A History of the Philippines

by David P. Barrows

Depopulation of the Ladrone Islands.—About 1680 a governor was sent to the islands, and they were organized as a dependency of Spain. The policy of the governors and the Jesuits was conversion by the sword. The natives were persecuted from island to island, and in the history of European settlements there is hardly one that had more miserable consequences to the inhabitants. Disease was introduced and swept off large numbers. Others fell resisting the Spaniards, and an entire island was frequently depopulated by order of the governor, or the desire of the Jesuits to have the natives brought to Guam. Many, with little doubt, fled to other archipelagoes.

If we can trust the Jesuit accounts, there were in the whole group one hundred thousand inhabitants when the Spaniards arrived. A generation saw them almost extinct. Dampier, who touched at Guam in 1686, says then that on the island, where the Spaniards had found thirty thousand people, there were not above one hundred natives. In 1716 and 1721 other voyagers announced the number of inhabitants on Guam at two thousand, but only one other island of the group was populated. When Anson in 1742 visited Guam, the number had risen to four thousand, and there were a few hundred inhabitants on Rota; but these seem to have been the whole population. The original native population certainly very nearly touched extinction. The islands were from time to time colonized from the Philippines, and the present population is very largely of Filipino blood.

Conflicts between Governor and Archbishop.—Meanwhile, in the Philippines the conflict of the governor with the archbishop and the friars continued. The conduct of both sides was selfish and outrageous. In 1683 the actions of Archbishop Pardo became so violent and seditious that the Audiencia decreed his banishment to Pangasinan or Cagayan. He was taken by force to Lingayan, where he was well accommodated but kept under surveillance. The Dominicans retaliated by excommunication, and the Audiencia thereupon banished the provincial of the order from the Islands, and sent several other friars to Mariveles.

But the year following, Governor Vargas was relieved by the arrival of his successor, who was favorable to the ecclesiastical side of the controversy. The archbishop returned and assumed a high hand. He suspended and excommunicated on all sides. The oidores were banished from the city, and all died in exile in remote portions of the archipelago. The ex-governor-general, Vargas, being placed under the spiritual ban, sued for pardon and begged that his repentance be recognized.

The archbishop sentenced him to stand daily for the space of four months at the entrances to the churches of the city and of the Parian, and in the thronged quarter of Binondo, attired in the habit of a penitent, with a rope about his neck and carrying a lighted candle in his hand. He was, however, able to secure a mitigation of this sentence, but was required to live absolutely alone in a hut on an island in the Pasig River. He was sent a prisoner to Mexico in 1689, but died upon the voyage.

The various deans and canons who had concurred in the archbishop’s banishment, as well as other religious with whom the prelate had had dissensions, were imprisoned or exiled. The bodies of two oidores were, on their death and after their burial, disinterred and their bones profaned.

Degeneration of the Colony under Church Rule.—Archbishop Pardo died in 1689, but the strife and confusion which had been engendered continued. There were quarrels between the archbishop and the friars, between the prelate and the governor. All classes seem to have shared the bitterness and the hatred of these unhappy dissensions.

The moral tone of the whole colony during the latter part of the seventeenth century was lowered. Corruption flourished everywhere, and the vigor of the administration decayed. Violence went unrebuked, and the way was open for the deplorable tragedy in which this strife of parties culminated. Certainly no governor could have been more supine, and shown greater incapacity and weakness of character, than the one who ruled in the time of Archbishop Pardo and those that succeeded him.

Improvements Made by Governor Bustamante.—Enrichment of the Treasury.—In the year 1717, however, came a governor of a different type, Fernando Manuel de Bustamante. He was an old soldier, stern of character and severe in his measures. He found the treasury robbed and exhausted. Nearly the whole population of Manila were in debt to the public funds. Bustamante ordered these amounts paid, and to compel their collection he attached the cargo of silver arriving by the galleon from Acapulco. This cargo was owned by the religious companies, officials, and merchants, all of whom were indebted to the government. In one year of his vigorous administration he raised the sum of three hundred thousand pesos for the treasury.

With sums of money again at the disposal of the state, Bustamante attempted to revive the decayed prestige and commerce of the Islands.