The Spell of the Hawaiian Islands and the Philippines Part 9

Legaspi brought with him from Mexico four hundred Spanish soldiers.

Later eight hundred more arrived, and civilian Spaniards, both married and single, sailed to the Islands as settlers. In 1591, according to the records of Spanish grants, there were 667,612 natives under Spanish rule, and twenty-seven officials to enforce the laws and preserve order.

It was reported that in a majority of the grants there was peace, justice and religious instruction. There were Augustinian, Dominican and Franciscan friars as well as secular clergy. These men were not only priests but also fighters and organizers, and did fine work for many years, until long-continued possession of power gradually made the orders corrupt and grasping.

Upon their first arrival, the Spaniards found the people established in small villages, or _barangays_, where the chief lived surrounded by his slaves and followers. It was considered wise to continue this system, ruling the villages through the local chieftain, whom the Spaniards called _cabeza de barangay_. Churches were erected, convent houses were built about them, and the natives were urged to gather near by. It was ordered that "elementary schools should be established, in which the Indians will be taught not only Christian doctrine and reading and writing but also arts and trades, so that they may become not only good Christians but also useful citizens."

So at the end of the sixteenth century the Philippines were at peace.

The natives were allowed to move from one town to another, but they were required to obtain permission, in order to prevent them from wandering about without religious instruction. The tendency of the Malays is to separate into small groups, and they have never been dwellers in large towns. The Spanish priests, therefore, found a constant effort necessary to keep them concentrated about the churches "under the bells."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "UNDER THE BELLS."]

The fervour of religious reform which started in Germany was followed by an equal fervour within the Roman Catholic Church. The period of Julius II and Leo X was over; the Council of Trent had met. Ignatius Loyola had seen his visions and sent forth his company, and Spain was full of priests eager to serve G.o.d with the same stern energy which the previous generation had shown in the search for lands and gold and fabulous gems.

No duty was so grave as that of conformity to the Church, no stigma so galling as that of heretic. To convert the heathen was an obligation binding upon all men. All Spanish colonies were missions; the Philippines were always rather a mission than a colony.

Until the revolt of 1896, Spain never found it necessary to hold the Islands by armed force; her dominion there was based rather on her conquest of the minds and souls of men. There had been a few uprisings, however, and early in the eighteenth century a Spanish governor and his son were murdered by a mob. But notwithstanding occasional difficulties, in the main there was peace until the civil service of the Philippines was a.s.similated with that of Spain. Then officials became dependent upon their supporters at home, and were changed with every change of the ministry. Some Spaniard writing at the time said that with the opening of the Suez Ca.n.a.l Spanish office holders descended on the Islands like locusts.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the Spanish army had grown to 17,859 of all ranks, only 3,005 of whom were Spaniards, and there was a constabulary of over 3,000 officers and men, who were almost entirely natives. The rule of Spain was secured by a native army. There could have been no widespread discontent, or that army would not have remained true to its allegiance, especially as its recruits were obtained by conscription.

The chronicles remind us, however, that the Spaniards did not have things all their own way. In the early days, they were at first friendly with the Chinese, and Mexico carried on a flouris.h.i.+ng trade with China by way of Manila until the pirate Li Ma Hong raided the Islands. The Spaniards were on good terms with the j.a.panese until the latter ma.s.sacred the Jesuit friars in j.a.pan. When the Shogun Iyeyasu expelled the priests he sent away even those who were caring for the lepers, and as a final insult, he sent to Manila three junks loaded with lepers, with a letter to the governor general of the Philippines, in which he said that, as the Spanish friars were so anxious to provide for the poor and needy, he sent him a cargo of men who were in truth sore afflicted.

Only the ardent appeals of the friars saved these unfortunates and their contaminated vessels from being sunk in Manila Bay. Finally the governor yielded, and these poor creatures were landed and housed in the leper hospital of San Lazaro, which was then established for their reception and which remains to-day.

The Spanish governors were also hampered by the lack of effective support from the older colony of Mexico, which was so much nearer than the home land that they naturally turned to it for aid. One of them wrote pathetically to the King of Spain:

"And for the future ... will your Majesty ordain that Mexico shall furnish what pertains to its part. For, if I ask for troops, they send me twenty men, who die before they arrive here, and none are born here.

And if I ask for ammunition, they laugh at me and censure me, and say that I ask impossible things. They retain there the freight money and the duties; and if they should send to this state what is yours, your Majesty would have to spend but little from your royal patrimony."

The Portuguese were a source of anxiety to the colonists until Portugal fell into the hands of Spain. The Dutch, too, who were growing powerful in the Far East, even took Formosa, which brought them altogether too near, but they were driven out of that island by the great Chinese pirate Koxinga.[13]

From the time of Legaspi to the end of Spanish rule there were occasional attacks upon the Chinese residing in the archipelago, who were never allowed to live in the Islands without exciting protest and dislike, based partly upon religious, partly upon commercial grounds.

During the last one hundred years of Spanish supremacy, the greatest danger to their power was the presence of the Chinese. Efforts to exclude them were never effective or long enduring, and yet it was felt that the men who came as labourers and traders were the advance guard of an innumerable host. In business the Malay has never been the equal of the shrewd Chinaman, and although the latter might be converted and take a Spanish name, yet it was always gravely suspected that a search would find joss sticks smoldering in front of the tutelary deity of commerce hidden behind the image of the Virgin in his chapel.

So the Chinaman, like the Jew in medieval Europe, carried on his trade in constant danger of robbery and murder. This antipathy did not, however, extend to Filipina women, many of whom married the foreigners.

Among the leaders in the Filipino insurrection against the United States, Aguinaldo, two of his cabinet, nine of his generals, and many of his more important financial agents were of Chinese descent.

In 1762 the English swooped down upon Manila, but they held the capital only two years, for, by the Treaty of Paris, the lands they had taken were returned to Spain. It is said the English conquest, brief as it was, brought good results to the Islands.

Before going on to the struggle against the friars, I wish to quote from my father's letters describing his experiences in the Philippines twenty years before American occupation.

"At Sea, December 2, 1878.

"Yesterday I left Manila, where I have been since the 6th of last month.... Our first days there were spent in firing salutes and exchanging visits, and going through all the forms which are customary when a government vessel comes into a foreign port. Admiral Patterson sent me here to settle a stabbing affray on board the American barque _Masonic_, and that took up my attention at first. In the evenings I went to the opera, and visited the sights of the city. On account of earthquakes, all the buildings are but one story high. The customs, fas.h.i.+ons, etc., are Spanish. Every one was polite and I found it very pleasant; but, as you might expect, after a little while I grew restless. I heard that there was some beautiful scenery in the interior, and I resolved to go on an investigating trip and see it. Our vice-consul, Mr. Yongs, and another gentleman went with me.

"From Manila we went in a boat up a short river, which had its rise in a large lake, about twenty-five miles long, that we crossed in a steamer.

I think I never saw such quant.i.ties of two things as were on that lake--namely, ducks and mosquitoes.

"From the lake we continued our journey in two-horse vehicles, like the _volantes_ of Havana, and in these we went from village to village, on our way to the mountains. We were very well treated. The Spanish authorities at Manila provided us with whatever we required. The villages were cl.u.s.ters of thatched huts around a church, and the religion seemed to be a curious mixture of Roman Catholic Christianity and pagan superst.i.tion, as I concluded from the style of the pictures with which the churches were adorned. These were chiefly representations of h.e.l.l and its torments. Devils, with the traditional tails and horns, and armed with pitchforks, were turning over sinners in lakes of burning brimstone....

"We found the natives very musical; they sang and played on a variety of instruments, and they were rather handsome. The women had, without exception, the longest and most luxuriant hair I ever saw in all my travels. You know it is a rare thing among us for a woman to have hair that sweeps the ground, but here the exception is the other way; nearly every woman I saw had hair between five and six feet in length.

"I was told that back among the mountains there existed tribes whom the Spaniards have never been able to conquer, and no one dares to venture among them, not even the priests. Our road was constantly ascending, and as we advanced toward the interior the scenery became beautiful. Peaks of mountains rose all about us; plains and valleys stretched out, covered with tropical vegetation; picturesque villages, cl.u.s.tering around their churches, were visible here and there; and in the distance were glimpses of the sea, sparkling and bright in the sun.

"I was told of a wonderful ravine among the mountains that was worth seeing and I decided to visit it, especially as it was a favourable time; the river, by which it had to be approached, was then high, and its fifteen cascades, which usually had to be climbed past, dragging the canoe, were reduced to four. I took three natives with me, and we ascended successfully. I have called it a ravine, but a gorge would be a better term, for it is worn directly through the mountain by a large river, and the rock rises up on each side, as sheer and straight as if cut by machinery.

"After I had ascended a certain distance, I stopped for a time to examine all the wild magnificence about me. The rocky wall on each side was so high that when I looked up I could see the stars s.h.i.+ning in that bright noonday, as if it were night. Huge birds came flapping up the gorge far above my head; and yet they were far below the top of the mountain of rock. I do not know how many feet it rose, but I never saw any precipice where the impression of height was so effectually given--it seemed immense.

"Beneath us was the deep, broad stream, looking very dark in the twilight that such a shadow made, and I could not help feeling awestruck. But the opening of the gorge framed as smiling and cheerful a landscape as could possibly be devised, to contrast with the inner gloom. It was a wide, varied and splendid view of the country beyond, sloping to the distant sea, and all of it as aglow with light and colour as sea and land could be, beneath a tropic sun.

"Descending the river on our way out, I had a characteristic adventure, which will make me satisfied for a time. We had pa.s.sed two of the rapids in safety, but as we approached the third, the canoe struck on a rock or something in the current, bow on, and swinging round, half filled with water. The natives in the end of the canoe nearest the rock sprang out and clung to the vines which hung over its sides, but the other man and I went over the fall in the half-swamped canoe, and were wholly at the mercy of the stream, with an unusually good prospect of getting a good deal more of it.

"The fall once pa.s.sed through, the current drove us toward the sh.o.r.e, if that is what you would call a precipice of rock, running straight down far below the surface of the water. I succeeded in grasping the vines and pulling the canoe after me by my feet. The water was quite close by the rock, and the other two men, crawling down to us, hung on with me, and bailed out the boat till it was safely afloat, and then we went down the rest of the way without accident."

Before the middle of the last century, life in the Philippines must have been, for Spaniards and natives alike, one long period of siesta. The sound of the wars and the pa.s.sing of governments and kings in Europe must have seemed to these loiterers in a summer garden like the drone of distant bees. After that period conditions changed rapidly. In 1852, the Jesuits returned to the Philippines; in 1868, the reactionary Queen Isabella II fled from Spain, because of the rise of republicanism; in 1869, the Suez Ca.n.a.l was opened. All these events had their influence, but the return of the Jesuits was of dominating importance.

Throughout the nineteenth century the sole idea of the Tagals was to get rid of the friars, and for several reasons, which I will explain as briefly as possible. The Roman Catholic clergy are divided into regular and secular. Members of the secular clergy are subordinate to the bishops and archbishops, through whom the decrees of the Holy See are promulgated. The regular clergy, monks and friars, are subordinate to provincials elected for comparatively short terms of office by members of their own order. The Jesuits form a group by themselves but belong rather to the regular than the secular.

Over three hundred years after the conversion of the Filipinos, the Spanish monks and friars considered it still unsafe to admit natives into the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. _The secular clergy were mostly natives, the regular clergy were Spaniards._ Naturally this condition of affairs in time produced friction.

To understand the case in regard to the Jesuits, it is necessary to go back nearly a century. In 1767, the King of Spain issued a decree expelling the Jesuits from his possessions. Their property was confiscated, their schools were closed, and they were treated as enemies of the state. They had been among the earliest missionaries in the Philippines, and were probably the wealthiest and most influential of all the clergy there. Their departure left no priests for the richest parishes in the provinces of Cavite and Manila, which had been their sphere of influence. The question at once arose as to who would succeed them, and as it happened, the Archbishop of Manila who had to answer it was a member of the secular clergy, a Spanish priest to be sure, but of liberal tendencies. Consequently, he filled the parishes with native priests, who continued to occupy them until the return of the Jesuits.

Now the parish priest was the most influential man in the community. As native priests used this influence to build up the prestige of the seculars, the ecclesiastical feuds which arose became embittered by racial antagonism.

When a royal order was received permitting the return of the Jesuits it became at once necessary to find places for them in the ecclesiastical government. Spain decided that the parishes of Cavite and Manila should be henceforth filled by members of the order of Recollets, who were to transfer their missions in Mindanao to the Jesuits. The Archbishop protested against this increase in the power of the regular clergy, and the Governor General a.s.sembled his council to act upon the protest. All the members of the council who were born in Spain voted against the Archbishop. All those born in the Philippines voted for him. The regulars gained another victory over the seculars; the native was publicly informed that he was not fit to administer the parishes of his own people, and he saw himself definitely a.s.signed to the position of lay brother or of curate. Whatever threads of attachment there had been between the opposing factions broke on the day of that decision, and every native priest from that moment became a center of disaffection and of the propaganda of hatred of the friars. This was perhaps the real beginning of the movement which continued, now secretly, now openly, until it broke out in actual revolt in 1872. The Spaniards put down this uprising of the Tagalogs with such cruelty that they feared a later retaliation, and sought help from the friars. This the friars gave them, in return for added wealth and power, which was granted, of course, at the expense of the vanquished natives.

Worcester writes in one of his earlier books, "During the years 1890-93, while traveling in the archipelago, I everywhere heard the mutterings that go before a storm. It was the old story: compulsory military service; taxes too heavy to be borne, and imprisonment or deportation with confiscation of property for those who could not pay them; no justice except for those who could afford to buy it; cruel extortion by the friars in the more secluded districts; wives and daughters ruined; the marriage ceremony too costly a luxury for the poor; the dead refused burial without payment of a substantial sum in advance; no opportunity for education; little encouragement for industry and economy, since to acquire wealth meant to become a target for officials and friars alike; these and a hundred other wrongs had goaded the natives and half-castes until they were stung to desperation."

The dissensions in the Philippines which ended in the rebellion of 1896-7 began with disagreements among the Spaniards themselves. A progressive party arose before which the clerical or conservative party slowly but steadily lost ground, and the legislation of modern Spain was by degrees introduced into the Islands. The country was not able to endure the taxation which would have been necessary to raise the revenues to carry out this legislation. Hence laws which were pa.s.sed against the advice of the Spanish clergy in the Philippines were left largely in their hands for execution, not because they were loved or trusted, but because they were the only Spanish functionaries who knew the language and the people and whose residence in the Islands was a permanent one. If the friars had used their power wisely and unselfishly, there would have been no trouble, but they used it too often simply to keep the people down and extort money, for which they gave little return.

By degrees the mestizos took sides. The Chinese mestizos soon grew restive under this priestly government, and aided the progressive Spanish party in Manila. As time pa.s.sed they had it borne in upon them that revolution might pay.

The insurrection of 1896-7 was planned and carried out under the auspices of a society local to the Philippines, called the "Katipunan,"

the full t.i.tle of which may be translated as "Supreme Select a.s.sociation of the Sons of the People." According to Spanish writers on the subject, it was the outgrowth of a series of a.s.sociations of Freemasons formed with the expressed purpose of securing reforms in the government of the Philippines, but whose unexpressed and ultimate object was to obtain the independence of the archipelago. As if to accomplish this purpose, a systematic attack was made on the monastic orders in the Philippines, to undermine their prestige and to destroy their influence upon the great ma.s.s of the population. The honorary president of the Katipunan was Jose Rizal, whose name was used, without his permission, to attract the ma.s.ses to the movement.

Rizal was born in 1861 not far from Manila. He came of intelligent stock. After his early training at the Jesuit school in Manila and the Dominican university, Rizal went to Spain, where he took high honors at the University of Madrid in medicine and philosophy. Post-graduate work in France and Germany followed.

He was an ardent patriot, and in order to awaken his countrymen to the need of reform, although he was a Roman Catholic, he published while in Germany his book called "Noli Me Tangere,"--Touch Me Not--which dealt with the immoral life of the friars. An English translation has been issued with the t.i.tle, "The Social Cancer." The circulation of the book in the Islands was forbidden, but it was read by most of the educated Filipinos. In reading it, one is again and again struck by the author's clear comprehension of the needs and the difficulties of the Filipinos, and the calm, unprejudiced way in which their problems are discussed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOSE RIZAL.]

In 1891, Rizal began the practice of medicine in Hongkong. Meanwhile, the Spanish authorities, in their desire to get him into their power, worked upon his feelings by persecuting his mother. The trick was successful, and he returned to Manila, where he was soon arrested, and banished to the island of Mindanao.

The most powerful leader of the insurrection was Andres Bonifacio, a pa.s.sionate and courageous man of little education. He sent an agent to Dr. Rizal to aid him in escaping from his place of exile and to request him to lead the Katipunan in open revolt. Rizal refused, believing that the Filipinos were not yet ready for independence. Bonifacio resolved to proceed without him.

Bonifacio a.s.sured his audience that when he gave the signal the native troops would join them. It was of great importance to the success of his plan that the army, as in 1872, was engaged in operations against the Moros. There were available in Manila only some three hundred Spanish artillery, detachments amounting to four hundred men, including seamen, and two thousand native soldiers. The plot was discovered, but Bonifacio escaped from Manila, and sent out orders for an uprising in that part of Luzon which had been organized by the Katipunan. Manila was attacked, but the rebels were repulsed. Martial law was proclaimed in eight provinces of Luzon, followed by wholesale executions. Many of those arrested on suspicion "were confined in Fort Santiago, one batch being crowded into a dungeon for which the only ventilation was a grated opening at the top, and one night the sergeant of the guard carelessly spread his sleeping-mat over this, so the next morning some fifty-five asphyxiated corpses were hauled away."

Just before the outbreak, Rizal received permission to join the army in Cuba as surgeon, but on the way there was arrested and brought back to Manila. His fate was now sealed. The trial by court-martial was a farce.

On a December day in 1896 he was led to execution.

Rizal was undoubtedly the n.o.blest and most unselfish of the Filipino leaders, and his execution was not only a crime but a blunder on the part of the Spanish authorities. From his prison he issued an address to the Filipinos remarkable for its moderation and its condemnation of the "savage rebellion," stating that the education of the people must precede any truly beneficial reforms, and urging them to go back to their homes. The Spanish officials deemed this not sufficiently "patriotic" to be published, and sentenced its author to the death of a traitor by shooting in the back. To-day he is the national hero of the Filipinos.