THE FIRST FILIPINOS (2)
11. THE “NEGRITOS” WERE NOT THE FIRST FILIPINOS?
But the answer to WHO IS FILIPINO would still be incomplete if we don’t pinpoint WHO was it that was the first person in the matter of being aware about his FILIPINO identity.
Yet, before saying WHO, we have to clear away, once more, the pathways of our Us WASP revised history. These “Americanized” pathways have been covered with the balderdash that “the first FILIPINOS are the Itas, or the Negritos.”
It may be true to say that they were the first inhabitants of the islands that now comprise what we know, after the influence of Spain, as the Philippines. But being the first inhabitants does not necessarily make them the first group of people who became aware that they were FILIPINOS and consequently called themselves as such.
It was surely not the Itas or Aetas, who called themselves FILIPINO. Nor the Indonesians that intermittently came. Nor the Malaysians that came in waves. Nor the Chinese or the Japanese that found themselves shipwrecked or blown into our islands.
The concept of being Filipino, of belonging to a nation called FILIPINO, did not originate from any of these above mentioned ethnic or tribal groups that also made some, or most, of these islands their home. This being the case, the awareness of being Filipino did not start with any one of them.
12. ‘EL CRIOLLO’ IS THE FIRST FILIPINO
The awareness of being FILIPINO started with a Spanish creole (criollo) born in the district of Tondo, Manila, in the year 1768. To be exact, 13 February 1768. He was Luis Rodríguez Varela.
A creole is one born in the American continent or the Philippine Islands but of European parents. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (page 534) has a more specific definition. Creole to it is also someone “(4.): of, belonging to, or characteristically of native born people of European (as Spanish) descent resident specifically in Spanish America.”
It is in this particular sense that Luis Rodríguez Varela is a creole. The word for creole in Spanish is criollo. And while criollo in Spanish America became, respectively, Mexican, Venezuelan, Central American, Peruvian, Ecuadorian, Colombian, Paraguayan, Bolivian, Chilean, Cuban, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Costa Rican, Brazilian, Uruguayan, and Argentinian, criollo in the Philippines became Filipino.
Thus, the Spanish criollo of the Philippines is the first Filipino. It is he, or she, who is the FILIPINO. Not the Itas or Aetas, nor the Indonesians who came in trickles, nor the Malaysians who came with Datu Putî, Datu Sumacuel, or any other “wave of Malayan immigration to what later became the Philippines.”
13. BEFORE SPAIN THERE WERE NO FILIPINOS: RAÚL MANGLAPUS
Former Senator Raúl Manglapus y Sevilla has accurately summarized the situation of the Philippines and its inhabitants before the advent of Spain who, in turn, caused the existence of the Filipino creoles. In his book “Nationhood, Culture” (Page 179), Senator Manglapus wrote:
Before the 16th century, there was no Filipino, no Philippines.
Only a group of some 7,000 islands intermittently invaded by
Negritos, Indonesians, proto-Malays, and swept by the tides of
the Southeast Asian Madjapajit Empires and The Chinese Mings.
Only a group of some 7,000 islands intermittently invaded by
Negritos, Indonesians, proto-Malays, and swept by the tides of
the Southeast Asian Madjapajit Empires and The Chinese Mings.
Awareness of being Filipino did exist before Luis Rodríguez Varela. To be a Filipino was to be a peninsular Spanish who owed allegiance to King Felipe II of Spain. In this sense, Villalobos, Legaspi, and all the other Spanish conquistadores that founded the Cities of Cebú, Iloílo (Arévalo), and Manila were Felipenos. Felipenos in the sense that they were the subjects and vassals of Felipe II, the King of Spain.
Considering the time, and age, when the criollos were marked as a distinct breed of men, it is understandable that that race became a factor in the identification of a creole of Spanish descent in the Philippines. In the 17th century, we can safely say that the Felipeno had to be a Spaniard who loved Felipe II and was born in the Philippine Islands.
In the 18th century, the Filipino had to be of Spanish blood but no longer from both his/her parents. The racial factor was giving way to other circumstances and factors, like culture, language, and religion. Varela, the scholar and bard, took note of these other factors. In a later poem, he said:
Los primeros filipinos, vasallos son de Felipe.
Pues filipinos lo somos los nacidos en Oriente
De padres peninsulares; conquistadores valientes
Que vinieron a estas Islas desconocidas y vírgenes.
Pues filipinos lo somos los nacidos en Oriente
De padres peninsulares; conquistadores valientes
Que vinieron a estas Islas desconocidas y vírgenes.
Y son también filipinos los de peninsular padre
Y madre oriental o india que en buen castellano parlen;
Educados en colegios de sacerdotes y madres
En el candor del Padre Nuestro y en los oficios y artes.
Y madre oriental o india que en buen castellano parlen;
Educados en colegios de sacerdotes y madres
En el candor del Padre Nuestro y en los oficios y artes.
Y habrán de ser filipinos todos nuestros indios netos
Que con nombres y apellidos peninsulares, sus rezos
Los oye Dios en el Cielo. Y, el fruto de sus esfuerzos
En las sementeras es lo que nutre a este Reino.
Que con nombres y apellidos peninsulares, sus rezos
Los oye Dios en el Cielo. Y, el fruto de sus esfuerzos
En las sementeras es lo que nutre a este Reino.
Todos somos hijos de Eva; por eso somos hermanos.
Todos parlamos el mismo lenguaje del castellano;
Y es un mismo Dios al quién conocemos y adoramos
Bajo una misma bandera y un mismo nombre preclaro.
Todos parlamos el mismo lenguaje del castellano;
Y es un mismo Dios al quién conocemos y adoramos
Bajo una misma bandera y un mismo nombre preclaro.
Varela may have been a second class poet, a common bard. But the few writings we know that came from his “rustic pen,” as he himself says, indicate the dawning of a national awareness among creoles, mestizos de españoles, chinos cristianos, mestizos de chinos, indios, mestizos terciados, and unassimilated sangleyes of a national concept they began calling Filipino.
It was an accepted fact that those born with a good amount of Spanish blood were still the ones called “Filipino.”
14. JOSE A. BURGOS, ONE OF THE FIRST CRIOLLO-FILIPINOS
When Archbishop Melitón Martínez of Manila, himself a peninsular Spanish, presented Father José Apolonio Burgos to Governor Carlos María de la Torre, he called Father Burgos as “the best, if not the most representative, specimen of the Filipino race.” Everybody back then knew, of course, that Father Burgos was not a “caligatang cayumanguî” (a dark skinned Filipino of Malay-Indonesian extraction) but one who was three-fourths Spanish.
Father Burgos’ mother, Doña Florencia García, was a Spanish mestiza, or half-Spanish and half Indio-Chinese. Doña Florencia’s father was a pure Spaniard; she was a natural de Vigan, whose house was quite near the sector de mestizos of Vigan.
Very few people today are aware of the fact that the sector de mestizos of Vigan was what anybody would now call “Chinatown” since almost all the people residing therein were merchants of Chinese extraction.
Even Nick Joaquin considers José Rizal a Spanish criollo by his characterization of Crisóstomo Ibarra as a Spanish creole in an essay of his in the book “A question of heroes”. (to be continued)
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