The Indolence of the Filipino

From his birth until he sinks into his grave, the training of the
native is brutalizing, depressive and antihuman (the word ‘inhuman’
is not sufficiently explanatory: whether or not the Academy admit it,
let it go). There is no doubt that the government, some priests like
the Jesuits and some Dominicans like Padre Benavides, have done a
great deal by founding colleges, schools of primary instruction, and
the like. But this is not enough; their effect is neutralized. They
amount to five or ten years (years of a hundred and fifty days at most)
during which the youth comes in contact with books selected by those
very priests who boldly proclaim that it is an evil for the natives
to know Castilian, that the native should not be separated from his
carabao, that he should not have any further aspirations, and so on;
five to ten years during which the majority of the students have
grasped nothing more than that no one understands what the books
say, not even the professors themselves perhaps; and these five to
ten years have to offset the daily preachment of the whole life,
that preachment which lowers the dignity of man, which by degrees
brutally deprives him of the sentiment of self-esteem, that eternal,
stubborn, constant labor to bow the native’s neck, to make him accept
the yoke, to place him on a level with the beast–a labor aided by
some persons, with or without the ability to write, which if it does
not produce in some individuals the desired effect, in others it has
the opposite effect, like the breaking of a cord that is stretched
too tightly. Thus, while they attempt to make of the native a kind of
animal, vet in exchange they demand of him divine actions. And we say
divine actions, because he must be a god who does not become indolent
in that climate, surrounded by the circumstances mentioned. Deprive a
man, then, of his dignity, and you not only deprive him of his moral
strength but you also make him useless even for those who wish to
make use of him. Every creature has its stimulus, its mainspring:
man’s is his self-esteem. Take it away from him and he is a corpse,
and he who seeks activity in a corpse will encounter only worms.

Thus is explained how the natives of the present time are no longer
the same as those of the time of the discovery, neither morally
nor physically.

The ancient writers, like Chirino, Morga and Colin, take pleasure
in describing them as well-featured, with good aptitudes for any
thing they take up, keen and susceptible and of resolute will,
very clean and neat in their persons and clothing, and of good
mien and bearing. (Morga). Others delight in minute accounts of
their intelligence and pleasant manners, of their aptitude for
music, the drama, dancing and singing; of the facility with which
they learned, not only Spanish but also Latin, which they acquired
almost by themselves (Colin); others, of their exquisite politeness
in their dealings and in their social life; others, like the first
Augustinians, whose accounts Gaspar de San Augustin copies, found
them more gallant and better mannered than the inhabitants of the
Moluccas. “All live off their husbandry,” adds Morga, “their farms,
fisheries and enterprises, for they travel from island to island by
sea and from province to province by land.”

In exchange, the writers of the present time, without being better than
those of former times, neither as men nor as historians, without being
more gallant than Hernan Cortez and Salcedo, nor more prudent than
Legazpi, nor more manly than Morga, nor more studious than Colin and
Gaspar de San Agustin, our contemporary writers, we say, find that the
native is a creature something more than a monkey but much less than
a man, an anthropoid, dull-witted, stupid, timid, dirty, cringing,
grinning, ill-clothed, indolent, lazy, brainless, immoral, etc., etc.

To what is this retrogression due? Is it the delectable civilization,
the religion of salvation of the friars, called of Jesus Christ by
a euphemism, that has produced this miracle, that has atrophied his
brain, paralyzed his heart and made of the man this sort of vicious
animal that the writers depict?

Alas! The whole misfortune of the present Filipinos consists in that
they have become only half-way brutes. The Filipino is convinced that
to get happiness it is necessary for him to lay aside his dignity
as a rational creature, to attend mass, to believe what is told him,
to pay what is demanded of him, to pay and forever to pay; to work,
suffer and be silent, without aspiring to anything, without aspiring to
know or even to understand Spanish, without separating himself from his
carabao, as the priests shamelessly say, without protesting against
any injustice, against any arbitrary action, against an assault,
against an insult; that is, not to have heart, brain or spirit:
a creature with arms and a purse full of gold ………… there’s
the ideal native! Unfortunately, or because the brutalization is not
yet complete and because the nature of man is inherent in his being in
spite of his condition, the native protests; he still has aspirations,
he thinks and strives to rise, and there’s the trouble!

V

In the preceding chapter we set forth the causes that proceed
from the government in fostering and maintaining the evil we are
discussing. Now it falls to us to analyze those that emanate from
the people. Peoples and governments are correlated and complementary:
a fatuous government would be an anomaly among righteous people, just
as a corrupt people cannot exist under just rulers and wise laws. Like
people, like government, we will say in paraphrase of a popular adage.

We can reduce all these causes to two classes: to defects of training
and lack of national sentiment.

Of the influence of climate we spoke at the beginning, so we will
not treat of the effects arising from it.