Note 93 — San Agustin’s Letter on the Filipinos

43. They act tyrannically one toward another. Consequently, the Indian who has some power from the Spaniard is insolent93 and intolerable among them—so much so that, in the midst of their ingratitude, some of them recognize it, although very few of them. Yet it is a fact that, if the Spaniards had not come to these islands, the Indians would have been destroyed; for, like fish,94 the greater would have swallowed the lesser, in accordance with the tyranny which they exercised in their paganism.95