There would have been no insurrection of any importance in the Visayas and Mindanao if the Tagálogs had kept their hands off. We have seen how they worked their will on the people of the Cagayan valley and the Visayas, and what bitter animosities they provoked. We have also seen how on various occasions the Ilocanos opposed the Tagálogs as such, and even planned to kill them, while the Visayans did kill them on various occasions. However much politicians may declaim about a united Filipino people, certain uncomfortable but indisputable facts reduce such claims to idle vapourings.
At the time when there was great excitement in Manila over the Jones Bill, and many Filipinos believed that independence was coming on July 4, 1913, there took place at the house of General Aguinaldo a very significant gathering of former insurgent generals and colonels. There was then much interest in the question of who would be appointed president of the coming Philippine Republic. It was officially announced that the object of this meeting was to unite those who attended it in an effort to aid in the maintenance of a good condition of public order. I learned from a source which I believe to be thoroughly reliable that one of the conclusions actually reached was that no Visayan should be allowed to become president of the republic, and that one of the real objects of the meeting was to crystallize opposition to the candidacy of Señor Osmeña, the speaker of the assembly. But the undesirability of giving publicity to such factional differences at this time was promptly realized and this attitude on the part of Aguinaldo’s supporters was not publicly announced.
Troubles between Ilocanos and Cagayans continue in Cagayan, Isabela and Nueva Vizcaya up to the present day. Several years since, when investigating the cause which lay behind a petition from certain people of the latter province for an increase in the educational requirement precedent to the exercise of the franchise, I discovered that the whole thing resolved itself into an effort to disfranchise the Ilocanos, who always voted together and already controlled elections in several townships.
A Typical Spanish Mestiza.
Without going further into the differences which separate the several civilized peoples, I will say emphatically that the great mass of Filipinos do not constitute “a people” in the sense in which that word is understood in the United States. They are not comparable in any way with the American people or the English people. They cannot be reached as a whole, and they do not respond as a whole. In this they agree with all other Malays. Colquhoun has truly said:[6]—
“No Malay nation has ever emerged from the hordes of that race, which has spread over the islands of the Pacific. Wherever they are found they have certain marked characteristics and of these the most remarkable is their lack of that spirit which goes to form a homogeneous people, to weld them together. The Malay is always a provincial; more, he rarely rises outside the interests of his own town or village.”
More important than the differences which separate the Tagálogs, Ilocanos, Cagayans, and Visayans as such, are those which separate the individuals composing these several groups of the population. Very few of the present political leaders are of anything approaching pure Malayan blood. To give details in specific cases would be to give offence, and to wound the feelings of men who certainly are not to blame for their origin. Suffice it to say that with rare exceptions, if one follows their ancestry back a very little way he finds indubitable evidence of the admixture of Spanish, other European or Chinese blood. The preëminence of these men is undoubtedly due in large measure to the fact that through the wealth and influence of their fathers they had educational advantages, and in many instances enjoyed broadening opportunities for travel, which were beyond the reach of their less fortunate countrymen. To what extent their present demonstrated abilities are due to these facts, and to what extent they are due to white or Mongolian blood, will never be known until the children of the common people, who are now enjoying exceptionally good educational opportunities, arrive at maturity and show what they can do.[7]
Meanwhile there is more or less thinly veiled hostility between the mestizo class and the great dark mass of the people. For a time we heard much of Filipinos de cara y corazon,[8] and while because of political expediency there is less of this talk now than formerly, the feeling which caused it persists, and will continue to endure. Throughout the Christian provinces the same condition exists everywhere. The mestizo element is in control. Until the common people have learned to assert themselves, and have come to take an important part in the commercial and political development of their country, anything but an oligarchical form of independent government is impossible.
There has been complaint from politicians and others of the mestizo class that American men are, as a rule, disinclined to increase it by marrying its women and breeding mestizo children.