A Filipino Response to Flogging

Colonial Whip
A Filipino Response to Flogging in 1835

I.
Cracks in the Parchment Curtain – 17 essay compiled into one to reveal factual information on the 300 year master-and-slave relationship of the Philippines and Spain. In here, we’ll see desolate angle of Filipinos living through the Spanish shadow for three centuries. An American author with Dutch-Lutheran decent uncovers the Philippine’s neglected history with an aim to put a window on every angle during the three century colonial rule of Spain. The book contains facts from primary sources in which the author patiently cracked through persons, places and time. Among them are musty books and documents coming from libraries to libraries, countries to countries, parishes to parishes and persons to persons. These were the keys in unsealing and renewing the Philippine history with the realistic glimpse of the Filipinos who have hungered for freedom and dignity in the chains of foreign power.
William Henry Scott was an American historian primarily interested with the Philippine history. In 1982, he completed twenty-five years of teaching, scholarship and publication in the Philippines. Upon completing his college education in Cranbook School, Michigan, he joined the Episcopalian Church mission in China where he also taught and studied. With a general expulsion of foreigners in China, he then followed his teachers to Yale University where he enrolled and graduated with a BA in Chinese Literature and Language. Although he wanted to teach in Japan, he was offered a post in St Mary’s School in Sagada, Mountain Province, Philippines where he eventually taught English and History. Scott held a Bachelor's degree from Yale University, a Masters from Columbia University and a PhD from the University of Santo Tomas. Scott's dissertation was published by the University of Santo Tomas Press as Pre-Hispanic Source Materials for the Study of Philippine History in 1968. A revised and expanded second edition was published in 1984.

Scott's first well known academic work is The Discovery of the Igorots. This is a history of the Cordillera mountain region over several centuries of Spanish contact, constructed from contemporary Spanish sources. Scott argues that the difficulties the Spaniards encountered extending their rule in the face of local resistance resulted in the inhabitants of the region being classified as a 'savage' race separate to the more tractable lowland Filipinos. He adopted a similar approach in Cracks in the Parchment Curtain, which he tries to glean a picture of pre-colonial Philippine society from early Spanish sources.
Scott received various critics on his works. Scott was aware of this limitation, but argued Spanish records provided glimpses of Filipino society and native reaction to colonial dominion, often incidental to the intention of the Spanish chronicler, which were the cracks in the Spanish parchment curtain.
The writing and teaching of "sound history" has been Scott's obsession. Although he has been popularly known as the historian of the Igorots, he has made a more basic contribution to Philippine historiography - that of methodology in history.

Although William Henry Scott used English as a medium in this compilation of Essays, he never failed to give the information as coherent as possible. He cited sources which made his dissertation reliable. He even included personal documents of the complainant of the people of Tagudin, Ilocos Sur. He began the essay with the event that took place prior to the complaint of “excessive number of floggings” and threats caused by their parish priest. As he went through, he gave a brief history of flogging and castigation among the Spaniards and how acceptable it is as to the part of their penal traditions. He gave a brief translation of the complaint as it was written based on the vernacular of the town of Tagudin. The complaint itself gave an overview of the situations and provided a glimpse on the “unjust” and “inhumane” punishment of the Spaniards, may it be the friars or the governor general himself. Scott though, failed in the aspect of citing more examples as he gave the reader a question of “Does these floggings happened on just a town or the whole country?” It is unknown whether these “harsh” punishments happened merely in a certain town of Ilocos Sur or it applied to the nation. It may be assumed that this is a metaphorical description on how the Filipinos responded on this treatment of the Spaniards that applies to the entire Philippine society itself.

II.
“Do not tamest carabaos turn against their masters if whipped too much?” – a veiled threat written with considerable passion included in the complaint written by tribute payers and “concerned citizens” of Tagudin, Ilocos Sur. It was a common penal tradition of the Spaniards to flog, whip and castigate a citizen. According to the complaint, it was a friar named Fray Juan Sorilla who ordered a penalty of 300 lashes to be received by individuals performing their public service. Even the appointed officers of Gobernadorcillos weren’t exempted to these punishments, for their slightest shortcomings. I partially agree to the author when he stated that the Spaniards did not invent flogging as a means of controlling their Filipino subject. Of course, flogging only exists when the subject did something unacceptable and surely the Spaniards didn’t do it out of boredom, did they? Yet, I do however negate at the thought that it was “an old and accepted part of their penal tradition”. There are numerous ways to discipline your subject. Too much flogging won’t mean that the subject will do any better. Even animals do not deserve to be treated like that. Going back to the warning that the complainant had left, it would be seen on the following case that the Dominican Fray Romualdo Aguado (Ilagan case, 1763) had recorded that there was a time when the commoners had planned an end to the tyranny of the Spaniards, treating them like slaves and “flogging them without mercy for the least fault. They flogged the gobernadorcillo, the same way he accustomed to do with the commoners. “They did the same thing with the “cabezas” and with thay they were satisfied.”
I am left with the question of, “What happened to civilization back then?” It seemed like the society during the said century went back to the time of Hammurabi wherein he made an infamous law stating “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. It’s like revenge turned rampant and the teachings of the Catholic faith were long been forgotten.
I do not impose hatred to the Spaniards as what those typical history books are trying to compel us, but the mere fact that these friars who give such unjust penalties of flogging and whipping made me think of the irony of the Spanish colonization. These friars were tasked primarily to spread Catholicism and preach the gospel yet, they are the ones doing things that are too far from what the Bible and Jesus apparently, are trying to teach since the beginning of this world. I can’t even grasp the thought of seeing women being slapped nor flogging someone as a form of entertainment (whipping someone in front of the plaza). Since when did castigating someone and treating him below the level of an animal became something as to boost your ego? You may feel superior but that doesn’t mean you will accustom yourself or even the person around with that scenario. I can’t help to think of the young ones during those times who were present in these things, poor children who witnessed such violent traditions as opposed to their innocence. Last but definitely not the least, I strongly affirm to the author stating that “flogging proved to be a useful instrument in retaining the colony’s control NOT because of the pain inflicted but the manner in which it was inflicted by fellow Filipinos.” This factor, I believe, intensified the Filipinos’ political consciousness. Although given the thought that revenge is nowhere near right as religiously speaking, yet it gave the Filipinos something to fight and revolutionized for. Revenge will never happen if, in the first place, no false actions occurred. I bet those Spaniards felt a pang of fear and awareness that they can never punish their subjects forever, in the same way that give 100 lashes to each person. I mean, who even do these things? Sooner or later, the Filipinos will fight back. And they did...
Kudos to William Henry Scott! It just sad to think that the Filipinos are apathetic and forever be jailed in the mistaken impression of our history IF NOT to another nationality, who could’ve just cared less and study his own American history instead, but chooses to patiently strive his way to the truth and accurate facts of the Philippine heritage..

*William Henry Scott, Cracks in the Parchment Curtain, pp.159-161

Created by:
MANUEL, Anjeanette Z.
2JRN1