PHILIPPINE OUTWARD MIGRATION: A GLIMPSE ON HISTORY
The islands have seen
the arrival of different peoples over the centuries leading to the evolution of
the present diverse culture. Among the earliest immigrants were the Little
People, shorter than five feet tall. They were dark skinned, had Negroid features,
and were named Negritoes by the Spanish. They may have arrived about 25,000
years ago, and they lived throughout the islands. In recent decades, they
occupied the mountain interiors of Luzon, Mindanao, and Palawan, living in
isolation and not mixing with later arrivals.
The first Indonesians arrived from the Asian continent sometime
between 4000 B.C. and 3000 B.C., A second Indonesian influx occurred about 1000
B.C. and lasted about 500 years. Both waves of Indonesians settled throughout
the islands, and over the centuries assimilated with subsequent immigrants.
Present-day Ilonggo are one result of tribal intermixing.
The Iron Age Malays, began arriving in the third century A.D. Peak
influxes started in the thirteenth century and continued well into the next.
The Bontoks, Igorots, and Tinguians are descendants of the Malays. Tribes that
in time became dominant were the Visayans, Cebunos, and Ilocanos. European and
American colonists discovered some of these groups were "head-hunting pagans."
The later Malay waves are users of Sanskrit
based alphabet and metal tools and more peaceful than earlier arrivals. They
were the ancestors of most present-day Filipino Christians. While considered
primitive by Western standards, these Malays were in fact far advanced over the
earliest immigrants. During the fourteenth century, Islamic Arab traders
arrived; their descendants, the Moros, populated the southern islands and
remained militant Muslims.
The Chinese and Japanese have had a major impact in the twentieth
century, although trade between the Philippines and South China began to
develop as early as the fourteenth century as Chinese emigrants became
successful merchants and traders. Descendants of Filipino and Chinese marriages
continued this domination of island businesses, gaining economic successes and
power. Their virtual monopoly of the nation's big businesses in the twentieth
century led some Filipinos, particularly those in urban areas, to resent the
Chinese and to engage in occasional hostile activities.
Japanese immigration
occurred after 1900; emigrants from Japan settled first on the island of
Mindanao, and they developed several large abaca plantations. Unlike the
Chinese and earlier Malay emigrants, the Japanese remained largely a homogeneous
group, rarely intermarrying. At the outbreak of World War II, Japanese could be
found throughout the islands, working mostly at such crafts as cabinetmaking
and photography.
The first European immigrants did not intend to settle permanently
in the Philippines. Spanish settlement proved transitory during the 400 years
of Spain's colonial occupation. The first contact between Spain and the
Philippines occurred in March of 1521, when Ferdinand Magellan's fleet reached
the island of Samar on its circumnavigation of the earth. Magellan claimed the
archipelago for Spain and the Catholic church, but Spain did not make his claim
official until 1565. The country was named the Philippines in the 1550s after
King Philip II of Spain.
In 1565, nine years after ascending to the Spanish throne, Philip
II sent a royal governor to the Philippines. The governor, from his first seat
of government on Cebu, sent expeditions to other islands and imposed Spanish
rule. From the outset, colonial officers exerted forceful and lasting control,
using the colonial methods used in the Americas as their model.
From 1565 to 1810 the Acapulco-Manila galleon trade flourished. It
connected the Spanish empire in Latin America with the Asian market via the
Philippines. Manila served as the entreport to the China trade route. Gold
bullions were extracted by the Spanish in Latin America and exchanged for silk,
spices, and tea in the East. The galleon trade forcefully used native Filipinos
as members of the crews aboard the Spanish ships.
As royal governors gained greater dominion over the islands, they
moved the colonial capital to Manila, with its superior harbor. Endorsing
European ideas of mercantilism and imperialism, Spain's monarchs believed that
they should exercise their power in the Philippines to enrich themselves. In
the course of almost four centuries, Spanish settlers and their descendants in
the islands came to own large estates and to control the colonial government.
The Catholic church, supported by the colonial powers, controlled
large areas of land and held a monopoly on formal education. The church and the
Spanish language were major Spanish cultural institutions imposed upon
Filipinos. By 1898, over 80 percent of the islanders were Catholics.
The Spanish, in installing an autocratic imperialism that
alienated Filipinos, created a class society and a culture that many Filipinos later
tried to imitate. Some of the Spanish, who made the islands their home, married
Filipinos; the descendants of these marriages were known as mestizos . By the nineteenth century,
mestizos had inherited large areas of agricultural lands. This Filipino upper
class found that the lighter their skin color, the easier it became to mingle
with Europeans and Americans. They also learned to control local politics
through power and corruption. This economic-political dominance came to be
known as caciquism.
Local revolts against Spanish imperial corruption, caciquism,
racial discrimination, and church abuse began late in the nineteenth century.
These first revolts called for reform of the economic-political system but not
for independence. An early leader, Jose Rizal, who formed La Liga Filipina (the Filipino League), called
for social reform. After the Spanish banished Rizal, more radical leaders
emerged. When Rizal returned to the islands, the Spanish colonial government
arrested, tried, and executed him in 1896, thus unwittingly creating a martyr
and national hero.
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Andres Bonifacio, a young man of modest origin, formed the secret
society Kagalanggalang at Kataastaasang Katipunan ng mga anak ng Bayan (KKK),
or Katipunan that aims to end exploitation of Filipinos by the Spanish slave rule through an armed revolution. It is
the first movement for an independent Philippines. Twenty-seven-year-old Emilio
Aguinaldo seized the leadership of the insurrectionists— now fighting openly
against the Spanish, by assassinating Bonifacio. In 1898, Aguinaldo conferred
with American officials in Hong Kong and Singapore. He was led to understand
that the Filipinos would become allies with the United States in a war against
Spain, the anticipated outcome of which would be an independent Philippine
nation. Admiral George Dewey and Consul General E. Spencer Pratt, with whom
Aguinaldo met, later denied that they had made such a promise. In 1898, the
United States declared war against Spain, and as a result of the ensuing
Spanish-American War, the United States went to war with the Philippines. The Filipinos,
following Aguinaldo's lead, protested the arrival of American imperialism, and
the insurrection first launched against the Spanish continued. After annexation
of the Philippines by the United States, the U.S. Army fought to quell
uprisings throughout the islands. With his capture on March 23, 1901, Aguinaldo
advised his followers to swear allegiance to the United States. On July 4,
1902, the Army declared the insurrection to be at an end, even though the Filipinos,
who had become largely independent under Spanish rule, continued to fight under
the leadership of Macario Sakay , last President of the first Philippine
Republic was captured in 1913. The Filipino American war took more than one
million Filipino lives and 6,000 American lives. The Treaty of Paris, approved
on February 6, 1899, made the United States an imperial power and started a
47-year rule on the Philippines.
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