The Indolence of the Filipino | Page 7

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?
III

A fatal combination of circumstances, some independent of the will in
spite of men's efforts, others the offspring of stupidity and ignorance,
others the inevitable corollaries of false principles, and still others the
result of more or less base passions has induced the decline of labor, an
evil which instead of being remedied by prudence, mature reflection
and recognition of the mistakes made, through deplorable policy,
through regret, table blindness and obstinacy, has gone from bad to
worse until it has reached the condition in which we now see it. (14).
First came the wars, the internal disorders which the new change of
affairs naturally brought with it. It was necessary to subject the people
either by cajolery or force; there were fights, there was slaughter; those
who had submitted peacefully seemed to repent of it; insurrections
were suspected, and some occurred; naturally there were executions,
and many capable laborers perished. Add to this condition of disorder
the invasion of Limahong, add the continual wars into which the
inhabitants of the Philippines were plunged to maintain the honor of
Spain, to extend the sway of her flag in Borneo, in the Moluccas and in
Indo-China; to repel the Dutch foe: costly wars, fruitless expeditions, in
which each time thousands and thousands of native archers and rowers
were recorded to have embarked, but whether they returned to their
homes was never stated. Like the tribute that once upon a time Greece
sent to the Minotaur of Crete, the Philippine youth embarked for the
expedition, saying good-by to their country forever: on their horizon
were the stormy sea, the interminable wars, the rash expeditions.
Wherefore, Gaspar de San Agustin says: "Although anciently there
were in this town of Dumangas many people, in the course of time they
have very greatly diminished because the natives are the best sailors
and most skillful rowers on the whole coast, and so the governors in the
port of Iloilo take most of the people from this town for the ships that
they send abroad ............. When the Spaniards reached this island
(Panay) it is said that there were on it more than fifty thousand families;
but these diminished greatly; ........... and at present they may amount to
some fourteen thousand tributaries." From fifty thousand families to
fourteen thousand tributaries in little over half a century!
We would never get through, had we to quote all the evidence of the

authors regarding the frightful diminution of the inhabitants of the
Philippines in the first years after the discovery. In the time of their first
bishop, that is, ten years after Legazpi, Philip II said that they had been
reduced to less than two thirds.
Add to these fatal expeditions that wasted all the moral and material
energies of the country, the frightful inroads of the terrible pirates from
the south, instigated and encouraged by the government, first in order
to get complaint and afterwards disarm the islands subjected to it,
inroads that reached the very shores of Manila, even Malate itself, and
during which were seen to set out for captivity and slavery, in the
baleful glow of burning villages, strings of wretches who had been
unable to defend themselves, leaving behind them the ashes of their
homes and the corpses of their parents and children. Morga, who
recounts the first piratical invasion, says: "The boldness of