The colonial moment has two faces, one belonging to the colonizer and the other to the colonized. When the moment of liberation severs these faces' ties two sorts of anguished vacuum emerge, one a tormented forgetting of guilt ridden past, the other a harrowing remembrance. Just as the colonizer has to systematically forget the past to be freed from a soiled and blood drenched conscience, the colonized has to systematically remember to be freed from the lingering twilight pre-modernity. To the colonizer belongs a moral ordeal, but to the colonized a social and political ordeal. Just as in the colonial moment there is inequality, so it remains even long after the moment of liberation. For a moral ordeal is nothing compared to a social and political one.

This paper is a sort of remembering, a sort of freeing the colonized from the social and political bondage sown by the colonial moment, a sort of ushering in the long-awaited dawn of modernity. More specifically, this paper investigates the sociological nature of knowledge within the context the Spanish colonial Philippines. This paper is a historical inquiry into the processes and the conditions involved in the destruction, concealment, creation, re-creation, importation and circulation of knowledge under the specific power relations of colonization. The investigation is done with the purview of understanding how the sociological nature of knowledge functioned, or malfunctioned, resulting to some distinctive markings on the Philippine society which, to the opinion of the author, persisted up to the present moment, creating on the process a modernly structured and seemingly rational society inhabited by a people with pre-modern minds.

PRE-MODERN MINDS IN A RATIONALIZED SOCIETY

As a historical investigation, this paper had to deal first with files and files of data, and as far as the Spanish colonial period is concerned data indeed abound. To make sense out of such massive collection what was necessary is some fine conceptual tools that can be used as an analytic frame. Thus, conceptual tools were borrowed from sociology and anthropology, namely: the binaries of pre-modern/modern modes of thinking, tribal/modernized societies, and subjugating/subjugated knowledge.

The main contention of this paper is that the mind of indio had been systematically made to remain pre-modern by the colonial regime, in effect making this mind maladjusted to the nuances of a society that had been drastically transformed by the same regime from being tribal to modern; yet despite such a procedure to coral the native mind away from the circulation of modern knowledge, knowledge of sorts exploded within the archipelago subverting the intentions of the colonizers. But owing to the fact that these exploding knowledges were class-specific and purpose-specific systems, these were not enough to engender a really rationalized and modern collective mentality. Thus, we have today an anomalous phenomenon of a practically modern society inhabited by a people with pre-modern mentality.

The Pre-Modern and the Modern Modes of Thought

The question whether there is a real qualitative difference between the pre-modern, or the primitive, and the modern modes of thinking is an issue that is still being debated by anthropologists. On one hand, mental sharpness, logic, and capacity to deal with abstract thoughts are the main contentions of those who claim there is difference. Anthropologists who belong to this camp assert that the pre-modern or primitive thought is pre-logical while modern is logical, or that the primitive is hopelessly bound to concreteness while the modern is capable of operating with the abstract. On the other hand, anthropologist who contend otherwise have carefully marshaled a number of ethnographic proofs that the pre-modern mind certainly is logical, at least in its own proper way, and can operate with abstract matters. `Naive ethnocentricism' is their battlecry against those who desired to maintain qualitative difference in between. The structural anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss, is one sort of theorist who denies qualitative difference. In his book The Primitive Mind, he casts a sardonic remark on the theorists belonging to the other camp.

Every civilization tends to overestimate the objective orientation of its thought and this tendency is never absent. When we make the mistake of thinking that the savage is governed solely by organic or economic needs, we forget that he levels the same reproach at us, and that to him his own desires for knowledge seems more balanced than ours (Levi-Strauss 1966: 3).

The anthropological camp that tends to deny qualitative difference between the pre-modern and the modern modes of thought, argue that the difference between them does not lie on the mind's mode of operation, but on its contents. They mean to say, there are of course differences between pre-modern and modern minds, but such differences are not caused by their alleged difference in terms of functioning, but by the fact that these modes of thought simple have different contents. And difference in content in no way means that the primitive mind contains less ideas than the modern mind. In fact, Levi-Strauss in the same book took great pains in illustrating the astounding conceptual mass present in a number of Indian tribes' collective representations. Pushing their line of argument further, these anthropologists arrived at a logical entailment that if the pre-modern mode of thought is educated with modern and scientific knowledge, then the marked difference between the primitive and the modern modes of thought would simply disappear.

Lucien Levy-Bruhl is one anthropologist who staunchly defended that other than differences of content there is something more that differentiates the pre-modern from the modern mode of thought. Levy-Bruhl shifted the debate away from the individualized comparison on how a primitive and a modern man thinks, to the comparison and contrast of the differences and similarities in collective representations. He wrote: "a primitive man, considered as an individual... will usually feel, judge and behave in the way we would expect. The inferences which he will form will be just those which would seem reasonable to us in the given circumstances"(Levy-Bruhl 1972: 44). Levy-Bruhl suggests that there is a big difference between the thinking of the primitive and the primitive mode of thinking. Following Levy-Bruhl's line of argument, there can be primitive men that are capable of having modern thoughts, just as there are modern men having primitive thoughts. After marking such a distinction between the individual mental processes and the collective representation, Levy-Bruhl focuses his attention to the latter. Levy-Bruhl tried to pin point what are the characteristics that mark the collective pre-modern mode of thought, and how different would it be from the collective modern mode of thought. Raul Pertierra, in his essay `Levy-Bruhl and the Modes of Thought', gives a description of such a collective phenomenon:

Levy-Bruhl's examples of collective representations always stress their importance in ritual (i.e., their collective and communicative aspects) and involve ideas, feelings, and activities with great social import and legitimation. For him, the collective representations found in primitive societies differ fundamentally from those found in complex literate societies since the affective and cognitive aspects of ideas are not sufficiently differentiated (Pertierra 1994: 142-143).

For Levy-Bruhl the conflation of affective and cognitive aspects of the concepts is the distinctive mark between the primitive and the modern modes of thought. This conflation of meaning and being, of the cognitive and conative aspects of meaning would then conflate the levels of reality-commonly the physical and the spiritual realities. Pertierra says: "These worlds, although different, are not, however, conceptually separate. In primitive thought these halves constitute one world, an integrated and socially legitimated field of experience"(Pertierra 1994: 143). Hence, Levy-Bruhl has successfully created a contrast between the pre-modern and the modern modes of thougt by pointing out that in the modern mode of thought, belief in other levels of reality may be present but the delineation between the different levels is quite clear. The modern mode of thought has a slant towards the empirical, the regulated and the predictable, and hence the arbitrary impingement from the spirit world would have to be bracketed off. On the other hand, for the primitive mode of thought, the impingement from the other levels of reality is common place and often operate to legitimize areas of thought and perception. But for the anthropologists, like Levi-Strauss, who deny qualitative difference between the primitive and the modern modes of thought would only point to their difference in terms of content, that is the primitive mind simply lack the modern and scientific ideas which the modern mind possess. Added, however, to this difference in content would be that slight difference in terms of the tendency to conflate conceptual aspects as well as levels of reality.

In the bottom line, both camps of the debating anthropologists would agree that the primitive mode of thought can be characterized by some deficiencies in content and the tendency to conflate distinct levels of reality.

Tribal and Modern Societies

If delineating the differences between the primitive and the modern modes of thinking became a complex incursion into the battlegrounds of warring anthropological camps, certainly delineating the differences between the tribal and modern societies will not be as complicated. The structures in the tribal society is much more simpler than that of its modern counterpart. A tribal society is definitely small compared to the modern society. Its smallness, moreover, is self contained, it has little cares and concerns for the other tribal societies. It exists in its own idiosyncratic space and time, such that in actuality, it would have immense difficulties interacting with other societies. The modern society, on the other hand, no matter how small it may be from modern standards, is not self-contained. Through the modern societies run grids and networks of commercial, intellectual, and cultural conduits. Modern societies are less and less entrenched in idiosyncratic notions of space and time.

The manner of interaction in a primitive society is governed by strong kinship ties. Hence, the personal mode of interaction is the rule. This personal mode remains true even in cases of hostile interactions, that is to say in a tribal society even the foes are individuals who are personally known. In a modern society, owing to its size and heterogeneity, kinship ties can no longer be counted as an apparatus of order. The more involved personal mode of interaction has to be supplanted more and more with the superficial and detached mode of impersonal interaction. Corollary to these, the legal system in the two societies vary greatly. Whereas in the context of a personalized interaction, laws are may not be rigidly drawn and are more or less contingent, in a society where the impersonal mode interaction predominates, laws become more numerous and the system of interpreting and applying them becomes more consciously structured.

Another distinctive difference between the tribal and the modern societies pertains to their use of and access to bodies of knowledge. It is quite clear that man is totally dependent on the acquisition and transmission of knowledge for survival. The earliest hominids, who were obviously weaker and more sluggard compared to the other predators had to use their heads to get food and to avoid death from the other beasts. When Francis Bacon trumpeted his famous new-age tidings that "human knowledge and human power meet in one.... therefore knowledge is power" it was something remarkable, but that was in an England of the early 17th century. At present, to say that knowledge is power is to utter a hackneyed clich�. What Bacon said with a throbbing heart, is so true that today it is taken fro granted. Yet such a Baconian clich� can have different nuances when contextualized in tribal, or primitive, and modern societies. In the tribal society, a farmer has power in the sense that he has knowledge on practical agriculture, and a shaman is likewise is powerful, in fact more powerful, in the sense that he has a monopolistic access to shamanistic knowledge. But knowledge in the tribal society is not so much of a power. It is prowess not knowledge that is the paradigm of power in the tribal society. Power is personified in the warrior, and not in the sage. The modern society has a different pattern for the creation and circulation of knowledge. It is in this context, where knowledge is really power, and as Michel Foucault would later on elaborate, power is really knowledge.¹ Hence, the more knowledge one has in the modern society, the more power he wields, and the more power one wields, the more knowledge he can create. Knowledge regime is what characterizes the modern society.

The modern society's peculiar obsession with the production, storage and transmission of knowledge requires textualization.² Hence writing is another distinctive feature of the modern society. Writing allows the wider circulation of knowledge. With the invention of the printing press, circulation transcended all sorts of geographical barriers. These contributed more to the commercial, intellectual and cultural interaction between modern societies which later on would more and more result to homogeneity.³ Writing may have existed in primitive societies, yet this writing more often than not is not necessarily geared towards the production, storage, transmission of ever-growing bodies of knowledge, but more on the tribal religious and magical concerns.

Subjugated and Subjugating Knowledge

In both tribal and modern societies, bodies of knowledge may co-exist. As already alluded to, knowledge is not an inert compilation of facts and theories but more of a writhing mass of power. Even in their co-existence, bodies of knowledge have a general hostile politics in between, each trying to inscribe upon the other a mark of domination. Hence, following Foucault there are such things as subjugated and subjugating knowledge. He defines the former when wrote:

I believe that by subjugated knowledges one should understand something else, something which in a sense is altogether different, namely a whole set of knowledges that have been disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated: naive knowledges, located low down on the hierarchy, beneath the required level of cognition or scientificity (Foucault 1980: 82).

Along this line, the subjugating knowledge is not merely that set of knowledge that is considered legitimate, adequate, sufficient and scientific. Subjugating knowledge is in fact the factor that subjugates the other knowledge. Hence, in between the two knowledges is not a calm space, but a complex structure of power relation.

The Context of the Spanish Colonial Philippines

The pre-Hispanic Philippine societies were definitely tribal societies. They were small, self-contained, kin-based, and sacred communities, which retained the vestiges of their maritime voyage from their Asian origins in the name of their political unit, the barangay. When Spain finally decided to occupy these islands which were brought to their attention some decades earlier by the Portuguese navigator, Fernao Magalhaes, these scattered tribal societies were drastically transformed into new political organizations with some strappings of a modern society. With force, diplomacy, treachery and religion, the Spaniards conquered rather swiftly the lowland and the coastal areas of the Philippines. The self-containment of the several scattered barangays could not offer significant resistance to the Spanish invaders. Spain started to impose its own notion of order. For easier administration and surveillance, the collections of some rustic barangays, through the process of reduccion, was strategically rationalized into pueblos. The chaotic conglomerations of native hamlets were fused into a more unified pueblo following the Roman grid patterns. The Church occupying the central point, the plaza, and the main streets, the sturdy houses became the template for each pueblo. To ensure domination, not only space was re-ordered, even time was restructured. David Sturtevant says:

The religious edifices-more lasting than any structure built in the Philippines before or since -- supplied a centripetal element which had been absent from pre-Spanish life. Confessionals, christenings, marriage, funerals, and repetitive masses interrupted everyday routines (Sturtevant 1976:27).

Many natives resisted the move, by refusing to settle in the pueblos, by returning again and again to their old settings, or by running to the mountains to become bandits or tulisanes. Yet in the long run, the colonizers seem to accomplish their agenda.

A highly organized government bureaucracy was imposed both on the `national' and local levels. The power structure was as follows: the king of Spain ruling through the viceroyalty of Nueva Espana, aided by the Real y Supremo Consejo de las Indias; then, the governor general as the chief-executive, chief of the armed forces and president of the supreme court; then, the alcade major for the pacified `provinces' or the corregidor for the unpacified regions, acting as executives, judges, chief of police, and tribute collector; followed by the post of the gobernadorcillo, which is open for the natives; and finally the cabeza de barangay, also open for the natives. The new bureaucratic order which is very susceptible to abuses had its own mechanism of checks and balances with the institutions of the residencia and the visita, wherein officials are inspected by higher authorities periodically as in the case of the residencia, or unannounced instances as in the case of the visita.

With the political re-structuring, the western legal system was introduced into the archipelago, supplanting the natives' crude systems of justice. The Real Audencia functioned as the supreme court, the tribunal of appeal from the subordinate courts and at the same time the consultative body of the governor general. Later, the Tribunal de Comercio was established to settle commercial disputes. Gradually, the uncodified native legal systems were defaced from history and alien codified laws became the uncontested legal system.

The spindles of colonization crept deeper into the colonized fiber. The Spaniards imposed their system of educating the natives, as well as instructing them of the Christian doctrine. Schools, colleges and universities were established for this purpose.

Gradually, even the initial discreteness of the pueblos merged into one organic whole and definitely a modernized society, the Philippines.

THE POLITICS OF SUBJUGATION

Supposedly, it is in these stages when a society is systematized and its domestic interaction intensified that knowledge should become more and more a public phenomenon. But such seemed to be not the case with the Philippines. Some anomalous stroke of misfortune happened somewhere.

Hidden Lights

The Enlightenment is an 18^th century Western phenomenon engendered by the rise of modern science and the aftermath of the bitter religious conflict accompanying the Reformation. The Enlightenment espoused some highly secular views based on human reason alone that were thought to create beneficial changes permeating all areas of human life and thought.

a. The Luces of Spain

 

translated or summarized for Spanish readers the latest articles on economics, science, and political theory appearing in France and elsewhere. Here the Spaniards could learn the theories of Newton on the universe, Montesquieu on the forms of governemnt, Rousseau on Education, Beccaria and Filangieri on legal reform, and Condillac on the Theories of learning, even though many of the original works of these authors had been prohibited by the inquisition (Herr 1971: 53).

With the proliferation and circulation of the new ideas, pressures appeared against the dated educational system of Spain. Subsequently, the Council of Castille, Spain's highest administrative and judicial body, ordered the universities to make reforms to accommodate the new ideas and theories. The university of Seville, in 1769, was first to make reforms. The move for educational reform was however not without opposition. The clergy, who were labeled as Aristotelians, opposed the order. Nonetheless, by the time of the demise of Charles III, reform in the universities was more or less accomplished. University texts were up-to-date.

With the outburst of the luces was born the Spanish liberalism, which later on would influence much of the Filipino illustrados. Liberalism came with its two dominant themes of resentment against arbitrary authority intertwined with the desire to recast it along more rational means, and the fascination for free expression individuality.

Aspects of the Spanish Enlightenment and liberalism would treacle into the archipelago with the advent of the Bourbon reformers such as Jose Basco y Vargas, serving as governor general, who organized the Real Sociedad Economica de amigos del Pais in 1780.

Though Spain was lit with the luces, only glitters of these lights reached the Philippines, and the masses never saw their glimmers. While the Western world was splendidly blazing, Philippines remained in darkness.

b. The Politics of Language

 

Spanish never became a pervasive lingua franca, as it did in the Americas, with the result that, certainly in 1900, and to a lesser extent even today, the peasants and fishermen in different parts of the archipelago could not communicate with one another: only their rulers had a common archipelago-wide speech (Anderson 1995: 6).

On official papers, things were quite different. There were several decrees from the Peninsula ordering that all the natives should learn the Castilian language, yet none of them was ever implemented. Was this a political strategy to consolidate the Spanish colonization? Was the indio intentionally excluded from learning the Castilian language so that he could not have access to more learning and knowledge? Things were not really that clear at the outset.

As early as 1550, Emperor Charles V, had already decreed that the Castilian should be the language of preaching. This was done with the pre-conception that all the native languages lacked the precise words to explain the most sublime Christian mysteries. In the Philippines, the missionaries claimed that it is more convenient not to use the Castilian. Instead of teaching the indios the Castilian language, they instead learned the native language. The 1586 Synod of Manila formally approved the use of the Philippine languages and dialects as the media of Christian instruction. Quite expectedly, this happened while the 1550 law was in full effectivity.

The articulation of the politics of domination happened when another major change was about to occur. Part of the Educational Decree of 1863, was the specification to teach Spanish in all schools. At this point the implicit was foregrounded. Many colonial officials objected the move. Fray Francisco Gainza, OP presented the famous argument that once the Castilian language was given to the masses they would gain access to the Enlightened and liberal (which for the friars meant immoral and anti-clerical) ideas from the continent. This would ensure the masses' loss of faith in the Church and loss of loyalty to the Crown. Moreover, learning the Castilian tongue, would give the masses a common language which potentially would unify them. Once a native leader would rally, they can easily rise against Spain. After some tedious rounds of casuistic debates, the law favored that Castilian be taught to the natives. But that was not the end. In papers, Gainza and his supporters lost their case, but they ended as victors, for the Decree of 1850 was never implemented due to lack of funds.

c. Education and Literacy

 

At the higher institutions of learning, things were a little bit sophisticated. The University of Santo was the center of colonial education. Sir John Bowring's memoirs of 1859 provides an eyewitness' account of the situation:

In the University of St. Thomas there are about a thousand students. The professorship are of theology, the canon law and civil law, metaphysics and grammar; but no attention is given to the natural sciences, to the modern languages, nor have any of the educational reforms which have penetrated most of the colleges in Europe and America found their way to the Philippines (Bowring 1963: 118).

By some stroke of misfortune, the Aristotelians who in the Peninsula tried to counteract the educational reform of the 1760s, and who were more and more the object of anti-clericalism there, reigned unchallenged in the archipelago. Bowring gives a rather kind description of their holy ignorance:

The personal courtesies, the kind reception and multifarious attentions which I received from the friars in every part of the Philippines naturally dispose me to look upon them with a friendly eye. I found among them men worthy of being loved and honored, some of considerable intellectual vigor; but literary cultivations and scientific acquirements are rare. Occupied with their own concerns, they are little acquainted with mundane affairs, politics, geography, history, have no charms for those who, even had they the disposition for study, would in their seclusion and remoteness, have access to few of its application (Bowring 1963: 127).

Hopes seems to be stirred with the decree on educational reform of 1863, only to be bashed again with its very negligible results. Article 15 of the same decree only perpetuated the monkishness of Philippine education by retaining the control of the ecclesiastics over learning.

The parish priests shall be the local inspectors ex-officio and shall direct the teaching of the Christian doctrine and morals under the direction of the right reverend prelates (Quoted whole by Martin 1980: 173).

Even the underpinning philosophy of the 1863 educational plan was far from being modern. It was not in fact geared towards specialized expertise, but only for social prestige.⁴

After a school has been established in any village for fifteen years, no natives who cannot talk, read and write the Castilian language shall form a part of the principalia unless they enjoy that distinction by right of inheritance (Article 16, Educational Decree of 1863, quoted whole by Martin 1980: 173).

The astonishment of the Europeans on the seemingly widespread literacy of the Filipinos would now appear as products of superficial encounter with the masses. The Jesuit historian Jose Arcilla gives us the literacy statistics of the late 19^th century Philippines:

By 1898, the Philippines had a total of 31 dailies and 81 weeklies in Spanish and the more important Philippine languages. But circulation was extremely limited, and the functional literacy rate of the population was quite low. Only 1.6% of the people had gone to higher studies, while of the school age population (10 years old and above), more than one half, or 55% were illiterate. Schools had been opened all over the islands, but they were not properly staffed or equipped (Arcilla 1991: 157).

Another very sad detail is behind the fact that when the Museo-Biblioteca de Filipinas was opened in 1892, the bulk of its Filipiana collection was composed of volumes and volumes of Corridos, Pasyon and Novenas. The Philippine education under Spain was monkish and it produced a prolific monkish literature.

For the French philosophes and the German Aufklarer and the host of other intellectuals dedicated to the ideals of Enlightenment, popular education was a vital means of breaking the backbone of ignorance and repression. But in the Philippines, education was the greatest caricature of their enlightened dream. The luces of Spain simply could not penetrate the smoke-screen of colonialism. Education never became a conduit of light, nor of its glitters.

d. Censorship

 

There is censorship called the Comercia (comite?) permanente de censura. It consists of four ecclesiastics and four civilians, presided over by the civil fiscal, and its authority extends to all books imported into or printed in the islands (Bowring 1963: 113).

How can anybody expect to get sane judgments from people whom Bowring a little earlier has described as generally ignorant of literary cultivations, scientific knowledge, politics, geography and history? Naturally, the press did not serve the purpose of spreading modern knowledge and vital information. It merely served the purpose of printing sheets upon sheets of catechism, corrido, pasyon and novenas which the friars would immediately approve for publication.

e. Doctrina: From Primitivity to Holy Primitivity

 

The absence of mines, and, until much later, of hacienda-based commercial agriculture, meant not only a concentration of Spanish in the Manila area, but the lack of any sustained interest in massive exploitation of the indigenous (or imported) populations as a labor force. At the same time, the fact that the pre-Hispanic Philippines (in contrast to Burma, Siam, Cambodia, Vietnam, or Java) lacked any states with substantial military or bureaucratic power meant that relatively little force was required for the intial conquest and for its subsequent consolidation. Small garrisons, scattered here and there, generally sufficed. Hence, in all the provinces, to a degree unparalleled anywhere in the Americas except Paraguay, Spanish power in the Philippines was mediated through the Church (Anderson 1995: 5).

In fact, the religious presence in the archipelago was very stable compared to the erratic stream of appointments of the civil officials. Bowring, writing in 1859, stated that since 1835, "there had been five provisional and eleven formal appointments to the governor-generalship. Some of these governor generals only held their office for a few months, being superseded by ministerial changes at Madrid" (Bowring 1963: 52). Compared with the two archepiscopal appointments since 1830, the civil flux would be quite visible.

As is already well known, the colonial power used religion to dominate the masses. Rizal had already commented on this when in the essay Philippines a Century Hence he said:

Thus years and centuries rolled on. Religious shows, rites that caught the eye, songs, lights, images arrayed with gold, worship in a strange language, legends, miracles, and sermons, hypnotized the already naturally superstitious spirits of the country... (Rizal, Philippines a Century Hence, 366).

It would have been all right if the religious domination ended its spindles in political subjugation. The sad fact is, such domination penetrated the collective representations of the natives. The initial pre-modernity of the indio mind was only re-enforced by the holy primitivity of the doctrina. Rizal lambasted this in his essay The Indolence of the Filipinos.

doctrine of his religion teach him to irrigate his fields in the dry season, not by means of canals by with masses and prayers; to preserve his stock during an epidemic with holy water, exorcisms and benedictions that cost five dollars an animal, to drive away the locusts by a procession with the image of St. Augustine, etc. (Rizal, The Indoloence of the Filipinos, 354).

Creation of the Indio

There are two sinister ways of handling knowledge. One is to hide true knowledge and the other is to fabricate false knowledge. We have already seen how the first way and some portions of the second way were employed by the colonizers. But the second way came with a more malevolent variant. The colonizers went further into re-inventing the indio himself.

a. Indio, the Dark Other

 

Various French philosophes pointed to the story of Spain's decline in the seventeenth century as a practical lesson of the bad effects of religious intolerance and exploitation of colonial peoples. They painted a picture of Spanish history full of wickedness and deceit which has since been known as the 'black legend'. Enlightened Spaniards were tormented by this reputation of their country, believing it to be true, and they were determined to bring Spain abreast of the rest of Europe in learning and economic well-being. (Herr, 1971: 52).

Michel Foucault said: "There can be no possible exercise of power without a certain economy of discourses of truth which operates through and on the basis of this association. We are subjected to the production of truth through power and we cannot exercise power except through the production of truth" (Foucault 1980: 93). To maintain their colonial holdings, the Spaniards were literally forced to spin some discourses.

With nothing else immediately at hand, the natives became their discursive scapegoat. It was a case of blaming the victim. The indio was conceptually constructed as "something more than a monkey but much less than a man, an anthropoid, dull-witted, stupid, timid, dirty, stinking, ill-clothed, indolent, lazy, brainless, immoral" and all sorts of negative characteristics (Rizal, The Indolence of the Filipinos, 358). Fr. Miguel Lucio y Bustamente, in his Si Tandang Basio, states: "The Spaniards will always be a Spaniard, and the indio will always be an indio... The monkey will always be a monkey however you dress his with shirt and trousers, and will always be a monkey and not human" (Quoted by Agoncillo 1990: 121). Spanish Friars would add such slanders as "the Filipino is created together with the carabao or the rattan." Meaning that if one separates the Filipino from the carabao, or the rattan, he ceases to be human. Bowring also captured some of these freely circulating thoughts:

It has been said of the Indian that he is more of a quadruped than a biped. His hands are large, and the toes of his feet pliant, being exercised in climbing trees, and divers other active functions (Bowring 1963: 84).

Post-colonial theorists have explained it well, such disgusting name-calling springs forth from a deeper-seated will to dominate. The endless litany of negative traits allegedly culled from the indio was in reality used as a rationale of the conquest and colonization. Consciously, or unconsciously, the colonizers thought that what the helpless indio needs is the enlightened guidance of a western man in order for the latter to become fully human, and that is what is exactly the former are here for. To whitewash their dark conscience, they have to smear the indio with all sorts of slander.

Nevertheless as discussion of it (indolence) has been continued, not only by government employees who make it responsible for their own shortcomings, not only by the friars who regard it as necessary in order that they may continue to represent themselves as indispensable (Rizal, The Indolence of the Filipinos, 333).

b. The Colonial Ego's Symbolic Inversion

 

We have already explained it above how the colonizers kicked the colonized with their disgusting abuse. Here, we are going to show how they sighed their anguish away by thanking the heavens that they are different from us. Here we need to put on the more refined lens of post-colonialism to be able to see how the indio was used in the construction or reconstruction of the colonizer's ego. Dr. Priscelina Patajo-Legasto, a Filipino post-colonialist feminist, argued:

Through a process of supposed "natural differentiation" these meta- narratives-the normative biographies and national histories inscribed in seemingly innocuous/objective/universalist discourses ranging from the sciences to literature-Europe and the US were able to constitute and continue to constitute Asians/Africans, Afro/Latin-Americans and peoples of color located in the interstices of Western hegemonic cultures as Europe/USA's "ontological other" (Patajo-Legasto 1993: 3-4).

Orvar Lofgren, in his essay On the Anatomy of Culture, talks about a similar situation in the case of Victorian bourgeois and the working class. "In the social images of Victorian children the typical worker is often represented by the chimney sweep or the coal man: swarthy, swaggering, blackish figures. Such stereotypes can be viewed as an example of symbolic inversion, in which the bourgeois defined itself indirectly through a description of its opposite, its social other" (Lofgren 38). The stereotypes, in this case, do not tell us anything about the working class but more of the self-image of the bourgeoisie. Similarly, the discourse on the indio by the Spanish colonizers are more reflective of the image the colonizers wanted to project than of the real identity of the indio. The indio became the ontological other, the point of reference, in the colonizers' project of self-definition. But since ethnocentrism dictated that such self-image be clean and white, the ontological other, the indio, has to be painted dark and dirty.

c. The Autopoesic Power of Discourse

 

The nature of these natives is a maze of contradictions and opposites... They are at once and the same time mischievous and humble; forward and villainous, but devious cowards; full of compassion, but cruel; lazy, but in affairs that profit them (whether good or bad), diligent and vigilant; credulous, but in matters of sacred doctrine that are repeatedly taught them, difficult and inconstant; they go to church and attend their fiestas and observe their (own) rituals with alacrity (Quoted by Corpus 1965: 38).

The text only shows that aside from the alleged dominant characteristics of the indio in the colonizer's model of, the real indio possessed something more. Hence, the indio is in fact a simplified and distorted representation.

Salman Rushdie in the magical realism of his Satanic Verses symbolically mentions Nigerians, Senegalis and Indians being transformed into human beasts by the mere power of description uttered by the Englishmen. He made a manticore, a man-tiger that is, say to the Indian-born Salahudding Chamchawala, who despite his naturalized citizenship is still gradually transforming into a man-goat: "They describe us... they have the power of description, and we succumb to the pictures they construct" (Rushdie 1989: 168). Similarly, the discourse on the indio is potentially dangerous because its circulation both in the domains of the colonizers and the natives would tend to be autopoeisic. That is, the inaccurate, the simplified and distorted model of the indio might become a model for, or a blue-print for the indio. The danger of autopoeisis happens when the model of is mistakenly followed as a model for, the time when the manticore and the satyr succumbed to the pictures constructed by the white men. Rizal, writing a century earlier, stressed:

The evil is not that indolence exists more or less latently but that it is fostered and magnified. Among men, as well as among nations, there exist not only aptitudes by also tendencies good and evil. To foster the good ones and aid them, as well as correct the evil and repress them, would be the duty of society and government, if less noble thoughts did not occupy their attention. The evil is that the indolence in the Philippines is a magnified indolence, an indolence of the snowball type, if we may be permitted the expression, an evil that increases in direct proportion to the periods of time and effect of misgovernment and of backwardness as we said, and not a cause thereof (Rizal, The Indolence of the Filipinos, 337).

When undesirable models of become the models for the problem would then be magnified. Laura Samson said: "This myth has not only become a convenient rationale for intensive colonial penetration and subjugation but has also encourage self-flagellation among Filipinos and has led the Filipino spirit to a state of prostration" (Samson 1985: 540).

THE POLITICS OF INSURRECTION

As the friars continued to control education, and insured that only monkish literature come out from the presses and get imported into the country, their vigilance seemed to be water-tight, no subversive material could circulate unnoticed. No insurrection could. But they were mistaken. First, they did not realize that texts have their own lives, they can metamorphose and emit various meanings. Second, if they thought no uncensored Western idea can get in, they forgot about letting some indios out into the more liberal world.

Formation of a Subjugated Knowledge

David Sturtevant, in his book Popular Uprisings in the Philippines, published in 1976, had already pointed out the religious timbre of the various Philippine uprisings. Reynaldo Ileto, in Pasyon and Revolution, of 1979, explained that in fact the revolutions, devoid of real political theories, had to depend on religious idioms for the articulation of the present oppression and for the visualization of a future utopia. Domingo Castro de Guzman, in his essay Pagtiteorya sa mga Teorya ng Rebulosyong Antikolonyal says:

Bakit dapat may teorya ng rebolusyon ang isang rebolusyon? Dahil dapat may dahilan ang isang rebolusyonaryo sa kanyang pagiging rebolusyonaryo, at dapat wasto o may pagkawasto ang mga dahilang iyon. Bagamat ang mga teorya ay lagi nang kahabi ng mga ilusyon at pantasyang samutsari, hindi maaring mga ilusyon at pantasya lamang ito (de Guzman 1994: 46).

Apparently, not only language was needed but also legitimation. Religion provided both. The close nexus between religion and political strife could be seen more once the indio mind is placed in its proper historical context. Pertierra asserts:

The earliest Spanish reports portray native society as one in which "sacred and profane were often indistinguishable" (Phelan 1964, 72). While the reliability of such reports may be questioned, it must be noted that the conceptual distinction between religion and politics was not a marked feature of the native perception of social reality (Pertierra 1994: 99-100).

The power relation of the colonial bondage was in fact very complicated and at the same time very subtle. The earlier chieftains who resisted the conquestadores did not need a language to mark the aliens as enemies and therefore potential dangers, nor did they need a legitimizing discourse to justify their opposition. Decades and centuries after the colonial occupation, the situation became entirely different. The colonizers were no longer alien enemies, but unquestioned masters. The indios grew and matured under the overarching colonial power, which to their eyes was presented as the natural state of affairs. The colonizers are now their natural masters. Without a language that can tell them that in fact the present situation is oppressive and that there is a chance of changing the future if they take the future into their own hands, they will never see oppression nor can they visualize the future. Without this language, they will be fettered forever to the colonial bondage.

The Spaniards thought that religion would eternally transfix the indio into docile submission. Yet, they failed to consider the erratic nature of texts. The freely circulating religious texts were appropriated by the colonized differently from what the colonizers intended. From the supposed tranquility of the Spaniards' Christian texts, the natives were able to get a language of war. This subversive appropriation can be clearly seen, for instance, in how the religious texts transformed the native conception of time. Bowring has an interesting anecdote about the indio's lack of preoccupation with time. "Ask him his age, he will not be able to answer: who were his ancestors? He neither knows nor cares" (Bowring 1963: 84). The indio was entrenched on a time structured by the agrarian cycles. As Niklas Luhman would say: "the primary function of primitive time-reckoning seems to be the integration of recurrent ecological changes and social norms regulating behavior" (Luhman 136). In this case, the indio can very well mark the boundaries of the planting, harvest, rainy, dry seasons. But this year's planting season could not be remembered as very different from the other year's planting season, unless of course there are very significant disruptions that occur. With such a notion of time, conceiving an armed struggle would be a very difficult project to accomplish. Revolution has a linear structure and cannot be plotted along the cyclical pattern of an agrarian time. In fact, the indios never conceptualized the revolution in terms of the agrarian model of time, but in the linear model of Judeo-Christianity made accessible to them by the widely circulated religious and devotional texts, not to mention of course the repetitive sermons the friars delivered. Ileto theorized that the time model employed in the Katipunan initiation rite was directly adapted from the pasyon's themes of paradisical past, seduction, suffering and the eschatological coming of the kingdom of God. In the end, in this sense of political subjugation, the pre-modernity of the indio mind succeeded in subverting the primitivizing colonial religious discourse. Pertierra says:

The earlier movements continue the indigenous tradition of failing to separate, both at the conceptual and empirical levels, the profane from the sacred domain, the political from the moral community, and the revolution from spiritual regeneration (Pertierra 1988: 108).

The Glitters of the Luces

The Bourbon reformists' efforts in the late 18^th century resulted finally into an economic boom in the first three quarters of the 19^th century. With the opening of the archipelago to British and American traders coupled with the inauguration of the canal Suez, Philippine economy seemed to be riding on the tides. Nick Joaquin writes about this period.

From this period date the grand houses of Vigan, the fabled elegance of Lipa, the ornate facades of once-austere town churches like those of Morong and Taal, the great haciendas of Pampanga, Bicol and Iloilo. Ilongo Sugar and Bicol abaca became exportable at this time and prompted the appearance in Manila of two mighty American commercial houses: Russell Sturgis and Company and Peel Hubell and Company, which were not merely trade firms by banking establishment offering advances to hacienderos (Joaquin 1982: 115).

The bustling economic activities seemed to be reflected on the dynamic circulation of paper bills, that replaced the inert gold in 1852. With these transformations were brought changes in government bureaucracy and information systems. It was quite an instance of what Max Weber has written:

Today, it is primarily the capitalist market economy which demands that the official business of the administration be discharged precisely, unambiguously, continuously, and with as much speed as possible. Normally, the very large, modern capitalist enterprizes are themselves unequalled models of strict bureaucratic organization. Business management throughout rests on increasing precision, steadiness, and above all, the speed of operation. This in return, is determined by the peculiar nature of modern means of communication, including among other things, the news service of the press (Weber 1993: 154).

The same transformations created new opportunities for the mestizo and middle class indio families to provide their sons better education in Manila or even abroad. Some of the sons of the more fortunate mestizos and indios were able to experience the remains of the enlightenment in their very habitat. Many rich families sent their sons to Spain, and other countries in Europe.

The propaganda movement properly started with Gregorio Sancianco's dispassionate and almost clinical analysis of the social ills of the country. Joaquin says:

Gregorio Sancianco is the epiphany that starts the propaganda. We do wrong to contain that movement in the triumvirate of Rizal, Del Pilar, and Lopez Jaena. Sancianco should precede them all because his book enunciated all the themes that they developed although, unfortunately, without his clinical unemotional approach (Joaquin 1982: 116-117).

It was in Barcelona, where the propaganda movement was organized. Barcelona is the place seething with the Catalan separationists. But Madrid eventually became the base of the movement. And it was rather a well suited base.

For one thing, here were gathered expatriates from Cuba, a Spanish colony already in the process of revolution, and association with the Cubans would infect the Filipinos with radical ideas. For another thing, Madrid itself had a tradition of street barricades and popular fronts. Coming from a country where it was a crime to speak ill of church and monarchy, the Filipinos would no but pop eyes to find themselves among Spaniards who were openly and vehemently anti court and anti clerical, and who deplored their country as the most backward in Europe (Joaquin 1982: 118-119).

When the illustrados articulated the oppressive situation, they used the distinctly enlightened language of economics, political science and education. For instance, Sancianco's germinal El Progreso de Filipinas, of 1881 talks about educational and economic reforms. The other propagandists envisioned the future by planning to make the Philippines a real province of Spain.

CONCLUSION

This paper has presented how the indio was thrown into a modernized society with his pre-modern mind made all the more pre-modern in different ways. First, it was excluded from the circulation of modern knowledge through constructing a language barrier, through offering backward and outdated education, and through imposing an ultra-conservative censorship. This exclusion had really made the native collective representation pre-modern contentwise. Secondly, the peculiar way of infusing the Christian ideology that borders on fanaticism, superstition and absurdity, only reinforced the contentwise pre-modernity of the native collective representation, by encouraging the tendency to conflate the different levels of reality. Thirdly, adding insult to injury, the colonizers made the indio thought more pre-modern by their supremacist discourse of the latter's inferiority which harbors at the same time autopoeisic powers.

Despite the above-mentioned machinization, the colonizers were not absolutely successful. The indio was able to construct his own model of rationality that subverted the colonial power. Moreover, with the economic transformation, the colonial power faced a tremendous pressure to more and more liberalize the circulation of knowledge. Hence, in the country and abroad dramatic changes happened that resulted to the rise of the illustrado discourse.

Though these native and illustrado discourses successfully subverted the political bondage, these rationalities were either very purpose-specific or not all permeating so as to successfully construct a modern mode of thought. And to a large extent we remain a people thrown into a modern world, devoid of the most basic tool of a modern collective representation. This realization can be painful for all of us to accept. But just as the colonial ties were painful, so is our task of remembering. The colonizer can live on without forgetting well, but for the colonized remembering well is a matter between remaining in the dawn's darkness or seeing the glimmers of the new day, because remembering well is the first stage of a ritual cleansing. The paper merely offered a way of remembering, a way of freeing us from the persisting socio-political bondage sown by the colonial moment, a way of ushering in the long-waited modernity, a way of ritual cleansing.

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