The Indolence of the Filipino

The facility with which individual liberty is curtailed, that continual
alarm of all from the knowledge that they are liable to secret report,
a governmental ukase, and to the accusation of rebel or suspect,
an accusation which, to be effective, does not need proof or the
production of the accuser. With that lack of confidence in the future,
that uncertainty of reaping the reward of labor, as in a city stricken
with the plague, everybody yields to fate, shuts himself in his house
or goes about amusing himself in the attempt to spend the few days
that remain to him in the least disagreeable way possible.

The apathy of the government itself toward everything in commerce
and agriculture contributes not a little to foster indolence. There
is no encouragement, at all for the manufacturer or for the farmer;
the government furnishes no aid either when poor crop comes, when
the locusts (23) sweep over the fields, or when a cyclone destroys
in its passage the wealth of the soil; nor does it take any trouble
to seek a market for the products of its colonies. Why should it do
so when these same products are burdened with taxes and imposts and
have not free entry into the ports, of the mother country, nor is
their consumption there encouraged? While we see all the walls of
London covered with advertisements of the products of its colonies,
while the English make heroic efforts to substitute Ceylon for Chinese
tea, beginning with the sacrifice of their taste and their stomach,
in Spain, with the exception of tobacco, nothing from the Philippines
is known: neither its sugar, coffee, hemp, fine cloths, nor its Ilocano
blankets. The name of Manila is known only from those cloths of China
or Indo-China which at one time reached Spain by way of Manila, heavy
silk shawls, fantastically but coarsely embroidered, which no one has
thought of imitating in Manila, since they are so easily made; but the
government has other cares, and the Filipinos do not know that such
objects are more highly esteemed in the Peninsula than their delicate
pina, embroideries and their very fine jusi fabrics. Thus disappeared
our trade in indigo, thanks to the trickery of the Chinese, which
the government could not guard against, occupied as it was with other
thoughts; thus die now the other industries; the fine manufactures of
the Visayas are gradually disappearing from trade and even from use;
the people, continually getting poorer, cannot afford the costly cloths
and have to be content with calico or the imitations of the Germans,
who produce imitations even of the work of our silversmiths.

The fact that the best plantations, the best tracts of land in some
provinces, those that from their easy access are more profitable
than others, are in the hands of the religious corporations, whose
desideratum is ignorance and a condition of semi-starvation for the
native, so that they may continue to govern him and make themselves
necessary to his wretched existence, is one of the reasons why many
towns do not progress in spite of the efforts of their inhabitants. We
will be met with the objections, as an argument on the other side,
that the towns which belong to the friars are comparatively richer
than those which do not belong to them. They surely are! Just as their
brethren in Europe, in founding their convents, knew how to select
the best valleys, the best uplands for the cultivation of the vine or
the production of beer, so also the Philippine monks (25) have known
how to select the best towns, the beautiful plains, the well-watered
fields, to make of them rich plantations. For some time the friars
have deceived many by making them believe that if these plantations
were prospering, it was because they were under their care, and the
indolence of the native was thus emphasized; but they forget that in
same provinces where they have not been able for some reason to get
possession of the best tracts of land, their plantations, like Baurand
and Liang, are inferior to Taal, Balayan and Lipa, regions cultivated
entirely by the natives without any monkish interference whatsoever.

Add to this lack of material inducement the absentee of moral stimulus,
and you will see how he who is not indolent in that country must
needs be a madman or at least a fool. What future awaits him who
distinguishes himself, him who studies, who rises above the crowd? At
the cost of study and sacrifice a young man becomes a great chemist,
and after a long course of training, wherein neither the government
nor anybody has given him the least help, he concludes his long
stay in the University. A competitive examination is held to fill
a certain position. The young man wins this through knowledge and
perseverance, and after he has won it, it is abolished, because
……… we do not care to give the reason, but when a municipal
laboratory is closed in order to abolish the position of director,
who got his place by competitive examination, while other officers,
such as the press censor, are preserved, it is because the belief
exists that the light of progress may injure the people more than all
the adulterated foods (26). In the same way, another young man won a
prize in a literary competition, and as long as his origin was unknown
his work was discussed, the newspapers praised it and it was regarded
as a masterpiece, but the sealed envelopes were opened, the winner
proved to be a native, while among the losers there were Peninsulars;
then all the newspapers hastened to extol the losers! Not one word
from the government, nor from anybody, to encourage the native who
with so much affection was cultivating the language and letters of
the mother country! (27)

Finally, passing over many other more or less insignificant reasons,
the enumeration of which would be interminable, let us close this
dreary list with the principal and most terrible of all: the education
of the native.