other institutions for datus to remain higher than the timawas."

Who were the datus and what were their perks and privileges? In much of the Philippines, the datus were the political leaders and the owners of vast farms, called the bukid or kabukiran. They owned many slaves, which were differentiated according to whether they lived in their own houses (namamahay) or lived in makeshift shelters on the grounds of the datus' houses (sagigilids).

Because the Catholic Church forbade slavery in the 17th century, the slaves were technically freed from bondage and ascended to the status of timawas, free men who were mostly poor but who counted among them some rich families who excelled in commerce. The datus technically no longer had slaves (alipins) but in practice still had them because the people who owed them money had to repay them through involuntary servitude.

The Spaniards were not willing to cross the datus because they needed those datus as allies against foreign invaders such as the notorious Chinese bandit, Limahong. This was the reason slavery persisted even after the Catholic Church mandated the abolition of slavery in the Philippines and other Spanish colonies.

The alipins, as an institution in the Philippines' social structure, have been formally absent since the 17th century, but in reality many Filipinos functioned as alipins until the the Land Reform Act in the 1960s was passed. Prior to Land Reform, many tenants of the biggest landlords were virtual slaves, working off debts to the landlords - for medicines, for rice seeds (palay), for operating capital for their small farms.

Until political correctness became fashionable, the treatment of housemaids and houseboys in the Philippines hearkened back to that earlier period in the country's history, when whole generations of pre-Spanish "Filipinos" were functioning as slaves.

The Spaniards as a ruling class have of course disappeared. They have been absorbed into the great mass of educated elites. Economically, the rich Chinese have replaced the Spaniards. Unlike the Spaniards, the Chinese tend to be as pliant and adaptable as the bamboo and have blended seamlessly into Philippine society. The Chinese are rich and powerful, but they are decidedly Filipino. They have never once hinted that they are superior to the local population the way the Spaniards saw themselves as being.

Going back to Philippine slaves. Slavery in the Philippines still exists today in the Filipino people's psyche. Many of the dirt poor people in the provinces behave as though their rich, landed patrons owned them.

The quality of Philippine democracy rests on the backs of people who have never known true independence and freedom. The masses who vote in Philippine elections - most Filpinos who are of voting age vote - are not voting their consciences but are voting choices dictated by their patrons and virtual masters.

This is how the powerful in the country retain power. The rich and influential people align themselves with their chosen candidates and generally deliver the votes in their spheres of influence.

The leftists in the 60s referred to Philippine democracy as de-mock-cracy. It was and still is a mockery, since most people in the provinces who cast their votes are not casting votes for their choices. They are mere clones of their patrons at the voting booths.

People talk about the utang na loob institution. Add to that the slave complex as a social institution.

The few who rule over the local economies and the local corridors of power are allowed to choose their candidates, while the great mass of the people echo those choices. This is why there are so many political dynasties in the Philippines. It is an important reason why the same people keep running and winning political offices in the Philippines, regardless of their abysmal records of service. Known jueteng and drug lords continue to be re-elected. It's always the same families, the same political groups, the same corrupt politicians that keep winning political offices there.

The rich and powerful decide who should retain or ascend to political power, while the great mass of political slaves make sure that the will of the rich and powerful is enforced in the ballot box.

The obvious question from all this discussion is this: if the great mass of voters in the Philippines act as ideological slaves of their padrinos (patrons) and not as independent agents who vote their consciences and according to their own ideologies and convictions, is true democracy possible in the Philippines?

Would the Philippines not be better off under the rule of a benevolent dictator? True, we tried this with Marcos and were greatly disappointed. Marcos was, in the language of today's youth, a bad, mean dude, but not every man or woman in the Philippines is a potential Marcos. Absolute power need not corrupt absolutely.

If Noynoy does what he promised to do in the campaign and the Philippines becomes a much better place and country, Filipinos should start thinking of keeping Noynoy as president for the long-term. He cannot be a Lee Kwan Yew if his term is limited to six years. The constitution would have to be amended to allow Noynoy to succeed himself for another term and after that for still another term, so don't hold your breath.

So far, Noynoy despite his glaring mistakes in judgment and execution is following through on his promises. The country is becoming stronger economically and slowly gaining admirers as a modern state. The world, especially the U.S., is eating out of Noynoy's hands. If he keeps this up, the country may find itself in its first golden age.

It is beginning to look like the masters and the slaves found someone who would lead the Philippines for the benefit of all, not just the masters. We will watch the developments in the Philippines in the coming months and years while keeping our fingers crossed.