The Indolence of the Filipino

A very extraordinary thing, and one that shows the facility with
which the natives learned Spanish, is that fifty years before the
arrival of the Spaniards in Luzon, in that very year 1521 when they
first came to the islands, there were already natives of Luzon who
understood Castilian. In the treaties of peace that the survivors
of Magellan’s expedition made with the chief of Paragua, when the
servant-interpreter died they communicated with one another through
a Moro who had been captured in the island of the King of Luzon and
who understood some Spanish. (Martin Mendez, op, cit ) Where did
this extemporaneous interpreter learn Castilian? In the Moluccas? In
Malacca, with the Portuguese? Spaniards did not reach Luzon until 1571.

Legazpi’s expedition met in Butuan various traders of Luzon with
their boats laden with iron, wax cloths, porcelain, etc. (Gaspar de
San Agustin,) plenty of provisions, activity, trade, movement in all
the southern islands. (11)

They arrived at the Island of Cebu, “abounding in provisions, with
mines and washings of gold, and peopled with natives,” as Morga says;
“very populous, and at a port frequented by many ships that came
from the islands and kingdoms near India,” as Colin says; and even
though they were peacefully received discord soon arose. The city was
taken by force and burned. The fire destroyed the food supplies and
naturally famine broke out in that town of a hundred thousand people,
(12) as the historians say, and among the members of the expedition,
but the neighboring islands quickly relieved the need, thanks to the
abundance they enjoyed.

All the histories of those first years, in short, abound in long
accounts about the industry and agriculture of the natives: mines,
gold-washings, looms, farms, barter, naval construction, raising
of poultry and stock, weaving of silk and cotton, distilleries,
manufactures of arms, pearl fisheries, the civet industry, the horn
and hide industry, etc., are things encountered at every step, and,
considering the time and the conditions in the islands, prove that
there was life, there was activity, there was movement.

And if this, which is deduction, does not convince any minds imbued
with unfair prejudices, perhaps of some avail may be the testimony of
the oft-quoted Dr. Morga, who was Lieutenant-Governor of Manila for
seven years and after rendering great service in the Archipelago was
appointed criminal judge of the Audiencia of Mexico and Counsellor
of the Inquisition. His testimony, we say, is highly credible, not
only because all his contemporaries have spoken of him in terms that
border on veneration but also because his work, from which we take
these citations, is written with great circumspection and care, as well
with reference to the authorities in the Philippines as to the errors
they committed. “The natives,” says Morga, in chapter VII, speaking of
the occupations of the Chinese, “are very far from exercising those
trades and have even forgotten much about farming, raising poultry,
stock and cotton, and weaving cloth AS THEY USED TO DO IN THEIR
PAGANISM AND FOR A LONG TIME AFTER THE COUNTRY WAS CONQUERED.” (13)

The whole of chapter VIII of his work deals with this moribund
activity, this much-forgotten industry, and yet in spite of that,
how long is his eighth chapter!

And not only Morga, not only Chirino, Colin, Argensola, Gaspar de San
Agustin and others agree in this matter, but modern travelers, after
two hundred and fifty years, examining the decadence and misery,
assert the same thing. Dr. Hans Meyer, when he saw the unsubdued
tribes cultivating beautiful fields and working energetically, asked
if they would not become indolent when they in turn should accept
Christianity and a paternal government.

Accordingly, the Filipinos, in spite of the climate, in spite of
their few needs (they were less then than now), were not the indolent
creatures of our time, and, as we shall see later on, their ethics
and their mode of life were not what is now complacently attributed
to them.

How then, and in what way, was that active and enterprising infidel
native of ancient times converted into the lazy and indolent Christian,
as our contemporary writer’s say?

We have already spoken of the more or less latent predisposition
which exists in the Philippines toward indolence, and which must
exist everywhere, in the whole world, in all men, because we all
hate work more or less, as it may be more or less hard, more or less
unproductive. The dolce far niente of the Italian, the rascarse la
barriga of the Spaniard, the supreme aspiration of the bourgeois to
live on his income in peace and tranquility, attest this.

What causes operated to awake this terrible predisposition from its
lethargy? How is it that the Filipino people, so fond of its customs
as to border on routine, has given up its ancient habits of work,
of trade, of navigation, etc., even to the extent of completely
forgetting its past?