Joshua Balane, Eugene Parayaoan, Emil Torres History 165-V Dr. Filomeno V. Aguilar, Jr.

Final Group Research Paper 4 October, 2011 Banditry in the Colonial State Revisited Banditry is group activity usually involving pillaging another of possessions. It is not something exclusive to one race for it can be considered as something innate in humans, being an outlet for sating a basic need of mansurvival. This can also hold true for the Philippines. It was not the Spanish colonisers who introduced banditry in the Philippines; it is already something present before they arrived in the country. Before, it had another namesake: sea raiding. Such activities were then made for practical reasons: to get more slaves, to avenge someones death or theft, to exact retribution for broken pacts, to gain allegiance with other leaders, to get goods for sustenance and sometimes to take brides for themselves (ibid. 153-155). Basically, reasons of banditry then were somehow limited to reasons concerning sustenance or feuds. This was the context of banditry in the pre-colonial Philippines. This would change once the Spaniards would arrive. With them came new things to steal and people to steal from. But not only good things came with them, with the new colonizers came new weapons and a new police force opposing them. Having much changes in banditry in the surface level, I think that it cannot be avoided that banditry underwent on what Foucault would call an epistemological breaka change in the function of something from what it used to be used for. What is the significance of banditry, then? What we think and would try to prove in this paper is that banditry may really have done something to espouse something far greater that it had expected: nationalist ideals. How? Banditry in the colonial Philippines helped develop nationalist ideals by the realization of a moral and economic injustice manifested by Page 1 of 8

the context, catalyzed further by the sharing of a common experience, a communal feel. This paper would like to look deeper into banditry from something common and insignificant into something crucial in the forming of the idea of a Filipino nation. The Landscape What we consider very important in every event is the context in which one dwells into, for it sheds light on the reasons that may have pushed him/her into doing one thing. Take the example of a stereotypical Atenista, such prefer to use conyo-speak as medium of language, having been exposed and induced to the mindset that English is the language of competence, coinciding with some ideals pushed for by the school such as going down to the hill which induces such students to also interact in the Tagalog language, which some are not really familiar with. Such a dichotomy in ideas and language and a competitive context can be seen as a cause for one stereotypical Atenista to use conyo-speak, paired with a constant exposure to such a context. Such an example can be transposed into the context of the colonial bandit. What is the context the natives were exposed to back then? First, let us go to where such crimes were usually committed. Greg Bankoff, in Crime, Society and the State in the Nineteenth-century Philippines, states that through his findings crimes are more likely to happen more in urban centres, not only because crimes there were mostly documented (Bankoff 1996, 19); there is something in there more than that. Practically, crimes are more likely to happen in such places because they are economic centres and those who inhabit there have higher economic capacity, as compared to other parts of the colony then. Other places where acts of banditry happen are usually in the trade routes near these cities and some areas in the countryside near the mountains or swamps where the bandits can catch traders going to cities and where they can easily retreat to places where the police cannot reach them. Who would be these bandits? Bankoff observed that there most bandits are usually male, illiterate natives aged from 25 to 50 (Ibid, 30). To whom are they stealing from? Page 2 of 8

Usually, victims are of the higher economic rung, which highlighted racial antagonism (Ibid, 23). Why were they doing these? On a basic level, besides the negligence of farmlands during the growth of the galleon trade, Bankoff notes that there had been an increase of drought and periodic flooding due to the draining of swamps (Bankoff 1998, 321). The former events are complemented by the death of carabaos due to an outbreak in the 1880s (Ibid, 322). This was the context in the natives point of view. Let us look now in the Spanish PoV. The Spanish police force has a negative public picture (147). The most infamous of them is the guardia civil as they are generally condemned for brutality, arrogance and highhanded-behaviour (148). Other discrepancies are some of them joining other bandits, as even the bandits disguise themselves as police (150). Some guardia civil were infamous of arresting in suspicion, something in contrast to what they government does (141). Going to their personnel and forces, I can say they are inefficient and wanting. I say they are inefficient due to their lack of weapons, though attempts of solving and funding this were only thought of after the Cavite Mutiny and such attempts were only in paper (133), their lack of good means of locomotion, and their inability to reach the bandits, though this had been attempted to be addressed by the institution of the comisarios del tribunal, but also failed due to lack of weapons (130). The same can also apply within the city guards. Another cause of inefficiency is the mixing of different races in troops, sparking racial antagonism within the forces (146). Another reason is the lack of a lucrative pay and benefits, (145) so their wager in joining the police force ensures nothing but losses. To sum it all up in a sentence, what supposed to be stopping occasions of banditry ironically fuels more to be bandits. This is the context, but it cannot be enough to state causes so we will state different views of reasons motivating bandits to do it.

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Economic Reasons During the 19th century colonial Philippines banditry was really prominent and one of the leading causes for Filipinos resulting to this kind of lifestyle is because they felt that they lack economic incentives from their previous life to support themselves and their family. Therefore, we can say that Filipinos become bandits because it is the rational choice. According to Popkins model of the competitive village, bandits are more motivated by personal and family welfare rather than group interest or moral values (Rojas quoting Popkin, 2003, 5) and that this was all due to the conflicts of the lower social class and the higher social class where the former felt that there is inequality and unfairness. Their goal then is to achieve equality in wealth or close to that with the other class. Greg Bankoff consider these kind of bandits professional where they are only force to criminal life because they are victims of progress, ill-fortuned or falsely accused. Usually these people are described as those desperate men left with no other way to provide for their families, therefore joined the swelling ranks of the tulisan bands (Bankoff, 1998, 327). A lot of the people during the 19th century Philippines were really lacking economically or are in poverty. This could be the reason why crimes against property constitute to almost 50 percent (Bankoff, 1996, 22) of the crimes. In the urban areas, most of the conflicts were between different social classes where properties of the rich are stolen by the poor. The conflicts could also be racial which are between Indio, Chinese and Spanish. On the rural setting, although there are also intra-class conflicts, there are also inter-class conflicts where people steal from other people to which they are equal in economic status. A rural province where banditry was really a problem was Cavite. The crimes there where related to the expansion of friar estates which led to a lot of natives to becoming landless. These people who were forced out of their land rebelled and became bandits. They were called vagamundos (Aguilar 1998, 76) which is translated as those without fixed

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residences. The intensity of banditry in Cavite could also be related to the changes in sharecropping agreements, where peasants were forced to pay a large amount of fixed rent irrespective of yield rather than a percentage of harvest (Bankoff, 1996, 63-64). Banditry negatively affected the agricultural development during that time because farms were the primary target of bandits in rural areas. Farmers were not allowed to have weapons to protect themselves from the bandits, police force was insufficient and mobilization of products was especially hard because roads were rendered impassable by the bandits. This led to the farmers abandoning their work and some even joining the bandits since they think that they will have a better opportunity in that kind of lifestyle. Overall, the natives wanted to pursue their suerte resulting with the gambling of their life in choosing to become a bandit. Considering that the times were hard and they felt oppression in the inequality of social status, professional bandits were really just forced on deciding a life of danger to make a living. Banditry was also seen as an opportunity for easy money which fits well with the gambling nature of the natives which was magnified by the Spanish colonizers. Moral Reasons In the case of the Filipinos during the Spanish colonial period, banditry was a deviation from the oppressive nature of Spains rule. While bandits are usually those that plunder out of necessity (i.e. lack of resources, driven out of land, etc.), they have chosen to be so because of moral undertones they could not stand for. Racism was rampant where there were Spanish and Filipinos mingling (Rojas 2003, 5). A good example of this is the snide remark of one of the Spanish elite when he saw Isidro de la Rama at a congregation during mass (Aguilar 1998, 160). There was also the demand of tax and corvee labor, in which there was heavier tax to the Filipinos, given their low salary and the abuses they receive from their colonisers. All in all, banditry was born from the sudden and violent opposition the native Page 5 of 8

Filipinos culture; their moral code, by that of the Spanish. This moral tension was one main factor that forced the collective to flee from colonized society in order to preserve their cultural integrity and collective welfare (Bankoff, 1998, 320). On a general summation of their moral logic in doing banditry, as James Scott would say, there is an assumption that there should be equality for all. Having perceived an imbalance, they will act in order to retain equity, with banditry as one of the outlets of such equalising measures (italics from Rojas quoting Scott 2003, 4). Social and Millenarian Reasons The social bandit is your Robin Hood, who attempts to upstage, through his activity, a primitive social protest against the ruling power (Hobsbawm 1965, 13). Such bandits prefer to stay with the company of the abused as he can be seen as a liberator figure. Hobsbawm points out that such bandits do something considered not criminal by his colleagues, but as something criminal by the State (15). Through his activity, in the Philippine context, he is seen by the Filipinos as a hero but a criminal by the Spaniards. Basically, such bandits operate on the grounds that there had been an inequality in society that such actions can be seen as actions demonstrating opposition to this inequality. Even his being a bandit can be seen as a revolt against colonial law. A deviation of this is the millenarian bandit, who legitimizes his identity by claiming that he was sent by a divine entity to upstage an opposition and instigate a new dominion. Most prominent among these are Dios Buhawi, Dios Gregorio, Papa Isio among many others discussed by Filomeno Aguilar, Jr. in his Clash of Spirits, as they claim they have been sent by God to revolt against foreign influence in Negros (Aguilar 1998, ---). In this context eventually, due to their loathing for most anything Spanish, the Filipinos began to make the connection that power came from the spirits of the old religion, and that power was augmented desecrating Christianity and Friar Power, the faith of the Spanish. The idea stuck, and became very popular among the Filipinos. The main Page 6 of 8

difference is that social bandits do it for the society and the millenarian bandits do it in the name of their sender, usually of divine origin. Significance What is the significance of such activities in the nationalist context? For the economic and moral bandits, we can say that through their working assumption that there should be equality in the community, the idea of human and racial equity came into being. For the social and millenarian bandits who claimed to be bringers of a new agea new age that would be free from the grasp of Spain and its oppression. This idea sounded very sweet for the people that it gained a following. Loosely, the formation of millenarian bandits can be said to have contributed to the awakening of a unified nation, at least in the sense that they all opposed and were opposed by the Spanish occupation. They were learning to conquer the engkanto that encroached on their sacred ground as can be seen by the examples of Papa Isio and Dios Buhawi (Aguilar 1998, ---). With the idea of a new age free of oppression and of colonial rule, such ideas fuelled solid followings and thus contributed for what can be called as predecessors of nationalist revolutions. Such motivations and ideas, however, can be seen to be inefficient in themselves. There still seems to be a missing link. What Im referring to is the sensation which we would like to call communal feel. Having experienced the same things, having the same aspirations for freedom and equality, the Filipinos then, more prominently Bonifacio and Aguinaldo, used this commonality to set aside differences and united to a force having the same motivation. Such sharing of motivations boosting the ideas of equity and of liberty, as we would propose, may have been one of the forces that made the revolution possible. This is why we consider banditry as something important in the context of nationalism.

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Conclusion Having said all of these, we can say that banditry, in another perspective, can be seen as a predecessor of nationalist movements. What seemed to be very personal turned out to be very nationalistic, eventually. This proves that there is something that we, as Filipinos, could share as we set our distinctions aside. As for a reflection, let me give two things to ponder upon. First, every small thing you do can have an effect on everybody, whether you are aware of it or not. Second, what is that certain thing that can induce communal feel among the Flipinos? What the bandits did, maybe, can be what we can emulate as an example. 2501 Words Bibliography: Aguilar, Filomeno Jr. 1998. Cockfights and engkantos: Gambling on submission and resistance. Clash of Spirits: The History of power and sugar planter hegemony on a Visayan island, 32-53.Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University. ------------------------- 1998. Toward Mestizo Power. Clash of Spirits: The History of power and sugar planter hegemony on a Visayan island, 156-88. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University. Bankoff, Gregg. 1996. Crime, the Criminal and the Context. Crime, society, and the state in the nineteenth-century Philippines, 19-33. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University. --------------------. 1996. The Police. In Crime, society, and the state in the nineteenth-century Philippines, 12954. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University. --------------------. 1998. Bandits, banditry and landscapes of crime in the nineteenth-century Philippines. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 29(2): 31939. Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1965.The Social Bandit. Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in 19th and 20th Centuries, 13-29. USA: Norton Library. Rojas, Virgilio. 2003. The Rational or Moral Tulisan? Making sense of peasant banditry in pre-20th Century Colonial Philippines. Sweden: Stockholm University. Scott, William Henry. 1994. Weapons and war, Barangay: Sixteenth-century Philippine culture and society, 153-155. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University.

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