Spanish Conquest

Divide-and-Conquer

The absence of a political unity involving all or the majority of the people of the archipelago allowed the Spanish conquistadores to impose their will on the people step by step even with a few hundreds of colonial troops at the start.

Magellan employed the standard tactic of divide-and-rule when in 1521 he sided with Humabon against Lapu-lapu. He started a pattern of inveigling certain barangays to adopt the Christian faith and then employing them against other barangays which resisted colonial domination.

However, it was Legazpi who in 1565 and thereafter succeeded in hoodwinking a large number of barangay chieftains typified by Sikatuna in quelling recalcitrant barangays with the sword and in establishing under the cross the first colonial settlements in Visayas and subsequently in Luzon.

Feudalism Emerges

The kind of society that developed in more than three centuries of Spanish rule was colonial and feudal. It was a society basically ruled by the landlord class, which included the Spanish colonial officials, the Catholic religious orders and the local puppet chiefs. The masses of the people were kept to the status of serfs and even the freemen became dispossessed.

From Barangays to Encomiendas

It was in 1570 that the Spanish colonialists started to integrate the barangays that they had subjugated into larger administrative and economic units called the encomiendas.

Wide areas of land, the encomiendas were awarded as royal grants to the colonial officials and Catholic religious orders in exchange for their “meritorious services” in the conquest of the native people. The encomienda system of local administration would be phased out in the 17th century when the organization of regular provinces was already possible and after it had served to establish the large-scale private landownership of the colonialists.

Under the guise of looking after the spiritual welfare of the people, the encomenderos collected tribute, enforced corvee labor and conscripted native soldiers. They arbitrarily extended the territorial scope of their royal grants, usurped ownership over the lands previously developed by the people and put more land to cultivation by employing corvee labor. It was convenient for the colonialists to convert into agricultural lands the clearing made from the forests as a result of the timber-cutting necessitated by various construction projects.

Public building, private houses, churches, fortifications, roads, bridges and ships for the galleon trade and for military expeditions were built. These entailed the mass conscription of labor for quarrying, timber-cutting, hauling, lumbering, brickmaking and construction work in nearby or faraway places.

Government Under Spanish Colonialism

Central Government in Manila

The central government was set up in Manila to run the affairs of the colony. Its head was the Spanish governor-general who saw to it that the Filipino people were compelled to pay taxes, render free labor and produce an agricultural surplus sufficient to feed the parasitic colonial officials, friars and soldiery.

On the one hand, the governor-general had the soldiery to enforce the colonial order. On the other, he had the collaboration of the friars to keep the people in spiritual and economic enslavement. He enriched himself fast within his short stay in office by being the chief shipper on the Manila-Acapulco trade galleons and by being the dispenser of shipping permits to merchants.

The Manila-Acapulco trade in certain goods coming from China and other neighboring countries yielded high revenues for the central government and the business-minded religious orders from the late 16th century to the early 19th century.

It eventually declined and was replaced by the more profitable export of sugar, hemp, copra, tobacco, indigo and others on various foreign ships after the first half of the 18th century and all throughout the 19th century. The large-scale cultivation of these export crops was imposed on the toiling masses to provide more profits for Spanish colonialism.

Provincial Governments

At the provincial level was the alcalde-mayor as the colonial chieftain. He exercised both executive and judicial powers, collected tributes from the town and enjoyed the privilege of monopolizing commerce in the province and engaged in usury. He manipulated government funds as well as drew loans from the obras pias, the friars’ chest for “charities,” to engage in nefarious commerce and usury.

Town

At the town level was the gobernadorcillo, the top puppet official formally elected by the principalia. The principalia was composed of the incumbent and past gobernadorcillos and the barrio chieftains called the cabezas de barangay. It essentially reflected the assimilation of the old barangay leadership into the Spanish colonial system. Membership in the principalia was qualified by property, literacy, heredity and, of course, puppetry to the foreign tyrants.

The most important regular duties of the gobernadorcillo and the cabezas de barangay under him were the collection of tribute and the enforcement of corvee labor. Their property was answerable for any deficiency in their performance. However, the gobernadorcillo usually made the cabezas de barangay his scapegoat. To avoid bankruptcy and keep themselves in the good graces of their colonial masters, these puppet officials also made sure that the main burden of colonial oppression was borne by the peasant masses.

Church and State

In the classic fashion of feudalism, the union of church and state suffused the entire colonial structure. All colonial subjects fell under friar control from birth until death.

The pulpit and the confessional box were expertly used for colonial propaganda and espionage, respectively. The catechetical schools were used to poison the minds of the children against their own country. The Royal and Pontifical University of Santo Tomas was established as early as 1611 but its enrolment was limited to Spaniards and creoles until the second half of the 19th century. The colonial bureaucracy did not find any need for natives in the higher professions.

Among the masses, the friars propagated a bigoted culture that was obsessed with novenas, prayerbooks, hagiographies, scapularies, the passion play, the anti-Muslim moro-moro and pompous religious feasts and processions. The friars had burned and destroyed the artifacts of precolonial culture as the handiwork of the devil and assimilated only those things of the indigenous culture which they could use to facilitate colonial and medieval indoctrination.

In the material base as well as in the superstructure, friar control was total and most oppressive in the towns situated in vast landed estates owned by the religious orders. In the colonial center as well as in every province, the friars exercised vast political powers. They supervised such diverse affairs as taxation, census, statistics, primary schools, health, public works and charities. They certified the correctness of residence certificates, the condition of men chosen for military service, the municipal budget, the election of municipal officials and police officers, and the examination of pupils in the parochial schools.

Friars intervened in the election of municipal officials. As a matter of fact, they were so powerful that they could instigate the transfer, suspension or removal from office of colonial officials, from the highest to the lowest, including the governor-general. In line with their feudal interests, they could even murder the governor-general with impunity as they did to Salcedo in 1668 and Bustamante in 1719. As they could be that vicious within their own official ranks, they were more so in witch-hunting and suppressing native rebels whom they condemned as “heretics” and “subversives.”

The People's Resistance

Hundreds of years of sporadic revolts

Throughout the Spanish colonial regime, revolts broke out sporadically all over the archipelago against the tribute, corvee labor, commercial monopolies, excessive land rent, landgrabbing, imposition of the Catholic faith, arbitrary rules and other cruel practices of the colonial rulers, both lay and clerical. There were at least 200 revolts of uneven scope and duration. These grew with cumulative strength to create a great revolutionary tradition among the Filipino people.

The most outstanding revolts in the first century of colonial rule were those led by Sulayman in 1564 and Magat Salamat in 1587-88 in Manila and by Magalat in 1596 in Cagayan. At the beginning of the 17th century, the Igorots in the central highlands of Northern Luzon rebelled against attempts to colonize them and used the favorable terrain of their homeland to maintain their independence. Almost simultaneously in 1621-22, Tamblot in Bohol and Bankaw in Leyte raised the flag of revolt. Revolts also broke out in Nueva Vizcaya and Cagayan in 1621 and 1625-27, respectively.

The most widespread revolts that occurred in the 17th century were those inspired by Sumuroy in the southern provinces and Maniago, Malong and Almazan in the northern provinces of the archipelago. The Sumuroy revolt started in Samar in 1649 and spread northward to Albay and Camarines Sur and southward to Masbate, Cebu, Camiguin, Zamboanga and Northern Mindanao. The parallel revolts of Maniago, Malong and Almazan started in 1660 in Pampanga, Pangasinan and Ilocos, respectively. Malong extended his revolt to Pampanga, Ilocos and Cagayan. A localized revolt also broke out in 1663 under Tapar in Oton, Panay.

Resistance in Mindanao and in the Mountains

All throughout the Spanish colonial rule, the Muslims of Mindanao as well as the mountain people in practically every island, especially the Igorots in Northern Luzon, kept up their resistance. Aside from these consistent anti-colonial fighters, the people of Bohol fought the foreign tyrants for 85 years from 1774 to 1829. They were first led by Dagohoy and subsequently by his successors. At the peak of their strength, they were 20,000 strong and had their own government in their mountain bases.

Despite previous defeats, the people of Pangasinan and the Ilocos provinces repeatedly rose up against the colonial rule. The revolt led by Palaris in 1762-64 spread throughout the large province of Pangasinan and the one led by Diego Silang in 1762-63 (and later by his wife, Gabriela, after his treacherous assassination) spread from the Ilocos to as far as Cagayan Valley northward and Pangasinan southward. These revolts tried to take advantage of the British seizure of Manila and the Spanish defeat in the Seven Years’ War.

Rising Consciousness Against Feudalism

In the 18th century, the anti-colonial revolts of the people increasingly took the character of conscious opposition to feudalism. Previously, the hardships and torment of corvee labor were the frequent causes of revolt. The arbitrary expansion of friar estates through fraudulent surveys and also the arbitrary raising of land rent inflamed the people, especially in Central Luzon and Southern Luzon. Matienza led a revolt outrightly against the agrarian abuses of the Jesuits who had rampantly grabbed land from the people. This revolt spread from Lian and Nasugbu, Batangas to the neighboring provinces of Laguna, Cavite and Rizal.

In other provinces of the archipelago outside of Central Luzon and Southern Luzon, revolt came to be more often sparked by the monopolistic and confiscatory practices of the colonial government towards the end of the 18th century and during the 19th century. In 1807, the Ilocanos revolted against the wine monopoly. Once more they rose up in 1814 in Sarrat, Ilocos Norte and killed several landlords.

Conscript Colonial Armies

In quelling all the revolts precedent to the Philippine Revolution of 1896, the Spanish colonialist conscripted large numbers of peasants to fight their own brothers. Military conscription thus became a major form of oppression as the development of revolts became rapid and widespread.