Counter-Hispanization in the Colonial Philippines

Counter-Hispanization in the Colonial Philippines

Literature, Law, Religion, and Native Custom

In Counter-Hispanization in the Colonial Philippines, the author analyzes the literature and politics of “spiritual conquest” in order to demonstrate how it reflected the contribution of religious ministers to a protracted period of social anomie throughout the mission provinces between the 16th-18th centuries. By tracking the prose of spiritual conquest with the history of the mission in official documents, religious correspondence, and public controversies, the author shows how, contrary to the general consensus in Philippine historiography, the literature and pastoral politics of spiritual conquest reinforced the frontier character of the religious provinces outside Manila in the Americas as well as the Philippines, by supplanting the (absence of) law in the name of supplementing or completing it. This frontier character accounts for the modern reinvention of native custom as well as the birth of literature and theater in the Tagalog vernacular.
  • Cover
  • Table of Contents
    • Acknowledgments
    • Introduction: Towards a Counter-History of the Mission Pueblo
      • The Great Unsettlement
      • Beyond the “Hispanization” thesis
      • Spiritual Conquest as (a) Staging [Escenificación]
      • Baroque Ethos and Native Custom
      • Counter-Histories of the Colonial Illusion
    • 1 The War of Peace and Legacy of Social Anomie
      • The Fact of Conquest
      • Pacification as Discourse and Performative Utterance
      • The Peace that Wasn’t
      • Protracting Colonialism
    • 2 Monastic Rule and the Mission As Frontier(ization) Institution
      • “Era público y notorio” [It was well known and infamous]
      • Patronato Regio [Royal Patronage of the Church] vs. Omnímoda [Complete Powers of the Religious Orders]
      • The Regular Orders Against Crown and Church
      • Immunity and / as Impunity in the Mission as Frontier Institution
      • Counter-Hispanization and / as Frontierization
    • 3 Stagings of Spiritual Conquest
      • Reducción or Forced Resettlement in Theory and Practice
      • A God Is Weeping
      • Desengaño as Theopolitics
      • Disciplining the Shamans
      • Conjurations of Law
    • 4 Miracles and Monsters in the Consolidation of Mission-Towns
      • Routinizing the Sacred
      • Disease, Derealization, and the Hostile [Racial] Other in the Tigbalang Complex
      • Antipolo, 1596: a Tale of Two (or Three, or a Multitude of) Crosses
      • Taal, c. 1600: from Manifest to Latent Grace
      • Miracles and Phantasms in the Gestation of a Colonial Unconscious
    • 5 Our Lady of Contingency
      • Dispensaries of Grace
      • Errantry and Unsettlement in the Legend of the Virgin of Caysasay
      • Towards a Genealogy of “Split-Level Christianity”
    • 6 Reversions to Native Custom in Fr. Antonio de Borja’s Barlaan at Josaphat and Gaspar Aquino de Belen’s Mahal na Pasion
      • From the End of the Encomienda to the New “Efficiency of Empire”
      • Jesuit Spirituality and the Ambiguity of Emancipation in the Tagalog Barlaan at Josaphat
      • Pasyon and Indictment in the Court of Public Opinion
      • The Last Maginoo and the “Philippinization of Christianity”
    • 7 Colonial Racism and the Moro-Moro As Dueling Proxies of Law
      • Towards a New Hierarchy: Race
      • Custom [Ugalí], Christian Tradition, and Spanish Law
      • Fiestas and cockfights
      • Upstaging the Scene of Spiritual Conquest in Native Theater and Romance [Moro-Moro and Awit]
      • Native Custom and the Undeceived Indian
    • Conclusion: The Promise of Law
      • Commonwealth vs. Cult in the Conjuration of Law
      • Confabulations of Philippine “Split-Level Christianity”
      • ReOrient or ReOccident?
    • Bibliography
    • Index
  • List of Illustrations
    • Figure 1: The mission fields of the several religious Orders and the secular clergy c. 1650,with designation of mission towns and placenames mentioned in the book. Copyright © Mathilde Grimaldi, 2022. Map by Daniel Doeppers, in “The Evolution of the Geogr
    • Figure 2: Banaue Rice Terraces, Ifugao Province. Copyright © John Crux / Alamy Stock Photo, 2022.
    • Figures 3 and 4: Frontispiece to Fr. Gaspar de San Agustín (OSA), Conquistas de las Islas Filipinas, etching; and “Per me Reges regnant” detail. Copyright © Museo Oriental, Valladolid (Spain). Permission granted by museum.
    • Figure 5: Drawing 227 from Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala, Primer Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno (1615 / 1616), manuscript. Royal Danish Library, GKS 2232 kvart, page 564 [578]. The caption reads: PADRES / QUE HAZE TEGER ROPA por fuerza a las yndias, deciend
    • Figure 6: Drawing 234, from Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala, Primer Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno (1615 / 1616), manuscript. Royal Danish Library, GKS 2232 kvart, page 585 [599]. The caption reads: PADRES / CASTIGA CRVELMENTE los dichos padres a los niños. D
    • Figure 7: Drawing 233, from Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala, Primer Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno (1615 / 1616), manuscript. Royal Danish Library, GKS 2232 kvart, page 582 [596]. The caption reads: VERDVGO, P[ADR]E, CASTIga afrentosamente desnudo en cueros c
    • Figure 8: “Village Tagal de Bacor, sur la route de Cavite á Manille” [1828]. In most towns outside Manila, Cebu, and Arevalo [Iloilo City], the only stone building was the church. From Edmond de La Touanne, vicomte, et al., Album pittoresque de la frégate
    • Figure 9: The fortress-like construction of the Augustinian church in Miagao (Iloilo) (completed in 1797) features tapering towers with buttresses that prevent scaling, and walls that are approximately 1.5 meters thick, with buttresses up to 4 meters thic
    • Figure 10: The Ati-Atihan festival in Kalibo, Aklan (on the island of Panay), where Aetas or highland natives mingle with residents in blackface. From Félix Laureano, Recuerdos de Filipinas. Album-Libro, n.d. (1895). Copyright public domain.
    • Figure 11: Poster or estampa of the image of Nuestra Señora de Guía (Our Lady of Guidance). Image taken from Wenceslao Retana, Aparato bibliográfico de la Historia general de Filipinas v. 1 (Madrid: Imprenta de la Sucesora de M. Minuesa de los Rios, 1906.
    • Figure 12: Virgin of Antipolo. Photo credit: Wilfred Jason Austria Naval, 2022.
    • Figure 13: Virgin of Antipolo (detail). Photo credit: Jun Figueroa, 2022.
    • Figure 14: First page of “Catalogus Christianorum quos colit Societas in Philippinius Anno 1675” [Catalog of Christians the Society (of Jesus) (Enforces?) Worship in the Philippines]. The rows represent the numbers of married couples [coniugati], unmarrie
    • Figure 15: “Cafres”: detail from Fr. Pedro Murillo Velarde (SJ), Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica de las Islas Filipinas (1734). Copyright public domain.
    • Figure 16: “Indios bailando el comintang” [Indians dancing the kumintang]: detail from Fr. Pedro Murillo Velarde (SJ), Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica de las Islas Filipinas (1734). Copyright public domain.
    • Figure 17: “Indios peleando gallos” [Indians fighting (with) gamecocks], detail (right) from Fr. Pedro Murillo Velarde (SJ), Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica de las Islas Filipinas (1734). Copyright public domain.
    • Figure 18: Performance of a moro-moro in Iloilo, Panay (Central Visayas), c. 1895. From Félix Laureano, Recuerdos de Filipinas. Copyright public domain.
    • Figure 19: A makeshift shrine atop outcropping boulders at the foot of the puwesto Sta. Lucia Falls. Images include two statues of the Immaculate Conception and a decapitated Santo Niño (photo courtesy of author).

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