Ocampo explores how Filipino Americans, while classified as Asian by the U. He suggests that the concept of ethnic and racial identity is a social construct, which means human beings create these identities. The Spanish colonial period of the Philippines began when explorer Ferdinand Magellan came to the islands in and claimed it as a colony for the Spanish Empire. The period lasted until the Philippine Revolution in The U. In , it was recognized by the U. Ocampo noted that when Filipinos immigrated to the U.
You have things like religion, our last names, and everyday words in Tagalog and other Philippine dialects. Socially and geographically isolated communities retained some indigenous traditions while experiencing Spanish colonial culture in varying degrees.
Instead of unifying the diverse local populations under one banner during the almost years of Spanish rule, various groups remained fiercely independent or indifferent to the colonizer; some appropriated and reinterpreted Spanish customs, 2 while others toiled as slaves to the empire.
As they spread throughout the islands, Spanish conquistadors encountered a variety of religions; during the sixteenth century, the areas now referred to as the Luzon and Visayas cluster of islands were home to several belief systems that were chronicled by the Christian friars and missionaries who came into contact with them. Christianity redefined the worldview and relationships of some of the locals, implementing a social structure heavily based on Biblical perspectives and injunctions. By the eighteenth century, indigenous people caught practicing so-called pagan rituals were punished; local histories written on bamboo or other materials were burned, and cultural artifacts were destroyed.
Church edifices dominated the landscape as the symbolic and psychological center of the permanent villages and towns that sprung up around them. Once firmly established, the Catholic Church, through various religious orders with their own agendas, clearly shared power with Spain, and the two jointly administered the colonization of the islands.
However, Spanish Catholic colonial rule was incomplete. Domination of the southern half of the archipelago proved impossible due in large part to the earlier introduction of Islam in approximately Muslim traders traveled in and around the southern islands, and over time, these merchants likely married into wealthy local families, encouraging permanent settlements while spreading Islam throughout the area. By the time of Spanish arrival in the sixteenth century, the Islamic way of life was already well-established; for example, the Kingdom of Maynila site of present-day Manila was ruled by Rajah Sulayman, a Muslim who fought against Spanish conquest.
Scholars agree that the Spanish arrival profoundly affected the course of Philippine history. Had Magellan or other colonizers never arrived or landed much later, they may have encountered a unified Muslim country. As history would have it, however, Spain encountered serious resistance in the Filipinas south, sowing the seeds of one of the oldest and bitterest divisions in contemporary Philippine society.
Spanish colonizers soon realized they were against a strong, although not entirely uniform or unified, Muslim people. The constant struggle to extend Spanish hegemony to the south spawned the Spanish-Moro Wars, a series of long-standing hostilities between Muslims and Spanish. From the late s until the late s, Spain attempted to gain a foothold in the area— succeeding only to the extent that some soldiers were eventually allowed by local leaders to maintain a small military presence. Spanish colonial leaders, however, never dominated or governed the local area, despite laying claim to the territory.
During the late eighteenth century, revolutionaries such as Gabriela and Diego Silang fought for a free Ilocano nation in the northern Philippines. Rizal, born to a relatively prosperous family of Filipino, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese descent, was well-educated in the Philippines and in parts of Europe.
A true renaissance man, Rizal was an ophthalmologist, scientist, writer, artist, and multilinguist whose works were written in several languages, including Spanish and Latin. In , Rizal was arrested and convicted of several crimes, including inciting rebellion, and was executed by firing squad on December His works, once considered seditious propaganda by some, are now available as free downloads.
He is remembered as a Filipino writing for his people, a native son who used the tools of storytelling to expose the truth about life under colonial rule. Scholars argue that the execution of Rizal inspired a broader fight for freedom from the Spanish government. Led by heroes such as Bonifacio, the Philippine Revolution began in and included numerous battles against Spanish forces on multiple fronts.
By , as Spain was fighting to quell the uprisings in the Philippines, it became embroiled in the Spanish-American War. During the negotiation of the treaty, the American Anti-Imperialist League opposed the annexation of the Philippines. I have read carefully the Treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines.
We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist.
I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land. The treaty was hotly debated by the Senate. Ultimately, ratification of the treaty was approved on February 6, , by a vote of fifty-seven in favor and twenty-seven against—a single vote more than the required twothirds majority.
Meanwhile in the Philippines, Emilio Aguinaldo, a Filipino leader in the fight for freedom, declared an independent Philippine government—which neither the Spanish nor United States governments acknowledged. When the final version of the Treaty of Paris was enacted, the islands once again became subject to the laws and policies of another distant nation.
Americans who supported annexing the Philippines viewed the archipelago as a doorway through which the United States could gain more of a financial foothold in Asia while extending its empire overseas. The missionaries had their greatest success among women and children, although the pageantry of the church had a wide appeal, reinforced by the incorporation of Filipino social customs into religious observances, for example, in the fiestas celebrating the patron saint of a local community.
The eventual outcome was a new cultural community of the main Malay lowland population, from which the Muslims known by the Spanish as Moros, or Moors and the upland tribal peoples of Luzon remained detached and alienated. The Spanish found neither spices nor exploitable precious metals in the Philippines. The ecology of the islands was little changed by Spanish importations and technical innovations, with the exception of corn cultivation and some extension of irrigation in order to increase rice supplies for the growing urban population.
The colony was not profitable, and a long war with the Dutch in the seventeenth century and intermittent conflict with the Moros nearly bankrupted the colonial treasury. Annual deficits were made up by a subsidy from Mexico. There was no direct trade with Spain.
Failure to exploit indigenous natural resources and investment of virtually all official, private, and church capital in the galleon trade were mutually reinforcing tendencies.
Loss or capture of the galleons or Chinese junks en route to Manila represented a financial disaster for the colony. The Chinese, in addition to managing trade transactions, were the source of some necessary provisions and services for the capital. The Spanish regarded them with mixed distrust and acknowledgment of their indispensable role.
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