Throughout the South of Market neighborhood, you might see something like this. Back to that very brief moment when the former president, Rodrigo Duterte, suggested that the name of the Philippines be changed to Maharlika. Now Maharlika has come to denote a number of different meanings apart from its original meaning of free people, but it certainly never meant serenity or peace. No, it doesn't even derive from the Malay language.
It comes from the Sanskrit actually, which is why we know it means free people. You see, the irony is that even though Duterte pointed to Marcos'original attempt to change the name to Maharlika, that dictator didn't even use the word to describe anything peaceful at all. In fact, Marcos picked the name to harken back to the pre-Hispanic, pre-colonial past of the Philippines.
Ferdinand Marcos loved the word Maharlika because it pointed to the warrior class or nobility of the pre-colonial Philippine society. Marcos was so taken by the idea that he named the military unit that he led in World War II as Angmangamahalika to fight against the Japanese. And the double irony is, get this, that the military unit never existed.
At least they never really fought against the Japanese during World War II. The investigation published in the New York Times actually said that those men who claimed membership in Mahalika had actually been committing atrocities against Filipino citizens rather than fighting against the Japanese. Both Marcos and Duterte fabricated a lot about the history of the Philippines, but it makes sense that in order to develop a national identity, they would fabricate part of the Philippine history that preceded Spanish colonialism.
The Republic of Maharlika, because Maharlika is a Malay word, and it means more of a concept of serenity and peace. Both Marcos and Duterte fabricated a lot about the history of the Philippines. But it makes sense that in order to develop a new national identity, they would fabricate part of the Philippine history that preceded Spanish colonialism. Why?
Well you see, if so many people believe in a definition of culture as something that's authentic or pure, what can be more pure than a culture before it was colonized? But culture isn't pure. It's not authentic or untouched by the influence of other people. In fact, this was a big reason why Manila became such an important trading outpost for the Spanish trade routes. For centuries before and after the Spanish Manila was a meeting point for the exchange of cultures throughout Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.
I suppose that's why so many people like to use Halo Halo as a metaphor for Filipino culture. This desire to find the real or true Filipino culture, one that has staved off the overwhelming influences of Spanish and American colonialism, it's one of the major through lines of this class. But it's also one of the biggest pitfalls.
I'll talk more about that later. Throughout the South of Market neighborhood in San Francisco, you might see something like this. This is part of the We Live Here project designed by the Filipino-American artist Melvera Cruz.
Words painted in the Filipino alphabet, also called abacada, words like bata and yaca, aims to remind San Franciscans of the many working class and immigrant Filipinos who continue to reside in the neighborhood. But abacada isn't the original alphabet that Filipinos used in pre-colonial times. It was first developed actually by the Philippine writer and former senator, Lope K. Santos.
all the way back in 1939. Is there anything then that we can look at that actually tells us what the past looked like in pre-colonial times? Actually there's quite a bit that remains in the lives of Filipino and Filipino-Americans that can be traced back to the time before the Spanish. Like I said, many Filipinas and Filipino-Americanists have studied this topic. There's so much to learn about the many people who inhabited the archipelagos before Spain.
So let me just share three broad ideas in order to help you begin thinking about these vibrant and complex communities. The first thing is that these communities weren't groups of savage nomads moving and settling from place to place. The people that lived throughout the archipelagos formed unique and complex societies that consisted of various roles and hierarchies. And secondly, just as their societies were complex, so too were their languages and beliefs. And lastly, if there was anything about these societies that was unlike their Western counterparts, it was their unique and significant views about gender and gender differences.
Going back to the anthropologist Keith Bosso's quote about culture, when he said, we are, in a sense, the place worlds we imagine. As I mentioned in an earlier part of the lecture, focusing our attention on Basso's definition of culture, it allows us to think about how culture both changes and sustains throughout time. It pushes us think past the view of culture as fixed in time. It allows us to not make that mistake of viewing people as somehow less because they don't fit in a specific definition of culture, or in Constantino's words, a high culture. You know, don't get me wrong, Renato Constantino and even perhaps Renato Rosaldo's professor, they didn't really think that indigenous Filipinos were overtly less human than the Spanish who colonized them.
I'm almost positive that Constantino didn't actually think that. But think about culture in the way that they did. It creates a lot of blind spots that has kept generations of people all over the world from seeing the brilliance and ingenuity that was already built in the cultures of the archipelago. Culture is never pure or untouched.
It's always being influenced by the cultures surrounding it, engaging it, interacting with it. And as you've already seen, Philippine culture today is completely influenced by the culture of Spanish colonialism. But at the same time there are always singular aspects within a culture, including within the cultures within the Philippines, that can actually be traced back before the modernity of the European Enlightenment and its conquests. This will help us to think about the Philippines and remember that these traces of pre-coloniality, well it's part of this place world and all of this history lives on. in an actual place.
The Philippines isn't an idea or something that existed in our parents'past. It continues to exist today. So how can we see the place world a pre-Hispanic, pre-colonial culture?
Well that's why language is such a crucial component of culture. In fact, we're not completely certain where the original inhabitants of the archipelagos came from. But we do know from the many languages and dialects within the Philippines today that there were at least two major groups of people that settled in the different parts of the archipelago more than 5,000 years ago, directly from what is today the country of Taiwan.
Throughout the centuries, these communities persisted. They broke up into different tribes. and maintain different types of societies.
However, one of the most basic cultural threads that ran through each of these communities were values that were deeply based on the shared good of the community. Today in the Tagalog language this value is defined by the word byanihan, and the most visible trace of the pre-colonial value byanihan is vividly portrayed throughout the rise terraces of Benawi in the northern region of Luzon. These beautiful terraces are often called the eighth wonder of the world because these marvels of human architecture created 2000 years ago, were mostly created by human hands, working together for the shared good of Bayanihan.
Another powerful aspect of pre-Hispanic culture that remains today is the tradition of sailing. You can see this in the Balangays. The author Kali Fajardo writes that now, today, the Philippines is the largest supplier of Filipino semen throughout the world. And part of the reason for this is because of the immense expertise necessary to navigate the vast oceans of the world. Filipinos have cultivated this expertise throughout the centuries, starting from when some of their ancestors made that treacherous migration from the Asian mainland to the archipelagos.
The Filipino writer Luis Francia has written about how the American archaeologist William Solheim found evidence that a migration of some of the first settlers in the archipelago came on Balangays from Southeast Asia dating all the way back to 5000 BCE, perhaps even earlier. Francia says the buoyant outriggers helped balance the shallow draft vessel while at the same time enabling it to navigate smoothly and speedily over the water. The immensely skillful ways in which Filipinos continue to shape and reshape such a massive geography like the terraces of Benawi or navigate the world's oceans with such expertise, well this, this is culture.
It's centuries of complex and sophisticated skill that persists so that we can see the past today. But what was the place world created by these people who settled in the archipelagos like? before the Spanish arrived. What were their lives like?
Well, as I've already alluded to throughout these lectures, pre-colonial Philippines wasn't the unified nation and people that form the Philippines today. And as I mentioned earlier, the islands were inhabited by different communities and tribes that differed in language and culture. These communities, they thrive primarily through trading goods, goods like abaca. to traders from the Middle East and the rest of Asia.
You can see this particularly in the diverse ingredients inside of the food that Filipinos eat today. Hence why people keep referring to halo-halo to explain the hybridity built into the culture of the Philippines today. You see, contrary to what Renato Rizaldo's professor said, Filipinos did have their own culture. Throughout these societies, people knew how to read and write. Through the influence of traders from India and the Sanskrit language, some pre-colonial communities began adopting a script called Kawi.
Beginning in the 8th century, the earliest existing evidence of this is the Laguna Copper Plate, and later the most widely known pre-colonial script, well it wasn't made from the Abacada alphabet, it was called Babayin. This script was widely adopted in the Luzon region by the 13th century, mainly due to the influence of Kawi. The term Baibaiyin means to write or to spell in Tagalog, and it's sometimes referred to as Alibata, a term that was also developed in the 20th century, all the way back in 1914. The Baibaiyin script was primarily used throughout societies in the region of Luzon, and it evolved into Tagalog as well as a lot of other Philippine dialects, particularly those throughout the region of Luzon. Pre-colonial Filipinos, they also lived within organized societies. We can see this in the term barangay, which was developed by pre-colonial societies.
And it's become an official term that Filipinos use to demarcate their communities, another pre-colonial trace that you can see in the Philippines today. Pre-colonial societies contained structures and hierarchies and at the top of many of these societies were people called Datus. Some were also called Rajas, a direct influence of the Islamic religion.
And this influence didn't seclude itself to the southern parts of the archipelago. One of the most famous Philippine Rajas was Aki or Raja Matanda, the old ruler of Luzon, who administered over the kingdom's capital Manila, between 1521 to 1572. The Datu had political and spiritual authority in his barangay. They had similar authority to what we might think of a village chieftain in other regions throughout the world.
governing over disputes and leading his community in battle. And as time passed, since the earliest migration settled in the archipelagos, well these societies transformed into sophisticated kingdoms. One of the first to emerge was Tondo, the kingdom of Namayan, located on the banks of the Pasig river in the 7th century. And as other kingdoms emerged, pre-colonial societies became more complexly organized.
in order to accommodate wider practices of building and trade. And so it was these trading routes that eventually brought the Islamic faith into the kingdom of Sulu in the southern region of the archipelago around 1214. And with the growth of these kingdoms and hierarchies came the emergence of a unique practice of slavery. Evidence from the Laguna Copper Plate and other things, they tell us that there were communities that weren't organized by a class system.
But most of these societies were, and they often looked like this. The maganu were the highest class, and it was from here that the nobility in this class was where the datus would ascend. Then there was the other property classes, the infamous maharlika, yes those maharlika, who tended to form the warrior class.
And then the other timawa, Together, these two groups constituted the free people in pre-colonial society. So yes, there was slavery. But it's important to note that slaves in pre-colonial Philippines weren't like the chattel slaves forced to live in the United States. Again, we can't use solely our words and definitions in order to understand the worlds of people who exist outside of our language.
These slaves are often referred to by the name Alipin, and what makes them different from our understanding of slavery is that the Alipin weren't confined to being slaves their entire lives. At times, enslaved people were able to paint their way out of slavery and make their way up the social ladder. So it's important to remember that these pre-colonial hierarchies, it's not the same thing as the caste system. In the caste system, People can't move in between classes.
In other parts of the archipelago, these social classes were referred to by different names. But for those societies that were divided by class, they were generally organized in the same way. And finally, women who lived in the pre-colonial period of the Philippines, they had a distinctly different role in their communities than Filipino women had after Spanish colonialism.
Now that's not to say that feminism died with Spanish colonialism in the Philippines. After all, two women did serve as presidents in the Philippines, and at the time of this recording, that's two more than the United States. Unlike women throughout Europe and the Americas for centuries, many women in pre-colonial Philippine society had a social standing that was more equal to their male counterparts, and sometimes more.
And that's because in those societies that were divided by class, things like property ownership determined class divisions much more than biology or sex. Along with owning property, many women in pre-colonial societies were able to divorce their husbands and were often responsible for financial decisions in the family. This was unheard of in intensely patriarchal cultures like the one that Catholic friars and priests from Spain would later bring to the archipelago. You know there's so much more that I want to say about just how different gender was perceived in these communities.
Different than the way that a lot of societies still think about gender today. The role of gender, including the significance that pre-colonial Filipinos placed in the distinction between genders, was very different from how many of us have come to understand gender today. Let me explain. For those of you who are Filipino in the class, did you ever wonder why your mom or your dad would mix up he and she when speaking English sometimes?
You see, in Tagalog and other Philippine dialects, there's no word demarcating he from she. In Tagalog, it's just sha, s-i-y-a. Think about that.
Whenever your mom or dad speak, they have to literally be conscious. of gender differences when they're referring to people in English. Whenever your mom or your dad speak, they have to literally be conscious. of gender differences when they're referring to people in English. This is what I mean when I say there's so much that's just built in to Philippine cultures that we can trace back to pre-colonial societies.
There's so many beautiful traces of this pre-colonial past everywhere amongst Filipinos today, both here in the United States and all throughout those living everywhere else in the world. and so much that Filipinos can learn about themselves if they choose to consciously search for it. The lie that Filipinos didn't have a culture until Spain colonized them, that lie was a tool manufactured to make it easier to convert Filipinos into Catholicism and introduce these new values, values around property ownership and the subjugation of women and transgender people. This is why I respectfully diverge from thinkers like Renato Constantino.
In my opinion, it wasn't that pre-colonial societies in the archipelagos lacked a culture and that's what made it easier to subjugate them. It was just that the Spanish developed so many tools to subvert pre-colonial societies, both from within and without patriarchy and evangelical Christianity. They didn't originate in the archipelagos, but they did so much to transform the Philippines and Filipino societies.
And because of the havoc that they wrought, especially in those throughout the diaspora like Filipino Americans, well Filipinos have longed for a real belonging to their very own place world since. See you next time. Ingat. The President of the Philippines has been asked to change the name of the Philippines to Maharlika. The President of the Philippines has been asked to change the name of the Philippines to Maharlika.
Back in 2019 when Rodrigo Duterte was the President of the Philippines, he presented reporters with a really strange proposal. He suggested that the name of the Philippines be changed. The Republic of Maharlika because Maharlika is a Malay word and it means more of a concept of serenity and peace. Now this wasn't the first time that a president from the Philippines wanted to change the name of the country.
The time of Marcos was perfect. He wanted to change it to Maharlika. Both presidents wanted to change the name of the Philippines to Maharlika. Whereas Duterte liked the name because it was, quote, more of a concept of serenity and peace, Marcos liked it simply because it harkened back to the country's pre-colonial past. Now why was it so important for both presidents to change the name of the Philippines?
And why change it to Maharlika? Welcome. My name is Eric Hedo and this is Asian American Studies 353, Filipino and Filipino-American Identities.
Today we're going to talk about what the Philippines was like before Spain colonized it. Now it's totally possible that you might be asking yourself, what does this have to do with Filipino American identities? So let's start there. Put aside pre-Hispanic colonialism. What does Spanish colonialism have to do with Filipino American identities?
Well going back to my discussion about the debate between Filipinos living in the United States. Well, I think that's a good question. whether the word Filipino should be spelled with an F or a P. You know what I'm talking about. Well, I argue that that actually originates in the Philippines, or more specifically, with the name of the country itself, the Philippines.
Why did Duterte and Marcos before him suggest that the Philippines Philippines be named Mahalika. This controversy is at the root of why trying to understand what it means to be Filipino is so complicated. This is a problem that countries who have never been colonized have ever been forced to consider.
Now think about it. Why would a country agree to live with a name when one of the letters in that name doesn't even exist within their language's alphabet? The problem literally starts with King Philip II, ruler of Spain from 1527 to 1598. The name the Philippines actually derives from Las Islas Filipinas.
That was the original name given to the archipelago after the Spanish explorer Ruy Lopez de Villalobos invaded in 1542. So even now, when Filipinos both in the United States and all over the world have a really difficult time trying to develop a sense of self attached to the Philippines, well that's really, really hard. hard for them to do. It's just really complicated.
Even today, the way how you call your kitchen tools, how you call the streets, everything that surrounds you has Spanish vestiges. So up to now, even after 150 years since Spain left the Philippines, they left a very big impact on us. How do you develop a sense of self when you truly don't know where you belong?
If we go by their name alone, to be Filipino literally means to belong to King Philip II. Obviously that's absurd. So to continue our discussion about Filipino American identity formation, we have to start from the beginning, before the Philippines and all of its people became the possession of Spain. But first, let me start by sharing this quote by a really famous anthropologist, Keith Bosso. While he was alive, Bosso didn't write about Filipinos.
He wrote about another indigenous society, the Apache people. This is what he wrote, constructing the past is also a way of constructing social traditions and in the process personal and social identities. And here's the important part. He said, we are, in a sense, the place worlds we imagine. In other words, when we imagine a certain people, say Filipinos, we're imagining the place in which they exist, say the Philippines.
Remember what I said about our parents thinking that the Philippines is really only three things, hot, polluted, and corrupt. Well, that's a place world. As our parents described their literal homeland. That's the place we conjure in our minds as their children or their grandchildren.
The thing is, this imagining of the Philippines, it's not a new or recent thing. This place world comes from the fact that from a very long time, when people imagined the Philippines before Spain, well, they thought of it as a place without a culture. Historian Arnold J. Toynbee said that the Philippines is a Latin American country that was transported to the Orient by a gigantic marine wave. Many people, and some still do, believe that the Philippines lacks a truly authentic culture because of their history of colonialism in Spain and the United States.
Like many Latin American countries once colonized by Spain, the Philippines is a Hispanic country. Zapatos, reloj, vestida, ventana, these are only some remnants of Spanish colonization. Many we take for granted.
Many we don't even realize. After all, the Spanish didn't just change our speech, clothing, tools, or food. They changed our way of living.
Let me tell you about another anthropologist, somebody that I really admired, especially in graduate school. His name's Renato Rizzaldo. Before he became a professor at Stanford, where he taught for a really long time, he was getting his Ph.D. at Harvard in the 1960s. And when he was there in graduate school choosing his topic, well, his advisor asked him, where do you want to study?
So he thought about it for a really long time. And Rizaldo finally decided that he wanted to study tribes in the Philippines. Well, his advisor scoffed at him. And this is what he said.
The Philippines is too westernized to have a culture. Think about that for a second. What does westernized mean?
And what does culture mean? Well, when Rizaldo's advisor at Harvard used the word culture, he didn't mean what the word actually means. In everyday language these days, the word culture for Rosaldo's advisor is referring to the term in the way that anthropologists understood it at the time.
His advisor meant a structured and authentic way of life. And by structured, I mean a way of life that was organized in ways that scholars can understand and write about. And by authentic, I mean a set of beliefs and practices. within a community or society that's so clearly different from the mixtures of culture that characterizes so many modern countries that we think of today.
So these sets of beliefs and practices are somehow not modern. For result, those advisor the Philippines lost its authentic culture after it was colonized by the Philippines in the U.S. Now there's a third definition of culture.
that I want to discuss and it's related to the other two definitions. And that's the idea of a high culture, as in cultured. You can think about this in the way that some people continue to think that countries are actually better off for having been colonized, including the Philippines.
Places like the Philippines for them were introduced to a superior way of life, a high culture. Once they were settled by colonizers, either from Europe or the United States.