The Indolence of the Filipino - Tapa blanda

Excerpt: ...speaking of other towns, he says: "Goaded by the ill treatment of the encomenderos who in administering justice have treated the natives as their slaves and not as their children, and have only looked after their own interests at the expense of the wretched fortunes and lives of their charges ..............." (Page 422) Further on: "In Leyte, where they tried to kill an encomendero of the town of Dagami on account of the great hardships he made them suffer by exacting tribute of wax from them with a steelyard which he had made twice as long as the others" This state of affairs lasted a long time and still lasts, in spite of the fact, that the breed of encomenderos has become extinct. A term passes away but the evil and the passions engendered do not pass away so long as reforms are devoted solely to changing the names. The wars with the Dutch, the inroads and piratical attacks of the people of Sulu and Mindanao disappeared; the people have been transformed; new towns have grown up while others have become impoverished; but the frauds subsist as much as or worse than they did in those early years. We will not cite our own experiences, for aside from the fact that, we do not know which to select, critical persons may reproach us with partiality; neither will we cite those of other Filipinos who write in the newspapers; but we shall confine ourselves to translating the words of a modern French traveler who was in the Philippines for a long time: "The good curate," he says with reference to the rosy picture a friar had given him of the Philippines, "had not told me about the governor, the foremost official of the district, who was too much taken up with the ideal of getting rich to have time to tyrannize over his docile subjects; the governor, charged with ruling the country and collecting the various taxes in the government's name, devoted himself almost wholly to trade; in his hands the high and noble functions he performs are nothing more than...