Note 217 — San Agustin’s Letter on the Filipinos

95. I do not believe that I should omit mention, saltem per transenam,217 of a matter very worthy of consideration—namely, that if God chooses to chastise the flourishing Christianity of these islands for our and their sins, by placing it in the hands of Indians ordained as priests (as appears about to threaten us very soon), if God do not apply a remedy, what abominations will not follow! For to declare that they will change their customs218 and the aforesaid vices is impossible. On the contrary, their arrogance will grow worse with exaltation to so sublime an estate; their cupidity with power will be better fed; their laziness, with the lack of necessity; and their vanity, with the applause that they would wish to have, for they would desire to be served by those whom they would in another estate respect and obey; and the villages would suffer from the curse mentioned in Isaiah xxiv, 2, sicut populus, sic sacerdos. For the Indian who is ordained does not become a priest because it is the calling that conduces to the most perfect estate,219 but because of the great and almost infinite advantage that comes to him with the new estate that he chooses. How much it differs from being a father cura, to be a baguntao or sexton! From paying tribute, to being paid a stipend! From going to the [compulsory] cutting of timber, to being served in it! From rowing in a banca, to be rowed in it! That does not count with a Spaniard, who, if he become a cleric, often gives up an office as alcalde-mayor, captain, or general, with many other comforts in his native place, while his house is exalted above all the nation of the Indians. Let one contrast this with the vanity with which one who has been freed from the oar,220 or from an ax in the cutting of timber, will give his hand to be kissed! What a burden for the village will be the father, and mother, sister and nieces ranked as ladies, when many other better women are pounding rice! For if the Indian is insolent and intolerable with but little power, what will he be with so much superiority! And if the wedge from the same log221 is so powerful, what will it be if driven by so great authority! What plague of locusts can be compared to the destruction that they would cause in the villages?222 What respect will the Indians have for him, seeing that he is of their color and nation—and especially those who consider themselves as good, and even better perhaps, than he who became a cura, while they do not become anything better than bilango or servant? How severely the good cura will chastise them, and for trifling offenses!223 as we see the Indians do when they act as gobernadorcillos of their villages for even a single year—when the first thing that they do, and in which they most delight, is immediately to place the picota224 in front of their houses, in order to apply lashes with the hangman’s strap [penca]. What tyranny will the cura practice on them, such as they are wont to practice if they have any power and authority! How well the wedge of the same wood will force its way, without there being any one to say to him, curita facis? [i.e., “Dost thou play the cura?”]225