Phelan Political Hispanization PDF

Chapter 1 x 120 Land, Folitics, and Society' latifundia would have diminished this abuse. Furthermore, Spanish landlords, if only for reasons of self- interest, would have protected their peons against excessive ecclesiastical exploitation.42 The ab- sence of Spanish landlords left the Filipinos v...

Chapter 1 x 120 Land, Folitics, and Society' latifundia would have diminished this abuse. Furthermore, Spanish landlords, if only for reasons of self- interest, would have protected their peons against excessive ecclesiastical exploitation.42 The ab- sence of Spanish landlords left the Filipinos virtually defenseless against the exactions of the clergy, for the native magistrates lacked the effective power to oppose the Church's demands. In Mexico, on the other hand, latifundia of two varieties came to prevail. In the south, with its dense Indian population, Spanish landowning tended to be of smaller units than the extensive estates carved out of the northern country of the Chichimecas, where the Indian population was relatively sparse.43 Although much of the communal property of the Indians survived intact, Spanish lati- fundia became increasingly predominant. The large-scale intrusion of Spaniards and mestizos into Indian Mexico weakened but did. not destroy the leadership role of the native magistracy. Local ad- ministration continued to be in the hands of the caciques, but their capacity to provide creative leadership was enfeebled. The role of the caciques as the intermediaries between the two races was gradually reduced in scopé, since debt peons were under the direct control of the manager of the hacienda. Deprived of many sources of graft and exploitation, the wealth of the cacique class diminished. Although the Indian masses received some protection against the dual exploitation of their own chieftains and of the clergy, their lot as debt peons was scarcely enviable. In the Philippines the class structure in native society remained more cohesive than in Mexico, for it was solidified by the per- formance of two kinds of services rendered by the principales to the colonial government. The native magistracy acted as inter- mediaries between the material demands of the Spanish regime and the productive capacities of the masses. Secondly the principales were the local, political administrators. Heretofore attention has been concentrated on the economic role of the principales. What now must be explored is their complementary political role. Political Hispanization Spanish legislation regarded the indigenous population of the ein- pire as legal minors whose rights and obligations merited paternal- istic protection from the Crown and its agents. For administrative purposes the natives were treated as a separate commonwealth, la republica de los Indios, with its own code of laws and its own set of magistrates. The segregation of the Indians from the Spanish and mestizo communities gave the Indian commonwealth a kind of eth-. nic-territorial reality. Among the natives there was a substantial amount of self-government. Spanish officialdom determined policy directives, but on the local level natives administered. Wherever the Spaniards colonized, they did not destroy the indigenous upper class. Rather they sought to transform such a group into a native. nobility from whose ranks local magistrates could be recruited, The system of local self-government which the Spaniards intro- duced into the Philippines was largely of Mexican-origin, with sig- nificant regional modifications. One of the most remarkable fea- tures of the whole Hispanization program was the degree to which the Filipinos acculturated to Spanish political usages. Their re- sponse was on the whole enthusiastic, rapid, and in many cases penetrating. 121 122 The Barangay Land, Politics, and Society The Spanish administration transformed the barangay into the smallest unit of local government. In pre- Hispanic times these kin- ship units, which were the only political entities, varied from thirty to one hundred families. In the interests of administrative efficiency the Spaniards sought to standardize the size of the barangay at a figure between forty-five and fifty families. Of the 6,000 barangays- existing in 1768 the average size probably came closer to thirty families. The actual number of people in a barangay was apt to vary considerably. The head of the barangay was originally called a datu, but this title was soon Hispanized to cabeza de barangay,. best translated into English as headsman. As early as 1573 the Augustinian prelates urged Philip II to preserve this group as a privileged class. In 1594 Philip II granted. two concessions to the headsmen of the Philippines, privileges pre- viously granted to the Indian caciques in America. Both the heads- men and their eldest sons were exempt from the paying of the an- nual tribute as well as from participating in compulsory labor projects. They also enjoyed certain honorific tokens of prestige. They enjoyed honors similar to hidalgos of Castile, including the privilege of using the Spanish "don."2 The primary duty of the cabezas was to collect the tribute tax from the members of their barangay. In addition, as we noted in the previous chapter, their responsibilities in connection with the polo and vandala provided them with inviting opportunities for extralegal enrichment and tended to increase their power. No government regulations were successful in rooting out these abuses.3 Two notable features of the postconquest barangay were its stability and its horizontal mobility. It was a hereditary class with succession passing from father to eldest son. In default of heirs, machinery existed for the selection of a new cabeza. Every Filipino. subject of the Crown had to belong to a barangay. He could change his barangay when he moved from one locality to another. A bap- tized person, however, could not move from one locality with re- Political Hispanization ligious instruction to another settlement lacking it, nor could he change barangays within the same community. The post-Hispanic barangay provided for a greater degree of horizontal mobility than did the preconquest institution. Before 1565 the cost of moving from one barangay to another was prohibitive. Not only did such a person have to pay a large fee, but he also had to offer an elaborate fiesta in honor of his former barangay.4 During the reign of Charles III (1759-88) enlightened despo- tism was in vogue among the ruling circles in Spain. One of the political aims of this movement was to create a more rational, efficient, and uniform system of imperial administration. The monarch's energetic bureaucrats were also motivated by the practi- cal incentive to increase the royal revenues, since the expenses feor imperial defense were steadily mounting. This fiscal consideration prompted an abortive attempt to abolish the barangay itself. A proposal was made to replace the headsmen, in their position as tribute collectors, with the elected magistrates of the villages, the gobernadorcillos. To encourage efficient tax collecting the goberna- dorcillos were to receive one-half per cent of the tribute collected. The cabezas were to be deprived of their cherished privilege of tribute exemption. Thus it was hoped to add 11,250 pesos to the royal revenue.5 These changes proposed by Governor Raón were never en- forced. In 1786 the barangay was modified and given the form it re- tained until the end of the Spanish regime." This legislation was a less drastic reform than one contemplated by Governor Raón. The cabezas retained their basic function as tribute collectors. The regu- lations abolished hereditary succession in favor of the election of cabezas for a minimum term of three years by the leading members of the community. During his term of office the elective headsmen men enjoyed all the privileges that the formerly hereditary cabezas once enjoyed, i.e., exemption from the tribute and forced labor serv- ices. If he served for a period of more than ten years, he retained these privileges for life. 124 Land, Politics, and Society Village Government The barangay was the smallest administrative unit. But there were also other units of local government, the most important being the pueblo de Indios. The latter was the forerunner of the modern municipio or township. A pueblo de Indios in the seventeenth century consisted of a principal settlement, the cabecera, where the main parish church was located. Attached to the pueblo was a whole series of outlying clusters of population, the visitas or barrios, serviced by an itinerant priest from the cabecera, in addition to vari- ous sitios (less than ten families). Every pueblo, which was an ex- tensive territorial unit, was a collection of barangays. There might be more than one barangay in the cabecera if the population war- ranted it, but in the visitas-barrios there was generally only one barangay. Various sitios would have to be combined to form one barangay. The evolution of Philippine settlement patterns and ad- ministrative terminology may be clarified by the following chart.7 PRE- CONQUEST I) (no term) CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH Sitio (hamlet) EARLY SPANISH LATE SPANISH Rancheria Sitio 2) Barangay Visita Barrio Barrio (village) Barangay Barangay 3) Cabecera Población 4) Pueblo Municipio 5) Cuidad Cuidad 6) Alcaldia mayor Provincia Corregimiento Población (town) Municipality (township) City Province The chief magistrate of the pueblo was called the gobernador- cillo, meaning petty governor in Spanish. In the early seventeenth century all adult males nominated three candidates for the post, and a representative of the Crown selected one nominee who served for a term of one year." This system proved unworkable, causing many disputed elections. The Filipinos evidently took their local politics seriously. Some politicans vigorously pushed their candidancy for the office of gobernadorcillo to the point of holding "political rallies." Political Hispanization 125 Support was wooed by organized fiestas in which entertainment and rice wine were supplied by aspirants to office. These "rallies" were never held in the cabecera villages themselves lest the clergy interfere. These facts do suggest that the Filipinos were rapidly responding to some Hispanic political practices, although in a manner that did not always meet with the approval of Spanish bureaucrats. Governor Corcuera and Governor Cruzat in 1642 and 1696 drastically restricted the franchise. The democratic arrangement in which all married males voted was replaced by a more oligarchi- cal franchise. In the presence of the retiring gobernadorcillo and the parish priest the twelve senior cabezas de barangay nominated three candidates at an annual election held between January 1 and Febru- ary 28. The governor in Manila selected one of the three nominees for all communities adjacent to the capital. The alcaldes mayores chose one of the nominees in the outlying provinces.10 Although Spanish officialdom retained the final voice in choosing the go- bernadorcillos, Filipino leadership played a substantial role in this process of selection. Alcaldes mayores were under standing orders not to interfere with the nomination of candidates except under rigorously pre- scribed conditions." That Spanish bureaucrats sometimes did is evident, but it is doubtful if such interventions became wholesale practice.As a deterrent to maladministration and corruption, gobernadorcillos were required to submit to a judicial and public re- view of their conduct in office.12 This review, known as the resi- dencia, was a system initiated in the Indies, where all magistrates were required to undergo it. Its effectiveness is a moot question.13 In the small Philippine communities the residencia was probably even less effective than in the larger administrative units staffed by pro- fessional Spanish bureaucrats. Petty peculations on the part of local magistrates usually went unpunished if these officials had an under- standing with the alcalde of the province. The Filipino upper class, the principales, largely consisted of two groups, namely, the hereditary cabezas and a whole series of 126 Land, Politics, and Society elected officials. Officeholders other than the gobernadorcillo in- cluded his deputy, a constable, an inspector of palm trees, an in- spector of rice fields, and a notary. Filipinos in the service of the Church also belonged to the upper class, in particular, the fiscales (the sacristans) and the cantors of the choir. All these magistrates enjoyed the statutory privileges of the cabezas. In practice there was much overlapping in the political functions of this class. Cabezas were apt to be the magistrates, and the fiscales ordinarily were ex- gobernadorcillos. The principle of rotation in office was observed. Gobernadorcillos could not succeed themselves, but they could be re- elected to office after undergoing the residencia.14 The possession of wealth and the participation in the local administration tended to coincide but perhaps not in all cases. The political authority of the local magistracy was not negligi- ble, although it was limited. The magistrates had to conform, out- wardly at least, to orders from Spanish officialdom. Although policy decisions were not theirs to make, the enforcement of the law in the villages and in the countryside was in their hands. Procrastination and evasion on their part made the local magistrates not insignificant. participants in the administrative chain of command. Nor could they directly oppose the expressed wishes of the priest, who was a "petty viceroy" of the Spanish king in his parish. The clergy could often be appeased by outward observance rather than inner accept- ance. Within these limitations the Filipino magistrates exercised considerable power and prestige over their fellow countrymen, and a whole class of Filipinos acquired substantial political experience on the local level. The growth of the principalia class in the early Spanish period has left a deep imprint on the subsequent political development of the islands. Although the Philippines did not achieve self-govern- ment on the national scale until very recently, the Filipinos had had extensive political experience on the level of local government since the late sixteenth century. New political practices introduced by the Spaniards, such as the principles of hereditary succession, representation, election to office, and rotation in office, were me- Political Hispanization 127 ticulously observed. This system of local administration was oli- garchical rather than democratic. Political office was monopolized by a small group of "bosses" in each community. Venality, wide- spread but petty, flourished. In the Hispanic world this system has come to be known as "caciquism.". Its legacy has proved a major obstacle to the growth of sound democratic institutions in the modern Philippines. At times it looks as if the cacique tradition had been transferred from the village level, where it was confined in Spanish times, to the national level, where it now seems to be flourishing. Some contemporary politi- cians have acted like gobernadorcillos indulging in graft and favorit- ism. In Spanish times graft for the individual magistrate was petty, for an officeholder's authority seldom extended beyond one small village. Now the sphere of peculation has reached out to include the whole nation. It would be unjust not to recognize the solid progress that the Filipino people have made in recent years toward creating stable democratic institutions, an achievement which has been but- tressed by the spread of popular education and economic growth. But candor requires that the obstacles toward the consolidation and expansion of democracy ought not to be glossed aside. One of the major barriers is just this legacy of caciquism. In order to enable the pueblos de Indios to carry out their cor- porate responsibilities, legislation provided that every community establish a treasury called a caja de comunidad. A certain amount of land from the royal domain was assigned to every new pueblo in its corporate capacity. Every Filipino deposited one half bushel of rice in the village treasury at the time he paid his tribute. These funds were supposed to provide an agricultural surplus with which to re- lieve distress in times of famine, to make loans payable at harvest time, to pay the nominal salaries of local officials and to finance public instruction. The supervision of the cajas was entrusted to the officers of the royal treasury, the oficiales reales, who formed an autonomous branch of the imperial bureaucracy. The judicial pro- tection of these funds was the responsibility of the Audiencia.15 Bishop Salazar was one of the first to suggest that the Mexican 128 Land, Politics, and Society system of communal treasuries be extended to the Philippines.16 This institution, however, did not prosper. The Audiencia esti- mated in 1609 that the total value of all the cajas in the islands did not exceed 10,000 bushels of rice.17 No substantial surpluses could be accumulated. The alcaldes mayores repeatedly borrowed from these funds without troubling to repay the loans. The stewards of the cajas were unable to resist the combined pressure of the religious and the gobernadorcillos, both of whom were anxious to spend la- vishly for religious fiestas. This practice, forbidden by royal edict, was widespread. Until 1657 the village treasuries also paid a monthly stipend to polo laborers from a separate fund accumulated from a special assessment. The treasury officials in Manila evidently exercised little effec- tive control over the administration of these communal funds. The cajas served to finance village fiestas, to pay the nominal salaries of local officeholders, and to provide sources of graft for Spanish and native officialdom18 The principal purposes for which the cajas were set up the accumulation of surpluses for emergencies and the financing of a system of primary education-never were fulfilled. Reform legislation issued in 1642, 1696, and 1768 did little to alter the situation.19 The archipelago was divided into twelve provinces called alcaldias mayores. Some of the more extensive provinces were sub- divided into corregimientos. There were eight of these subdivisions. The modern provinces of the Philippines grew out of these seven- teenth-century alcaldias and corregimientos, just as the cabeceras and visitas are the genesis of the contemporary población and barrio. The alcalde mayor or the corregidor was the principal executive, judicial, and military officer in his district, responsible directly to the authorities in Manila, the governor and the Audiencia. The alcaldes were scarcely able to provide for themselves, let alone for their families, on their modest salary of 300 pesos annually. The irresistable temptation was to indulge in a wide variety of pecula- tions, mostly at the expense of the natives. Although these officers were required to submit to the residencia, this device evidently did little to diminish these abuses.20 Political Hispanization i29 The alcaldes and their deputies, the subdelegates, were the intermediaries between the central authorities in gobernadorcillos in the villages. Occupying a middle position in the administrative chain of Manila and the command, their primary responsibility was to enforce locally policy directives issued in Madrid and in Manila, not to formulate policy. The Administration of Justice The Spanish regime provided the Filipinos with an elaborate machinery to enable them to seek redress of their grievances through the courts. A standard practice of the colonial administra- tion throughout the Indies was to recognize the applicability of the customary law of the natives in those cases where it did not violate basic precepts of Spanish-Christian morality. In civil suits among the Filipinos, customary law applied in litigations dealing with pre- Hispanic dependent status, inheritances, and dowries. In 1599 the Audiencia defined as customary law for the whole archipelago Tagalog usages as codified by Friar Juan de Plasencia. In all criminal suits and civil cases not covered by customary law Roman jurisprudence applied1.2 The transition from pagan to Spanish legal procedures was made as smooth as possible. Disputes antedating the conquest were settled on the basis of oral testimony. The Spanish monarchs issued repeated orders that native suits be adjudicated summarily and hence with the least possible expense to the Filipinos. As chief mag- istrates in the pueblos, the gobernadorcillos tried civil cases involving small sums. The alcaldes or their deputies heard appeals on these verdicts. In civil suits involving large sums, all criminal cases, and litigations in which the royal treasury was a party the alcaldes acted as the court of the first instance, with the Audiencia hearing appeals.22 The Council of the Indies in Spain was the highest court of appeal for the colonies, but cases among the Filipinos were sel- dom referred to the Council. Some restrictions had to be placed on the jurisdiction of the Audiencia in cases involving Filipinos. The government sought to discourage the Filipinos from spending their meager resources in 130 Land, Politics, and Society needless litigations which, under the slow-moving Spanish legal machinery, were often interminable. Most observers felt that the Filipinos, like the Indians of Mexico and Peru, were all too prone to spend their time and their money in litigations merely for the sake of being embroiled in a legal controversy. As an appellate court the Audencia reserved the right to refuse to hear cases at its discretion.23 Although the Crown sought to place some curbs on the litigious- ness of the Filipinos, strenuous efforts were made to assist the Filipinos in their quest for justice before the Audiencia. The fiscal of the Audiencia, the Crown attorney, also held the post of pro- tector of the natives and the Chinese. As such he defended them without fee. He was assisted by a solicitor and a staff of interpreters who performed their services gratis. The regular clergy often questioned the desirability of applying Spanish judicial procedures to cases among the Filipinos. Most Spaniards, laymen and ecclesiastics alike, expressed nothing but contempt for the veracity of a Filipino's testimony. They shared the conviction, whether rightly or wrongly, that the capacity of the Filipinos for committing perjury was virtually limitless. What some religious criticized was the policy of the Audiencia of reach- ing decisions on the principle of juxta allegata et probata, without in- quiring into the credibility of the witnesses. According to the religious, the Filipinos often exploited Spanish judicial processes to obtain vengeance in their feuds. Instead of murdering or assaulting his enemies, an accuser brought suit and peresnted false testimony, which usually produced the desired result. The accused languished in prison. The regulars claimed that the paternalistic system pre- vailing in the villages produced fewer miscarriages of justice.24 Suits were settled on the basis of oral testimony, and the veracity of testimony could be checked against other local sources. That the Filipinos sometimes exploited Roman law procedures to their ends is undoubtedly true. They used canon law for this purpose on occasion, as we observed in Chapter V. It should be realized, nevertheless, that the religious were not solely motivated Political Hispanization 131 by a disinterested consideration in their criticism of the introduc- tion of Roman law usages among the Filipinos. They felt that the spread of Roman jurisprudence would tend to bring the Filipinos under the increasing jurisdiction of the civil authorities and thereby might lessen the influence and the power of the clergy.25 The Nonlinguistic Character of Hispanization The native commonwealth in the Philippines was no mere legal or administrative fiction. It had more of a territorial and socioethnic reality in the islands than it ever possessed in Mexico. The vast majority of Filipinos in the provinces seldom saw any Spaniard except the local priest, who usually spoke the local language. The isolation of the Filipinos from Spanish-speaking people provides the basic explanation for the strange fact that after more than three hundred years of Spanish rule less than to per cent of the population spoke Spanish.26 As we already know, the Crown originally encouraged the clergy to preach the Faith in the native languages in order to facilitate the transition from paganism to Christianity. In the seventeenth century, however, royal policy became one of en- couraging the Indians to become bilingual, and in the eighteenth century frantic efforts were made to compel the natives to adopt Spanish. Motivating this gradual shift toward "linguistic im- perialism" was an ethnocentric prejudice of the Spaniards that the native tongues were not sufficiently well developed to transrnit the mysteries of the Catholic creed. was also a genuine fear among the civil authorities that idolatries and superstitions would persi Therest until the natives abandoned the languages of their pagan past.27 Every community was required to set up a primary school with Spanish as the obligatory language of instruction. The monthly salary of one peso paid to school teachers obviously did not pro- vide any economic incentive for Filipinos to enter that perennially underpaid profession.28 Spanish-speaking school teachers were at a premium, and students were scarcer still. Parents showed no en- 132 Land, Politics, and Society thusiasm for sending their children to school, since their labor services could be usefully employed in the rice fields or in domestic chores. Philippine geographical particularism also imposed con- siderable hardships on students, most of whom had to travel long distances daily to attend classes.29 Hence few of these civil- operated primary schools, designed to take the place of the mo- nastic-run schools which had long since decayed, actually func- tioned. Punitive measures in the eighteenth century produced no appreciable change. A royal cedula that no Filipino who did not read, write, and speak Spanish could be elected to public office was unenforceable. The Crown had to retreat behind the face-saving formula that Spanish-speaking Filipinos be "preferred" for public office. Since few Filipinos spoke Spanish, the phrase was meaning- less.30 Bureaucrats during the time of Charles III (1759-88) were apt to accuse the regular clergy of deliberately conspiring to keep the Filipinos in linguistic isolation on the supposition that non- Spanish-speaking Filipinos would be more amenable to ecclesi- astical control.31 The regulars may have been indifferent if not hostile to the spread of Castilian, but they could not have pre- vented the Filipinos from learning that language if certain con- ditions had been present. What the Filipinos lacked was a social and economic incentive to learn Spanish, the kind of incentive with which the American regime provided them to learn English. The Americans quickly recognized the practical necessity of throwing open most of the jobs in the civil service to qualified Filipinos. English was made the sine qua non for obtaining these positions. The creation of an educational system from the primary grades through the uni- versity level, with English as the obligatory language of instruc- tion, spread the new lingua franca within a generation. Given the isolation of the Filipinos from most social contracts with the Spaniards, the slow growth of a Spanish-speaking mestizo class, and the total absence of any socioeconomic incentive, fluency in Spanish was confined ordinarily to Filipinos living in Greater Political Hispanization 133 Manila. But even there Tagalog remained the "language of the hearth." The failure of Spanish to spread among the Filipinos did not prevent a substantial measure of political Hispanization. The ex- planation of this anomaly lies in the character of the political and judicial forms which the Spaniards introduced. This system was a mosaic of preconquest and Hispanic features, with the latter ele- ments tending to predominate. The post-Hispanic barangay, for example, was profoundly Hispanized without losing continuity with its preconquest antecedent. Out of the system of local self- government, in which the principles of hereditary succession, representation, election and rotation in office were meticulously observed, grew modern political caciquism. In the administration of justice pre-Hispanic usages and Roman jurisprudence originally coexisted, but they eventually blended together. Terminological Hispanization was in time followed by a substantial degree of func- tional Hispanization. The enthusiasm with which the Filipinos adapted themselves to Spanish political forms attest to their capacity for creative social adjustment. Their response to political Hispanization was in many respects as positive and as penetrating as their acceptance of certain features of Christianity. The institutions of local self- government established In the islands were substantially similar to those the Spaniards had previously fashioned for Indian Mexico.32 The long-term results in both regions, however, were somewhat dissimilar. As we observed in the last chapter, the Philippine magistrate's remained relatively affluent, largely as a result of their role in organizing the material and human resources of the native population for the benefit of the colonial government. Continued prosperity in addition to the isolation of the Filipinos from the Spanish- mestizo community strengthened the political and societal leadership of the principales. These conditions enabled them to play a creative role as intermediaries between the two cultures. The loss of wealth among the Mexican cacique class caused by the spread of Spanish latifundia and debt peonage weakened the societal role of the caciques as cultural intermediaries. His- panization often took a more direct form, with Indian debt peons coming into close contact with some Spaniards but more especially with mestizos. In some respects the Mexican Indians may have been more completely Hispanized than the Filipinos. The intrusion of mestizos into the Indian countryside, for example, was an effective agent in spreading the Castilian language among the Indians. But this more direct form of Hispanization could produce confusion and demoralization. As is well known, the Indian consumption of pulque increased alarmingly all during the colonial period. Spanish pulque producers may have encouraged this trend in order to expand the market for their product. But the Indians' alcoholism can also be interpreted as a symptom of a state of de- moralization caused by the cultural cross currents in which they lived. In the Philippines, on the other hand, alcoholic consumption declined precipitantly during the seventeenth century. This result occurred in spite of the preconquest tradition of ritual drinking associated with the performance of certain religious observances. As was pointed out in Chapter VI, ceremonial drinking disappeared after the pagan ritual complex was overwhelmed by the elaborate ritual of Spanish Catholicism, in which alcoholic stimulation had no necessary function. The fact that alcoholic consumption during the seventeenth century declined to virtually nothing is indicative of a relative lack of demoralization. 2 While it is a valid generalization to describe Hispanization in the Philippines as indirect rather than direct, some reservations. are in order. Outstanding among them is the case of metropolitan Manila. The large Filipino population in the capital was thrown into frequent contact with the Spanish community. They became ur- banized wage earners who spoke at least a smattering of Spanish and hence were more Hispanized than their cousins in the provinces. Although a small class of mestizos emerged, miscegenation between the Filipinos and the Chinese was much more frequent than be- tween the Filipinos and the Spaniards. The simple fact is that there were far more Chinese in Manila than there were Spaniards. Both the Chinese and the Filipinos were in an inferior social cate- gory to the Spaniards. The Chinese seemed to adapt themselves more easily to the Filipinos' way of life than did the Spaniards, who ordinarily insisted on the prevalence of Spanish cultural standards. Sino-Filipino miscegenation evidently produced far fewer psy- chological and cultural tensions than issued from unions between Spaniards and Filipinos. In conclusion, it seems apparent that the cultural changes intro- duced by the Spanish regime were of a more orderly, a more selec- tive, and a less demoralizing character in the Philippines than in Mexico. In the making of this result three factors seem decisive. The physical survival of the Filipino population was never threatened by any of the changes accompanying the conquest. The Filipinos in the provinces were isolated from most contacts with the Spanish and mestizo population except those provided by the clergy. Thirdly, continued prosperity enabled the principales to act in a creative and selective fashion as the intermediaries betweenthe two cultures. A convincing demonstration of the inward co- hesiveness of native Philippine society can be found in an examina- tion of some of the disruptive pressures aimed at overthrowing this regime.