Pluralism and Truth: Filipino Lessons in a Time of Pandemic and Racial Conflict
Fr. Horacio de la Costa, S.J., one of the foremost Filipino historians of his time, was a product of the first American Jesuits who took over the Philippine province from the Spanish Jesuits. He was an advocate for social and economic justice. In his address at the Jesuit Mission Benefit Dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City on 6 November 1970, he responded to the question what the Philippines “has been up to” since independence from American colonial rule in 1946 (De La Costa S.J., 1970). America had provided our society with notions of citizenship and participative governance. Democratic institutions were established, not to mention an efficient civil service and public school system making possible more opportunities for social mobility.
Because of America we have become a democratic people who have found the inherent and permanent authority to politically organize our leadership through representation (De La Costa S.J., 1971). As citizens, we accept freedom being secured by a state abiding by principles of political and social equity. Democracy serves as a platform to exercise freedom — and democracy is about people. It is from a people’s identity that a state is constructed to serve and protect their sovereignty.
Stepping into the subject of identity, an important way of understanding the Filipino is recognizing the years of 1565 to 1898 as a formative period that provides an alternative image of Spaniards and their contributions (Zialcita, 2017). Our cultural identity had not been wiped out by western rule. Our identity, interpreted in the context of hybridity, is a nation of half-breeds originating from a cultural reality that Spanish influence recognized interracial marriages (Francisco SJ, 2017) (Zialcita). Hybridity and integration, a fusion of influences, required welcoming pluralism, accepting Chinese and Moslem contributions to culture, for example; and minorities accepting integration to a national culture. Our anomaly adds to a “frission of wonder” that we are the only country in Asia being Catholic and hybridity adds to that marvel (Barry, 2017). Linked with Spanish colonial rule is the “appropriation” of Christianity since it differentiates us distinctively from the traditions of our Asian neighbors by upholding the “sacredness of the human person” (Francisco S.J.). It is to our good fortune the Church had defended native rights and liberated the indios from slavery early on in Imperial Spain’s conquest of las islas del poniente.
In 1565, forty-four years after Magellan’ s expedition “girdled” the world and passed through the archipelago now known as the Philippines, Miguel Lopez de Legazpi landed at Cebu and began the conquest of the islands (De La Costa S.J., 2002c). Before his death in 1573, Legazpi had doled out parcels of land, called encomiendas to conquistadors for stewardship in the name of the crown. From 1577 to 1606 religious orders arrived to evangelize the country. Midway, the colony was at the height of an economic crisis in 1581. Its top executives enriched themselves starting from the Governor-General who had capitalized on the bureaucracy by exploiting the Galleon trade. After a decade, the conquistadores were disaffected and gave up hope of also enriching themselves. These soldiers found themselves penniless since pay was notoriously delayed. The country had no economic surplus like silver from Mexico, silk from China, or spices from the Moluccas. The impoverished colonists using the encomienda and repartimiento systems exacted their toll, in turn, on the natives (De La Costa S.J., 2002b).
The encomienda was a royal grant to deserving colonists, particularly the conquistadores, giving them jurisdiction over territory and its inhabitants. The repartimiento was a system of forced labor requiring villages to supply a quota of men for work at the encomiendas, mines, factories, or docks. Both systems were subject to abuse as men could be torn away from their families and shackled to galleys as rowers. Pay was also very much often delayed, indefinitely at times. To add to the plight, tribute exacted on the natives drove the poor into debt slavery.
The Augustinians who came with Legazpi took note of the encomienderos turning natives into slaves. After they made several representations to the viceroy at Mexico and to the King, a cedula or decree was ordered by Philip II that Spanish residents of the Philippines could not retain indios as slaves in any manner. It was only in 1581 with the arrival of the first bishop of the Philippines, Fray Domingo Salazar, was the matter of slavery dealt with concisely (De La Costa S.J., 2002a). The encomienda and repartimiento systems transformed into unjust structures predicated by racial dominance. They had become what we now term, systemic racism. Only by 1591, with the advent of a new governor, Gomez Perez Dasmarinas, who quarreled heatedly with Bishop Salazar on matters of ecclesiastical authority, yet with their integrity in conjunction, were both systems reformed.
In spite of our human dignity being upheld by the protection of the church, our Spanish colonial masters still found ways of exploitation with unjust structures; this time predicated by class discrimination for the next three hundred years. The bigotry of men finds means to create rules to oppress others for dominance, profit, and gain. It was also around the middle of the 1500s that America began institutionalizing the slave trade. Ironically, as it were the Augustinian friars who first denounced slavery in the Philippines, the settlement of St. Augustine had become the hub of the slave trade in Spanish Florida in the 16th century and the first in the continent to include enslaved Africans (AAR, 1998). In the next three hundred years a slave culture grew alongside an evolving nationhood driven by white Americans. After the abolition of slavery in 1865 which was paid at a great cost of a civil war, a post-war restoration policy failed and the south oppressed once more black Americans through unjust structures, namely Segregation for another 100 years. After dismantling the structural injustice of Segregation in the civil rights struggle of the 1960s, work still remains for systemic racism to be addressed like the financial practice of Redlining home values (Charles, 2018). Biases and prejudices will continue to foment bigotry and hate as long as systems exist that oppress.
Filipinos continued to suffer the dominance of white men during American colonial rule, who begrudgingly labeled us their Little Brown Brothers. The U.S. purchased the Philippines from Spain after their defeat in the Spanish-American War. Immediately after the surrender of the Spanish colonial government to the Americans after a fake battle in Intramuros, the U.S. Army undertook destroying the Philippine revolutionary army. Atrocities were committed by both sides but none as extensive as turning the island of Samar into a “Howling Wilderness” by the U.S. Army. In this war, American military made use of a form of water torture when interrogating captured prisoners. The last revolutionary general surrendered in 1902 and the next decade would find the country under American military rule. Stepping back from the sufferings of the Philippine–American war and understanding the Filipino experience during the Spanish Flu pandemic under American rule may prove more relevant today.
Francis Gealogo, Filipino historian, gave an online lecture last April 7. “Will COVID-19 just go away? Lessons in Pandemics from History,” he provided valuable insights on the impact of the Influenza pandemic, besides a cholera epidemic in 1903, in the Philippines during American colonial rule. The 1918 Influenza pandemic or the Spanish Flu appeared in the Philippines with the arrival of an U.S. Army transport that left San Francisco for Manila. The first victims were Filipino cabin-boys and mess attendants along with first-class passengers on board. Three days after the first cases were reported 70%-80% of pier and office workers of shipping fronts fell indisposed. No isolation, quarantine, nor lockdown measures were instituted.
Of a population of 10 million in 1918, around 90,000 to 165,000 fell victim to the disease. Case morbidity built up to around 45–55% of the population. Its surge came in three waves. The first came from May to June, the second from October to December and the last came the following year of 1919, from February to March. The first wave mainly hit Luzon with a mortality average of .33%. The second wave affected most of the archipelago and exhibited the worst rates of morbidity and mortality. Its mortality average spiked to 32.2%. By the end of the third wave, the influenza death rates per 100,000 had ranged from around 30–40. The disease affected the infected population with a 2.5–3.0% case mortality. That would have been around 1 out of 85 Filipinos succumbing to the illness.
While the upper class was adapting to the amenities of American rule, and the hearts and minds of the budding middle class was being won over, mistrust still burned in the lower classes. Only a little more than 15 years since the revolutionary army’s surrender to the Americans in 1902 and after a cholera epidemic in 1903, that also killed tens of thousands, popular perception of the Spanish Flu being a foreigner’s disease stoked that distrust. In fact, there was a huge debate whether Filipinos actually were more immune to Influenza, a racial question. Paradoxically, the racial dimension involved in return, the denial of Filipinos who believed they were immune to it due to race relations. Aggravating the distrust was the American government’s initial report of the illnesses to be “autochthonous” in origin. It was merely a case of the Filipino trancazo or flu.
American censorship misled the population, their subjects. The U.S. was at war in Europe and they did not want to upend the war effort. At the same time, they were still in the process of subjugating the rest of the islands. Public health leaders had told the people it was just the ordinary flu by another name. A Filipino one. The problem, therefore, was a simple case of not telling the people the truth about what was happening. Some administrators were more concerned about the economy or politics than medical reaction.
Debates over addressing the influenza crisis revolved around culture and society: hygiene of communities and cultural practices. The nipa constructs of lower-class dwellings were thought by the Americans to be festering grounds for the virus. Fueling the fire of distrust further were memories of the American military’s measures to contain the 1903 cholera epidemic by burning squatter communities, interning farming villages into concentration camps, and restricting food trade — causing famine. This was their version of the lockdown at the turn of the century, a continuing era of empire building.
The Influenza pandemic happened at a time of intersection of colonialism, medicine, and science with nationalism and resistance in the Philippines. During that time, the crisis could not be separated from the colonial experience under the Americans as far as majority of the population was concerned. Distrust and discord prevailed at the expense of tens of thousands of lives. Distrust came as a product of the perceived inability of Americans to understand local traditions and customs, Filipinos felt the same experiences and emotions that were attributed to being colonial subjects. The pandemic had given the Americans a unique conundrum, how to control the disease and how to control a population being subjugated.
A world war was reaching its climax by 1918. American forces were assembling in France and new units were forming. The military command in the Philippines was recruiting Filipinos to train in Camp Claudio for deployment in Europe. Most of them having arrived, coincided with an armistice being signed in November 1918 thus ending the fighting. The troops were shipped back home and brought the disease with them. That was the time of the deadly second wave and the colonial government had already been instituting official measures to combat the virus. Philippine Civil Service was suspended. Schools, postal service, and amusement places like the sabungan or cockfighting arenas were closed. Information campaigns of pamphlets in English, Spanish, and local dialects were distributed. The sick was isolated, and the infected premises were disinfected. Frontliners, medical doctors and practitioners were affected and so too were gravediggers who fell in short supply. Farm workers failed to harvest crops while laborers failed to report to work.
If the response of the American colonial government were a dish it would be chop suey. Consequences faced were changes in the administration, resignations for that matter. While administrative positions were realigned, the Filipinization program was going through policy differences due to the crisis. Many Filipino administrators did not follow Americans because they did not believe their measures would work, or they wanted to be assigned elsewhere. Filipino and American doctors could barely get along on how to approach the disease. Compounding the distrust was a bureaucratic challenge: Public Health was not high priority during the colonial regime. When medical personnel were being reassigned for the war effort in Europe, the policy contributed to the distrust: that maybe the de-prioritized medical programs were being done to help colonization all along.
Given today’s coronavirus pandemic in the U.S., with the bungling of the U.S. presidency and politicizing of the crisis by opponents, if the American response were a dish it would also be chop suey. The distrust and discord mentioned earlier during the Spanish flu crisis in the Philippines presents itself in America’s coronavirus crisis. John M. Barry who wrote the book, “The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Greatest Plague in History,” adamantly claims the biggest lesson of the 1918 influenza pandemic is that leaders need to tell the truth, no matter how hard it is to hear (Illing, 2020). Pointed out by Professor Gealogo on the Influenza impact in the Philippines, lying about the severity of the crisis in 1918 created more fear, more isolation, and more suffering for everyone. “People can deal with reality and the truth a lot better than they can deal with uncertainty,” Vox had quoted John Barry in bold type. In the U.S., the truth about the pandemic is stressfully confusing for truths abound everywhere and anywhere. It is most unfortunate the death toll of the country is the highest globally.
In the Great Influenza, Barry wrote the gradual disintegration of trust at every level of society cascaded in breakdowns. The lack of trust made it harder to implement critical public health measures because people just did not believe what they were being told. When government finally became transparent about the situation, it was too late. Lying and the lack of trust cost lives. In this time of pandemic, we have watched that in America, distrust in society had grown ever more prevalent beyond the coronavirus crisis and into racial conflict.
Stepping back into the subject of identity, we may have to learn that hope lies in living identity out of historic diversity (De La Costa S.J., 1975). Five hundred years since Spanish conquest the Filipino identity is still taking shape; thus, we live it — how we live its formation process has been the question we have dealt with and finding our identity has taken understanding the differentiations from one culture to another. The Philippines has been an open society whose process of development has also been taking a process of integration (Zialcita) (De La Costa S.J., 2002a). Our years of integration is a testament to pluralism. Shall we dare speculate what we would be today if slavery by the Spanish colonists prevailed?
Going back to Fr. De la Costa’s address mentioned earlier he told his American audience to let us Filipinos be. We have gone on our own, and we’ve been doing decently well — in spite of the many tribulations, struggles and threats. Maybe, the question should be thrown back, “What’s up, America?”
Liberation from four hundred years of slavery and 100 years of segregation does not mean black America is fully free. Of all the racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S., two did not seek the land of freedom for prosperity and security. The native Americans were driven out of their lands; conquered and subjugated. African Americans were forcibly shipped in chains and bound into labor as chattel.
Over decades of conflict, achievements of black celebrities, sport stars, statesmen and a black president; together with the unjustified violence against ordinary people like Rodney King, Michael Brown, and George Floyd, stress the point that black lives do matter. More so, with black leadership stepping up to make the world aware of continuing systemic racism in America they catalyze awareness against systemic injustices around the world.
African Americans acting for police reform should make the racial conflict in the U.S. relevant to freedom loving Filipinos. Our national police doctrine, manifested in a 2013 operations manual, is patterned after a militarized American police model. When shooting is justified at the slightest sign of imminent danger should one still wonder about the high death toll of Tokhang, our War on Drugs? As of January 2019, 5,000 drug personalities have been killed together with 7,000 other victims of which 54 were children in the first year (Felipe, 2018) (Editorial, 2018). Since systemic racism is creating global awareness of institutional injustices, in that, because black lives matter, truly all lives matter.
From the perspective of a Filipino whose nation has struggled for centuries in the name of freedom and justice; the whole of America has to eventually acknowledge its amalgamated culture is still in formation with two races unjustly treated for centuries. A United States will continue taking shape by the integration of conflicting identities. Social, economic, and political problems intrude to confound the road to an emerging American consciousness. Consciousness is a fact of awareness and self-awareness can bring a better understanding of one another. Collective awareness could enable empowerment to remain truly in the love of country, retaining acceptance about your nation’s past, and being hopeful about your present and for the future.
References
AAR. (1998). St. Augustine, Florida founded. African American Registry. https://aaregistry.org/
Barry, C. (2017). More Honored Than Read: Horacio de la Costa and the Vagaries of Intellectual Life in Southeast Asia. In S. S. Reyes (Ed.), Reading Horacio De La Costa, S.J.: views from the 20th century (p. 23). Ateneo de Manila University Press.
Charles, J. B. (2018). Racial “Redlining” from 1930s Still Shapes Home Prices Today. Governing. https://www.governing.com/topics/transportation-infrastructure/gov-redlining-race-real-estate-values-lc.html
De La Costa S.J., H. (1970). What We Are Up To. In R. M. Paterno PhD. (Ed.), Horacio De La Costa S.J.: Selected Essays on the Filipino and His Problems Today (p. 7). 2B3C Foundation, Inc., Philippine Province Society of Jesus, and Ateneo de Manila University.
De La Costa S.J., H. (1971). Philippine Problems in Historical Perspectives. In Roberto M. Paterno (Ed.), Selected Essays on the Filipino and His Problems Today (p. 16). 2B3C Foundation, Inc., Philippine Province Society of Jesus, and Ateneo de Manila University.
De La Costa S.J., H. (2002a). Bishop Salazar and the Colonial Episcopate. In Robert M. Paterno (Ed.), Selected Essays on the Filipino and His Problems Today (p. 16). 2B3C Foundation, Inc., Philippine Province Society of Jesus, and Ateneo de Manila University.
De La Costa S.J., H. (2002b). Church and State under the Patronato Real. In Robert M. Paterno (Ed.), Selected Essays on the Filipino and His Problems Today (p. 18). 2B3C Foundation, Inc., Philippine Province Society of Jesus, and Ateneo de Manila University.
De La Costa S.J., H. (2002c). Outpost of Empire, 1521–1600. In R. M. Paterno PhD (Ed.), Selected Essays on the Filipino and His Problems Today (p. 17). 2B3C Foundation, Inc., Philippine Province Society of Jesus, and Ateneo de Manila University.
Editorial. (2018, September 28) The Guardian view on the Philippines: a murderous ‘war on drugs’ | Philippines. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/28/the-guardian-view-on-the-philippines-a-murderous-war-on-drugs
Felipe, C. S. (2018, May 8). PNP bares numbers: 4,251 dead in drug war. Philippine Star. https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2018/05/08/1813217/pnp-bares-numbers-4251-dead-drug-war
Francisco SJ, J. M. C. (2017). The Filipino and the “Other”: de la Costa’s Notion of Hybridity. In S. S. Reyes (Ed.), Reading Horacio De La Costa, S.J.: views from the 20th century (p. 14). Ateneo de Manila University Press.
Zialcita, F. N. (2017). Making an Identity Out of Diversity. In S. S. Reyes (Ed.), Reading Horacio De La Costa, S.J.: views from the 20th century (p. 14). Ateneo de Manila University Press.
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