[3] This is only too true!
Chapter XXV
Slavery and Peonage
Chattel slavery existed in the Philippine Islands when Magellan discovered them in 1521. It exists there to-day.
Morga, who was in the Philippines from 1595 to about 1608, and is admittedly the most reliable chronicler of the events of those early days, has given the following interesting account of the conditions then existing:[1]—
“There are three classes of persons among the natives of these Islands, by which the commonwealth is divided: principales, of whom I have spoken before; timawa which is the same as plebeians, and slaves, of principales as well as of timawa. These slaves were of various classes: some are in entire servitude and slavery, like those which we have, and these are called sagigilir; they served in the interior of the houses and so also the children descended from them; others, who have their own dwellings, which they inhabit with their family, away from the house of their master, and these come in at times to help the latter in their fields and crops, as also aboard the vessel when they embark, and in the construction of their houses whenever they erect such, and they also serve in their houses whenever there is a guest of some distinction, and they are under obligation, whenever the master has them called, to come to his house and to serve him in this ministry without pay or other stipend; these are called namamahai, and their children and descendents are slaves of the same condition. Of these slaves sagigilir and namamahai there are some who are slaves entirely, and others who are only half slaves, and others who are slaves only for a fourth part. This originates thus: if either the father or the mother was free and they had a single child, the latter was half free and half slave. If they had more than one child, the children were distributed in this way: the first followed the condition of the father, be he free or a slave, and the second that of the mother; and if the number was uneven, the last child was half free and half slave; and those descended from such child, if they had a free father or a free mother, remained slave only for a fourth part, because they were children of a free father, or mother, and of a half slave. These half or quarter slaves, namamahai or sagigilir, serve their masters only every second month, respectively, in proportion to their condition as slave.
“Among the natives the ordinary price of a slave sagigilir used to be, if much, ten taes of good gold, worth 80 pesos, and if he is a namamahai half of that, and thus in proportion the others, taking into account the personality and age.
“It cannot be established as a principle from where these classes of servitude among the natives arose, for they are all of the islands and not foreigners; it is understood that they made them in their wars and differences; and the most certain is that those who were most powerful made and took as slaves the others for slight causes and occasions, and most often through loans and usurious contracts current amongst them, the payment, risk and debt increasing with the lapse of time until they became slaves; and thus all these forms of servitude have their violent and unjust origin, and it is about them that there arise the greater part of the lawsuits that exist among the natives and with which they keep busy the judges in the forum of the court, and the confessors in that of the conscience.”
To the last of the preceding paragraphs Rizal makes the following annotation, which, mutatis mutandis, should give leading Filipinos of to-day matter for reflection:—