“Loans with interest were in very common practice, excessively high rates of interest being current, so that the debt doubled and multiplied all the time during which the payment was deferred, until there was taken from the debtor what he possessed as capital, and, when ultimately nothing more was left, his person and his children.”
Of these statements Rizal says:—
“This is the sad truth, and so much the truth that it subsists until now. In many provinces, and in many towns, there is taking place, word for word, what Morga says, it being to be lamented that at present not only Indios [Filipinos, Tr.] continue this usury, but also the mestizos, the Spaniards, and even various priests. And it has come to this that the Government itself not only permits it, but in its turn exacts the capital and the person in payment of the debt of others, as occurs with the cabeza de barangay.”
It would be easy to compile passages similar to the preceding from other authors, but those given are explicit and authoritative enough to make it clear, first, that slavery existed in the Philippines at the time of the conquest as a general tribal institution of social and economical character and in minutely regulated form; and, second, that although it lost, with the advent of the Spaniards, the character of an institution, and indeed was formally abolished by early edicts from Spain, it continued to exist as an unauthorized practice, so that Rizal, writing at the close of the nineteenth century could say that slaves still existed in many parts of the country.
In a statement recently published in the New York Evening Post, Señor Quezon, Resident Delegate from the Philippines to Congress, has said:—
“Since there is not, and there never was, slavery in the territory inhabited by the Christian Filipinos, which is the part of the Islands subject to the legislative control of the Assembly, this House has refused to concur in the anti-slavery bill passed by the Philippine Commission.”
Whom will the American public believe, Morga, the historian, and Rizal, the Filipino patriot, or Quezon, the Filipino politician?
While I entertain no doubt as to the answer, I shall nevertheless discuss at length the more recent history and present status of slavery and peonage in the Philippines, because of the vital importance of full knowledge of the facts to intelligent consideration of the claim that the Filipinos have arrived at a stage of civilization comparable with that of the more advanced nations of the world, and are capable of establishing and maintaining a just and humane government.
The Spanish Penal Code did not prohibit or penalize slavery, or the purchase or sale of human beings. It did contain provisions against forcible detention of individuals and the abduction of minors, but in the Philippines at least they were more honoured in the breach than in the observance during the Spanish régime.
The Moros raided the towns of the peaceful Filipino inhabitants of the Visayan Islands and of Luzón until within quite recent times. An unhappy fate awaited the prisoners whom they took. Men were frequently compelled to harvest for their captors the crops which they themselves had planted, and were then mercilessly butchered. Women, girls and boys were carried away into slavery, the former to serve as household drudges or as concubines, and the latter to be brought up as slaves pure and simple. Some men met a similar fate. The only reason that more were not enslaved was that it was usually considered too much trouble to make full-grown individuals work. Slaves were held as chattels if it suited the convenience of their masters to retain them, and otherwise were sold, bartered or given away. Zamboanga was at the outset largely populated by escaped Moro slaves who had sought the protection of the Spanish garrison there. Coming originally from widely separated parts of the archipelago, these unfortunates had no common native dialect, hence there arose among them a Spanish patois now known as Zamboangueño.