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Title: Pangayaw
Author: Bas Umali
Date: 2019
Language: en
Topics: decolonization, Philippines
Source: *Pangayaw and Decolonizing Resistance: Anarchism in the Philippines.*
Notes: Edited by Gabriel Kuhn.

Bas Umali

Pangayaw

Introduction

Mutual cooperation is inherent in every human aggregation, a

relationship that naturally evolved due to people’s biological and

social needs.[1] Likewise, the absence of authority and coercion is

natural to human relationships. This presupposes that every individual

human being can voluntarily act and behave in accordance with the social

responsibilities and duties established through actual practices.

This view inevitably leads to the assumption that institutionalized

hierarchy is not natural but, rather, human-made, a synthetic

relationship that through institutions produces slavery and oppression.

Competition has been present in human relationships since time

immemorial, but we have mistaken it as a core tool for survival. Under

hierarchical frameworks like statism and capitalism, competition is

catastrophic, dehumanizing, destructive, corrupting, and unsustainable.

The world population in 10,000 BCE was about ten million. People lived

in stateless societies. By the time Columbus reached America, the world

population had grown to 350 million, and only one percent was living in

non-state societies. Today, only 0.001 percent are living outside of the

direct influence of states and other centralized institutions. People in

non-state societies are autonomous, they generate their own subsistence

with no or very little assistance from the outside world. They bow to no

external leaders or authorities. Their lifeways are consistent with

ecological processes. As a result of European colonization in the

sixteenth century, stateless groups have fallen under the influence of

states and mainstream Western society.

Competition is the mainstream framework reinforced by markets, states,

and religious institutions through their highly bureaucratic relations.

People compete at the top of the hierarchy to achieve the highest

privilege and influence. The groups of people at the top of the

structure compete to exploit people, communities, and the environment to

maintain and increase their benefits and power.

Mainstream societies are characterized by social injustices, poverty,

the political marginalization of communities, and ecological crises. In

the Philippines, these social conditions have not changed despite

several uprisings. Government reports of a 7.3 percent expansion of the

economy or a domestic liquidity growth of 16 percent in 2006 or an

increase in the balance of payments or other alleged proof of positive

economic development cannot conceal the real conditions of millions of

hungry, homeless, and landless people living without dignity throughout

the archipelago. The techno-fascist jargon is not translatable into

concrete gains enjoyed by the people.

This paper is an attempt to contribute to the development of an

alternative politics against the hierarchical and centralistic politics

that dominate our current social relations, causing slavery, hunger,

poverty, discrimination, war, oppression, and ecological destruction.

Politics and economy will be treated as strictly interrelated—if one of

them remains unfulfilled, the concept of direct democracy will be

incomplete. Politics of representation is nothing but elite democracy;

as long as centralization of power prevails, democracy will not be

realized, because power will naturally fall into the hands of a few

representatives. Political participation requires concrete

manifestations, such as equitable access to benefit streams and social

services.

The effort of understanding the pre-Spanish archipelago is an attempt to

explore alternative social setups that were once used by our ancestors.

Multiple studies have deepened our appreciation and understanding of the

social relations of our ancestors, characterized mainly by mutual

cooperation and horizontal political relations.

The word archipelago is consistently used to affirm the concept espoused

by the “Archipelagic Confederation” article issued and published in

2006. The concept captures the geographical characteristics of a network

of cultures and the very essential role of rich but fragile and finite

natural resources that have strongly influenced the highly diverse

lifestyles of the archipelago’s inhabitants. Myriad historical accounts

indicate that the bodies of water surrounding the different islands

actually connected rather than separated them from each other. The

economic, social, and political activities of the inhabitants developed

due to the interconnectedness of their immediate environments. The group

of islands we call the Philippines today is part of an archipelago that

connects the borderless communities of islands and islets in Luzon, the

Visayas, Mindanao, Maguindanao, and south to the Talaud Islands,

Ternate, Tidore, Halmahera, Borneo, the Moluccas, and as far as Makassar

and Brunei. Southeast Asian communities in modern-day Thailand, Sri

Lanka, Malaysia, and other places were also part of the traditional

network.

The word autonomous is consistently used to describe the absence of

absolute and centralized power—this means there was no figurehead,

whether familial or individual. The themes of diversity and respect were

dominant and meant recognition of all communities. The absence of a

despotic leader allowed the autonomous character of communities to

flourish during ancient times. This also included the autonomy of an

individual from their group.

It is erroneous to assume that our ancestors’ anarchistic ways of life

were perfect; like any culture throughout the world, ours has

limitations. But such imperfections are incomparable to the Western

campaigns of colonization that caused deep misery for the indigenous

communities of Africa, America, and Asia. Their sophisticated methods

included genocide, torture, rape, massive destruction of natural

resources, slavery, and war in the guise of development, democracy, and

freedom.

We have our indigenous concepts of development and freedom, evidence

from our prehistoric past, historical documents, and ethnographic

studies; they all suggest that our ancestors maintained, sustained, and

fought for their freedom and self-determination.

Reconnection to our indigenous past is necessary for us to explore the

wisdom of autonomy and ecologically sound ways of living. This wisdom

will be used in our current context with the aim of abolishing hunger,

poverty, discrimination, patriarchy, war, and control.

Key Words

Archipelago

According to Wikipedia, an archipelago is “a chain, cluster or

collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of

scattered islands. The word archipelago is derived from the

Greek—pélagos (‘sea’) through the Italian arcipelago. In Italian,

possibly following a tradition of antiquity, the Archipelago was the

proper name for the Aegean Sea and, later, usage shifted to refer to the

Aegean Islands.”

As stated earlier, the word will be used for ecological settings and

cultural networks of communities before the advent of the nation-state.

It cuts across from Luzon, the Visayas, Mindanao, Sulu, Sarangani, the

Talaud Islands, Sangihe, Sulawesi, Borneo, Halmahera, Malacca through

Brunei to neighboring communities in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam,

Cambodia, and other areas in Southeast Asia that were also directly and

indirectly part of relations based on kinship, trade, marriage, and war.

Antiauthoritarian

Wikipedia states that antiauthoritarians believe in full equality before

the law and strong civil liberties. Sometimes, the term is used

interchangeably with “anarchism,” an ideology which entails opposing

authority or hierarchical organization, including the state system, in

the conduct of human relations.

This document will refer to antiauthoritarian politics as a politics

against the centralization of power, which is associated with a

leader-centered approach and relevant representation. Usually, leaders

and representatives are in authority and possess power used to control

and exploit people, communities, organisms, and environments to maintain

a status quo that is favorable to a few privileged groups and families.

Autonomous

Webster’s New World Thesaurus defines autonomy as “liberty, independence

and sovereignty.” The word will be used for a political belief based on

one’s self-determination and not accepting the external authority,

representation, and centralization espoused by the state, market, and

religion. Said political belief encourages independent, free, and

critical thinking. It has a deep recognition of cultural diversity and a

deep respect for ecology.

As we will discuss later, autonomy mainly relates to the capacity of an

individual, a group of people, or a community to make decisions based on

actual situations, conditions, and available information, as well as the

capacity to implement such decisions.

Decolonization

Decolonization is the meaningful and active resistance to the forces of

colonialism that perpetuate the subjugation and/or exploitation of our

minds, bodies, and lands. Its ultimate purpose is to overturn the

colonial structure and realize Indigenous liberation. First and

foremost, decolonization must occur in our own minds. The Tunisian

decolonization activist, Albert Memmi, wrote, “In order for the

colonizer to be the complete master, it is not enough for him to be so

in actual fact, he must also believe in its legitimacy. In order for

that legitimacy to be complete, it is not enough for the colonized to be

a slave, he must also accept his role.” The first step toward

decolonization, then, is to question the legitimacy of colonization.

Once we recognize the truth of this injustice, we can think about ways

to resist and challenge colonial institutions and ideologies. Thus,

decolonization is not passive, but rather it requires something called

praxis.[2]

Anticolonization is the struggle to liberate a particular territory from

colonial power and to drive away external authority by establishing

another one. In my judgment, the presentation of history where the

center subject is the Katipunan is about the founding of a nation-state.

But if we focus on the nation-state, it is more about replicating

colonial systems rather than cultivating indigenous systems of

organization.

Decolonial processes do not tell you to adopt indigenous culture, but

they do not stop you from doing so either. The most essential in this

process is awareness. If someone takes action it should be their

decision.

Direct Democracy

There are plenty of practices and ideas with regard to the notion of

direct democracy. In a broad sense, direct democracy will be applied by

organizing free associations and assemblies at the local level: people’s

organizations that are based on communal interests, such as those of

peasants, fishers, women, youth, indigenous people, vendors, tricycle

drivers, jeepney drivers, the homeless, gays, neighborhood associations,

religious groups, and other formations at the local level. They should

be encouraged to organize themselves. These formations will directly

participate in public decision-making processes under the theme of

mutual cooperation for the benefit of the community rather than

competition, which is designed to outcompete, overpower, and control.

Unlike representative democracy, direct democracy is not

leader-oriented; it requires direct participation of the most

marginalized sectors or individuals through a process of consultation,

education, and dialogue based on relevant information and data. It

provides venues for the people to speak with regard to their actual

situations without any mediation.

Diversity

Diversity is a perfect indicator of a healthy ecology and free

communities and people. Differences of cultures, perspectives, values,

and lifeways are natural; we are all organically different, and that is

our strength. Constant exposure to one another improves our culture.

Diversity will not thrive in an authoritarian condition.

Self-determination

According to the Collins Online Dictionary, self-determination is “the

act or power of making up one’s own mind about what to think or do,

without outside influence or compulsion.” In this paper, it describes

the practice of communities in many different regions of the

archipelago, communities that aim to live their lives based on their

indigenous views of the world. They have consciously adopted mechanisms

to ensure sustenance, development, and improvement of their own culture

collectively through mutual cooperation.

It should be emphasized that these words, ideas, and concepts are based

on actual practices that are directly related to one another and used

interchangeably.

Systematic Hunger and Poverty

It is reasonable to consider that industrial revolution eliminated the

threat of scarcity of foods and other necessary things, making it, in

theory, possible for everyone to live comfortably. State-of-the-art

technology never ceased to evolve. Given the current state of

technology, it is safe to conclude that we have already created highly

efficient means to produce foods and other necessities for our daily

lives.

In fact, one of the core issues in multilateral and bilateral trade

negotiations is market access. Capitalist nations and transnational

corporations are looking for markets where they can dump their huge

surpluses. Trade-related issues may appear complicated. At the World

Trade Organization (WTO), for instance, the negotiations about

Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA) produced too complex a formula to

balance the interests of players. Nonetheless, the aim is to reduce

tariffs at a substantial rate, and the ultimate goal is elimination. But

tariff elimination will lead to the demise of the local economy and

local livelihoods due to incompetent local industries and sectors that

become more vulnerable due to a lack of or absence of subsidies.

We do not aim to simplify trade discourse, but we must not let tricky

words and concepts revolving around trade issues deceive us. Developed

and developing countries alike, especially the US, EU, Japan, and China,

as well as others, cannot conceal their intention to expand their

markets to allow their corporations to make more profit. Investments are

among the critical issues being discussed to access the Third World’s

remaining natural resources. These facts make one thing obvious: the

threat of underproduction and scarcity has long been addressed and

totally eliminated. Yet poverty and hunger still persist at the global

scale.

The great volume of products, both agricultural and industrial, moving

freely at the global scale correspond to the volume of profit created in

the process. Meanwhile, a great number of people are starving on a daily

basis, especially in the developing and poor nations, which have high

figures of impoverished children, women, small producers (peasants and

fishers), workers from rural areas, and urban poor. The current

situation denies them access to basic things, such as food, clothing,

shelter, water, education, health services, and the opportunity for a

sustainable livelihood.

The Social Weather Stations’ survey results of the fourth quarter of

2014 estimated that 11.4 million families in the Philippines considered

themselves poor.[3] Do you have any idea how it is to live on less than

one dollar a day? Meanwhile, the few who have access to power and

influence over the economy live their lives luxuriously and

extravagantly.

Over ten million Filipinos go hungry every year. The latest record puts

the number of unemployed and underemployed people at about 4.5 million.

Every year, almost one million women and men want to leave the country

to seek job opportunities. The country has one of the largest numbers of

malnourished children in the world. In 2000, the country ranked 77 out

of more than 150 countries, with a poverty incidence of 34 percent. The

human development index (HDI) figure was 0.656. Eighty percent of fisher

households lived below the poverty line.[4]

Poverty becomes a complicated issue when experts start to raise

opinions. If there is a single explanation, it would be social

inequality. There is no need for rocket science to comprehend the

relationship between the rich and the have-nots. The gap between them is

big enough to stare right at the reality of inequality.

Basic logic and mathematics will lead us to the reality that vast

productive lands and resources are controlled and occupied by only a few

families. This results in the misery of millions of landless farmers.

The business of a few influential families who accumulate massive

profits continuously expands the gap between the rich and the poor. The

same group of people will likely have superior access to the economy due

to its influence in decision-making. Public services that could have

helped reduce the burden of the poor majority are rarely accessible to

common people.

One of the core problems is one that we do not need a genius to

comprehend: the privatization of our finite, exhaustible, and limited

resources. This inevitably results in marginalization and poverty for

millions of people.

Democracy Scandal

The current political setup has created confusion with regard to the

meaning and concept of the word democracy. What is taught in schools,

textbooks, and formal documents is far from the actual practice of

democracy.

The fall of the monarchs in France in 1789 ended the idea that “some

people are born to rule.” Moreover, it was followed shortly after by the

downfall of many powerful monarchies in Europe. The ideas of equality

and individual rights were expressed and legally adopted by the

revolutionary National Assembly in the Declaration of the Rights of Man

and Citizen.

The monarchies collapsed; the merchants and the bourgeoisie rose,

cleverly inventing the idea of democracy to maintain hegemony and their

privilege and to protect the capitalist setup of a private-property

regime.

The neoliberal paradigm is one of the most effective tools of

capitalism. It created institutions like the International Monetary

Fund-World Bank (IMF-WB) and the WTO. Agreements signed by the

Philippines, including ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations),

RP (Republic of the Philippines)-China, ASEAN-China, and JPEPA

(Japan-Philippine Economic Partnership Agreement), are among the

agreements where the agenda of the neoliberals is being pushed.

The economic assistance offered by IMF-WB makes many communities pay a

very dear price. In exchange for loans, the Philippine government

legislates policies to implement privatization and liberalization based

on Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs). With the coercive assistance

from IMF-WB, privatization and liberalization are imposed on poor and

developing countries like ours. Privatization dispossesses,

marginalizes, and displaces communities of farmers, fishers, indigenous

groups, and women.

In practice, the capitalist system and the neoliberal paradigm are

inconsistent with the idea of democracy. Ideally, democracy is defined

as a system wherein all people in a particular territory or community

directly partake in decision-making. However, the elites and

corporations that control the means of production will not allow workers

to participate, because they are just part of machines that produce

commodities. Direct-democratic decision-making is a great threat to

profits, property, and privileges. In many cases, workers participate

through unions, but the results—for example, collective bargaining

agreements—are limited and do not really secure substantial gains.

Democracy is a political system developed as an alternative to the

absolute control by the monarchs over all social and economic affairs.

This is supposed to provide not only political freedom but also freedom

to access benefit streams and social services.

After a long coercive process of colonization, the archipelago finally

became an independent republic based on a constitution upholding

democratic principles. In practice, our political system of making

decisions and implementing them, described as democracy, is divided into

three major institutions. The legislature enacts laws through the

congress and the senate. The judiciary interprets laws. Finally, the

executive implements policies led by the president and aided by a bunch

of secretaries through huge bureaucracies of departments and line

agencies. The police and the military deal with those who stubbornly

resist. In theory, these three branches of government have equal power,

but in many cases the executive branches exercise overwhelming

influence.

Generally, most of the decisions made by “honorable” lawmakers are

totally opposed to people’s interests. For instance, the government’s

lousy alibi on E-VAT is fiscal deficit. This is highly doubtful. Let us

assume that the situation is real. During the time of Jose Isidro

Camacho, formerly a minister of energy as well as finance, the Bureau of

Internal Revenue admitted that the institution is inefficient in terms

of collecting government revenues; this inefficiency cost the government

losses of as much as 40 percent. Included in these are uncollected

revenues due to tax evasion by big businesses, smuggling of various

products, and, not least, the government’s virtual removal of tariffs

and the provisions of tax holidays for foreign and local corporations.

How did intelligent officials, lawmakers, experts, and doctors in

economics miss these facts? Did they run out of brains and turn to

people’s pockets, not even bothering to rethink the huge amount that

goes to useless government debt and loan payments due to automatic

appropriation laws?

During Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s administration, she had the power to

veto the bill submitted by the legislature. But she herself, as an

economist, failed to see the objective conditions and let her government

collect E-VAT (12 percent) for every processed product bought, including

non-nutrient instant noodles, one of the most affordable food products

for millions of poor families.

Going back to the trade liberalization issue, let’s say we agree to

compete and combine with industrious and creative men and women who can

establish great competitive advantage in the agriculture and fishery

sectors. Again, the government missed these simple facts and decided to

open up our sensitive sectors. Worse, it encouraged foreign investors to

exploit our rich mineral and energy resources without clear long-term

gains for the communities where the project sites are located. News

networks do not run out of news about the violations and abuses of

investors in tourism, logging, fishing, natural gas extraction, mineral

resources exploitation, and others.

While liberalizing sensitive sectors, leaders made a policy that

prohibited the import of cheap drugs and medicines. Because of this, the

archipelago has the highest price for medicines in Southeast Asia. They

are inaccessible to poor people.

In a democratic system, everyone is entitled to offer their services to

the public. If someone wishes to run for office, let’s say in a

barangay, they must be ready to spend one hundred thousand to one

million pesos in order to effectively reach the voters (the cost varies

based on the size of the barangay). If someone is seeking the office of

House of Representative, they must have a minimum of a million pesos for

the campaign. During the senatorial race of 2007, for example, GMA 7

reported that at the beginning of the campaign candidates like Prospero

Pichay and Ralph Recto had already spent twenty million pesos for TV

advertisements alone. The fact is that government offices are expensive

and accessible only to the few who have capital and influence. One will

conclude that these offices are lucrative businesses under the guise of

service and patriotism.

That is why it is not surprising that the political leaders of today are

the same families who have held office since the Spaniards left. They

used the same old catchphrases, such as “change,” “democracy,”

“development,” “pro-people,” “progod,” and “pro-environment,” to make

themselves appear worthy of their office, but the trick is that they are

the same few families who own and control the economic, political, and

cultural institutions of the country.

This is what democracy looks like.

A Shortsighted Sense of History

In order to be able to imagine our ancestors’ lives and to comprehend

indigenous lifeways to learn from their wisdom, this paper utilizes a

multitude of ideas emanated from multiple disciplines, including

anthropology, archeology, history, sociology, and folklore.

The “band-tribe-chiefdom-state” model of analyzing sociocultural

complexity pioneered by archaeologist Elman Service refers to a

hierarchical progression of society. It presents the evolutionary

process of a community from a simple stateless egalitarian indigenous

organization like a band or tribe to chiefdoms and states, which are

generally characterized by central power, uniformity, and

non-egalitarianism. The Marxist evolutionary model of the authoritarian

Left in the Philippines is consistent with this model, except that it

added the twist of Maoism and concluded that the current state of the

Philippine society was semicolonial and semifeudal. Criticism of the

chiefdom model is prevalent among scholars in related fields of study.

Joyce C. White of the University of Pennsylvania, for instance, argues

that this model cannot account for the sociopolitical dynamics of

communities in Southeast Asia.[5]

The abovementioned model has readily defined a phase of progression and

an established pattern of movement; it is meant to help observers

predict the outcome of the process. Most Marxists are inclined to this

mode of thinking. The semicolonial/semifeudal analysis is based on

dialectical materialism, which presents the hierarchical progression of

society consistent to the chiefdom model. The word “primitive,” as

espoused in dialectical historical frameworks, is used to describe

“outmoded” and inferior systems that are expected to improve as time

progresses. The first stage will be slavery, followed by feudalism, then

capitalism, and so on. If this is the case, is it proper to assume that

the centralization of political power, the privatization of benefit

streams, ecological crises, hunger, poverty, slavery, and other social

issues are requirements to attain the perfect society, which is the

communist stage?

The word primitive, in most cases, is used with prejudice to refer to

traditional cultures as underdeveloped. The indigenous communities still

exist, because they chose to protect and defend their culture by

practicing it, by reproducing and improving it. They were not left

behind by social progression as presented in the chiefdom model or by

the dialectical historical tool. Their resilience is attributed to their

love of freedom and self-determination. Most indigenous communities

consciously maintained their culture. Like all organizations, they have

mechanisms to protect their well-being by continuously doing things the

way they see fit. Electricity, gadgets, cars, groceries, malls,

appliances, bombs, cannons, nuclear power, churches, guns, and bullets

do not exist in remaining stateless societies. They lack sophisticated

technology and material culture the same way they lack hunger,

malnutrition, coercion, ecological destruction, forced labor, and social

issues attributed to large-scale, centralistic forms of power and to

authoritarian, consumerist, and patriarchal modern societies.

Mainstream society has programs to integrate indigenous communities:

churches, schools, and corporations are among the institutions that are

consistently pestering them. The fact that there are indigenous groups

that stand their ground and protect their culture the way their

ancestors did during Spanish colonization shows that the evolutionary

approach is not suitable to analyze our local context. The indigenous

communities throughout the archipelago are highly diverse; there is a

multitude of cultural patterns that overlap and consistently influence

each other through the process of interaction and exposure. Based on

historical accounts, the indigenous organizations did not evolve into

states but, rather, were coerced to adopt centralistic patterns of

organization, such as states and corporations.

Who Discovered the Philippines?

This is a novelty question in Philippine mainstream society; it is

usually asked if one wants to joke during history-related conversations.

The answer reveals one’s wittiness—or historical shortsightedness.

Nowadays, people’s sense of history revolves around the idea of Spanish

colonization and the Katipunan uprising, which led to the establishment

of a republic. This was a historical period that connected many

communities in the archipelago to the modern setting dominated by

nation-states and characterized by centralized social relations and

absolute truths along with poverty, hunger, injustice, discrimination,

and ecological destruction.

Spain is perceived as the villain that brought suffering to the people;

it is also considered as a “master” who introduced the idea of a

civilized life. Since civilization is viewed as the benchmark of

development, it is considered plausible to think that we owe Spain our

progress.

Mainstream history is Eurocentric. It will inevitably treat pre-Spanish

cultures and lifestyles as underdeveloped, as savages and backwoodsmen

that needed to be changed according to the standards of the colonizers.

This is exactly where we are now. We challenge the negative attributes

of the society introduced by the colonizers, while invoking alternatives

which were also introduced by colonizers.

For instance, the Katipunan challenged Spanish authority by asserting

its capacity to self-rule through the system introduced by colonizers.

Revolutionary ideas carried by anti-colonialism are Western in origin.

In mainstream terms, Philippine history exclusively refers to the period

where written documentation is involved. The year 1521 is recognized by

mainstream society as the year of the so-called discovery of the

Philippines.

The novelty question is being asked constantly and spontaneously perhaps

because our history is haunting us. The terms Philippines and Filipino

are not ours. They were imposed on us by the colonizers and coercively

used to describe and define us. They are the very attributes that

reinforced the disconnection from our indigenous selves. They make us

think that we are superior to other cultures. Why the need for

superiority? Is it to defeat and outcompete other people and to

undermine their cultural orientation?

Our own culture should be our guide in our search for

self-determination. Our self-determination is no justification to

control or to coerce others. Our ancestors’ system displays no center.

They never had uniform conduct that exercised control. What they had

were diverse cultural orientations that cut across the archipelago and

into Southeast Asia, facilitated by marriage, kinship, trade, and war.

We are not Filipinos. We are people raised by diverse cultures. Our

culture is a gift from our ancestors. It is not perfect, but it has the

complete set of elements under the theme of mutual cooperation and

respect.

There is no such thing as a “perfect culture.” But ours is far more

humane and ecologically sound than the nation-state and capitalism,

systems that introduced massive killings of people, the destruction of

culture, and the destruction of the earth. There is no one big formula

that could provide a single solution to the problems we are currently

facing, but at least we have the wisdom from our ancestors providing us

with a framework that has proven to be effective and is still utilized

by indigenous cultures across the archipelago.

Lapu-Lapu’s victory over Ferdinand Magellan in 1521 is iconic. The

message it conveyed was not about a nation and sovereignty. It was about

the defense of the autonomy of Mactan Island. Numerous forms of

resistance followed the struggle, aiming to reinstitute the indigenous

setup in order to protect people’s autonomy.

The fragmentation of cultural communities should not be viewed as

weakness. It represents freedom and autonomy. These communities have

indigenous means to connect and integrate; fragmentation is only a

weakness if one has the intention to control and dominate.

Various communities throughout the archipelago have been in existence

since time immemorial. The earliest traces of prehistoric humans and

their tools are found in Palawan in a group of caves called Tabon Caves,

located at the mouth of the South China Sea. Tools from different

periods in pre-history have been dug up at these sites. How long ago the

tools were used or how long ago the humans and animals whose traces have

been found lived is learned through a complex process of analyzing the

findings. Excavations in the Tabon Caves have revealed fossils of

prehistoric animals (elephants, giant tortoises, and others) along with

artifacts that have left traces of human inhabitation. Chert and

choppers made of hard stone were recovered with human and animal bones

scattered in the surroundings. Based on these fossils, archaeologists

have estimated that humans occupied the caves as early as fifty thousand

years ago.

Experts and scholars will not cease to amaze with the volume of

artifacts recovered in different places in the archipelago that provide

clues of the wisdom of our ancestors. Archaeologists believe that at the

end of the glacial period, that is about 10,000 BCE, human dispersal

across half of the planet began from Burma (Myanmar) and the south coast

of mainland China. This particular stock belongs to Malayo-Polynesian or

Austronesian cultures believed to be our ancestors, and to those of the

Malaysians, Indonesians, and Polynesians. These peoples are considered

the first boat people of human history, highly mobile in that borderless

part of Asia. It is said that before the Phoenicians roamed the

Mediterranean with their wooden ships, our ancestors had already tamed

the violent and treacherous waves of the Pacific and successfully

reached islands, such as Fiji, Samoa, and Hawaii, with tiny makeshift

boats we call balanghay. Therefore, we have a deep and meaningful base

of cultural identity that cannot be erased by the culture of consumerism

and authoritarian politics of colonialism reinforced by the state,

religion, and market institutions.

As mentioned above, the group of islands we today call the Philippines

is part of the archipelago that connects the borderless communities of

islands and islets in Luzon, the Visayas, Mindanao, Maguindanao, and to

the south, including the Talaud Islands, Ternate, Tidore, Halmahera, the

Moluccas, Borneo, and as far as Makassar and Brunei. We also have

indigenous connections in Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and

other southeast Asian societies. What we had was a highly diverse

culture, a culture that was inherited by remaining indigenous

communities and deposited to folklore transmitted through oral

tradition. We have ancient historical roots, a rhizome of complex

cultures deeply crisscrossing the upland, misty rainforests and river

systems and lakes freely reaching to bays, gulfs, and coves connected to

the Celebes Sea, the Sulu Sea, and up in the South China Sea.

The 1521 incident, when Lapu-Lapu defeated Magellan, marked a milestone

in the resistance against the West intending to control us. Our

ancestors roamed in borderless seas, rivers, and lakes. Our culture

cannot be contained within the boundary set by the Treaty of

Tordesillas.[6] The treaty cannot limit the movements, interactions, and

relationships of the diverse cultures of our ancestors. The

“Philippines” symbolize the acceptance and submission to the concept of

development, politics, and culture of the West. It is a disconnection

from our indigenous selves.

Nowadays, indigenous groups and their practices are neglected due to the

dominance of Western ideologies in all aspects of our lives. This

situation has, in most cases, reduced them to subjects of ridicule, and

we failed to explore the wisdom inherent in their practices that is more

meaningful than the framework and alternative crafted by the

intellectuals and cultures from the West. The intention of this document

is to reinforce and support what existed prior to the creation of the

nation-state. Our ancestors were better off and lived in freedom, to its

closest proximity.

Pangayaw as a Process in Decolonizing Our Well-Being

Colonization generally refers to the process that is perpetuated after

the initial control over Indigenous Peoples is achieved through invasion

and conquest. Perpetuating colonization allows the colonizers to

maintain or expand their social, political, and economic power. It is

detrimental to us because their power comes at the expense of Indigenous

lands, resources, lives, and self-determination. Not only has

colonization resulted in the loss of major rights such as land and

self-determination, most of our contemporary daily struggles are also a

direct consequence of colonization (poverty, family violence, chemical

dependency, suicide, health deterioration). Colonization is an

all-encompassing presence in our lives.[7]

This definition is from the book For Indigenous Minds Only. In my own

understanding, colonialization is the complete acceptance of an external

culture and authority which leads to the denial of one’s indigenous

self, identity, and community. An obvious fact is the current modes of

thinking of mainstream culture, in which the superior practices and

frameworks are Western. This concerns language, food, drugs, music,

politics, education, and beliefs. Almost all aspects of our lives are

highly influenced by centralized and absolute truths, as well as by

uniformity.

I know that many of us are hell-bent in terms of addressing social

issues that affect our very own families and households—social issues

that were introduced in connection with colonialization. Since Western

thinking is deeply inculcated in us, even the very alternatives we

employ are derived from external authorities. We tend to turn to the

idea of democracy, sovereignty, development, socialism, GNP, GDP, and

progress rather than the wisdom and practices we inherited from our

ancestors.

With the adverse impacts and bad results of statist socialist and

authoritarian leftists, communities and social movements inevitably seek

viable and sustainable systems to protect and maintain our households

and communities.

None of us would disagree with the fact that we have our own set of

systems. Systems that colonization, by Westerners and Asians alike,

tried to eliminate. These indigenous systems refuse to give up; they

maintain their existence. The remaining cultural communities owe their

resilience to the continuous practice and improvement of indigenous

systems. These are sustainable systems being subjected by mainstream

society to ridicule and marginalization. Mainstream and centralized

institutions, such as states, corporations, and churches, are set to

eliminate them by intensifying mining and logging activities and

building schools and religious structures within territories of

indigenous communities.

In the midst of absolutism, authoritarianism, anthropocentrism, and

intolerance to diversity, our indigenous roots are the remaining

unexplored alternatives. Pangayaw was the practice of our ancestors most

feared by the colonizers. They had every reason to eliminate pangayaw

due to its efficiency in countering early attempts of colonization.

Pangayaw is an act of raiding, on land or on sea. The reason could be

revenge, unsettled disputes, or simply the desire to loot and capture

slaves. The raiders of the Visayans were among those most feared, their

notoriety reaching all the way to communities in southern China. Major

languages within the archipelago use the word pangayaw to refer to this

activity. Historian William Henry Scott noted that it was an accepted

practice.

In my current mode of thinking and values, I will definitely go against

this practice. Why would I support such acts of atrocity? Such practices

are totally opposite to the culture that raised me. But an attempt to

understand our ancestors’ culture will require us to suspend our

judgment influenced by the standards of mainstream society. I would be

inclined to disagree if one were to consider pangayaw as wrong and evil,

because, in the end, it is no different from the policy of Spain, which

set out to eliminate our ancestors’ culture, including tattooing, the

defiling of teeth, earlobes, body piercings, g-strings, and so forth. If

one insists on the barbarity of pangayaw, I ask in return: How barbarous

were the colonizers when they robbed and stole our lands? When they

raped and killed our people and destroyed our natural resources?

The practice of pangayaw was a major obstacle to Spanish conquest. One

of the early colonies of the Spaniards was the Visayans. With the

allegiance of the Visayans to Spain, they were particularly targeted,

and there was a prohibition of arms in Cebu and in Bohol. The

long-lasting Moro Wars significantly depopulated communities in the

Visayas.

It is probable that many of us agree with the objective of making our

world better. I would directly equate the term better with social

justice, ecological sustainability, equal access to services for all,

respect, love, and peaceful coexistence. Our common experience tells us

that we cannot achieve a better world if we allow control, uniformity,

centralism, competition, and absolutism in our different aspects of

life.

Pangayaw is an unexplored alternative to commence decolonization. If one

were to take me as literally advocating pangayaw, one would conclude

that I advocate violence.

Waziyatawin and Michael Yellow Bird note the following:

Scott DeMuth begins chapter 6, “Colonization Is Always War,” by

describing how any Indigenous challenges to state authority today, even

peaceful challenges, are met with threats of police violence, arrests,

and heavy surveillance. This serves as a useful reminder to Indigenous

people who have come to believe that because we do not observe open

repression on a daily basis, we have made progress in our relationships

with our colonizers, or that colonization at its core is not still

serving the same purpose it always has. DeMuth asserts that because

colonization is inherently a war for territory and resources, “If

colonization continues today, then it follows that war continues to be

waged against Indigenous Peoples and territories.” In this context, it

is imperative that Indigenous people develop a proper response to

warfare, requiring the development of an organized resistance movement.

Rather than viewing a potential resistance movement as an offensive

action, however, DeMuth points out that decolonization is actually a

self-defensive action against the war that is colonization.[8]

Perhaps it is not easy to figure out the direct relationship of

colonization to the daily lives of the people, especially if most poor

people are busy seeking jobs or livelihood opportunities. The majority

of the people would not immediately suspect that colonization is a very

effective means of control to maintain inequality in society and

ignorance among the people. This situation means war against our very

selves. Super-institutions are well equipped in terms of propagating and

maintaining legitimacy of inequality, ecological destruction, and the

assault on cultural communities through formal processes of the law.

Homelessness, hunger, war, and ecological terrorism are accepted social

facts that are generally the results of activities of

super-institutions.

The process of decolonization is not uniform. It appears and exists in

many forms but should start within ourselves, within our families and

communities. It is a process that can respond to the immediate impact of

macro-events like poverty and ignorance, while strategically laying

foundations of future alternatives through increasing awareness of our

indigenous roots.

Communities, households, associations, and other formations at the local

and grassroots level, particularly if they operate in nonauthoritarian

processes, will never run out of ideas and creativity. Decolonial

processes are no blueprint and do not follow standardized conduct; they

offer diverse methods and actions but won’t reinforce and promote

authoritarianism, absolutism, and hierarchy. Indigenous systems and

traditions are banks of information; they offer multitudes of practices

that facilitate the improvement of our consciousness and lifeways toward

claiming our self-determination.

To engage in decolonization means to engage in war. Our age is the age

of the propaganda war. We can use pangayaw to engage in a propaganda war

against centralized institutions. Direct action always delivers strong

messages; it’s an effective means of propaganda that sends a message of

sharing, respect, love, ecology, social justice, and self-determination.

Solidarity actions to uplift the spirit of autonomous resistance and to

support independent movements and communities through the sharing of

skills, resources, and knowledge are concrete activities that would

definitely hit hierarchy at its core.

Overall, our activities toward decolonialization will establish the

reconnection to our indigenous roots.

Historical Notes on Decolonial Events

The historical victory of Lapu-Lapu was temporal and just the beginning

of autonomous resistance that plagued 333 years of Spanish occupation.

The resistance became more intense in 1581, when Friar Andres Aguirre

implemented the policy of gathering locals in order to teach indigenous

communities to live in a “civilized” and European way.

In 1587, Tagalog leaders set up a conspiracy to topple Spanish rule,

where the primary objective was to regain the privileges they had lost.

They wanted to collect taxes for themselves rather than the Spaniards,

and they wanted the return of their slaves and women, whom the friars

had freed and sent back home. The group of leaders who conspired were

Magat Salamat, the son of Rajah Matanda, from Tondo, Pedro Balinguit

from Pandacan, Felipe Amarlangagui from Catangalan, Omaghicon from

Navotas, Felipe Salonga from Polo, in Bulacan, his brother Dionisio

Capolo from Candaba, in Pampanga, and Pitongatan, Joan Banal, and other

members of the feudal maharlika class from Tondo. Salamat particularly

demanded the reestablishment of the datu regime.[9]

The revolt was well-planned but never executed due to the betrayal of

Antonio Surabao, a Tagalog who happened to be employed by the Spanish

captain Pedro Sarmiento. On November 4, 1588, Governor De Vera ordered

the arrest of all the leaders of the conspiracy.

According to the account The Philippine Islands, 1493–1898, Volume

XXIII, 1629–30,[10] eight years after Rajah Sulayman and Rajah Matanda

fell from power, Maynila (now Manila) came under the control of the

Spaniards. The colonizers went to the town of Li Han (now Malolos) and

conquered four thousand residents. The following years, there were

sporadic revolts around the area that would later be called Bulacan, but

this was not sustained until 1643, when a Bornean, Pedro Ladia, came and

convinced the Bulakenyos to turn their backs on the Spaniards. He

claimed that he was the Rajah of Tagalog and was supposed to inherit

Rajah Matanda’s throne. He insisted on reinstituting traditional

practices, such as the belief in local spirits and deities like bathala,

anyito, and diwata. The Augustinian priest Cristóbal Enríquez discovered

Ladia’s plot. Ladia was secretly arrested and transferred to Manila to

be executed.

In 1621, Tamblot, a traditional priest from the province of Bohol,

preached traditional beliefs. He told people that it was about time to

abandon foreign religion; diwata, anyito, and the spirits of their

ancestors would provide them with food and protect them from the

Spaniards. His followers went into hiding in the forest, where they

built a holy place of their own and performed their traditional rites.

Tamblot’s teachings spread like wildfire due to the organizers he had

strategically deployed on the entire island. Many Boholanos joined the

barangay he established in the heart of the forest. The Jesuit priests,

who were powerful on the island at that time, did, of course, condemn

what they were doing. Tamblot and two thousand followers revolted. They

burned down all the churches and statues of saints on the entire island,

except for Loboc and Baclayon. The Jesuits went to Cebu and told Alcalde

Mayor Juan Alcarazo about the revolt. Alcarazo knew that Cebuanos would

not fight Boholanos and waited for one hundred Pampango soldiers to come

from Manila. He also recruited a thousand people from Sialo and fifty

homeless Spaniards.

On January 1, 1622, four outrigger warships went ashore to suppress

Tamblot. The first attack made Tamblot retreat and establish another

camp. The second encampment did not last due to serious losses inflicted

during the first attack. The rebels ran out of arrows and so the battle

was bolo knives and stones against guns. As expected, Tamblot’s revolt

failed.

The Babaylan had already been in fifty years of hiding when the Spanish

took control of the archipelago. The Spanish were alerted by Tamblot’s

revolt and began chasing them again actively. On the island of Leyte,

the seventy-year-old Bancao established a barangay in Carigara, similar

to the one in Bohol. The Waray-Waray were prepared to revolt and waited

for results from Bohol. In late 1622, after almost a year of waiting,

Bancao’s group started the uprising. They burned no churches and

destroyed no Christian symbols, but they denounced Spaniards and their

teachings. The churches were emptied and the locals stopped rendering

services to the friars.

Friar Melchor de Vera went to Cebu and asked assistance from Juan

Alcarazo. He brought his soldiers to Leyte and, with the help of locals,

discovered Bancao’s whereabouts. Alcarazo divided his forces into three

and attacked the barangay from various sides; the many guns of the

Spanish forces overwhelmed Bancao’s warriors. The Waray-Waray fled to

the forests; children and women in traditional Babaylan wardrobe were

killed by soldiers upon the orders of the priests.

Mang Abu was a known leader in 1629 in Caraga. It was a time when Davao

del Sur and Davao del Norte still belonged to Caraga. The rebellion was

started when Mang Abu confronted Spanish soldiers who were involved in

the illegal business of capturing locals for the slave trade. He was

mauled by a captain, assisted by twenty soldiers, when he asked them to

free the Tagabaloys and Mandayas.

Mang Abu asked the people why they let foreigners harm their peers. They

were superior in numbers, and Mang Abu was conscious of this advantage.

He convinced the locals to act immediately. They chased out the Spanish

troops, killed them all, including the priest, and then freed all the

locals.

Conscious of the danger of retaliation, the Mandayas urged the

indigenous groups to kill all Spaniards in the village of Basuag. The

Mandayas attacked the Spanish fortress, but the Spaniards had already

been warned and had closed all possible entries. The Mandayas decided to

lock them in. Hundreds of boats surrounded the Spanish fort in Tandag to

intercept all possible help. The Spaniards were terrified. They did not

have sufficient capabilities to fight the Mandayas, and their supply of

food was not enough to hold them standing until reinforcements arrived.

The news reached Cebu. The Alcalde mayor was Friar Jacinto de San

Fulgencio. He informed Manila about the attacks, and then he assembled a

fleet commanded by Capitan Juan de Chaves, an encomendero from

Caraga.[11] The rebellion was suppressed, and the leaders brutally

punished, but Mang Abu was pardoned due to the support from his friar

friends.

Similar resistance took place in other places: in Pangasinan and

Pampanga in 1660; in Iloilo in 1663; in Bohol in 1744; in Ilocos Norte

in 1807. All these revolts were to defend the autonomy of the local

communities. Betrayal caused serious damage to most of the resistance,

which contributed to its failure. This is because the colonizers were

able to penetrate the indigenous political structure. Through blood

compacts with the local leaders, the Spaniards were able to exploit

their loyalty. They were also able to capture the deeply spiritual

locals, using Christianity to control and pacify resistance.

Some have called these uprisings “pocket resistance,” revolts intended

to reclaim communities’ self-determination, which had been undermined by

the centralized and authoritarian system. Obviously, they did not stage

revolts to establish systems similar to monarchies or republics. Their

intention was to regain their indigenous lifeways and to protect their

cultures from exploitation by the colonizers.

Our experience tells us that an effort of a community to resist is

futile if it is disconnected from other communities that are cooperating

with the oppressors. This is perhaps one of the reasons why some

considered the Katipunan as the culmination of the resistance. It is

plausible to conclude that the Katipunan was the “aggregation” of

experience of exploitation and resistance of diverse communities in the

archipelago. This aggregation represents common sentiments reinforced by

the will to expel Spaniards and to claim sovereignty. Thus, it

established a basis of unity among dissenters through the process of

representation. A system learned by the local elite from the exploiters

and colonizers.

The lens to be used in interpreting the best available data with regard

to “our history” is imperative. Representative systems will not work in

a highly diverse context, particularly for those communities who

practice autonomy. Republicanism is an idea adopted by the few educated

people from the privileged section of society dominated by Luzon-based

activists, particularly of Tagalogs. It was the second attempt to claim

the archipelago under one uniform system after the regalian doctrine

introduced by Spain, a treacherous and pretentious claim that would

inevitably misrepresent the communities that are not amenable to

statism, civilization, uniformity, and authoritarianism.

I do not question the integrity and commitment of our ancestors who

fought against the colonizers and oppressors, but adopting the system

that was supposed to be overthrown was tantamount to replicating

oppression.

The idea of sovereignty through self-governance could have been a tactic

to consolidate the locals, while winning support from the international

community. The flourishing modernist ideas from the West, such as

nationalism, reinforced statist thinking among the locals. It had

reached the minds of the likes of Rizal, Aguinaldo, Mabini, Jaena, and

del Pilar. Retelling what had been told, Bonifacio, unlike his

contemporaries, saw no hope in diplomatic processes. For him,

establishing an independent state (republic) required war.

In 1896, the uprising of the Katipunan broke out, but prior to this,

Isabelo de los Reyes was arrested. He was not part of any revolutionary

group during that time, but his name consistently appeared in newspapers

attacking the colonial administration. An activist from the countryside

(Ilocos region), he was a journalist, a profession which gave him the

opportunity to plant his revolutionary ideas effectively. After he was

freed, he wrote a letter calling people to take up arms and launch a

guerrilla war, a letter adopted and issued by the Katipunan as an

official communiqué signed by Emilio Aguinaldo, as president.

Isabelo was rearrested, and this time he was sent to the prison of

Montjuic in Barcelona—a grave mistake by Spanish authorities, because he

got connected to various radical people including anarchists. Spain at

that time was already highly influenced by anarchism. A few years

earlier, Bakunin’s comrade Guiseppe Fanneli had gone to Spain to

organize workers, and, after several years, workers grasped a profound

understanding of anarcho-syndicalism. While José Rizal, considered a

national hero by the Philippine Republic, went to universities in

Europe, Isabelo joined workers in the streets and learned the

anarcho-syndicalist ways.

Spain backed down when Americans asserted their interest over Cuba and

the Philippines. In 1901, during this early phase of colonization by the

US and the emerging economic order, Isabelo de los Reyes arrived from

exile in Spain. Fresh from exposure to anarcho-syndicalism, he

introduced an anti-imperialist mode to the resistance. To the amazement

of the American capitalists and the local elite, Isabelo was able to

mobilize thousands of workers and urban poor in Manila and its

surrounding communities. The anti-imperialist resistance was able to

organize the Unión Obrera Democrática (UOD), the very first labor union

in the so-called Republic of the Philippines. Its basic documents were

derived from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, an anarchist, but the union did not

last very long.

The authoritarian Left started to gain influence during the 1930s, and

later dominated the radical movement in the archipelago. The

Marxists-Leninist ideology of the Bolsheviks proliferated, and its

adherents became one of the armed elements that resisted Japanese

occupation during World War II. During the 1960s, the Maoists took the

steering wheel. Jose Maria Sison’s group veered away from the

insurrectionary methods of the Bolsheviks and held on to the “protracted

people’s war”: a guerrilla tactic that had raised Mao Zedong to

unprecedented popularity during the peasant revolution in China. Sison’s

group later merged with armed rebels to establish the armed component of

the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the New People’s Army

(NPA). Both became part of the National Democratic Front (NDF).

CPP-NPA-NDF became the most influential within the leftist blocs during

the 1970s and up to the latter part of the 1980s. In the 1990s, the

dominant leftist formation suffered a crisis that inflicted serious

damage on the mass movement. It initially emerged as a question of

tactics, and later developed into ideological struggle, becoming the

basis of a split that started the fragmentation process and decrease of

popularity and influence of the leftist movement.

From early nationalist resistance up to now, whether people advocated

arms or education, there was just a difference in tactics, not in

objectives; they were all for the creation of centralized political

systems with centralized power.

Exchange, Sharing, and Debt: The Autonomous Communities and

Indigenous Social Stratification

According to ethnographic accounts by the early Spanish chroniclers, a

small barangay was composed of communities with thirty to one hundred

households. The biggest were found in Sulu, Butuan, Cebu, Panay,

Batangas, Bicol, and Manila, with populations ranging from two thousand

to twenty thousand.

Human communities have existed and thrived in different places in the

world, with varied social arrangements developed from their interactions

with one another, their direct utilization patterns, and the management

of natural resources. The social stratification of the communities of

the prehistoric archipelago was not uniform, as presented earlier.

Communities had their similarities, peculiarities, and variations. The

purpose of the discussion with regard to rankings, particularly of

Tagalog culture, which shares features with Visayan and Central Luzon

traditions and customs, is to be understood in this context. We are used

to viewing “slavery” in the context of the European experience, which

may not be applicable to our indigenous context and situation. Our

indigenous setup has its peculiarities that do not surface if we use

conventional analytical thinking.

The practice of sharing and a culture of exchange are imperative when it

comes to analyzing society. The processes of exchange and sharing bring

significant influence to the relationships of individuals,

organizations, and institutions.

Nowadays, economics is a recognized field of study with a special

interest in exchange. For many economists, long before money was

invented, there was barter: a system of exchange that entailed the

swapping of things. In our modern age, money is the most efficient means

of exchange, generally adopted by the majority of societies in the

world. Anthropologist David Graeber’s critique of barter is intriguing.

Economists would surely raise their eyebrows, as an anthropologist makes

incisive comments on economic discourse.[12] Anyway, the idea of barter,

as discussed by the moral philosophy professor Adam Smith in the book

The Wealth of the Nations, started with the premise that exchange is a

behavior exclusive to humans. Humans, if left to their own devices, will

exchange and compare things. To reinforce his claim, he described North

America where, according to him, indigenous people were engaged in the

process of barter. How does barter work? First is the idea of double

coincidence, without which barter will not take place. How does double

coincidence work? A person, for instance, who has no use for her bike

may wish to dispose of it in exchange for a juicer. She needs to find a

person who has a juicer to dispose of and needs a bike in exchange.

There are two persons who are willing to exchange their items. If their

transaction works out, both will dispose of the respective things they

don’t have use for and acquire new things that satisfy their needs.

However, many centuries have passed, and this land of barter mentioned

by Smith is nowhere to be found. Explorers attempted to find this fabled

land but to no avail. If economics is an objective field of study, it is

disappointing to know that no economist paid attention to this fact. It

is plausible to think that the system of exchange we are using today

derived from the story made up by Smith. Instead of barter, researchers

discovered diverse processes and systems of exchange among indigenous

groups.

Based on studies by scholars, the prehistoric communities in the

archipelago engaged in trading within Southeast Asia through barter.

From the community level to regional communities, everyone was involved

in trading. Are the scholars and academics referring to the double

coincidence idea of a barter from the fabled land espoused by Smith? The

ideas of barter and debt are very important fields of study for

analyzing the social relations of our ancestors. It has been reported

that the insubordination of people in prehistoric Tagalog, Visayan, and

Kapampangan communities was primarily due to debt that could be passed

to children and children’s children. Freedom could be regained once the

debt was settled. This form of insubordination should not be mistaken

for slavery in the West, where human beings owned other human beings.

In the Tagalog context, barangay was a big aggregation of people with

established complex social stratification. Datu was the ruling elite.

Next to datu was the maharlika class. The warriors, called bagani, who

were expected to aid the datu in times of peace and war, were recruited

from this rank. The bulk of the population consisted of the timawa

class, or freemen, as described by the early Spanish chroniclers.[13]

The lowest rank in the primitive social order was that of the alipin, or

oripun in Visaya. They were the least privileged and consisted of two

categories:

• The sagigilid lived in their own houses and served the person they

were indebted to. They provided assistance during the harvest and

planting seasons, or when their masters traveled to faraway places. The

subordination of the sagigilid was caused by debt, so if they were able

to settle their due, they were freed of the obligation to render

services.

• Namamahay on the other hand lived with their master in a small hut or

makeshift house near the farm. They attended to all kinds of work and

had no social privileges at all. Most of them were captured during

pangayaw (wars and raids). They could marry only if their master allowed

it. Some writers refer to them as slaves, but unlike chattel slaves in

the West they could only be sold on rare occasions.

The large population and division of labor explained why trading

activities with other Southeast Asian communities could be maintained.

It is important to note that the defense carried out by Lapu-Lapu would

not have been possible for a small population. As recounted by Antonio

Pigafetta,[14] Lapu-Lapu mobilized hundreds of warriors overnight and

repulsed Magellan’s forces in a low-tide battle along the shores of

Mactan, where the cannons from the Spanish ships didn’t reach.

Coastal areas around Manila Bay were littered with barangays. Larger

barangays were located at the Pasig River’s various openings. The finest

seaports were in Tondo and Navotas. People traded goods heavily in

fragmented patterns. A myriad of unknown barangays participated for a

long time. Archeological evidence proved that Sulu, Basilan, and the

western part of Mindanao were haven of traders. The movement of parao

(Indonesian boats) and huge ships back and forth to Sumatra and Java had

never stopped since its beginnings in the year 650, before Islam came.

After the year 987, sampan (Chinese boats) visited the Lingayen Gulf in

Pangasinan and the Ilocos region on a regular basis. In the year 1290,

parao and sampan started to trade goods along the Pasig River in Luzon.

The trading activities led to the establishment of a nayon (big town)

called Maynila; across the river was Tondo, a large fishing barangay.

The economic prosperity achieved by Maynila attracted Paduka Sri Sultan

Bolkiah,[15] who arrived in 1500 and conquered Maynila twenty years

before the Spaniards came. He can be considered the first colonizer—not

of the archipelago but of Maynila, which soon became the seat of

political power in the republic.

In 1521, Ferdinand Magellan reached Panay, which started the

colonization of the archipelago for the kingdom of Spain. Inhuman acts,

cruelty, and oppression were perpetuated against the inhabitants in the

name of the church and civilization. The entire archipelago was declared

to be a part of the territory of Spain, thus establishing centralized

government on more than 1,700 islands.

Reflections

Hierarchical relationships are the apex of social problems. A person or

group cannot represent the interests of people with very diverse needs

and convictions. After the introduction of centralized government, vast

numbers of communities and people in the archipelago no longer

controlled their own destiny; decisions and policies were made in Spain

without any participation from the locals. This setup did not change

when the US came and stole the victory from the Katipunan in the name of

democracy. The Japanese had their share in the aggression. In the short

time of their stay, they inflicted deep misery on the people. Although

the US is no longer here physically, their influence, as well as the

influence of international institutions, on the central government

through the elite group is undeniable.

Ecological crises are just reflections of human relationships based on

hierarchy. The privatization of resources and benefit streams cannot be

carried out without hierarchical relationships. The accumulation of

masses of profit and the control of benefits cannot be realized without

exploiting natural resources and human labor.

The existing political structures maintain and reinforce the ownership

and control of resources and the economy by the corporations and a few

families. This kind of relationship leads people to a dog-eat-dog type

behavior. They compete for higher positions for greater incentives and

privilege.

The alternatives of state socialists in Russia, China, Cuba, Cambodia,

and North Korea failed to install participatory and equitable processes.

In many cases, communist parties surpassed in cruelty, slavery, and

oppression the previous oppressors of the people they were supposed to

liberate. The state socialist and labor parties in Europe also failed to

introduce democracy in its real substance.

Why did this happen? It is because hierarchy accumulates privilege. The

higher the position in a structure, the greater the access to power and

benefits. This promotes competition that makes relationships between

people revolve around incentives of privilege and political power.

Incentives entice people to produce more for the markets and shops,

which results in the massive extraction of natural resources and the

exploitation of the earth as a sink, which causes ecological crises. The

accumulation of the few “winners” of the competition will eventually

lead to poverty and the marginalization of the many.

This pattern can be found in all states in the world, be they welfare,

communist, or socialist states. Thus, taking the path toward

centralizing political power was an erroneous tactic. The baranganic

resistance and primitive communities could have taken advantage of

developing their informal ties not through the pattern introduced by the

colonizers but through expanding federations of the

barangays/communities and through strengthening traditional networks of

support and coordination against the oppressors.

Pulling back history is not practical; I believe that humanity recorded

it in order to imagine our future. Sure, it is difficult to picture a

humane, nonhierarchical, confederal order constructed under the wisdom

of indigenous organizations. As human history unfolds, many parts of the

earth reveal practical, applicable, and genuinely democratic political

processes of decision-making bubbling from below. Some of them were the

free assemblies of the Paris Commune of 1871, the early phase of the

Russian Revolution, specifically in the Ukraine, Kronstadt, and among

the workers of Petrograd. The large-scale application of confederations,

free assemblies, and millions of collectives, together with the direct

appropriation of anarcho-syndicalist ideas, occurred during the Spanish

Civil War of 1936–1937. In Buenos Aires, Argentina, the actual direct

management by the workers of two hundred industries took place in 2001;

many have survived to this day. The Zapatista experiment offers concrete

processes of non-hierarchical and antiauthoritarian alternatives.

These experiences prove that people can be organized not in hierarchical

ways but in a horizontal fashion. This means that no individual can

exercise authority over others. People come together to cooperate,

collaborate, and work in a confederal process in order to meet their

needs in an ecologically sustainable, non-oppressive, and equitable

manner. We cited foreign experiences not to look for a model but to

derive wisdom to enrich our indigenous versions of an anarchist society.

We need only turn to our ancestors and current indigenous groups. The

anarchist theme subtly passed to us by our ancestors materializes

whenever we act directly and without intermediaries on concrete issues,

whenever we talk and apply equality and socialism in our circles,

whenever we stand for ecological protection, and whenever we send

solidarity to the communities of the world who attack hierarchies.

The dominant political relationships in our society are clientelism,

patronage, and fantasy politics. The very foundation of these oppressive

politics is deeply rooted and has been established through long

historical coercive processes of colonization. These made us believe

that there are experts who can handle our lives and gave politicians and

leaders the power to take care of things that they know nothing about.

The idea of direct democracy is a concrete alternative framework to

statist politics and hierarchical relationships. It is mainly associated

with Western thought and practice but definitely consistent with our

tradition of decentralism, autonomy, and nonhierarchical politics based

on cooperation.

To apply this to the archipelago is a great challenge. The privileged

class absolutely will never agree to this system, and we do not need to

convince them anyway. What we need to do is to retake our own lives from

corporations, the state, and other institutions. We do not have to be

anarchists embracing propaganda by the deed; we can be anarchists in our

everyday lives. We can start at home, attending to household chores,

such as laundry, dishwashing, and taking care of our children. Such

activities are surely anarchistic in nature, specifically if you do it

because you are convinced that you need to partake in housekeeping,

because all members of the family should share it.

Production of things we need on a daily basis is another challenge.

Corporations provide us with almost all things, but most of them are

irrelevant to our daily sustenance. We are trained to work and

conditioned to shop and consume. This process actually consumes the

world’s ecosystems by controlling resources and exploiting people to

work in different industries in order to create commodities for

shopping. This is designed to achieve limitless growth.

Alternatives should be doable at home, because if it will not work in

our own household, we do not have the basis to encourage people to adopt

alternatives. Techniques in gardening to maximize space which promotes

chemical-free vegetables has been proven effective by many infoshops and

collectives in the archipelago. Adopting renewable energy technology

increases our independence from greedy power corporations. Creating

independent spaces for recreation and learning at the community level

will increase solidarity and participation of the people within our

community. There are plenty of things we can experiment with and

explore; groups as well as individuals can engage in activities that

encourage autonomy.

We can replicate this at the community level by initiating

nonhierarchical activities that can directly contribute to addressing

concrete manifestations of oppression. For instance, organizing one-time

feeding activities (Food not Bombs) is not appealing for the mainstream

political parties. Providing foods for the homeless collected from

luxurious gatherings for instance is a direct action that confronts

hunger. Organizing a feeding activity for a tiny fraction of hundreds of

thousand hungry people can concretely deliver results, more concrete

than organizing a mobilization to publicize demands. The question of

sustainability is indeed a critical concern, but we should be reminded

that we are not the solution to hunger but, rather, contributors to

realize food security.

We cannot change the world by providing food alone, but as long as we

handle things directly to achieve particular objectives without any

intermediaries, we contribute to the critique against the machineries of

hierarchy. Propaganda is inherent in every action. If an individual or a

collective successfully meet their objectives, this will definitely send

messages to their immediate environments. The public probably will be

first surprised to learn that the annoying-looking kids are providing

food for the homeless and organize art workshops for poor communities,

but they will soon realize that they can do the same to support their

marginalized peers.

Avenues that encourage people’s meaningful participation in

decision-making are crucial. Meaningful participation will not be

possible in a republican and representative setup. Education is key to

address bossism, clientelism, dependency, and ignorance. People will be

more active and critical if they have information and appropriate

venues.

Direct democracy will allow us to explore processes that are liberatory

and participatory—a critical component in shifting power relations from

centralization to power-sharing.

Anarchy

I intentionally placed anarchy last because the anarchist framework can

summarize major points and assertions of this text. Anarchism is a

political idea invented by people not out of abstraction. It was

developed through actual interaction of the people among themselves and

with ecological systems, and it can be traced during prehistoric times.

Anarchist practices are diverse, based on the multitude, and they have a

myriad of variations. Despite the diversity, there are characteristics

common among these anarchist practices, such as solidarity,

decentralization, mutual aid, noncoerciveness, anti-patriarchy, direct

action, and ecologically sound ways of living. Thousand years before

Europeans coined the word anarchism, it was already practiced by myriad

indigenous communities in many places around the world. In fact, the

traditional social relations of our ancestors were anarchistic, and the

remaining indigenous communities up to the present day are still

practicing such cultures and lifeways.

Social revolution is indeed a process that will educate the people about

the evil of the state; it is a process that will abolish hierarchy to

regain self-determination. Political revolution in many instances

mentioned above is a hindrance to social revolution.

Acknowledgments

I would like to extend my gratitude to the following collectives and

individuals for their contributions and direct as well as indirect

influence on the development of this essay. I am truly honored that I am

not denied support by the following…

Food Not Bomb crews: Cainta, Makati, Lucena, Baliwag Bulacan, Cavite,

Cebu City.

Collectives: Anarchist Initiative for Direct-Democracy (AID collective),

NON-Collective, Pinagkaisahan collective (Bulacan), As a Whole Family

(Davao), Samcore (Sampaloc), Anti-Panis, Mobile Anarchist School, Mutual

Aid Not Charity (Sapang-Palay Bulacan), Ferral Crust, Flower Grave,

Notra Block, Mag-Isa Collective, Organic Minds, Maharlika Integral, Theo

sa Kanto.

Infoshops: Manila Infoshop, Etniko Bandido, Flying House/Tarima,

Balay-Likhaan Tuklasan, Bee Hive Collective, Safehouse Infoshop,

Irregular Rhythm Asylum.

Campaigns/Projects/Network: Sagada 11, Local Autnomous Network, Sining

Kalikasan Aklasan (SKA).

Individuals: Ramon Fernando, Randy Nobleza, Rodney, Ronald (Beauty of

Doubt), Jong Pairez, Kristek, Boy Dada, Fritz, Pepe Tanchuling, Ted

Jacinto, Bong Escober, Lito Anunuevo, Bob Black, Gabriel Kuhn, Kaori,

Kim Hill, Chris French, Maxx Ourg, Bram Sickos, Pintig-Yaman, Keith Mc

Henry, Mark and Terry, Gary Granada.

My immediate collective is my family. They provide most of the

assistance I need.

Sa gabay ng ating mga ninuno…

[1] Based on his study of the history of humankind, Peter Kropotkin

described how the practice of mutual aid allowed people to improve and

develop their knowledge, culture, and human intelligence. In addition,

cooperation was based on the premise that only the fittest survive, not

individually but as a species.

[2] Waziyatawin and Michael Yellow Bird, eds., “Introduction,” in For

Indigenous Minds Only: A Decolonization Handbook (Santa Fe: School of

Advanced Research Press, 2012), 3.

[3] “Fourth Quarter 2014 Social Weather Survey: Hunger Falls to 17.2% of

families; Moderate Hunger 13.2%, Severe Hunger 4.1%,” Social Weather

Stations, January 26, 2015,

www.sws.org.ph/swsmain/artcldisppage/?artcsyscode=ART-20151122001030.

[4] It is unclear where these figures were derived from. The UN’s Human

Development Report 2000 lists the Philippines’ HDI at 0.744 and the

poverty rate at 37.5 percent.

[5] Joyce C. White, “Incorporating Heterarchy into Theory on

Sociopolitical Development: The Case from Southeast Asia,” Archeological

Papers of the American Anthropological Association 6, no. 1 (January

1995): 101–23.

[6] The Treaty of Tordesillas, signed in 1494, divided the lands

colonized by Portugal and Spain between them.—editor’s note

[7] Waziyatawin and Yellow Bird, “Introduction,” 2–3.

[8] Ibid., 8.

[9] The term datu refers to traditional leaders in the archipelago later

known as the Philippines.

[10] Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson, The Philippine

Islands, 1493–1898, Volume XXIII, 1629–30, Project Gutenberg,

www.gutenberg.org/files/16451/16451-h/16451-h.htm.

[11] An encomendero was equipped with an encomienda and ruled over

subjects, mostly indigenous people, whose labor he could exploit at

will.—editor’s note

[12] David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (New York: Melville

House, 2011), chapter 2, “The Myth of Barter,” 21–41.

[13] They served the datu and maharlika, and in return they received

economic assistance and protection in times of danger.

[14] Antonio Pigafetta (c. 1491–c. 1531), a member of the 1519–1522

expedition to the Philippines led by Ferninand Magellan, left a detailed

journal of the journey.

[15] From 1485 to 1524, Paduka Sri Sultan Bolkiah was the king of

Brunei, a rich town on the island of Borneo.