Four
The Mind of Sugarlandia

A letter came saying that the Women's Association of Silay was composed mostly of rich families, and that, although they belonged to the elite and that they' studied in big schools in Iloilo and Manila, nevertheless, in their meetings and sessions, they used their own dialect instead of English and Spanish. This was worthy of praise. Hence, I have no doubt that this association composed of twenty girls who belonged to the rich families, will without doubt prosper.
Makinaugalingon (Feb. 8, 1916)

Though it has waned, changed, been buried Santa Iglesia is first among religions In time to come it will again arise Reappear, coming to us.
Santa Iglesia Brotherhood, "Song of the Flag"
(trans. Linda Ty-Casper)

The preceding chapter dealt with the establishment of sugar society in Negros and Pampanga during the formative years from 1836 to 1920; the present one seeks to explore some ideas, perceptions, and attitudes of participants in that society as it solidified. What events shaped the thinking of sugar people, and how did they react to the changes wrought by the coming of large-scale production? One can more readily discern the social and economic structure that sprang up in sugar country during the frontier era than penetrate the outlook of sugarmen, their mentalité , in the argot of intellectual historians. The relationship between farming practice and world outlook is a subject only recently considered by historians, and success in such studies depends on having ample statements by the participants themselves. But expressions of discontent and satisfaction, of aspirations and disappointments by the sugar people of the Philippines are not so plentiful as are data on landholding, wealth, agricultural practices, and the other circumstances of livelihood. It is, therefore, difficult to differentiate the opinions of wealthy and modest planters and of rich and poor casamac and sugar workers, if indeed there are differences. To gain even a general notion of the outlook of sugarmen, one must comb their

scarce statements and those by others who wrote about them, as well as consider their group behavior. Such an endeavor risks distortion and can lead to overly broad conclusions; however, an initial foray is worth undertaking, for during the decades of the founding of the modern sugar industry, attitudes and predilections developed that carried over into subsequence times and affected the way the industry evolved.

Hacenderos

Several important phenomena shaped the thinking and behavior of sugar planters and landowners: conquest of the frontier; acquiescence, even encouragement, on the part of the colonial government in this endeavor; strong participation of foreigners in that undertaking; and dependence on international market conditions.

Perhaps the most significant result of the transformation of the frontier into thriving sugar plantations was the considerable wealth generated, despite years of economic depression that sometimes afflicted the industry. During this era no other enterprise yielded more profit than did sugar, and the title of hacendero became synonymous with material riches. Contrary to the romanticism about heroic conquest of the wilderness that suffuses the work of writers like Robustiano Echaúz and Mariano Henson, both planters themselves, the fact persists that at its heart the taming of the frontier remained for the hacendero an economic activity, the conversion of the soil and other natural resources into investors' profits.^[1]

With rare exception so-called pioneers of the industry—ex-servicemen like de Miranda and Montilla; former tradesmen and artisans like the mestizos of Iloilo and central Luzon; and erstwhile colonial civil servants, Spanish and American—moved into agriculture from other pursuits and did not actually do farmwork themselves. Advertisements of complete estates for sale on Negros appeared in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Visayan newspapers, and rentals continued to offer a door to planter status. Among later generations, a similar situation prevailed. Consider, for example, Justo Arrastia, member of a prominent Pampangan Spanish mestizo family. He finished engineering studies at the University of the Philippines, undertook graduate studies at Cornell, worked for the Bureau of Public Works, and taught at his alma mater, all before turning to farming.^[2] The following note from an Iloilo newspaper conveys an impression of the way many planters approached their occupation: "A tea party will be held in 'Union Juvenal' tomorrow afternoon in honor of Mr. C. R. Fuentes and his family. They are leaving Iloilo to farm in Murcia, N.O."^[3] As easily as investors moved into sugar, they just as quickly departed. At the turn of the century, Pampanga's farmers left their land fallow or turned to rice in

the face of failing sugar markets; meanwhile, under similar harsh conditions, many Negros planters simply abandoned their haciendas.^[4]

One gleans a sense of how hacenderos viewed their enterprises from some observations by Francisco Liongson. A physician educated in Europe, he subsequently served as governor of Pampanga and senator from the Third District; as well, he owned extensive sugar lands. In 1911, the Philippines Free Press interviewed him on matters pertaining to sugar farming, and his remarks sparked a debate on a number of issues related to tariffs and agricultural labor. On the state of sugar farming in his province, he commented:

The sugar industry in Pampanga occupies the first place, for it is the only product exported abroad and so is the article which brings in big returns or revenues to 'the province. It is true, other products of Pampanga, such as rice, are also important, but this cereal does not go abroad but only to neighboring provinces. Pampanga produces about 700,000 piculs of sugar and when the price for a picul does not go higher than P5, the hacendero pays only his expenses, interest of 8 per cent on the capital employed, and as administrator receives for his own services only P50 a month. As a result, with sugar at P5 a picul, there is no clear profit to pay him for his trouble. And this on the supposition that everything goes well, and there are no locusts, or fires among the sugar cane, or baguios [typhoons]; and over and above all this, that none of his carabao die. But when some of these calamities come, with sugar at P5 a picul, he is headed directly for bankruptcy.^[5]

Investors certainly had to learn the economics of planting and processing if they hoped to flourish, but maximization of profits remained their chief concern. Overseers and tenants took care of the everyday business of making the soil yield its fruit. Low productivity directly resulted from failure by Filipino hacenderos to pay close attention to farming methods and from their tendency to entrust supervision of their properties to employees or tenants. Some planters actively involved themselves in cane production, but many more either lacked the experience and knowledge of how to farm efficiently or showed no interest in that aspect of the business. To raise productivity required infusions of technological expertise, personal attention, and capital resources—three commodities they often sparingly offered.

Because of low labor costs and an abundance of land, however, planters earned high returns from sugar farming during the best decades of the frontier era. One of the more astute American residents in Negros, John

White, a Philippine Constabulary officer assigned there during the early American years, commented:

But beyond other Philippine pueblos that I have known Isabela possessed a distinctive flavor; whether it was the carelessness engendered by the proximity of constant danger or because of the large number of mestizos and Europeans on near-by haciendas I cannot say, but Isabela was always gay. The babaylanes [local insurgents] might be raiding the haciendas by day; but there would be a baile [ball] at night. Despite many years of insurrection and outlawry there was plenty of money in circulation. Let the price of sugar rise ever so little and the haciendas fairly ground out wealth from the black volcanic soil. Did the babaylanes burn the buildings? There was abundant bamboo in the foot-hills to be rafted down the river, and a camarin (storehouse) could be erected in a day or two.^[6]

Rather than using their gains to raise agricultural productivity, hacenderos spent money elsewhere. The most entrepreneurial found ancillary activities in which to invest, or they turned to other financial outlets: shares of commercial banks and trading houses, money lending, trade, urban real estate, and utilities. Nevertheless, colonial policy severely limited opportunities in the broad area of manufacturing, and savings institutions did not exist before the twentieth century. Other planters utilized their profits to purchase jewelry for security against hard times or to educate their children as a way of diversifying their economic expectations. Many simply indulged in conspicuous consumption in the form of large houses, imported merchandise, gambling, religious processions, automobiles, and an extravagant lifestyle.

Sugar hacenderos became known for their liberal spending, as this quote from the Philippines Free Press suggests:

With sugar at eight pesos a picul it looks as if the halcyon days of yore were on the wing for the planters of Negros and Panay. . . .

Now it looks as if even P8.00 might not constitute the limit and that the register recording saccharine prices might not stop until it strikes an even P10. All of which means mortgages wiped off and plantations free and unencumbered and a healthy balance in the bank and large purchases and a revival of the ancient splendor and glory and royal magnificence and lavish entertainment for which Negros was formerly famed.^[7]

Capampangan, too, earned a similar reputation for wealth, as evidenced by descriptions from numerous foreign travelers to the province. For

instance, José María Mourin, a Spanish visitor particularly observant of matters material, recorded at Christmas time 1876:

For our next activity we headed to San Fernando and went up to the house of the former Capitan [gobernadorcillo] named Paras, who lived with his family, among whom the one who stood out, a pleasant mestiza named Juanita.

Not only did the good construction of this house surprise me, but also even the reliefs on the doors were well done, and the spaciousness of it, besides the profusion of furnishings that adorned it, and the good taste and beauty of many things, among others that caught my attention, a mirror in the Venetian style with a frame also of mirror, magnificent busts worth at least five hundred' pesos each, and a superb sideboard for silver plate in the dining room (which is a room separate from the interior gallery), that went for no less than one hundred pesos; and all that hardly benefits this rich family, since it has few needs, and only on great occasions do they light the lamps and show off the furnishings.

On a later visit to the Paras house, Mourin added:

While the others were eating. . . I could not help but focus on the contrast between the luxury, the splendor of this house, the exquisite platters, the delicious wines and all the refinements of modern civilization, with the calico shirt of Paras, his bare feet shod with light slippers, spending on this meal solely in order to entertain his guests, without having a fondness for those eating and drinking; and it's probable that a little ball of rice and viands, with their dried fish, solely constitutes the repast of Paras and his family. Undoubtedly it is worthwhile studying the indio with his mixture of plainness and ostentation, of vanity and indifference and the other multitude of contrasts that would be extensive to enumerate.^[8]

Mourin's observations coincide sometimes even in small detail with those of such other tourists as Ferdinand Alençon, a French nobleman who visited Pampanga around 1850, and Edith Moses, an American who visited half a century later. Compare Mourin's remarks, too, with those of English businessman John Foreman about a hacienda in northern Negros in the early 1880s:

From Victoria[s] to Cadiz Nuevo, the route is still worse, and one has to ford several streams and a number of insecure bridges to reach the town. Instead of going directly to Cadiz Nuevo, I turned off to a place called Bayabas—to the property

of a half-cast Chinese planter, whose acquaintance I had made in Yloilo. His estate-house is the neatest and prettiest I have ever seen in any Philippine plantation. The spacious airy apartments are well furnished and decorated, whilst the exterior calls to mind a country gentleman's residence in fair Andalusia. Moreover, the furniture of the house was chosen with rare taste, whilst the vestibule and lobbies are void of that miscellaneous lumber generally found in Philippine farmery.

The owner, Don Leandro, and his Señora shewed me every attention. Ponies were at my disposal for riding round his splendid property—a basket chaise was always ready if I wished to go into town. I could bathe in the house, or I could swim in the river, the Italon diutai —with its shaded banks, two minutes walk from the house.^[9]

Whether in the poblaciones of Pampanga or in the more rural settings of northern and interior Negros, foreigners encountered a form of hospitality purely indigenous in provenance. As early as 1521, a datu treated Ferdinand Magellan and his officers to a grand feast served on imported porcelain platters.^[10] By the nineteenth century the ritual had changed little; only its main diplomatic purpose of putting strangers at ease had given way to a more informal function of providing visitors with respite from the journey and with evidence of a family's local standing. Furnishings and settings were more likely to be Western, reflecting intervening centuries of colonial influence.

Besides elegant meals, sugarlandia's hosts frequently treated their guests to an evening of dancing such as the ones attended by John White at the turn of the century.

The people of Negros delighted in dancing. Rarely a week passed in any pueblo but that a baptism or a birthday offered excuse to get together a few guitars or a more pretentious orchestra, clear the polished hardwood sala (hall) of some house, and tread a maze of waltzes, polkas, and rigadons (square dances) from 9 P.M. to daybreak.^[11]

The first ball that White attended in Bacolod honored the visiting governorgeneral. Mourin was also invited to such affairs during his stay in Pampanga.

Other travelers to nineteenth-century Negros and Pampanga shared Mourin's view of the newly rich quality of the planter life there, of the elegant possessions out of sync with the hacenderos' own more plain, rustic lifestyle. Recent penetration by Chinese mestizos and others into the

planter group at a time when the taming of the frontier created new fortunes likely accounted for their need and ability to acquire status symbols, the fancy goods so proudly exhibited. As the period closed, however, later, better-educated generations behaved in a more sophisticated manner and became more comfortable with their use of such possessions. Edith Moses, a visitor in Apalit's most distinguished home, confirms this transition in the following comment:

The dinner was good, but dining or rather the feeding of one's guests is a serious affair in the Philippines. . . . After dinner we had music and dancing, and were delighted with the young uncle of the girls. He is a charming young man educated in Europe, yet not spoiled by his sojourn there. He was gay, unaffected, and simple in his manners. He is clever, too, and manages the large estate owned by an elder sister, who, it appeared, is a woman of character and position in Pampanga. She did not appear at the dinner and we did not see her until just as we were leaving, when a tall dark "Indian woman" appeared, who was dressed in a straight narrow skirt and a cotton jacket. She extended a hand in greeting, and our young host presented her with all due deference and courtesy as a lady who had never learned Spanish. No one seemed disturbed by her sudden appearance and there was no attempt to keep her in the background, but this dispenser of diamonds and dinners, for she owned the house and all it contained, preferred to superintend the kitchen maids and be presented to her guests later.^[12]

At least one version of the contemporary social ideal of the planter class appeared in "A Remarkable Filipino Family." Written by Negrense planter/journalist Ramon Navas, the article, which was published in the Philippine Free Press , dealt mainly with the four daughters of a planter from Cadiz. Of them, he wrote:

But it is not so much that they play the piano and the violin so well, and that they shine in both Negros and Iloilo society, that the Lopez girls elicit admiration. Personally, I admire them most when they are at home.
Last week I had an opportunity of visiting their home in Faraon. While traveling for the FREE PRESS I saw many Filipino homes, but I have never been in one where so much of that right and sane Americanism, mingled with all that is best in our own native manners and customs, is to be found. As one enters the house one sees on the left a stand of books, on

the table on the other side, books again, and copies of the Ladies Home Journal, The Delineator, Woman's Home Companion, Collier's, Everybody's Smart Set, Popular Mechanics , and half a dozen other magazines, besides Manila and Iloilo and local newspapers.^[13]

By the second decade of the twentieth century, this ideal of blending American culture with native refinement had spread widely among the Filipino upper class, in part because of the broad access to education provided by the colonial regime and because of closer economic ties encouraged by the Payne-Aldrich Act. In sugarlandia, moreover, familiarity with Occidental ideas and tastes became even more pronounced because of interaction with Spaniards and Americans through the industry and through intermarriage, especially with the former group.

Cultural refinement, a good education, and a reputation for lavish hospitality stood as important achievements to members of planter society, and they spent liberally to attain those goals. The image of the freewheeling, free-spending planter came to symbolize both independence of spirit and action to the hacendero class and to other Filipinos as well. Francisco Varona, a Visayan author of the 1920s and 1930s, wrote a book that revealed his admiration for the great entrepreneurs whom he described in almost heroic terms. For example, he portrayed one of them as follows:

They still recall the pomp and opulence of D. Jose Domingo Frias, the magnate who competed from La Carlota with Capitan Orong Benedicto, Sambi Hernaez and Isidro de la Rama in financial matters. Of Frias they said that, through his capitalization of haciendas and hacenderos, he could have built a larger fortune, had he been a man of greater ambition. He could have owned a number of haciendas that today would represent one of the grandest fortunes in the Philippines. But Don Jose Domingo Frias contented himself with having what, at the time, was considered the maximum in riches, with his million in properties, lorchas and cash, the product of his loans; he bridled his ambition, satisfying himself with pursuing his business at a moderate pace while he rewarded himself by living a splendid life of a nabob generously shared with his family and all his friends. He created and maintained at his own expense, and for the personal delight of his palatial house-hold, the best and largest orchestra, the orchestra Kandaguit, and in his immense dining room he maintained a perpetual banquet for guests who came regardless of the day of the week.

It is said that, once, when D. Jose Domingo Frias was playing cards, people approached him with a proposition for sale at a seductive price of a beautiful hacienda with mature cane. The potentate Don Jose Domingo did not want to listen to the proposition so as not to bother the friends who were playing with him. Well, this hacienda, having been purchased by someone else, was paid for from money produced by the sale of sugar milled from the harvested cane.^[14]

In Pampanga, independence was also highly esteemed, but the more cautious Capampangan frequently tied prestige to public service and the professions as well. Being a sugar planter meant having social standing in Pampanga, and great entrepreneurs like Roberto Toledo, Jose L. de Leon, and Augusto Gonzalez were all highly admired; nevertheless, most smaller landholders needed further attainments to rise to the social pinnacle. Jose Ventura, son of a planter and nephew of Governor Honorio Ventura, acquired an advanced education in England and Spain and achieved prominence as an attorney and financier; furthermore, he married Carmen Pardo de Tavera, daughter of a member of the Philippine Commission.^[15]

The ideal of the independent and achievement-oriented planter clashed with the reality of the prevalence of debt: in sugarlandia, since hacenderos frequently found themselves dependent on loans. For every Jose Domingo Frias willing to supply credit, there existed numerous farmers borrowing from him or from others. Credit and debt is a phenomenon woven into the fabric of Philippine society and is prehispanic in origin. It stands at the heart of patron-client bonds such as the tenant-landlord relationship that tied Pampangan society together and was used in various ways in other businesses in the islands. Social and political relations have long operated on a ubiquitous system of favor and obligation. In the sugar industry, however, the system of loans grew out of proportion to the availability of credit and took on more of the character of a strict business obligation.

Negrense farmers freely admitted their personal dependence on credit and its role in sustaining the sugar industry on their island. Confronted with a market crisis in 1886, a group from La Carlota and Pontevedra sent the government a petition of relief that included the following remarks:

From 1860 to 1877 was the time of the development of agriculture in the Archipelago, thanks exclusively to the special help of the foreign commercial houses that unlocked financial credits for both machinery and clarifying equipment to establish haciendas, especially for cane sugar. [The credit], if not all that was necessary, [was] at least enough to produce [sugar] under conditions of [hacenderos] being able to redeem annu-

ally, if not all their debts, at least two thirds or three quarters of them with some exception. [It was] all that some hacenderos could accomplish under the most favorable circumstances and with their best efforts.

In this whole period, due to the fertility of the soil and to the newly opened lands, even with little intelligence on the part of the majority of the farmers, the fields produced sugar in abundance so that from year to year came such enthusiasm for agriculture that peninsular and locally born Spaniards and natives who figured at least that even though they dedicated insufficient [funds] to create haciendas, by relying always from the start on the credit that they would get from the above mentioned houses, and, with the good conditions of the years cited up to 1877 and beyond, there was such abundance of production that in those years there was a feeling of well-being because the rewards more than compensated for all the anxieties of the work. The savings sugar afforded them they gradually returned to the farm as improvements that haciendas needed for completion, and in this manner at the end of each harvest and sale of sugar it always roughly came out that if they did not break even with their creditors, having very little debt they could later resort to a loan for the succeeding harvests.^[16]

With the frequent downturn in market conditions from the late nineteenth century onward, the plea for low-interest credit grew into a steady refrain in sugarlandia, somewhat more strongly heard in Negros than in Pampanga. Through newspapers and reports of the provincial governors, the call for loans and mortgages came from planters and their spokesmen. Timoteo Unson, a newspaper writer and planter farming in Negros, spoke most eloquently on behalf of distressed planters in a 1913 article in the Philippines Free Press . After detailing the preceding years of disaster and pointing out that most planters did not have resources for luxurious living, he concluded:

There you have the true causes of the present crisis and it is not attributable to improvidence or mismanagement on the part of the farmers, since it has been shown how if the farmers of Negros know how to spend 100 or 200 thousand pesos on silks and jewels to please their wives and daughters, they also know how to spend eight million on work animals; if they know how to spend 100 thousand pesos on automobiles, they also know how to spend 6 million on agricultural machinery and cultivation equipment, and for such people who know how

to allocate their expenses, it is an injustice to say that they spend money on luxuries and feasts.^[17]

The Iloilo newspaper Makinaugalingon (Native ways) sometimes served as the conscience of southern farmers, and, apropos agricultural loans, its editor wrote:

Many of the farmers from Negros have no clear account books. Hence, many of them were victims of a loan shark—especially if the loan money was not spent properly, but was, instead, used on things unrelated to farming, for example, gambling, diamonds, politics, automobiles, and other luxurious things. If so, the hacendero will certainly fall into the pit of bankruptcy, and, hence, his hacienda will be taken by the loan sharks. Thanks to a law introduced by Commissioner Jaime de Veyra, all luxury goods must be paid for by the owner. Perhaps this kind of law will curtail the unnecessary expenditures of some hacenderos.^[18]

In reality, hacenderos and landholders employed credit in a variety of ways: to farm, to invest in newer equipment, and to retire prior debts, as well as to grant loans to their tenants and duma'an. Planters also borrowed to buy luxury goods and to invest in nonfarming enterprises. Critics and defenders of the planter way of life could find many examples of the misuse of and the need for credit, and the numerous references to this subject suggest that it remained a pressing topic in sugarlandia, particularly in the last few decades of the frontier era.

Especially in times of distress, partisans of the hacenderos spoke often and loudly of the need for survival loans: however, during good years only occasionally did anyone from the inside point to risks inherent in extravagant expenditures. In 1920, the following rather isolated news item appeared: "Representative Lope Severino of Silay recently announced that he is not happy with the luxury of the hacenderos. They should think of the future because the price of sugar might go down and the little saving they have might just disappear like a dream."^[19] Here surfaces a rare testimony on a harsh reality of planter life: that big rewards from sugar farming came only intermittently. Credit remained the vehicle by which hacenderos transported themselves from one crisis to the next.

Planters in Negros and Pampanga perceived no difficulty in turning to the government for aid with their financial problems because in the past the regimes had provided them economic relief. The planter class stood as a powerful political and economic prop for the colonial administrations, and

the latter sought to assure landholders' support by following policies that would not alienate them.

To obtain such support from the government, hacenderos had learned to make use of petitions, a custom that dated back at least to 1886, when Negrenses sent Manila a nine-point proposal. By the twentieth century ad hoc agricultural associations in Pampanga and Negros, with prominent spokesmen like Liongson, Jose Escaler, Jose de Leon, Rafael Alunan, Matias Hilado, and Tito Silverio, regularly petitioned Manila on various financial matters related to their benefit. Additionally, under the United States, planters enjoyed increased say over government financial policies when sugarmen were elected first to the Philippine Assembly established in 1907 and then to the Senate after 1916.^[20] The following item from the Free Press reveals how planters interacted with the government on their own behalf:

News of the possible postponement of legislative action on the project for a national bank so alarmed the farmers of Occidental Negros that a meeting of them was held in Silay last Sunday for the purpose of devising some means to avert the impending calamity. It was decided to send former assemblyman Esperidion Guanco, who was president of the first agricultural congress, and Carlos Locsin to Manila to urge upon the legislature the necessity of immediate action on the bill. According to Mr. Guanco, unless the legislature approves the national bank bill, the withdrawal of two million pesos of government money from the planters during the next harvest crop, and the shutting down of credit by the British houses on account of the war, will mean the grave of Negros agriculture.^[21]

Within two years Guanco was elected to the Senate, where he ended up on the banking committee overseeing policies of the newly created PNB and supervising the activities of rural credit associations. By 1920 the leaders of the sugar industry were already influencing government policy in the Philippines; more and more sugarmen were moving to Manila to enjoy the benefits of urban life—and also to lobby for favorable legislation for their industry.^[22]

As a group, hacenderos adopted a conservative stance toward the use of government in support of the common weal; rather, they supposed its purpose was to aid planters so that they could afford to help others. As noted in the last chapter, owners paid little in the way of land taxes, and the government accordingly functioned on sparse income. In 1920 the provincial government of Negros Occidental sought permìssìon from the governor-general to solicit private contributions for the construction of roads and bridges.^[23] Many public expenditures in Negros and Pampanga de-

pended on private donations, a sort of noblesse oblige, and local newspapers abounded with stories of elite generosity, among them the following:

Agustin Ramos of Himamaylan, Negros, donated to the municipality a concrete school house which cost him P15,000. People rejoiced at this exemplary act.^[24]

The high esteem for public instruction in this province exists, perhaps because said branch has the necessary support for its promotion and development. One may say, if no school buildings are being raised, that they begin to raise them and that they will probably raise them. Bacolor rates among others with its School of Arts and Trades; Arayat with its intermediate school; San Fernando with its high school. The erection of these buildings is through voluntary contributions of the citizens and through donations by the municipal, provincial and insular governments.

Angeles and San Luis have already collected enough money, in spite of the hard times, to build in their respective jurisdictions spacious intermediate schools. It mounts into the thousands of pesos the money gathered by voluntary contribution. Not much time will pass, if the eagerness for instruction continues as it has up to today, before all the towns in this beautiful region may count upon their own school houses.^[25]

Numerous items from the local news make it clear that provincial schools, public as well as private, relied on the generosity of the wealthy, and this situation caused a writer for La lgualdad to wonder if democracy could flourish under a system where public education depended so heavily on private largesse.^[26] But Negrense planters felt that they made education effective. In 1901, when the Philippine Commission met with local officials to discuss formation of a civil government, the following observation appeared:

Referring to the subject of education, [a representative from Bacolod] did not think the present system in Negros left anything to be desired. He referred to the town of Bago, where there are over four hundred children attending school. The president of that town had paid money out of his own pocket for clothing, so that the children might appear decently attired; and all this upon the initiative of the present government of Negros.^[27]

Like so many conservatives, hacenderos feared that too much government would cost them money better used elsewhere. In deliberations over

creation of provincial administration for both Pampanga and Negros, questions of officials' salaries arose and were strongly debated. On the matter of taxation, the following comment appeared in the minutes:

Senor Ramon Orozco [of Bacolod], who offered to speak in English if desired, showed credentials making him the floor representative of five towns of Western Negros. . . . His towns, he said, were also pleased with the proposals as to the land tax and distributing more equitably the burdens of supporting the government. . . .

Orozco, however, went on to say that the "proletariat" class, not owning land, would pay nothing under this system, while their wages are now about eight dollars a month and on these they live very comfortably. The onus of taxation would fall on the rich, who would gradually lose their land.

Another speaker interrupted to recommend a direct tax of two dollars gold per year on the proletariat class. At present they have to pay $1.50 gold for cedulas.^[28]

This last remark reveals a strong planter belief that the functions of government' did not include rectifying the income imbalance between rich and poor. Furthermore, it shows the distinct limitations on the sense of paternalism felt by the elite of Negros.

By virtue of their wealth, political position, education, and cultural orientation, the elite attained a familiarity with foreigners that made it easier for them to exert influence upon the colonial regime. Western merchants, government officials, and travelers regularly sojourned at Pampanga and Negros, where they interacted with hacenderos officially and unofficially. On Negros there existed a situation virtually unknown elsewhere in Southeast Asia, where citizens of the metropolitan country actually worked as inquilinos for native landholders. In no other area outside Manila did such an easy relationship between Europeans and the native elite spring up as in the sugar provinces. With Americans it took longer for such an interaction to develop, in part because of racial prejudices and stereotyping the new rulers brought with them and also because of the language barrier; nevertheless, when the first military officers and civilian administrators arrived in Pampanga and western Negros, they were quickly introduced to children of the elite already able to speak English, often learned in Hong Kong.^[29] Official contacts between representatives of the two peoples were followed by formal social engagements that eventually led to more personal relations. To be sure, outright social equality did not exist, and Americans usually proved more standoffish than did their predecessors; nevertheless, greater dependence on native participation by

the new administration eventually eased the formality of the relationship. In no other colony in Southeast Asia did a group of natives immediately play such an influential role as did that in the Philippines. Consider that, of the original three Filipino appointees to the Philippine Commission, two—Pardo de Tavera and Luzuriaga—held sugar lands and a third—Benito Legarda—while not having sugar properties, owned other agricultural lands and a nipa palm wine distillery in Guagua, Pampanga. The general attitude of sugarlandia's elite toward foreigners appears most clearly in its response to the Philippine Revolution, against both Spain and the United States.

The Revolution, Asia's first major nationalistic movement against a Western power, stands as the most complex series of events in the archipelago’s history, and the body of literature on this subject is enormous. Historiographic disagreements about the. meaning and extent of revolutionary activity abound, and it would require at least a monograph to elucidate these debates; nevertheless, recent work on the Revolution in Pampanga and Negros has provided some insight into sugar elite behavior during those trying times.^[30]

Between 1872 and 1896, members of the Filipino intelligentsia led by Jose Rizal and Marcelo del Pilar launched the nonviolent Propaganda Movement among students and intellectuals of the Christian lowlands to encourage political, economic, and religious reform of the Spanish regime. While the movement's main actions occurred abroad and in the areas in and around Manila, the turmoil reached into Pampanga when a small number of landholders such as Ceferino Joven and Mariano Alejandrino joined "subversive" Masonic lodges in San Fernando and Bacolor. A crackdown on Freemasonry in 1892 resulted in punishment of both men, the harsher sentence falling on Alejandrino, who was exiled to northern Luzon. Capampangan also shared in the student ferment in Spain, where Jose Alejandrino (son of Mariano) and Francisco Liongson joined Rizal in discussions of the colony's future under colonialism. Although large numbers of Capampangan did not participate openly in the various organizations, many undoubtedly quietly shared the sentiments in favor of reform. The province was so close to the center of agitation that the political currents of the times could scarcely have gone unnoticed or unfelt there. In Negros, however, there appears to have been little enthusiasm for the Propaganda Movement from elite residing either in the archipelago or in Europe. Negrenses studied at those same educational centers where the burning issues were discussed, but only a few converted to the cause, including Juan Araneta, a student contemporary of Rizal and Jose Alejandrino at the Ateneo de Manila and in Europe.

Open revolt against Spain broke out in the Tagalog provinces in August 1896 and culminated in victory when revolutionary troops gained control over almost all of Luzon during June 1898. The First Philippine Republic, based on the Malolos (Bulacan) Constitution, was inaugurated under the leadership of President Emilio Aguinaldo on January 23, 1899. As the fortunes of Spain declined, Capampangan and Negrense allegiance to the mother country faded as well.

Despite attempts by the Republican forces to involve Pampanga in their struggle, the province remained uncommitted during the first year. On October 15, 1897, the last Spanish governor of Pampanga, José Cánovas, wrote to his superiors:

[Since the outbreak of fighting] there was not a single moment of indecision: from the first moment until today, all the towns declared allegiance to Spain, have stayed and will stay at her side, accepting the same fate as the Spanish flag, rejoicing with the triumphs of our arms and suffering for the cause of Spain's persecution, blockade and plunder by the rebels who, on different occasions, have shown to the Pampangos who have fallen into their hands indignities for [the rebels'] having encountered in this province one of the most formidable obstacles to their intent, because Pampango loyalty has been a model of continuity for the soldiers of five provinces. . . .

A call was sounded to gather resources for Pampangos who died or were wounded in the lines of [our] army, and the province with great generosity offered her help; ask for donations for the [Spanish] patriots and at once the province will heed the call without pressure of any kind.^[31]

For all its contributions, Cánovas hoped that the government would award Pampanga a permanent title such as "Muy Heroica y Siempre Fiel," or "Muy Noble y Muy Leal," or even "Muy Española."

Pampangan loyalty began to wither in late 1897 when guerrilla units of the Republican cause began to filter into the province, providing evidence that Spain could no longer control the military situation. A Capampangan from Tarlac, General Francisco Makabulos, commenced organizing clandestine revolutionary cells in every town; and the Spanish population, facing increased hostility, started one by one to evacuate the province. By the time of Dewey's victory over the Spanish fleet at the Battle of Manila Bay in May 1898, Pampanga had committed itself to the Republic, raising local troops to expel remaining Spanish forces.

The Negrenses, too, initially declared their allegiance to Spain and, more tangibly, committed men and money to the Loyal Volunteers, a locally

raised force of Spaniards and natives who joined the fighting against Aguinaldo's army from November 1896 to April 1898. The Negrenses did not support in any significant way the Republican cause, although several planters including Juan Araneta were arrested and held on suspicion.

As long as Spain appeared able to hold the upper hand in the conflict, most Negrenses stayed loyal to the mother country; however, with Spain's defeat at Manila Bay and its subsequent losses to the armies of Aguinaldo and the United States, the hacenderos began to distance themselves from their old ally. By August 1898 several towns in Negros Occidental had formed central and local revolutionary committees, and Generals Aniceto Lacson and Juan Araneta acted as regional commanders of the northern and southern sections respectively. Planters created local military units and drafted their sometimes reluctant workers to fill the ranks. Lacson even resorted to hiring Macabebe mercenaries from Pampanga to provide himself with reliable soldiers. In a move coordinated with revolutionary groups on Iloilo, Negrenses used their superior numbers to defeat small pockets of Spanish troops in Bacolod and Himamaylan between November 5 and 8, thereby ending more than three centuries of Spanish occupation.

Negrense leaders then took a unique step: instead of affiliating with the Malolos Republic, they immediately formed their own provisional government with Lacson as president and Araneta as war delegate. During the next month they created the Cantonal Government with local branches in every town of the island and opted for autonomous status vis-à-vis Malolos. This course of action did not sit well with leaders on neighboring Panay, for leaders there had hoped to include Negros in a new federal government of the Visayas they were then creating. The decision taken at Bacolod and endorsed by most planters can perhaps be seen as further evidence of a growing social and sentimental separation of Negros from its parent settlement across the Guimaras Strait.

The third and final phase of the Revolution commenced in February 1899 when the Philippine Army battled the forces of the United States, which now claimed the archipelago by virtue of the Treaty of Paris signed the preceding December. The First Filipino Republic ended in April 1901 upon the capture of Aguinaldo and his taking the oath of allegiance to the United States; nevertheless, sporadic guerrilla operations persisted in widely scattered areas including Pampanga and interior Negros for months, even years in the case of the latter. Despite continuing incidents of violence, the inauguration of civil government on July 4, 1901, signified to the elite of sugarlandia the finale of the Revolution.

Within a week of obtaining the Spanish surrender and before the signing of the Treaty of Paris, the government of Negros forwarded to the Americans a petition seeking alliance, signed by Lacson, Araneta, Melecio Severino, and other high-ranking officials. After Iloilo fell to American forces in February 1899, representatives from Negros accelerated that search. Members of both the Malolos and U.S. governments acknowledged that this defection of Negros seriously damaged the morale and prestige of the budding national government. Thereafter, in several stages, the island moved toward provincial status under the new regime, a status confirmed on May 1, 1901. These actions earned the enmity of the Aguinaldo government, and the Negrenses subsequently had to ask for help from the Americans in dealing with Republican dissidents who had secretly entered their province and harassed planters declaring their allegiance to the United States.

Leaders on Negros justified their actions in this way:

Holding the current responsibility that we have contracted before the civilized world [and] . . . considering that, having assured the internal order of this territory, we have also the duty to take precautions against the attacks of Spain or of any other foreign power, that if this event should occur, it would be the beginning of the destruction of all that exists on this fertile, rich and coveted soil, because we are prepared to repel with all our force all unjustified aggression; having deliberated with wisdom about this most essential point that demands immediate solution and making use of the authority we are demonstrating:

The provisional revolutionary government of this independent territory has agreed to take refuge as a protectorate of the Grand Republic of the United States of North America.^[32]

At the turn of the century Philippine nationalism scarcely reached rural areas, and the sugar elite of Negros placed local concerns above those of a newly formed, shaky government dominated by a small group of leaders from central Luzon. From their own vantage, Negrenses could hardly have acted otherwise.

The south also faced another worry, where to sell its sugar. Exports from Iloilo had begun dropping off, and the demise of Spanish authority made existing international market arrangements unpredictable. That the possibility of renewing access to the U.S. market and of penetrating the Dingley Tariff wall occurred to leaders on Negros is obvious from the

following hint contained in a letter, dated May 27, 1899, from President Aniceto Lacson to President McKinley:

The Island of Negros, inhabited by sorts of toil engaged almost exclusively in agriculture, produces more than half of the total amount of sugar exported from the Philippines, and for this reason its inhabitants are in the majority peacable, and have gladly accepted American authority, because it is the incarnation of work and material progress, and is the generator of moral progress also.^[33]

Economic interest coupled with political realism informed basic decisions made by the Negrense leadership during the Revolution.

The third phase of the Revolution proved far more devastating and divisive for the Capampangan, since a large share of the fighting happened on their turf, leaving their land ravished and many of the poor famished. No neat political swings occurred, and questions of loyalty became confused because of shifting military control, physical and psychological coercion, and the raging guerrilla warfare that engulfed the province. Broadly speaking, Capampangan began this phase overwhelmingly in support of the Republic, but by the time the period ended, with the creation of Pampanga Province under the American civil government in February 1901, a majority of the elite backed the new colonial regime. Many local civilian leaders participated in the Malolos government, and Maximino Hizon and Jose Alejandrino as well as Servillano Aquino and Francisco Makabulos from Tarlac served loyally in the top ranks of the army. Residents in the province 'provided soldiers, logistics, and moral support to the cause, even as U.S. forces began to invade its borders.

For roughly the next two years, the provincial elite found themselves trapped between two contending parties, each demanding their allegiance. Guerrilla intimidation of planters to hold their loyalty was matched by U.S. coercive pressures to end their support for the Republic. Murders, kidnappings, burnings, arid robberies marred tranquility until the Americans finally mastered sufficient control of the countryside. As peace returned, more and more hacenderos—including such former loyalists as Liongson, Joven, and Enrique Macapinlac—committed themselves to the new order. Others, such as Hizon, Alejandrino, and Pedro Abad Santos, even after their capture remained true to the cause.

The majority of the elite in Pampanga seemed to swim with the tide of whichever side controlled the province, but such an observation obscures a more complex reality. The elite espoused a conservative ideology that called for order and the sanctity of private property, and they gave their

allegiance to the government—Spanish, Philippine Republican, or American—that appeared to provide them the best guarantee of stability. At times when it was not clear which faction would win, many Capampangan paid a heavy price for making a choice, suffering death, injury, and/or loss of property. When the Americans emerged at last as the victors and supported the traditional order, the elite backed them, even at considerable risk to themselves. While their revolutionary experience differed, the sugarmen of Negros and Pampanga shared, finally, a common desire for tranquility, peaceful commerce, and the preservation of their own estates, aspirations the Americans promised to respect. To those ends, national independence took a back seat.

Planters of sugarlandia subsequently subordinated their desire for political freedom to their need for markets. No more striking evidence of this attitude can be found than in debates over passage of the Payne-Aldrich Act in 1909. This tariff bill offered duty-free access to the U.S. market for large quantities of Philippine agricultural commodities, including sugar, in exchange for free entry to the archipelago of American manufactures. Filipino nationalists opposed this bill, correctly anticipating that it would create an economic reliance on the United States that would delay political independence.^[34]

Sugarmen did not begin their quest for American tariff preferences with the idea of compromising Philippine independence, and not all hacenderos favored the 1909 arrangement; however, in the end, the majority of them chose economic advantage over other considerations. In September 1901, scarcely had civil government come to the provinces when planters in Negros and Panay petitioned Governor-general Taft for reduction of duties under the Dingley Tariff, and this plea continued for the next eight years with planters from the south even taking their case directly to the halls of the U.S. Congress.^[35] Spokesmen for the Negrense planters did not view tariff relief as a brake to the drive toward liberation but rather as part of a package of relief for their depressed industry. In his report for 1906, for example, Governor Melecio Severino, after outlining the economic hardships confronting Negros, wrote the following:

Such being the calamities afflicting agriculture, with which the planters must necessarily and desperately contend, it cannot be hoped to bring about an improvement of agricultural conditions by their unaided efforts or without the decided protection of the Government.

It therefore becomes necessary for the Insular Government to exert itself on behalf of the Islands for the enactment of legislation which shall free from customs duties agricultural

machinery and implements; which shall encourage the establishment of agricultural and mortgage banks, and which shall reduce or abolish the Dingley tariff on sugar. It would also be advisable for the Philippine Commission to appropriate Insular money for the extermination of locusts and grasshoppers and to enact a law regulating plantation labor.^[36]

Capampangan, in contrast, because of their proximity to the capital and its politics and because of their closer ties to the old revolutionary cause, showed greater understanding of the dangers inherent in tariff concessions. In 1905, a group called "Comite de Intereses Filipinos," made up of more than a hundred of the province's most influential agriculturalists and professionals, sent a long petition to Secretary of War Taft, listing thirty desired changes. Unlike the usual solicitation from Negros, the document encompassed all the points of the current nationalist agenda, including demands for a specific date for independence, formation of a legislative assembly, trial by jury, revision of the sedition and libel laws, reform of the constabulary, change in the composition of the Philippine Commission, reduction in the alcohol and land taxes, and equal pay for Filipino and American officials. All these changes and others preceded pleas for tariff consideration for local commodities. Indeed, the petition raised so many politically sensitive issues that the senior inspector of constabulary for Pampanga secretly investigated the origins of the document and reported on its organizers to his superiors.^[37]

Because of differing political traditions and perhaps because Pampanga possessed a more mixed economy than did Negros, Capampangan remained more divided on Payne-Aldrich than did Negrenses. At the time of the passage of the bill, debate in Pampanga, pro and con, raged "redhot," in the language of the Philippines Free Press .^[38] Nevertheless, confronted with the reality of their dire economic conditions, hacenderos supported the compromise. As Governor Arnedo, himself a sugarman, wrote in his annual report:

As to the general opinion regarding the results expected from the Payne Bill after enactment thereof by the Congress of the United States, so far as the agriculture of the province is concerned, this bill was in general well received by the majority of the inhabitants of the province, and although a small minority appeared to sustain the contrary opinion, in the sense that the effects of this bill, instead of being beneficial, will be detrimental to the interests of the country in general and the province

in particular, it may be affirmed that this was but a play of party politics.^[39]

In Negros the reception of "Bill Payne" was even more enthusiastic, although even in the south some reservations about its political implications surfaced. Governor Severino wrote in 1909:

By the foregoing brief statements of the prices that prevailed in the Iloilo market, it will be seen that sugar quoted highest when favorable news of the bill was received.

The rise in prices naturally caused the planters of Occidental Negros to form a favorable opinion of he Payne bill, although this opinion was divided with respect to the considerations relative to its transcendental influence on the political future of the Islands.

The majority of the planters, realizing the palpable results which will accrue to agriculture in the future from the enactment of the Payne bill, as it will create a market for Philippine sugar, paid no attention to the efforts made to make a failure of every public meeting held in its favor, and in important assemblies convoked by the municipal presidents of different places, not only said that they favored the bill and asked for prompt enactment, but also would accept free trade, provided that Philippine sugar was admitted duty free into the United States.^[40]

After enactment of Payne-Aldrich, sugar farmers of both provinces, although they gave occasional lip service to the idea of independence, cast aside any reservations once favorable market conditions appeared and came to rely almost entirely on sales to the United States. In 1915 the Agricultural Association of Pampanga, representing the most influential of the province’s agriculturalists, wrote to Resident Commissioner Manuel L. Quezon in Washington, asking his help to continue the existing tariff preferences, for without them the Philippines could not compete with Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and U.S. domestic producers for a piece of the American sugar market.^[41]

The following year the U.S. Senate added to the pending Jones Bill the Clarke Amendment that promised independence for the Philippines within two to four years. While this amendment ultimately met defeat, it evoked the following response from Jose Ledesma Jalandoni, a Negrense planter whose opinion represented that of a strong segment of sugarlandia:

I am not opposed to independence, but I believe that ample time for preparation should be allowed us so that we can devote all our efforts and energies to the development of the vast

agricultural resources of our country. 'Let us urge the establishment of agricultural banks, sugar centrals, railroads and all that is necessary to develop our national resources, for, with the individuals prosperous as they should be, .the government which derives from them shall be able to establish coast fortifications, a respectable navy, a well organized army and acquire sufficient war implements and ammunitions to enable it to meet other nations shoulder to shoulder, or breast to breast. . . .

The great majority of our professional and ignorant politicians are actually insisting upon independence under whatever form without calmly considering the responsibilities that it brings with it. They have flattered and seduced the people into this belief, call us "traitors" without stopping to ascertain that the interests of our country are dearer to our hearts than to theirs. Let us not be deluded by the emotion of beholding our dear flag unfurled on the shaky mast which may break never to rise again.^[42]

Demand for a stable market, like the need for a steady source of credit, imposed sharp limits upon the economic and political choices of these otherwise powerful and independent-acting planters.

Casamac and Duma'an

Before World War II, the Filipino poor left little printed testimony concerning their reactions to events that changed their lives. Moreover, many of those in the past who claimed to speak for tenant farmers and laborers exhibited little understanding of or empathy with them. Often these putative spokesmen represented the interests of the upper class rather than those of their adopted charges. Historians recently have pointed out that, in several instances at least, the rural farmer's world view differed widely from that of the landholder, that the two outlooks were positioned at a greater distance from one another than is normally implied in the great tradition-little tradition dichotomy. Patron-client paternalism did not necessarily produce the kind of symbiosis that allowed planters to fathom the thinking of those who labored in their fields; rather, opportunism, a patronizing attitude, and even adversariness characterized that relationship. Evidence suggests that workers in sugarlandia shared this same fate of being little or badly understood by litterateurs.^[43]

In 1964, as part of my research on local history, I conducted an anonymous informational survey among older men in Pampanga concerning their memory of their lives before 1920. Among the respondents, 149 former sugar tenants and thirty landowners provided data about their

residence, education, and employment in the sugar industry during this century's first two decades. Aside from brief, biographical answers, many of these interviewees, who ranged in age from 69 to 104 years, volunteered more extensive comments about their work experience. Their insights, given to the local teachers and college students who acted as surveyors, offer some unusually frank comments on tenant-landlord relations. The forty-four intervening years, eventful and tumultuous as they were, did not erase for some of these old men vivid memories of their days laboring in the sugar industry.^[44]

Perhaps the clearest notion that emerged from these interviews was the contrast in perceptions between landlords and casamac about their relationship: landholders considered that their tenants felt a deep sense of gratitude toward them for the treatment they received, while tenants often expressed resentment and fear. The following statements demonstrate this contrast, the first from a landholder in Angeles:

My brother and I tilled the soil—our own land—and had helpers, wards of my father. We treated them like members of our own family. They lived with us. We supplied their necessities and we did not maltreat them. I remember they loved us very much. My father saved one of them from the Guardia Civil during Spanish times. My father held the position of cabeza.^[45]

A retired school teacher and hacendero from Guagua described the samacan system in these terms:

We were like one big family. They treated us like their parents and we treated them like children. When the planting began and they came to the house for the cuttings, they brought along firewood of their own volition, and I was thankful for their gesture of kindness.^[46]

Another planter, from San Fernando, added:

My father was a farmer with around a three-hundred-hectare hacienda. . . . The sharing of crops was fifty-fifty and the expenses were also on a fifty-fifty basis. The tenants loved my father. They would come and help us during fiestas, bringing us gifts of fruits, chickens, and sweets.^[47]

While some tenants considered their landlords paternalistic, the majority were more resentful. An 84-year-old tenant from Porac gave the most positive comment about the relationship:

The tenant and the landowner share fifty-fifty. . . . The landowner calls for the tenant when the Chinese buyer comes—

everything is done in their presence and with their consent. No interest on money and rice. The landowner (Hipolito Coronel) was very humane. He treats his tenants as member of the family. The tenants are served their meals at the family table.^[48]

On the other side, a casamac from Guagua stated:

The tenants would serve the landlord by cutting wood for fuel for him, cleaning his yard and his house, and giving him gifts of chickens, firewood, and carabao milk whenever he had a fiesta. No request of the landlord was ever turned down. Of course, the landlord had a way of discriminating among his tenants. It must be kept in mind that the landowner has foremost in his mind the increase of his production. Nevertheless, there were times when a landlord would remove his tenant from his farm for failing to please hirn. There were even cases when the landlord cut out the ration of the tenant altogether.

A common practice of the landlords at that time . . . was that every weekend when the tenant's wife went to see the landlord for the next week's ration, she was made to clean the yard, the house, or made to cook the landlord's meal before she was given the ration, which time was usually shortly before noon or even later.^[49]

Another, from Angeles, said:

My landlord would ask me to do odd jobs for him without pay, even to the extent of cutting wood, which was about three carloads, and delivering it to his house. My wife used to dean clothes and clean the house of my landlord. She, too, received no compensation for it. At the end of the milling season our debts were cleared. Of course we were the poor, then oppressed by the rich. I did not complain. We were not allowed to, and nobody dared to.^[50]

Fear of landlords appeared in numerous comments, including one by a tenant, 73, from San Fernando:

I started selling firewood at the age of about ten or eleven years old. We were very poor. My father was a tenant farmer. He had no carabao. . . . At that time we were much afraid of our landlord. My father could not answer back for fear of be-

ing removed from his work. My father's landlord cheated my father.^[51]

One from Mexico testified:

My landowner was the kindest among the Panlilios. I was formerly a tenant of Don Vicente Panlilio, but something happened. I asked him once if he thinks that the price he gave to my crop was too low. But it happened that he was out of mood at the time I asked him. I have always considered myself one of the most faithful tenants, but that time he got angry with me and he started shouting at me. Plenty of co-tenants heard me because we were in the fields at the time. They were angry at me because I didn't assert my right. They said I was a weakling. All of them were mad at Don Vicente. Then it happened that Don Bengang Panlilio, his cousin, needed one more tenant, and I asked Don Vicente if I could transfer to his cousin's hacienda. He was no longer angry at that time and he refused to let me go. My landlord was just temperamental. I understood his moods because I knew he has some Spanish blood.

Later on Don Bengang asked Don Vicente if he could spare one, and that was when I transferred to Don Bengang's hacienda. He was a very kind old man—very fatherly; although he also had some bad moods, he was very kind compared to Don Vicente. There were even some brothers of Don Vicente who whipped their tenants.^[52]

That whippings occurred on occasion was confirmed by another Mexico tenant, age 78, who revealed:

During those times even grown men got beaten when the landlord, Pablo Panlilio, did not like what he did. We said a tenant was given "two cavans" if he gets whipped fifty times, because one cavan was equal to twenty-five gantas. . . . And the whip he used was not just an ordinary kind, it was especially made for the purpose of whipping tenants. It had a leather case, the handle was made of a metal and gold plated, and the stem was of thick rounded leather. When the landlord asked his servant to bring out the whip, everyone in the barrio trembled in fear. Even how much one hated the tenant being beaten, one felt pity when the whip was taken out. Everyone gathered to see, and the family most of the time cried for mercy. The landlord rarely used the whip, however. He used it only in extreme cases, but I did see him use it once when I

was a small boy, and the memory stayed long in my mind. The tenant was not like a human being when he was being beaten. During the first few whippings he shouted in pain, but after that he did not cry anymore, because he became numb.^[53]

If Pampangan tenants expressed a sense of helplessness in the face of planter power and authority, they also conveyed a sense of hopelessness as well. A 76-year-old tenant from San Fernando offered a common sentiment of the era:

Although the sharing of crops was on a fifty-fifty basis, the tenant shouldered his expenses on the farm. Whatever he got from his landlord in cash or kind (cigarettes, rice, sugar) he paid back. He worked for his landlord like a slave. . . . What was not quite nice was that most landlords cheated their tenants. . . .

The tenant does not get his share of the harvest because he has no place to store it' and he does not have connections with big buyers like the Chinese, et cetera.^[54]

The endlessness of unrewarding work appeared further in a statement from a 100-year-old tenant from Angeles:

I was supposed to receive one fourth of the sugar production which we placed in pilones. No sugar and no money was given to me in return, for my share was kept in my landlord's storehouse. He sold my share as he pleased without my knowing the selling price. I was just informed of the cost of my ration every time I came to get it. At the end of the next harvest, I was informed of the balance of debts. I got so fed up with such treatment that I gave up the work. My son who was then quite big worked in my stead.^[55]

Landholders at their most paternalistic expressed their reluctance to loan money, for it encouraged long-term indebtedness, and three of them commented:

I used to limit the loans of my tenants, because I wanted them to make a little sacrifice for their future. I did not collect interest on money I loaned them. I even gave them lessons on how to produce more, once in a while.^[56]

When I lent my tenants any amount of money, I charged twenty percent interest to prevent them from borrowing often and spending the money for gambling. When my father died, I canceled all debts of my tenants.^[57]

My father . . . always gave his tenants money as often as they came to borrow, so that when I took over, I found many of the tenants with debts as big as five hundred pesos, six hundred pesos, and a thousand pesos. There seemed to be no way by which they could pay their debts, so I forgave them their debts and told them to start anew. I often gave them lectures on thrift. There were two bad traits I observed common to most tenants—indolence and extravagance.^[58]

Despite these charitable sentiments most tenants borrowed to survive, and most landholders loaned them the cash, the majority of the latter charging some interest rate between 5 percent and 20 percent for cash. And this system resulted in a recurring round of indebtedness that left tenants without hope of breaking free. A 95-year-old tenant from San Fernando revealed his thoughts in this manner:

The landlord at that time would give you any number of pilones of sugar as he pleased. We could not complain for fear of being removed from our work. We were much cheated and we poor people were treated as servants. We worked as tenants to pay for the debts incurred by our parents, and our children would in turn work as tenants to pay for our debts to our landlords. We worked day and night. The landlord's word was law.^[59]

Perennial debt and inability to alter their situation informed the thinking of casamac in Pampanga; however, these attitudes did not necessarily determine their reaction to a specific hacendero. Rather, along with adequate subsistence tenants expected, even insisted upon, fairness from landlords. Casamac opinion about their relations with others as well depended on this need for fairness, and wrong was measured by just how inequitably someone treated them. The following narrative concerning the arrival in 1916 of the cadastral survey in Magalang reveals a long-remembered slight harbored by a 74-year-old tenant of that town:

I remember clearly—the police came and gathered us. They told us to go to the tribunal [municipal building]. But we were afraid of the police then, and we never wanted to go near the tribunal for we associated it with being imprisoned. They told us to register our land, but we didn't want to have anything to do with the police. We didn't go to the municipal building, and they came and asked us why. We told them we were very busy working in our fields. They then told us that a man would register our land for us. We were ignorant at the time

and we were happy that this man would register for us. We found out later he registered it in his name.^[60]

Most tenants in this era possessed no legal claim to land, only traditional rights through the samacan, and the registering of titles did not directly affect them; however, the perception of inequity on the part of those associated with the survey made many tenants view the cadastral program negatively.

Casamac operated on a basic sense of justice in dealing with landholders; and above all the implied paternalism, they needed to be satisfied that they received enough and that their contracts operated fairly. A tenant from San Fernando expressed this sentiment succinctly:

During that time the landlord bore all the expenses on the farm, and all the production went to the storehouse of the landlord. He gave us our necessities—food, clothes, shoes, and other things—and we did not know our share. We just lived buried in debt to our landlord. We were like members of his family. He disciplined us and we were afraid of him. We were not given enough subsistence and we left him.^[61]

The samacan functioned in such a way that tenants seldom improved their economic condition, largely because opportunities to profit all remained in the hands of hacenderos. The latter kept the books, warehoused and sold the finished product, set interest rates, and often loaned stores, equipment, and draft animals. Choosing where to profit at the expense of tenants remained a matter of individual landlord style, and the manner selected often determined casamac reaction. Charging moderate interest on loans did not appear to cause undo reaction, providing other parts of the contract proved acceptable; charging no interest compensated for other exactions by the hacendero. A satisfied tenant from Guagua described his relationship this way:

My share of the sugar was paid in cash to me by my landlord, usually a peso less than the current selling price. The molasses went to my landlord. Any amount of money I borrowed from my landlord did not bear any interest. The relationship between us was paternal.^[62]

By far the biggest perceived inequity on the part of tenants dealt with the matter of selling finished sugar to brokers. Planters often did not seem to realize the distrust they created with these financial dealings; rather, they believed that they did the casamac a favor (or fooled tenants into

thinking so) in handling the complex negotiations. Three landlords gave different justifications for dealing alone with the Chinese brokers:

During those times tenants were treated very well by us. We did not ask any interest. . . . They were free to ask for help anytime they needed it. Only we were the ones who purchased the whole crop, including theirs, because they might be cheated by Chinese merchants.^[63]

When we sell the sugar I got the average price of sugar and I multiplied it by the number of piculs. That was how I gave an accounting to the tenants. Sometimes I sell several piculs at a certain price and the week after I sell several other piculs at a higher price. I get the average of all these prices and that was the price I based the accounting on.^[64]

If I sold a pilon of sugar at twenty-five pesos, I charged it to [the tenant] at twenty-four pesos. My gain was one peso, which was in the form of a gift to me for selling my tenant's share.^[65]

No matter how hacenderos justified their negotiations, tenants found them the greatest source of injustice in the samacan contract. Two representative tenant comments reveal the hostility and misperception that underlay the Pampangan labor arrangement:

In sugar production we farmers were cheated most of the time. If a pilon of sugar cost twenty-five pesos in the market, the landowner will first tell the poor farmer any amount he wishes to tell him. Any complaint by the farmer in this accounting will mean his firing from his job.^[66]

The landlord treated us kindly in words. I know very well that they were cheating me, especially in sharing the crop, which is supposed to be on a fifty-fifty basis. . . . And when it comes to sharing harvested sugar, the crop was first put in the bodega of the landlords. Then they did everything they can to cheat us. However, they lend us money without interest, provided it will be paid back in not longer than one year.^[67]

Tenants who sold their own share usually defended their samacan relationship as fair, but such individuals remained a small minority. Perceived inequities as early as the first two decades of the twentieth century threatened the social order that had developed over the preceding years.

In 1970 a similar survey collected responses from duma'an and other sugar people from Negros concerning their life in the two decades before

World War II.^[68] Among the interviewees were eighty-two duma'an from 70 to over 100 years of age who supplied observations concerning their early days working on haciendas. Because of the time lapse between the two surveys and the different period emphasis of the later one, the data collected are not quite comparable; nevertheless, these older Negrenses did offer recollections of the late frontier period. And their comments on their working life contrasted in some ways with those of Pampangan casamac.

Duma'an evinced somewhat more satisfaction with their conditions than did their northern counterparts, perhaps reflecting the better market conditions that prevailed in Negros in the the early twentieth century. While no hacienda laborer admitted to improving his circumstances, they generally felt their subsistence needs were met. An 80-year-old retiree from Murcia supplied this response:

My life as a hired worker of the hacienda was much better during that normal time, even though wages were so small as compared to wages now. At the rate of fifty centavos a day I could still support my family, since prices of foods were very much lower as compared to prices now. I can also let my children go to school, but, due to their [negative attitude], they didn't even reach the intermediate grade.^[69]

Several of the comments, however, contain a certain ambivalence: their wages had to suffice, because no alternative sources of livelihood existed. Three examples from octogenarians in. Hinigaran, Isabela, and Himamaylan exemplify this sentiment:

We received no consumo [rations]. . . . Life was hard but I couldn't complain about my financial problems for fear of losing my job. I had to work in the field every day, even when I wasn't feeling well, since my earnings were paid on a daily basis.^[70]

We were given consumo and the amount was deducted from our salary. I was contented with my earnings. It was a hand-to-mouth way of life. I supported my family with my meager income. Everything was cheap during that time, so no worry at all, although this income was not enough to meet daily needs.^[71]

There were no major troubles, although the landowner didn't give any privileges to his laborers. They couldn't get any cash

loans from him, nor get any help in bad times. Laborers would just have to bear the kind of management they have.^[72]

The remarks of the minority who proclaimed dissatisfaction with their hacienda wages contained overtones of a fear and helplessness that bonded them to their poor situations. Three retired duma'an, two from Pulupandan and one from Binalbagan, made representative comments in this vein:

There were no labor troubles. If you do good in your work you won't have any trouble at all. They were treated well by the owner, if they only follow what the owner would like them to do.^[73]

Laborers couldn't complain—otherwise they'd be ousted. They just waited for instructions and payday. They never complained because they reasoned that the landlord wouldn't help them anyway.^[74]

I just obeyed orders. At times I complained to the cabo because of too much work, but the cabo didn't listen to my complaints. I just worked and obeyed orders.^[75]

Not so surprisingly, the only statements that revealed open resentment came from or referred to sacadas. As noted earlier, the one group over which hacenderos complained they exerted little control and which caused them the most trouble were these seasonal workers from neighboring islands. Many sacadas later settled on Negros haciendas and became duma'an, but so long as they remained transients, they maintained an independence unavailable to permanent staff. A 70-year-old duma'an from La Carlota commented:

Trouble arises only if the amount paid to the laborers in the pakyaw [piece work rate] was very low. Laborers would stop working if the landowner would not raise the salary.^[76]

Another duma'an from La Carlota remembered the time around 1920 when he came from Antique Province, Panay, to cut cane on Negros. He observed:

Labor troubles arose only during payday when the laborers couldn't receive their salary, especially those under the pakyaw system, and recruited by the contratista. There were sometimes contratistas who didn't give the salary to the laborers but, instead, used the money for themselves.

During those times laborers were treated like animals. There were foods served for the laborers, but foods which weren't prepared well—like rice which was not cleaned well.

There was also a laborer on one of the haciendas in Bago, owned by a Spanish mestizo. He tied the laborer to a tree and let the ants bite him, because of the cane that the laborer wasn't able to cut because he didn't feel well.^[77]

A comparison of the collective responses of Pampanga casamac and Negros duma'an points to a similar harsh perception of conditions on the sugarlands of northern Pampanga and the Negros plantations. The casamac, however, appeared to see more unfairness in their relations with landholders than did the duma'an, or at least they expressed their sense of the injustice more often. But such a comparison might be misleading. The surveys involved the memories of old men, some of whom volunteered fuller answers than others. Further, the years between 1920 and the 1960s and 1970s witnessed vastly different political experiences within the two areas, and the replies of the casamac may have been colored by the politically charged atmosphere of 1964 Pampanga. Negros Occidental in 1970 harbored a far more repressive and orderly climate. It is possible, of course, that different cultural backgrounds, living arrangements, and conditions of employment in the two regions accounted for the dissimilarities in declarations of injustice. Perhaps the Capampangan expressed themselves more openly because they possessed collective ways to reveal their resentment. Does other evidence buttress or discredit these disparities in actions and expression?

While direct corroborating testimony does not exist, reactions among rural farmers to two turn-of-the-century messianic movements, one in Pampanga, the other in Negros, tend to confirm the differences in attitude and outlook expressed by the elderly casamac and duma'an. Folk leaders Felipe Salvador—Apong (Saint) Ipe to his followers in Luzon—and Dionisio Sigobela, the Negrenses' Papa (Pope) Isio or Dionisio Papa, seemed to have parallel careers in their respective regions; however, the nature of the support they received reflected regional cultural and historical differences that gave each movement a distinctive flavor, despite a common impact on both of the Philippine Revolution and an expanding sugar industry.

Salvador distinctly belongs to an old Philippine tradition of chiliastic leaders who draw upon folk Catholic themes and practices to express peasant world views. Movements in a similar vein to his own sprang up in central Luzon from Laguna to Pangasinan from at least the mid-nineteenth century onward. In 1894 he formed his own group, Santa Iglesia

(Holy Church), among followers of a sect founded in the late 1880s by Gabino Cortes of Apalit, Pampanga. Salvador himself grew up in the nearby Tagalog town of Baliwag, Bulacan, and spoke that language as his native tongue; nevertheless, he had strong influence within the Capampangan-speaking community. He eventually held sway in the rural barrios of Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Pangasinan, and Tarlac as well as Pampanga, communities that he visited first from his base in Barrio Camias, San Miguel, Bulacan, then from hidden centers on Mount Arayat and in the Candaba Swamp.

At the onset of the Philippine Revolution in 1896, he shifted away from his initial, strictly religious focus and created a militant arm to fight for independence, his troops first confronting Spanish forces in San Luis in 1896. After a retreat to Biak-na-Bato (near Camias) to join Aguinaldo, Salvador's army of church members fought again in February 1898 at Apalit and Macabebe, in both cases suffering considerable losses. With the arrival of the Americans, the soldiers of Santa Iglesia took to the field again and achieved success in capturing a hundred rifles from the Spanish garrison at Dagupan, Pangasinan. This feat and others earned Apong Ipe the rank of colonel in the revolutionary army, and in July 1898 he paraded with rive hundred of his followers triumphantly through the streets of Candaba.

Despite these contributions to the cause, local elite officers from Pampanga refused to treat Salvador as an equal, abused soldiers of Santa Iglesia and their families, and accused Apong Ipe himself of desertion in the line of duty. In a reasoned defense to Aguinaldo, the religious leader made it dear that Pampangan principales objected to his troops' loyalty to him and their combining military with religious activities. The elite felt they deserved to command the poor of the province and resented this threat to their authority. Because of his appeal and his loyalty, Salvador earned a favorable ruling from his commander in chief on the charge of desertion and retired to the Candaba Swamp area in time to organize a guerrilla campaign against the American army. Captured in 1902, he escaped to the wonder of his followers—and subsequently conducted religious services and directed a guerrilla war for independence, long after other Pampangan ofricers had sworn allegiance to the new regime.

For eight years Salvador and his apostles wandered the rural barrios of central Luzon preaching devotion and brotherhood. The military wing under the command of Manuel Garcia, known as Capitan Tui, made lightening strikes against unsuspecting constabulary outposts in such places as San Jose, Nueva Ecija (1903), Mabalacat (1903), and Malolos, Bulacan (1906). The constabulary killed Garcia in mid-1906, and military raids diminished thereafter; however, as late as 1910, in the fateful year

of the appearance of Halley's comet, peasants and former soldiers from south of Manila to Lingayen Gulf still looked to Apong Ipe to revive the Revolution and expel the Americans. The colonials and cooperating native elite still considered Felipe Salvador a danger to public order. His capture came about at his home in Barrio San Isidro, San Luis, in the midst of the Candaba Swamp on July 24,1910, the result of a joint effort between secret agents from Governor Arnedo's office, municipal policemen, and constabulary troopers. The government charged him with sedition and on April 15, 1912, at Manila's Bilibid Prison, executed him by hanging.^[78]

Santa Iglesia did not vanish with the disappearance of its leader. In 1913 Governor Liongson reported confidentially to the executive secretary in Manila that the Salvadoristas still congregated peacefully and regularly. Evicted from a barrio of Angeles, 150 of the faithful removed to the slopes of Mount Arayat, the old haunt of their slain Apong Ipe. The governor ordered their leader, a man named Cortez, to appear before him, and this spiritual guide dutifully did so, accompanied by Angeles vice-mayor Ireneo Abad Santos, a planter and younger brother of Pedro. Cortez seemed to agree to disbanding the group, and Liongson considered the matter closed, attributing the whole incident offhandedly to opponents of independence. However, in 1970 I visited the Santa Iglesia headquarters, still in Barrio San Isidro, San Luis, and found that elderly adherents maintained two churches in that community. One of the original apostles of Apong Ipe, Victor Larin, who was 101 years old, presided over one of the structures and asserted that the Santa Iglesia never died, although at that time its membership consisted only of very old parishioners living in the surrounding barrios.^[79]

While Salvador centered his movement in the wetter, rice-growing portions of Luzon, his sway reached into sugar-growing Pampanga. From his vantage on Mount Arayat he possessed easy access to the rest of the great plain that stretched out from its foot. After their attack on Mabalacat in August 1903, his raiders fled north to safety in Tarlac, where Salvador had a considerable following. Driven from Arayat town center in 1910, he found sanctuary for a 'time in the sugar community of Floridablanca. Finally, as Salvador notes in his abbreviated spiritual autobiography dictated on the eve of his execution, he received hospitality from two tatcheros (those who boil sugar), indicating a kind and enthusiastic reception from those in sugar country.^[80]

Papa Isio derived from another Philippine folk tradition, the babaylan or native priest, a holdover from prehispanic society. The religion flourished in rural, especially mountainous, areas of the western Visayas, where babaylanes performed a variety of functions including conducting services

on important occasions that propitiated natural spirits and supplying anting-anting , charms that warded off evil and harm in many forms. Babaylanism as an institution survived in part because of the shortage of Catholic priests to minister intensely to Visayans, including those who lived on or transferred to Negros. Along the central cordillera and in the southern foothills where dwelt upland farmers, victims of usurpacion, and lowland refugees from hacienda exploitation, animist priests ministered to those outside the plantation system.

From as early as the seventeenth century, some babaylanes had taken on the added role of leading peasant revolts and customarily supplied anting-anting that protected their adherents from bullets. Hence, when Isio became a babaylan in Negros, his combining of military and religious leadership fit longstanding local traditions. Authorities believed that he fled to this world after wounding or killing a Spanish hacendero. Information about his life—even about his given name—is conflicting, but the story of this murder at least indicates Isio's longstanding hatred of foreigners. In 1896 at age 50 he joined the revolution against Spain and confronted the Guardia Civil in hard-fought battles in central Negros.^[81]

Isio's actions reveal that he despised colonials because they sanctioned, indeed instigated, the sugar industry with all its attendant inequities and injustices. That sugar stood as the root problem to him and his followers is evidenced in an 1899 report by General James Smith:

The Babaylanes came down to the outlying haciendas, and by specious representations that the lands would be repartitioned among the people, that machinery would no longer be permitted in the island, and that nothing but palay [rice] would henceforth be planted, succeeded in persuading the ignorant laborers of about fifty haciendas to join them and to destroy by fire the places which had given them employment.^[82]

Initially his men, known collectively (and incorrectly) as babaylanes, attacked just Spanish plantations, in the belief that only native Visayans had rights to the land of Negros.

When the just-formed Negros government sought American protection in early 1899, a disillusioned Dionisio Papa directed his attacks against native planters who collaborated with the new colonial power. Isio made his targets explicit in a letter written to his next-in-command, Rufo Oyos, on May 19, 1900:

It is advisable to punish by decapitation all those who go with the Americans; but it is necessary first to ascertain the existence of the crime, and it should appear that they are real spies

of the enemy, they must be beheaded immediately without any pretext whatsoever against it [being accepted].
You, Captain Antonio and Judge Cornelio must perfectly understand what this order says; when the wealthy are Americanistas, you must seize all their money, clothing and other property belonging to them, immediately making an inventory of the property seized.^[83]

From March to July 1899 Papa Isio's troops pillaged Spanish and native Negrense plantations, mainly in the sugar district from La Carlota south to Isabela, an area skirting the central mountain spine that provided raiders sanctuary from pursuing American soldiers. These attacks reduced the island's sugar output, and the U.S. Army eventually committed three battalions to the task of quelling them. Marauders under the command of Rufo Oyos also operated effectively in towns in southern Negros.

After midyear the army provided better security for planters around La Carlota, and the babaylanes moved west to Ma-ao, where they made several forays against the property of, among others, Juan Araneta. Further raids brought them to Himamaylan and Pontevedra, but as they approached the coast the insurgents enjoyed little sanctuary. Additionally, big hacenderos like Araneta, Aniceto Lacson, and Pedro Yulo employed private guards to protect their lands from destruction and their workers and themselves from capture. Finally, planters began to organize programs of registering duma'an to ensure none supported the insurgents. Isio and his troops fought their last major battle of this campaign at Bacolod in late July and suffered a loss of 170 men. From this time on he adopted more sporadic hit-and-run tactics.

Despite defections from his ranks and pursuit by American forces, Isio and his remaining troops harassed plantations and towns in western Negros on and off for eight more years. Although loyal to the cause, he received only reluctant recognition from Aguinaldo, who preferred to deal with faithless hacenderos of his own class, like Araneta. Finally, the last Republican commander, Miguel Malvar, commissioned Isio a colonel in May 1902; at the time of his surrender the latter had served the Revolution more continuously than any other officer. The Philippine Constabulary replaced the American Army in the law-and-order campaign on Negros in 1902, and newly appointed Lt. John White attacked Isio's mountain bases shortly thereafter. Oyos capitulated in April 1903, and Isio carried on the struggle alone. After a final foray against Kabankalan in 1907, Isio, now an old man, surrendered; he died in Bilibid Prison around 1908.^[84]

The careers of Apong Ipe and Dionisio Papa reveal many similarities due to the common impact on Pampanga and Negros of faltering economic

conditions and revolution. Depressed markets, spreading epidemic diseases among people and farm livestock, political change, and military destruction damaged the lives of casamac and duma'an, and millenarianism offered them solace and a rallying point for organized protest. Removal of the Spanish clergy as a mechanism of social control and unwillingness on the part of Americans to enforce some of the more onerous restraints upon sugar workers allowed some opportunities to release pent up hostility to the system that subjugated them. That the two religious leaders emerged and flourished during the same time span proves no coincidence, and other regions just then experienced similar religious outbursts. Each movement, however, was shaped according to the local culture of its adherents.

Salvador moved through central Luzon in flowing robes, conducting prayer sessions and giving sermons that spoke of brotherhood and a future that included land redistribution. While Isio constructed a church at a mountain retreat where he maintained his own utopian community, his chief religious function was to issue anting-anting to his followers to ward off injury when they attacked government forces. His agents at the same time destroyed plantations and tried to induce workers to swell rebel ranks on the promise of a more equitable land settlement. Isio also demonstrated a better grasp of modern notions of secular leadership and closer touch with the larger political issues of the day. His captured letters, written in Spanish by a clerk, contained practical instructions on how to conduct a campaign of guerrilla warfare. A note of March 4, 1901, to Rufo Oyos, revealed that Isio knew that American politician William Jennings Bryan somehow featured in America's future plans in the Philippines:

I have received from Luzon an order to proceed more rapidly with my operations this month, because Bryan ordered Emilio to keep the war going vigorously until April, and he also said that if independence was not given the Philippines by that time, he, Bryan, and his followers would rise in arms against the oppressors.^[85]

Nothing in Apong Ipe's biography approached such a practical or secular tone.

Despite differences in style and mode of operation, Salvador and Isio endured the long, hard struggle for Philippine independence for the same reason. The two leaders finally achieved commissions as colonels, but both faced continuous hostility from such patriots as Maximino Hizon, Liong-

son, Lacson, and Araneta. This enmity existed because those in control of the Malolos government and its provincial branches quite accurately understood that, whereas they fought for political independence, Apong Ipe and Papa Isio struggled for social and economic changes repugnant to the elite.

In his annual report for 1902 Governor Locsin wrote the following:

The society of Babaylanes (believers in superstitious and idolatrous things) is a mixture of confused socialistic principles, anarchistic instincts, and an aberration of religious and fanatic ideas. They are a crazy and criminal sect, and at the same time pray to God and preach the distribution of wealth, and looting and murder.^[86]

Undoubtedly his awareness that Isio persuaded duma'an from plantations bordering the central mountains to desert their jobs to join his ranks and that the babaylanes promised to redistribute land and eliminate the sugar industry colored Locsin's judgement. That widespread fear of social revolution afflicted Negrense hacenderos emerges from the following item in a local newspaper:

The presidente of Silay, Sr. Lucio Jaime, convoked on December 17th [1899] a junta of property owners and hacenderos of the pueblo, also with the assistance of [Negros Government] Secretary of the Interior Sr. Locsin and American Lieutenant Hanagan, and they resolved to adopt effective means, not only to repel the bandits who try to claim the shelter of a political idea which they do not comprehend or know, but also to prevent the workers on the haciendas from being infected with the virus of banditry. The junta is organizing a system of vigilance of such workers so that they have to be enrolled on each hacienda, so that by this means they can be better watched.^[87]

During this period planters all along the west coast offered to support American forces in suppressing Papa Isio and his movement.

Government forces on Luzon expressed similar judgements about Apong Ipe. A constabulary report in 1906 explained his movement this way:

The society purports to be a religious one, the members being given or sold crucifixes or rosaries by Salvador and using forms of worship similar to those of the Catholic Church. Salvador preaches socialistic doctrines to the believers, practices polygamy, and promises them that land and other desirable

things will be distributed among his followers when he shall have overthrown the Government and taken possession of the country himself, that there will soon be a great flood or fire that will destroy all unbelievers, and that after this purging of the country there will be a rain of gold and jewels for the faithful.^[88]

Like their counterparts on Negros, establishment Capampangan placed themselves at the disposal of the Americans in bringing about the downfall of this social revolutionary.

Comparison of the practices and aims of the two religious figures proves helpful in understanding their thinking and that of their adherents; as well, such comparisons provide insight into regional cultural diversity. But what does one learn of the attitude of sugar people toward these millenarian leaders and toward their own social and economic circumstances, so affected by the impact of war and a sugar economy ? The support varied considerably and does provide evidence of differences in outlook between Capampangan and Negrenses.

In Pampanga and Negros Occidental the Philippine Revolution generated several splinter patriotic movements; moreover, simple banditry, a longstanding problem in both provinces, proliferated during these years of distress. Nevertheless, among all these antigovernment, antiestablishment activities, the organizations of Dionisio Papa and Apong Ipe attracted the most support from the indigenous population and the most attention from colonial authorities. Additionally, no other dissident movement survived nearly as long as Santa Iglesia and Isio's babaylanes.

Each leader, however, operated in a different manner and evaded arrest for separate reasons. For many years Apong Ipe moved freely about farming barrios in central Luzon, including the sugar areas of Pampanga and Tarlac, praying with his apostles and preaching love and brotherhood. What appears most remarkable about his experience is that, even in those harsh economic times, no one turned him in despite the P2,000 reward for his capture. A 1910 constabulary report observed:

Felipe Salvador, the well-known bandit leader who deserted from the Filipino insurrectionary forces years ago, and who has been lurking since in the low and swampy regions of Nueva Ecija or neighboring provinces and around Mount Arayat, showed considerable activity last spring after having been long quiet. The people of whole barrios, minor officials and all, joined him, and a large gathering was formed on Mount Arayat, apparently with the intention of attacking some

detachment of Constabulary. Strenuous efforts were put forth by many Constabulary detachments from the near-by province, but they were unable to locate or capture Salvador, who was aided practically by the whole population, though the activity of the detachments prevented his doing any harm and caused his band to dissolve and himself to again go into hiding.^[89]

As he himself notes in his autobiography, so long as he stayed away from town plazas, the abode of officialdom and rich landholders, he did not face danger. Like Jesus at the Garden of Gethsemane, Salvador, to test his disciples' faith, led them to pray at the town plaza in Arayat. People of the poblacion proved fearful of approaching him, and soldiers eventually began firing at the religious group. However, among the barrio folk and the very rare hacenderos who remained sympathetic to the Revolution—loyalists like Anselmo Alejandrino (brother of Republican General Jose)—Apong Ipe received a hospitable reception to the end.^[90]

Papa Isio, in contrast, depended for backing on mountain folk, people in the nonsugar foothills in the far south, and escapees from haciendas abutting the central cordillera. The greatest defections of duma'an to his ranks came between February and July 1899 when he ravaged inland sugar plantations in the La Carlota district. Defeats at Ma-ao and Bacolod essentially ended this support from sugar workers, and afterwards Isio remained at large chiefly by hiding in the inaccessible central mountains, shunning plantations and making occasional forays against towns chiefly in the south. Whereas Salvador worshipped among the lowland poor, Papa Isio avoided them.^[91]

The diverse manner in which the two rebels operated accounts in part for this difference in receptivity. Apong Ipe circulated in a peaceful manner, not destroying farms where casamac earned their livelihoods. Santa Iglesia directed its raids mainly against military and police outposts, seeking weapons and other supplies. Isio, initially at least, ravaged the farms of both Spaniards and collaborating Negrenses, not necessarily discriminating between harsh and generous hacenderos. His activities thus displaced duma'an in a region where alternate forms of labor hardly existed; moreover, White indicates that the babaylanes sometimes kidnapped women from haciendas, an action certain to alienate the local population. If oppression existed on many haciendas, Dionisio Papa's methods did not necessarily provide the means of ending it.^[92]

Salvador also traveled freely through sugar country because of the structure of rural communities in Pampanga. As municipalities took on a

more urban face in response to a cash-crop economy, the social division between towns proper and barrios grew. The former became the space chiefly of planters, bureaucrats, merchants, craftsmen, and laborers, while the latter communities remained the realm of tenants and small proprietors where casamac lived freer of hacendero supervision. Certainly representatives of the establishment kept in touch with more remote hamlets, but oversight remained less effective than in Negros. In the latter region, duma'an resided on plantations under the close watch of encargados and hacenderos, and this structured environment offered little opportunity for sugar workers to support without detection Papa Isio's movement.

Finally, an important part of the explanation of Apong Ipe's warm reception had to do with the great appeal of his message to Capampangan casamac. The way communities developed in Pampanga affected social attitudes, and Salvador's message of sharing blended with those rural values. Tenants dwelt near their fields, and because of the scattered pattern of landholding, aparceros contracted by several different owners might reside in the same barrio. In contrast, all those farming for a single individual might inhabit one community, especially in recently settled territory where more extensive holdings still prevailed. In any case, Pampanga's tenants mixed more freely with one another than did duma'an of Negros. The need to deal with landlords, often weekly, and to go to central markets, as well as the shorter distances between communities and better roads, generated tenant socializing.

Because of the labor pattern of Pampanga's sugar industry, share farmers forged two sets of relationships: one vertical with landholders, the other horizontal with fellow tenants and barrio denizens. A common ethnic heritage, generations of intermarriage and family ties, and a shared barrio existence provided the bases for social security in harsh times and joint action in the face of disaster. Poor farmers might depend on the rich for certain forms of economic support, but barrio mates and relatives provided the final protection against threats from nature and other outside forces. Rice tenants reciprocated planting and harvesting labor more so than did sugar tenants, but harvesting and milling cane provided some occasions for mutual help. What information casamac gained about market conditions they frequently passed among themselves, and as landlords grew increasingly distant, horizontal ties had to provide compensatory bonds of support. Such a change did not happen quickly or dramatically, and one can still discern strong patron-client bonds operating well into the twentieth century. Nevertheless, crises like those at the turn of the cen-

tury encouraged cooperation and mutual support among rural folk. Two old residents of the province spoke in interviews on this matter of provincial cooperation:

The people then loved one another more than they do now. Your neighbors would rally to your side whenever you need their help.^[93]

Life is not so hard because everything is cheap and neighbors then are ready to help those who need help.^[94]

Into this environment came Apong Ipe with his message of brotherhood and sharing. A recurrent theme in his autobiography is the partaking together and voluntary giving of food that becomes a metaphor for communalism, spiritual and social. In the biography Salvador also refers to several occasions when he and close friends formed a cooperative venture to cut and sell firewood to obtain their sustenance. At San Luis members of Santa Iglesia formed a successful cooperative market to which came rural folk to buy their food. Through such ventures Salvador demonstrated his theme that joint endeavor provided both physical and spiritual advantages. Concerning the appeal of this message to the farm folk of central Luzon, Ileto notes:

We can also conclude from the narrative that people were attracted to Salvador, not merely because of his individual traits, but because through their association with him certain possibilities of existence were realized. In 1904 Salvador in passing referred to the Santa Iglesia as a katipunan. In the narrative, Salvador talks about what "katipunan," or brotherhood, is all about. The minute descriptions of the bringing of gifts and food, the cooking and. sharing of meals, and the conversations; the sharing of work and earnings; the pervading atmosphere of damay [emotional sharing]—all these point to how the katipunan idea is being realized. In each of Salvador's encounters with people, "katipunan" is experienced.^[95]

Sympathy for Apong Ipe and his message of both prayer and communality encouraged Capampangan to harbor this religious rebel in their midst for years, despite the antagonism of the landholding elite and the government. No similar situation existed in Negros, where duma'an proved unwilling and perhaps unable to hide the babaylanes from the purview of hacenderos. Dionisio Papa did have a priestly function and a social message: gain political independence and dismantle the sugar industry. However, if he possessed a vision of a better society he did not make

it easily available, because he did not preach and pray among sugar hands. His only writings contained orders and threats, while his personally established home community lay hidden in inaccessible and mysterious mountain reaches. Dionisio Papa lacked the means to communicate with the great bulk of Negrense poor.

Even with a well-articulated social message, however, it seems unlikely that Papa Isio would have found a sirnpatico response on haciendas, for duma'an had not developed the sense of community that existed in Pampanga's tenant barrios. Whereas the latter region began with communities upon which the sugar industry was grafted, in Negros the social units were a creation of that industry. The duma'an inhabited isolated plantations where they were closely watched. They had limited occasions for concerted action and for socializing with workers on other haciendas. They might well have practiced the everyday forms of small resistance adopted by the poor all over Southeast Asia; the hacenderos did, after all, carry guns when they made their rounds of their estates.^[96] Such acts of defiance, however, would have gone largely unnoticed by most, since they were carried out subtly and individually, for the duma'an would scarcely have acted overtly and risked the wrath of the plantation bosses. Even sacadas had more freedom to speak out in concert than did workers on haciendas. This inability to function collectively reduced the duma'ans' ability to confront inequity and to express dissatisfaction with it.

Of social life on plantations in general, Beckford has written:

Within [the] plantation community, interpersonal relations reflect the authority structure of the plantation itself. In every aspect of life a strong authoritarian tradition can be observed. Any one with the slightest degree of power over others exercises this power in a characteristic[ally] exploitlve authoritarian manner, and attitudes toward work clearly reflect the plantation influence. Overseer types never do manual work which is degrading to their social dignity and laborers consistently devise ways and means of getting pay without actually doing the work it is simply a case of always trying to beat the system. On the whole the plantation has a demoralizing influence on the community. It destroys or discourages the institution of family and so undermines the entire social fabric. It engenders an ethos of dependence and patronage and so deprives people of dignity, security, and self-respect. And it impedes the material, social, and spiritual advance of the majority of people.^[97]

While this description applies most aptly to Beckford's own Caribbean world, its claims about society appear to fit the situation in Negros as well.

Sugar workers recently drawn from several surrounding islands and diverse language groups and living in isolated, atomistic units scarcely constituted a population likely to share a common notion of the ideal community. Papa Isio's social vision probably had little chance of being well received or even comprehended by those to whom he most needed to appeal.

Thus, differences in expression of resentment and sentiments toward social protest in the statements of casamac and duma'an seem to find corroboration in the responses of each to local rebels. The two regions had grown along different lines, and not surprisingly, their work forces had developed disparate social attitudes that reacted to events in separate ways. In the broadest terms Pampanga's spirit of community and the Negrense notion of individuality emerge as the two major social legacies of the frontier era, ideals that would carry over into the years when centrals dominated the landscape.

Plate 1.
Pedro Abad Santos. From Florence Horn, Orphans of the Pacific: The
Philippines (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1941), photo section.

Plate 2.
Successful Negros Hacendero Yee On. From Sugar News 14 (1933): 92.

Plate 3.
Cane Cutter. From Sugar News 1, no. 15 (1920): 55.

Plate 4.
Loading Sugar on Lorchas in Negros. From G. E. Nesom and Herbert S.
Walker, Handbook on the Sugar Industry of the Philippine Islands
(Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1912), pt. 2, plate 9, fig. 2.

Plate 5.
Pilon Sugar in Storage. From Sugar News 1, no. 9 (1920): 19.

Plate 6.
Sugar Mill in Action. From Nesom and Walker, Handbook , pt. 2, plate
6, fig. 2.

Plate 7.
Furrowing Out Rows and Planting Cane Points. From Nesom and Walker,
Handbook , pt. 1, plate 11, fig. 1.

Plate 8.
Loading Railroad Cars with Cane. From Sugar News 1, no. 14 (1920):20.

Plate 9.
Cascos of Sugar at the Manila Wharves. From Frederic H. Sawyer, The
Inhabitants of the Philippines (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1900), p. 161.

Plate 10.
Aniceto Lacson House, Talisay, Negros Occidental. From the Museum
of History and Iconography Archive, Ayala Museum, Makati, Metro Manila.

Plate 11.
President and Mrs. Quezon at Their Pampanga Farm. From Manuel
L. Quezon, The Good Fight (New York: Appleton-Century, 1946), p. 198.

Plate 12.
Central Azucarera de La Carlota. From Sugar News 1 , no. 10 (1920):
frontispiece.