HISTORY

● Antonio Pigafetta, the Venetian chronicler of Magellan's voyage, witnessed bets being placed on
cockfights when his ship put in at Palawan in July 1521.
● Institutionalized forms of gambling, however, cockpits, card parlours, billiard halls and so forth
followed in the wake of the Spanish occupation.
● Cockfighting as a regular form of gambling is generally considered to have been introduced from
Mexico by officials who initially encouraged the sport "with the purpose of luring back those
indigenous people who had fled to the hills to avoid Spanish dominion.
● Gambling was recognized as a problem from the first days of the Spanish colony.
● Despite being prohibited in 1598 men in Manila were "accustomed to gamble for enormous and
excessive stakes".
● During the 17th and 18th centuries, gambling became widespread among all sectors of society.
● Instead of enforcing the law, provincial and municipal officials were accused of enriching
themselves by selling special dispensatory licences to gamble. "As a result", the villages and
their grain fields are inundated with gambling games of cards, dice and cocks, and many other
kinds.
● Alarmed at the detrimental effects of gambling on both the spiritual and material well-being of
the indigenous population, the colonial government took more rigorous steps to suppress such
activities. Under the Royal Ordinances of 1768, all public houses of play were banned and
indigenous people frequenting such places were subject to 50 lashes at the first offence.
Punitive legislation, however, had little effect on preventing what had become, by the 19th
century, a national passion.

FULL TEXT:

Gambling in the Philippines certainly pre-dated the Spanish conquest. Antonio Pigafetta, the Venetian
chronicler of Magellan's voyage, witnessed bets being placed on cockfights when his ship put in at
Palawan in July 1521. "They have large and very tame cocks", he wrote, "which they do not eat because
of a certain veneration that they have for them. Sometimes they make them fight with one another, and
each one puts up a certain amount on his cock, and the prize goes to him whose cock is the victor".3
Institutionalized forms of gambling, however ? cockpits, card parlours, billiard halls and so forth ?
followed in the wake of the Spanish occupation of much of lowland Luzon and the Visayas. Indeed,
cockfighting as a regular form of gambling is generally considered to have been introduced from Mexico
in the early colonial period by officials who initially encouraged the sport "with the purpose of luring
back the remontados", those indigenous people who had fled to the hills to avoid Spanish dominion.4
Gambling was recognized as a problem from the first days of the Spanish colony. Despite being
prohibited, Antonio de Morga noted how in 1598 men in Manila were "accustomed to gamble for
enormous and excessive stakes". Concern was particularly expressed about the soldiery who were prone
to "squander" their pay in such activities and even to "gamble away or sell their clothes or arms".5
During the 17th and 18th centuries, gambling became widespread among all sectors of society.
Churchmen, in particular, decried its pernicious influence over the indigenous population, blaming
gambling for cursing, violence, poverty, the abandonment of field and family and "the sinful waste of
much time". Instead of enforcing the law, provincial and municipal officials were accused of enriching
themselves by selling special dispensatory licences to gamble. "As a result", commented Fr. Jos? Vila in
1701, "the villages and their grain fields are inundated with gambling games of cards, dice and cocks,
and many other kinds".6 Alarmed at the detrimental effects of gambling on both the spiritual and
material well-being of the indigenous population, the colonial government took more rigorous steps to
suppress such activities. Under the Royal Ordinances of 1768, all public houses of play were banned and
indigenous people frequenting such places were subject to 50 lashes at the first offence.7 Punitive
legislation, however, had little effect on preventing what had become, by the 19th century, a national
passion.

Financial Expediency

If those in authority were antagonistic towards all forms of gambling, why was cock fighting and other
forms of gambling progressively decriminalized during the 19th century and the number of occasions on
which they could be played even increased?

● The answer to this apparent paradox lies in the changed political fortunes of Spain during the
19th century, which made it imperative for colonial authorities in Manila to increase internal
sources of revenue.
● On the one hand, the need for money persuaded the government to open the Philippines to
foreign trade and overseas markets. On the other hand, it drove colonial authorities to increase
revenue from internal sources through state monopolies on tobacco, betel nuts, wine, salt and
other forms of indirect taxation such as licensed gambling.
● "The Government not only sanctioned, but virtually fostered, the gambling of the cockpit". The
principal aim of that policy was to create a colonial administration that was financially self-
supporting.
● One of the ways the colonial treasury raised revenue was by issuing licences to hold fights or run
gambling houses. Cockpits, in particular, proved a lucrative means of making money. Each
entrant to
● All this amounted to a great deal of money that a colonial treasury running a recurring deficit
could ill afford to lose.
● The government, he wrote, was forced to seek "opportune means" of increasing revenue to
meet its financial obligations "without overloading the inhabitants with heavy taxes and other
imposts".
● Rather than expend more resources in a futile attempt to enforce proscriptive legislation,
Spanish authorities progressively decriminalized gambling during the late 18th and 19th
centuries, a policy that was similarly adopted by the U.S. administration after cockfighting was
made illegal by President Aguinaldo during the First Philippine Republic.
● Colonial authorities, first Spanish and then American, were forced to conclude that it was better
to make money from a practice they could not effectively prohibit and, in the process, redefined
the nature of criminality according to the exigencies of financial demands.

SOURCE:
Bankoff, G. (1991). Redefining criminality: Gambling and financial expediency in the colonial Philippines,
1764-1898. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 267-281.