Spaniards, Sangleys, Mestizos

The Roots of the Filipino Nation By Onofre D. Corpus ©1989.
Chapter 6
SPANIARDS, SANGLEYS, MESTIZOS
We prohibit and forbid that Spaniards ... may live or reside in the
reducciones and pueblos of the Indios. because it has happened that
some Spaniards who trade, mingle, reside and go among the Indios
are troublesome persons, riotous. robbers. gamblers. vicious. or
vagrants: and in order to escape injury the Indios leave their
pueblos..... Ley 21, Titulo 3, Libro VI, Recopilación promulgated 1563,
1578, 1581, 1589, 1600, 1646.
The Chinese have taken over all of the retail trade. because their
system of helping each other exclusively. forming themselves into a
distinct guild similar to the practice of the Jews, with whom they have
much in common in their social and business principles, gives them
great advantages over the natives and Spaniards. From a report of
the royal officials in Filipinas. (1830)
The mestizos are acquiring all the lands in Filipinas, and if the
Audiencia does not take measures to prevent this abuse. in no time this
clever race will own the entire islands, from which will arise grave
consequences. Martinez de Zuniga (1800)
Our principal story so far has been that of the natives. Life in the archipelago,
whether joyful or bleak, light or depressing, primitive or progressive, was their life,
although partly defined by the transient invaders. The invaders caused death and
hardship and brought change; but all that they caused and all the change that they
wrought were absorbed into the vast body of native life and culture. Inevitably, across
the centuries, the story of some nonnative peoples became part of the story of the
Filipinos, as members of other racial groups in the islands joined the natives to form and
share a common life and future.
We will note in this Chapter that the Chinese mestizos, a completely new class of
people in the archipelago, blended almost immediately into native society and the land
of their native mothers. Indeed the cause of the secular priests during the 1770s and
continuously thereafter until the Revolution was the common cause of the native and
Chinese mestizo priests. When members of the other racial groups would see no
separate political future for themselves and decide to identify with the awakening mass
of natives and mestizos, such as happened by the 1860s, their joint story became the
story of the Filipino people.
1
The population figures during the Spanish colonial era began as estimates of the
tributepaying population. This population was composed of the colonized natives, and
the Chinese residents; the latter came in increasing numbers after 1571. The Spanish
population reports did not include the Muslims; and people called "independent tribes"
in the tributary population. The latter were the unconquered mountain communities;
they and the Muslims were also referred to as infieles or infidels. Naturally the
Spaniards did not pay tribute, and so they too did not appear in the early population
reports.
Although the Chinese paid tribute like the natives (their tribute rate was much
higher), they came from such a superior and ancient civilization that they did not
identify with the latter.
As time passed, other groups came to be registered in the tributary population

reports or estimates. One such group was composed of the swarthy mountain people;
they paid the tribute, sometimes only the reconocimiento de vasallaje.
The important new group was the mestizos. The Franciscan friar San Antonio
observed in 1738: “The archipelago today, especially the Tagalog provinces, is full of
another race of rnestizos. They were not here in the period of the discubrimiento. We
call them 'mestizos de Sangley,' the offspring of native women and Chinese men.” The
mestizos appeared in the Spanish population reports as a major category for the first
time after 1750. Their Chinese fathers had to convert to Christianity, often for
convenience in order to enjoy greater security and, much more important, to marry
native women. Their mestizo offspring easily integrated into the society of their mothers
and identified themselves with their native cousins.
The term "mestizo" until well into the nineteenth century was used only to refer to
Chinese mestizos and did not include the offspring of Spanish fathers and Filipina
mothers. This was because there were too few Spaniards in Filipinas to begin with; they
were expected to reside in the Spanish towns and cities and prohibited from living in the
native pueblos.
The mestizos grew in numbers progressively. In the 1760 population estimates there
were a reported 36,700; in 1791 there were a reported 66,917; in 1822 96,135; and in
1844 270,000 (although a 1845 report had only 180,000). In comparison, there were
only a reported 11,254 Spanish mestizos in 1822. (the 1845 report was on the
conservative side, at only 8,584).
The conventional Spanish population estimates were basically approximations

(explained in the Appendix), but are adequate for the purpose of establishing trends. In
1846 the Frenchman Mallat had estimates based on the regime's reports. His figures
included (not the total population of the archipelago):
2
Natives 3,700,000
Chinese mestizos 240,000
Spanish mestizos 20,000
Chinese 10,000
Spaniards born in Filipinas 3,500
Spaniards born in Europe 1,500
The figures indicate the relative racial contributions to the Filipino nation that would
ultimately emerge (but still not inclusive of the Muslims). The natives would be
dominant. The mestizos would' be disproportionately important, the Chinese mestizos
being more so than the Spanish mestizos. The Spaniards ,who would cast their lot with
the Filipino nation would be a small minority.1
The Spaniards
To the native Filipinos every Spaniard was called "Castila." This was originally
because Filipinas was officially the New Kingdom of Castilla; and this in turn was
because the Spaniards who had effected the conquest of much of the archipelago were
men in the service of the Spanish kingdom of Castilla, whose king was Felipe II.
But the terms "Castila" or "Espanol" did not include all Spaniards in Filipinas. The
Spanish clergy was excluded. During most of the Spanish era the colonial documents
(laws and government orders) as well as the friar chronicles did not refer to the clergy as
Spaniards. The laws distinguished between the clergy and the lay Spaniards. The friars
and priests were referred to as ecclesiastical persons, exempt persons, regulars or
seculars, fathers or ministers of the doctrine, but not as Spaniards. The Recopilación had
different laws for the lay Spaniards and for the clergy. For instance, it banned
"Spaniards" from residing in the pueblos, but not the clergy. It was the same in the
documents of the regime in Manila. Official reports would estimate the population of
Spaniards in Filipinas; these estimates did not include the friars and curates.
The practice went both ways. In the chronicles of the friar orders references to
Spaniards, often denigratory, ordinarily did not include the clergy. For instance, a friar
history or account might severely criticize "the Spaniards," but this would not include
the churchmen. The following paragraphs therefore refer primarily to the lay Spaniards.
The influence of the Spaniards as individuals on life in the pueblos was negligible.
There were very few of them in Filipinas as a whole. They had to live in the Spanish
cities and towns unless they were officials posted in the provinces. Most of them
naturally settled in Manila. The next largest settlement of Spaniards was to have been
Cebu, but it could attract only a few citizens or vecinos. By 1750 all the Spanish
residents of Cebu were not even enough to constitute the city council. The other Spanish
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cities and towns were equally hard put to have enough residents. The Spanish presence,
therefore, was not felt in most of the native pueblos.
Even if there had been more Spaniards, the Recopilación (Libro VI, Titulo 3, Ley 21)
prohibited them from residing in the native reducciones and pueblos. This prohibition
was justified on grounds stated in the law: the Spaniards “had vicious habits, were cruel
to the natives, and set a bad example, all of which frustrate the fruit that We desire for
the natives' salvation, increase, and tranquillity." This law was promulgated in 1563,
1578, 1589, 1600, and 1646. Ley 22 (1646) repeated the ban even in cases where
Spaniards had bought land in a pueblo. This law became Ordinance 29 of the 1642 and
1696 Ordinances in Filipinas.
For some reason, the ban was required to be strictly enforced in the province of
Pampanga. The context indicates that there were still a fair number of Spaniards there
before 1650. Some had Spanish wives, others were married to Pampanga women. The
Ordinances ordered the departure of all Spaniards from the province, except that those
who were already married to Pampanga women were allowed to stay; those who married
Pampangas in the future were subject to the prohibition.
Ordinance 29 was repealed in 1752 when the regime tried once again, without
success, to promote the teaching and dissemination of the Spanish language. In 1768
Ordinances ordered the alcaldes to aid and favor Spaniards who would reside in the
provinces, but they were also ordered to oppose Spaniards who are “vicious and
destructive” and to punish these for “the harm they inflict upon the Indios.”
The effect of the old prohibition was to ensure that the only Spaniards in the pueblos
were the Spanish friars or curates. But even the lifting of the prohibition in 1752 did not
result in Spanish residents in the pueblos. In 1768 Anda was to write in his memorial
that: “There is no other settlement of Spaniards than that of Manila; for in the provinces
rarely or never does one see a Spaniard.” Anda deplored the prohibitory laws of the
Recopilación. He charged that the friars collected copies of these laws and had them
posted widely in the doctrinas, and harassed any Spaniard who tried to establish
residence. The result was that there was nobody who could check the friars' behavior
and excesses. The Frenchman Le Gentil who was in Manila at this time wrote of the
difficulties that a Spaniard would have to face if he dared to reside in a pueblo. The
friars:
are so absolute that no Spaniard dares to go to the provinces to
settle. If he were to undertake to do so, he could not succeed without
encountering tremendous difficulties and overcoming the most formidable
obstacles; and he would always have to maintain himself in a state of war.
The friars would play so many tricks on him, they would stir up so many
difficulties, and they would get him into so much trouble that he would
4
finally be compelled to leave. Thus these friars are the masters of the
country, and are more absolute in the Philippines than the king himself.
Anda was rabidly antifriar and used much stronger language: “The regulars have
committed more havoc in America and Filipinas than all the locusts put together”; and
“if, by scandals and evil example to the Indians, the Spaniards have to leave the village,
one ought to begin with the friar.”
In 1787 the governorgeneral would write to the Spanish king that “almost all the
Spaniards (in Filipinas) live in Manila and its environs.” Some numbers will picture the
general situation. For 1810 Comyn reports a total of 4,000 European Spaniards (to be
read as including those from America), Filipinasborn Spaniards, and mestizos or
children of Spaniards and Filipinos. This was after almost two and a half centuries since
the Spaniards came to the archipelago. For purposes of comparison, there were almost
120,000 ChineseFilipino mestizos alone this year.
There were somewhat more Spaniards in Filipinas beginning with the 1820s, because
many Spaniards in the Americas became jobless when the colonies there won their
independence. More would come, some by exile, after the Spanish revolution of 1868.
The politics in Spain at this time resulted in the contending political blocs sending their
sympathizers to occupy the offices in Filipinas and displacing the officeholders who
were partisans of the other party. Finally, more peninsular Spaniards would come after
the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 shortened the voyage to Filipinas. Even so,
however, their total numbers would not be significant. In 1876 there were 1,962 in the
clergy, and 13,265 Spaniards of all other classes, including mestizos. At this time there
were a reported more than six million natives in the colonized population.2
Spanish influence on life in the pueblos, therefore, was generally limited to contacts
between the Filipinos and the friars or curates. The long Spanish occupation did not
bring Spanish culture to the pueblos. It is only an ambiguous generalization, culturally
speaking, to speak of the “hispanization” of the Filipinos. It was not the rich and
deservedly admirable Spanish culture that the Filipinos encountered, but only a small
part of it, chiefly that part to which they were exposed by the Spanish friar in the
doctrina.
The Filipinos who had broad and daily contact with the Spaniards were those in the
Manila and Cavite (the naval town) areas, and to a lesser extent those of the cabeceras.
Much later on, since the midnineteenth century, it was the sons of the rich provincial
families who went to Manila to study, who became the most "hispanized" Filipinos, at
least as far as dress and speech were concerned. This class of young men, including the
seminary students and priests, eventually divided into two groups. They originally
identified with Spanish colonial society, and sought reforms beginning in the late 1860s.
5
Some remained reformists, but the others, the second group, subsequently identified
with a Filipino nation and progressed from reformism to radicalism and still later joined
the Revolution.
Sangleys and Mestizos
The Chinese presence in the pueblo, producing close contact with the Filipinos since
the earliest years of the Spanish era, contrasted sharply with the protracted absence of
the Spaniards. The Chinese were called Sangleys, presumably because most of those
who came to Filipinas were from Fukien province in China, where Amoy was the chief
port and where the word sengli meant trader. Four Chinese trading ships were moored
at the bar of the river Pasig when the Spaniards attacked Manila in 1570. There were
already forty married Chinese residents in the old native town of Manila. It is not
recorded whether they were married to Filipino women; among the prisoners taken by
the Spaniards in the fight for Manila were Chinese women, wives of the Chinese. The
women had been brought over from China. A Spanish account says that these Chinese
had fled their home land, and “brought their wives with them; all of them both men and
women, number about one hundred and fifty. They became Christians after coming
here.”
The Chinese trading ships did not at first bring their fine silks and other valuable
trade goods. The market in preSpanish Manila had not yet become lucrative; the
expensive wares were for the trade with Malacca. However, the traders were soon
assured by the Spaniards that there would be a market in Manila for these goods. By
1575 twelve to fifteen trading ships were calling annually at Manila, carrying: “figured
silks of all sorts; wheat, flour, and sugar; many kinds of fruit; iron, steel, tin, brass,
copper, lead; and other kinds of metals; and everything in the same abundance as in
Espana and in the Indias, so that they lack for nothing. The prices of everything are so
moderate, that they are to be had almost for nothing.”
The flourishing trade and the profits that could be made by the fortunehunting
Spaniards with the Chinese made the latter an important element in the colony. Many of
them stayed. They prospered; many others came from China to settle. In time their
numbers and importance gained them a chapter in the Recopilación. All of Libro VI,
Titulo 18 grew out of laws dealing exclusively with the Sangleys. These laws attracted
and protected them and regulated their numbers, terms of residence, occupations, as
well as relationships with the Spaniards and Filipinos.
The unabated influx and residence of the Chinese sometimes worried the
government authorities. Reports to the Spanish king prompted him in 1589 to instruct
the governorgeneral to decide whether to prohibit the Chinese traders from remaining
6
in Manila after the trading season was over; he was authorized to allow those who
converted to Christianity or who would settle as artisans and craftsmen, to remain as
residents.
The comparative numbers of Chinese and Spaniards clearly justified the Spanish
king's concern. There were just about 2,000 Spaniards in the Manila area in 1591, and
another 1,000 scattered in various islands in Filipinas. On the other hand, in 1590 there
were 3,000 to 4,000 Chinese in the Chinese quarter in Manila alone, not counting the
more than 2,000 who came and went with the ships. Most of the Chinese lived in a
ghetto called the Parian, sometimes called Pantin, located one musket shot away and
under the guns of the city, to the east. Others managed to live outside of this ghetto.
Within the Parian were more than a hundred shops comprising the Chinese silk market,
as well as small shops of tailors, cobblers, painters, bakers, confectioners, candlemakers,
silversmiths, apothecaries, and other tradesmen. There were also a number of restaurants
which several Spaniards learned to frequent.
The main reason why more and more Chinese were allowed to stay and reside in
Manila was corruption. The Chinese each paid eight pesos (later, ten pesos and two
reals) for the residence permit, compared to the one peso tribute by each native family.
The Spanish officials, however, would sell residence permits for a greater number of
Chinese than the laws prescribed and pocketed the proceeds from sale of the surplus and
illegal documents. They sold the permits at bargain prices.
Another reason for the increasing numbers of Sangleys was that the Spaniards found
them indispensable. The Jesuits had 250 Chinese farmers and gardeners working their
estates outside the city; the Augustinians employed the same number on their farms.
These two factors corruption and the Spaniards' dependence on Chinese skills and
services were to lead to tragedy. In 1603 the Chinese rose in revolt. The cabildo or city
council of Manila had repeatedly warned that only 3,000 Sangleys should be allowed to
remain as residents. The government records showed some 4,000 resident Chinese. But
there were then more than 18,000 Sangleys, not counting the 4,000 that had come with
the trading fleet. The illegal licenses or permits had been sold for five, six, seven, or
eight pesos each.
The Chinese were massacred during the revolt; the Spaniards had incited the natives
against them. But they kept coming. This was because the pull of profit was strong, both
for them and their protectors. The latter were the religious orders and the officials who
profited from their Sangley proteges. The graft in Chinese residence permits lasted for
centuries in the Philippines. It was an open secret that influential politicians had
amassed handsome fortunes since 1946 for their protection of “overstaying Chinese,”
especially when many of the latter fled the 1949 Chinese Communist takeover of the
mainland. It was only after 1972, when the naturalization laws were relaxed, that the
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business somewhat tapered off.
After the Chinese uprising of 1603 the Audiencia set a limit of 1,500 Chinese
residents (that is, the nonChristians, because the converted Chinese were treated
liberally). Nevertheless, no less than 1,648 permits were issued in 1605. The next year
6,533 Chinese arrived. In 1634 the governorgeneral reported that 4,000 were allowed by
royal decree, “but a greater number has been tolerated because of the advantages of the
licenses that they pay, and in order not to disturb the trade with China.” The next
governorgeneral petitioned the king in 1636 for permission to grant more licenses.
Memories of the 1603 revolt faded away very quickly. The issuance of residence
permits again became wantonly indiscriminate and profitable. In 1639 a reported 33,000
Sangleys were staying throughout Filipinas. The estimated number of Chinese in the
provinces was 20,000. This year the regime decided to conscript 6,000 Chinese to work
in a new plantation near Calamba, Laguna to produce rice for the Spanish presidios.
Many of them fell sick before long; 300 died while the Spanish alcalde of the province
subjected them to extortions and other abuses. They revolted. The Chinese in the nearby
provinces, as well as those of the Parian, followed suit. The Spaniards, aided by
Tagalogs and the usual Pampangos, succeeded in suppressing the uprising. In the
process there was another massacre of the Chinese, the total dead reaching to between
22,000 and 24,000.
There would be two more major Chinese revolts, those of 1662–1663 and 1762, and a
minor uprising, that of 1686. After the revolt of 16621663, the ceiling on the number of
Chinese residence permits was placed at 6,000. The Manila Spaniards justified this on
the following argument: “for not only does everything necessary for life come to us from
China – as wheat, cloth, and earthenware – but it is the Sangleys who carry on all the
crafts, and who with their traffic maintain the fortunes of the citizens.”3
We will now consider the background of the Chinese impact on the pueblos. The
1642 Ordinances professed a cautious and strict attitude toward the Sangleys. They were
a source of spiritual demoralization on the Filipinos; besides, the Ordinances claimed,
whether the Chinese were Christian or nonChristian, they were wily and tricky,
exchanging trifles of little value in return for the products of the natives. The non
Christians were therefore prohibited from residing in the native pueblos. Those found in
any village were to be sent immediately to the Parian; anyone found living among the
natives was subject to 200 lashes and four years service in the Cavite naval base.
Unmarried Christians were allowed to live in the native pueblos, but only up to the
number required for service in the churches and in the pueblo governments. Chinese
who had converted to Christianity and were married to Filipino wives were naturally
allowed residence in their wives' villages. In addition, the Christians were monitored by
the friars in the doctrinas; if found unsatisfactory, the married ones were to be sent to
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the Christian Chinese villages of Santa Cruz and Binondo outside of Manila; if single,
to the Parian.
The Christian Chinese were allowed by the Recopilación to engage in trade. They
were exempt from the tribute for a period of ten years after the date of their conversion.
These advantages were enough to attract a number to convert to Christianity, although
for a long time their custom of wearing pigtails was an obstacle. No converts were
allowed to return to China.
The regime allowed the nonChristian Chinese to trade in the provinces upon
payment of the trading permit; this became a rich source of illicit income for corrupt
Spanish officials. The traders who bought the permits were originally allowed in the
nearby provinces of Tondo, Bulacan, Pampanga, Laguna, and in the port of Cavite. They
were permitted a maximum of twelve days in each pueblo, but could not spend the night
anywhere except on their boats. Those found sleeping in the village were subject to two
years' service in the Cavite shipyards.
As tens of thousands of Chinese resided and traded in the provinces over the years,
they inevitably became the principal contact between the Filipinos and the outside
world. From them the Filipinos saw and bought commoditie from other provinces, from
Manila, and from Asia. The Filipinos learned new arts and trades and technologies.
Equally important, they were exposed to a new but rich and ancient culture. The Chinese
presence to this point was a relatively quiet but enriching influence on Filipino pueblo
life, compared to the dour and scolding presence of the Spanish friar.
The image of the Chinese in Filipinas has generally been shaped by their crucial and
conspicuous role in the trade between Manila and Acapulco, as merchants in Manila,
and as transient traders in the provinces. Actually, although on a smaller scale, the
Chinese were also associated with land and agriculture. As early as 1589 it is reported
that they were buying up gardens, estates, and other landed property in the environs of
Manila. A 1629 letter from the governorgeneral to the Spanish king stated that the
Chinese were better farmers than the natives. Spanish landowners in the Manila area
would advance them money to work the former's lands, and the Chinese would repay the
advances in a very short time, with profit to all parties. The Augustinian and Jesuit
hiring of the Sangleys to till their estates and haciendas has already been mentioned, as
well as the regime's illfated project for Chinese plantation labor in Calamba in 1639. In
the Manila area the Chinese early on saw the opportunities in truck gardening to meet
the needs of the Spanish city. The Spaniards exploited them by requiring them to make
weekly deliveries of vegetables and poultry for their households in return for protection.
The Chinese vegetable growers in fact became a feature of Manila's environs for
centuries. They supplied the metropolis with greens until World War II and its aftermath
of urban sprawl cleared away the gardens.4
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The fortunes of the Chinese often hung upon the difference between two viewpoints
in the colony. The first, which tended to favor more Chinese residents, was that of the
more or less permanent Spanish residents of Manila: the officials who sold the
residence and trading permits; those whose fortunes depended on their shipments of
Chinese goods to Acapulco; and sometimes the friar orders that wanted to convert them
– and obtained, free, weekly supplies of food from the Chinese. The second viewpoint
was that of almost every recently arrived governorgeneral whose interests were not yet
corrupted by Chinese bribes; and of the Spanish king who was far away from it all; both
of them tended to place more stress on colonial security than on profits.
In 1709 the governorgeneral sent many Chinese back to China. In 1755 the
governorgeneral Arandia, perhaps the first to bring an economic development
perspective to Filipinas, tried a novel approach to the Chinese problem, an approach that
is mistakenly said to be an expulsion order, even in the Spanish histories. There were
two elements in this approach. The first was the establishment of a quarter where the
Chinese traders were required to dwell and to do business in until their champans or
trading junks were to sail on the return voyage to China. This was the alcaiceria or silk
market of San Fernando. Arandia had several new buildings erected for its special
function. The second was the formation of a trading company, under the sponsorship
and protection of the governorgeneral; membership was to be open to Spaniards and
natives and mestizos; the purpose of the company was to bring about the takeover of the
wholesale and retail business in textiles and household provisions from the Chinese. The
company was duly organized, began operations, and its governing statutes were sent to
Spain for approval. In the meantime, everyone concerned prepared for the traders'
departure. The deadline was set for 30 June 1755, and the government had vessels riding
in the bay, ready for the voyage.
The Sangleys had also been preparing. From experience they had long ago
discovered the sure way to avoid deportation and to obtain permission to stay. This was
baptism into Christianity. So, many of them did indeed prepare for the deadline and for
this great event, certainly with the help of the religious orders. On the day fixed for their
departure, 515 Sangley traders escaped repatriation by becoming Christians in a mass
baptism. As for the trading company, its operations during the first year met with
indifferent success in spite of its having a captive market. It was in Spain where the
project was doomed. The fiscal of the Council of the Indies recommended disapproval
of the company. He believed that trading in Filipinas should be free and that the
Spaniards compete with the Sangleys on equal terms, since “it cannot be the case that
the vassals of his Majesty have less capacity and skills than the Sangleys” The retail
trade therefore remained in Sangley hands, and the Chinese continued their dominance
into modern times.
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The most important Chinese revolt, politically speaking, took place in 1762. This
was partly triggered by the flagrant ineptitude of the Spaniards' defense, and then abject
surrender, during the British invasion. Witnessing the Spaniards' weakness, the Chinese
of Guagua in Pampanga conspired with their countrymen in the Parian to rise in
December. The Chinese in San Pablo de los Montes in Laguna also joined the Filipinos
of the pueblo in a minor revolt.
The reckoning came with the departure of the British and the restoration of Spanish
authority. Spanish troops reentered Manila in May 1764 under the peace treaty of
February 1763. In 1766 the expulsion of the Chinese from Filipinas was ordered by royal
decree; rigorous penalties were imposed on converted Christians who had committed
crimes of disloyalty, apostasy, and other serious offenses during the war. This decree
had immediate effects on the Chinese and longterm consequences on the role in
Filipino society of those who remained. The 1768 Ordinances provided that “true
Christians” were to be allowed to remain under the following rules: they were to register
regularly; they would be assigned to various pueblos or districts for their residence; they
were prohibited the possession and the use of weapons; they were to engage in
agriculture, crafts, and the mechanical trades; they were not to leave their assigned
pueblos without authorization, subject to perpetual banishment from all Spanish
dominions.
Two more expulsion orders were issued in the eighteenth century – that of 1769
which was only partially enforced and was revoked in 1778, and that of 1785. After the
latter came another decree which approved a project to establish a colony for 200
Chinese farm workers in the swamps of Candaba in Pampanga. These measures were
essentially followup actions to the 1766 decree, which was meant to be implemented in
the 1768 Ordinances.
The conditions prescribed in the Ordinances had two primary purposes. The first
was to finally effect the dispersal of the Chinese from their concentration in the Manila
and surrounding area and settle them in the various provinces, so that they would not be
able to unite in any possible future uprising. The second was to have them engage in
agriculture.
The numbers of the Chinese in Filipinas did in fact later go down, but not because of
the expulsion orders nor because of the stringency of the 1768 Ordinances. The principal
cause was the abolition of the galleon trade; the last ship of the line, aptly named the
Magallanes, sailed from Manila in 1811. The loss of the American colonies to Spain,
which killed off the ManilaAcapulco trade, also enabled Spain to strengthen its military
forces in Filipinas by transfer or reassignment of its surplus officers and soldiers from
America. The result was better security from domestic insurrections, whether native or
Chinese, so that the colonial regime overcame its anxiety over the Chinese presence and
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generally became more tolerant in its policies. In 1822 the Chinese reportedly numbered
an official 5,440; in 1830 there were 5,708 in Filipinas. More than 5,200 were in the
Tondo province, so that the policy of dispersal does not seem to have succeeded.
Still, the series of expulsions and of pressures for the Chinese to go to the provinces
had a cumulative effect. They led to the founding of small Sangley colonies in some
provinces; these colonies were called pariancillos after the Parian in Manila. Among the
better known of these were those in Cebu, Vigan, Lingayen, Naga, and Molo. There was
also a colony in Jolo, which explains the fair number of Chinese names there in modern
times. Understandably, of course, the Chinese quarter in Jolo was not called a Parian.
Molo near the modern Iloilo City continues to be known as the home of the popular
ChineseFilipino dish, the tasty pansit molo. These small Chinese colonies provided the
small capital and, more important, the entrepreneurship for the provinces.
The second objective, to engage the Sangleys in agriculture, also did not succeed:
The Frenchman Vicomte de Pagés visiting in 1768, says that “At present they amount to
more than 20,000 [and], after engrossing the whole manufactures, and the principal part
of the Manila trade, begin to turn their attention to agriculture.” What he actually meant
was that the Chinese were now beginning to trade in agricultural produce. By the early
1820s a visiting Englishman would observe that only a very few Chinese or mestizos
were engaged in cultivation. A royal decree of 1843 provided for the importation of
Chinese farm workers, but it was a dead letter. Various other arrangements were decreed
around 1850. One decree classified the Chinese on the basis of agricultural holdings and
provided for a reduced tribute rate on Chinese farm workers. An impossible decree
ordered that the Chinese could engage only in agricultural cultivation. In 1851 a law
provided that Chinese who were in Filipinas for the first time would be exempt from the
tribute for one year.5
What was natural was that the Chinese would continue to trade, and they did. By this
time of economic growth and trading opportunities, the Chinese would not only remain
in the retail trade; they would move into the interprovincial shipping trade between the
Visayas, even Jolo, and Manila.
It was equally natural that the original Chinese pariancillos would metamorphose
into mestizo communities. The first mestizos in Filipinas, of course, were not those of
these little parians. The first were the offspring of some of the tens of thousands of
traders who bought permits, across almost two centuries, for the privilege of trading in
the provinces; and of the shrewder among these, who converted to Christianity and
contracted marriages with local women. It will not be facetious to say that the most
valuable contribution of the Chinese to Filipino life was not their exotic and expensive
wares, nor their technology, nor their culture in general, but the ChineseFilipino
mestizos.
12
The first trading permits allowed the Sangleys only in the provinces around Manila.
The 1738 Franciscan history says that the Chinese traders married Filipino wives,
“becoming Christians for this purpose, and their mestizos cannot be counted.” The sons
looked less Chinese than the daughters, but almost invariably inherited their fathers'
ambition and application to hard work. The presence of the mestizos became most
marked in the Tagalog provinces and in Pampanga. The Franciscan author reports that
there were “innumerable” mestizos in Tondo province; Cavite had somewhat less; there
were 870 in Pampanga, fifty in Ilocos, and “a few” in Bulacan. There were as yet no
reports of the mestizo population in the smaller provinces. In the small island of
Agutaya near Cuyo Island north of Palawan, the people in 1624 were already reported as
being mestizos, “industrious and shrewd in trade.”
Before 1760 the mestizos were not numerically significant to warrant separate listing
in the population estimates, and were reported jointly with the native population. This
year their numbers as a class were at an estimated 36,700. This increased to just under
67,000 in 1791. The pariancillos would grow and prosper during the era of the
promotion of commercial agriculture that began around 1780. By 1810 there were a
reported 119,718 mestizos. This compares with only 11,254 SpanishFilipino mestizos in
1822. In 1842 a Spanish observer was impressed by the fact that there were 200,000
“rich, active, and intelligent” mestizos. In 1844 the government estimated their number
at 270,000.
By virtue not only of their numbers, but for other reasons besides, the mestizos were
destined to play the most important roles in Filipino life. Their mothers and, later, their
wives, came from the pueblo upper class, so that they were normally integrated into
pueblo society at the principalia level. Moreover, since the residents of a pueblo were
generally not allowed to transfer residence to another – the pueblo tributes would go
down, the friar's income would be reduced – the mestizo children grew up and married
in the pueblos of their mothers. They had to identify with the place of their birth. They
also regarded their pueblos, from the inherited unerring profit instincts of their fathers,
as ripe fields for profit making.
This seems to be the explanation for Ordinance 44 of the 1768 Ordinances, which
noted that the native lands were falling to the permanent possession of the mestizos–
through cash advances against the crop which would not be repaid, or during the life of
a loan against the debtor's land as security. This is significant as an indication of the
beginnings of a class in pueblo society that had cash to lend, as well as of the existence
of a growing need for cash in pueblo life. More important, it marked the beginnings of a
phase in Filipinas land tenure history, where the mestizos were starting to accumulate
lands. They became de facto landlords with the debtors working out their debts, but
without hope of ever redeeming their rice lands. They became compradors of
13
agricultural produce, especially rice, cornering the market and dictating prices. Later on,
they became the chief inquilinos (renters, managerlessees) of the friar haciendas.
The first wave of agricultural output increases in Filipinas came about in the form of
the forced surpluses that the people had to produce for their tributes and their quotas of
the reales compras. The second wave, which was more authentic, was the result of the
colonial regime's new policies that began on the eve of the 178()s. This period was
featured by the emergence of commercial agriculture for both the domestic and export
markets.
For this development the mestizos were in the right place at precisely the right time,
and they had the resources to enable them to play a vital role in both agriculture and
trade, as will be seen in Chapter 10.
The mestizos also became important in a role that has not been generally recognized.
They and their cousins the sons of the native principalia moved up the ladder of colonial
society and served the purposes of the regime when they were recruited for education
and ordination into the secular clergy. The friars' contemptuous attitude toward them, on
racial grounds, cemented their common identity. Both natives and mestizos were
regarded as one in the friars' attacks on their character and ability. The native and
mestizo priests reacted as one, and would become the core of the Christian Filipino
nationalism that began to surface in the 1860s.
The Chinese mestizos had class characteristics that set them apart from the other
class of mestizos, the children of SpaniardFilipino marriages. The latter were usually
born in Manila, where most of the Spaniards resided. Their fathers were engrossed with
the galleon trade and generally did not invest in land. The Spanish mestizos were
therefore basically an urban class (with the exception of the offspring of Spanish friar
concubinage in the doctrinas). They looked to careers in the offices of the regime, both
civil and military. They were unlike the ChineseFilipino mestizos, whose families had
binding links to the land and were active in domestic trade. The Oriental physical
features of the Chinese mestizos were also a factor towards their easy integration into
native society. The Spanish mestizos, on the other hand, would almost invariably have a
pronounced blend of Castilian and native features; this is appreciated highly in modern
times, but in those days the Spanish mestizos were merely viewed as looking neither
Castilian nor native.
The Spanish mestizos sought identification with the nation of their fathers, but their
mixed caste only earned them the very bottom place in the rigidly statusconscious
Spanish community. Caste also closed the doors of the friar orders to them.
Circumstances would therefore lead many of the Spanish mestizos to seek entry into the
secular clergy and share the scorn that the friar orders directed at the native and
14
ChineseFilipino priests. It is for this and other reasons, much later on during the mid
nineteenth century, that the Spanish mestizos would even tually also cast their lot with
the Filipinos.6
We end this part of the story with brief illustrative notes of Sangleys and mestizos as
they exploited or tried to exploit economic and social opportunities in the regime.
Aside from engaging in trade, the Chinese sought additional opportunities for
making money through the various government monopolies. In 1714, for instance, a
Sangley Christian named Benito Jonio bid 2,000 pesos a year for the concession of the
salt monopoly covering the provinces around Manila and the port of Cavite. The offer
was disapproved on the ground that the price of salt, which was a prime staple, would
go up.
A more complex case involved a mestizo, Pedro Tiangco, in the 1790s. He was a
resident of the pueblo of Tambobong, by the old village of Tondo. He had been
rewarded with a grant of exemption from the tribute by the Spanish king. This was for
his reputed contributions and involvement in the cultivation and development of indigo
and cotton, crops which were then being promoted by the regime. In 1794 the exemption
from the tribute was extended via another royal favor to Tiangco's sons and male
descendants on condition that they continue to engage in their father's efforts in the
promotion of indigo and cotton. At this point Manila sent an inquiry to Madrid, seeking
clarification on a technical matter: whether the exemption from the tribute for the
children also extended to their exemption from the polos.
Accompanying the inquiry were the endorsements formulated on the question in
Manila. The fiscal had ascertained that Tiangco had seven sons; two were married. He
believed that the grant of exemption was an excessive favor, because the Tiangco family
was large. He also asked that the original grant of exemption to Tiangco be suspended.
Tiangco, he said, was not an agriculturist. Nor was he a real promoter of indigo. He was
actually a mere trader who made profits by making advances against the crop to the real
indigo growers.
The governorgeneral's legal adviser held the same views. He affirmed that the grant
of exemption to Tiangco was fraudulent in the first place, since he was not a cultivator,
and had concealed the fact. The loss to the royal treasury would be serious in view of
Tiangco's many sons. The gobernadorcillo of Tambobong had also certified that three of
Tiangco's sons were pursuing careers in letters; they were not engaged in agriculture.
The opinions from Manila were unfavorable to Tiangco in two ways: they held that
exemption from the polos was not covered in the grant of exemption from the tribute,
and they recommended that the original exemption to Tiangco himself be withdrawn.
Still more complex were two cases involving Sangley and mestizo families named
15
Tuason. They were upper class families. In the early 1770s the governorgeneral had
appealed to the guild of mestizos in the province of Tondo for contributions, in view of
the straitened finances of the regime. The task of leading the fundraising fell upon the
mestizo Antonio Tuason of Binondo. He was a pillar of the community. He had already
attained the high rank of colonel of the urban militia infantry regiment in Manila. He
called upon the mestizos of the sixteen pueblos of Tondo. He started off by making a
generous personal donation of 1,000 pesos; his wife Justa Leonor contributed 200 pesos;
Tuason then gave eighty pesos more in the name of his children. The fund campaign was
successful.
Tuason's record of generosity to the regime under which his family had prospered
was exemplary. By 1773 he had contributed a total of 8,119 pesos on different occasions.
In acknowledgment of Tuason's constant loyalty and support, the governorgeneral Anda
had recommended to the Spanish king that Tuason, his children, wife, and parents be
exempted from the tribute. Beyond this ordinary grace and favor, Anda further
recommended that Tuason, his sons, and grandsons be vested the Fucro militar (an
ancient set of rights or exemptions enjoyed by feudal knights). The Spanish king
approved only the exemption from the tribute.
The Tuasons must have steadily risen in caste. The next case involved the purchase
via public auction of one of the seats on the council of the Ayuntamiento de Manila.
This requires a brief explanation. The sale of public offices in the colonial governments,
including judicial magistracies, was a rich and customary source of revenue for the
Spanish king. The theory was that the king owned everything of value in the Indies.
Therefore he could sell them. These sales were authorized and governed by Libro VIII,
Titulo 20 of the Recopilación. The Ayuntamiento was the city corporation, so that in law
it was the city itself. It functioned through its council or cabildo. A member of the
cabildo was called a regidor, and to bid for a regidor's seat was to bid for one of the
most illustrious positions in Spanish Manila.
Each seat was valued intrinsically at between 800 pesos to 1,000 pesos yearly in
terms of income to the holder. This in itself was a piddling sum, not nearly large enough
to cause the scandal that would soon agitate the Spanish community, so that it is clear
that it was the glory and the honor of the position that attracted bidders. Over the period
17751795 the post had been sold in the auctions for 1,500 pesos, the lowest, to 4,747
pesos, the highest. In 1800, when the bidding for the vacant seat was conducted, it was
officially appraised at 4,000 pesos.
The highest bidder was Vicente Dolores Tuason. To qualify in the bidding, Tuason
had exhibited a patent of nobility from the Spanish king to his father, since deceased,
and to his children and descendants. This patent ennobled them and qualified them for
the post of regidor of the council as well as for other posts of honor in the royal service.
16
Tuason was, in short, a hidalgo or a noble, of Spain.
The Ayuntamiento de Manila, made up of Spaniards, contested his bid. The cabildo
pointed out to the governorgeneral the grave impropriety and fatal consequences that
would ensue if Tuason, a Sangley mestizo, were to become a regidor of a Spanish city.
Besides the fact that he was a descendant of pure Sangleys, the cabildo stressed, and
despite the favor of noble status granted to his house by the King, Tuason continued to
observe Sangley customs and maintained dealings, friendship, and commerce with the
other Sangleys. The Ayuntamiento foresaw adverse effects on religion, the monarchy,
and on the fatherland.
The highest Spanish bid was 10,255 pesos. Tuason had topped everybody with a bid
of 12,200 pesos. He showed his affluence by paying the full amount to the treasury, plus
the mediaanata and eighteen per cent more to cover the costs of remittance to Spain.
Then he capped it all by making still another generous donation of 300 pesos.
The Spaniards closed ranks to prevent Tuason's triumph. The incumbent members of
the Ayuntamiento pleaded in a petition that any Spaniard was better than Tuason; they
volunteered jointly to pay the difference between Tuason's bid and the next lower bid as
well as his 300 pesos donation. Thereupon the governorgeneral awarded the post to the
second highest bidder. Tuason did not take this lying down, and appealed the decision to
the Spanish king. The documents do not include the final resolution of this case, but the
officials at court were of the opinion that the king would not lose any money if the
action of the governorgeneral against Tuason were to be confirmed.7
In the following chapters the story of the Filipinos will be the common story of the
natives and of the Chinese mestizos. The Spanish mestizos will make their decisions
around the 1820s after the revolutions in Spain's American colonies lead the Spaniards
in Filipinas to suspect the mestizos of potential sedition. Some fullblooded Spaniards,
born in Filipinas, follow the mestizos during the 1860s.
As for the Chinese mestizo Filipinos, many had become indistinguishable from the
natives by the mideighteenth century. The national hero Jose Rizal had Chinese
forbears. But after four generations the head of the family changed its registration in the
tribute rolls from Chinese mestizo to Indio or native, in Binan, Laguna just after 1800.
The military assessor's endorsement of the death sentence on Rizal in 1896 referred to
him as a mestizo. He replied in writing; he denied he was mestizo; he wrote that he was
a pure Indio, a native. The Rizal family case illustrates the completed identification of
the mestizos with the native Filipinos.8
17
Notes
Chapter 6
SPANIARDS, SANGLEYS, MESTIZOS
The quotations at the beginning are from Libro VI, Titulo 3, Ley 21 of the Recopilación;
Zamora y Coronado, VI, 102103; and Martinet de Zuniga, Estadismo, 1, 364365.
1. Re population numbers: see the Appendix. Re mestizos, 1738: San Antonio, 132.
2. Re Spanish residents in Cebu: in the 1730s, San Antonio, 89; in 1751, Delgado, 60, 62; in the mid
1760s, Le Gentil, 138. Although the prohibition in the Recopilación on Spaniards residing in the native
villages was repealed in 1752, it was still noted in 1768 in Pierre Marie Francois, Vicomte de Pagés, Travels
Round the World (1791), I, 205206. The population numbers are in the Appendix.
3. Re sengli: Schurz, 63, Note. Re the Chinese and wives: "Relation of the Voyage to Luzon," BR, III,
95, 101102; "Relation of the Conquest of the Island of Luzon;" ibid., 167168.
Re the trading ships and goods: "Affairs in the Philippines After the Death of Legazpi," ibid.,
181182; "Letter from Juan Pacheco Maldonado to Felipe II;" ibid., 299.
Re excessive numbers of Chinese, official corruption, need for Chinese, and insurrection of
1603: “Instructions to Gomez Perez Dasmarinas;” ibid., VII, 141172; "The Chinese, and the Parian
at Manila," ibid., 212238; “Letters from Benavides to Felipe III;” ibid., XII, 109; '"The Sangley
Insurrection;' ibid., 142168.
Re licenses after 1603: "Relations with the Chinese; ibid., XIV, 51; "Letter from the Fiscal to
Felipe III," ibid., 150; "Letters from Juan Cerezo de Salamanca to Felipe IV," ibid., XXIV, 310;
"Letters from Governor Hurtado de Corcuera," ibid., XXVI, 140143. Re 1639 revolt "Events in the
Filipinas Islands, 16391640," ibid., XXDC, 201207; "Relation of the Insurrection of the Chinese,"
ibid., 208258. Re Manila Spaniards' justification: "Events in Manila, 16621663," ibid., XXXVI,
257260.
4. Re Chinese and land: "Report of Conditions in the Philippines," ibid., X, 88.
5. Re 1709 expulsion: "Events of 17011715;' ibid., XLIV, 146. Martinet de Zuniga, Historical View,
173174.
Re Arandia project of 1755: Concepción, XIII, 356361; Ferrando and Fonseca, N, 587588;
AGI, Filipinas, 158 has a comprehensive account.
Re 1762 revolt and consequences: "Anda and the English Invasion, 17621764," BR, XLIX, 147
149; "Synopsis of Letter from Anda to Carlos III," ibid., 262264.
Re Chinese and agriculture in 1768: De Pagés, 228229. Re Chinese and cultivation in early
1820s: Piddington, ibid., LI, 137.
Re 18431851: Buzeta and Bravo, I, 181184; Montero y Vidal, III, 150152, 154, 160161.
6. Re 1738 history on mestizos: San Antonio, 132 et passim; “General History of the Discalced
Religious of St. Augustine,” BR, XXI, 313. See Appendix for number of mestizos since 1760.
7. Re cases of Sangley and mestizos: AGI, Filipinas, 874, 374; and AGI, Nueva Espana, 137.
8. Re Rizal family registered as native: Austin Craig, Lineage, Life, and Labors of José Rizal (1913), 54.
Re Rizal's denial that he was a mestizo: José Barón Fernández, José Rizal (1980), 357. The endorsement is
reproduced in Rafael Palma, Biografia de Rizal (1949), 320322.
18

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The Roots of the Filipino Nation By Onofre D. Corpus ©1989.

As time passed, other groups came to be registered in the tributary population

The conventional Spanish population estimates were basically approximations

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