Extract from “ The Ideal and the Real in Filipino Lowland Life. Franciscan Descriptions of the Ways Filipinos Actually Lived in the Eighteenth Century “, by Bruce Cruikshank (pages 63 to 69)
Easter is arguably the most important season in the Christian religious calendar, and I have presented some of the religious and ritual aspects in the first chapter. In the Philippine colonial context it epitomized the dual nature of the priest’s role, spiritual as well as administrator for the king’s government centered in Manila. If we focus on this second aspect of the priest we will be able to glimpse some of the themes outlined in the previous chapters.
The civil, administrative role of the pueblo priest centered on his role in compiling a roster or padrón of individuals and families living in the pueblo. This roster was used for a variety of functions, but fundamentally it served to account for those Filipinos subject to tribute payments and forced labor or requisitions of goods. The parish priest was charged with making sure that the pueblo Filipino officials developed such a list and then validating it. In the first part of the eighteenth century the list was updated every three or four or so years; in the latter part of the century it was supposed to be updated yearly. The priest relied on the gobernadorcillo and other pueblo officials to compile and update the list, and we have already seen that some Filipino officials used the opportunity to hide potential tribute payers and instead have them work on their own lands and pay for exclusion with coin and labor. We have also seen that some pueblo bureaucracies became inflated as a way to protect others from imperial tribute and labor exactions while helping the gobernadorcillo or leading families to increase their networks of followers. I won’t repeat that material here but will rather focus on the priest and his administrative role for the state.
The official roster of the pueblo was compiled and updated at a specific season of the year—the Easter season. Easter in the colonial Philippines was both a religious holiday of signal importance in the Christian calendar as well as a notable time for acknowledgment of governmental power and the authority of Spain. Filipino acknowledgment of submission and obligation to Spain was demonstrated by registering for and submitting to the tribute and other taxes owed to the imperial master. The connection between Easter and tribute was explicit. It was at Easter time that one was obligated to both participate in religious acts and rituals as well as to acknowledge civil and tax submission by registering in the padrón. The religious sacrament of Confession was the vehicle for tax registration. No Filipino
… was ready to make actual confession until he had been examined in the basic tenets of Christian doctrine and the principal Christian prayers, and until he had been issued by the examiner a piece of paper stamped with the sello (seal) provided for by the Ministro for that specific purpose. This sello must be presented to the confessor [before confession]. After confession the Ministro gave the penitent another seal called cédula de confesión which authorized him to receive Holy Communion the following day. …
The missionaries had recourse to the use of sellos and cédulas to maintain some order and to manage that all the faithful under their care complied with this important Christian duty.
… Apparently the sello and cédulas carried important information concerning the holder, such as name, age, sex, barangay head, occupation, legal status, because the missionary was able to make the padrón of the year from the cédulas de confesión collected from those who received their Easter-day Holy Communion. …
The padrón listed families and their tax or tribute obligations for the year. The description of the categories and organization underline the civil uses to which it would be put:
using both of those seals, the priest will make up a list of inhabitants (padrón)
… putting first the Cabeza de Barangay and his household, and then the others, house by house. [Within each household, list the individuals in this order:] husband, wife, children, and slaves, if there are any, signifying those who are married and those unmarried, males first and then females if they are single. Having finished the listing of the pueblo, by each barangay then list those men reserved from the tribute, and then those women who are reserved, followed by the [young males (Bagontavos)] who are not tribute payers, followed by the [young women (Dalagas)] who are not yet of the age for the tribute. Then put the schoolboys, even those who for whatever reason do not attend school. Then list all the girls who are of the same age as the schoolboys. Then enter those who are Aetas as well as those Christian indios who are not yet congregated into the pueblo …
and one must also list the Chinese and any other foreigners who might be in the pueblo.
Spiritual and civil obligations neatly reinforced each other, and thus “both majesties” were acknowledged.
This congruence of civil and religious authority and obligation notwithstanding, we saw in Chapter One that Easter was primarily a spiritual set of rituals and exercises and obligations, similar to some of the fiesta and other ceremonies described earlier as well but much more prolonged, intense, and demanding. Throughout, Filipino participation was active and enthusiastic, voluntary as well as mandated. The Filipinos who participated—from the pueblo’s civil administrators to the church’s fiscal and other church officials to the parishioners—had seen that the church and streets were decorated appropriately and enthusiastically attended the prolonged sequence of events associated with this seminal myth of the Christian faith. Filipinos, as good Christians of the period, were also obligated to fast at specified periods as well as to participate in forms of penance, some of which some parishioners took to with great enthusiasm.
What is perhaps most striking is the coincidence of this popular passion and devotion centered on one of the holiest periods of the Christian calendar with the use of Confession as a way to construct the mundane census that would be the basis for exacting taxes in kind or in specie from the Filipino subjects. Franciscan priests were expected to pass these tallies up the hierarchy to Manila, where the Franciscan Provincial turned them in to the Spanish civil authorities. Franciscans would not receive their yearly subsidies from the Crown until this was done. It is significant in both ideological as well as in practical ways that the padrón was to be compiled from those taking Confession in the church during the Easter season.
Filipino responses to Spanish demands and expectations give us a glimpse into the world of the islanders in the eighteenth century. Here too we can snatch a peek, especially when we learn of how some Filipinos responded to this combination of the spiritual and the tax roll. Here’s a Franciscan response concerning those who tried to take Confession but were not resident in the pueblo: “no minister, in the time of Lent, is to confess an indio from another parish, without permission of the parish priest of that parish, due to the inconveniences that could ensue.” In 1718 a Franciscan Provincial noted that there might be awkward situations arising with the Bishop or the provincial governor and not to confess Filipinos from other pueblos without good reason.
Mobility is a common theme in the manuscripts and seems to have been a constant in the lives of many Filipinos in this period leading to difficulties in collecting the tribute. Since mobility was legal, the Spanish tried to lay out rules and procedures to adjust to the Filipino mode while still collecting taxes and keeping track of the population. While some registered when they resided in a different pueblo from the one they paid tribute in, paying a sum as vagabundos, many ignored and evaded such regulations. We also have the words of a Franciscan writing in 1726 that “we see Indios who within the space of a year usually have two or three pueblos of residence.” While we cannot know for sure what motivated this mobility, presumably it was based on perceptions of self-interest and advantage. Other glimpses into the Filipino world come with references to concern by the Franciscans about “those who customarily live hidden in houses and fields [owned] by principales, to those who do not pay the tribute nor [usually do not] hear Mass nor comply with the other obligations and burdens imposed on the pueblo and its neighbors.”
We find hints as well that some, perhaps many, of the non-official Filipinos in the provinces were actively responding to the impositions and creatively learning to play the system to their advantage, not to the advantage of the Filipino and Spanish officials. One example dates from the late eighteenth century and Spanish governmental attempts to reform the tribute system. At one point the plan was to have the cabezas de barangay issue a certificate to each ostensible tribute payer in his charge. At Easter, when Filipinos were required to attend church and services as well as confess, they were as we have seen to present the certificate, have their name recorded on the roster (the padrón), and thus be subject to the tribute, the polo, and the bandala.
Filipinos quickly figured out that if they did not show up for the Easter Confession and services their names would not be entered on the padrón and they could then avoid being subject to tribute demands for that year. As a Franciscan remarked in 1774, the previous three years had seen a “very notable” decrease in those coming to Mass and making their confession,
with detriment to their recognition of vassalage to our sovereign through the annual tribute, that they ought to pay to the cavezas de barangay as representatives of the king. The priests must certify … the tributes who are administered in the pueblos, which is done through the padrones that are made up based on certificates that they carry from their cavezas at the time of confession. If they do not confess, their names are not registered in the padrón. … We know the names who should have confessed because of the previous year’s padrón.
Stratagems such as missing annual confession, payoffs to local officials, collaboration, and feigning incompetence and laziness are strategic responses to a corrupt and oppressive system where punishments for direct confrontation could be draconian. Flight and mobility are indicators that are more noticeable and sometimes the linkage was expressly noted. For instance, according to Huerta, a ranchería established by the Franciscans in the municipality of Limotan in 1670, took form and “prospered until the year of 1700” when the government tried to obligate its residents to pay tribute. At that point, they all fled to the hills, and the mission was entirely lost.
Filipino priorities seem to have been determinative. We see this in a case from a mission settlement, Manguirin, in 1756:
… the sitio that is called Santa Cruz of Manguirin … is where the priests suffer from fevers the most, where there is no [adequate] drinking water, and to bathe one has to half a legua from the sitio to the river Ynarihan. To continue with the dreadful [qualities of the place, the inhabitants], except for those who have no tools at all, have implements which barely allow them to make a piece of a field, all of which means that in that sitio there are only a few houses. Most people live [away], in rancherias. The consequence is attendance at Mass is low …
Only when they want, and how they want, then they come enthusiastically [Sino solo quando quieren, y como quieren, a una cosa bienen todos gustosos]. Notwithstanding [the dispersion of population], every Wednesday there is a market in the cabecera with markets as well in the sitios on Saturdays and Sundays. In these markets one finds goods and sellers from Bicol, selling meat, fish, tobacco, iron, and many other things, and the cimarrones trade for them with what they have, namely wax, abaca, etc. … In reality they do not want a priest but rather [only] a shadow of a priest. They [only] want [a priest] who will attend to their needs, remove [los saque] their miseries. When they arrive in the doorway the priest receives them with love and gives them protection. Their [need, though,] only lasts as long as they are in the doorway. When they can, they escape ….
Filipino preferences perhaps meant that the priorities of the priests and the governments were of secondary or tertiary significance.
We now have a sketch of Philippine society in the eighteenth century, one where Filipinos had their own political, economic, and social networks. The imperial administrations encompassing clerical and governmental hierarchies reached the pueblos but penetrated the lives of Filipinos in those municipal districts largely at the behest or with the acquiescence of Filipinos. Direct opposition to clerical or governmental colonial power could be costly. Punitive responses were readily employed. Evasion, partial acquiescence, manipulation, playing government against clerical authority, and flight therefore were more successful stratagems.
The priest was ostensibly the center of pueblo life, working both as a cleric and as the representative of the imperial power. It appears to me that in fact the leading families in the pueblo worked through and with the priest and the Spanish provincial governor to effectively run the world of the pueblo, with their influence diminishing as one moved from the población to the farthest outliers. Much of the statements above admittedly are conjectural, based on an interpretive reading of manuscript materials. We appear to have no autobiographies or family histories from Filipino pueblo elite from this period that might support or undercut my argument.
We can go even further. There are paradoxes that touch Filipinos who chose to live in both the boondocks and in the población. For those living far from that población, they had more freedom from Church and State and less hispanization–but along with this came also perhaps less ability to avoid discriminatory prices for their goods, less opportunity for their children to get some formal education, perhaps more subjection to debt bondage and exclusion from church rituals and sacraments. Those Filipinos who lived in the población were close to the church and the residence of the priest, where hispanization and Spanish control should have been the greatest. However, it was here where the leading Filipino families lived and where their political skills and economic power supported their control of the municipality. It is here where they built networks of political and economic influence, recruited followers, received petitions for loans and other help, and made alliances and arranged for allies to hold pueblo and church positions. With political acumen would have come greater influence, power, and wealth, enabling them more effectively to deflect, avoid, and fulfill demands of the Spanish government and the parish priest, artfully working the system and “both majesties.”
Wherever they lived, Filipinos were deemed by Church and State to be colonial subjects. Direct opposition to that subordinate position was destined to be unsuccessful. More artful and evasive methods allowed some Filipinos to manipulate the system to their advantage while appearing to be dutiful subjects of crown and church. Those who chose to live outside the población, in sitios or hidden in the hills, effectively chose a life of freedom but were subject to constraints of environment, exploitation by powerful families, and lacked regular opportunities to grow through formal education and religious instruction. Those in the población were apparently less free from Spanish rules, but they enjoyed greater opportunities for family advancement and personal growth. The Spanish ruled, Filipinos chose their responses.