The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 51, 1801-1840: Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century
History
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 51, 1801-1840: Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century
Demarcation line of Alexander VI; Missions -- Philippines; Philippines -- Discovery and exploration; Philippines -- History -- Sources
The code of laws for the Indias, considering these Indians as
neophytes like those of the Antillas and the Americas, has made them
participants in the privileges and liberties granted to those natives;
and it exempts them from the penalties of which they render themselves
worthy by the atrocious crimes which they continually commit. Incest,
for example, is a common vice among them, for which opportunity is
given by the little privacy in which the families live; for the
mother, daughters, and sisters all sleep in one bed [hacen cama
redonda], without any other separation from the men than merely a
blanket. It is difficult to prove this crime among them, and only the
cura or missionary could rebuke them and apply the proper correction,
in their wrongly-understood condition of neophytes, if in confession
they should reveal their sin; but, as lying is their dominant vice,
they are silent or else deny it, and the cura cannot, even when he
knows of it, obtain any satisfaction from them. The capital and its
environs are the refuge of the more perverse, who migrate from the
provinces and from their villages, in order not to work and to relieve
themselves from paying the tribute. There they devote themselves to
studies in the colleges of Santo Tomas, San José, and San Juan de
Letran, making progress in a short time, and deceiving the professors
with their apparent ingenuousness; at the same time they are occupied
as servants to the Spaniards and foreigners, but only nominally, since
they do not go to their master's house except for eating, sleeping, and
stealing from him (which they do with astonishing dexterity). After a
little time, having abused the master's patience, and having violated
his wife, daughters, and other relatives, if he has such (without
respecting even those who have not reached the age of puberty), they
end by departing with the utmost coolness; and in order to avoid
recognition, and so that they cannot be caught if they happen to be
pursued, they employ the trick of shaving the head, and, while naked,
anointing the entire body with oil, and then take to flight, with no
other covering than a mere breech-clout. The poor Spaniard, although
he finds that he has been robbed, does not think of resorting to the
magistrates to make complaint, for he knows that instead of doing him
justice they would, after making him spend much money, sentence him
to pay the costs and exculpate the Indian, regarding the latter as a
neophyte. Still less does he say a word about the rape, in order not to
make public his own dishonor. Let it not be supposed that this occurs
only among private persons; for there have been persons in authority
who have experienced in their own houses similar acts of insolence
from these vicious and immoral neophytes. After these evil deeds,
they disappear, as I have said; and in a very short time they are
seen returning from Ilocos, Camarines, and Cebú, ordained as clerics,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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