• PSR 29 (1981): 17·23

THE PHILIPPINE PEASANTRY OF THE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD

CAROLYNI.SOBRITCHEA Asian Center, University ofthe Philippines

Until a decade ago, knowledge of the Filipino peasants reacted and were affected in beginnings and development of the Philippine varying degrees to the imposition of a feudal rural sector was imprecise and spotty. mode of production. However, recent interest among local and foreign scholars on local history and the role The proto-peasants of the of agriculture in colonial life has generated pre-colonial period new information which provide a clearer picture of the early development of the In their historical periodisation of the Philippine peasantry. Philippines, both Guerrero (1972) and Constantino (1975) claim that feudalism The Philippine peasantry emerged with the developed on' its widest scale during the institution of a feudal mode of production in Spanish period. They concede, however, that the country. It constitutes the thousands of the genesis of this mode of production may agriculturists who have been dispossessed of be traced to the pre-Hispanic period. As their land throughout the centuries of Guerrero (1975:37) stressed: colonialism and drawn into the market economy as producers of surplus crops. This It is not the Spanish colonialists who first transformation was difficult for these farm laid the foundation of feudalism in the workers. More' than anyone, they were country. The sultanate of Mindanao responsible for sustaining colonial rule but in especially those of Sulu and Maguindanao, preceded the Spanish conquistadores by at exchange for the countless hardships suffered least a· century in ·doing so. These were the under those who took their land from them. first to create a feudal mode of production, producing agricultural surplus to support a This paper shall briefly trace the landed nobility of considerable development during the first two hundred membership, fighters, religious teachers and years of Spanish colonial rule which brought traders. The growth of feudalism under the lasting changes to the property relations and Islamic faith was stimulated by the brisk land tenure system of the rural sector. Any trade in Sulu. study on the farming structure and nature of the agricultural economy during this period While there is hardly any source material on will have to rely heavily on documents and the feudal transformation of the southern records of friar estates. For while many Philippine communities (except for Majul • farming communities remained relatively 1973, on the Islamic Sultanate in the independent, being outside the immediate Philippines) a few historical accounts about control of religious and secular Spanish 'estate the indigenous population in Luzon and the owners until the 18th century, there is not Visayas show how this process could have enough information on these communities to taken place. allow. a more comprehensive comparative study of the different agricultural patterns At the time of conquest, a sizeable portion that obtained in areas immediately exposed to of the native population drew its subsistence colonial rule. Various farming arrangements from agriculture. Rice, sugarcane, as well as a were characteristic of the early period and the wide variety of fruits and rootcrops were • 17 18 PIULlPPINE SOCIOLOGICAL ~ • grown in tile island visited by Magellan's crew tenants to what was then an emerging datu in 1521, (Blair and Robertson 1903·9). class. For. while the datus were originally Almost half a century later, Spanish explorers administrators only of communal lands, there 'found thickly populated communities along is evidence that they were starting to assume the coasts of Manila, thriving on commerce purely political functions. Tributes which and agriculture. Swidden cultivation seemed to formerly pertained to communal funds were be most widespread while permanent wet-rice fmding their way to their private coffers. farming was limited to some coastal and They were starting' to accrue private riverine-oriented settlements in the islands of properties, most important . of which were Panay, Iloilo, Negros and in the provinces of permanent wet-rice fields, and acquire other Pampanga, Pangasinan, Laguna and Batangas. goods of economic and prestige value. This Rice was generally produced for community situation can probably explain the relative consumption although there are indications ease with which the advanced trading that by the mid-Ifith century; Pampanga, communities, . especially Manila, adjusted to Pangasinan and the neighboring locales were the Spanish colonial institution of private land already producing some surplus (Larkin 1972; ownership. Zuniga 1966). In general, however, land in precolonial Pre-hispanic villages were divided' into times, especially areas used for wood and groups of thirty to a hundred families under grazing, was considered a communal.resource the leadership of a headman known as the while fields under permanent cultivation were datu (Blair and Robertson 1903.09). This social probably allocated by the datu in usufruct to unit, known among the Tagalogs as barangay, barangay families according to their need. was essentially a community of freemen Certain elements of Village democracy still (maharlikas) bound together, by kinship ties much in evidence during the contract period, and having under. them two types of balanced the powers of the datus vis-a-vis the dependents known as the aliping namamahay rights and privileges of his dependents. and aliping saguiguilid, The land tenure Sturtevant (1976:23) adds: pattern was such that the former worked in For several reasons, barangay social the farm, giving half of his harvest and labor stratification escaped rigidity. The delicate services to the datu and freeman. He held web, of kinship which bound the . property rights to his house and personal community together blurred any tendencies effects but' not to the land he cultivated since toward caste. Landholding arrangements this belonged to the datu. Hut the latter had differed sufficiently to assure a gradual rise no property right whatsoever; he lived in the and fall of individual fortune's. Complex house of the datu or commoner and marital patterns." together with intricate performed household chores. An isolated but social gradations growing out of them, interesting historical observation also points to alleviated the long-term impact of status. the maharlikas as tenants of the datus: They "paid annually . ~ . a hundred gantas of rice" Colonialism and the growth for the use of the latter's "arable land" (Blair of ~he peasant sector and Robertson 1903-(9). , Spanish colonialism' drew many of the formerly independent and subsistence, farming While it can never be ascertained how settlements into the mainstream of feudalism. widespread this practice was in those days, it Notable among the major changes it brought is likely that there was already, a limited about, and which subsequently paved the way exercise' of private land ownership Whereby for. the growth of the peasantry, were the the aliping namamahay and aliping saquiguilid institution Of private' land ownership, the and probably the maharlikas also, served as exaction of tribute payments, labor services • • TIlE PHILIPPINE PEASANTRY OF TIlE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD 19

and forced sale of crops, and the mortgages from the remaining secular intensification of commercial farming during hacenderos and Filipino farm owners. From the later part of the 18th century. here on, the consolidation and concentration of alienable lands in ecclesiastical hands There were three types of real property continued unabated that by the end of the that developed during the early colonial 19th century they had full control and period. These were crown land, land of private citizen acquired through royal grants or possession of more than 215,000 hectares purchases and ecclesiastical land acquired not (Roth 1977:2) of prime agricultural lands. only through royal grants and sales but also • through donations from Spanish laymen and The Jesuits held most of their estates in "pious" principales (Constantino 1975:67) the province of Tondo (the area that now Spanish laws recognized communal holdings comprises the different towns of Rizal) while and declared the cultivated fields originally the Agustinians had theirs in Tondo also, as held in usufruct by the Filipinos as their well as in Cagayan, Isabela, Nueva Viscaya, private or alienable property. Those not Cavite and Bulacan, The Dominicans held the declared as such or were unoccupied, became estates of Naic, Cavite; in Calamba, Biflan and royal or crown property. However, it is clear Sta, Rosa, Laguna; and in Lomboy, Pandi and that "when lands from settled areas around Orion, Bataan, Meanwhile the Recollects Manila were given out, much of it had to be owned an estate in Imus, Cavite and another taken from the Filipinos already occupying it in Mindoro (Constantino 1975:72). (Roth 1977:40)." This was the first instance of land usurpation and the practice became so It is interesting that while large tracts of Widespread "that by 1723, the judge of the religious lands were presumably acquired court of Compasiciones y Indultos charged through purchases and donations, there is that royal grants had been carried out "with increasing evidence that some were actually little regard for the welfare and interest of the leased or simply borrowed from the Filipinos. Filipinos {Ibid.]," Between 1571-1626, the For example, a sizeable addition to the colonial government awarded at least 200 land Agustinian estate occurred in 1619 when grants to Spanish officials and Filipino several principales donated a portion of their principales in Manila and surrounding areas. communal land. The donation, however, The size of land grants varied; some consisted stipulated that the Agustinians should give the of just a few caballerias (42.5 hectares) or ptincipales "two calves each year" and failure several sitios with a total area of about 2,000 to do so will revert the use of the land to the hectares (Cushner 1976:23). Filipino owners. Hence, although the transaction was called a donation, it was Although the first privately-owned lands actually a lease (Cushner 1976:28). In other were by descendants of the datus and Spanish cases, the early Filipinos probably allowed the • laymen, the attraction of ready cash, friars to occupy and use their communal prospects of commerce in Manila, together lands, "out of respect for the latter" and with the inexperience of the latter in without surrendering their right of ownership agriculture and inability to adjust to the rigors (Ibid.). As time passed, however, legal titles to of the tropical climate, eventually transferred friar estates were made in complete disregard the ownership of these properties to a few of the fact that some of these were simply hacenderos, Then, once the religious orders leased or borrowed from the natives. obtained a revocation of a royal prohibition against owning real property, they, with the A sizeable portion of religious lands indeed exception of the Franciscans, started to came from outright donations. Roth accumulate land property by soliciting (1977 :43) mentions that the largest single death-bed donations, buying and foreclosing Filipino donation was the land which became 20 PHILIPPINE SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW •

the of Orion in Bataan. The others made it easier for them to acquire legal titles came from Spanish donors and formed part of to-the landholding of their dependents. the Hacienda of Buenavista in Bulacan, the Hacienda of Lian in Batangas, the Hacienda of It is evident that at this time the bulk of Imus in Cavite and the Dominican and Jesuit cultivated fields were still in the possession of in Pandi and Lomboy, and- in the Filipinos. The pre-hispanic - land tenure various parts of Tondo, respectively. pattern still prevailed whereby the dependents, who remained as such in view of the' Usurpation of contiguous lands was persistence of debt peonage, cultivated the another method used in the expansion of lands of the principales,and the two shared haciendas. This was usually' carried out the harvest. It must be .noted that the through connivance between the prospective descendants of the datus, once co-opted to the landgrabber and the "underpaid, mercenary colonial political machinery, exercised certain alcaldes mayores, and govemadorcillos" in powers over the native population. They used undertaking fraudulent land surveys and land these powers to acquire the lands of their documentation. This has not yet been covillagers. Some chieftains confiscated the sufficiently documented for Luzon, but in token paid to polo iaborers while others Negros, Bauzon (1974:7). mentions that some lent credit at usurious rates to those who of the cases he came across were "simply could not meet the vandala quotas. In this sensational." One involved. 7,000 hectares, manner, they acquired more dependents to with "indio" residents of an entire barrio on their expanding fields. Although being dispossessed of their ancestral land. , legislations were subsequently passed between 1677 and 1692 banning the whole dependent The principales likewise played a major role system, the practice apparently did not cease in facilitating the entrenchment of feudal at this point, In fact, the sharecropping structures in the country•. While the practices that flourished in later times may be descendants of the datus could have inherited traced to this pre-hispanic' tradition. some parcels of family-owned land, the numerous cases of land transaction they were The' immediate effect of the consolidation involved in during the early 17th century of real property in the 'hands of the indicate that they were selling communal principales on one hand and the religious lands or making donations with or without orders, on the other, was the gradual increase the tacit approval .of their kinsmen or of landless , lessees and sharecroppers. covillagers, However, except for a case that Many descendants of the commoners or . involved the Jesuit purchase of a land in Quiapo maharlikas were dispossessed of their ancestral from local leaders and which aggravated protest lands and therefore, reduced to the status of from the villages (Blair and Robertson farm workers and tenants. , 1903-09) there seems to be no other documents reporting the sale 'of inalienable lands by . During the late 16th. and early 17th principales. It is possible that contrary to the centuries, there was no fixed pattern of estate popular view that the .influence of administration. Some estates were operated by the datus and their families waned as their salaried and unsalaried workers, leased wholly traditional powers disappeared, they, in fact, or in part to some principales or Spanish and continued to exercise control over native Chinese mestizos, while others were worked affairs and properties. This could have kept by entire villages or tenants on a leasehold or their decisions and actions from being sharecropping basis. Salaried labor usually questioned or challenged before the law. consisted of a majordomo (often a Spaniard . Moreover, the principales' familiarity with the or Spanish mestizo), cattle herders or vaqueros administrative and legal machinery could have (almost. invariably Chinese mestizos), estate • 1HE PHILIPPINE PEASANI'RY OF 1HE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD 21 Cooks, servants, valets, horse herders and century undermined the stability of the others. The non-salaried laborers, in turn, were inquilino system and gave way for the debt and landless families who provided Widespread practice of sharecropping. labor services in return for a small plot of land.

As ranching declined in the 17th century, Sources ofstress and peasant reaction giving way for more intensive rice cultivation There were basically two areas of conflict and the limited production of such crops as prevalent during this period. One existed sugar cane and tobacco, wage labor likewise between the estates- and contiguous declined, and many estates turned increasingly settlement, while the other was between estate • to the inquilino system of land tenure. owners and workers. Although some of the Inasmuch as the friars and secular Spanish royal land grants and initial purchases of the were generally absentee landlords, estate religious orders and Spanish laymen covered management was given to an administrator portions of areas used as communal resource who was usually a lay Spanish mestizo or by the early Filipinos, there were many more Filipino lay brother. After every harvest time, villages which remained relatively independent the administrator collected the land rent of and outside estate control. However, as friar the inquilinos, arranged the delivery of the estates expanded, defining the boundaries that products to the local market or to Manila and separated these estates from communal lands remitted the income from both rents and sales became a frequent source of conflict. to the estate owners. In some estates, "Disputes over communal woodcutting and however, these tasks were relegated to trusted grazing areas occured regularly between inquilinos, who, while acting as overlords, villages and estates, with the latter denying to made countless and unreasonable demands the former their traditional communal from farm workers. privileges(Cushner 1976:49)."

The inquilinos paid a fixed rent and the In Bulacan, for instance, the villagers once amount depended on the size and quality of complained that the friars took illegal the land being worked on. In the Tondo possession of their land and to compound this estates, for example, the sizes of tenant plots crime, they even denied the use of rivers for ranged from one or two cabalitas (one-half to fishing and the forests for collecting firewood a hectare) to one quihon (5.8 hectares) and wild fruits. In Cavite and Laguna, the (Cushner 1976: 46-48). In the Hacienda of Dominicans and Tagalogs frequently fought Bifian, the average was one-half quihon. With over border lands. In one incident, the former the expansion of friar estates, the size of claimed that the pasture lands in a nearby farmlands leased to inquilinos also increased mountain was included in their land grant, allowing many of them to sub-lease parcels of while the latter denied this and regularly • their land to sharecroppers or kasamas; This killed the estate cattle grazing there. Land arrangement eventually became very lucrative border conflicts became so acute in these that some inquilinos acquired lands of their provinces that they served as catalysts for the own and engaged in other profitable business agrarian uprising of 1745. ventures. Others stopped becoming farmers and relegated the entirely to their The causes of conflicts between estate sub-tenants. It is interesting that the relative owners and workers were varied. These freedom which the inquilinos achieved by emanated from collection of exhorbitant land sub-leasing their fields provided them a tactical rent and taxes, the deterioration of sharing advantage for leading and organizing peasant agreements, excessive demands for labor protest movements. The subsequent entry of sewices and arbitrary fixing of crop prices. As urban capital in agriculture in the 18th mentioned earlier, the hacienda structure 22 PHILIPPINE SOCIOLOGICAl; REVIEW consisted of three strata: the estate owner, the that of- post-conquest. origin. Spanish leaseholder or inquilino and the colonialism introduced the concept of private tenant-sharecropper. Between the owner and ownership and lands held in' usufruct by the the inquilino, however, was the administrator early Filipinos were recognized as private, who often demanded a share of the produce, alienable property. At the same time, Spanish over and. above the stipulated land rent. Each law recognized the communal holdings' of year at harvest time, the inquilino paid the native' settlements and only those not declared land rent, separated the seed, and divided the as such were relegated as royal or crown remaining crop .equally between the property. How vigorously this was enforced is sharecropper' and 'himself. Since the uncertain but it is likely that royal grants sharecropper was at'the bottom rung of the around Manila involved lands already occupied' .' hierarchy, he suffered most abuses and by Filipinos. demands of the two non-producing sectors above him. Moreover, inasmuch as land rent . The first privately owned lands, in addition was deducted from the total harvest and not to those held by the native Filipinos were, ' merely from the inquilino's share, the therefore, crown lands assigned to Spanish sharecropper in effect paid one-half of the soldiers, administrators, principales and later, rent. This arrangement deteriorated, further in to religious orders. But despite these royal the late l Sth century as commercial farming awards; it is evident that the bulk of intensified and the peasants became most cultivated 'lands still remained in the vulnerable to price fluctuations of farm possession of the Filipinos. By the late 16th products and inputs as well as financial century, the many descendants of the manipulation of traders. principales and recipients of royal grants were selling their lands. Their attraction to ready The peasant's reaction to abuses of early cash, prospects of commerce' in Manila, landowners and the colonial government, together with the inexperience of foreign which on many occasions took side with the landowners in agriculture and their inability to .' latter, ranged from outright passivity and adjust to the rigors of a tropical climate, were acceptance of feudal impositions to sporadic probably the reasons behind this transfer of displays of hostility. There were several property. Meanwhile, the religious' orders who peasant unrests that occurred during the 17th were" more than the other I colonialists, and early 18th centuries. Some were the determined to stay in the country, started direct results of abusive colonial and religious buying, these lands. 'From these initial policies such as the Pampanga revolt .of 1660 purchases, friar property soon expanded to while others, although clearly anti-colonial cover thousands upon thousands of arable also, took on more nativistic arid millenarian ' land some of which were acquired through overtones. However, the revolt of 1745 was a various legal and dubious means: solicitation direct result of the deteriorating agrarian of death-bed donations, usurpation and • condition in the Tagalog provinces. Filipino purchase of contiguous native' lands- and peasants took arms to protest the alleged foreclosure of mortgages. usurpation of their lands by the Jesuits, Dominicans, Agustinians and the Recollects. The early private estates were devoted to cattle raising and agriculture. Some were leased to,Filipino farmers while others were 'Conclusion managed by groups of salaried arid non-salaried workers. However, as, ranching There were two .types of land tenure, that declined in the early' .17th century, the wage coexisted during the early period of Spanish labor system, gave way to leaseholding and rule, the indigenous or pre-colonia! systemand sharecropping. Then as the friar estate I ~ • THE PHILIPPINE PEASANTRY OF THE EARLYCOLONIAL PERIOD 23

expanded, a three-rung structure developed: of their communal lands to aggressive the landowner at the top, the leaseholder or landowning friars. By the 18th century, inquilino at the middle and the tenant conflicts over lands separating the estates from sharecropper at the bottom. Being at the the communal domain of farming villages bottom rung, the sharecropper suffered the became so acute in the provinces surrounding most from the abuses of those above him, Manila. Angered by their repeated failure to although the inquilino was not without his reclaim their ancestral lands, the Filipino own share of difficulties. peasants fmally rose up in arms in i 745.

.. Colonial policies of forced labor and The patterns of landlord-tenant relations tribute payment exacerbated the already which developed at this time practically precarious condition of the early Filipino remained unchanged for the rest of the peasants. Not only did they have to contend colonial and post-colonial period. These took with a meagre income from a deteriorating deep root and forged changes which gave way cropsharing agreement, but watched with for the conditions obtaining today in the mixed feelings of anguish and anger, the loss Philippine countryside.

References New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, p, 23. Bauzon, Leslie 1974 Rural History, Land Tenure and the Guerrero, Amado Negros Hacienda Complex: Some 1972 Philippine Society and Revolution. Quezon Preliminary Notes. PSSC Social Science City: Bandilang Pula Publications, p, 93. Information, January 1974, p, 7. Larkin, John Blair, Emma and J. Robertson 1972 The Pampangans. Quezon City: Phoenix 1903-09 The Philippine Islands: 1493-1803. Press, Inc. pp. 22-25. Oeveland: A.IL Clark, Vol 40. Majul, Cesar S. 1973 Muslims in the Philippines. Quezon City: Constantino, Renato U.P. Press. 1975 The Philippines: A Past Revisited. Quezon City: Tala Publishing Services, p. 37. Roth, Dennis M. 1977 The Friar Estates in the Philippines. Cushner, Nicholas Albuquerque: University of New Mexico 1976 Landed Estates in the Colonial Philippines. Press, p, 40. 24 PHILIPPINE SOCIOLOGICAL REVffiW .

PIDLIPPINE SOCIOLOGICAL A vailable Back Issue REVIEW

BenedictJ. Kerkvliet Differences Among Philippine and Werasit Sittitrai Peasants: A Provincial Sample

M Cristina Blanc Szanton The Uses ofCompadrazgo: Views from a Philippine Town

Leopoldo M Moselina Olongapo's Rest and. Recreation Industry: A Sociological Analysis of Institutionalized Prostitution ­ With Implications for a Grassroots­ Oriented Sociology

Henry J. Travers Axiomatic Theory Construction: Lags and Leaps

Jose[ina Jayme Card, Determinants of Individual Fertility Winifred J. Wood and and Contraceptive Use: A Review and Eduardo B. Jayme Synthesis of the Literature

Volume 27, Number 3 July 1979

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