Pure-Blooded

MANILA, Philippines - A hundred forty years ago, three Filipino secular priests were brutally garroted by the Spanish colonial administration with the tacit consent of the Church. We were taught in school that they championed the secularization of parishes so the Spanish friars who were lording it over the countryside implicated them in the Cavite Mutiny of 1872. Fathers Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora - known as GOMBURZA since Gat Andres Bonifacio himself invented the password for the Katipunan - inspired a whole generation of Filipino patriots which included General Paciano Rizal and his younger brother Jose.

Apparently, that malignant power play between secular and religious had deeper roots, the truth concealed for centuries by supposedly erudite chronicles about "the natural incapacity of natives for the priesthood and religious life." Natives in all the colonies of the Spanish empire, from Mexico, South America, to the Philippines were consistently denigrated as incapable of heading parishes as secular priests. They were also believed to be congenitally inadequate to join the religious congregations like the Dominicans, Augustinians, Franciscans, etc. There were silent statutes known as "limpieza de sangre," literally, cleaning the blood, that were already in practice in Spain even before Christopher Columbus set sail. I wonder if that attitude had something to do with the centuries-long Muslim occupation of southern Spain and the eventual "reconquista."

It was different in the beginning. The conquistadores, like Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, and the early missionaries realized soon enough that to carry out the designs of the empire, they needed native allies. Most of these came from the native ruling class they encountered and called principalia; in Mexico and South America, they were the caciques. According to reliable sources, the early missionaries found dependable allies in the native indio children. As early as 1526, Franciscan and Dominican missionaries in Mexico realized that the "niños y señoritos" were central to evangelization and the Christianization of the locals as these young men could be trained for cleaning duties, kitchen chores, begging for alms, digging graves, "pawns' work" which freed the friars for their loftier obligations. In the Philippines, the effeminate young men were used to destroy the credibility of the powerful babaylans.

In Latin America, the indio "co- missionary" eventually because dispensable due to European migration and in our islands, they probably outlived their usefulness when the friars learnt the vernacular languages and became effective liaisons between the native populace and the Spanish colonial administration. The indio was deemed incapable and inadequate, not fit for either religious or secular priesthood and were kept out of the parishes where they rightfully belonged. Priesthood was only for the pure-blooded and not for the likes of GOMBURZA. (for more information, BEGINNINGS OF THE FILIPINO DOMINICANS, Rolando V. de la Rosa, O.P., 1990) gemma601@yahoo.com