THE CHINESE MESTIZO IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY*
E . WlCKBERG.
Students of Southeast Asian history have had little to say about
the historical role played by the Chinese mestizo in that region.
Although studies of the Chinese in Southeast Asia have devoted
some attention to the position of native-born Chinese as opposed
to immigrant Chinese, the native-born Chinese of mixed Chinesenative ancestry is rarely singled out for specific treatment. Perhaps
this is because in most parts of Southeast Asia the Chinese mestizos
(to use the Philippine term for persons of mixed Chinese-native
ancestry) have not been formally and legally recognized as a separate
group — one whose membership is strictly defined by genealogical
considerations rather then by place of birth, and one which, by its
possession of a unique combination of cultural characteristics, could
be easily distinguished from both the Chinese and the native communities.
Such distinctiveness was, however, characteristic of the Chinese
mestizo in the Philippines during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. Both the Spanish colonial government and the mestizos
themselves concurred in this exact identification as neither Chinese
nor native, but specifically Chinese mestizo. It is precisely because
they formed a separate group, legally defined as such by the Spanish
government, that we are able to determine with considerable clarity
the nature of the mestizos’ activities — and hence, the nature of
their role in that period of Philippine history. Tha t role was as
I will attempt to demonstrate below, of great significance to Philippine historical development. Indeed, although close comparison
is difficult, it is likely that no other group of mestizos — that is, not
simply locally-born Chinese, but specifically mestizo Chinese—played
a similar role in the development of a Southeast Asian country.
T h e present paper is a kind of preliminary research report. In
it I will present my findings to date as well as some rather new
interpretations of Philippine history that I have come to as a result
of the work done thus far. I hope these interpretative comments
may stimulate discussion on both the mestizo and on broader problems in Philippine historiography.
I. Background Discussion
If the Chinese mestizo was important in the eighteenth an d
nineteenth centuries, and if Spanish legal distinctions make it easy
for us to follow his activities during that period, why, then, is so
little said about him in modern writings about Philippine history?
Why has there been almost no research on this topic?
One of the answers seems to be that there is confusion about
the term mestizo — a confusion compounded by the fact that since
1898 there has been no legally-defined mestizo class which we may
use as a basis for understanding the Spanish usage of the term. It
is sometimes claimed that Spanish mestizos were of great importance
in Philippine history when, indeed, the activities described as support for this statement were those of Chinese mestizos. One recent
study, the Huma n Relations Area Files monograph on the Philippines, goes so far as to say that although they were of some
importance during the first decades of the Spanish period, the Chinese mestizos faded into obscurity thereafter,1
Statements of this
kind seem to be based upon the assumption that the term mestizo,
when encountered in its unmodified form in materials of the
Spanish period, refers to Spanish mestizos — that is, persons of
mixed Spanish-native ancestry — rather than to Chinese mestizos.
Because of this apparent confusion over the term mestizo, it is
best to begin with a discussion of the distinctions that wTere made
during the Spanish period — both by the Spanish government and
by popular usage.
From the time that Chinese mestizos became numerous enough
to be classified separately, the population of those parts of the Philippines that were controlled by Spain was formally divided into
four categories: those who did not pay the tribute (which included
Spaniards and Spanish mestizos), indios (Malayan inhabitants of
the archipelago, who are now called Filipinos2
), Chinese, and Chinese mestizos. Th e last three of these groups were considered
tribute-paying classes, but the amount of their tribute payments
and the services demanded of them varied. Normally, the india
paid the lowest tribute. Th e Chinese mestizo paid double the
tribute paid by the indio, the stated reason being that he was
assumed to have approximately double the earning capacity of the
indio. Th e Chinese, in turn, paid a much larger tribute than that
paid by the Chinese mestizo, again, on the grounds that his earning
capacity was larger than that of the mestizo.3
It would seem, therefore, that in Spanish thinking, biology and economics had a certain
correlation.
On the other hand, Spanish policy may have been grounded
mor e in economic and social reality than in bio-economic theory.
Throughou t most of the Spanish period the indio and mestizo
also had to supply a fixed amount of forced labor every year, an
obligation that did not fall upon the Chinese. It is possible that
this requirement, taken together with other taxes, represented simply a recognition of the occupational facts of Philippine social life.
T h e Chinese was, first and last, a commercially-oriented moneymaker. What he could best supply, was money. At the other extreme was the indio, whose concerns were chiefly agricultural; what
he could best supply, other than tribute grain, was labor. Th e
Chinese mestizo was somewhere between — possibly engaged in agriculture, possibly in commerce, possibly in both.
In any event, the tribute-paying classes remained, until late in
the nineteenth century, divided as indicated above. Why so? Aside
from matters of theory and convenience in taxation as discussed
above, one may cite the familiar political reason: divide and conquer. This is a simple, comfortable, and hence tempting answer.
It is also not without validity for the middle and late nineteenth
century Philippines. But we ought not to assume automatically
that it was the basic reason why the Spanish, mid-way through the
colonial period, established a policy of social compartmentalization.
Indeed, there is some evidence that the separation of groups in
this fashion was originally based upon no more than a Spanish
belief that the healthy society was one in which peoples of different
cultural backgrounds were kept apart and not allowed to live together in helter-skelter fashion.4
For whatever reason, indios, Chinese mestizos, and Chinese remained as three separate groups, especially in terms of tax obli