THE CHINESE MESTIZO.docx

THE CHINESE MESTIZO

Jose Rizal's Chinese descent came from his maternal grandfather, Manuel de Quintos, a Chinese mestizo who had been a well-known lawyer in Manila. Both Don Lorenzo and his father, Don Cipriano, had been mayors of Bifiang. On the other hand, Jose descended from an industrious and intelligent Chinese merchant, Domingo Lam-co, who married a Chinese mestiza, Ines dela Rosa. From the Parian the family migrated to Biñan and became tenants in the Dominican estate. Lam-co's only son, Francisco who was to be Rizal's great grandfather, was a keen-witted and liberal young man. He became quite well-to-do and popular enough to be appointed municipal captain of Biñan in 1783.

Early in the 15th century, Chinese mestizos were already established in the region, particularly in Luzon. The Chinese had been significantly involved in the economic and social affairs of the Philippines. Direct contact between China and the Philippines existed from at least the Sung Period (960-1279). Through the junk trade several points in the Philippines enjoyed regular commercial and cultural contacts with the Chinese.

The arrivals of the Spanish conquerors in the Philippines in the 1560s meant new opportunities for the Chinese. By 1603, barely 32 years after the founding of Manila as a Spanish settlement, the Chinese population there was estimated at 20,000 in contrast to perhaps 1,000 Spaniards. They were classified separately into four categories by the Spanish government in the Philippines: those who did not pay any tribute (which included Spaniards and Spanish mestizos), indios (Malayan inhabitants of the archipelago who are now called Filipinos), Chinese, and Chinese mestizos. The last three of these groups were considered tribute-paying classes, but the amount of their tribute-payments and the services demanded of them varied. Normally, the indio paid the lowest. The Chinese mestizo paid double the tribute paid by the indio. The maintenance of these categories in orderly fashion was provided by the Spanish legislation. Legal status as Chinese, mestizo, indio by the terms of its legislation, was not ordinarily a matter of personal choice or orientation. Rather, it was the status of the parents, particularly the father, that was the most important. Thus, the son of a Chinese father and an india or mestiza mother was classified as a Chinese mestizo. Subsequent male descendants were inalterably Chinese mestizos. The status of female descendants was determined by their marriages. A mestiza marrying a Chinese or mestizo remained in the mestizo classification, as did her children. But by marrying an indio, she and her children became in that classification. Thus, females of the mestizo group could change status, but males could not. The implications of this system were that so long as legislation remained constant there would always be a sizeable group of people legally classified as mestizos (Wickerberg, 1964, pp. 64-66).

Purely in terms of his ancestry, Rizal might be considered a fifth-generation Chinese mestizo. His paternal ancestor, a Catholic Chinese named Domingo Lam-co, married a Chinese mestiza. Their son and grandson both married Chinese mestizas. This grandson, having achieved wealth and status in his locality, was able to have his family transferred from the mestizo pardon, or tax census register, to that of the indios. Thus, Rizal's father and Rizal himself were considered an indio (Craig, p. 41).

The development of Chinese mestizo in the Philippines can be understood by first considering briefly certain features of the history of the Chinese in the Philippines. When the Spaniards arrived in 1521, the Chinese moved into an important economic position. Chinese merchants carried on a rich trade between Manila and the China coast and distributed the imports from China to the area of Central Luzon, to the immediate north of Manila. The Chinese established themselves at or near Spanish settlements, serving them in various ways: as provisionary of food, as retail traders, and as artisans (Wickerberg, 1964, pp. 3-5).

Binondo was founded as a Chinese town in 1594. A royal order was passed for the expulsion of all Chinese from the Philippines; however, Governor realized that the ay of Manila, the largest Spanish settlement, needed charset in at least a small group of Chinese for its economic services. Therefore, he purchased a tract of land across the river from the walled city and gave it to a group of prominent Chinese merchants and artisans as the basis for a new Chinese settlement. In the beginning, religious and cultural questions were not involved, but the missionary enterprise of Spanish Dominican fathers soon made Binondo a kind of acculturation laboratory where the Dominicans made it a community of married Catholic Chinese. On the other hand, non-Catholics in areas within Binondo were proselytized, baptized, married, and added to the community of married Catholics, reaching five hundred or more in 1600.

The Chinese had founded Binondo on the basis of Dasmarinas' land grant to be tax free and inalienable to non-Chinese and non mestizos. The grant was accompanied by limited self-governing privileges. Thus, during the 17th century, Binondo was intended to be a settlement for Catholic Chinese and their mestizo descendants. However, Indios began to settle in Binondo. The eventual result was the formation of the separate communities, mestizos, and indios within Binondo. Later, when the mestizo population grew and became the leading element in Binondo, they broke away from the Chinese forming their own Gremio de Mestizo de Binondo in 1741. By 1741, the Chinese mestizos had been recognized as a distinct element in Philippine society, sufficiently numerous to be organized and classified separately, and they were bulked in three central Luzon provinces of Tondo, Bulacan, and Pampanga, comprising 60% of the mestizos in the Philippines. The province of Tondo alone accounted for almost 30% of the mestizo population in the Philippines. But away from Central Luzon, there were no large concentrations of mestizos. Some mestizos are in some other parts of Luzon but in the Visayas and Mindanao, very few were accounted for. Indeed, 90% lived in Luzon while the 10% were spread in few spots on the other islands - notably the provinces of Cebu, Iloilo, Samar, and Capiz. By the middle of the 19th century, the position of the Chinese mestizo in Philippine economy and society was firmly established, 1750-1850 which brought some interesting changes in their geographic distribution. Though they were still numerous in Central Luzon they began to be noticed in farther Luzon - Abra, and especially in Nueva Ecija. In the Visayas, the largest group of mestizo before was in Cebu, but afterward there were a number of them in Antique. In Mindanao, they were already noticed in the eastern part of the island (Caraga province) and in Misamis (Wickerberg, 1964).

In terms of economic position, it became stronger than ever. Not only did they have substantial land interests, but they were well on the way to monopolizing internal trading with only the provincial governors as their competitors. Manila's retail commerce was handled exclusively by the Chinese mestizo and the Chinese. They also had the majority of artisan's shops and were active in urban wholesaling. They were even described by Bowring, a noted historian, upon his visit to the Philippines, as being the most industrious, preserving, and economical element in the Philippine population.

It was the mestizos who made Cebu wealthy. From Cebu, the mestizos sent their purchasing agents eastward to Leyte and Samar, southward to Caraga and Misamis, and westward to Negros and Panay to buy up local products for sale to foreign merchants in Manila. They bought up tobacco, sea slugs and mother-of-pearls, cacao, coconut oil, coffee, and wax, among some other precious native products. Mestizos in the other parts in the Visayas had their own ships and had invested in the trade. It was even noted that the mestizo's strength in these engaging economic activities made the Philippines known to some other parts of the world. Products were exported to overseas markets. Philippine products, like the hemp and sugar, had already been exported in quantity while the products of European factory industry, particularly the English textiles, began to find markets in the Philippines.

The rise of the mestizo to economic importance was paralleled by a rise in social prominence. Indeed, the mestizo's wealth and the way they spent it made them, in a sense, the arbiters of fashion in Manila and in the other large settlements. Although they built up their savings, sometimes into real fortunes, the Chinese mestizos were fond of gambling and ostentation, especially in dress. Besides entertaining friends and others with sumptuous feasts, mestizo families often expended great sums of money on feast days. Hence, a great prestige came to be attached to the name mestizo. Indeed, there were some places in Central Luzon where everyone in the region claimed to be mestizo. The best illustration of this kind of mestizo-craze attitude might be found in the character of Capitan Tiago in Rizal's novel. Capitan Tiago is an excellent example of an indio cacique of means who wished to be regarded as a Chinese mestizo and was able to purchase for himself a place in the wealthy and famous Cremio de Mestizos de Binondo (Wickerberg, 1964).

However, not all indios admire the mestizos. Because of this lack of admiration, there were a number of petty disputes between the mestizo and indio gremios and their litigation dragged on over the decades. With the rise of the mestizos to a position of affluence and prestige, their relations with the indios became a matter of increasing concern to the Spaniards. It was from this time - the middle of the 19th century - that we began to find the "divide and rule" theme in Spanish writings.

AGRARIAN RELATION AND THE FRIAR LANDS

It was until the 20th century that monastic haciendas were the dominant form of land tenure in the region surrounding Manila. Throughout most of the 333 years of Spanish colonization in the Philippines, ecclesiastical estates occupied nearly 40% of the surface area in the four Tagalog-speaking provinces, namely, Bulacan, Tondo (now known as Rizal), Cavite, and Laguna de Bay. An understanding of the history of the friar lands within the Tagalog region would help us understand the many revolts and eventually the Philippine Revolution of 1896 that happened in history. Some American officials noted that the estates somehow served as an overriding source of the revolt. According to documents, on the eve of the Philippine Revolution of 1896, four religious orders owned at least 21 haciendas in the provinces surrounding Manila. Seven years later, 1903, the American colonial government, fearful of further outbreaks of agrarian unrest if friar land-ownership continued, bought 17 of these estates for division and sale to the Filipinos while four (4) of them remained. Three decades later they were to become principals in the Sakdal uprising of 1936. Over the next few years, the Church sold the last remaining estates largely to the Philippine government (Roth, 1982). Among the four religious orders, the Dominicans owned ten estates, thus, calling them the largest landlords in the region, followed by the Augustinians with seven, the Order of St. John with the large Hacienda Buenavista in Bulacan and the Recollects, owners of two valuable and intensively cultivated estates in Cavite. The archdiocese of Manila owned the remaining estate - the Hacienda of Dinalupihan in Bataan Province. The haciendas ranged in size from the Augustinians' mini estate of Binagliag (294 hectares) in Angat, Bulacan. There, hacienda boundaries conformed very closely to the municipal boundaries, which had been established as administrative and pastoral units. The close correspondence of town and hacienda seemed to lie in the fact that in Cavite and Laguna all of the haciendas formed a compact and contiguous group. From Muntinlupa in the north and Calamba in the south, Laguna de Bay in the east and Naic in the west, there stretched an unbroken expanse of friar lands (Roth, 1982). Hacienda towns in the Philippines during the 19th century were arranged in the following: they had a municipal center (municipio) with a centrally located plaza where the parish church, a government building, and perhaps a jail usually would be found. The residence of the friar administrators (the casa hacienda) and a granary were the only visible evidences marking the presence of a friar estate. The municipio was the home for the wealthier citizens of the town the traders, artisans, and tenants who leased but did not actually till the land. Outside the municipio were the barrios where the peasants lived near the fields they cultivated as sharecroppers and agricultural laborers.

ORIGIN OF THE ESTATES

The historical beginnings of these estates were traced to the land grants which were made to the early Spanish conquistadores. During the late 16th and early 17th centuries, approximately 120 Spaniards received grants within a 100-kilometers radius of Manila. This land grant consisted of a large unit of land known as a sitio de gagado mayor (equivalent to 1,742 hectares) and several smaller units called caballerias (42.5 hectares) while the larger grants measured two or three sitios and may have included a sitio de gagado menor (774 hectares). The Spanish hacienderos were quick to show their unwillingness and inability to exploit their lands. By 1612 the original land grants were consolidated into 34 estancias (ranches). The Spanish landowners sold their lands to some other Spaniards who in turn mortgaged or donated their estates to the religious orders. Spanish success in owning lands in other parts of the empire poses the question of their failure in the Philippines. The religious orders acquired their estates in a variety of ways. Several of the largest haciendas were donated to the orders by Spaniards seeking spiritual benefit while some lands were purchased directly from their Spanish owners. Filipino donors and sellers also contributed directly to the formation of the religious estates, though to a lesser extent than the Spaniards. Former Filipino chiefs and headmen were invariably the ones who sold or donated the land. Collectively known as principales by the Spaniards, they were converted into village and town by officials of the colonial government.

EARLY PERIOD OF SPANISH COLONIZATION

The Spaniards brought with them to the Philippines their ideas of landownership and their experiences from the new world where they met people of different cultural orientation and confronted new ecological and economic conditions. Thus the late 16th and early 17th centuries was a time of experimentation on the estates. Most of the estates catered is cattle ranching overshadowing rice, sugar, and tropical fruits. The economically sophisticated Jesuits devoted more of their lands to sugar although their operations were small compared to the sugar culture. The transfer of estates from unsuccessful Spanish landowners to the monastic orders was accomplished with relative ease. Their transformation into profitable enterprises was more difficult, however. To make them productive, the religious orders invested thousands of pesos in the improvement of their estates. Dams and irrigation works were built on a large scale and money was advanced to prospective tenants and laborers to entice them onto the estates. In addition, they called upon the help of the colonial government in supplying their labor needs. The institution of exempted labor largely accomplished its main purpose of populating the estates and making them dependable suppliers of agricultural products for the Spaniards in Manila, Biñan, and Santa Rosa. The estates grew and prospered as a result of the liberal policy of exemption, which the government had adopted for them, so they quickly became the Dominican's most profitable properties. The exemption, however, had its negative side, particularly on the side, of the Filipinos. More exemptions meant that more Filipinos were siphoned off from the non-hacienda villages, which then had to fill their labor quotas from diminishing population bases. Consequently, the burden of forced labor grew increasingly heavy on the Filipinos living outside the estates. But because of the inadequacy of government supervision, many hacienderos exceeded their quotas of exemption. Thus, the 17th and 18th centuries were filled with complaints and petitions from Filipinos outside the haciendas who felt they were being discriminated against and who wanted relief from excessive labor obligations. When the agrarian revolt of 1745 broke out, one of the grievances of the rebels was the institution of exempted labor and the abuses that resulted from it. In 1745, five provinces near Manila erupted in an agrarian revolt, which directly expressed Filipino anger with the estates. The basic issues in the revolt were land usurpation by the haciendas and the closing of the haciendas land to common use for pasturage and forage. The flashpoint of the rebellion was a dispute between the Hacienda of Biñan and the neighboring town of Silang, Cavite. It was in 1740 that the Dominicans began formal proceedings to gain control of the land. Three years later a fraudulent survey was conducted, which included the disputed land within the boundaries of the hacienda. The results of the survey were then hastily ratified by the Royal Audencia which had failed to adequately evaluate the facts of the case and overlooked the grossly incorrect units of areal measure used by the surveyors. The errors, which permeated all aspects of the decision, gave the citizens of Silang ample reason to believe that money rather than justice had been the arbiter. Thus, the Dominicans took possession of the land in early 1745 and began to expel the people of Silang and replace them with tenants in Biñan. It also happened to nearby estates, like the town of San Mateo in Tondo and a contiguous Augustinian hacienda, and the Recollects requested that the survey be made of their hacienda in Imus. The revolt of 1745 by a few years became a turning point in the socio-economic history of the friar estates. The Filipinos who reacted against the estates and the system of exemption underscored excesses, which became part of the hacienderos search for land and labor. On the other hand, the attempt to close the haciendas commons showed that new ideas of landownership were in the air and foreshadowed the economic forces