CHAPTER XI

Personal Status and Trade Restrictions

Classification of Residents-Restrictions-Status of Natives-Slavery Forbidden by Law-The Tribute and Its Collection-The Encomiendas-A Sort of Slavery-Restrictions on Commerce-The Galleons—Japanese and Chinese— Segregation and Regulation of Chinese-Massacres-Effect of the Restrictive System on Character of the Natives.

The reader who would understand the Philippine people and judge of their capacity for self-government must never lose sight of the vital fact that they are the products of the Spanish mission system of colonial government, a system designed to save souls, but not to develop merchants, traders, agriculturists or citizens. At every point where it touched the natives it was restrictive and repressive, seeking to control his every thought and action. Nothing was further from the thought of the Spaniards, particularly those to whom Spain delegated the actual power, than to train the inhabitants for citizenship in a free constitutional government. The laws were paternal in character and were enforced by a superior class of foreigners temporarily resident in the country and to but a limited extent identified by interest or sympathy with the people. The Spaniards who were without some official position in either Church or State were of little importance in the community.1

The inclination of the Spanish mestizos was to identify themselves with the Spanish official class in order to share the privilege of living on their native blood relations. Frequently they

1 The number of unofficial Spaniards increased during the last three or four decades. In 1899 a Spaniard, Señor José de Loyzaga, the editor of El Commercio, testified that there were about 3,000 Spaniards in the islands. "The Spaniards who hold extensive properties here are no more than three. The rest of them are engaged in keeping shops or something of that sort." Rept. Schurman Com., II, p. 373.

were greater tyrants than the Spaniards. The civil, military and ecclesiastical officials, a few Spaniards who were engaged in some business favored by the government, such as farming a monopoly, the Chinese and the natives constituted the inhabitants. The great proportion of Chinese were native born, but they were always regarded as a distinct class and subjected to special laws and regulations.

Until about the middle of the nineteenth century foreigners, other than Chinese, were not permitted to reside in the Philippines. After the relaxation of the laws governing foreign commerce a few English, Swiss, French and American traders established themselves in Manila; but they were a negligible factor except in so far as they aided in developing commerce. They were, in a sense, transients, although but little more so than the Spanish civil and military official class who were there to govern the inhabitants for a while and then returned to the Peninsula or to some better official position in Mexico or South America. The sort of people who might accompany a governor-general to the Philippines was determined by law. Discharged soldiers were not allowed to remain in the country. Of course these restrictions were not always enforced, but the policy was fixed and definite.2

Trade was regulated for the benefit of the India House in Seville, and until after the loss of Mexico the foreign commerce of the islands was little more than a form of gambling engaged in by the public officials and their friends, often with money borrowed from the Obras Pias. Commerce, in a broad and generous sense of the term, was forbidden by law. Manufacturing in such a community could never rise much above the level of tinkering. Agriculture never made substantial progress. There were a few haciendas, or plantations, which were owned by the friars or by Spaniards, or caciques, and worked by tenants or by workmen who were generally in a condition of peonage, if not

2 From December, 1853, to November, 1854, there were four governorgenerals. From 1835 to 1897 there were fifty governor-generals, each serving an average of one year and three months.

actual slavery. The small farms were constantly being divided among heirs until they became little more than truck patches.

In the provinces the people lived in villages gathered about great stone churches and conventos in which the parish priest lived and from which he practically governed the local community. All the political institutions were designed for the attainment of religious ends. The legal status of the natives was that of minors who were never expected to reach their majority. They were the wards of the State, by which they had been placed in the custody of the Church to be made into Christians, but never into citizens.

The system was admirably adapted for its purposes. It assumed that the Indians were incapable of development; that they were children and would remain children through successive generations. It contemplated a perpetual condition of tutelage. It succeeded for centuries in isolating the country from the influence of liberal ideas which were revolutionizing and remaking the Western world. It left its mark upon every Filipino who was born and reared under its influence. It paralyzed individual initiative, denied the right to participate in public affairs or to acquire modern scientific education. It kept the people shrouded in the mists of economic, religious and political medievalism, and it fought with unparalleled bitterness every attempt to let in the light of modern civilization. Its beneficial work, for which full credit should be awarded, was completed by the end of the first half century of Spanish occupation; thereafter it was obstructive, repressive and detrimental to the best interests of the people.

When the Spaniards arrived in the Philippines they found three conditions of persons among the natives-the chiefs, the timaguas or plebeians, and slaves. Of the latter class there seems to have been a great number. Slavery was an established institution and has never been entirely disestablished in all parts of the Archipelago. According to Morga there were two classes of slaves-seguiguilires, who were in absolute slavery and required to do all kinds of work in and about the master's house, and namamahays, who lived in their own houses and came at the

proper times and seasons to assist their lord in planting and harvesting, constructing his buildings, acting as oarsman for his boats and serving in his house when guests of distinction were present. All classes were subject to sale by the master. The descendants of slaves were of the class of their parents. If either the father or mother was free and the other a slave, a single child was half free and half slave. If there was more than one child the first born followed the condition of the father and the second that of the mother. If there were an odd number of children the last born was half free and half slave. The children of a free father or mother and a half slave were only one-quarter slave. These partial slaves served their masters during every other moon. The price of a slave depended upon his class and the degree of his slavery.

A free man became a slave if he entered the house of a chief without asking permission, if he crossed the fields planted by a chief, if he even looked at a chief's wife; but it was not a common occurrence for one to enter the state of slavery in this manner, as the offenses described were considered so very serious that but rarely was any one guilty of their commission.

The most numerous slaves were probably those who were in the condition now known as peonage. When a man needed money badly it was customary to offer himself as security for a loan and to serve as a slave to his creditor until the debt was paid. A debt of a few pesos, when properly manipulated, was sufficient to make a man a slave for life. A creditor might transfer both the debt and the security there for to another person. As the wealth and power of each headman depended largely on the number of his slaves he of course tried by all imaginable means to increase their number.

3

3 For detailed descriptions of slavery among the primitive Filipinos, see letter of Martin De Radá (1574), B. & R., XXXIV, p. 292; Chirino's Relación (1604), B. & R., XIII, p. 56; Morga's Sucesos (1609), B. & R., XIV, p. 297-310; Blumentritt, De los estados Indigenes Existent en Filipinas en Tiempo de la Conquista Espanola, in the Revista Contemporanca (Madrid, 1886).

A great part of this pamphlet and quotations from other early writers will be found in a report of a committee of the Philippine Assembly entitled, Informe Sobre la Esclavitud y Peonaje en Filipinas (Manila, 1914).

There are many early Spanish laws and decrees forbidding the holding of natives in slavery. The Bull of Gregory XIV of April 18, 1591,5 recited that some, despite the edict of the king, continued to keep their slaves, bought or taken in war, "therefore, in order that, as is befitting to reason and equity, the Indians themselves may freely and safely, without fear of bondage, come and go to their Christian doctrines and to their homes. and possessions," it was ordered under pain of excommunication that all slaves be freed.

Notwithstanding the elaborate legislation, slavery, in more or less disguised forms, continued to exist during the entire Spanish period, and remnants of it still exist even in the civilized parts of the islands, although contrary to law.

6

Under the system which was introduced immediately after the conquest of the country, every native family which acknowledged the authority of the Spaniards was required to show the sincerity of his loyalty by paying tribute to the government or to some favored person to whom the privilege of receiving the same had been granted. Had the letter of this law been observed the tribute would not have imposed any serious burden on the families. It was no greater than any intelligent community of savages should be willing to pay cheerfully for protection against their raiding neighbors, and even the Igorots of

4 Many of these laws are quoted in the pamphlet Informe Sobre la Esclavitud y Peonaje en Filipinas, referred to above, pp. 10-19.

5 See B. & R., VIII, p. 71.

6 In 1913 Commissioner Worcester published a report in which he asserted that slavery and peonage existed in the Philippines at that time and the same conclusion was reached by W. H. Phipps, the Insular Auditor, who made an investigation about the same time. The Filipino leaders indignantly denied that slavery existed and the Assembly conducted an elaborate investigation into the conditions and reached the conclusion that slavery did not exist. The agitation resulted in the enactment by the legislature of Act No. 2300, which supplied the deficiencies of the Spanish law and by providing penalties for the offense of holding persons in involuntary servitude made the Act of Congress of July 1, 1902, which had been held not self-executing, effective. See Slavery and Peonage in the Philippine Islands, by D. C. Worcester, Manila, 1913; Rept. on Slavery in the Philippines, by W. H. Phipps, Manila, 1913; Informe Sobre la Esclavitud y Peonaje en Filipinas, Manila, 1914.

The controversy, which was personal and political, reduced itself to a mere matter of definition of the word slavery. It was conceded by the investigators that there were many scattered instances of persons who were being deprived of their liberty and required to work for a master against their will.