SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY

Colonization of the Philippines

Topic: Important facts during the colonization of the

Philippines.

Concept Digest (Discussion)

Pre-Colonial Period

The quest for a distinct Filipino identity never seems

to perish. There are various analyses, dialogues,
literature, and works of art that always seek to answer the
question: What makes a Filipino?
As a country infused with colonial practices for most of its
recorded history, the Philippines’ pre-colonial past can
oftentimes be viewed with an air of mystery, a long-gone era
where beliefs and traditions are nothing but a distant,
almost unimaginable memory.

While most Filipinos’ way of life at the present time

is largely influenced by the values of our colonial masters,
there are still crucial parts of being Filipino — from how
meals center around eating rice to the value put on females
— that have come from the time before we were in the
shackles of our colonizers.

Here are some surprising facts about pre-colonial

Philippines (900 and 1565), mostly referenced from the book
“Kasaysayan: The Earliest Filipinos” and the essays by
Filipino writers, scholars, and historians accompanying it.

1. Filipino women were on equal footing with men

In most aspects of life, pre-colonial women enjoyed the

same rights, privileges, and opportunities as did men,”
wrote activist nun Mary John Mananzan in her essay “The Pre-
colonial Filipina.” She also recounted how if females were
to marry, they didn’t lose their names, and in fact, among
the Tagalogs, if the woman was especially distinguished (in
class or achievement), the husband takes the name of the
wife. Females were also made to take charge when it comes to
finances and landholdings, and contracts with Chinese
merchants even required to have women’s signatures because
women were proven reliable.

During that time, virginity was also not seen as a

value that should be upheld. In the essay, Mananzan
explained how when the Spaniards came in 1521, they were
appalled by the freedom that women had, a freedom that did
not coincide with their idea of how a woman should behave.
Hence, the Spanish worked to transform Filipinas into how
women were in Iberian society — sheltered and reserved.

2. The earliest coin was made of gold.

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 It’s no surprise that most pre-colonial Filipinos had
no knowledge of money, but instead were trading through
gold. In author Angelita Legarda’s essay “Small Change,” she
noted that early Spanish chroniclers noted that Filipinos
then were already experts at evaluating the quality of gold.

Coin specialists have also found the earliest Filipino

coin, which was “a small gold piece no larger than a pea,
shaped like a rounded cone, with a character stamped in
relief at the base,” and called it ‘piloncito.’ They called
it such because the gold bits looked the same as the sugar
receptacle called ‘pilon.’

Further proof that the gold bits were indeed the coins
used by early Filipinos surfaced when the largest piloncito
was found to weigh 2.65 grams, which is equivalent to one
‘mas,’  the standard weight of gold that was used across
Southeast Asia.

3. Pre-colonial inhabitants were already literate.

In 1663, Spanish missionary Francisco Colin noted that

“the people cling fondly to their own methods of writing and
reading. There is scarcely a man, nor a woman, who does not
know and practice that method, even those who are already
Christian in matters of devotion.”

Those who were living in coastal communities were said

to be the most literate among early Filipinos — the
Ilocanos, the Pangasinense, the Pampangos, the Tagalogs, the
Samar-Leyte groups, the Negrenses, and the Butuanons.

However, as soon as the Spaniards introduced the Roman

alphabet to the early Filipinos, the latter were made to
look inadequate, which helped the Spaniards’ argument that
the Filipinos at that time were not civilized.

Women underwent cranial reformation to be deemed

beautiful.
Cranial reformation, a process by which the skull is made to
be reshaped, was a type of body adornment in pre-colonial
Philippines. Anthropologists during the excavation in Butuan
City in the mid-70s found that the skulls were made to slant
backwards. This then made the chin assume an upward
position, which elevated the stance of early Filipinos.
Cranial reformation was done by wrapping the head of an
infant with a cloth or attaching small wooden boards around
an infant’s head, and then gradually taking these off upon
maturity. The anthropologists at Butuan did not find any of
these for male Filipinos, only with females, which
contributed to their theory that the process was possibly
done for beautification.

4. The earliest form of Philippine literature was the

riddle

In author and professor Damiana Eugenio’s essay,

“Riddles to Tease and Teach,” she asserted that riddles were

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among the first and most common use of words. “Like
proverbs, most are characterized by brevity, wit, and
felicitous phrasing, and as such are effective ways of
transmitting folk wisdom to succeeding generations,” she
wrote.

Eugenio adds that riddles have been found in every

ethnolinguistic group across the Philippines: bugtong in
Tagalog and Pampango, patoto’don in Bikol, burburtia in
Iloko, pabitla in Pangasinan, kabbuni in Ivatan, tigmo in
Cebuano, paktakon in Hiligaynon, titiguhon in Waray, antoka
in Maranao, and tigum-tigum in Tausug.

Nonsense words were also coined just so it can go well

with a particular rhythm. A riddle was found with the title
“Kukurukutong,” but this was only a fictitious name for a
person that was used to rhyme with the sentence “Bumubula’y
walang gatong.”

5. Rice has always been the center of meals.

Another essay by Fernandez, “The Staff of Life,”

underscores the importance of rice for pre-colonial
Filipinos. If people were eating without it, it was just
considered a snack, not a meal. Not only was rice important
in the day-to-day meals of earlier Filipinos, rice was also
used in weddings where couples would exchange balls of rice.
This food staple was also used to express grief as no clean
rice would be eaten for an entire year as a sign of
mourning.

The many words Filipinos used for rice — palay is

unhusked, bigas is husked, kanin is cooked — also mirrored
the significance it had in their way of life.

6. Ancient Filipinos celebrated a woman’s first

menstruation.

The Boxer Codex, a Spanish manuscript detailing the

lives of pre-Spanish Philippines, includes details of how
when a woman got her first menstruation, she underwent a
ceremony known as “dating,” where she was blindfolded and
secluded in a windowless space for four days.

Once her menstrual period was over, she was led to a

stream for a bath but her feet were not allowed to touch the
ground, so she was either carried or made to walk on an
elevated pathway.
When she returned home, oil or musk would be put on her
body, which was then followed by two nights of singing.
During this time, only females were allowed to be around
her. This ceremony also marked the woman as someone who can
now be married.

Colonial period of the Philippines

The Spanish colonial period in the Philippines (1565 to

1898) was the period during which the Philippines were part

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of the Spanish Empire  as the Captaincy General of the
Philippines 1565 to 1898. The islands were part of the
larger Spanish East Indies. Forty-four years after
Ferdinand Magellan discovered the Philippines and died in
the Battle of Mactan in 1521, the Spanish explored and
colonized the islands, starting with the founding of Cebu by
Miguel Lopez de Legazpi in 1565. Manila was made the capital
of the Philippines in 1571. This was the time of the reign
of King Philip II of Spain whose name has remained attached
to the country.

The Spanish colonial period ended with the Philippine

Revolution and Spanish-American war in 1898, which marked
the beginning of the American colonization of the
Philippines.

The Spaniards started to explore the Philippines in the

early 16th century when Ferdinand Magellan led a Spanish
expedition to the Spice Islands and reached Cebu in 1521.
Magellan made a blood compact with the local chieftain of
Cebu, Raja Humabon as a sign of friendship. After Humabon
converted to Catholicism and was baptized as Carlos, he
requested Magellan to subjugate his enemy Lapu-Lapu, the
chief of nearby Mactan Island.

In the ensuing Battle of Mactan, Magellan and other

Spanish soldiers lost their lives, outnumbered by the Mactan
tribesmen. The remaining Spanish forces were later betrayed
by their ally, Humabon, and hastily continued their journey
to the Spice Islands.

This second part of expedition was led by

commander Juan Sebastian Elcano who ultimately completed
the world’s first circumnavigation in 1522.

In 1543, Spanish explorer Ruy Lopez de Villalobos  

arrived at the islands of Leyte and Samar and named
them Las Islas Filipinas in honor of Philip II of Spain, at
the time Prince of Asturias. Philip became King of Spain on
January 16, 1556, when his father, Charles I of Spain (who
also reigned as Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor) abdicated the
Spanish throne. Philip was in Brussels at the time and his
return to Spain was delayed until 1559 because of European
politics and wars in northern Europe.

Shortly after his return to Spain, Philip ordered an

expedition to the Spice Islands, stating that its purpose
was "to discover the islands of the west in order to set up
an outpost in Asia and engage in the spice trade(Williams,
Patrick, 2009).

On the other hand, Colonialism in the Philippines has

allowed the invasion of globalization, free trade and
commercialization in the Philippines, tools by which the
transnational companies used to monopolize the world market.
Globalization is like a cordon that symbolizes a no escape zone
for the Philippines. The Philippines, due to high inflation rates
and its devalued Peso, imports a lot of cheaper products from
China, killing what remains of our local industries. In truth,

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our markets are flooded not only with Chinese products but those
of other foreign countries, under such economic realities.

Every morning, we wake up and do the day’s routine. A

typical Pinoy breakfast consists of hotdogs, bacons,
pasteurized cheese, cereals and beverages, much of these are
foreign products. Most of the Filipinos still use toothpaste
that was introduced by the Americans many decades ago.
Filipinos love to listen to hip-hop songs by foreign rappers
and hate not being in on the latest American hit movie. Yes,
Filipinos are still shadows of their colonial past, a past
that is akin to a leech stuck to the national character.

Though sad but true, human labor is our main export

today. We export our countrymen, families and friends in
exchange for dollar remittances. It was our heroes’ dream to
liberate the Filipinos from any form of foreign slavery, but
today, extreme poverty forces Filipinos to work in foreign
lands and ironically serve the same foreign masters who
oppressed us before.  

During the Spanish and American colonial eras, the

Philippines was politically and economically controlled by
those two countries. The Spaniards labeled the Filipino race
as Indio, to underscore our inferiority.  In a debate on the
Treaty of Paris in 1898, U.S. Senator MacLaurin asserted
that the possible annexation of the Philippines would mean
the “incorporation of a mongrel and semi-barbarous
population into our body politic, which was inferior to,
but akin to the Negro in moral and intellectual
qualities…”.  

To the Americans, we belonged to the lowest class of

civilization simply because we are Filipinos. We admit it or
not, this mentality the Whites taught us is like a scar that
marks our consciousness. Today, most of us still follow the
standards of beauty set by our past oppressors. In fact,
Filipinos patronize whitening products to erase their
natural kayumanggi complexion and “assume” the skin color
of he Anglo-Saxon American.

Recently, Sarangani Congressman and World Boxing Champ

Manny Pacquiao voluntarily deactivated his Twitter account
because of foul comments from English-literate critics who
seemed to forget that English is not our native tongue.
Before the Spaniards and the Americans conquered the
Philippines, our ancestors used the Alibata and their
respective regional dialects to communicate with each other.

Alibata is an ancient Filipino script that is believed to have

originated from the Javanese' old kawi script. It is not a mortal
sin if Manny Pacquiao commits errors in English grammar.
When he becomes inarticulate to his native tongue, like a so
called “Coño”, that is time for us to say boo to Manny.

Religion is probably the most popular vestige of

colonialism that was left by the Spaniards and Americans.
From animism, the Filipinos were drawn to the Christian

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doctrine. Islam, a dominant religion in Mindanao was not
founded by a Filipino but by an Arab named Mohammad. 
Our anitos were replaced by statues with Greek features.
Today, a various sect are sprouting like mushrooms to teach
Western theology.
 
When we go to the movies, we patronize Hollywood films
because our colonial culture has conditioned us to believe
that local productions are inferior in all aspects. All of
these manifestations of colonial culture and colonial
mentality recall the words of Renato Constantino wrote in
one of his books;

 “The Americans established a system of education using

English as a medium of instruction… English opened new
vistas of Western culture to their dazed eyes and enabled
them to write poetry about autumn and winter and snow on
fir trees… But more important because of greater practical
value…their rudimentary command of English enabled Filipino
citizens to import Hollywood movies, to purchase large
quantities of American publications, and to consume a
phenomenal amount of American-made goods”.

        Where Jose Rizal visualized where Filipinos are now

in his “The Philippines a Century Hence”;

        “Then began a new era for the Filipinos; little by

little they lost their old traditions, the mementos of
their past; they gave up their writing, their songs, their
poems, their laws in order to learn by rote mother
doctrines which they did not understand, another morality,
another aesthetics different from those inspired by their
climate and their manner of thinking. Then they declined,
degrading themselves in their own eyes; they became ashamed
of was their own; they began to admire and praise whatever
was foreign and incomprehensible; their spirit was dismayed
and it surrendered.”

        June 12, 1898 was a milestone event that all

Filipinos should commemorate. However, the challenge this
event presents before us every year is to achieve true
independence. This kind of independence does not stop with
the absence of foreign military invasions but starts with
the application of nationalist ideas by all Filipinos.

Post-Colonial Philippines
In the last two decades of Spanish rule in the
Philippines, the colonizers created a countrywide public
sphere dominated by political, administrative, and religious
institutions. They created a "modem", world market-oriented
economy, in conjunction with the economic activities of the
colonial state (Mulder 2000:180). This "modem" creation
should also be viewed against the background of the Spanish
galleon trade between Manila and Acapulco that lasted for
two and a half centuries, from 1565 to 1815, the period in
European history that falls approximately between the naval

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battle of Lepanto and the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at
Waterloo (Legarda 1999:32). Nevertheless, the Philippines
remained an agricultural economy (Mulder 2000:181.
During the American colonial era that effectively was
in place in 1901, the country came to see "modernity" from
the American perspective. The global perspectives this
opened are still with the Filipinos of today. An active
civil society arose in the Philippines, as a result of
economic development and [American] education, well before
it emerged in Indonesia and Thailand (Mulder 2000: 190-1).
However complex and contentious the processes that
animate the culture of the public world in the Philippines,
the overall image it evokes is that of a market, a place to
bargain and to earn a living that is kept at a safe distance
from private concerns (Mulder 2000:190). Elite and masses
live in two separated worlds, like two nations in one state.
In the space between these two, are the civil servants,
small businesspeople, and professionals who comprise the
middle class. In the urban space, the middle class operates
in, everyone minds his own business, pursues her own
interests. Here, society is a market. In the market, only
money counts (Mulder 2000:186-7).
Today's Filipinos come from the various lines of
peoples who inhabited the islands of the archipelago, the
very same peoples who have since 1571 been adapting,
negotiating, resisting or surrendering to the coercion of
two European colonizers, and one Asian imperialist. Again,
by way of Huntington (2001: 109), it seems appropriate here
to recall Dussel who has come to the conclusion that the
"realization of modernity lies a process that will transcend
modernity as such, a trans-modernity, in which both
modernity and its negated alterity or the victims, co-
realize themselves in a process of mutual creative
fertilization."
Per Bronner (1994:301), "Habermas following Talcott Parsons
and Niklas Luhmann, asserts that modernization involves the
generation of systems with increasingly complicated sub-systems
whose reproduction depends upon their capacity to secure
universalistic processes of adaptation against the 'lifeworld'.
If the lifeworld stands distinct from the instrumental logic of
state and economic systems, however, it is not divorced from all
integration mechanisms" Bronner (1994:301) continues. By
translating "latently available structures of rationality" into
social practice, new social movements supplanted the proletarian
"macro-subject" of history. Thus, these new social movements
receive emancipatory definition in terms of their ability to
assail the given systems logic through their attempts to redeem
the solidarity and subjectivity anthropologically embedded in the
lifeworld (Bonner 1984:301).

Interrogating Habermas's position, Bonner (1994:302)

raises the question ofhow well these new movements succeed
inasmuch as they employ in judging the cultural traditions

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and norms influencing their actions with the very concept of
universalism that they oppose. Bonner further asserts that
this is only logical since advanced industrial society, with
its strategically defined economic and state institutions,
provides the material foundations for regenerating the
lifeworld.
Nonetheless, Habermas (1984:342) claims that "only with
the conceptual framework of communicative action can one
gain a perspective from which the process of societal
rationalization appears as contradictory from the start". He
continues to say that “the contradiction arises between a
rationalization of everyday communication that is tied to
the structures of intersubjectivity of the lifeworld, in
which language counts as the genuine and irreplaceable
medium of reaching understanding," and "the growing
complexity of subsystems of purposive-rational action, in
which actions are coordinated through steering media such as
money and power.
All told, no matter what propaganda was rolled out by
whichever colonizer to justify to themselves and to the rest
of their world their forcible occupation of a foreign land,
all of them wanted no more than a colony that they can use
for their respective purposes. In short, the country now
known as the Philippines and its native peoples were birthed
into modernity. As soon as they were delivered into
modernity, the people were raised, and the institutions were
created in correspondence to what the colonizers required or
demanded from the colony, and the colonized population.

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References:

Gregorio, F. (2012). A few thoughts on freedom and colonial

culture. Retrieved from https://nhcp.gov.ph/a-few-
thoughts-on-freedom-and-colonial-culture/

“Kasaysayan: The Earliest Filipinos” by Cecilio G. Salcedo,

Wilfredo P. Ronquillo, Eusebio Z. Dizon, and Fr. Gabriel
S. Casal

Lacson, E. (2004). Text and Transformation: Refiguring

Identity in Postcolonial Philippines. Retrieved from
file:///C:/Users/pauls/Downloads/Documents/Text%20and
%20Transformation_%20Refiguring%20Identity%20in
%20Postcolonial%20Phil.pdf

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