UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Mercurial Masculinities: Indigenous and Chinese Laborers in the Early Colonial Philippines DISSERTATION submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in History by Stefanie Joy Lira Dissertation Committee: Associate Professor Rachel O’Toole, Chair Associate Professor Renée Raphael Professor Jennifer Terry Professor Heidi Tinsman 2020 © 2020 Stefanie Joy Lira DEDICATION I dedicate this work to my inay. To the woman who carried me from our inang bayan, across an ocean, salamat sa lahat. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page NOTES ON TERMINOLOGY AND GLOSSARY iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v VITA vii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION ix INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: The Masculine Facade of Empire: 27 Chinese Merchants, Buyeros, and Neophytes CHAPTER 2: Bread and Wood: Exclusionary “Expertise” 72 in Philippine Provisional Economies CHAPTER 3: Testing their Metal: Gauging Masculinity in the Mines 103 CHAPTER 4: “Inclined to total freedom”: Vagabonds and Gamblers 134 in las calles CHAPTER 5: “Ang aming lupa”: Masculine Strategies of Resistance 175 in the 1745 Agrarian Rebellion CONCLUSION 212 BIBLIOGRAPHY 221 iii NOTES ON TERMINOLOGY & GLOSSARY OF TERMS Throughout the work, I employ multiple terms with political and historical responsibility. First, I only employ the term “Indian” or “indio” as the legal category Spanish officials invoked to categorize indigenous men. I use the terms indigenous and “indigenous Philippine” to describe the peoples of the Philippines as, historically, the Philippine peoples had not yet banded together in an independence movement to claim “Filipino” as their national identity. Where the documents reflect the region of the indigenous actors, I employ their provincial names (ex: Mambulaoan, Silangan, etc.). Like the term “indio,” the treatment of the term “Filipino” in the early colonial period still belonged to Spanish colonial officials. Similarly, I use “sangley” with caution. Like the term “indio,” Spanish officials used the term “sangley” as a legal category. However, when Spanish men often paired “sangley” with racialized terms (ex: “lascivious sangley”), it is difficult to underestimate the racialization of the term over time. Audiencia – Highest tribunal of the Philippines Barangay – Indigenous township Barangueño – Fellow townsperson Cabeza de barangay – Indigenous colonial official of a barangay Cedula – Local law, also crown-authorized identification cards for colonial residents Cortes de madera (shortened: corte) – The lumberyards Datu – The indigenous leader of a barangay, pre-conquest Extramuros – The lands outside of Manila’s city walls Governor General – The governmental executive of the Spanish colonial Philippines Intramuros – The territories within Manila’s city walls Oídor – A judge in the Audiencia Parián – The segregated city for Chinese subjects, in Extramuros Manila Principales – Colonial position title interchangeable with Cabeza de barangay Procurador General – The Attorney General of the Philippines iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The questions and intellectual struggles that form this dissertation emerged from spirited conversations with activists, academics, family, and friends who suffer from the same postcolonial ennui with which I struggle. My work does not scratch the surface of our collective curiosity, nor can my acknowledgements repay the debt I owe to you, my interlocutors and comrades. First, I would like to thank my committee chair, Rachel O’Toole. Since 2012, I have fought tooth and nail with Dr. O’Toole over word combinations, semicolons, the “feel” of sentences, and my own literary coyness. Without her persistent belief in my scholarly work, I would not put pen to paper to articulate and make coherent the rage I know about colonialism and its unending afterlife. I am eternally grateful to her. I want to express my appreciation to my committee members, Dr. Jennifer Terry, Dr. Renée Raphael, and Dr. Heidi Tinsman, whose intellectual contributions strengthened my desire to answer tougher and tougher questions. For Jenny, in particular, I extend my many thanks. It has been a true pleasure learning from a fierce feminist whose has taught me the meaning of feminist praxis. I would like to thank the generous Charles and Ann Quilter and Center for Asian Studies whose grants sent me to many Philippine archives and to The Bancroft Library. To the workers who cared for me while I was abroad – the archivist, Ana Hernández Callejas, who guided me through the Filipinas Collections as well as the ayudantes at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, the security guards and archivists at the National Archives of the Philippines, the knowledgeable ayudantes and archivists at the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City, the Manileño and Sevillano shopkeepers who checked in on me daily, the Manileño tricycle and jeepney drivers who shuttled me from archive to archive – thank you for being so kind to an often frazzled, weary traveler. I want to thank my archive companions, Ros Costelo and Sebastián Amaya Palacios, for afternoons spent over delicious meals. In the process of creating this project, I had the privilege of working through many a knotted idea with truly great minds. To the Doctors Valerie Francisco-Menchavez, Vina Lanzona, Christine Balance, Catherine Ceniza Choy, Matthias Lehmann, and Laura Mitchell, without your patience, your questions, and your many recommendations, I would not have written the intellectually rigorous “Mercurial Masculinities.” I have so appreciated your guidance. To Dr. Sharlene Sayegh who started me on my graduate school journey, I am so grateful for your support. To the fellow graduate students who sat with me during our office hours mulling over inchoate theses and lucky guesses, I thank you. Kat Cosby, Shoshanna Lande, Felipe Ninomiya, Romina Akemi Green, Ali Olomi, Rachael De La Cruz, Elaine Andres, Jessica Pruett, and Erica Cheung, your support, warmth, and kindness changed how I moved through grad school. v I am deeply grateful to my family on both sides of the Pacific. Thank you, Tito Oweng and Tito Rudy for making sure I arrived at the steps of the many Philippine archives dry from the rain and ready to go. And to my mother, Noemi Martinez, who insisted on the same, maraming salamat. I will forever cherish transcribing and translating with you and Ron Elicerio on those Sunday mornings. I hope this labor of love makes you proud. I want to express my gratitude to my kasamas. You showed me, simultaneously, how my work is both important, yet not enough. Without your insistence that I use what I know to serve the community, without your reminders that my work should somehow root itself firmly in the past as well as the present, this project would be deeply lacking and embarrassingly incomplete. Nikole Cababa, Theresa Jaranilla, Xenia Arriola, Diandre Fuentes, Jedi Jimenez, Alex Montances, and Hiyas Saturay, this work is yours, too. For the ones who held me in the many ways I needed as I made this work, I thank you. I thank the workers at Viento y Agua who fed me and brought levity to long writing days. Thank you, Jed Brubaker and Steven Frost, whose advice and letters kept me sane and grounded. To Hilda Franco, Jo Steph Gomez, and Jackie Rodriguez whose deep check-ins have become my medicine, I thank you. And of those who have so kindly cared for me, my deepest gratitude goes to Wily and Sandra Ramirez-Bravo. I simply do not know how I would have fared without your constant love and reassurance. For every party, every message, every strange distraction in the form of YouTube clips, every laugh shared, I offer you my humble thanks. And finally, I express my gratitude to the person in my life who has cared for me throughout this entire process. Thank you to my tireless coffee-runner, wise advisor, my emotional and intellectual foundation, my partner, Sean. In my most challenging moments you, somehow, still made my life full. For that, and for all of it, I am forever grateful. vi VITA Stefanie Joy Lira 2020 Ph.D. in History, University of California at Irvine 2020 Teaching Assistant, Department of History, University of California at Irvine 2019 Gender & Sexuality Studies Instructor, University of California at Irvine 2018 History Instructor, Santa Ana College 2017-18 Graduate Student Researcher, “Engaging Humanities Project: Afterlives of Martial Law,” University of California, Humanities Research Institute and Visual Communication 2016 Graduate Feminist Emphasis, University of California, Irvine 2016 Humanities Out There Program, University of California, Irvine PBS SoCal/ KOCE-TV Archive Intern 2014 M.A. in World History, University of California, Irvine 2010 BA., in History, California State University of Long Beach 2016-18 Teaching Assistant, Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies University of California, Irvine 2015 Teaching Assistant, Department of History, University of California at Irvine FIELD OF STUDY Race and Gender in Latin America and the World vii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Mercurial Masculinities: Indigenous and Chinese Laborers in the Early Colonial Philippines by Stefanie Joy Lira Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Irvine, 2020 Professor Rachel O’Toole, Chair In the Philippines from 1640 to 1750, Spanish authorities feared that they would lose control of the Pacific colony to its multiracial resident populations. Essential to imperial fear was a fundamental misunderstanding of racial and gender dynamics within colonial labor spaces. Imperial officials