Note 1 — DOCUMENTS OF 1751–1762

To the president and auditors of my royal Audiencia of the Filipinas Islands, resident in the city of Manila:1 Don Pedro Enriquez, an auditor of that same Audiencia, made a report, with sworn statements of his proceedings; of what he had done under the commission which was conferred on him by the government there for the pacification of the villages of Taguig, Hagonoy, Parañaque, Bacoor, Cavite el Viejo, and other places attached to them which lie near that capital, all which had revolted. [He reported that] they were pacified by merely the proclamation of a general pardon (except to the chief instigators of the revolt) which he published, and by the promise that their complaints should be heard and justice done to them; but the village of San Mateo also revolted, and he proceeded to its punishment and left it in ruins, because the people had not surrendered their arms; it was, however, already [re]peopled, with inhabitants who were more numerous and of more peaceable disposition. A similar insurrection or revolt occurred in most of the villages of the province of Bulacan, and these, like the former, by an agreement which they had formed by a public writing with the village of Silang protested, as they afterward made evident in their petitions, against the injuries which the Indians received from the managers of the estates which are owned by the religious of St. Dominic and those of St. Augustine, both calced and discalced—usurping the lands of the Indians, without leaving them the freedom of the rivers for their fishing, or allowing them to cut wood for their necessary use, or even to collect the wild fruits; nor did they allow the natives to pasture on the hills near their villages the carabaos which they used for agriculture.2 Accordingly [the said auditor] determined to free them from these oppressions,3 and decided that they should not pay various unjust taxes which the managers exacted from them. Having proved to be capable in the other task assigned him, he received a commission as subdelegate judge of the adjustment of land-titles, in consequence of which he demanded from the aforesaid religious orders the titles of ownership for the lands which they possessed; and, notwithstanding the resistance that they made to him, repeatedly refusing [to obey], he distributed to the villages the lands which the orders had usurped, and all which they held without legitimate cause4 he declared to be crown lands [realengas]—as occurred with the convent of San Pablo, belonging to the calced religious of St. Augustine, assigning to it [i.e., the crown] a farm for horned cattle and two caballerías of land which were supposed to belong to it, according to the testimony of the village of San Mateo. He also took other measures which seemed to him proper for the investigation of the fraudulent proceedings in the measurement of the lands in the estate of Biñan, which is owned by the religious of St. Dominic—fraud which was committed in the year 1743 by the court clerk of that Audiencia [of Manila] with notable fraud and trickery, in which participated the two surveyors (appointed through ignorance or evil intent), to the grave injury of the village of Silang. This had caused the disturbances, revolts, and losses which had been experienced in the above-mentioned villages. The aforesaid proceedings [by the auditor] were considered and examined with the closest attention in my Council of the Indias, with the decrees that were also sent by the Audiencia there in the course of the proceedings in a second appeal interposed by the village of Silang—decrees obtained in that suit by the natives of that village against the college of Santo Tomas de Aquino, in regard to lands usurped [from them] and annexed to the estate of Biñan, which the religious own. On the subject of the disturbance among the aforesaid Indians, Governor Don Gaspar de la Torre, his successor the bishop of Nueva Segovia, and the provincials of the aforesaid religious orders set forth the allegations made in the name of the orders by father Fray Miguel Vivas as their procurator-general at this court, and by Father Pedro Altamirano, who acts in that capacity for the Society of Jesus for its provinces of the Indias (on the point that the province of San Ignacio in those islands had no share in the commotions in those villages, as was shown by various testimonies), and the explanations made by my fiscal, who was cognizant of the whole matter. It has therefore appeared expedient to me to advise you of the receipt of your letters of July 30, 1745, and July 17, 1746, and of the acts which accompany them; and to notify you that by a despatch of this date I approve, and regard as just and proper, all that was performed by the aforesaid Don Pedro Calderon Enriquez in virtue of the commission and appointment which was conferred upon him by Governor Don Gaspar de la Torre by the advice of the Audiencia there, in order that he might proceed to the pacification of the insurgent villages in the jurisdictions of Silang, Imus and San Nicolas, Cavite el Viejo, and the other districts which united on account of the controversy over the ownership of the lands which the religious—Dominicans, and both calced and discalced Augustinians—are endeavoring to keep. I also give him thanks for the judicious conduct and measures which he employed for the aforesaid pacification; and I likewise approve what he accomplished as subdelegate judge of the settlement of land-titles, in regard to the survey and boundaries of the estates which, in accordance with their legitimate titles, belong to each of those orders, in view of the more accurate and reliable information [obtained] from the interpretations of the four surveyors whom he appointed—the latter bearing in mind, to this end, the measures put into execution by the auditor Ozaeta in the year 1699, in accordance with the chart printed by the pilot Bueno, in his book entitled Navegación especulativa y practica5 [i.e., “Navigation, theoretical and practical”] (which chart serves in those islands as the standard for the surveys)—assigning to the aforesaid religious that which belongs to them by their [legal] titles, which is the same that was ordained in the executory decree despatched by the Audiencia there. I also approve what he did in adjudging to my royal crown the lands which the aforesaid religious orders had usurped, and in allotting lands to the Indians for the sum of two thousand pesos, at times and terms stipulated with them.