The Indolence of the Filipino | Page 9

Philippines was reduced
one-third. We are not saying this: it was said by Gaspar de San Agustin,
the preeminently anti-Filipino Augustinian, and he confirms it
throughout the rest of his work by speaking every moment of the state
of neglect in which lay the farms and fields once so flourishing and so
well cultivated, the towns thinned that had formerly been inhabited by
many leading families!
How is it strange, then, that discouragement may have been infused
into the spirit of the inhabitants of the Philippines, when in the midst of
so many calamities they did not know whether they would see sprout
the seed they were planting, whether their field was going to be their
grave or their crop would go to feed their executioner? What is there
strange in it, when we see the pious but impotent friars of that time
trying to free their poor parishioners from the tyranny of the
encomenderos by advising them to stop work in the mines, to abandon
their commerce, to break up their looms, pointing out to them heaven
for their whole hope, preparing them for death as their only consolation?
(18)
Man works for an object. Remove the object and you reduce him to
inaction The most active man in the world will fold his arms from the
instant he understands that it is madness to bestir himself, that this

work will be the cause of his trouble, that for him it will be the cause of
vexations at home and of the pirate's greed abroad. It seems that these
thoughts have never entered the minds of those who cry out against the
indolence of the Filipinos.
Even were the Filipino not a man like the rest; even were we to suppose
that zeal in him for work was as essential as the movement of a wheel
caught in the gearing of others in motion; even were we to deny him
foresight and the judgment that the past and the present form, there
would still be left us another reason to explain the attack of the evil.
The abandonment of the fields by their cultivators, whom the wars and
piratical attacks dragged from their homes was sufficient to reduce to
nothing the hard labor of so many generations. In the Philippines
abandon for a year the land most beautifully tended and you will see
how you will have to begin all over again: the rain will wipe out the
furrows, the floods will drown the seeds, plants and bushes will grow
up everywhere, and on seeing so much useless labor the hand will drop
the hoe, the laborer will desert his plow. Isn't there left the fine life of
the pirate?
Thus is understood that sad discouragement which we find in the friar
writers of the 17th century, speaking of once very fertile plains
submerged, of provinces and towns depopulated, of products that have
disappeared from trade, of leading families exterminated. These pages
resemble a sad and monotonous scene in the night after a lively day. Of
Cagayan Padre San Agustin speaks with mournful brevity: "A great
deal of cotton, of which they made good cloth that the Chinese and
Japanese every year bought and carried away." In the historian's time,
the industry and the trade had come to an end!
It seems that these are causes more thorn sufficient to breed indolence
even in the midst of beehive. Thus is explained why, after thirty-two
years of the system, the circumspect and prudent Morga said that the
natives "have 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 HAD BEEN
CONQUERED!"

Still they struggled a long time against indolence, yes: but their
enemies were so numerous that at last they gave up!

IV
We recognize the causes that, awoke the predisposition and provoked
the evil: now let us see what foster and sustain it. In this connection,
government and governed have to bow our heads and say: we deserve
our fate.
We have already truly said that when a house becomes disturbed and
disordered, we should not accuse the youngest, child or the servants,
but the head of it, especially if his authority is unlimited, he who does
not act freely is not responsible for his actions; and the Filipino people,
not being master of its liberty, is not responsible for either its
misfortunes or its woes. We says this, it is true, but, as will be seen
later on, we also have a large part, in the continuation of such a
disorder.
The following, among other causes, contributed to foster the evil and
aggravate it: the constantly lessening encouragement that labor has met
with in the Philippines. Fearing to have the