The Church and Land tenure in the Philippines

(intro)

The Church with the largest following and the most influential in the Philippines is the Roman Catholic
Church. Its involvement in land issues through the centuries has many sides: ownership, political power
and moral. At the outset, the Catholic Church‘s place in land issues combined elements of ownership,
political power and moral clout. The Catholic Church was the other partner in the theocratic state that
ruled this territory from the 16th to the last years of the 19th century.

The friar orders accompanied the Spanish conquistadores in colonizing much of what we now call
Philippine territory. At times, the friars defended the natives from the excesses of the colonial
government and brought the matter to Madrid but this was done to consolidate Spain‘s hold on the
natives. The friar orders began to acquire big landholdings in the Philippines, especially in areas
surrounding Manila during the early part of the 17th century. Later on, they were joined by the
Archdiocese of Manila through:

(1)One was donation from Spaniards seeking spiritual benefit, (2)The other was direct purchase, and
(3)But the more common was foreclosure on mortgages.

These lands belonged to Spanish conquistadores who were awarded huge land grants earlier. In due
time, these Spanish landowners showed low interest and capability to pursue ranching and agriculture,
leaving the field to the friar orders.

Spanish colonial law prohibited Spaniards from taking over lands already occupied by the natives.

Thus, there were lands, which were legally considered as belonging to the native community, including
the commons which were reserved for pasturage and forage. However, native chiefs who were coopted
into the colonial administration later started selling or donating great parcels of these lands to the friar
orders in the name of their villages or towns.

The Spanish friars brought with them ideas of landownership and land administration from their native
Europe.

 Although it was patterned from something that was beneficial to the land owners and feudal
lords of Europe, the effect was quite crippling in the Philippines since it evolved into something
way more harsh and oppressive to the native land owners. How come?

“On top of the annual rent which the native tiller had to surrender to the friar orders and other
Spanish landowners, they had to submit to forced or corvee labor elsewhere to build ships or
churches, pay loans at onerous terms, suffer countless abuses on their women and their own
persons and endure other humiliations that went along with colonial subjugation.”
The exploitation and the abuses in the early haciendas provoked native rebellions. The revolts were
quelled but new developments in the haciendas in response to the opening of the Philippines to world
trade in the late 18th century gave rise to new and more intensified system of exploitation and abuses.(
the friar haciendas usurped the lands of the villages and the towns belonging to the natives and closed
the commons)

e.g. a great revolt exploded in 1745 in the four provinces around Manila – Laguna, Cavite, Batangas and
parts of present-day Rizal and Metro Manila.

*Americans became the highest buyer of the lands in a whopping 7.2 million dollars, fearing that the
friars and the religious ordeal that holds the bigger percentage of the lands will continue to release
tension between the church and the state.

Almost all these lands ended up being resold to the wealthy inquilinos, the non-cultivating leaseholders
who would become the owners of the present-day haciendas or big landholdings.