The Napoleonic invasion of Spain in 1808 sowed the seeds that would spark the demand for political representation and participation among the indios naturales (or simply, indios; i.e., natives) of the Philippine archipelago, all the way across the globe. To preserve the sovereignty of King Fernando VII, imperial ministers formed juntas (local governments) across the peninsula. Then, they established a regency council to convene representatives from the territories of the vast Spanish Empire and founded the Cortes de Cádiz to write a new constitution. (For more on the Philippines and the Cortes de Cádiz, see María Dolores Elizalde’s article here.) Thus, the Cádiz Constitution, proclaimed in 1812, decreed all inhabitants of the Spanish Empire to be Spanish citizens.
Abisai Pérez Zamarripa, PhD candidate at the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin, studies the impact of the 1812 Cádiz Constitution on the Philippine natives and the Spanish political order in the archipelago. His article, published in our March 2020 issue, “’Philippine Indios Were European Constitutional Spaniards’: Filipino Reception of the Cádiz Constitution, 1813–1814” is divided into three sections: first, Pérez describes the way that the charter conflicted with the existing juridical status of the local inhabitants; second, he shows how the authorities adapted the new code of laws to the socioeconomic circumstances of the Philippines; and third, he demonstrates how native commoners learned of the constitution and swore fealty to it through a civic-religious festival called the constitutional oath. In his analysis Pérez contrasts traditional Spanish legal culture, which sustained a system that privileged a set of local principales (elites), to the more liberal ideas of the Cádiz Constitution. He also primarily examines reports of Philippine civil and ecclesiastical officials on the constitutional oath.
Both local and colonial authorities indeed saw the introduction of elections through the new charter as a challenge to the existing social order. The roots of this order lay in the legal culture and systems brought and established by the Spaniards in 1571, alongside the founding of Manila. Traditionally, Spaniards viewed the Spanish realm as a “conglomerate of corporate bodies or juridical communities” each with specific privileges and duties of their own. So long as these codes “contributed to the common good of the empire,” the king recognized these groups as legitimate and autonomous. Therefore, Pérez remarks, “all inhabitants living under the Spanish monarchy possessed different rights and duties because they responded to a diverse corpus of laws.”
The República de Indios, which consisted of all the Christianized indiosnaturales, was no different and enjoyed certain benefits (including the right to special courts of justice) in exchange for rendering polo (forced labor) and paying tribute either in cash or kind. According to Pérez the incorporation of natives into the Spanish legal system preserved prehispanic laws and forms of governance by integrating indigenous leaders into the colonial management of the Philippines. Cabezas de barangay (village chiefs) were ideally descendants of traditional local nobility, and elected gobernadorcillos (town magistrates) on a yearly basis. Both answered to the alcalde mayor, the Spanish provincial judge residing in the Royal House located in the provincial capital. In essence the principales became intermediaries who delivered tax collections to the crown and exercised some authority over local peasants.
As such, the Cádiz Constitution threatened the monopoly of power that the indio elites in the Philippines held over governing positions because it allowed individuals to assume office so long as they satisfied residential requirements and had good reputations. Furthermore, the barangay system that facilitated tax collection and colonial management would crumble once all the commoners acquired the same rights and duties as Spaniards. In short the charter “threatened the entire economic and social system that sustained Spanish rule” in the Philippines and needed to be adjusted before it could be put to action. (See Filomeno V. Aguilar, Jr.’s article here for more information on the tribute and Philippine society.)
A junta formed by the governor-general in consultation with the archbishop and the town council of Manila hastily elected Ventura de los Reyes, a creole, to represent the Philippines in the Cortes de Cádiz. De los Reyes argued for a “restricted version of Spanish citizenship and elections in the Philippine countryside” and suggested three adjustments to the charter. First, it needed to be translated into different languages for the colony. The Spanish population mostly resided in Manila, while much of the native population spoke “in five dialects of the Tagalog.” Second, elections should be held “without granting political citizenship” to the naturales but should let the principales choose representatives on behalf of their respective communities. These chosen electors would then select two delegates from the bishopric, who would, in turn, vote for the new provincial deputies. Finally, De los Reyes suggested for the Philippines to have only one or two deputies instead of the designated twenty-five because he claimed that the colony’s “extreme lack of funds” could not sustain too many representatives.
Convinced by De los Reyes’s arguments, the Cortes tasked Manila authorities to form a junta preparatoria (political assembly) to implement an electoral system befitting the socioeconomic conditions of the archipelago. This junta drafted the Prontuario Directivo, a customized version of the Cádiz Constitution. The Prontuario defined Spanish citizens as free adult men—whether indio, European or American—born and settled in certain towns of the Philippines. Descendants of Chinese and other Asian immigrants with honorable occupations also qualified. These men could “participate in elections but only for deputies and not for local authorities.” Elections would proceed in the way De los Reyes had proposed: clergymen and citizens would convene in parish committees to choose their electors; these electors would meet at the regional capitals to elect provincial representatives; finally, these representatives would vote in Manila for twenty-five deputies for the Cortes of Cádiz.
The Prontuario guaranteed political citizenship for the natives as well as the organization of elections. However, Pérez observes, it neglected two issues related to rights granted to the naturales. First, the right to form municipal councils remained exclusive to Manila, wherein Spaniards and creoles presided. Indio elites opposed the creation of town councils outside Manila to prevent other groups (such as Chinese mestizos) from grabbing political posts. Second, the Prontuario never abolished tribute payment. In short, despite the equal citizenship that it claimed, the Cortes essentially sustained the República de Indios.
Natives learned of the new charter through civic-religious festivals called the constitutional oath, which replaced the royal oaths in which they swore fealty to the Spanish king. Throughout Spanish rule, such festivals played a key role not only in spreading information about new policies, but in legitimizing the reign of the Spanish crown over the colony. The Cortes repurposed these ceremonies in the constitutional oath to foster loyalty and national unity throughout the colony. After a chosen reader proclaimed the new charter aloud in the local languages, the inhabitants of the village would pledge allegiance to the new constitution, the Spanish monarchy, and the Spanish nation. Nonparticipation in the oath was considered an act of rebellion regardless of one’s social status.
After the performance of constitutional oaths across the colony, Gov.Gen. José de Gardoqui began receiving reports from authorities expressing concerns over the refusal of commoners to pay tribute or render labor. A cleric of Meycauayan even recalled that the indigenous interpreter had intentionally “misread the ideas of the charter” during the constitutional oath and claimed that the indios, now Spanish citizens, would “no longer suffer the many humiliations.”
Aside from using the constitution as grounds to not pay tribute, natives invoked it in personal legal matters. Anastasio Naguio, a peasant, filed a lawsuit against his town’s parish priest for charging a marriage fee on top of the tribute he had already paid. Naguio claimed equal rights before the government as a “European Constitutional Spaniard” and implored the attorneys for a quick resolution on the grounds of the charter’s promise of “new liberty, independence and privileges” to all indios.
Moreover, despite the restrictions imposed upon locals in elections, they challenged the Manila elites’ “intentions to monopolize the posts for deputies” by favoring indio clerics in elections. Since native clergymen alongside other native authorities had been in charge of organizing the constitutional oaths, they were in a position to “channel electoral preferences” among their parishioners; thus, Pérez opines, they “perceived an opportunity to challenge traditional hierarchies.”
Fernando VII returned to the throne in 1814 and immediately abolished the Cádiz Constitution. But by then, the social order that the colonial and local authorities had worked so hard to maintain had begun to crack; through the crevices, the indios naturales had glimpsed life as citizens with rights and political participation. For the archipelago to be truly part of a unified community of Spaniards, the system that exploited the natives for economic growth should have been abolished. The peaceful Propaganda Movement would echo these sentiments decades later, before giving way to the bloody Philippine Revolution.
Read the full article of Abisai Pérez Zamarripa in Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, volume 68, number 1, 2020.
