supposedly traditional rite~ ofcircumciion or of a revolution not only

unfinished but unresolved steeped in acts both courageous and crimishy

nal The) draw one to think of impure origins and foreign genealogies

of national selves ineluctably inhabited by foreign others

Although I did not intend it Ulis book shares an affinity with at least

this aspect ofJoaquins project Part ofmy fathers generation wbo came

of age during and immediately after the Japanese occupation Joaquin

writes and lives in Manila whereas I write across the very PaCIfic once

traversed by the Spanish galleons Yet we find ourselves sharing a familshy

iar predicament For him it entaus thinking of Filipino as an identity

in progress for me it is the name of a history thai conung from the

outside continues to arrive from the future The dIfference may not be

so great In either case the task is one of historicizing the uncertainty of

such names and namings Qierebr momentarily interrupting the workshy

igs ofcolol1lal and national lobotomies I t should be clear though that

the effects of such interruptions can never be fuUy determined Standing

on th threshold of a revolutionary epoch the national hero Jose Rizal had sought to contemplate a cure for his diseased counLry by tearing

away the veil that hid the social cancer of la pnrrin In his novel Noli me

Tangere Our situalion is o f course different Par in these postcentennial

(and arguably cow1terrcvolutionary) Limes we can hope at the very least

to approach the sense of vertigo- epistemological and comparativcshy

that comes with apprehending las jsla~ Filipinas and Filipinos as they

slip in lnd OUI of various attempts 10 ma~ler anJ c()mprehend them

I White Love ellsus mid Afelodramn i17 the

us Colonization oJ the Philippines

Arriving in ManUa in March 1899 Dean C Worcester proshyfessor of zoology at the UIlIversity of Michigan and member of lhe

Schurmarl Commission appoinled by President McKinley to LDvestigate

conditions in the Philippines tells of witnessing the signs of war beshy

tween the United States and Lhe Filipino forces led by Emilio Aguinaldo

Worcester describes how he walked toward the Fihpino trenches after

one such baule counting tbe dead and wounded as 1 had heard w il d

stones of tremendous slaughter and wanted to see just how much damshy

age the fire of ollr troops had really done1 WishlOg to discredit the

claims made by anti-imperialists in [he United States regarding the

severity of thc Filipino-American War2 Worcester conceives of the dead

bodies of insurgents as objects to be counted and data for ol1kia

source of information To do so he erases the partiauarity of those

bodies as the task of counLing replaces the ritual of mourning The

eXlent oi the era1gture of the Filipino dead becomes even more stunshy

ning at Ihe conclusion of Worcesters story when he talks not about the

dead at all but the wounded At the tune we visited the Insurgent

trenches nut middotalJ our own killed and wounded had been removed yet

~vcry wounded Insurgent whom we found had a Umted States canteen

of water at his SIde obviously left by ome kindly American soldiers

Not a few ~f the injured had been furlllshed hard tack as well All were

ultimately takcn t(l Manita and there given the best care by surgeons ibidi

111

iJtl1eloit1I1 Homing For Worcester colonial warfare was not meant to

conquer and exterminate the native populace It was instead a kind

of police action thaI would quell the disorder on the islands caused b) the surrings of deluded peasantamp and workers led by a gang of ambishy

tious mixed-blood Fil ipino~ Theampe FiliQino leader~) beginning vittuhe

qlinese-mestizo A~inald() were illegitimate representatives ofthe filshyipino pe0E1e Indeed there were no Filipino people as such only a

heterogeneous collection of imperfecU civilized tribes and wild men

speaking a bewildering variety of languages bereft of a common culshy

ture and subject to impulsive and irrational behavior (Worcester 2 92Jshy

22938) Given this putative absence of a Filipino nalion the us presence in

the archipelago could not be construed as usurping another peoples

sovereignty Tntervgntion was understood in gfficial ac~ollnls) as an

altrUlsti~ actJlQtivated by America concern fQr the natives welfare on

the plrt of theUmted States US troops did not shoot Filipinos Lo kill

them but to save them from killing one another Hence in the Senate

hearings of 1901 David Prescott Barrows head of the Bureau of Nonshy

hristian Tribes who would go on to run the colonial public school

system before becoming professor of anthropology at the University of

Californ ia Berkeley could stale that the US practice o f administering

the water cure-forcing water down prisoners bodies to compel them

to talk-could not possibly have harmed Filipinos and that they willshy

ingly abandoned their homes and sought US protection in concentrashy

tion camps at the height of the war in order to lead easier more se~ure

lives William Howard Taft similarly claimed that there were Filipinos

who bull ~aid Ihey would not say anything unles~ ther wert~ lortured

and that there never was a war cOl1ducted whether against inferior

races or nOI in which there was more compassion and more restraint

and more generosity Ithan this war against the Filipinosl Seaetar) 0

War Elihu Root could only ooncur a year later praising the splendiJ

virile energy bull accompanied by sclf~control patience [andJ magnashy

nimity on the partoftht LSlroOpS IfUgtriteorthouian~bQtTilipino

d~~hs nsnltingJrQJ1 artillery fi~ ~i~eas~~andJa-1i~ ~~JI as (onshy

~~le ec~logical havoc the Car a~ cham1pound~jzeJ_bJ humanlly and

kindness to the pisonc ~d non-co ll1battant3 For in the end the war

had been a clluable learning experience lor the Filipinos a real blessshy

ing as Barrows would write in 1901 in his djary for without it lhe

Filipinos would never have recognized their own weaknesses without it we would never have done our work thoroughJ y~

Indeed us colonialism in the Philippinec was rhetorically driven by

what President McKinley had referred to as benevolent assimilation

whereby the earnest and paramount ai m of the colonizer was lhat of

win[ninsl the confidence respect and afiection of the coloOlzed

Colonization as assimilation was deemed a moral imperative as wayshyward native children cut off from their Spanish fathers and desired by

other European powers would now be adopted and protected by the

compassionate embrace of the United States As a father is bound to

guidt his son the United Slates was charged with the development of

nallve others Neither exploitative nor enslaving colonization entaHed

the cultivation of the felicity and perfection of the Philippine people

through the uninterrupted devotion to those noble ideal s which

(Ollstitute the higher civilization of mankind~ Because colonization is

abuut civilizing love and the Jove of cirilization it must be absolutely

distinct (rom the disruptive criminality of conquest The aUegory of

benevolent aSSiIll1Jatlon eff(ces the viQlence of conquest bi construing

cqlonial rule as the most preciQ~u~ampifL that the mQSt cjyiH~JW)rle

can render to those gttill caught in a state ofbarbarou~ disorder

But tnslead of returning their love Fi lipino insurgents seemed

lltmt on making war Why these hostilities the Schurman Commisshy

~iun asked What do the best Filipinos want By demanding recognishy

lion of the independence thai they bad jusL wrested [rom Spain Filshy

ipinos appeared to have misllterpreted the pure aims and purposes

Oflhe Amlrican government and people and thus were attacking US

forcesYIn resisting the TiliEinQpound were being unreasonable As with

trrant childrcl~ tJe) needed to be discil21incd accQrding tQ McKinley

middotmiddotwith hrmnciif need be hllt without severity so far as may be possishy

blpound- t crucial pari of the higb mission of colonization then was the

need to maintain the strong arm of authority to repress disturbances

and to avercoml all obstacles 10 the bestowal of the blessing o f a good

and slable gov~rnment upon the people of the Philippine Islands under the free Ilag of the United States111

A certain kinll of violence underwrote the alJegory of benevolent

as~imilation The measured use of force was deemed consistent with lhl

21 Whilf Iav 20

iJtl1eloit1I1 Homing For Worcester colonial warfare was not meant to

conquer and exterminate the native populace It was instead a kind

of police action thaI would quell the disorder on the islands caused b) the surrings of deluded peasantamp and workers led by a gang of ambishy

tious mixed-blood Fil ipino~ Theampe FiliQino leader~) beginning vittuhe

qlinese-mestizo A~inald() were illegitimate representatives ofthe filshyipino pe0E1e Indeed there were no Filipino people as such only a

heterogeneous collection of imperfecU civilized tribes and wild men

speaking a bewildering variety of languages bereft of a common culshy

ture and subject to impulsive and irrational behavior (Worcester 2 92Jshy

22938) Given this putative absence of a Filipino nalion the us presence in

the archipelago could not be construed as usurping another peoples

sovereignty Tntervgntion was understood in gfficial ac~ollnls) as an

altrUlsti~ actJlQtivated by America concern fQr the natives welfare on

the plrt of theUmted States US troops did not shoot Filipinos Lo kill

them but to save them from killing one another Hence in the Senate

hearings of 1901 David Prescott Barrows head of the Bureau of Nonshy

hristian Tribes who would go on to run the colonial public school

system before becoming professor of anthropology at the University of

Californ ia Berkeley could stale that the US practice o f administering

the water cure-forcing water down prisoners bodies to compel them

to talk-could not possibly have harmed Filipinos and that they willshy

ingly abandoned their homes and sought US protection in concentrashy

tion camps at the height of the war in order to lead easier more se~ure

lives William Howard Taft similarly claimed that there were Filipinos

who bull ~aid Ihey would not say anything unles~ ther wert~ lortured

and that there never was a war cOl1ducted whether against inferior

races or nOI in which there was more compassion and more restraint

and more generosity Ithan this war against the Filipinosl Seaetar) 0

War Elihu Root could only ooncur a year later praising the splendiJ

virile energy bull accompanied by sclf~control patience [andJ magnashy

nimity on the partoftht LSlroOpS IfUgtriteorthouian~bQtTilipino

d~~hs nsnltingJrQJ1 artillery fi~ ~i~eas~~andJa-1i~ ~~JI as (onshy

~~le ec~logical havoc the Car a~ cham1pound~jzeJ_bJ humanlly and

kindness to the pisonc ~d non-co ll1battant3 For in the end the war

had been a clluable learning experience lor the Filipinos a real blessshy

ing as Barrows would write in 1901 in his djary for without it lhe

Filipinos would never have recognized their own weaknesses without it we would never have done our work thoroughJ y~

Indeed us colonialism in the Philippinec was rhetorically driven by

what President McKinley had referred to as benevolent assimilation

whereby the earnest and paramount ai m of the colonizer was lhat of

win[ninsl the confidence respect and afiection of the coloOlzed

Colonization as assimilation was deemed a moral imperative as wayshyward native children cut off from their Spanish fathers and desired by

other European powers would now be adopted and protected by the

compassionate embrace of the United States As a father is bound to

guidt his son the United Slates was charged with the development of

nallve others Neither exploitative nor enslaving colonization entaHed

the cultivation of the felicity and perfection of the Philippine people

through the uninterrupted devotion to those noble ideal s which

(Ollstitute the higher civilization of mankind~ Because colonization is

abuut civilizing love and the Jove of cirilization it must be absolutely

distinct (rom the disruptive criminality of conquest The aUegory of

benevolent aSSiIll1Jatlon eff(ces the viQlence of conquest bi construing

cqlonial rule as the most preciQ~u~ampifL that the mQSt cjyiH~JW)rle

can render to those gttill caught in a state ofbarbarou~ disorder

But tnslead of returning their love Fi lipino insurgents seemed

lltmt on making war Why these hostilities the Schurman Commisshy

~iun asked What do the best Filipinos want By demanding recognishy

lion of the independence thai they bad jusL wrested [rom Spain Filshy

ipinos appeared to have misllterpreted the pure aims and purposes

Oflhe Amlrican government and people and thus were attacking US

forcesYIn resisting the TiliEinQpound were being unreasonable As with

trrant childrcl~ tJe) needed to be discil21incd accQrding tQ McKinley

middotmiddotwith hrmnciif need be hllt without severity so far as may be possishy

blpound- t crucial pari of the higb mission of colonization then was the

need to maintain the strong arm of authority to repress disturbances

and to avercoml all obstacles 10 the bestowal of the blessing o f a good

and slable gov~rnment upon the people of the Philippine Islands under the free Ilag of the United States111

A certain kinll of violence underwrote the alJegory of benevolent

as~imilation The measured use of force was deemed consistent with lhl

21 Whilf Iav 20

tutelary aim of ~nl()nizalion making nouive inhabilanls desire what

colonial authority desirtd for ulem The mandate Lo institute d~moshycratiL aspirations slntiments and ideals brought with it the need to enforce discipline and constant surveillance among the Filipino~ Filshy

ipJno~ were called on to accept the supremay of the United Slales

and those who resist it can accomplIsh no end other than [their] own bull illrum What may seem like a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the

colonial enterprise was due to assumptions regarding the aptituJe of

Filipinos They lacked the experience possessed by u5- narnely that

of self-government- and by implical1on the self-consc iousness that

marks a peoples readiness for independence (Worcester 2981-88) Filshy

ipinos as Taft observed were iJ1 a hopeless condition 0[ ignorance

subject like the waves of the sea to lhe influence ofthe moment ~~

with childrenl they were highly impressionable unable to retlect on

~wn conditions and capable only Qf mimickinghe_ actions of

those they perceived to bc_abllV~ Lem In llleir present state Taft as shy

serted they cannot possess themselves they can only be possessed hy

others This situation made it all the more imperative [or the United

Slates to intenene For only after the natives have been elevated and

taught the dignity of labor and self-restraint can they be allowed to

decide thei r own future 12

The aU egory of benevolent assimi lation lllus foresaw the possibil ity

if nol the inevitab il ity of colonialisms end Bul equally important it

also msist(d on defining and delimiting the means to that end While

colonial rule may be a Lransitional stage of self-rule the self that rules

itself can only emerge by way oran intimate relationship with a colonial

master who sets the standards and practices of discipline to mold the

conduct of the colonial subject In other wor~ the culmmatign of

c~lolLa1 ~ule self-g~ment~9ln be acbi~~J gnly when the subject

has learned to colonize itself As Woodrow Wilson wrote with reference ~ _-------shyto the Philippine

Self-government is a form of character 11 follows upon the long discipline

which gives a people self possession self-mastery and the habIt of order and

pll1ce the ~teadine~ of self-control and political mastery And these things

cannot be had without long discipline No people can be given the self-

on lrol o maturity Only a long apprenticeship ofobedience can secure them

the rreci(u~ pussession

MOlde lip of disparate characteristics Filipinos lacked the character

with which to conLrol themselves thereby requiring a long apprenticeshy

shjp~ In this way can benevolent assimilation mdefinitely defer its own

completion in that the condil1on for self-rule self-mastery can be

made identical to the workings of colonial rule the mastery of the other

Lhat resides within the boundaries of the self oVhite love holds oUl the

pr~ 2f fillheri ns as it were a civilized people capable in time of

assertins its own character But it also demands the indefinite submisshy

sion to a program of discipHne and reformation requiring the constant

superviion ofa sovereIgn masterI 1

Conjoining love and discipline benevolent assimila Lion was meant

to ennoble the colonizer as it libeTated the colonized What secured this

link between an ideology of benevolence and the repressive-productive

institutions of discipline How was it possible to sustain the fil-Lion

istercd by US official discourse and eventually accepted with varyshy

inp degrees of alacrity by Filipino collaborators that colonial rule - ~

amounted to democratic tutela~e How did white love and native subshy

jugation become mutually reinforcing

I want to suggest that the Link between benevolence and discipline

was made possible lhrough representational practices that recast Filshy

IPJn appearances The re-fonnation of nalives as colonial subjects

reqUIred that they become visible and therefore accessible to those

charged with their supervision Through continuous and discrete obshy

servations the targetb of benevolent assimilation could be idenlified

apprehended and delivered for democratic tutelage Whether it was in the areas of public order or public health education or dections incarshy

c~ration or commerce such superviSion sustained the articulation of

colonial rule at both the Ideological and practical level By (en~kriDampshyvisiblt lhesubjects 9f colQnizatiQn in Qarticular waI~ col9nial supervishy

sion amounredtoa powerful form of surveillance setting the limits of

colonJal idelHlie~ Vithin the borders of Iht state

This b not to imply that the circuils linking supervision representashy

tion and control were perfectJ) insulated making the colonial state aJ I

powerful and unchallenged lnJeed recent sdlOlarslUp has shown the

2 White lo1e 22

extent to which US colonial rulc like its Spanish rndecessor was

cOllStantly comrromise1 b) forces and ~vents it could not control

much I~ss comprehend The very agents oftht slate were often dIvided

in their personal loyalties and ideologicaJ indinations LS milttary and

civilian officials for example were clearly at odds over th~ appropriate

techl1lqutS of conquest and colonization owing to their varying apshy

praisals of Filipino capacities just as the colomal government was subshy

iect to the vagaries of policy shifts among elected officiab an the metshy

ropole Similarly differences existed among Filipino collaborators in

terms of their earlier involvement wiLh the revolution as well as their

personal and political tics with colonial patrons Collaboration was

fraught with disagreements over legislation taxation budgets and rashy

dally tinged debates regarding Filipino fitness for self-rule Equally sIgshy

nificant class conflicts pitted colonial authorities US and Pilipino

elites alike against peasant and workers groups at times erupting into

local revolts that were brutally suppressed I Nonetheless an examinashy

tion of the rhetoric of colonial rule suggests the existence of a dominant

desire informing the state that of creating a continuum between an

ideology of benevolence disciplinary practices and networks of supershy

vision-in short a desire to consolidate the relay between knowledge

and power My interest here lies in inquiring about the formation of this

colomal desire and the limits to its institutionalization

In the earJy period of US rule Olle of the most instructive docushy

ments of Ule colonial wish to establish total and continuous supervision

for the sake of tutelage was the four-volume Q1l5US of the Philippine

Islands begun in 1903 and published In 190slft In what follows I want to

consider the vanou~ ways in which the ccnus functionetl as an apparashy

tus for producing a colonial order coextensive with the represrotalion

of iu subjec~ It is important to stress however that the censuss sahshy

cnce as a discursive practice cm best be understood within the larger

context of the Filipino-American War A such Tattempt in the latter

part of this chapter to link the census with one of the most popular

forms of nationalist expressions among Filipinos during this period

vernacular plays whose performances were deemed seditious and ulshy

timately banned by the colonial regime

Historically coincident With the Laking of the colonial census perforshy

mances of the nationalist dramas between 1899- 1905 sought 10 contesl

thl mcan~ with which to delineate and ltluthorizl thl differene between

Filirino arid North American-and as r ~hllI suggest between men and

umen-ut a timc of catastrophic changes when a US coloniaJ ~tatl

Va~ yet to be stablllzcd amid the ruingt of Spanish imperial hegemony

and the colJective memory of fiJ ipino revolutionary victory over Spain

Seen in their historical conjuncture both the census and plays were

struggles over the representation of the Philippincs gTowing out of the

violence ofnationalist revolution and imperialist intervtntion

SUrlqillg SlIbjects Census reports are curious texts They contam no

single author for standing behind them is not a person but a state

apparatus made up or a veritable army of enumerators derks and

statislicians managed by a hierarchy of supervisors and directors It is

not therefore the case that a census has no author but that the bureaushy

wllic nature of its writing renders its authorship and authority disshy

persed lt1nd anonymous Consequently whi le the workings and results

of cenSllS reports a re never completely visible to an indiVid ual censuses

can claim to ~ee everything that can be individuated that is coun Led

tabulated and classified No single reader can exhaust the entirety of a

census report Just as no single reading can comprehend its meaning

insotlf as its myriad tabJes and graphs of statistical data escape total

recall Compiled in a mechanical fashion census reports exceed narrashy

tive synopsis The power-that is to say the persuasiveness-of a census

to conq what appears to be an objective representation of U1C world

derives in part frol11 its remarkable capacity to picture in quantitative

terms the tot11iLy of the worlds multiplicity Thus Lhe value of census

reports tu the colonial (and to any modern) state they represent the

states abilitmiddot to represent and so govern itself In enumerating and

classifying the resources and population of the state censuses render

visible the entire field of colonial intervention l -

As the first Philippine census under US rule the 1905 report was

conceiwd as hoth a confirmation of and means for consolidating the

paClficatioll of the archipelago The Congressional Act of 1902 made

the cessation of the insurrection a precondition for conducting the

census The creation of a Census bureau under the direction of General

Joseph P Sanger (who had supervised earlier census reports for Puerto

Rico and Cub ) was a way of officially asserting that the war was over It

25 White LIlIC

---shy

24

------

was left to Ihe victor to make an inventory of it~ ncw possessions One reason for doing so was 10 sct the conditions for holding elections

within two years of the ccnsuss publicatitm for Filipino representative)

to the coJoniallegisJature to be known as thc Philippine ssembly Such

a legislature was designed to consolidate the practice l1r Filipino LoUabshy

oration thereby rendering more effiClcnt and cost effective the running

of the colomal state while containing all remaining nationalist chalshy

lenges to US hegemony CollaboratlOn was seen 35 an mdex of lhe

success of tutelage the measure of the Filipinos recognitio11 of their

subordination to and desire for white authority The taking of the censhy

sus Governor-General Taft wrote will therefore [arm a test of the

capacity of the Filipinos to discharge a most important function of

government The ccnSt15 is to be taken solely for the benefit of the

Filipino people [and I they should lend their unarumot15 support to

the successful taking of the census (Cemus 120

Call ing for Filipino collaboration both as local supervisors and enushy

merators the cenSllS would serve as cl kind of test of Filipinos ability LO

perform a task Discipline was caUed for by the census that was why it could serve both the practical and ideological route to self-government

in the future As an instrument of white love it was meant to give

Filipi nos an opportunity to perform before the solicitous gaze of US

tutors The census would be an exercise as it were in character building

where the capacity to count was coterminous with the ability to b~

accountable to a colonial hierarchy Not only would the census provide

the empirical grounds for shapmg the direction of coloniallegislallon

and facilltating the mflux ofUS (middotapital investments in the archIpelago

as with the colonial legislature i1 would also fundlon as a stage on whkh

Filipinos were Lo be represented as wedl as represent themselves as subshy

jects ora colonial order disciplined agents actively assuming their role in

their own subjugation and maluration

The US project of a centrally organized and nationally coordinated

ctnsus superseded thal of the Spanish statemiddots For its census data the

Spanish colonial regime had relied mainly on thl irreguJar and farshy

from -comprehensive records kepl by parish priests on their locaillock

[n addition Spanish efforts at more systematic cenSWi gathering met

with enormous resistance from the people inasmuch as they were

geared primarily for the levIng of taxe5 and conscription of labor

(Cmsus 113) Th~ VS census oI ht Philippines by contrast was

supposed tn elevate rather than exploit the popuJacc The groundwork

had been plcpared by a number of US survcys between June 1898 and

1903 In the face of ignorance about the arch ipdlg11 in lhe United Stales

such surveys were charged with collecting facts on the Philippines as

well as encouraging ~ollaboralion from natjve informltlnts The most

important of these were the Philippine Commisslom of 1899 and 1900

presided over by acadcnuc experts and the Ethnological Surveys carshy

ried out by such anthropologists ~ David Barrows Dean C Worcester

and Albert Jenks between 1900 and 1905 These surveys produced volushy

minous reports on lhe conditions of lhe counlry generously illusshy

trated with photographs of native scenes and types As Paul Kramer has

shown the American projecl ofamassing what was considered scientific

knowledge was dependent not only on progressivist notions ofexpertise

but also on an already existing body ofSpanish colonial writings on the

PhilippinlS Even more SIgnificant these surveys would not have been

pOSSIble without the active collaboration of natives especially local

clites as indispensable sources of support and information Published

and republished cited widely in newspapers congressional testimonies

s(hoolbook~ and scholarly studies such surveys estabhshed the basis

for a lund of colonial common sense in the interest of countering revoshylutionary expectations 19

The Census Bureau followed lXislmg practice laymg great stress on

seeking Filipino cooperation in order to neutralize whatever local reshy

sistmccs still existed in the country Conducting the census then was of

il piece with US altempts at co-opting Filipinos of aJJ classes thereby

consolidalmg a counterrevolutionary nationalism that had emerged as

early as 1898~n WIth appollltments LO the colonial judiciary beginning in

1899 the establilhment of the Philippine Scouts (1901) and the election

by limited Suffrage of municipal officials (1905) and later representashy

tives (0 Ule Philippine Assembly (19deg7) Filipinos were drawn into a patshy

tern of collaboration with the colomal state) There were practical and

pcdagogiLaJ reasons for FilipinOS particularly members of the provinshy

cial and municipal clites to be t15ed as census perSOnllcl To do so was as

Censw Chief GeneraJ Sanger pu t it to identify them with the censt15

and to test their capacity to pcrform duties never undertaken before

and which in thiS country are supposed to require at least average

27 lV1lite UJIl 16

----intelligence (CCIlSUs 113 ) AJrogether 7502 Filipinos were employed

40 of whom were women Like the surrendering imurgentlllcal supershy

visors and enumerators were required to take an oath of aUegiance to

the government of the United States they also received instructions on

how to manage the canvassing of their districts To supplement the

ranks of US and Filipino supervisors the Census Bureau pressed into

service all provincial and municipal officials as well as US army officers

and the Philippine Constabulary (Census 116 18-1936)

he gathering of census data was an enormous undertakmg involvshy

ing the mobilization of a vast army of clerks in the colonial capital

and the deployment of enumerators across as much of the archipelago

as possible Although President flleodore Roosevelt had declared the

Filipino-American War officiaUy at an end by July 1902 guerrilla reshy

sistance continued in many parts of the country In provinces such as

Albay 50rsogon Bulacan and Rizal census takers were challenged by the guerrllJas now referred to under the criminal sign of ladrolles or

bandits by the colonial government TIe enumeration of the populashy

tion llecesitated their pacification Constabulary forces oflen intershy

vened to suppress the guerrillas and secure the areas to be canvassed In

parts o f Mindanao a show of force by the colonial army was usually

required to gain access to sources of local information while in other

parts of the country local elites were pressed into providing inforshy

mation on and arranging for the surrender of local ladrones (CtIISLlS

122-2j)

hl census thus illustrates the indispcn~ilble link htwcen the policshy

ing of colonial horders and annexation of local populations into the

space of colonial knowledge Census workers white and native alike

IahoreJ under the watchful eyes of a hierarchy of supervisors even as

they kept their eyes out for alleged insurgents They sunreyed the popushy

lacl and were themselves surveyed by the state In this sense the censu~

functioneJ as a machine for totalizing obseryatJon Through the collecshy

tion and classification of statistical data it kept watch over the pOpU]lshy

tion mapping thdr social location and transcribing them as disLfcte

objects ofinformation and re-formution And through the bureaucratishy

7-3tion ur supervisiolJ undenvrilten by the organized deployment of

violence the emus differentially disciplined those who ma~naged IS

well as Iholoe who were tnrgeted by its operations

In order to better understand tbe manner in which superviSion proshy

motes lSsimiJalion-that is how it lay~ the circuits that run between

benevolence and iliscipUne-I want to look in more detail at the mechashy

nisms for gathering census data Two forms were utilized a schedule for

enumerating and c1lSsifying people in a given area and a keyboarded

punch card for identifying each individual in relation to a set of categoshy

ries indicated IJ1 the schedule One served as an index [or the olher

Where the schedule sheets were designed to divide and distrib ute a

persons identity into a series of delimited categories the punch cards

were meant to reconstitute him or her as the referent of a speo1ic set of

signs ( CtIIStlS 29-14)

The schedule sheet was written in Spanish for the sake of Filipino

enumerators unfamiliar with Engllsb A facsimile of the schedule in

English translation appears in the census report (fig 1) The schedule

consists of a series of vertically arranged categories such as Location

Name Relationship Personal Description Race Age Sex

Mantal Status Ocmpation and so fonll for the supposedly civiUzed

(that is Christian) population and a simpler more abbreviated series

[or those deemed wild (that is non-Christian) Enumerated on the

sheer one can imagine ones existence flattened and neatly spread out as

a set of numbers across a table It is as if becoming a subject of the

colonial state entailed taking on a different kiml of particularity Plotted

on a grid ones identity becomes sheer surface and extension abstracted

from any historical specificity Put differently the census schedule proshy

jctts a skewed profile of colonial society by divorcing idenLJty from

biography Where biography entails th articulation of the subject as an

agent of its own history the schedule posillons its subjects as a series of

aggregates locatable on a table of isolated and equivalent values

lhrough the schedule the census sought to transcribe the person

into a scriClgt ofnumbers grafted onto a closed set of categories In tabushy

lating the results of 1he schedule however the census also attempted to

retmstitule the subject as an individuated and therefore retrievable

item within the vast repositones of the colonial archive This was done

through what amounted to a massive filing system in the form of keyshy

bllardeu punch card~ designed to labulate populallon tables-similar to

the bullards used in 1lt)00 for the twelfth US census Each card contamed

an arrar of numbers and letters that corregt-ponded to the data on the

29 f1Jit 100 t 28

DIAGUW OF KCV80AAD PUNCH clAO

0- otw 1Ii~nUv rgth _IA~ a11

~middot ~I bullbull I~L-rw

middotmiddot-Imiddot~ ~bull tJ~ ~

Il -~

middotmiddot 1-pound1r1l~1 H~ SIFl~~shy~Aj

t~ LLmiddot r C-

i I I It lJ 11 It Ii

tl 111

51

I

~ I

I~ to

1_1 I~una

1shy

IIvPMipp JIluIuJ fllb Uilv fAt-ltI-ta ct(lllt(rIolUI PIIilllpfTV LtlfUIIim llJiU

rJ~ Wb1k tI ~ ii_nltb l-bILt NIua_J

t(TfWTTU Ng - -h~ulJI dam cIC1nlI P~In(rllshy

~a=r~ l1FtI ~ - Jodldal I1tan1amp_ ~bmfw-4IrO-I_ __ ~~Q~t

Fig I SLhedule ~hd (CLISltS of tJrl Jitilippillc Islands 1903)

schedule sheets tn addition a numbering system tied the cardgt 10 the

nJme of a specific person and the area where she or he was counted

(fig 2) By punching the appropriate holes-say B for blallco (whIte)

lI fOT morello (brown) A for amariJfo (yellow) V for varon

(male) H [or hembra (female) etc-the canis fun~lIoned lO index a

range of information regarding an inwnduals race sex age OCCUP

_w ~ ~l~ _ 11 _middot1 ~ ~ ~ ~bull 8 j ~ bull bull amp 3r 1 0 al ~u lit bull ~ ~

bull J bull rrw ~ 0 0 0 a a 0 I0 bull 4 bull bull bull J bull bull ~ 0 X ltlt4

bull bull bull bull -- lO eo 1 bull tD 10 I bull r--~ la 0 U CDC ~~ -1- ~

a____ It 0 10 j bull 7 to 10 i 1 bull ~ at 0 ID ~ _ _e J _

~ bull II bull 10 110 bull raquo bull bull )t eo I 70 7) GO Is raquo X purI 1---shy

1 II bull 0 10 i bull eG 0 II 00 7 II ~ bull bull bull 10 a 011 ampIII 1 O 0 II 0 i 0 1 7 e 1_ A

J i ~ LOO 1 ft c XI TJi I I 4 i 1 4J 1J1r ~ Ta e

middot Fa rY- bull 1_ Tn 1 CII 7r au D f

a u oa f1D m I 1 0 a z D

bull u 10 0 IX bull i i D 01 WOE I I L shy

XI tJo VIZ 100oIJOXh

o_~~ i1 ~E~11~~~-I~1 I I~~middot ~~- fI~~I -~ I Fig 2 Keyboard pWlCh card (OmSll~ vf Ille Philippie Islands 1903)

tion and so on By means of the gang punched holes and numbers

declared the census anyone of the approximately 7000000 cards

corresponding to the population of the Philippines could be identified

and the correctness of the punching verified (Census 213 )

The cards moved in the opposite but complementary direction to the

cheltlul~ ciung an inclividual as a possessor of a range of qualities

rather tban a collection of numbers atlached to J set of categories The

schedule itemized 311 indiVIduals characteristics whereas the card indishy

vidulhzed the items on the schedule In this sense the census worked

like an 3c(hive cross-referencing characters with characteristics On the

one hand it attempted to constitute a population by enumerating the

totality of heterogeneous peoples and recording them onto a grid of

reified categories On the other hand the census sougbt to affix to each

member of the population an essentialized reguJated amI therefore

retrievable identity As Benewct Anderson has remarked The fiction

of the censw is that everyone is in il and that everyone has one and only

one c(lremely clear place~

The census could seTVe as an infinitely eXpandabk repository for

accumulating all that could be quantified and empirically known in the

Colony Lo the extent thai it provided the grammar for classifying its

objects of knowledge as subjects of a colonial order As with tht practice

31 V1ife LoFt

-

30

of enumtratioll this grammar of dassificalion WlS far [rom disinttrshy

tsted Rather it wa~ (rucial in imaging thc terms of colonial society as ltbove all a racial hierarchy

Recoriil1g Race Vhlte loYlt tOr little brown brothers as Taft reterred

to Filipinos was predicated on white supremacy enforced through pracshy

tices of diSCipline and maintained by a network ofsupervision General

Sanger in hh introduction to the census Of1903 remarked how fllJpwos

would in the course of time become good citizens in that some of tllem

had already proved themselves to be excellent soldiers capable of folshy

lowing the orders of their white officers Similarly census workers under

white supervision had shown the natives potential for performing comshy

plex state functions With appropriate training there was no relson why

the rest of the population could not become a disciplined people As

Sanger contends

Under the guidance of a free just and generous government the eswbhshmiddot

ment of more rapid and frequent means or communicalion whereby they

wulcl be brought into more frequent contact wilh each other and with the

general spread of education t11e tribal dlstinctiom which now exist wi ll

gradually disappear and the Filipino wili hecome a numerous aod homogeshy

neous EnglIsh-speaking race cceeding in intelligence and capacity all other

eo pIes of the tropics (Census 140)

Encapsulating the benevolent-disciplInary trajectory of colonial polshy

iC) in general and the census in particular Sangcr reiterllCS the posshy

sibility indeed the uesirabililr of molding colonial gtubJccts into a single

people here conceived of 30 a homogeneous English-speaking race

Predictably homogenization (10 only come afta a process or tutelage

one aimed at superseding if not suppressing existing tribal distincshy

tions To do ~o however the general owlincs of those distinctions need

tt) be surveyed and accounted ror In order to transform the native races

into a people their differences had to be produced and reassemhled

The population tables of the censu~ divide the inhabitants of the

Philippines into roughly twenty-five linguistic groups distinguishing at

least five skin colors ranging from whilC to black and where releshy

vant types of dlilenshlp and Iunions oC birth These seeminglv

incommensurable gfClupings were then reduced into two broad categoshy

rie~ civilized and wild Their Jiffercnccs initially had iClgts to do with

thodr material nJlture than their religious characteristics Those labeled

civilized were seen to adhere La a common Christian Lulture whIle

lhost marktd wild w~re either Musltms or subscribed to animi5m both

dearly outside the Christian order The former comprising the majority

)f the ltlrchipclagos illhabitant~ lIweu their civilized state the census

assumed to the effects of Spanisb ru The latter-whether pagan

headhunters in the mountamgt nomadic forest dwellers or Muslim

peoplts in Ule south-had steadfastly resisted Spanish conquest and

were thought to live in stages between almost complete savagery amI

dawning civilization (Censlls 122-23)

Jt is important to note though that Ule distinction between civilized

1I1d Wild peoples is regarded in the census as relative and transitional

Wild peoplegt owed their barbarous state to the historical failure of

Spain to conquer them a condition that a more vigorous US regime

would remedy Indeed colonial accounts especially those of Worcesshy

ters are filled wiu) glovring reports regarding the wild men as ideal

colontal subjects Because they were free from the so-ca lled corrupting

inluence of Catholic Spain and lowland mestizo elites wiJd men were

seen to be far more receptive to the firm straight-talking tough love of

while men Hence could wild men be more easily disciplined through

such tasks a~ massive road constructions that would link the lowlands

with the mountains mining explorations for uS-owned companies

North American-style athletic competitions staged for visiting colonial

Jignitarics and the policing of the wild country from warring tribes to

iecure the safety of colonial hill stations and outposts Wild men were

ripe candidates for tutelage to the extent that they seemed most suscepshy

tible to suhjugation L

Conversely so-called civilized Filipinos were more recalcitrant even

resistant tothe caJI of benevolent assirrulation As insurgents fighting

ttl aSSert their socreignty after hwing defeated the Spanish army deshy

clared a republic framed a constitution organized a cabinet and conshy

vened a congress hy 1899 they were deemed dangerously ambItious and

inherently deceptive By their conduct in the war these Filipinos had

showed themselves to be wild and barbarous And when they chose to

collabMate ith the new colonial power they remained shifty opporshy

tunistic anJ often la0 Sparnsh colonization and the Catholic religion

33 VTlile Ltlle 32

had done no mort than imprint the n(ltivcs wilh the ouhvard ~igns of

civilization Inwardly lhey remaineJ inadequate to the task of civilizing themselves

O ne of the most common) cited character traits in colonia sources

that suggested he semicivilized state of Filipinos was their supposed

penchant for mimicry Incapahle of original thought they could excel

only In copying heir olonial and class superiors Sangers remarks on

the ability of FilipLOo soldiers to foUow orders under competent white

officers seemed tu ratify this belief The census repeatedly quotes passhy

sages from various colonial sources and travel accounts from the late

sixteenth centurr LO the early twentieth that retail this notion of native

mimicry Typical were the comments of Major Frank S Bourns army

surgeon and later chiefof the Bureau of Healtb

The race is quick to learn and has a fairl) good natural abilitv bu t such a class

will have 10 be educated before great responsibility can be placed in its

hands M) idea [is tha t] if IFilipinos were I associated with a sufllient

number ofAmericans who are honorable Jnd upright In their dealjngs there

would be a vel) strong tendency on their part 0 do as their colleagues do

They are natural imilators it is a racia l charactristk (Celsus 1505 see also

1494gt 497499500-502507-8)

As natural imitators Filipinos perforce depend on external stimuli

to shape their internal disposition Merely reactjvc ralher than reflecshy

uve they existed in immediatt and sensuous relationship to their surshy

roundings rather than as self-conscious agcnt1gt of their own transforshy

mation [f they had conullilted atrociotls crimes during the war

according to Governor-General Taft it was only because they were imshy

itating lhe actions of their mestizo leaJers (who in tum were imitating

the adions of their Spiwish masters) Taft like Bourns attributes thb

tendency of the Filipinos to hlindly follow their racial supltriors to the

fact that thq are an Oriental race Like all Orientals they are a

suspicious people but when their confidence I~ won they f(IUoW with a

trust that IS complde (Censlls 1530)

Mimicry on th~ part of thl nativegt is construed as a sign of inferiority

bomt out of raCial difference But precisely for this reason as Taft states

it is also an invitation to white supcrvislOn [The Filipinos] are merel)

in a state of Christian pupilage They are imitative They arc glad to be

educated glad 10 study some languages other than their own glad to

follow European and American ideals (erSUS 1530) Just a~ the un

tainted Slale orrhe wild peoples provided white mcn the opportunity to

display their manl) Jove the civilizeJ but Imitative and corrupted pcoshy

pks of a hybrid Oriental-Christian culture called for the studious amI

diligent care of whHc rutors and commanders

Wildness and civility were thus contingent and interchangeable

terms In mapping population differences the cenSill also projected

their future reconfiguration Such was p05sible because the religious

dilTerence between wild and civilized peoples was subsumed by larger

considerations of color and race Vhether they were Christian or nonshy

~hristian marked or unmarked by European influences prior to US

role both types were seen to display great homogeneity with regard to

their brown color live in tribes with regard to their sociolinguistic

orgarnzation and be Malays a species of Orientals with regard to their

race (Census 14U-12 242-65) Hence is the census able to imagine

Civilized and wild peoples existing side by side on the same map of the

Philippines (CelSUs 250- 51) While their separate locations are indishy

cated by the various colors of the map one gelS an acute sense of how

their borders were encompassed and flatlened out on the sanle homogeshy

neOliS surface by lhe surveying eye of the state Their identity as wild or

CIvilized peoples was relative to their place all the colornal geobody just

as their dtstimt charactenstics came into focu~ with reference to the

assimilative gaze ofwhlte benevolence The census not only mapped the

structure of racial difference it also established the privilege of a parshy

ticular race to determine the borders of those differences

This racial privilege was endowed with a genealogy In the census

section titled HisLOr) of the Population then Chief of the Bureau of

Non-Christian Tribes David Barrow~ writegt about the peoplmg of the

archipelago in lerms ofwaves ofmigrations of diTerent races from the

outside [n doing so he reiterates the speculations of other colonial

accounts regarding the prehi5tory of the Philippines-speculations that

since the archeological advances of the 1960s have been definitively

discredited My llltcrest III pointing out the censuss usc of the wave

migralion theory has les~ to do with disproving its accuracy than with

showing how its currency in official accounts grew out of the colonial

concern with racializing Philippine history

35 Wile 101lt1

~

34

The original inhabitants of the islands were supposedly the Negntos

(a Spanish term that literally mean little Negroes) or Aetas aborigishy

nal black dwufs whose origins according to Barrows remain shroud~d

in mystery Wilh ilieir shorter stature dark skin woolly hair nomadic for~st existence and austere material culture they seemed to Barrows

and other writers from lhe United States to be so racially distinct as to be

historically removed from the rest of the populalion They probably

approach as nearly to the conception of primitive man as any people

thus far dlscovered Barrows oates The abonginal Negritos were then said to have succumbed to a succession of more cullurally sophisticated

and physic-ally better endowed Malays from the south Arrivmg til large

boats iliey conquered the islands pushing the aboriginal populations

into the forests while occasionally intermarrying witb tbem Later mImiddot

gratory waves brought even stronger Malays some in possession of an Islamic faith acquired from Arabs driving the older Malays into the

mountains The spread of Muslim Malays however was checked by th

arrival of the Catholic Spaniards m the sixteenth century marking

the break between the prehistoric and properly historic epochs in the

Philippines The Spanish conquest also led to an influx of a Chinese

element into the population as radelS settled and intenllarried with

the Malays giving rlse to a small but economically afld socially signifishy

cant mestizo population (CensLls t411-17 454 532V~

This narrative or the peopling of the archipelago imagines the Philipshy

pines to haw been a tabula ralgt settled by gtUCCCSSlve waves ofcolonizers AI such the racial and tribal divenily of the population can be exshy

platned in temporal terms as the inevitable retreat of darker-skinned

more savage inhabitants in the face of advancing groupgt of lightershy

skinned more civilized and physically superior conquerors Indeed the

epochal break between tbe prehistoric to the properly historkal era

occurs only with the arrival of the Spaniards Racial differences result then from a long history of colonization (ulnunating presumdbly in

the arrival of the strongest m05t progresSIVe and lightc-st-skinned l0111shynuer to date wbites from the United States TIle ldfet of racializing

both the SOCIal structure and cultural history of the Philippines is to

position the population in a derivative relatiomhip to the outside It is as if tilt counlry was naturally destined for conquest just as the UniteJ

States was maniJeslly destined LO colonize It The historical recountrng

3(gt

of the population like its ~tatistical accounting renders aloma subshy

Jects visible from a transcendent posthi~toric vantage poim one tlCshy

cupild hy what we might designate as the white gaze Spatialiy it is a

gaze that dreams of surveying and cataloging other races while remainshy

ing unmarked and unseen itself temporally iL IS that which sees the

receding past of nonwhiLe others from the perspective of its own irreshy

sistible fulure l3

The privllcged poise of seeing a regulated and well-pOliced future

already prefigured in the beterogen~ous and disorderly past comes

acroSS WJth special clarity in the photographs of Filipinos that appear in the census report Set off from the ttxtual and statistical sectiolls of the

census the photographs are arranged to form an albwn of colonial

subJectivities Typical examples of wild and civilized peoples are feashy

tured in che photographS in the first volume along with pictures of

native enumerators and their local supervisors Dressed in their tribal

attire for the cameras lens images of colonial bodies are wrenched from

their historical and social contexts In tlleir frozen slate they suggest

the appearance of specimens undergoing different stages of tutelage

At the lowest egt1Teme the scantily clad Negritos hunched over the

ground with tangled hair and minstTel -like grim are made to appear

farthest removed from the civilizing touch of colonial rule (6g 3)

Head-hunling Igorots those putative descendants of the first wave of

Malay conquerors along with Muslim Malays appear more erect even

regal decked out in their tribal ornaments signifying their more adshy

vanced statt (figs J and 5) Closest to civilization are the Western-clad

census workers Set againsl ] background of Americcul flags their apshy

pearance suggests weD-disciplined bodies while the portraits of local

supervisors identified by name and area of responsibility produce uushyages of bourgeois respectability aSSimilated into the state machinery

(figs 6 and 7)

Within the context of the censuss raciali7jng frame such photoshy

graphs constitute a visual complement to the statistical tables a distinct

but related way of seeing native subjects as objects of knowledge and

reform Where statistical tabulations abstract native identities into laceshy

less numbers tle photographs give a kind of composite face to the

amplatistics Shadowed by the n()tion of typicality-which I take to be the

reductIOn of cultuml differences mto an ordered range ofv-ariaLions and

37 While Love

extent to which US colonial rulc like its Spanish rndecessor was

cOllStantly comrromise1 b) forces and ~vents it could not control

much I~ss comprehend The very agents oftht slate were often dIvided

in their personal loyalties and ideologicaJ indinations LS milttary and

civilian officials for example were clearly at odds over th~ appropriate

techl1lqutS of conquest and colonization owing to their varying apshy

praisals of Filipino capacities just as the colomal government was subshy

iect to the vagaries of policy shifts among elected officiab an the metshy

ropole Similarly differences existed among Filipino collaborators in

terms of their earlier involvement wiLh the revolution as well as their

personal and political tics with colonial patrons Collaboration was

fraught with disagreements over legislation taxation budgets and rashy

dally tinged debates regarding Filipino fitness for self-rule Equally sIgshy

nificant class conflicts pitted colonial authorities US and Pilipino

elites alike against peasant and workers groups at times erupting into

local revolts that were brutally suppressed I Nonetheless an examinashy

tion of the rhetoric of colonial rule suggests the existence of a dominant

desire informing the state that of creating a continuum between an

ideology of benevolence disciplinary practices and networks of supershy

vision-in short a desire to consolidate the relay between knowledge

and power My interest here lies in inquiring about the formation of this

colomal desire and the limits to its institutionalization

In the earJy period of US rule Olle of the most instructive docushy

ments of Ule colonial wish to establish total and continuous supervision

for the sake of tutelage was the four-volume Q1l5US of the Philippine

Islands begun in 1903 and published In 190slft In what follows I want to

consider the vanou~ ways in which the ccnus functionetl as an apparashy

tus for producing a colonial order coextensive with the represrotalion

of iu subjec~ It is important to stress however that the censuss sahshy

cnce as a discursive practice cm best be understood within the larger

context of the Filipino-American War A such Tattempt in the latter

part of this chapter to link the census with one of the most popular

forms of nationalist expressions among Filipinos during this period

vernacular plays whose performances were deemed seditious and ulshy

timately banned by the colonial regime

Historically coincident With the Laking of the colonial census perforshy

mances of the nationalist dramas between 1899- 1905 sought 10 contesl

thl mcan~ with which to delineate and ltluthorizl thl differene between

Filirino arid North American-and as r ~hllI suggest between men and

umen-ut a timc of catastrophic changes when a US coloniaJ ~tatl

Va~ yet to be stablllzcd amid the ruingt of Spanish imperial hegemony

and the colJective memory of fiJ ipino revolutionary victory over Spain

Seen in their historical conjuncture both the census and plays were

struggles over the representation of the Philippincs gTowing out of the

violence ofnationalist revolution and imperialist intervtntion

SUrlqillg SlIbjects Census reports are curious texts They contam no

single author for standing behind them is not a person but a state

apparatus made up or a veritable army of enumerators derks and

statislicians managed by a hierarchy of supervisors and directors It is

not therefore the case that a census has no author but that the bureaushy

wllic nature of its writing renders its authorship and authority disshy

persed lt1nd anonymous Consequently whi le the workings and results

of cenSllS reports a re never completely visible to an indiVid ual censuses

can claim to ~ee everything that can be individuated that is coun Led

tabulated and classified No single reader can exhaust the entirety of a

census report Just as no single reading can comprehend its meaning

insotlf as its myriad tabJes and graphs of statistical data escape total

recall Compiled in a mechanical fashion census reports exceed narrashy

tive synopsis The power-that is to say the persuasiveness-of a census

to conq what appears to be an objective representation of U1C world

derives in part frol11 its remarkable capacity to picture in quantitative

terms the tot11iLy of the worlds multiplicity Thus Lhe value of census

reports tu the colonial (and to any modern) state they represent the

states abilitmiddot to represent and so govern itself In enumerating and

classifying the resources and population of the state censuses render

visible the entire field of colonial intervention l -

As the first Philippine census under US rule the 1905 report was

conceiwd as hoth a confirmation of and means for consolidating the

paClficatioll of the archipelago The Congressional Act of 1902 made

the cessation of the insurrection a precondition for conducting the

census The creation of a Census bureau under the direction of General

Joseph P Sanger (who had supervised earlier census reports for Puerto

Rico and Cub ) was a way of officially asserting that the war was over It

25 White LIlIC

---shy

24

------

was left to Ihe victor to make an inventory of it~ ncw possessions One reason for doing so was 10 sct the conditions for holding elections

within two years of the ccnsuss publicatitm for Filipino representative)

to the coJoniallegisJature to be known as thc Philippine ssembly Such

a legislature was designed to consolidate the practice l1r Filipino LoUabshy

oration thereby rendering more effiClcnt and cost effective the running

of the colomal state while containing all remaining nationalist chalshy

lenges to US hegemony CollaboratlOn was seen 35 an mdex of lhe

success of tutelage the measure of the Filipinos recognitio11 of their

subordination to and desire for white authority The taking of the censhy

sus Governor-General Taft wrote will therefore [arm a test of the

capacity of the Filipinos to discharge a most important function of

government The ccnSt15 is to be taken solely for the benefit of the

Filipino people [and I they should lend their unarumot15 support to

the successful taking of the census (Cemus 120

Call ing for Filipino collaboration both as local supervisors and enushy

merators the cenSllS would serve as cl kind of test of Filipinos ability LO

perform a task Discipline was caUed for by the census that was why it could serve both the practical and ideological route to self-government

in the future As an instrument of white love it was meant to give

Filipi nos an opportunity to perform before the solicitous gaze of US

tutors The census would be an exercise as it were in character building

where the capacity to count was coterminous with the ability to b~

accountable to a colonial hierarchy Not only would the census provide

the empirical grounds for shapmg the direction of coloniallegislallon

and facilltating the mflux ofUS (middotapital investments in the archIpelago

as with the colonial legislature i1 would also fundlon as a stage on whkh

Filipinos were Lo be represented as wedl as represent themselves as subshy

jects ora colonial order disciplined agents actively assuming their role in

their own subjugation and maluration

The US project of a centrally organized and nationally coordinated

ctnsus superseded thal of the Spanish statemiddots For its census data the

Spanish colonial regime had relied mainly on thl irreguJar and farshy

from -comprehensive records kepl by parish priests on their locaillock

[n addition Spanish efforts at more systematic cenSWi gathering met

with enormous resistance from the people inasmuch as they were

geared primarily for the levIng of taxe5 and conscription of labor

(Cmsus 113) Th~ VS census oI ht Philippines by contrast was

supposed tn elevate rather than exploit the popuJacc The groundwork

had been plcpared by a number of US survcys between June 1898 and

1903 In the face of ignorance about the arch ipdlg11 in lhe United Stales

such surveys were charged with collecting facts on the Philippines as

well as encouraging ~ollaboralion from natjve informltlnts The most

important of these were the Philippine Commisslom of 1899 and 1900

presided over by acadcnuc experts and the Ethnological Surveys carshy

ried out by such anthropologists ~ David Barrows Dean C Worcester

and Albert Jenks between 1900 and 1905 These surveys produced volushy

minous reports on lhe conditions of lhe counlry generously illusshy

trated with photographs of native scenes and types As Paul Kramer has

shown the American projecl ofamassing what was considered scientific

knowledge was dependent not only on progressivist notions ofexpertise

but also on an already existing body ofSpanish colonial writings on the

PhilippinlS Even more SIgnificant these surveys would not have been

pOSSIble without the active collaboration of natives especially local

clites as indispensable sources of support and information Published

and republished cited widely in newspapers congressional testimonies

s(hoolbook~ and scholarly studies such surveys estabhshed the basis

for a lund of colonial common sense in the interest of countering revoshylutionary expectations 19

The Census Bureau followed lXislmg practice laymg great stress on

seeking Filipino cooperation in order to neutralize whatever local reshy

sistmccs still existed in the country Conducting the census then was of

il piece with US altempts at co-opting Filipinos of aJJ classes thereby

consolidalmg a counterrevolutionary nationalism that had emerged as

early as 1898~n WIth appollltments LO the colonial judiciary beginning in

1899 the establilhment of the Philippine Scouts (1901) and the election

by limited Suffrage of municipal officials (1905) and later representashy

tives (0 Ule Philippine Assembly (19deg7) Filipinos were drawn into a patshy

tern of collaboration with the colomal state) There were practical and

pcdagogiLaJ reasons for FilipinOS particularly members of the provinshy

cial and municipal clites to be t15ed as census perSOnllcl To do so was as

Censw Chief GeneraJ Sanger pu t it to identify them with the censt15

and to test their capacity to pcrform duties never undertaken before

and which in thiS country are supposed to require at least average

27 lV1lite UJIl 16

----intelligence (CCIlSUs 113 ) AJrogether 7502 Filipinos were employed

40 of whom were women Like the surrendering imurgentlllcal supershy

visors and enumerators were required to take an oath of aUegiance to

the government of the United States they also received instructions on

how to manage the canvassing of their districts To supplement the

ranks of US and Filipino supervisors the Census Bureau pressed into

service all provincial and municipal officials as well as US army officers

and the Philippine Constabulary (Census 116 18-1936)

he gathering of census data was an enormous undertakmg involvshy

ing the mobilization of a vast army of clerks in the colonial capital

and the deployment of enumerators across as much of the archipelago

as possible Although President flleodore Roosevelt had declared the

Filipino-American War officiaUy at an end by July 1902 guerrilla reshy

sistance continued in many parts of the country In provinces such as

Albay 50rsogon Bulacan and Rizal census takers were challenged by the guerrllJas now referred to under the criminal sign of ladrolles or

bandits by the colonial government TIe enumeration of the populashy

tion llecesitated their pacification Constabulary forces oflen intershy

vened to suppress the guerrillas and secure the areas to be canvassed In

parts o f Mindanao a show of force by the colonial army was usually

required to gain access to sources of local information while in other

parts of the country local elites were pressed into providing inforshy

mation on and arranging for the surrender of local ladrones (CtIISLlS

122-2j)

hl census thus illustrates the indispcn~ilble link htwcen the policshy

ing of colonial horders and annexation of local populations into the

space of colonial knowledge Census workers white and native alike

IahoreJ under the watchful eyes of a hierarchy of supervisors even as

they kept their eyes out for alleged insurgents They sunreyed the popushy

lacl and were themselves surveyed by the state In this sense the censu~

functioneJ as a machine for totalizing obseryatJon Through the collecshy

tion and classification of statistical data it kept watch over the pOpU]lshy

tion mapping thdr social location and transcribing them as disLfcte

objects ofinformation and re-formution And through the bureaucratishy

7-3tion ur supervisiolJ undenvrilten by the organized deployment of

violence the emus differentially disciplined those who ma~naged IS

well as Iholoe who were tnrgeted by its operations

In order to better understand tbe manner in which superviSion proshy

motes lSsimiJalion-that is how it lay~ the circuits that run between

benevolence and iliscipUne-I want to look in more detail at the mechashy

nisms for gathering census data Two forms were utilized a schedule for

enumerating and c1lSsifying people in a given area and a keyboarded

punch card for identifying each individual in relation to a set of categoshy

ries indicated IJ1 the schedule One served as an index [or the olher

Where the schedule sheets were designed to divide and distrib ute a

persons identity into a series of delimited categories the punch cards

were meant to reconstitute him or her as the referent of a speo1ic set of

signs ( CtIIStlS 29-14)

The schedule sheet was written in Spanish for the sake of Filipino

enumerators unfamiliar with Engllsb A facsimile of the schedule in

English translation appears in the census report (fig 1) The schedule

consists of a series of vertically arranged categories such as Location

Name Relationship Personal Description Race Age Sex

Mantal Status Ocmpation and so fonll for the supposedly civiUzed

(that is Christian) population and a simpler more abbreviated series

[or those deemed wild (that is non-Christian) Enumerated on the

sheer one can imagine ones existence flattened and neatly spread out as

a set of numbers across a table It is as if becoming a subject of the

colonial state entailed taking on a different kiml of particularity Plotted

on a grid ones identity becomes sheer surface and extension abstracted

from any historical specificity Put differently the census schedule proshy

jctts a skewed profile of colonial society by divorcing idenLJty from

biography Where biography entails th articulation of the subject as an

agent of its own history the schedule posillons its subjects as a series of

aggregates locatable on a table of isolated and equivalent values

lhrough the schedule the census sought to transcribe the person

into a scriClgt ofnumbers grafted onto a closed set of categories In tabushy

lating the results of 1he schedule however the census also attempted to

retmstitule the subject as an individuated and therefore retrievable

item within the vast repositones of the colonial archive This was done

through what amounted to a massive filing system in the form of keyshy

bllardeu punch card~ designed to labulate populallon tables-similar to

the bullards used in 1lt)00 for the twelfth US census Each card contamed

an arrar of numbers and letters that corregt-ponded to the data on the

29 f1Jit 100 t 28

DIAGUW OF KCV80AAD PUNCH clAO

0- otw 1Ii~nUv rgth _IA~ a11

~middot ~I bullbull I~L-rw

middotmiddot-Imiddot~ ~bull tJ~ ~

Il -~

middotmiddot 1-pound1r1l~1 H~ SIFl~~shy~Aj

t~ LLmiddot r C-

i I I It lJ 11 It Ii

tl 111

51

I

~ I

I~ to

1_1 I~una

1shy

IIvPMipp JIluIuJ fllb Uilv fAt-ltI-ta ct(lllt(rIolUI PIIilllpfTV LtlfUIIim llJiU

rJ~ Wb1k tI ~ ii_nltb l-bILt NIua_J

t(TfWTTU Ng - -h~ulJI dam cIC1nlI P~In(rllshy

~a=r~ l1FtI ~ - Jodldal I1tan1amp_ ~bmfw-4IrO-I_ __ ~~Q~t

Fig I SLhedule ~hd (CLISltS of tJrl Jitilippillc Islands 1903)

schedule sheets tn addition a numbering system tied the cardgt 10 the

nJme of a specific person and the area where she or he was counted

(fig 2) By punching the appropriate holes-say B for blallco (whIte)

lI fOT morello (brown) A for amariJfo (yellow) V for varon

(male) H [or hembra (female) etc-the canis fun~lIoned lO index a

range of information regarding an inwnduals race sex age OCCUP

_w ~ ~l~ _ 11 _middot1 ~ ~ ~ ~bull 8 j ~ bull bull amp 3r 1 0 al ~u lit bull ~ ~

bull J bull rrw ~ 0 0 0 a a 0 I0 bull 4 bull bull bull J bull bull ~ 0 X ltlt4

bull bull bull bull -- lO eo 1 bull tD 10 I bull r--~ la 0 U CDC ~~ -1- ~

a____ It 0 10 j bull 7 to 10 i 1 bull ~ at 0 ID ~ _ _e J _

~ bull II bull 10 110 bull raquo bull bull )t eo I 70 7) GO Is raquo X purI 1---shy

1 II bull 0 10 i bull eG 0 II 00 7 II ~ bull bull bull 10 a 011 ampIII 1 O 0 II 0 i 0 1 7 e 1_ A

J i ~ LOO 1 ft c XI TJi I I 4 i 1 4J 1J1r ~ Ta e

middot Fa rY- bull 1_ Tn 1 CII 7r au D f

a u oa f1D m I 1 0 a z D

bull u 10 0 IX bull i i D 01 WOE I I L shy

XI tJo VIZ 100oIJOXh

o_~~ i1 ~E~11~~~-I~1 I I~~middot ~~- fI~~I -~ I Fig 2 Keyboard pWlCh card (OmSll~ vf Ille Philippie Islands 1903)

tion and so on By means of the gang punched holes and numbers

declared the census anyone of the approximately 7000000 cards

corresponding to the population of the Philippines could be identified

and the correctness of the punching verified (Census 213 )

The cards moved in the opposite but complementary direction to the

cheltlul~ ciung an inclividual as a possessor of a range of qualities

rather tban a collection of numbers atlached to J set of categories The

schedule itemized 311 indiVIduals characteristics whereas the card indishy

vidulhzed the items on the schedule In this sense the census worked

like an 3c(hive cross-referencing characters with characteristics On the

one hand it attempted to constitute a population by enumerating the

totality of heterogeneous peoples and recording them onto a grid of

reified categories On the other hand the census sougbt to affix to each

member of the population an essentialized reguJated amI therefore

retrievable identity As Benewct Anderson has remarked The fiction

of the censw is that everyone is in il and that everyone has one and only

one c(lremely clear place~

The census could seTVe as an infinitely eXpandabk repository for

accumulating all that could be quantified and empirically known in the

Colony Lo the extent thai it provided the grammar for classifying its

objects of knowledge as subjects of a colonial order As with tht practice

31 V1ife LoFt

-

30

of enumtratioll this grammar of dassificalion WlS far [rom disinttrshy

tsted Rather it wa~ (rucial in imaging thc terms of colonial society as ltbove all a racial hierarchy

Recoriil1g Race Vhlte loYlt tOr little brown brothers as Taft reterred

to Filipinos was predicated on white supremacy enforced through pracshy

tices of diSCipline and maintained by a network ofsupervision General

Sanger in hh introduction to the census Of1903 remarked how fllJpwos

would in the course of time become good citizens in that some of tllem

had already proved themselves to be excellent soldiers capable of folshy

lowing the orders of their white officers Similarly census workers under

white supervision had shown the natives potential for performing comshy

plex state functions With appropriate training there was no relson why

the rest of the population could not become a disciplined people As

Sanger contends

Under the guidance of a free just and generous government the eswbhshmiddot

ment of more rapid and frequent means or communicalion whereby they

wulcl be brought into more frequent contact wilh each other and with the

general spread of education t11e tribal dlstinctiom which now exist wi ll

gradually disappear and the Filipino wili hecome a numerous aod homogeshy

neous EnglIsh-speaking race cceeding in intelligence and capacity all other

eo pIes of the tropics (Census 140)

Encapsulating the benevolent-disciplInary trajectory of colonial polshy

iC) in general and the census in particular Sangcr reiterllCS the posshy

sibility indeed the uesirabililr of molding colonial gtubJccts into a single

people here conceived of 30 a homogeneous English-speaking race

Predictably homogenization (10 only come afta a process or tutelage

one aimed at superseding if not suppressing existing tribal distincshy

tions To do ~o however the general owlincs of those distinctions need

tt) be surveyed and accounted ror In order to transform the native races

into a people their differences had to be produced and reassemhled

The population tables of the censu~ divide the inhabitants of the

Philippines into roughly twenty-five linguistic groups distinguishing at

least five skin colors ranging from whilC to black and where releshy

vant types of dlilenshlp and Iunions oC birth These seeminglv

incommensurable gfClupings were then reduced into two broad categoshy

rie~ civilized and wild Their Jiffercnccs initially had iClgts to do with

thodr material nJlture than their religious characteristics Those labeled

civilized were seen to adhere La a common Christian Lulture whIle

lhost marktd wild w~re either Musltms or subscribed to animi5m both

dearly outside the Christian order The former comprising the majority

)f the ltlrchipclagos illhabitant~ lIweu their civilized state the census

assumed to the effects of Spanisb ru The latter-whether pagan

headhunters in the mountamgt nomadic forest dwellers or Muslim

peoplts in Ule south-had steadfastly resisted Spanish conquest and

were thought to live in stages between almost complete savagery amI

dawning civilization (Censlls 122-23)

Jt is important to note though that Ule distinction between civilized

1I1d Wild peoples is regarded in the census as relative and transitional

Wild peoplegt owed their barbarous state to the historical failure of

Spain to conquer them a condition that a more vigorous US regime

would remedy Indeed colonial accounts especially those of Worcesshy

ters are filled wiu) glovring reports regarding the wild men as ideal

colontal subjects Because they were free from the so-ca lled corrupting

inluence of Catholic Spain and lowland mestizo elites wiJd men were

seen to be far more receptive to the firm straight-talking tough love of

while men Hence could wild men be more easily disciplined through

such tasks a~ massive road constructions that would link the lowlands

with the mountains mining explorations for uS-owned companies

North American-style athletic competitions staged for visiting colonial

Jignitarics and the policing of the wild country from warring tribes to

iecure the safety of colonial hill stations and outposts Wild men were

ripe candidates for tutelage to the extent that they seemed most suscepshy

tible to suhjugation L

Conversely so-called civilized Filipinos were more recalcitrant even

resistant tothe caJI of benevolent assirrulation As insurgents fighting

ttl aSSert their socreignty after hwing defeated the Spanish army deshy

clared a republic framed a constitution organized a cabinet and conshy

vened a congress hy 1899 they were deemed dangerously ambItious and

inherently deceptive By their conduct in the war these Filipinos had

showed themselves to be wild and barbarous And when they chose to

collabMate ith the new colonial power they remained shifty opporshy

tunistic anJ often la0 Sparnsh colonization and the Catholic religion

33 VTlile Ltlle 32

had done no mort than imprint the n(ltivcs wilh the ouhvard ~igns of

civilization Inwardly lhey remaineJ inadequate to the task of civilizing themselves

O ne of the most common) cited character traits in colonia sources

that suggested he semicivilized state of Filipinos was their supposed

penchant for mimicry Incapahle of original thought they could excel

only In copying heir olonial and class superiors Sangers remarks on

the ability of FilipLOo soldiers to foUow orders under competent white

officers seemed tu ratify this belief The census repeatedly quotes passhy

sages from various colonial sources and travel accounts from the late

sixteenth centurr LO the early twentieth that retail this notion of native

mimicry Typical were the comments of Major Frank S Bourns army

surgeon and later chiefof the Bureau of Healtb

The race is quick to learn and has a fairl) good natural abilitv bu t such a class

will have 10 be educated before great responsibility can be placed in its

hands M) idea [is tha t] if IFilipinos were I associated with a sufllient

number ofAmericans who are honorable Jnd upright In their dealjngs there

would be a vel) strong tendency on their part 0 do as their colleagues do

They are natural imilators it is a racia l charactristk (Celsus 1505 see also

1494gt 497499500-502507-8)

As natural imitators Filipinos perforce depend on external stimuli

to shape their internal disposition Merely reactjvc ralher than reflecshy

uve they existed in immediatt and sensuous relationship to their surshy

roundings rather than as self-conscious agcnt1gt of their own transforshy

mation [f they had conullilted atrociotls crimes during the war

according to Governor-General Taft it was only because they were imshy

itating lhe actions of their mestizo leaJers (who in tum were imitating

the adions of their Spiwish masters) Taft like Bourns attributes thb

tendency of the Filipinos to hlindly follow their racial supltriors to the

fact that thq are an Oriental race Like all Orientals they are a

suspicious people but when their confidence I~ won they f(IUoW with a

trust that IS complde (Censlls 1530)

Mimicry on th~ part of thl nativegt is construed as a sign of inferiority

bomt out of raCial difference But precisely for this reason as Taft states

it is also an invitation to white supcrvislOn [The Filipinos] are merel)

in a state of Christian pupilage They are imitative They arc glad to be

educated glad 10 study some languages other than their own glad to

follow European and American ideals (erSUS 1530) Just a~ the un

tainted Slale orrhe wild peoples provided white mcn the opportunity to

display their manl) Jove the civilizeJ but Imitative and corrupted pcoshy

pks of a hybrid Oriental-Christian culture called for the studious amI

diligent care of whHc rutors and commanders

Wildness and civility were thus contingent and interchangeable

terms In mapping population differences the cenSill also projected

their future reconfiguration Such was p05sible because the religious

dilTerence between wild and civilized peoples was subsumed by larger

considerations of color and race Vhether they were Christian or nonshy

~hristian marked or unmarked by European influences prior to US

role both types were seen to display great homogeneity with regard to

their brown color live in tribes with regard to their sociolinguistic

orgarnzation and be Malays a species of Orientals with regard to their

race (Census 14U-12 242-65) Hence is the census able to imagine

Civilized and wild peoples existing side by side on the same map of the

Philippines (CelSUs 250- 51) While their separate locations are indishy

cated by the various colors of the map one gelS an acute sense of how

their borders were encompassed and flatlened out on the sanle homogeshy

neOliS surface by lhe surveying eye of the state Their identity as wild or

CIvilized peoples was relative to their place all the colornal geobody just

as their dtstimt charactenstics came into focu~ with reference to the

assimilative gaze ofwhlte benevolence The census not only mapped the

structure of racial difference it also established the privilege of a parshy

ticular race to determine the borders of those differences

This racial privilege was endowed with a genealogy In the census

section titled HisLOr) of the Population then Chief of the Bureau of

Non-Christian Tribes David Barrow~ writegt about the peoplmg of the

archipelago in lerms ofwaves ofmigrations of diTerent races from the

outside [n doing so he reiterates the speculations of other colonial

accounts regarding the prehi5tory of the Philippines-speculations that

since the archeological advances of the 1960s have been definitively

discredited My llltcrest III pointing out the censuss usc of the wave

migralion theory has les~ to do with disproving its accuracy than with

showing how its currency in official accounts grew out of the colonial

concern with racializing Philippine history

35 Wile 101lt1

~

34

The original inhabitants of the islands were supposedly the Negntos

(a Spanish term that literally mean little Negroes) or Aetas aborigishy

nal black dwufs whose origins according to Barrows remain shroud~d

in mystery Wilh ilieir shorter stature dark skin woolly hair nomadic for~st existence and austere material culture they seemed to Barrows

and other writers from lhe United States to be so racially distinct as to be

historically removed from the rest of the populalion They probably

approach as nearly to the conception of primitive man as any people

thus far dlscovered Barrows oates The abonginal Negritos were then said to have succumbed to a succession of more cullurally sophisticated

and physic-ally better endowed Malays from the south Arrivmg til large

boats iliey conquered the islands pushing the aboriginal populations

into the forests while occasionally intermarrying witb tbem Later mImiddot

gratory waves brought even stronger Malays some in possession of an Islamic faith acquired from Arabs driving the older Malays into the

mountains The spread of Muslim Malays however was checked by th

arrival of the Catholic Spaniards m the sixteenth century marking

the break between the prehistoric and properly historic epochs in the

Philippines The Spanish conquest also led to an influx of a Chinese

element into the population as radelS settled and intenllarried with

the Malays giving rlse to a small but economically afld socially signifishy

cant mestizo population (CensLls t411-17 454 532V~

This narrative or the peopling of the archipelago imagines the Philipshy

pines to haw been a tabula ralgt settled by gtUCCCSSlve waves ofcolonizers AI such the racial and tribal divenily of the population can be exshy

platned in temporal terms as the inevitable retreat of darker-skinned

more savage inhabitants in the face of advancing groupgt of lightershy

skinned more civilized and physically superior conquerors Indeed the

epochal break between tbe prehistoric to the properly historkal era

occurs only with the arrival of the Spaniards Racial differences result then from a long history of colonization (ulnunating presumdbly in

the arrival of the strongest m05t progresSIVe and lightc-st-skinned l0111shynuer to date wbites from the United States TIle ldfet of racializing

both the SOCIal structure and cultural history of the Philippines is to

position the population in a derivative relatiomhip to the outside It is as if tilt counlry was naturally destined for conquest just as the UniteJ

States was maniJeslly destined LO colonize It The historical recountrng

3(gt

of the population like its ~tatistical accounting renders aloma subshy

Jects visible from a transcendent posthi~toric vantage poim one tlCshy

cupild hy what we might designate as the white gaze Spatialiy it is a

gaze that dreams of surveying and cataloging other races while remainshy

ing unmarked and unseen itself temporally iL IS that which sees the

receding past of nonwhiLe others from the perspective of its own irreshy

sistible fulure l3

The privllcged poise of seeing a regulated and well-pOliced future

already prefigured in the beterogen~ous and disorderly past comes

acroSS WJth special clarity in the photographs of Filipinos that appear in the census report Set off from the ttxtual and statistical sectiolls of the

census the photographs are arranged to form an albwn of colonial

subJectivities Typical examples of wild and civilized peoples are feashy

tured in che photographS in the first volume along with pictures of

native enumerators and their local supervisors Dressed in their tribal

attire for the cameras lens images of colonial bodies are wrenched from

their historical and social contexts In tlleir frozen slate they suggest

the appearance of specimens undergoing different stages of tutelage

At the lowest egt1Teme the scantily clad Negritos hunched over the

ground with tangled hair and minstTel -like grim are made to appear

farthest removed from the civilizing touch of colonial rule (6g 3)

Head-hunling Igorots those putative descendants of the first wave of

Malay conquerors along with Muslim Malays appear more erect even

regal decked out in their tribal ornaments signifying their more adshy

vanced statt (figs J and 5) Closest to civilization are the Western-clad

census workers Set againsl ] background of Americcul flags their apshy

pearance suggests weD-disciplined bodies while the portraits of local

supervisors identified by name and area of responsibility produce uushyages of bourgeois respectability aSSimilated into the state machinery

(figs 6 and 7)

Within the context of the censuss raciali7jng frame such photoshy

graphs constitute a visual complement to the statistical tables a distinct

but related way of seeing native subjects as objects of knowledge and

reform Where statistical tabulations abstract native identities into laceshy

less numbers tle photographs give a kind of composite face to the

amplatistics Shadowed by the n()tion of typicality-which I take to be the

reductIOn of cultuml differences mto an ordered range ofv-ariaLions and

37 While Love

------

was left to Ihe victor to make an inventory of it~ ncw possessions One reason for doing so was 10 sct the conditions for holding elections

within two years of the ccnsuss publicatitm for Filipino representative)

to the coJoniallegisJature to be known as thc Philippine ssembly Such

a legislature was designed to consolidate the practice l1r Filipino LoUabshy

oration thereby rendering more effiClcnt and cost effective the running

of the colomal state while containing all remaining nationalist chalshy

lenges to US hegemony CollaboratlOn was seen 35 an mdex of lhe

success of tutelage the measure of the Filipinos recognitio11 of their

subordination to and desire for white authority The taking of the censhy

sus Governor-General Taft wrote will therefore [arm a test of the

capacity of the Filipinos to discharge a most important function of

government The ccnSt15 is to be taken solely for the benefit of the

Filipino people [and I they should lend their unarumot15 support to

the successful taking of the census (Cemus 120

Call ing for Filipino collaboration both as local supervisors and enushy

merators the cenSllS would serve as cl kind of test of Filipinos ability LO

perform a task Discipline was caUed for by the census that was why it could serve both the practical and ideological route to self-government

in the future As an instrument of white love it was meant to give

Filipi nos an opportunity to perform before the solicitous gaze of US

tutors The census would be an exercise as it were in character building

where the capacity to count was coterminous with the ability to b~

accountable to a colonial hierarchy Not only would the census provide

the empirical grounds for shapmg the direction of coloniallegislallon

and facilltating the mflux ofUS (middotapital investments in the archIpelago

as with the colonial legislature i1 would also fundlon as a stage on whkh

Filipinos were Lo be represented as wedl as represent themselves as subshy

jects ora colonial order disciplined agents actively assuming their role in

their own subjugation and maluration

The US project of a centrally organized and nationally coordinated

ctnsus superseded thal of the Spanish statemiddots For its census data the

Spanish colonial regime had relied mainly on thl irreguJar and farshy

from -comprehensive records kepl by parish priests on their locaillock

[n addition Spanish efforts at more systematic cenSWi gathering met

with enormous resistance from the people inasmuch as they were

geared primarily for the levIng of taxe5 and conscription of labor

(Cmsus 113) Th~ VS census oI ht Philippines by contrast was

supposed tn elevate rather than exploit the popuJacc The groundwork

had been plcpared by a number of US survcys between June 1898 and

1903 In the face of ignorance about the arch ipdlg11 in lhe United Stales

such surveys were charged with collecting facts on the Philippines as

well as encouraging ~ollaboralion from natjve informltlnts The most

important of these were the Philippine Commisslom of 1899 and 1900

presided over by acadcnuc experts and the Ethnological Surveys carshy

ried out by such anthropologists ~ David Barrows Dean C Worcester

and Albert Jenks between 1900 and 1905 These surveys produced volushy

minous reports on lhe conditions of lhe counlry generously illusshy

trated with photographs of native scenes and types As Paul Kramer has

shown the American projecl ofamassing what was considered scientific

knowledge was dependent not only on progressivist notions ofexpertise

but also on an already existing body ofSpanish colonial writings on the

PhilippinlS Even more SIgnificant these surveys would not have been

pOSSIble without the active collaboration of natives especially local

clites as indispensable sources of support and information Published

and republished cited widely in newspapers congressional testimonies

s(hoolbook~ and scholarly studies such surveys estabhshed the basis

for a lund of colonial common sense in the interest of countering revoshylutionary expectations 19

The Census Bureau followed lXislmg practice laymg great stress on

seeking Filipino cooperation in order to neutralize whatever local reshy

sistmccs still existed in the country Conducting the census then was of

il piece with US altempts at co-opting Filipinos of aJJ classes thereby

consolidalmg a counterrevolutionary nationalism that had emerged as

early as 1898~n WIth appollltments LO the colonial judiciary beginning in

1899 the establilhment of the Philippine Scouts (1901) and the election

by limited Suffrage of municipal officials (1905) and later representashy

tives (0 Ule Philippine Assembly (19deg7) Filipinos were drawn into a patshy

tern of collaboration with the colomal state) There were practical and

pcdagogiLaJ reasons for FilipinOS particularly members of the provinshy

cial and municipal clites to be t15ed as census perSOnllcl To do so was as

Censw Chief GeneraJ Sanger pu t it to identify them with the censt15

and to test their capacity to pcrform duties never undertaken before

and which in thiS country are supposed to require at least average

27 lV1lite UJIl 16

----intelligence (CCIlSUs 113 ) AJrogether 7502 Filipinos were employed

40 of whom were women Like the surrendering imurgentlllcal supershy

visors and enumerators were required to take an oath of aUegiance to

the government of the United States they also received instructions on

how to manage the canvassing of their districts To supplement the

ranks of US and Filipino supervisors the Census Bureau pressed into

service all provincial and municipal officials as well as US army officers

and the Philippine Constabulary (Census 116 18-1936)

he gathering of census data was an enormous undertakmg involvshy

ing the mobilization of a vast army of clerks in the colonial capital

and the deployment of enumerators across as much of the archipelago

as possible Although President flleodore Roosevelt had declared the

Filipino-American War officiaUy at an end by July 1902 guerrilla reshy

sistance continued in many parts of the country In provinces such as

Albay 50rsogon Bulacan and Rizal census takers were challenged by the guerrllJas now referred to under the criminal sign of ladrolles or

bandits by the colonial government TIe enumeration of the populashy

tion llecesitated their pacification Constabulary forces oflen intershy

vened to suppress the guerrillas and secure the areas to be canvassed In

parts o f Mindanao a show of force by the colonial army was usually

required to gain access to sources of local information while in other

parts of the country local elites were pressed into providing inforshy

mation on and arranging for the surrender of local ladrones (CtIISLlS

122-2j)

hl census thus illustrates the indispcn~ilble link htwcen the policshy

ing of colonial horders and annexation of local populations into the

space of colonial knowledge Census workers white and native alike

IahoreJ under the watchful eyes of a hierarchy of supervisors even as

they kept their eyes out for alleged insurgents They sunreyed the popushy

lacl and were themselves surveyed by the state In this sense the censu~

functioneJ as a machine for totalizing obseryatJon Through the collecshy

tion and classification of statistical data it kept watch over the pOpU]lshy

tion mapping thdr social location and transcribing them as disLfcte

objects ofinformation and re-formution And through the bureaucratishy

7-3tion ur supervisiolJ undenvrilten by the organized deployment of

violence the emus differentially disciplined those who ma~naged IS

well as Iholoe who were tnrgeted by its operations

In order to better understand tbe manner in which superviSion proshy

motes lSsimiJalion-that is how it lay~ the circuits that run between

benevolence and iliscipUne-I want to look in more detail at the mechashy

nisms for gathering census data Two forms were utilized a schedule for

enumerating and c1lSsifying people in a given area and a keyboarded

punch card for identifying each individual in relation to a set of categoshy

ries indicated IJ1 the schedule One served as an index [or the olher

Where the schedule sheets were designed to divide and distrib ute a

persons identity into a series of delimited categories the punch cards

were meant to reconstitute him or her as the referent of a speo1ic set of

signs ( CtIIStlS 29-14)

The schedule sheet was written in Spanish for the sake of Filipino

enumerators unfamiliar with Engllsb A facsimile of the schedule in

English translation appears in the census report (fig 1) The schedule

consists of a series of vertically arranged categories such as Location

Name Relationship Personal Description Race Age Sex

Mantal Status Ocmpation and so fonll for the supposedly civiUzed

(that is Christian) population and a simpler more abbreviated series

[or those deemed wild (that is non-Christian) Enumerated on the

sheer one can imagine ones existence flattened and neatly spread out as

a set of numbers across a table It is as if becoming a subject of the

colonial state entailed taking on a different kiml of particularity Plotted

on a grid ones identity becomes sheer surface and extension abstracted

from any historical specificity Put differently the census schedule proshy

jctts a skewed profile of colonial society by divorcing idenLJty from

biography Where biography entails th articulation of the subject as an

agent of its own history the schedule posillons its subjects as a series of

aggregates locatable on a table of isolated and equivalent values

lhrough the schedule the census sought to transcribe the person

into a scriClgt ofnumbers grafted onto a closed set of categories In tabushy

lating the results of 1he schedule however the census also attempted to

retmstitule the subject as an individuated and therefore retrievable

item within the vast repositones of the colonial archive This was done

through what amounted to a massive filing system in the form of keyshy

bllardeu punch card~ designed to labulate populallon tables-similar to

the bullards used in 1lt)00 for the twelfth US census Each card contamed

an arrar of numbers and letters that corregt-ponded to the data on the

29 f1Jit 100 t 28

DIAGUW OF KCV80AAD PUNCH clAO

0- otw 1Ii~nUv rgth _IA~ a11

~middot ~I bullbull I~L-rw

middotmiddot-Imiddot~ ~bull tJ~ ~

Il -~

middotmiddot 1-pound1r1l~1 H~ SIFl~~shy~Aj

t~ LLmiddot r C-

i I I It lJ 11 It Ii

tl 111

51

I

~ I

I~ to

1_1 I~una

1shy

IIvPMipp JIluIuJ fllb Uilv fAt-ltI-ta ct(lllt(rIolUI PIIilllpfTV LtlfUIIim llJiU

rJ~ Wb1k tI ~ ii_nltb l-bILt NIua_J

t(TfWTTU Ng - -h~ulJI dam cIC1nlI P~In(rllshy

~a=r~ l1FtI ~ - Jodldal I1tan1amp_ ~bmfw-4IrO-I_ __ ~~Q~t

Fig I SLhedule ~hd (CLISltS of tJrl Jitilippillc Islands 1903)

schedule sheets tn addition a numbering system tied the cardgt 10 the

nJme of a specific person and the area where she or he was counted

(fig 2) By punching the appropriate holes-say B for blallco (whIte)

lI fOT morello (brown) A for amariJfo (yellow) V for varon

(male) H [or hembra (female) etc-the canis fun~lIoned lO index a

range of information regarding an inwnduals race sex age OCCUP

_w ~ ~l~ _ 11 _middot1 ~ ~ ~ ~bull 8 j ~ bull bull amp 3r 1 0 al ~u lit bull ~ ~

bull J bull rrw ~ 0 0 0 a a 0 I0 bull 4 bull bull bull J bull bull ~ 0 X ltlt4

bull bull bull bull -- lO eo 1 bull tD 10 I bull r--~ la 0 U CDC ~~ -1- ~

a____ It 0 10 j bull 7 to 10 i 1 bull ~ at 0 ID ~ _ _e J _

~ bull II bull 10 110 bull raquo bull bull )t eo I 70 7) GO Is raquo X purI 1---shy

1 II bull 0 10 i bull eG 0 II 00 7 II ~ bull bull bull 10 a 011 ampIII 1 O 0 II 0 i 0 1 7 e 1_ A

J i ~ LOO 1 ft c XI TJi I I 4 i 1 4J 1J1r ~ Ta e

middot Fa rY- bull 1_ Tn 1 CII 7r au D f

a u oa f1D m I 1 0 a z D

bull u 10 0 IX bull i i D 01 WOE I I L shy

XI tJo VIZ 100oIJOXh

o_~~ i1 ~E~11~~~-I~1 I I~~middot ~~- fI~~I -~ I Fig 2 Keyboard pWlCh card (OmSll~ vf Ille Philippie Islands 1903)

tion and so on By means of the gang punched holes and numbers

declared the census anyone of the approximately 7000000 cards

corresponding to the population of the Philippines could be identified

and the correctness of the punching verified (Census 213 )

The cards moved in the opposite but complementary direction to the

cheltlul~ ciung an inclividual as a possessor of a range of qualities

rather tban a collection of numbers atlached to J set of categories The

schedule itemized 311 indiVIduals characteristics whereas the card indishy

vidulhzed the items on the schedule In this sense the census worked

like an 3c(hive cross-referencing characters with characteristics On the

one hand it attempted to constitute a population by enumerating the

totality of heterogeneous peoples and recording them onto a grid of

reified categories On the other hand the census sougbt to affix to each

member of the population an essentialized reguJated amI therefore

retrievable identity As Benewct Anderson has remarked The fiction

of the censw is that everyone is in il and that everyone has one and only

one c(lremely clear place~

The census could seTVe as an infinitely eXpandabk repository for

accumulating all that could be quantified and empirically known in the

Colony Lo the extent thai it provided the grammar for classifying its

objects of knowledge as subjects of a colonial order As with tht practice

31 V1ife LoFt

-

30

of enumtratioll this grammar of dassificalion WlS far [rom disinttrshy

tsted Rather it wa~ (rucial in imaging thc terms of colonial society as ltbove all a racial hierarchy

Recoriil1g Race Vhlte loYlt tOr little brown brothers as Taft reterred

to Filipinos was predicated on white supremacy enforced through pracshy

tices of diSCipline and maintained by a network ofsupervision General

Sanger in hh introduction to the census Of1903 remarked how fllJpwos

would in the course of time become good citizens in that some of tllem

had already proved themselves to be excellent soldiers capable of folshy

lowing the orders of their white officers Similarly census workers under

white supervision had shown the natives potential for performing comshy

plex state functions With appropriate training there was no relson why

the rest of the population could not become a disciplined people As

Sanger contends

Under the guidance of a free just and generous government the eswbhshmiddot

ment of more rapid and frequent means or communicalion whereby they

wulcl be brought into more frequent contact wilh each other and with the

general spread of education t11e tribal dlstinctiom which now exist wi ll

gradually disappear and the Filipino wili hecome a numerous aod homogeshy

neous EnglIsh-speaking race cceeding in intelligence and capacity all other

eo pIes of the tropics (Census 140)

Encapsulating the benevolent-disciplInary trajectory of colonial polshy

iC) in general and the census in particular Sangcr reiterllCS the posshy

sibility indeed the uesirabililr of molding colonial gtubJccts into a single

people here conceived of 30 a homogeneous English-speaking race

Predictably homogenization (10 only come afta a process or tutelage

one aimed at superseding if not suppressing existing tribal distincshy

tions To do ~o however the general owlincs of those distinctions need

tt) be surveyed and accounted ror In order to transform the native races

into a people their differences had to be produced and reassemhled

The population tables of the censu~ divide the inhabitants of the

Philippines into roughly twenty-five linguistic groups distinguishing at

least five skin colors ranging from whilC to black and where releshy

vant types of dlilenshlp and Iunions oC birth These seeminglv

incommensurable gfClupings were then reduced into two broad categoshy

rie~ civilized and wild Their Jiffercnccs initially had iClgts to do with

thodr material nJlture than their religious characteristics Those labeled

civilized were seen to adhere La a common Christian Lulture whIle

lhost marktd wild w~re either Musltms or subscribed to animi5m both

dearly outside the Christian order The former comprising the majority

)f the ltlrchipclagos illhabitant~ lIweu their civilized state the census

assumed to the effects of Spanisb ru The latter-whether pagan

headhunters in the mountamgt nomadic forest dwellers or Muslim

peoplts in Ule south-had steadfastly resisted Spanish conquest and

were thought to live in stages between almost complete savagery amI

dawning civilization (Censlls 122-23)

Jt is important to note though that Ule distinction between civilized

1I1d Wild peoples is regarded in the census as relative and transitional

Wild peoplegt owed their barbarous state to the historical failure of

Spain to conquer them a condition that a more vigorous US regime

would remedy Indeed colonial accounts especially those of Worcesshy

ters are filled wiu) glovring reports regarding the wild men as ideal

colontal subjects Because they were free from the so-ca lled corrupting

inluence of Catholic Spain and lowland mestizo elites wiJd men were

seen to be far more receptive to the firm straight-talking tough love of

while men Hence could wild men be more easily disciplined through

such tasks a~ massive road constructions that would link the lowlands

with the mountains mining explorations for uS-owned companies

North American-style athletic competitions staged for visiting colonial

Jignitarics and the policing of the wild country from warring tribes to

iecure the safety of colonial hill stations and outposts Wild men were

ripe candidates for tutelage to the extent that they seemed most suscepshy

tible to suhjugation L

Conversely so-called civilized Filipinos were more recalcitrant even

resistant tothe caJI of benevolent assirrulation As insurgents fighting

ttl aSSert their socreignty after hwing defeated the Spanish army deshy

clared a republic framed a constitution organized a cabinet and conshy

vened a congress hy 1899 they were deemed dangerously ambItious and

inherently deceptive By their conduct in the war these Filipinos had

showed themselves to be wild and barbarous And when they chose to

collabMate ith the new colonial power they remained shifty opporshy

tunistic anJ often la0 Sparnsh colonization and the Catholic religion

33 VTlile Ltlle 32

had done no mort than imprint the n(ltivcs wilh the ouhvard ~igns of

civilization Inwardly lhey remaineJ inadequate to the task of civilizing themselves

O ne of the most common) cited character traits in colonia sources

that suggested he semicivilized state of Filipinos was their supposed

penchant for mimicry Incapahle of original thought they could excel

only In copying heir olonial and class superiors Sangers remarks on

the ability of FilipLOo soldiers to foUow orders under competent white

officers seemed tu ratify this belief The census repeatedly quotes passhy

sages from various colonial sources and travel accounts from the late

sixteenth centurr LO the early twentieth that retail this notion of native

mimicry Typical were the comments of Major Frank S Bourns army

surgeon and later chiefof the Bureau of Healtb

The race is quick to learn and has a fairl) good natural abilitv bu t such a class

will have 10 be educated before great responsibility can be placed in its

hands M) idea [is tha t] if IFilipinos were I associated with a sufllient

number ofAmericans who are honorable Jnd upright In their dealjngs there

would be a vel) strong tendency on their part 0 do as their colleagues do

They are natural imilators it is a racia l charactristk (Celsus 1505 see also

1494gt 497499500-502507-8)

As natural imitators Filipinos perforce depend on external stimuli

to shape their internal disposition Merely reactjvc ralher than reflecshy

uve they existed in immediatt and sensuous relationship to their surshy

roundings rather than as self-conscious agcnt1gt of their own transforshy

mation [f they had conullilted atrociotls crimes during the war

according to Governor-General Taft it was only because they were imshy

itating lhe actions of their mestizo leaJers (who in tum were imitating

the adions of their Spiwish masters) Taft like Bourns attributes thb

tendency of the Filipinos to hlindly follow their racial supltriors to the

fact that thq are an Oriental race Like all Orientals they are a

suspicious people but when their confidence I~ won they f(IUoW with a

trust that IS complde (Censlls 1530)

Mimicry on th~ part of thl nativegt is construed as a sign of inferiority

bomt out of raCial difference But precisely for this reason as Taft states

it is also an invitation to white supcrvislOn [The Filipinos] are merel)

in a state of Christian pupilage They are imitative They arc glad to be

educated glad 10 study some languages other than their own glad to

follow European and American ideals (erSUS 1530) Just a~ the un

tainted Slale orrhe wild peoples provided white mcn the opportunity to

display their manl) Jove the civilizeJ but Imitative and corrupted pcoshy

pks of a hybrid Oriental-Christian culture called for the studious amI

diligent care of whHc rutors and commanders

Wildness and civility were thus contingent and interchangeable

terms In mapping population differences the cenSill also projected

their future reconfiguration Such was p05sible because the religious

dilTerence between wild and civilized peoples was subsumed by larger

considerations of color and race Vhether they were Christian or nonshy

~hristian marked or unmarked by European influences prior to US

role both types were seen to display great homogeneity with regard to

their brown color live in tribes with regard to their sociolinguistic

orgarnzation and be Malays a species of Orientals with regard to their

race (Census 14U-12 242-65) Hence is the census able to imagine

Civilized and wild peoples existing side by side on the same map of the

Philippines (CelSUs 250- 51) While their separate locations are indishy

cated by the various colors of the map one gelS an acute sense of how

their borders were encompassed and flatlened out on the sanle homogeshy

neOliS surface by lhe surveying eye of the state Their identity as wild or

CIvilized peoples was relative to their place all the colornal geobody just

as their dtstimt charactenstics came into focu~ with reference to the

assimilative gaze ofwhlte benevolence The census not only mapped the

structure of racial difference it also established the privilege of a parshy

ticular race to determine the borders of those differences

This racial privilege was endowed with a genealogy In the census

section titled HisLOr) of the Population then Chief of the Bureau of

Non-Christian Tribes David Barrow~ writegt about the peoplmg of the

archipelago in lerms ofwaves ofmigrations of diTerent races from the

outside [n doing so he reiterates the speculations of other colonial

accounts regarding the prehi5tory of the Philippines-speculations that

since the archeological advances of the 1960s have been definitively

discredited My llltcrest III pointing out the censuss usc of the wave

migralion theory has les~ to do with disproving its accuracy than with

showing how its currency in official accounts grew out of the colonial

concern with racializing Philippine history

35 Wile 101lt1

~

34

The original inhabitants of the islands were supposedly the Negntos

(a Spanish term that literally mean little Negroes) or Aetas aborigishy

nal black dwufs whose origins according to Barrows remain shroud~d

in mystery Wilh ilieir shorter stature dark skin woolly hair nomadic for~st existence and austere material culture they seemed to Barrows

and other writers from lhe United States to be so racially distinct as to be

historically removed from the rest of the populalion They probably

approach as nearly to the conception of primitive man as any people

thus far dlscovered Barrows oates The abonginal Negritos were then said to have succumbed to a succession of more cullurally sophisticated

and physic-ally better endowed Malays from the south Arrivmg til large

boats iliey conquered the islands pushing the aboriginal populations

into the forests while occasionally intermarrying witb tbem Later mImiddot

gratory waves brought even stronger Malays some in possession of an Islamic faith acquired from Arabs driving the older Malays into the

mountains The spread of Muslim Malays however was checked by th

arrival of the Catholic Spaniards m the sixteenth century marking

the break between the prehistoric and properly historic epochs in the

Philippines The Spanish conquest also led to an influx of a Chinese

element into the population as radelS settled and intenllarried with

the Malays giving rlse to a small but economically afld socially signifishy

cant mestizo population (CensLls t411-17 454 532V~

This narrative or the peopling of the archipelago imagines the Philipshy

pines to haw been a tabula ralgt settled by gtUCCCSSlve waves ofcolonizers AI such the racial and tribal divenily of the population can be exshy

platned in temporal terms as the inevitable retreat of darker-skinned

more savage inhabitants in the face of advancing groupgt of lightershy

skinned more civilized and physically superior conquerors Indeed the

epochal break between tbe prehistoric to the properly historkal era

occurs only with the arrival of the Spaniards Racial differences result then from a long history of colonization (ulnunating presumdbly in

the arrival of the strongest m05t progresSIVe and lightc-st-skinned l0111shynuer to date wbites from the United States TIle ldfet of racializing

both the SOCIal structure and cultural history of the Philippines is to

position the population in a derivative relatiomhip to the outside It is as if tilt counlry was naturally destined for conquest just as the UniteJ

States was maniJeslly destined LO colonize It The historical recountrng

3(gt

of the population like its ~tatistical accounting renders aloma subshy

Jects visible from a transcendent posthi~toric vantage poim one tlCshy

cupild hy what we might designate as the white gaze Spatialiy it is a

gaze that dreams of surveying and cataloging other races while remainshy

ing unmarked and unseen itself temporally iL IS that which sees the

receding past of nonwhiLe others from the perspective of its own irreshy

sistible fulure l3

The privllcged poise of seeing a regulated and well-pOliced future

already prefigured in the beterogen~ous and disorderly past comes

acroSS WJth special clarity in the photographs of Filipinos that appear in the census report Set off from the ttxtual and statistical sectiolls of the

census the photographs are arranged to form an albwn of colonial

subJectivities Typical examples of wild and civilized peoples are feashy

tured in che photographS in the first volume along with pictures of

native enumerators and their local supervisors Dressed in their tribal

attire for the cameras lens images of colonial bodies are wrenched from

their historical and social contexts In tlleir frozen slate they suggest

the appearance of specimens undergoing different stages of tutelage

At the lowest egt1Teme the scantily clad Negritos hunched over the

ground with tangled hair and minstTel -like grim are made to appear

farthest removed from the civilizing touch of colonial rule (6g 3)

Head-hunling Igorots those putative descendants of the first wave of

Malay conquerors along with Muslim Malays appear more erect even

regal decked out in their tribal ornaments signifying their more adshy

vanced statt (figs J and 5) Closest to civilization are the Western-clad

census workers Set againsl ] background of Americcul flags their apshy

pearance suggests weD-disciplined bodies while the portraits of local

supervisors identified by name and area of responsibility produce uushyages of bourgeois respectability aSSimilated into the state machinery

(figs 6 and 7)

Within the context of the censuss raciali7jng frame such photoshy

graphs constitute a visual complement to the statistical tables a distinct

but related way of seeing native subjects as objects of knowledge and

reform Where statistical tabulations abstract native identities into laceshy

less numbers tle photographs give a kind of composite face to the

amplatistics Shadowed by the n()tion of typicality-which I take to be the

reductIOn of cultuml differences mto an ordered range ofv-ariaLions and

37 While Love

----intelligence (CCIlSUs 113 ) AJrogether 7502 Filipinos were employed

40 of whom were women Like the surrendering imurgentlllcal supershy

visors and enumerators were required to take an oath of aUegiance to

the government of the United States they also received instructions on

how to manage the canvassing of their districts To supplement the

ranks of US and Filipino supervisors the Census Bureau pressed into

service all provincial and municipal officials as well as US army officers

and the Philippine Constabulary (Census 116 18-1936)

he gathering of census data was an enormous undertakmg involvshy

ing the mobilization of a vast army of clerks in the colonial capital

and the deployment of enumerators across as much of the archipelago

as possible Although President flleodore Roosevelt had declared the

Filipino-American War officiaUy at an end by July 1902 guerrilla reshy

sistance continued in many parts of the country In provinces such as

Albay 50rsogon Bulacan and Rizal census takers were challenged by the guerrllJas now referred to under the criminal sign of ladrolles or

bandits by the colonial government TIe enumeration of the populashy

tion llecesitated their pacification Constabulary forces oflen intershy

vened to suppress the guerrillas and secure the areas to be canvassed In

parts o f Mindanao a show of force by the colonial army was usually

required to gain access to sources of local information while in other

parts of the country local elites were pressed into providing inforshy

mation on and arranging for the surrender of local ladrones (CtIISLlS

122-2j)

hl census thus illustrates the indispcn~ilble link htwcen the policshy

ing of colonial horders and annexation of local populations into the

space of colonial knowledge Census workers white and native alike

IahoreJ under the watchful eyes of a hierarchy of supervisors even as

they kept their eyes out for alleged insurgents They sunreyed the popushy

lacl and were themselves surveyed by the state In this sense the censu~

functioneJ as a machine for totalizing obseryatJon Through the collecshy

tion and classification of statistical data it kept watch over the pOpU]lshy

tion mapping thdr social location and transcribing them as disLfcte

objects ofinformation and re-formution And through the bureaucratishy

7-3tion ur supervisiolJ undenvrilten by the organized deployment of

violence the emus differentially disciplined those who ma~naged IS

well as Iholoe who were tnrgeted by its operations

In order to better understand tbe manner in which superviSion proshy

motes lSsimiJalion-that is how it lay~ the circuits that run between

benevolence and iliscipUne-I want to look in more detail at the mechashy

nisms for gathering census data Two forms were utilized a schedule for

enumerating and c1lSsifying people in a given area and a keyboarded

punch card for identifying each individual in relation to a set of categoshy

ries indicated IJ1 the schedule One served as an index [or the olher

Where the schedule sheets were designed to divide and distrib ute a

persons identity into a series of delimited categories the punch cards

were meant to reconstitute him or her as the referent of a speo1ic set of

signs ( CtIIStlS 29-14)

The schedule sheet was written in Spanish for the sake of Filipino

enumerators unfamiliar with Engllsb A facsimile of the schedule in

English translation appears in the census report (fig 1) The schedule

consists of a series of vertically arranged categories such as Location

Name Relationship Personal Description Race Age Sex

Mantal Status Ocmpation and so fonll for the supposedly civiUzed

(that is Christian) population and a simpler more abbreviated series

[or those deemed wild (that is non-Christian) Enumerated on the

sheer one can imagine ones existence flattened and neatly spread out as

a set of numbers across a table It is as if becoming a subject of the

colonial state entailed taking on a different kiml of particularity Plotted

on a grid ones identity becomes sheer surface and extension abstracted

from any historical specificity Put differently the census schedule proshy

jctts a skewed profile of colonial society by divorcing idenLJty from

biography Where biography entails th articulation of the subject as an

agent of its own history the schedule posillons its subjects as a series of

aggregates locatable on a table of isolated and equivalent values

lhrough the schedule the census sought to transcribe the person

into a scriClgt ofnumbers grafted onto a closed set of categories In tabushy

lating the results of 1he schedule however the census also attempted to

retmstitule the subject as an individuated and therefore retrievable

item within the vast repositones of the colonial archive This was done

through what amounted to a massive filing system in the form of keyshy

bllardeu punch card~ designed to labulate populallon tables-similar to

the bullards used in 1lt)00 for the twelfth US census Each card contamed

an arrar of numbers and letters that corregt-ponded to the data on the

29 f1Jit 100 t 28

DIAGUW OF KCV80AAD PUNCH clAO

0- otw 1Ii~nUv rgth _IA~ a11

~middot ~I bullbull I~L-rw

middotmiddot-Imiddot~ ~bull tJ~ ~

Il -~

middotmiddot 1-pound1r1l~1 H~ SIFl~~shy~Aj

t~ LLmiddot r C-

i I I It lJ 11 It Ii

tl 111

51

I

~ I

I~ to

1_1 I~una

1shy

IIvPMipp JIluIuJ fllb Uilv fAt-ltI-ta ct(lllt(rIolUI PIIilllpfTV LtlfUIIim llJiU

rJ~ Wb1k tI ~ ii_nltb l-bILt NIua_J

t(TfWTTU Ng - -h~ulJI dam cIC1nlI P~In(rllshy

~a=r~ l1FtI ~ - Jodldal I1tan1amp_ ~bmfw-4IrO-I_ __ ~~Q~t

Fig I SLhedule ~hd (CLISltS of tJrl Jitilippillc Islands 1903)

schedule sheets tn addition a numbering system tied the cardgt 10 the

nJme of a specific person and the area where she or he was counted

(fig 2) By punching the appropriate holes-say B for blallco (whIte)

lI fOT morello (brown) A for amariJfo (yellow) V for varon

(male) H [or hembra (female) etc-the canis fun~lIoned lO index a

range of information regarding an inwnduals race sex age OCCUP

_w ~ ~l~ _ 11 _middot1 ~ ~ ~ ~bull 8 j ~ bull bull amp 3r 1 0 al ~u lit bull ~ ~

bull J bull rrw ~ 0 0 0 a a 0 I0 bull 4 bull bull bull J bull bull ~ 0 X ltlt4

bull bull bull bull -- lO eo 1 bull tD 10 I bull r--~ la 0 U CDC ~~ -1- ~

a____ It 0 10 j bull 7 to 10 i 1 bull ~ at 0 ID ~ _ _e J _

~ bull II bull 10 110 bull raquo bull bull )t eo I 70 7) GO Is raquo X purI 1---shy

1 II bull 0 10 i bull eG 0 II 00 7 II ~ bull bull bull 10 a 011 ampIII 1 O 0 II 0 i 0 1 7 e 1_ A

J i ~ LOO 1 ft c XI TJi I I 4 i 1 4J 1J1r ~ Ta e

middot Fa rY- bull 1_ Tn 1 CII 7r au D f

a u oa f1D m I 1 0 a z D

bull u 10 0 IX bull i i D 01 WOE I I L shy

XI tJo VIZ 100oIJOXh

o_~~ i1 ~E~11~~~-I~1 I I~~middot ~~- fI~~I -~ I Fig 2 Keyboard pWlCh card (OmSll~ vf Ille Philippie Islands 1903)

tion and so on By means of the gang punched holes and numbers

declared the census anyone of the approximately 7000000 cards

corresponding to the population of the Philippines could be identified

and the correctness of the punching verified (Census 213 )

The cards moved in the opposite but complementary direction to the

cheltlul~ ciung an inclividual as a possessor of a range of qualities

rather tban a collection of numbers atlached to J set of categories The

schedule itemized 311 indiVIduals characteristics whereas the card indishy

vidulhzed the items on the schedule In this sense the census worked

like an 3c(hive cross-referencing characters with characteristics On the

one hand it attempted to constitute a population by enumerating the

totality of heterogeneous peoples and recording them onto a grid of

reified categories On the other hand the census sougbt to affix to each

member of the population an essentialized reguJated amI therefore

retrievable identity As Benewct Anderson has remarked The fiction

of the censw is that everyone is in il and that everyone has one and only

one c(lremely clear place~

The census could seTVe as an infinitely eXpandabk repository for

accumulating all that could be quantified and empirically known in the

Colony Lo the extent thai it provided the grammar for classifying its

objects of knowledge as subjects of a colonial order As with tht practice

31 V1ife LoFt

-

30

of enumtratioll this grammar of dassificalion WlS far [rom disinttrshy

tsted Rather it wa~ (rucial in imaging thc terms of colonial society as ltbove all a racial hierarchy

Recoriil1g Race Vhlte loYlt tOr little brown brothers as Taft reterred

to Filipinos was predicated on white supremacy enforced through pracshy

tices of diSCipline and maintained by a network ofsupervision General

Sanger in hh introduction to the census Of1903 remarked how fllJpwos

would in the course of time become good citizens in that some of tllem

had already proved themselves to be excellent soldiers capable of folshy

lowing the orders of their white officers Similarly census workers under

white supervision had shown the natives potential for performing comshy

plex state functions With appropriate training there was no relson why

the rest of the population could not become a disciplined people As

Sanger contends

Under the guidance of a free just and generous government the eswbhshmiddot

ment of more rapid and frequent means or communicalion whereby they

wulcl be brought into more frequent contact wilh each other and with the

general spread of education t11e tribal dlstinctiom which now exist wi ll

gradually disappear and the Filipino wili hecome a numerous aod homogeshy

neous EnglIsh-speaking race cceeding in intelligence and capacity all other

eo pIes of the tropics (Census 140)

Encapsulating the benevolent-disciplInary trajectory of colonial polshy

iC) in general and the census in particular Sangcr reiterllCS the posshy

sibility indeed the uesirabililr of molding colonial gtubJccts into a single

people here conceived of 30 a homogeneous English-speaking race

Predictably homogenization (10 only come afta a process or tutelage

one aimed at superseding if not suppressing existing tribal distincshy

tions To do ~o however the general owlincs of those distinctions need

tt) be surveyed and accounted ror In order to transform the native races

into a people their differences had to be produced and reassemhled

The population tables of the censu~ divide the inhabitants of the

Philippines into roughly twenty-five linguistic groups distinguishing at

least five skin colors ranging from whilC to black and where releshy

vant types of dlilenshlp and Iunions oC birth These seeminglv

incommensurable gfClupings were then reduced into two broad categoshy

rie~ civilized and wild Their Jiffercnccs initially had iClgts to do with

thodr material nJlture than their religious characteristics Those labeled

civilized were seen to adhere La a common Christian Lulture whIle

lhost marktd wild w~re either Musltms or subscribed to animi5m both

dearly outside the Christian order The former comprising the majority

)f the ltlrchipclagos illhabitant~ lIweu their civilized state the census

assumed to the effects of Spanisb ru The latter-whether pagan

headhunters in the mountamgt nomadic forest dwellers or Muslim

peoplts in Ule south-had steadfastly resisted Spanish conquest and

were thought to live in stages between almost complete savagery amI

dawning civilization (Censlls 122-23)

Jt is important to note though that Ule distinction between civilized

1I1d Wild peoples is regarded in the census as relative and transitional

Wild peoplegt owed their barbarous state to the historical failure of

Spain to conquer them a condition that a more vigorous US regime

would remedy Indeed colonial accounts especially those of Worcesshy

ters are filled wiu) glovring reports regarding the wild men as ideal

colontal subjects Because they were free from the so-ca lled corrupting

inluence of Catholic Spain and lowland mestizo elites wiJd men were

seen to be far more receptive to the firm straight-talking tough love of

while men Hence could wild men be more easily disciplined through

such tasks a~ massive road constructions that would link the lowlands

with the mountains mining explorations for uS-owned companies

North American-style athletic competitions staged for visiting colonial

Jignitarics and the policing of the wild country from warring tribes to

iecure the safety of colonial hill stations and outposts Wild men were

ripe candidates for tutelage to the extent that they seemed most suscepshy

tible to suhjugation L

Conversely so-called civilized Filipinos were more recalcitrant even

resistant tothe caJI of benevolent assirrulation As insurgents fighting

ttl aSSert their socreignty after hwing defeated the Spanish army deshy

clared a republic framed a constitution organized a cabinet and conshy

vened a congress hy 1899 they were deemed dangerously ambItious and

inherently deceptive By their conduct in the war these Filipinos had

showed themselves to be wild and barbarous And when they chose to

collabMate ith the new colonial power they remained shifty opporshy

tunistic anJ often la0 Sparnsh colonization and the Catholic religion

33 VTlile Ltlle 32

had done no mort than imprint the n(ltivcs wilh the ouhvard ~igns of

civilization Inwardly lhey remaineJ inadequate to the task of civilizing themselves

O ne of the most common) cited character traits in colonia sources

that suggested he semicivilized state of Filipinos was their supposed

penchant for mimicry Incapahle of original thought they could excel

only In copying heir olonial and class superiors Sangers remarks on

the ability of FilipLOo soldiers to foUow orders under competent white

officers seemed tu ratify this belief The census repeatedly quotes passhy

sages from various colonial sources and travel accounts from the late

sixteenth centurr LO the early twentieth that retail this notion of native

mimicry Typical were the comments of Major Frank S Bourns army

surgeon and later chiefof the Bureau of Healtb

The race is quick to learn and has a fairl) good natural abilitv bu t such a class

will have 10 be educated before great responsibility can be placed in its

hands M) idea [is tha t] if IFilipinos were I associated with a sufllient

number ofAmericans who are honorable Jnd upright In their dealjngs there

would be a vel) strong tendency on their part 0 do as their colleagues do

They are natural imilators it is a racia l charactristk (Celsus 1505 see also

1494gt 497499500-502507-8)

As natural imitators Filipinos perforce depend on external stimuli

to shape their internal disposition Merely reactjvc ralher than reflecshy

uve they existed in immediatt and sensuous relationship to their surshy

roundings rather than as self-conscious agcnt1gt of their own transforshy

mation [f they had conullilted atrociotls crimes during the war

according to Governor-General Taft it was only because they were imshy

itating lhe actions of their mestizo leaJers (who in tum were imitating

the adions of their Spiwish masters) Taft like Bourns attributes thb

tendency of the Filipinos to hlindly follow their racial supltriors to the

fact that thq are an Oriental race Like all Orientals they are a

suspicious people but when their confidence I~ won they f(IUoW with a

trust that IS complde (Censlls 1530)

Mimicry on th~ part of thl nativegt is construed as a sign of inferiority

bomt out of raCial difference But precisely for this reason as Taft states

it is also an invitation to white supcrvislOn [The Filipinos] are merel)

in a state of Christian pupilage They are imitative They arc glad to be

educated glad 10 study some languages other than their own glad to

follow European and American ideals (erSUS 1530) Just a~ the un

tainted Slale orrhe wild peoples provided white mcn the opportunity to

display their manl) Jove the civilizeJ but Imitative and corrupted pcoshy

pks of a hybrid Oriental-Christian culture called for the studious amI

diligent care of whHc rutors and commanders

Wildness and civility were thus contingent and interchangeable

terms In mapping population differences the cenSill also projected

their future reconfiguration Such was p05sible because the religious

dilTerence between wild and civilized peoples was subsumed by larger

considerations of color and race Vhether they were Christian or nonshy

~hristian marked or unmarked by European influences prior to US

role both types were seen to display great homogeneity with regard to

their brown color live in tribes with regard to their sociolinguistic

orgarnzation and be Malays a species of Orientals with regard to their

race (Census 14U-12 242-65) Hence is the census able to imagine

Civilized and wild peoples existing side by side on the same map of the

Philippines (CelSUs 250- 51) While their separate locations are indishy

cated by the various colors of the map one gelS an acute sense of how

their borders were encompassed and flatlened out on the sanle homogeshy

neOliS surface by lhe surveying eye of the state Their identity as wild or

CIvilized peoples was relative to their place all the colornal geobody just

as their dtstimt charactenstics came into focu~ with reference to the

assimilative gaze ofwhlte benevolence The census not only mapped the

structure of racial difference it also established the privilege of a parshy

ticular race to determine the borders of those differences

This racial privilege was endowed with a genealogy In the census

section titled HisLOr) of the Population then Chief of the Bureau of

Non-Christian Tribes David Barrow~ writegt about the peoplmg of the

archipelago in lerms ofwaves ofmigrations of diTerent races from the

outside [n doing so he reiterates the speculations of other colonial

accounts regarding the prehi5tory of the Philippines-speculations that

since the archeological advances of the 1960s have been definitively

discredited My llltcrest III pointing out the censuss usc of the wave

migralion theory has les~ to do with disproving its accuracy than with

showing how its currency in official accounts grew out of the colonial

concern with racializing Philippine history

35 Wile 101lt1

~

34

The original inhabitants of the islands were supposedly the Negntos

(a Spanish term that literally mean little Negroes) or Aetas aborigishy

nal black dwufs whose origins according to Barrows remain shroud~d

in mystery Wilh ilieir shorter stature dark skin woolly hair nomadic for~st existence and austere material culture they seemed to Barrows

and other writers from lhe United States to be so racially distinct as to be

historically removed from the rest of the populalion They probably

approach as nearly to the conception of primitive man as any people

thus far dlscovered Barrows oates The abonginal Negritos were then said to have succumbed to a succession of more cullurally sophisticated

and physic-ally better endowed Malays from the south Arrivmg til large

boats iliey conquered the islands pushing the aboriginal populations

into the forests while occasionally intermarrying witb tbem Later mImiddot

gratory waves brought even stronger Malays some in possession of an Islamic faith acquired from Arabs driving the older Malays into the

mountains The spread of Muslim Malays however was checked by th

arrival of the Catholic Spaniards m the sixteenth century marking

the break between the prehistoric and properly historic epochs in the

Philippines The Spanish conquest also led to an influx of a Chinese

element into the population as radelS settled and intenllarried with

the Malays giving rlse to a small but economically afld socially signifishy

cant mestizo population (CensLls t411-17 454 532V~

This narrative or the peopling of the archipelago imagines the Philipshy

pines to haw been a tabula ralgt settled by gtUCCCSSlve waves ofcolonizers AI such the racial and tribal divenily of the population can be exshy

platned in temporal terms as the inevitable retreat of darker-skinned

more savage inhabitants in the face of advancing groupgt of lightershy

skinned more civilized and physically superior conquerors Indeed the

epochal break between tbe prehistoric to the properly historkal era

occurs only with the arrival of the Spaniards Racial differences result then from a long history of colonization (ulnunating presumdbly in

the arrival of the strongest m05t progresSIVe and lightc-st-skinned l0111shynuer to date wbites from the United States TIle ldfet of racializing

both the SOCIal structure and cultural history of the Philippines is to

position the population in a derivative relatiomhip to the outside It is as if tilt counlry was naturally destined for conquest just as the UniteJ

States was maniJeslly destined LO colonize It The historical recountrng

3(gt

of the population like its ~tatistical accounting renders aloma subshy

Jects visible from a transcendent posthi~toric vantage poim one tlCshy

cupild hy what we might designate as the white gaze Spatialiy it is a

gaze that dreams of surveying and cataloging other races while remainshy

ing unmarked and unseen itself temporally iL IS that which sees the

receding past of nonwhiLe others from the perspective of its own irreshy

sistible fulure l3

The privllcged poise of seeing a regulated and well-pOliced future

already prefigured in the beterogen~ous and disorderly past comes

acroSS WJth special clarity in the photographs of Filipinos that appear in the census report Set off from the ttxtual and statistical sectiolls of the

census the photographs are arranged to form an albwn of colonial

subJectivities Typical examples of wild and civilized peoples are feashy

tured in che photographS in the first volume along with pictures of

native enumerators and their local supervisors Dressed in their tribal

attire for the cameras lens images of colonial bodies are wrenched from

their historical and social contexts In tlleir frozen slate they suggest

the appearance of specimens undergoing different stages of tutelage

At the lowest egt1Teme the scantily clad Negritos hunched over the

ground with tangled hair and minstTel -like grim are made to appear

farthest removed from the civilizing touch of colonial rule (6g 3)

Head-hunling Igorots those putative descendants of the first wave of

Malay conquerors along with Muslim Malays appear more erect even

regal decked out in their tribal ornaments signifying their more adshy

vanced statt (figs J and 5) Closest to civilization are the Western-clad

census workers Set againsl ] background of Americcul flags their apshy

pearance suggests weD-disciplined bodies while the portraits of local

supervisors identified by name and area of responsibility produce uushyages of bourgeois respectability aSSimilated into the state machinery

(figs 6 and 7)

Within the context of the censuss raciali7jng frame such photoshy

graphs constitute a visual complement to the statistical tables a distinct

but related way of seeing native subjects as objects of knowledge and

reform Where statistical tabulations abstract native identities into laceshy

less numbers tle photographs give a kind of composite face to the

amplatistics Shadowed by the n()tion of typicality-which I take to be the

reductIOn of cultuml differences mto an ordered range ofv-ariaLions and

37 While Love

DIAGUW OF KCV80AAD PUNCH clAO

0- otw 1Ii~nUv rgth _IA~ a11

~middot ~I bullbull I~L-rw

middotmiddot-Imiddot~ ~bull tJ~ ~

Il -~

middotmiddot 1-pound1r1l~1 H~ SIFl~~shy~Aj

t~ LLmiddot r C-

i I I It lJ 11 It Ii

tl 111

51

I

~ I

I~ to

1_1 I~una

1shy

IIvPMipp JIluIuJ fllb Uilv fAt-ltI-ta ct(lllt(rIolUI PIIilllpfTV LtlfUIIim llJiU

rJ~ Wb1k tI ~ ii_nltb l-bILt NIua_J

t(TfWTTU Ng - -h~ulJI dam cIC1nlI P~In(rllshy

~a=r~ l1FtI ~ - Jodldal I1tan1amp_ ~bmfw-4IrO-I_ __ ~~Q~t

Fig I SLhedule ~hd (CLISltS of tJrl Jitilippillc Islands 1903)

schedule sheets tn addition a numbering system tied the cardgt 10 the

nJme of a specific person and the area where she or he was counted

(fig 2) By punching the appropriate holes-say B for blallco (whIte)

lI fOT morello (brown) A for amariJfo (yellow) V for varon

(male) H [or hembra (female) etc-the canis fun~lIoned lO index a

range of information regarding an inwnduals race sex age OCCUP

_w ~ ~l~ _ 11 _middot1 ~ ~ ~ ~bull 8 j ~ bull bull amp 3r 1 0 al ~u lit bull ~ ~

bull J bull rrw ~ 0 0 0 a a 0 I0 bull 4 bull bull bull J bull bull ~ 0 X ltlt4

bull bull bull bull -- lO eo 1 bull tD 10 I bull r--~ la 0 U CDC ~~ -1- ~

a____ It 0 10 j bull 7 to 10 i 1 bull ~ at 0 ID ~ _ _e J _

~ bull II bull 10 110 bull raquo bull bull )t eo I 70 7) GO Is raquo X purI 1---shy

1 II bull 0 10 i bull eG 0 II 00 7 II ~ bull bull bull 10 a 011 ampIII 1 O 0 II 0 i 0 1 7 e 1_ A

J i ~ LOO 1 ft c XI TJi I I 4 i 1 4J 1J1r ~ Ta e

middot Fa rY- bull 1_ Tn 1 CII 7r au D f

a u oa f1D m I 1 0 a z D

bull u 10 0 IX bull i i D 01 WOE I I L shy

XI tJo VIZ 100oIJOXh

o_~~ i1 ~E~11~~~-I~1 I I~~middot ~~- fI~~I -~ I Fig 2 Keyboard pWlCh card (OmSll~ vf Ille Philippie Islands 1903)

tion and so on By means of the gang punched holes and numbers

declared the census anyone of the approximately 7000000 cards

corresponding to the population of the Philippines could be identified

and the correctness of the punching verified (Census 213 )

The cards moved in the opposite but complementary direction to the

cheltlul~ ciung an inclividual as a possessor of a range of qualities

rather tban a collection of numbers atlached to J set of categories The

schedule itemized 311 indiVIduals characteristics whereas the card indishy

vidulhzed the items on the schedule In this sense the census worked

like an 3c(hive cross-referencing characters with characteristics On the

one hand it attempted to constitute a population by enumerating the

totality of heterogeneous peoples and recording them onto a grid of

reified categories On the other hand the census sougbt to affix to each

member of the population an essentialized reguJated amI therefore

retrievable identity As Benewct Anderson has remarked The fiction

of the censw is that everyone is in il and that everyone has one and only

one c(lremely clear place~

The census could seTVe as an infinitely eXpandabk repository for

accumulating all that could be quantified and empirically known in the

Colony Lo the extent thai it provided the grammar for classifying its

objects of knowledge as subjects of a colonial order As with tht practice

31 V1ife LoFt

-

30

of enumtratioll this grammar of dassificalion WlS far [rom disinttrshy

tsted Rather it wa~ (rucial in imaging thc terms of colonial society as ltbove all a racial hierarchy

Recoriil1g Race Vhlte loYlt tOr little brown brothers as Taft reterred

to Filipinos was predicated on white supremacy enforced through pracshy

tices of diSCipline and maintained by a network ofsupervision General

Sanger in hh introduction to the census Of1903 remarked how fllJpwos

would in the course of time become good citizens in that some of tllem

had already proved themselves to be excellent soldiers capable of folshy

lowing the orders of their white officers Similarly census workers under

white supervision had shown the natives potential for performing comshy

plex state functions With appropriate training there was no relson why

the rest of the population could not become a disciplined people As

Sanger contends

Under the guidance of a free just and generous government the eswbhshmiddot

ment of more rapid and frequent means or communicalion whereby they

wulcl be brought into more frequent contact wilh each other and with the

general spread of education t11e tribal dlstinctiom which now exist wi ll

gradually disappear and the Filipino wili hecome a numerous aod homogeshy

neous EnglIsh-speaking race cceeding in intelligence and capacity all other

eo pIes of the tropics (Census 140)

Encapsulating the benevolent-disciplInary trajectory of colonial polshy

iC) in general and the census in particular Sangcr reiterllCS the posshy

sibility indeed the uesirabililr of molding colonial gtubJccts into a single

people here conceived of 30 a homogeneous English-speaking race

Predictably homogenization (10 only come afta a process or tutelage

one aimed at superseding if not suppressing existing tribal distincshy

tions To do ~o however the general owlincs of those distinctions need

tt) be surveyed and accounted ror In order to transform the native races

into a people their differences had to be produced and reassemhled

The population tables of the censu~ divide the inhabitants of the

Philippines into roughly twenty-five linguistic groups distinguishing at

least five skin colors ranging from whilC to black and where releshy

vant types of dlilenshlp and Iunions oC birth These seeminglv

incommensurable gfClupings were then reduced into two broad categoshy

rie~ civilized and wild Their Jiffercnccs initially had iClgts to do with

thodr material nJlture than their religious characteristics Those labeled

civilized were seen to adhere La a common Christian Lulture whIle

lhost marktd wild w~re either Musltms or subscribed to animi5m both

dearly outside the Christian order The former comprising the majority

)f the ltlrchipclagos illhabitant~ lIweu their civilized state the census

assumed to the effects of Spanisb ru The latter-whether pagan

headhunters in the mountamgt nomadic forest dwellers or Muslim

peoplts in Ule south-had steadfastly resisted Spanish conquest and

were thought to live in stages between almost complete savagery amI

dawning civilization (Censlls 122-23)

Jt is important to note though that Ule distinction between civilized

1I1d Wild peoples is regarded in the census as relative and transitional

Wild peoplegt owed their barbarous state to the historical failure of

Spain to conquer them a condition that a more vigorous US regime

would remedy Indeed colonial accounts especially those of Worcesshy

ters are filled wiu) glovring reports regarding the wild men as ideal

colontal subjects Because they were free from the so-ca lled corrupting

inluence of Catholic Spain and lowland mestizo elites wiJd men were

seen to be far more receptive to the firm straight-talking tough love of

while men Hence could wild men be more easily disciplined through

such tasks a~ massive road constructions that would link the lowlands

with the mountains mining explorations for uS-owned companies

North American-style athletic competitions staged for visiting colonial

Jignitarics and the policing of the wild country from warring tribes to

iecure the safety of colonial hill stations and outposts Wild men were

ripe candidates for tutelage to the extent that they seemed most suscepshy

tible to suhjugation L

Conversely so-called civilized Filipinos were more recalcitrant even

resistant tothe caJI of benevolent assirrulation As insurgents fighting

ttl aSSert their socreignty after hwing defeated the Spanish army deshy

clared a republic framed a constitution organized a cabinet and conshy

vened a congress hy 1899 they were deemed dangerously ambItious and

inherently deceptive By their conduct in the war these Filipinos had

showed themselves to be wild and barbarous And when they chose to

collabMate ith the new colonial power they remained shifty opporshy

tunistic anJ often la0 Sparnsh colonization and the Catholic religion

33 VTlile Ltlle 32

had done no mort than imprint the n(ltivcs wilh the ouhvard ~igns of

civilization Inwardly lhey remaineJ inadequate to the task of civilizing themselves

O ne of the most common) cited character traits in colonia sources

that suggested he semicivilized state of Filipinos was their supposed

penchant for mimicry Incapahle of original thought they could excel

only In copying heir olonial and class superiors Sangers remarks on

the ability of FilipLOo soldiers to foUow orders under competent white

officers seemed tu ratify this belief The census repeatedly quotes passhy

sages from various colonial sources and travel accounts from the late

sixteenth centurr LO the early twentieth that retail this notion of native

mimicry Typical were the comments of Major Frank S Bourns army

surgeon and later chiefof the Bureau of Healtb

The race is quick to learn and has a fairl) good natural abilitv bu t such a class

will have 10 be educated before great responsibility can be placed in its

hands M) idea [is tha t] if IFilipinos were I associated with a sufllient

number ofAmericans who are honorable Jnd upright In their dealjngs there

would be a vel) strong tendency on their part 0 do as their colleagues do

They are natural imilators it is a racia l charactristk (Celsus 1505 see also

1494gt 497499500-502507-8)

As natural imitators Filipinos perforce depend on external stimuli

to shape their internal disposition Merely reactjvc ralher than reflecshy

uve they existed in immediatt and sensuous relationship to their surshy

roundings rather than as self-conscious agcnt1gt of their own transforshy

mation [f they had conullilted atrociotls crimes during the war

according to Governor-General Taft it was only because they were imshy

itating lhe actions of their mestizo leaJers (who in tum were imitating

the adions of their Spiwish masters) Taft like Bourns attributes thb

tendency of the Filipinos to hlindly follow their racial supltriors to the

fact that thq are an Oriental race Like all Orientals they are a

suspicious people but when their confidence I~ won they f(IUoW with a

trust that IS complde (Censlls 1530)

Mimicry on th~ part of thl nativegt is construed as a sign of inferiority

bomt out of raCial difference But precisely for this reason as Taft states

it is also an invitation to white supcrvislOn [The Filipinos] are merel)

in a state of Christian pupilage They are imitative They arc glad to be

educated glad 10 study some languages other than their own glad to

follow European and American ideals (erSUS 1530) Just a~ the un

tainted Slale orrhe wild peoples provided white mcn the opportunity to

display their manl) Jove the civilizeJ but Imitative and corrupted pcoshy

pks of a hybrid Oriental-Christian culture called for the studious amI

diligent care of whHc rutors and commanders

Wildness and civility were thus contingent and interchangeable

terms In mapping population differences the cenSill also projected

their future reconfiguration Such was p05sible because the religious

dilTerence between wild and civilized peoples was subsumed by larger

considerations of color and race Vhether they were Christian or nonshy

~hristian marked or unmarked by European influences prior to US

role both types were seen to display great homogeneity with regard to

their brown color live in tribes with regard to their sociolinguistic

orgarnzation and be Malays a species of Orientals with regard to their

race (Census 14U-12 242-65) Hence is the census able to imagine

Civilized and wild peoples existing side by side on the same map of the

Philippines (CelSUs 250- 51) While their separate locations are indishy

cated by the various colors of the map one gelS an acute sense of how

their borders were encompassed and flatlened out on the sanle homogeshy

neOliS surface by lhe surveying eye of the state Their identity as wild or

CIvilized peoples was relative to their place all the colornal geobody just

as their dtstimt charactenstics came into focu~ with reference to the

assimilative gaze ofwhlte benevolence The census not only mapped the

structure of racial difference it also established the privilege of a parshy

ticular race to determine the borders of those differences

This racial privilege was endowed with a genealogy In the census

section titled HisLOr) of the Population then Chief of the Bureau of

Non-Christian Tribes David Barrow~ writegt about the peoplmg of the

archipelago in lerms ofwaves ofmigrations of diTerent races from the

outside [n doing so he reiterates the speculations of other colonial

accounts regarding the prehi5tory of the Philippines-speculations that

since the archeological advances of the 1960s have been definitively

discredited My llltcrest III pointing out the censuss usc of the wave

migralion theory has les~ to do with disproving its accuracy than with

showing how its currency in official accounts grew out of the colonial

concern with racializing Philippine history

35 Wile 101lt1

~

34

The original inhabitants of the islands were supposedly the Negntos

(a Spanish term that literally mean little Negroes) or Aetas aborigishy

nal black dwufs whose origins according to Barrows remain shroud~d

in mystery Wilh ilieir shorter stature dark skin woolly hair nomadic for~st existence and austere material culture they seemed to Barrows

and other writers from lhe United States to be so racially distinct as to be

historically removed from the rest of the populalion They probably

approach as nearly to the conception of primitive man as any people

thus far dlscovered Barrows oates The abonginal Negritos were then said to have succumbed to a succession of more cullurally sophisticated

and physic-ally better endowed Malays from the south Arrivmg til large

boats iliey conquered the islands pushing the aboriginal populations

into the forests while occasionally intermarrying witb tbem Later mImiddot

gratory waves brought even stronger Malays some in possession of an Islamic faith acquired from Arabs driving the older Malays into the

mountains The spread of Muslim Malays however was checked by th

arrival of the Catholic Spaniards m the sixteenth century marking

the break between the prehistoric and properly historic epochs in the

Philippines The Spanish conquest also led to an influx of a Chinese

element into the population as radelS settled and intenllarried with

the Malays giving rlse to a small but economically afld socially signifishy

cant mestizo population (CensLls t411-17 454 532V~

This narrative or the peopling of the archipelago imagines the Philipshy

pines to haw been a tabula ralgt settled by gtUCCCSSlve waves ofcolonizers AI such the racial and tribal divenily of the population can be exshy

platned in temporal terms as the inevitable retreat of darker-skinned

more savage inhabitants in the face of advancing groupgt of lightershy

skinned more civilized and physically superior conquerors Indeed the

epochal break between tbe prehistoric to the properly historkal era

occurs only with the arrival of the Spaniards Racial differences result then from a long history of colonization (ulnunating presumdbly in

the arrival of the strongest m05t progresSIVe and lightc-st-skinned l0111shynuer to date wbites from the United States TIle ldfet of racializing

both the SOCIal structure and cultural history of the Philippines is to

position the population in a derivative relatiomhip to the outside It is as if tilt counlry was naturally destined for conquest just as the UniteJ

States was maniJeslly destined LO colonize It The historical recountrng

3(gt

of the population like its ~tatistical accounting renders aloma subshy

Jects visible from a transcendent posthi~toric vantage poim one tlCshy

cupild hy what we might designate as the white gaze Spatialiy it is a

gaze that dreams of surveying and cataloging other races while remainshy

ing unmarked and unseen itself temporally iL IS that which sees the

receding past of nonwhiLe others from the perspective of its own irreshy

sistible fulure l3

The privllcged poise of seeing a regulated and well-pOliced future

already prefigured in the beterogen~ous and disorderly past comes

acroSS WJth special clarity in the photographs of Filipinos that appear in the census report Set off from the ttxtual and statistical sectiolls of the

census the photographs are arranged to form an albwn of colonial

subJectivities Typical examples of wild and civilized peoples are feashy

tured in che photographS in the first volume along with pictures of

native enumerators and their local supervisors Dressed in their tribal

attire for the cameras lens images of colonial bodies are wrenched from

their historical and social contexts In tlleir frozen slate they suggest

the appearance of specimens undergoing different stages of tutelage

At the lowest egt1Teme the scantily clad Negritos hunched over the

ground with tangled hair and minstTel -like grim are made to appear

farthest removed from the civilizing touch of colonial rule (6g 3)

Head-hunling Igorots those putative descendants of the first wave of

Malay conquerors along with Muslim Malays appear more erect even

regal decked out in their tribal ornaments signifying their more adshy

vanced statt (figs J and 5) Closest to civilization are the Western-clad

census workers Set againsl ] background of Americcul flags their apshy

pearance suggests weD-disciplined bodies while the portraits of local

supervisors identified by name and area of responsibility produce uushyages of bourgeois respectability aSSimilated into the state machinery

(figs 6 and 7)

Within the context of the censuss raciali7jng frame such photoshy

graphs constitute a visual complement to the statistical tables a distinct

but related way of seeing native subjects as objects of knowledge and

reform Where statistical tabulations abstract native identities into laceshy

less numbers tle photographs give a kind of composite face to the

amplatistics Shadowed by the n()tion of typicality-which I take to be the

reductIOn of cultuml differences mto an ordered range ofv-ariaLions and

37 While Love

of enumtratioll this grammar of dassificalion WlS far [rom disinttrshy

tsted Rather it wa~ (rucial in imaging thc terms of colonial society as ltbove all a racial hierarchy

Recoriil1g Race Vhlte loYlt tOr little brown brothers as Taft reterred

to Filipinos was predicated on white supremacy enforced through pracshy

tices of diSCipline and maintained by a network ofsupervision General

Sanger in hh introduction to the census Of1903 remarked how fllJpwos

would in the course of time become good citizens in that some of tllem

had already proved themselves to be excellent soldiers capable of folshy

lowing the orders of their white officers Similarly census workers under

white supervision had shown the natives potential for performing comshy

plex state functions With appropriate training there was no relson why

the rest of the population could not become a disciplined people As

Sanger contends

Under the guidance of a free just and generous government the eswbhshmiddot

ment of more rapid and frequent means or communicalion whereby they

wulcl be brought into more frequent contact wilh each other and with the

general spread of education t11e tribal dlstinctiom which now exist wi ll

gradually disappear and the Filipino wili hecome a numerous aod homogeshy

neous EnglIsh-speaking race cceeding in intelligence and capacity all other

eo pIes of the tropics (Census 140)

Encapsulating the benevolent-disciplInary trajectory of colonial polshy

iC) in general and the census in particular Sangcr reiterllCS the posshy

sibility indeed the uesirabililr of molding colonial gtubJccts into a single

people here conceived of 30 a homogeneous English-speaking race

Predictably homogenization (10 only come afta a process or tutelage

one aimed at superseding if not suppressing existing tribal distincshy

tions To do ~o however the general owlincs of those distinctions need

tt) be surveyed and accounted ror In order to transform the native races

into a people their differences had to be produced and reassemhled

The population tables of the censu~ divide the inhabitants of the

Philippines into roughly twenty-five linguistic groups distinguishing at

least five skin colors ranging from whilC to black and where releshy

vant types of dlilenshlp and Iunions oC birth These seeminglv

incommensurable gfClupings were then reduced into two broad categoshy

rie~ civilized and wild Their Jiffercnccs initially had iClgts to do with

thodr material nJlture than their religious characteristics Those labeled

civilized were seen to adhere La a common Christian Lulture whIle

lhost marktd wild w~re either Musltms or subscribed to animi5m both

dearly outside the Christian order The former comprising the majority

)f the ltlrchipclagos illhabitant~ lIweu their civilized state the census

assumed to the effects of Spanisb ru The latter-whether pagan

headhunters in the mountamgt nomadic forest dwellers or Muslim

peoplts in Ule south-had steadfastly resisted Spanish conquest and

were thought to live in stages between almost complete savagery amI

dawning civilization (Censlls 122-23)

Jt is important to note though that Ule distinction between civilized

1I1d Wild peoples is regarded in the census as relative and transitional

Wild peoplegt owed their barbarous state to the historical failure of

Spain to conquer them a condition that a more vigorous US regime

would remedy Indeed colonial accounts especially those of Worcesshy

ters are filled wiu) glovring reports regarding the wild men as ideal

colontal subjects Because they were free from the so-ca lled corrupting

inluence of Catholic Spain and lowland mestizo elites wiJd men were

seen to be far more receptive to the firm straight-talking tough love of

while men Hence could wild men be more easily disciplined through

such tasks a~ massive road constructions that would link the lowlands

with the mountains mining explorations for uS-owned companies

North American-style athletic competitions staged for visiting colonial

Jignitarics and the policing of the wild country from warring tribes to

iecure the safety of colonial hill stations and outposts Wild men were

ripe candidates for tutelage to the extent that they seemed most suscepshy

tible to suhjugation L

Conversely so-called civilized Filipinos were more recalcitrant even

resistant tothe caJI of benevolent assirrulation As insurgents fighting

ttl aSSert their socreignty after hwing defeated the Spanish army deshy

clared a republic framed a constitution organized a cabinet and conshy

vened a congress hy 1899 they were deemed dangerously ambItious and

inherently deceptive By their conduct in the war these Filipinos had

showed themselves to be wild and barbarous And when they chose to

collabMate ith the new colonial power they remained shifty opporshy

tunistic anJ often la0 Sparnsh colonization and the Catholic religion

33 VTlile Ltlle 32

had done no mort than imprint the n(ltivcs wilh the ouhvard ~igns of

civilization Inwardly lhey remaineJ inadequate to the task of civilizing themselves

O ne of the most common) cited character traits in colonia sources

that suggested he semicivilized state of Filipinos was their supposed

penchant for mimicry Incapahle of original thought they could excel

only In copying heir olonial and class superiors Sangers remarks on

the ability of FilipLOo soldiers to foUow orders under competent white

officers seemed tu ratify this belief The census repeatedly quotes passhy

sages from various colonial sources and travel accounts from the late

sixteenth centurr LO the early twentieth that retail this notion of native

mimicry Typical were the comments of Major Frank S Bourns army

surgeon and later chiefof the Bureau of Healtb

The race is quick to learn and has a fairl) good natural abilitv bu t such a class

will have 10 be educated before great responsibility can be placed in its

hands M) idea [is tha t] if IFilipinos were I associated with a sufllient

number ofAmericans who are honorable Jnd upright In their dealjngs there

would be a vel) strong tendency on their part 0 do as their colleagues do

They are natural imilators it is a racia l charactristk (Celsus 1505 see also

1494gt 497499500-502507-8)

As natural imitators Filipinos perforce depend on external stimuli

to shape their internal disposition Merely reactjvc ralher than reflecshy

uve they existed in immediatt and sensuous relationship to their surshy

roundings rather than as self-conscious agcnt1gt of their own transforshy

mation [f they had conullilted atrociotls crimes during the war

according to Governor-General Taft it was only because they were imshy

itating lhe actions of their mestizo leaJers (who in tum were imitating

the adions of their Spiwish masters) Taft like Bourns attributes thb

tendency of the Filipinos to hlindly follow their racial supltriors to the

fact that thq are an Oriental race Like all Orientals they are a

suspicious people but when their confidence I~ won they f(IUoW with a

trust that IS complde (Censlls 1530)

Mimicry on th~ part of thl nativegt is construed as a sign of inferiority

bomt out of raCial difference But precisely for this reason as Taft states

it is also an invitation to white supcrvislOn [The Filipinos] are merel)

in a state of Christian pupilage They are imitative They arc glad to be

educated glad 10 study some languages other than their own glad to

follow European and American ideals (erSUS 1530) Just a~ the un

tainted Slale orrhe wild peoples provided white mcn the opportunity to

display their manl) Jove the civilizeJ but Imitative and corrupted pcoshy

pks of a hybrid Oriental-Christian culture called for the studious amI

diligent care of whHc rutors and commanders

Wildness and civility were thus contingent and interchangeable

terms In mapping population differences the cenSill also projected

their future reconfiguration Such was p05sible because the religious

dilTerence between wild and civilized peoples was subsumed by larger

considerations of color and race Vhether they were Christian or nonshy

~hristian marked or unmarked by European influences prior to US

role both types were seen to display great homogeneity with regard to

their brown color live in tribes with regard to their sociolinguistic

orgarnzation and be Malays a species of Orientals with regard to their

race (Census 14U-12 242-65) Hence is the census able to imagine

Civilized and wild peoples existing side by side on the same map of the

Philippines (CelSUs 250- 51) While their separate locations are indishy

cated by the various colors of the map one gelS an acute sense of how

their borders were encompassed and flatlened out on the sanle homogeshy

neOliS surface by lhe surveying eye of the state Their identity as wild or

CIvilized peoples was relative to their place all the colornal geobody just

as their dtstimt charactenstics came into focu~ with reference to the

assimilative gaze ofwhlte benevolence The census not only mapped the

structure of racial difference it also established the privilege of a parshy

ticular race to determine the borders of those differences

This racial privilege was endowed with a genealogy In the census

section titled HisLOr) of the Population then Chief of the Bureau of

Non-Christian Tribes David Barrow~ writegt about the peoplmg of the

archipelago in lerms ofwaves ofmigrations of diTerent races from the

outside [n doing so he reiterates the speculations of other colonial

accounts regarding the prehi5tory of the Philippines-speculations that

since the archeological advances of the 1960s have been definitively

discredited My llltcrest III pointing out the censuss usc of the wave

migralion theory has les~ to do with disproving its accuracy than with

showing how its currency in official accounts grew out of the colonial

concern with racializing Philippine history

35 Wile 101lt1

~

34

The original inhabitants of the islands were supposedly the Negntos

(a Spanish term that literally mean little Negroes) or Aetas aborigishy

nal black dwufs whose origins according to Barrows remain shroud~d

in mystery Wilh ilieir shorter stature dark skin woolly hair nomadic for~st existence and austere material culture they seemed to Barrows

and other writers from lhe United States to be so racially distinct as to be

historically removed from the rest of the populalion They probably

approach as nearly to the conception of primitive man as any people

thus far dlscovered Barrows oates The abonginal Negritos were then said to have succumbed to a succession of more cullurally sophisticated

and physic-ally better endowed Malays from the south Arrivmg til large

boats iliey conquered the islands pushing the aboriginal populations

into the forests while occasionally intermarrying witb tbem Later mImiddot

gratory waves brought even stronger Malays some in possession of an Islamic faith acquired from Arabs driving the older Malays into the

mountains The spread of Muslim Malays however was checked by th

arrival of the Catholic Spaniards m the sixteenth century marking

the break between the prehistoric and properly historic epochs in the

Philippines The Spanish conquest also led to an influx of a Chinese

element into the population as radelS settled and intenllarried with

the Malays giving rlse to a small but economically afld socially signifishy

cant mestizo population (CensLls t411-17 454 532V~

This narrative or the peopling of the archipelago imagines the Philipshy

pines to haw been a tabula ralgt settled by gtUCCCSSlve waves ofcolonizers AI such the racial and tribal divenily of the population can be exshy

platned in temporal terms as the inevitable retreat of darker-skinned

more savage inhabitants in the face of advancing groupgt of lightershy

skinned more civilized and physically superior conquerors Indeed the

epochal break between tbe prehistoric to the properly historkal era

occurs only with the arrival of the Spaniards Racial differences result then from a long history of colonization (ulnunating presumdbly in

the arrival of the strongest m05t progresSIVe and lightc-st-skinned l0111shynuer to date wbites from the United States TIle ldfet of racializing

both the SOCIal structure and cultural history of the Philippines is to

position the population in a derivative relatiomhip to the outside It is as if tilt counlry was naturally destined for conquest just as the UniteJ

States was maniJeslly destined LO colonize It The historical recountrng

3(gt

of the population like its ~tatistical accounting renders aloma subshy

Jects visible from a transcendent posthi~toric vantage poim one tlCshy

cupild hy what we might designate as the white gaze Spatialiy it is a

gaze that dreams of surveying and cataloging other races while remainshy

ing unmarked and unseen itself temporally iL IS that which sees the

receding past of nonwhiLe others from the perspective of its own irreshy

sistible fulure l3

The privllcged poise of seeing a regulated and well-pOliced future

already prefigured in the beterogen~ous and disorderly past comes

acroSS WJth special clarity in the photographs of Filipinos that appear in the census report Set off from the ttxtual and statistical sectiolls of the

census the photographs are arranged to form an albwn of colonial

subJectivities Typical examples of wild and civilized peoples are feashy

tured in che photographS in the first volume along with pictures of

native enumerators and their local supervisors Dressed in their tribal

attire for the cameras lens images of colonial bodies are wrenched from

their historical and social contexts In tlleir frozen slate they suggest

the appearance of specimens undergoing different stages of tutelage

At the lowest egt1Teme the scantily clad Negritos hunched over the

ground with tangled hair and minstTel -like grim are made to appear

farthest removed from the civilizing touch of colonial rule (6g 3)

Head-hunling Igorots those putative descendants of the first wave of

Malay conquerors along with Muslim Malays appear more erect even

regal decked out in their tribal ornaments signifying their more adshy

vanced statt (figs J and 5) Closest to civilization are the Western-clad

census workers Set againsl ] background of Americcul flags their apshy

pearance suggests weD-disciplined bodies while the portraits of local

supervisors identified by name and area of responsibility produce uushyages of bourgeois respectability aSSimilated into the state machinery

(figs 6 and 7)

Within the context of the censuss raciali7jng frame such photoshy

graphs constitute a visual complement to the statistical tables a distinct

but related way of seeing native subjects as objects of knowledge and

reform Where statistical tabulations abstract native identities into laceshy

less numbers tle photographs give a kind of composite face to the

amplatistics Shadowed by the n()tion of typicality-which I take to be the

reductIOn of cultuml differences mto an ordered range ofv-ariaLions and

37 While Love

had done no mort than imprint the n(ltivcs wilh the ouhvard ~igns of

civilization Inwardly lhey remaineJ inadequate to the task of civilizing themselves

O ne of the most common) cited character traits in colonia sources

that suggested he semicivilized state of Filipinos was their supposed

penchant for mimicry Incapahle of original thought they could excel

only In copying heir olonial and class superiors Sangers remarks on

the ability of FilipLOo soldiers to foUow orders under competent white

officers seemed tu ratify this belief The census repeatedly quotes passhy

sages from various colonial sources and travel accounts from the late

sixteenth centurr LO the early twentieth that retail this notion of native

mimicry Typical were the comments of Major Frank S Bourns army

surgeon and later chiefof the Bureau of Healtb

The race is quick to learn and has a fairl) good natural abilitv bu t such a class

will have 10 be educated before great responsibility can be placed in its

hands M) idea [is tha t] if IFilipinos were I associated with a sufllient

number ofAmericans who are honorable Jnd upright In their dealjngs there

would be a vel) strong tendency on their part 0 do as their colleagues do

They are natural imilators it is a racia l charactristk (Celsus 1505 see also

1494gt 497499500-502507-8)

As natural imitators Filipinos perforce depend on external stimuli

to shape their internal disposition Merely reactjvc ralher than reflecshy

uve they existed in immediatt and sensuous relationship to their surshy

roundings rather than as self-conscious agcnt1gt of their own transforshy

mation [f they had conullilted atrociotls crimes during the war

according to Governor-General Taft it was only because they were imshy

itating lhe actions of their mestizo leaJers (who in tum were imitating

the adions of their Spiwish masters) Taft like Bourns attributes thb

tendency of the Filipinos to hlindly follow their racial supltriors to the

fact that thq are an Oriental race Like all Orientals they are a

suspicious people but when their confidence I~ won they f(IUoW with a

trust that IS complde (Censlls 1530)

Mimicry on th~ part of thl nativegt is construed as a sign of inferiority

bomt out of raCial difference But precisely for this reason as Taft states

it is also an invitation to white supcrvislOn [The Filipinos] are merel)

in a state of Christian pupilage They are imitative They arc glad to be

educated glad 10 study some languages other than their own glad to

follow European and American ideals (erSUS 1530) Just a~ the un

tainted Slale orrhe wild peoples provided white mcn the opportunity to

display their manl) Jove the civilizeJ but Imitative and corrupted pcoshy

pks of a hybrid Oriental-Christian culture called for the studious amI

diligent care of whHc rutors and commanders

Wildness and civility were thus contingent and interchangeable

terms In mapping population differences the cenSill also projected

their future reconfiguration Such was p05sible because the religious

dilTerence between wild and civilized peoples was subsumed by larger

considerations of color and race Vhether they were Christian or nonshy

~hristian marked or unmarked by European influences prior to US

role both types were seen to display great homogeneity with regard to

their brown color live in tribes with regard to their sociolinguistic

orgarnzation and be Malays a species of Orientals with regard to their

race (Census 14U-12 242-65) Hence is the census able to imagine

Civilized and wild peoples existing side by side on the same map of the

Philippines (CelSUs 250- 51) While their separate locations are indishy

cated by the various colors of the map one gelS an acute sense of how

their borders were encompassed and flatlened out on the sanle homogeshy

neOliS surface by lhe surveying eye of the state Their identity as wild or

CIvilized peoples was relative to their place all the colornal geobody just

as their dtstimt charactenstics came into focu~ with reference to the

assimilative gaze ofwhlte benevolence The census not only mapped the

structure of racial difference it also established the privilege of a parshy

ticular race to determine the borders of those differences

This racial privilege was endowed with a genealogy In the census

section titled HisLOr) of the Population then Chief of the Bureau of

Non-Christian Tribes David Barrow~ writegt about the peoplmg of the

archipelago in lerms ofwaves ofmigrations of diTerent races from the

outside [n doing so he reiterates the speculations of other colonial

accounts regarding the prehi5tory of the Philippines-speculations that

since the archeological advances of the 1960s have been definitively

discredited My llltcrest III pointing out the censuss usc of the wave

migralion theory has les~ to do with disproving its accuracy than with

showing how its currency in official accounts grew out of the colonial

concern with racializing Philippine history

35 Wile 101lt1

~

34

The original inhabitants of the islands were supposedly the Negntos

(a Spanish term that literally mean little Negroes) or Aetas aborigishy

nal black dwufs whose origins according to Barrows remain shroud~d

in mystery Wilh ilieir shorter stature dark skin woolly hair nomadic for~st existence and austere material culture they seemed to Barrows

and other writers from lhe United States to be so racially distinct as to be

historically removed from the rest of the populalion They probably

approach as nearly to the conception of primitive man as any people

thus far dlscovered Barrows oates The abonginal Negritos were then said to have succumbed to a succession of more cullurally sophisticated

and physic-ally better endowed Malays from the south Arrivmg til large

boats iliey conquered the islands pushing the aboriginal populations

into the forests while occasionally intermarrying witb tbem Later mImiddot

gratory waves brought even stronger Malays some in possession of an Islamic faith acquired from Arabs driving the older Malays into the

mountains The spread of Muslim Malays however was checked by th

arrival of the Catholic Spaniards m the sixteenth century marking

the break between the prehistoric and properly historic epochs in the

Philippines The Spanish conquest also led to an influx of a Chinese

element into the population as radelS settled and intenllarried with

the Malays giving rlse to a small but economically afld socially signifishy

cant mestizo population (CensLls t411-17 454 532V~

This narrative or the peopling of the archipelago imagines the Philipshy

pines to haw been a tabula ralgt settled by gtUCCCSSlve waves ofcolonizers AI such the racial and tribal divenily of the population can be exshy

platned in temporal terms as the inevitable retreat of darker-skinned

more savage inhabitants in the face of advancing groupgt of lightershy

skinned more civilized and physically superior conquerors Indeed the

epochal break between tbe prehistoric to the properly historkal era

occurs only with the arrival of the Spaniards Racial differences result then from a long history of colonization (ulnunating presumdbly in

the arrival of the strongest m05t progresSIVe and lightc-st-skinned l0111shynuer to date wbites from the United States TIle ldfet of racializing

both the SOCIal structure and cultural history of the Philippines is to

position the population in a derivative relatiomhip to the outside It is as if tilt counlry was naturally destined for conquest just as the UniteJ

States was maniJeslly destined LO colonize It The historical recountrng

3(gt

of the population like its ~tatistical accounting renders aloma subshy

Jects visible from a transcendent posthi~toric vantage poim one tlCshy

cupild hy what we might designate as the white gaze Spatialiy it is a

gaze that dreams of surveying and cataloging other races while remainshy

ing unmarked and unseen itself temporally iL IS that which sees the

receding past of nonwhiLe others from the perspective of its own irreshy

sistible fulure l3

The privllcged poise of seeing a regulated and well-pOliced future

already prefigured in the beterogen~ous and disorderly past comes

acroSS WJth special clarity in the photographs of Filipinos that appear in the census report Set off from the ttxtual and statistical sectiolls of the

census the photographs are arranged to form an albwn of colonial

subJectivities Typical examples of wild and civilized peoples are feashy

tured in che photographS in the first volume along with pictures of

native enumerators and their local supervisors Dressed in their tribal

attire for the cameras lens images of colonial bodies are wrenched from

their historical and social contexts In tlleir frozen slate they suggest

the appearance of specimens undergoing different stages of tutelage

At the lowest egt1Teme the scantily clad Negritos hunched over the

ground with tangled hair and minstTel -like grim are made to appear

farthest removed from the civilizing touch of colonial rule (6g 3)

Head-hunling Igorots those putative descendants of the first wave of

Malay conquerors along with Muslim Malays appear more erect even

regal decked out in their tribal ornaments signifying their more adshy

vanced statt (figs J and 5) Closest to civilization are the Western-clad

census workers Set againsl ] background of Americcul flags their apshy

pearance suggests weD-disciplined bodies while the portraits of local

supervisors identified by name and area of responsibility produce uushyages of bourgeois respectability aSSimilated into the state machinery

(figs 6 and 7)

Within the context of the censuss raciali7jng frame such photoshy

graphs constitute a visual complement to the statistical tables a distinct

but related way of seeing native subjects as objects of knowledge and

reform Where statistical tabulations abstract native identities into laceshy

less numbers tle photographs give a kind of composite face to the

amplatistics Shadowed by the n()tion of typicality-which I take to be the

reductIOn of cultuml differences mto an ordered range ofv-ariaLions and

37 While Love

The original inhabitants of the islands were supposedly the Negntos

(a Spanish term that literally mean little Negroes) or Aetas aborigishy

nal black dwufs whose origins according to Barrows remain shroud~d

in mystery Wilh ilieir shorter stature dark skin woolly hair nomadic for~st existence and austere material culture they seemed to Barrows

and other writers from lhe United States to be so racially distinct as to be

historically removed from the rest of the populalion They probably

approach as nearly to the conception of primitive man as any people

thus far dlscovered Barrows oates The abonginal Negritos were then said to have succumbed to a succession of more cullurally sophisticated

and physic-ally better endowed Malays from the south Arrivmg til large

boats iliey conquered the islands pushing the aboriginal populations

into the forests while occasionally intermarrying witb tbem Later mImiddot

gratory waves brought even stronger Malays some in possession of an Islamic faith acquired from Arabs driving the older Malays into the

mountains The spread of Muslim Malays however was checked by th

arrival of the Catholic Spaniards m the sixteenth century marking

the break between the prehistoric and properly historic epochs in the

Philippines The Spanish conquest also led to an influx of a Chinese

element into the population as radelS settled and intenllarried with

the Malays giving rlse to a small but economically afld socially signifishy

cant mestizo population (CensLls t411-17 454 532V~

This narrative or the peopling of the archipelago imagines the Philipshy

pines to haw been a tabula ralgt settled by gtUCCCSSlve waves ofcolonizers AI such the racial and tribal divenily of the population can be exshy

platned in temporal terms as the inevitable retreat of darker-skinned

more savage inhabitants in the face of advancing groupgt of lightershy

skinned more civilized and physically superior conquerors Indeed the

epochal break between tbe prehistoric to the properly historkal era

occurs only with the arrival of the Spaniards Racial differences result then from a long history of colonization (ulnunating presumdbly in

the arrival of the strongest m05t progresSIVe and lightc-st-skinned l0111shynuer to date wbites from the United States TIle ldfet of racializing

both the SOCIal structure and cultural history of the Philippines is to

position the population in a derivative relatiomhip to the outside It is as if tilt counlry was naturally destined for conquest just as the UniteJ

States was maniJeslly destined LO colonize It The historical recountrng

3(gt

of the population like its ~tatistical accounting renders aloma subshy

Jects visible from a transcendent posthi~toric vantage poim one tlCshy

cupild hy what we might designate as the white gaze Spatialiy it is a

gaze that dreams of surveying and cataloging other races while remainshy

ing unmarked and unseen itself temporally iL IS that which sees the

receding past of nonwhiLe others from the perspective of its own irreshy

sistible fulure l3

The privllcged poise of seeing a regulated and well-pOliced future

already prefigured in the beterogen~ous and disorderly past comes

acroSS WJth special clarity in the photographs of Filipinos that appear in the census report Set off from the ttxtual and statistical sectiolls of the

census the photographs are arranged to form an albwn of colonial

subJectivities Typical examples of wild and civilized peoples are feashy

tured in che photographS in the first volume along with pictures of

native enumerators and their local supervisors Dressed in their tribal

attire for the cameras lens images of colonial bodies are wrenched from

their historical and social contexts In tlleir frozen slate they suggest

the appearance of specimens undergoing different stages of tutelage

At the lowest egt1Teme the scantily clad Negritos hunched over the

ground with tangled hair and minstTel -like grim are made to appear

farthest removed from the civilizing touch of colonial rule (6g 3)

Head-hunling Igorots those putative descendants of the first wave of

Malay conquerors along with Muslim Malays appear more erect even

regal decked out in their tribal ornaments signifying their more adshy

vanced statt (figs J and 5) Closest to civilization are the Western-clad

census workers Set againsl ] background of Americcul flags their apshy

pearance suggests weD-disciplined bodies while the portraits of local

supervisors identified by name and area of responsibility produce uushyages of bourgeois respectability aSSimilated into the state machinery

(figs 6 and 7)

Within the context of the censuss raciali7jng frame such photoshy

graphs constitute a visual complement to the statistical tables a distinct

but related way of seeing native subjects as objects of knowledge and

reform Where statistical tabulations abstract native identities into laceshy

less numbers tle photographs give a kind of composite face to the

amplatistics Shadowed by the n()tion of typicality-which I take to be the

reductIOn of cultuml differences mto an ordered range ofv-ariaLions and

37 While Love

Fig 3 Ncgrilos (Aetas) (CCISIIS of tire Philippine lslaru190J)

a set of representative figures-these photographs form part of the same

enumerative and classificatory optic of colonial knowledge Photographs of wild and civilized rilipinos are reproduced not only

in the census report but in various official documents of lhe colonial

archive Many wer~ taken by government officials themselves most

prominently Dean C Worcester as part of their regular trips to survey

the peoples and conditions of the country Witrun a coloma context

these photographs make a claim analogous to that of the censUS wbile

a diverse collection of tribes may exist in the archipelago they can

be encoded wuhin the gtlime racial hLCrarchy and enclosed within a

single visual field Constructed illgt examples and exemplars of native

types photographic images ofcolonial subJccts map Iuitural differences

within the same representational grid That is tu say they bear the marks

of a colonizing gaze that is able to Jrrogate for itself in remaining

discrete and disperseJ the privilege to rank and assess the comparative

value of the native inhabitants and their world fhey image the subjects

of colonialism as oble( LS of transitional signifkance whose prescnL is

bound to fade into the pat as they are wholly annexed to tbe civili7jng

embrace of the future Mementos of conquest such photographs serve

as dioramas of benevolent assimilation Like the census tables and

graphs they work to crclSe the traces of lOlence atlhc origin ofUS rule

Fig 4-5 Wi ld non-Christian peoples (CCIlSUS of Ihe Pl ilippirle s(lIJds 1903)

and instead pay tribute to tbe technologies of supervision and classificashy

tion that maintain the disciplinary devotions of white loveJ~

Short-dTCIlitillg Surllillal1Ce Were there other ways of reading benevshy

olent assimilation thal went against the grain of the census Did aJternashy

live styles of nvisioning the Philippines exist that called into question

the radaHzing narratives of the Philippine past along wiLh the disciplinshy

ary prescnpLlOos for its prcsent and future

~t about the same time that the census-with ilS Jream images of a

benevolent empire-was being conducted and published between 1903shy

1905 a series of nationalist plays in the Tagalog vernacular were being

performed in and arouud Manila Written and performed largely b

urban working-class artists some of whom had been active in both the

revolution agaimt Spain and war against the United States these plays

were extraordinarily pupular among working-class audiences as well as

39 White LOlle

~-

38

Fig 6 Civilized Chri~han people (Censlls I1f rile PJiippirc Islands 1903)

members of the nationalist elite critical of US rule Occupying the same

historical terrain as the colonial census nationahst melodramalgt mark

the limits of the censuss reach While the census servegt as an Important

foundation in the construction of a Larger colonial archive- one that

would eventually come to include transcribed and translated examples

of Tagalog seditious plays as part of the colonial court recordsshy

nationalist dramas performed a history whose meltlnings eluded the imshy

pcrial logic ofheneolent assimi1uion and surveying gaze uflbe archive

UnJer the Sedilion Law the colonio Supreme Court banned these

nationalist dramas claiming Lhilt they tended to incite the people- 01

the Philippine blands tn open ltlod armeJ resistance 10 U1C conslttuted

auth(lrititS and inculcate a spirit of hatred and enmity against the

American people and the Government of the United tatesin the Philshy

ippines1 Forced 10 go underground in orJer to evade the constant

scrutiny of colonial authorities plavrights and casts were frequentl

arrested fined and imprisoned Through suh coercion Ihe colonial

government managed to (Urlal] and finally extingUIsh the production of

nationali~t plays after 1905

Official anxiety over these nationalist dramas had Lo do with the

extent of their popullril) among flllplnos Playing to crowded houses

4U

Pig 7 Portraits of census

supervisors (CellSllS of

the Philippi istllds

1903)

in Manila such dramas also attracted every man woman and child in

the ouuying barrios It was not uncommon for on audience to cheer on

its feet rabid with fury and frenzy for three hours after a performance

as one US observer nervously wrote When the sed itious plays apshy

peared the people rose to it as one man recognized that it told their

story and patronized them liberalJy (Riggs xi 45 S7)ln order to evade

colomal surveilJance theatrical groups relied on such tactics as publicizshy

ing plays under different tiues staging imprompt u songs and speeches

advocating Philippine sovereignty and dressing the cast in costumes

that when brought into formation on stage momentarily created an

image of the outlawed Philippine flag They used visual props such as

the rising red sun symbolic of the revolutionary orgallization Katishy

punan which had led the revolution against Spain and ~tructured their

41 White Love

~

stories as nllegaries of romance and kinship to invoke recollections o( re~eJlI events and provoke sympathy (tfnllClY) for the suITcrings of the motherland Uallgbajfm) Through the characters tlle playwrights staged debates about the present and future of the nation crafting lengthy soliloquies and pOll1ted exchanges ilial questioned US prushy

nouncements of benevolent assimilation and critiqued tIll prlctice of ilipino collaboration indeed coJonialtsm and collaborauon were seen

in the playgt 1S mutually reinforcing working to enslave (olipil1l1l) the

population and disrupt the affective tiegt that constituted the borders of

the national community Nationalist plays drew their formal coherence from the melodrashy

matic conventiuns of nineteenth-centUT) vernacular genres especially

lhe komedya By the nineteenth century the increasing commercializashy

tion of agriculture and opening of the Philippines to world trade laid

the conditions for the emergence of secuJar art fo[Q1 tied LO the marshy

ketplace rather than the Calholic Church Theatrical genrts such as the

komedya were part of these cultural developments Tl1ey wen local

versions of medieval Spanish romances feat uring forbidden love meloshy

dramatic conflicts and predictable resolutions between Christian and

Muslim princes and princesses and their respective families Performed

in the vernacular language komedyas rearticulated Spanish forms They

highlighted spectacular stage effects densely choreographed moveshy

ments such as sword fights and marches brightly colored costumes and elaborate rhetorical modes of address Focusing on the social conflicts

generated by the proscribed love of Cluistiln for Muslim komedyas

look up the themes of lransgressive deSire filial betrayal the aisi~ of parental ltlUlhority (md by extension the u nmaki ng and remaking of the

bonds of reciprocity on which such authority was brued 5d amid the

fanlaSl1C ~urroundings ot imagtned but distant medieval European

kingdoms nineteenth-century popular Lheater translated and so con

ventionalized the persistent presence of the foreign in oncs midst in

ways that escaped c1eriLal and colonial representations It thus opened

up an alternative space for conccptualizing and addressing colonial conshy

Jitions in terms other than those authorized by the chunn and state

Komedyas furthermore were linked to the marketplace as much ltb

to the commwlilles where they performed Out of this genre a notion of the lt1uthor as owner and origin of his or her work begln to form

~uch as in the case of thl best-known pla)vright Francisco Baltazar) and certlin performerli became widely recognizabJe to ditTercnt aushydiences across geographk divides aJlowing them to charge more for their appearances Theatrical troupes were portable alld mobile macing

money by Lravelmg lTom one town fieta to the next rather than enjoyshying the patronage of the state or churdlllI With the outbreak ofrevolushytion the-atrical torms were politicized and performative conventions

rcarticulated toward more radical ends Reynaldo UcLa for instance has demonstrated such transformations in the case of the Pasyorl the epic

storr of Christs passion performed in the vernacular during Holy Week

and mohiizeJ to frame the tumultuous events of the revolution in miUlllUrian terms2~ It comes as DO surprise lhen that the melodrashy

mati conventions of the komedya should also lend themselves to being

ntooled to respond to the force of events relating to the war and onset orus colonial rule

The plots of nationalist dramas served as screens for projecting proshy

foundly felt and widely shared social experiences of revolution colonial occupation war and the intense longing for freedom (kalayaan)JO They

ugtuuly revolved around ilie relationship between a female beloved and

her male lover-protector or between a mother and her children One

personified the naLion and freedom the other sLood for the patriot and

the people Tn either case tbeir relaLionship is invariably threatened by a

male [oreign intruder harboring designs Oll the woman-nation He i ~

aIded hya local collaborator who in betrayi ng his siblings and parents

suhstitutes the love of nation for the lusl after money lbgether they

abduct the woman-naLion thereby precipitating a crisis of filiation

Encouraged by their mother-land lhe male-patriot and his supporters

battle both foreigner and collaborator to regain the freedom of the

beloved-nation Extended calLi to mourn (damay) those who had pershy

ished in the fighting are issued by the motherland (lJlang-bayan ) She

appeals tu her sons and daughters to recall the sacrifices of the dead

th~rebyturmng death into an occasion to celebrate the bonds iliat unite

them Allhough the endings of the plays may vary in their details they

all envision the spectacular reunification of the be10ved nation whether

in the present or future with her lover-patriot retuming from imshy

prisonment or death itself to lead the people to victory against forshyeigners and collaborators alike

43 WIite Love

~

42

Fig 6 Civilized Chri~han people (Censlls I1f rile PJiippirc Islands 1903)

members of the nationalist elite critical of US rule Occupying the same

historical terrain as the colonial census nationahst melodramalgt mark

the limits of the censuss reach While the census servegt as an Important

foundation in the construction of a Larger colonial archive- one that

would eventually come to include transcribed and translated examples

of Tagalog seditious plays as part of the colonial court recordsshy

nationalist dramas performed a history whose meltlnings eluded the imshy

pcrial logic ofheneolent assimi1uion and surveying gaze uflbe archive

UnJer the Sedilion Law the colonio Supreme Court banned these

nationalist dramas claiming Lhilt they tended to incite the people- 01

the Philippine blands tn open ltlod armeJ resistance 10 U1C conslttuted

auth(lrititS and inculcate a spirit of hatred and enmity against the

American people and the Government of the United tatesin the Philshy

ippines1 Forced 10 go underground in orJer to evade the constant

scrutiny of colonial authorities plavrights and casts were frequentl

arrested fined and imprisoned Through suh coercion Ihe colonial

government managed to (Urlal] and finally extingUIsh the production of

nationali~t plays after 1905

Official anxiety over these nationalist dramas had Lo do with the

extent of their popullril) among flllplnos Playing to crowded houses

4U

Pig 7 Portraits of census

supervisors (CellSllS of

the Philippi istllds

1903)

in Manila such dramas also attracted every man woman and child in

the ouuying barrios It was not uncommon for on audience to cheer on

its feet rabid with fury and frenzy for three hours after a performance

as one US observer nervously wrote When the sed itious plays apshy

peared the people rose to it as one man recognized that it told their

story and patronized them liberalJy (Riggs xi 45 S7)ln order to evade

colomal surveilJance theatrical groups relied on such tactics as publicizshy

ing plays under different tiues staging imprompt u songs and speeches

advocating Philippine sovereignty and dressing the cast in costumes

that when brought into formation on stage momentarily created an

image of the outlawed Philippine flag They used visual props such as

the rising red sun symbolic of the revolutionary orgallization Katishy

punan which had led the revolution against Spain and ~tructured their

41 White Love

~

stories as nllegaries of romance and kinship to invoke recollections o( re~eJlI events and provoke sympathy (tfnllClY) for the suITcrings of the motherland Uallgbajfm) Through the characters tlle playwrights staged debates about the present and future of the nation crafting lengthy soliloquies and pOll1ted exchanges ilial questioned US prushy

nouncements of benevolent assimilation and critiqued tIll prlctice of ilipino collaboration indeed coJonialtsm and collaborauon were seen

in the playgt 1S mutually reinforcing working to enslave (olipil1l1l) the

population and disrupt the affective tiegt that constituted the borders of

the national community Nationalist plays drew their formal coherence from the melodrashy

matic conventiuns of nineteenth-centUT) vernacular genres especially

lhe komedya By the nineteenth century the increasing commercializashy

tion of agriculture and opening of the Philippines to world trade laid

the conditions for the emergence of secuJar art fo[Q1 tied LO the marshy

ketplace rather than the Calholic Church Theatrical genrts such as the

komedya were part of these cultural developments Tl1ey wen local

versions of medieval Spanish romances feat uring forbidden love meloshy

dramatic conflicts and predictable resolutions between Christian and

Muslim princes and princesses and their respective families Performed

in the vernacular language komedyas rearticulated Spanish forms They

highlighted spectacular stage effects densely choreographed moveshy

ments such as sword fights and marches brightly colored costumes and elaborate rhetorical modes of address Focusing on the social conflicts

generated by the proscribed love of Cluistiln for Muslim komedyas

look up the themes of lransgressive deSire filial betrayal the aisi~ of parental ltlUlhority (md by extension the u nmaki ng and remaking of the

bonds of reciprocity on which such authority was brued 5d amid the

fanlaSl1C ~urroundings ot imagtned but distant medieval European

kingdoms nineteenth-century popular Lheater translated and so con

ventionalized the persistent presence of the foreign in oncs midst in

ways that escaped c1eriLal and colonial representations It thus opened

up an alternative space for conccptualizing and addressing colonial conshy

Jitions in terms other than those authorized by the chunn and state

Komedyas furthermore were linked to the marketplace as much ltb

to the commwlilles where they performed Out of this genre a notion of the lt1uthor as owner and origin of his or her work begln to form

~uch as in the case of thl best-known pla)vright Francisco Baltazar) and certlin performerli became widely recognizabJe to ditTercnt aushydiences across geographk divides aJlowing them to charge more for their appearances Theatrical troupes were portable alld mobile macing

money by Lravelmg lTom one town fieta to the next rather than enjoyshying the patronage of the state or churdlllI With the outbreak ofrevolushytion the-atrical torms were politicized and performative conventions

rcarticulated toward more radical ends Reynaldo UcLa for instance has demonstrated such transformations in the case of the Pasyorl the epic

storr of Christs passion performed in the vernacular during Holy Week

and mohiizeJ to frame the tumultuous events of the revolution in miUlllUrian terms2~ It comes as DO surprise lhen that the melodrashy

mati conventions of the komedya should also lend themselves to being

ntooled to respond to the force of events relating to the war and onset orus colonial rule

The plots of nationalist dramas served as screens for projecting proshy

foundly felt and widely shared social experiences of revolution colonial occupation war and the intense longing for freedom (kalayaan)JO They

ugtuuly revolved around ilie relationship between a female beloved and

her male lover-protector or between a mother and her children One

personified the naLion and freedom the other sLood for the patriot and

the people Tn either case tbeir relaLionship is invariably threatened by a

male [oreign intruder harboring designs Oll the woman-nation He i ~

aIded hya local collaborator who in betrayi ng his siblings and parents

suhstitutes the love of nation for the lusl after money lbgether they

abduct the woman-naLion thereby precipitating a crisis of filiation

Encouraged by their mother-land lhe male-patriot and his supporters

battle both foreigner and collaborator to regain the freedom of the

beloved-nation Extended calLi to mourn (damay) those who had pershy

ished in the fighting are issued by the motherland (lJlang-bayan ) She

appeals tu her sons and daughters to recall the sacrifices of the dead

th~rebyturmng death into an occasion to celebrate the bonds iliat unite

them Allhough the endings of the plays may vary in their details they

all envision the spectacular reunification of the be10ved nation whether

in the present or future with her lover-patriot retuming from imshy

prisonment or death itself to lead the people to victory against forshyeigners and collaborators alike

43 WIite Love

~

42

stories as nllegaries of romance and kinship to invoke recollections o( re~eJlI events and provoke sympathy (tfnllClY) for the suITcrings of the motherland Uallgbajfm) Through the characters tlle playwrights staged debates about the present and future of the nation crafting lengthy soliloquies and pOll1ted exchanges ilial questioned US prushy

nouncements of benevolent assimilation and critiqued tIll prlctice of ilipino collaboration indeed coJonialtsm and collaborauon were seen

in the playgt 1S mutually reinforcing working to enslave (olipil1l1l) the

population and disrupt the affective tiegt that constituted the borders of

the national community Nationalist plays drew their formal coherence from the melodrashy

matic conventiuns of nineteenth-centUT) vernacular genres especially

lhe komedya By the nineteenth century the increasing commercializashy

tion of agriculture and opening of the Philippines to world trade laid

the conditions for the emergence of secuJar art fo[Q1 tied LO the marshy

ketplace rather than the Calholic Church Theatrical genrts such as the

komedya were part of these cultural developments Tl1ey wen local

versions of medieval Spanish romances feat uring forbidden love meloshy

dramatic conflicts and predictable resolutions between Christian and

Muslim princes and princesses and their respective families Performed

in the vernacular language komedyas rearticulated Spanish forms They

highlighted spectacular stage effects densely choreographed moveshy

ments such as sword fights and marches brightly colored costumes and elaborate rhetorical modes of address Focusing on the social conflicts

generated by the proscribed love of Cluistiln for Muslim komedyas

look up the themes of lransgressive deSire filial betrayal the aisi~ of parental ltlUlhority (md by extension the u nmaki ng and remaking of the

bonds of reciprocity on which such authority was brued 5d amid the

fanlaSl1C ~urroundings ot imagtned but distant medieval European

kingdoms nineteenth-century popular Lheater translated and so con

ventionalized the persistent presence of the foreign in oncs midst in

ways that escaped c1eriLal and colonial representations It thus opened

up an alternative space for conccptualizing and addressing colonial conshy

Jitions in terms other than those authorized by the chunn and state

Komedyas furthermore were linked to the marketplace as much ltb

to the commwlilles where they performed Out of this genre a notion of the lt1uthor as owner and origin of his or her work begln to form

~uch as in the case of thl best-known pla)vright Francisco Baltazar) and certlin performerli became widely recognizabJe to ditTercnt aushydiences across geographk divides aJlowing them to charge more for their appearances Theatrical troupes were portable alld mobile macing

money by Lravelmg lTom one town fieta to the next rather than enjoyshying the patronage of the state or churdlllI With the outbreak ofrevolushytion the-atrical torms were politicized and performative conventions

rcarticulated toward more radical ends Reynaldo UcLa for instance has demonstrated such transformations in the case of the Pasyorl the epic

storr of Christs passion performed in the vernacular during Holy Week

and mohiizeJ to frame the tumultuous events of the revolution in miUlllUrian terms2~ It comes as DO surprise lhen that the melodrashy

mati conventions of the komedya should also lend themselves to being

ntooled to respond to the force of events relating to the war and onset orus colonial rule

The plots of nationalist dramas served as screens for projecting proshy

foundly felt and widely shared social experiences of revolution colonial occupation war and the intense longing for freedom (kalayaan)JO They

ugtuuly revolved around ilie relationship between a female beloved and

her male lover-protector or between a mother and her children One

personified the naLion and freedom the other sLood for the patriot and

the people Tn either case tbeir relaLionship is invariably threatened by a

male [oreign intruder harboring designs Oll the woman-nation He i ~

aIded hya local collaborator who in betrayi ng his siblings and parents

suhstitutes the love of nation for the lusl after money lbgether they

abduct the woman-naLion thereby precipitating a crisis of filiation

Encouraged by their mother-land lhe male-patriot and his supporters

battle both foreigner and collaborator to regain the freedom of the

beloved-nation Extended calLi to mourn (damay) those who had pershy

ished in the fighting are issued by the motherland (lJlang-bayan ) She

appeals tu her sons and daughters to recall the sacrifices of the dead

th~rebyturmng death into an occasion to celebrate the bonds iliat unite

them Allhough the endings of the plays may vary in their details they

all envision the spectacular reunification of the be10ved nation whether

in the present or future with her lover-patriot retuming from imshy

prisonment or death itself to lead the people to victory against forshyeigners and collaborators alike

43 WIite Love

~

42

Whrca~ the allgory of benevolent assimilation regarded imperialshy

ism as the melociramltl of while love for brown brothers sditious rlay~

used the language of melodrama to expns~ the lovc of naLion WI can

sec how language is politicizeu in the pJays b looking at the conventions

for naming different characters Playwrights generally used ~ommon nouns and adjectives to denote each character anu haw each character

signify a particular concept or social enLity as gleaned from thl phlrs dlamatis personae For exampJe 111 Juan Abads Tallika(wg Guillto (TIl

Golden Chain) Liwanag (literally light signifying freedom) is beshy

trothed to Kulayaw (defender standmg for the patriot) the son of

Dalita (suffering connoting the captive condition of the motherland)

Liwanag however is desired by Maimbot (avarice that is the US

colonial government) who enlists the aid of the collaborator Nag-tapon

(one who is thrown away) Nag-tapon accepts money from MaJmhot

and thus betrays his brother Kulayaw and mother Dalila (RIggs 49shy

542)

Similarly in Juan Matapang Cruzs Hindi Pa Aco Patay (J Am Not Yet

Dead) Maeamcam (navancious again the colonial stat) the son of

Maimbot seeks hy force and deception to wed Karangalan (dignity or

respect connoting the natural resources of the country) the daughter

of Pinag saki tan (shc who suffers or the motherland) Macamcan1 and

Maimbot employ the services of the son of Pinagsakltan Ualanghinlt1shy

yang (shameless one the Pilip ina collaborator) who in exchange

for mone) helps to tngineer the abduction of Karangalan However

Karangalans lover Tangulan (protector the Filipino patrIot) the

nephew of Katuiran (reason nr justice signifying Filipino rights)

attempts to rescue her by challenging ~lacamcam to a duel Macamcam

seems momentarily victorious and everyone believes thal Tangulan is

ueatl But as the wedding between Macamcam and Karangalan is ahqut

to take place Tangulan suddenly appears on the stage dcdanng to the

wild applausc oftht audience I am not yet dead (Riggs 543-606)

In one of the most famous seditious dramas Kahapon Ngayorl 11

Bllkas (Yesterday Toda)~ ald Tomorrow) by the prolific writer Aurelio

TolentinO Philippine history is depicted not as the successive waves o(

conquests ues(ribed in the census report hut lS the progressIon of antishy

colonial struggles against foreign invaders and local collaborators In

act 1 Yesterday Inangbayan (motherland) rallies her people led by

~

r1gailog (Iitemllr from Ihe water a rcfcrencc to the Tagalogs) to

defend their llnu Balintawak (a reference to tbe lgtltc where the rcvQlushy

lion of 11)96 against Spain began) against the IOcursions of the Chishy

nese despot Batang Had (child-king perhaps a reference to the

sen~nteenth-century Chinese pirate Limahong who had threatened

to Invade the Spanish colony) Batang Han JS aided by the m1Chinations

of the collaborator Asalhayop (behaves like an animal ) In act 2 Toshy

day Tagailog escapes from prison b killing the collaborator Dahumshy

palay (venomous snake) concealing his identify and rousing his felshy1clvTngalogs to rescue lnangbayan-ilien in the process of being buried

alive by Matanglaw in (hawkeye the Spanish colo mal governmenL)

hi~ jfc Dilatnabulag (slghteJ but unable to see Spain herself) and

Iialimaw (monster the Spanish friar) Finally in act 3 Tomorrow

Tagallog presses a condescending Malaynatin (one whom we dont

know the US government) to live up to his promi~c of granting

indepenJence 10 the people lnangbayan also pleads with Malaynatins

wife Bagongsibol (fresh spring the US natio n) LO convince her

husband to accede to TagaiJogs demands The laller prepares an army to

attack MalaynatlO should he renege on his promise But such a plan

proves unnecessary as Bagongsibol finally succumbs to the entreaties of

the children of Inangbayan and gives the country its independence

Tomorrow ends on a hopeful note with everyone celebrating the new

freedom oflnangbayan (Riggs 607-51)

Arthur Stanley Riggs who compiled an extensive dossier on these

plays for the colonial government remarks on the practice of using

common words to denote the names of characters

Such name~ are to the native mimi filled with the keenest suggestion Jnd

the artful connotation (If the playwright in thus making the very Dames ofhi~

mimet tell mllre than their set speeches has had a t rernendou~ effect Every

time the common nouns were employed in the body of the text the audIence

Saw nol only the ampharacteristlc pTOpert1e~ suggested by them but also swiftly

imagined the parLiwlar characters to which the names belonged The

r~u11 was a quick lively and entire confidence established between author

pI verso and audience impossible to obtai n in any other way (Riggs 122)

In nltlonal1~t melodramas mimicry acquires a value different fTom

thaI aSSigned to 11 by wloOial SOureC5 111 relation to native characterisshy

45 WIite Love

lies Charaders on stage mjme the qualities suggested by tllcir namelgt

with th~ actiw and complicituu~ underbLanding of the playwrights and audiences In this case mimicry becomes a sign of acute even ironic self-consciousness geared toward acting out historical narratives that ran counter to official wrsions Common names are invested with new

meanings and remade by characters into emblems of collectiw experishy

ences The) become hilroglyphs as it were for recalling the nauons

history and redrawing its moral boundaries In this sense the comshy

monality of words becomes proper not only to the individual tharacter

on stage but to the particu lar vcrnacular community fTom and to whICh

that character addresses her- or himself

The practice of naming in nationalist melodramas bears comparison

to the representational conventions of the census report As we have

seen the latler designated the population as the aggregate of quanshy

titatively visible entities withjn a closed set of categories RliJying identishy

ties into schedules card~ and photographic specimens of the typical

the censw consigned both their nammg and interpretation to a bureaushy

craLilt apparatus Translatable into numbers and locatable on a grid

names were regarded a part ofan ensemble of objectiJYing devices with

which to regulate and supervise the relationship between knower and

knOWll stale and subjects white and nonwhite peoples

By contrast nationalist plays turned common names into new sites

for public life rendeTing their referents easily accessible to actors aushy

diences and authors who shared the same vernacular The practice of

naming was a way of establIshing an imagined continUIty between comshy

munication and community Thus could names speak more than their

characters inasmuch as they provided n01 merely a way of marking one

from the other on stage they also opened up a spae from which La

address all those who considered themselves affiliated with the nalion

Where colonial arduves characlenzc and classify in order to rellder

their subjects available for disClpI ine nationalist melodramas resignif

the vernacular so as to reclaim the capacity of peopJe to nominate

themselves as agents in and in lerprelers of their experiences

The narrative of those collective experiences was shaped by a tb~shy

matic of kinship ties As with many Souheasl Asian island societies

Filipino relations are bilalerally reckoned Individuals trace heir links

equally on both the mothers and fathers SIdes Bilateral kinshIp descent

alh)Vi for the ~LJltivati(ln I)f extended fdmlljco through both ritual and extraritual means Historically such ties tended to be idealizcd along the

lines of an tconomy of recipTocal obligations that is through convenshytions of deference respect and expectations of mutual caring between

parents anJ children older and younger siblings husbands and wives

lovers and beloveds landJords and tenants masters and servants and

any other configuration of superordinate and subordinate relations

RedprocaJ obltgatiom are in a way the grammar of kinship ties

Jetcrmmlllg the Jin~s of fiHatlon and affiliation between self and other

as simuJtaneously perllonal (face-to-face) and politicaJ (hierarchic and

liubject to conflict and change) Put diffcrently kinshjp is a way of

concelving the self as faLed and thereby obligated to lhe other and to a

social order predicated on the circulation of mutual indebtedness In a

sense lhen to acknowledge ones kin is to imagine the limits of ones social exp~rience1

By mapping the national community onto the extended family-and

i1lnversely by imaging colonization and collaboration as the disruption

of thaI family and the subversion of an economy of reciprocal indebtedshy

ncss-nationaJist dramas reenact the relationship between the personal

and political As melodramas thlY regard kinship as the terrain of

conflICts and alliances that bear simuJtaneously on the private and pllbshy

Ill spheres-indeed thal calJ altention to their mUlua) constitution 1b

better understand how these plays dramati2e the link between the pershy

sonal and poUljcal it is instructive to look at the ways in which they

eng(nder the Image of a nation by placing gender itseU in moLion

As we saw earlier the discourse orbenevolcnt assimila tion was predishy

cilted on a racial hierarchgt that surveyed as it sought to discipline coloshy

nial subjects Yet tbe census also differentiated the population as males

and females coordinaung gender di~tinctions with race age Occupashy

lion causeofdeath disability and the like Worth noting is the (act that

wIllie racial dltTerence was conceived of in spatial and temporal terms as

organized by and subordinate to whiteness gender distinctions were

posed withoul commentary as if they were wholly natural Indeed the

category ofgender was not used at all but rather that of sex so that the

distinction behveen men and women appears LO be natural and beshyyond any sort of social convelllion

The extent to which gender seems unproblematic in the census is I

47 White LOI 46

Ihlll k a Iundion of the overwhelmingly masculine construdioll oj

colomal order There is never any doubt In official sources that white

love is palernal amI Ihe task uf colonial ddminislratioD though it eOlshy

ployed women as teachers in public schools and nurses in public health

programs is by and large mens work ColoniaJ politics was conceived of

as a homosocial affair involvillS the tutelary bonding between whIte

faLher$ and lheJr male nllive-mestizo apprentices To be coded female of

whatever race was in effect to be consigned to a margInal posilion in

the public spheTe ofcolonial society Gender was thus conflated with sex

as the representation of selCllal difference was naturalized in relation to

the paternruism of the colomal state rust as racial di1Ierence was orgashy

nized from the vantage point of whiteness sexual difference was strucshy

tured from the states masculine perspective To be classified as male Or

female meant becoming visible as sucb to the gaze of white fathers

Nationalist melodramas by contrast do not contain a discourse on

race VVhatever hostile references these plays may have to SUppOSIU

foreigners such characters are never distinguished by color or race but

in terms of behavior and language Hence characlers standing for lhe

US colonial government are depicted as loud and disrespectful given

to excessive drinking and crude behavior (as Fi lipinos orten witnessed

US soldier~ do during the war ) and untrustworthy by virtue ofhaVlflg

ren eged 0 11 past obligations 10 Tolentinos play the foreigners represhy

sentin g the United States are even more complex depicted in a sympashy

thetic light as potentially responsive to the rights of Filipinos and by

implication assimilable into the famdy The occasional reference to

Chinese invaders mav reflect a sense ofanti-Sinitism cultivated by Spanshy

ish colonial policies in the past bUl these Chinese remain so vaguel

drawn and unracialized as to be tokel1$ U1 a larger discourse about

nationalist resistance to colonia] ruleY

tndecd race as a trope for difference and pmvcr is remarkably absent

in the e plays What seems crUCIal in drawing SOCial dislinctions howshy

ever is gender The Importance ofgender is apparent in the names and

plots of the dramltb Figures fur the heloved nation (such as Inangbaran Pinagsakitan Karangalan and Dalita) and deSired freedom (Liwanag

Bituin Malaya) are invariably cast as women middotThose who desire her

whether patriot-protectors or colonialists and collaborators are always

cast as men It IS as if these drrunas triangulate social deSire casting

nat ionhood in lemlS of Ihc masculine strugglt over a feminized ubject

The rdalionship between the nation and nationalists and colonizer

alike is thereby medIated by what appear to he gender stereotypcs Whl1c

men act-they threaten or protect abduct or rescue wage war or make

pace-vomln react and watch the ~ectace of men seeking them ouL Yet In the [exl of the plays these gender stereotypes are provisional

and shifting Ln attributi ng a gender to the characters llle plays also

prnblematize the meaning of those roles parLiculady under the severe

condltions ofrevolutionary upheaval and colonial dislocation In Hilldi Pa Aco Patfy for example Karangalan calls out to Tangulan to rescue

ber from Macamcam Nonetheless it is she who ends up rescuing lum in the forest by shooting a predatory bird symbolizjng the colonial

Philippine Constabulary It is from her too that we hear the most

incisive critique of collaboration as mere enslavement to money and the

most resonant refutation ofUS assessments regarding the ulmtness of

Filipinos for self-government Luhemg Tagalog (Tagalog Tears ) an earshy

lier play by Tolentino feature a wife Bituin (star signifying indepenshy

dence) who protects her husband from the murderow desigm of his

collaborationist father She also counsels the motbers a nd wives of Lbose

gomg off to war offers a trenchant critique of war as an arena of masshy

culme privilege) and eloquently exposes the link between benevolent

assimilation and colonial subjugation (Riggs 352- 422 ) As the suffering

motherland (Busilak in lomas Remigios Malaya [Freedom ] Pinagshy

salltllan in Hind Pl Aco Palay and lnangbayan in Kahnpor1 Ngayoll a [Jukus) women do not serve as passive spCC1alors to their own rescue

Ralher the) initiate the call 10 struggle by putting forth the need to

remember Lbe dead They invoke Lhe importance of mourning (damay)

which because it rekindles ties between lhe living and dead the past and

future constitutes the historical and affective boundaries ofthe national community l~

Women personify lbe beloved nation waiting to be rescued yet they

I~n general the conditions that make their resClIe both possible and

desirable As nurturing mothers imd vulnerable lovers womau-nation

figures take up arms plan battles 8l1d demand accountability from

characters and audiences alike They are objects of masculine conten shy

tion but they are also active interlocutors in the debate over the futllTC

dlSPOftion of their body politic

49 1111 LOI 48

Part of what fenuergt women~ position so complegt is the remarkable

fact thal fathers arc either marginal or iJbsent in these plays The forshy

eigners who covet the woman-nation are constructed as illegItimate or

unacceptable fathers Collaborators arc often depicted as less than hushy

man almost animal because of lheir association wilh money Patriot shy

protectors as lovers are not yet husbands and tend to occupy shifting

positions as characters in need of defense as much as they setk to defend

the nation When taken together tbese masculine roles have tbe effect of

deferring the emergence of any kind of paternal hegemony within the

world of the nationalist dramas Just as the relationship between Ihe

nation and its people crystallizes in opposition to the avaricious and

monopolizing intentions of the colonial state so it would seem that the

gender differences between women and meD do not coalesce around a

paternal figure of authorit)~ instead these differences come up against

and before the persislent fihJUre of the motherland This is not to say that

men and women were considered equal only that the inequality inhershy

enl in gender formations was called into question cast as provisional

and contlitional under specific historical circwnstanccs Gender in these

plays does not come across as a series of fixed and natural categories but

as a set of negotiable positions in the articulation ofnationhood ill the

absence of a symbolic father that would serve as a point of reference in

the gendering of social relations at a time of intense turmoil and uncershy

laint) it is conceivable that the association between woman and nation

in the dramas did Dot simply reproduce gender stereotypes it suggested

alternative role~ as well enablmg women to speak and act in the defense

o the body politic agamst the designs of colonizing ~)lhers Small wonshy

der then that the women arc as ardent theater-goers even 10 urnes of

political stress as their husbands brothers and sons (RIggs 46)

Nationalist melodramas indicate that the imagmg of the nation a1

woman did not i_nvariably translate into a rwed gender hierarchy

Rather the ambiguous con~truclion of gender categories in the plays

arose from the specificity of FilipInO Dotions of kinship historically

articulated in relation to the turbulence ofwar the reolutionary expecshy

tations of freedom (kalayaaD) and the absence of a slable patriarchal

stale between 1i99 and 1905 What made the plays significant was that b

imagining the nallon as woman they projected a nouon of the nation as

distiller from the state And such was indeed imaginable al that parlicushy

iO

lar historical moment when rhe structures of authority-colonial as

well as familial-were up fix grabs Thus did nationalist Jramas allow

for a certain play on the meaninggt of male and female The unresolved

stalus of gender roles (where for In~tance a display of utter weakness

rather than confident mastery can be a mole attribute as much as it is a

womans) wldelscores once again the differences between the represhy

sentational operations of the census and plays Where the fonner was

organized around tlle production of a stable state apparatus that would

rule paternally over a radalized and gendered people the laLLer were far

more concerned with imaging the nation as an extended family predishy

cated less on a patriarchal principle of authority than as a general econshy

omy ofreciprocal obligations freed from the violence of colonial rule

Unlike the census then nationalist plays did not seek to represent

the population as implacably bound to gender and racial categories

subjecllo the continuous gaze ofwhite benevolence Their seditiousness

consisted precisely in providing alternative sources of knowledge and

power-sources into wllich colonjal agents were assinlilated but as figshy

ures disruptive of reciprocal obligations As melodramas they depicted

social desires in motion thereby reintroducing a deep sense of conshy

tingency into LJe narrative of recent even ts on the levels of language and

gender For where white love prescribed manly discipline the love of

nation postulated a different kind of bondage one where a network of

supervision gave way to a spectacular commerce in learsJ5 As Tolentino

wntes in dedicating his play Luhnllg Tagalog to the motherland

Weeping WI hout ceasing for your children

And weeping always for your sorrows

I have taken care to write thb piece

So that my lears should flow

Together with the tears from your eyes

To you [ offer this it i~ so very fragile

Because It IS from me

StllJ accept this

For I have nothing more valuable to gIve (Riggs 352)

51 IVIite Love

Ihlll k a Iundion of the overwhelmingly masculine construdioll oj

colomal order There is never any doubt In official sources that white

love is palernal amI Ihe task uf colonial ddminislratioD though it eOlshy

ployed women as teachers in public schools and nurses in public health

programs is by and large mens work ColoniaJ politics was conceived of

as a homosocial affair involvillS the tutelary bonding between whIte

faLher$ and lheJr male nllive-mestizo apprentices To be coded female of

whatever race was in effect to be consigned to a margInal posilion in

the public spheTe ofcolonial society Gender was thus conflated with sex

as the representation of selCllal difference was naturalized in relation to

the paternruism of the colomal state rust as racial di1Ierence was orgashy

nized from the vantage point of whiteness sexual difference was strucshy

tured from the states masculine perspective To be classified as male Or

female meant becoming visible as sucb to the gaze of white fathers

Nationalist melodramas by contrast do not contain a discourse on

race VVhatever hostile references these plays may have to SUppOSIU

foreigners such characters are never distinguished by color or race but

in terms of behavior and language Hence characlers standing for lhe

US colonial government are depicted as loud and disrespectful given

to excessive drinking and crude behavior (as Fi lipinos orten witnessed

US soldier~ do during the war ) and untrustworthy by virtue ofhaVlflg

ren eged 0 11 past obligations 10 Tolentinos play the foreigners represhy

sentin g the United States are even more complex depicted in a sympashy

thetic light as potentially responsive to the rights of Filipinos and by

implication assimilable into the famdy The occasional reference to

Chinese invaders mav reflect a sense ofanti-Sinitism cultivated by Spanshy

ish colonial policies in the past bUl these Chinese remain so vaguel

drawn and unracialized as to be tokel1$ U1 a larger discourse about

nationalist resistance to colonia] ruleY

tndecd race as a trope for difference and pmvcr is remarkably absent

in the e plays What seems crUCIal in drawing SOCial dislinctions howshy

ever is gender The Importance ofgender is apparent in the names and

plots of the dramltb Figures fur the heloved nation (such as Inangbaran Pinagsakitan Karangalan and Dalita) and deSired freedom (Liwanag

Bituin Malaya) are invariably cast as women middotThose who desire her

whether patriot-protectors or colonialists and collaborators are always

cast as men It IS as if these drrunas triangulate social deSire casting

nat ionhood in lemlS of Ihc masculine strugglt over a feminized ubject

The rdalionship between the nation and nationalists and colonizer

alike is thereby medIated by what appear to he gender stereotypcs Whl1c

men act-they threaten or protect abduct or rescue wage war or make

pace-vomln react and watch the ~ectace of men seeking them ouL Yet In the [exl of the plays these gender stereotypes are provisional

and shifting Ln attributi ng a gender to the characters llle plays also

prnblematize the meaning of those roles parLiculady under the severe

condltions ofrevolutionary upheaval and colonial dislocation In Hilldi Pa Aco Patfy for example Karangalan calls out to Tangulan to rescue

ber from Macamcam Nonetheless it is she who ends up rescuing lum in the forest by shooting a predatory bird symbolizjng the colonial

Philippine Constabulary It is from her too that we hear the most

incisive critique of collaboration as mere enslavement to money and the

most resonant refutation ofUS assessments regarding the ulmtness of

Filipinos for self-government Luhemg Tagalog (Tagalog Tears ) an earshy

lier play by Tolentino feature a wife Bituin (star signifying indepenshy

dence) who protects her husband from the murderow desigm of his

collaborationist father She also counsels the motbers a nd wives of Lbose

gomg off to war offers a trenchant critique of war as an arena of masshy

culme privilege) and eloquently exposes the link between benevolent

assimilation and colonial subjugation (Riggs 352- 422 ) As the suffering

motherland (Busilak in lomas Remigios Malaya [Freedom ] Pinagshy

salltllan in Hind Pl Aco Palay and lnangbayan in Kahnpor1 Ngayoll a [Jukus) women do not serve as passive spCC1alors to their own rescue

Ralher the) initiate the call 10 struggle by putting forth the need to

remember Lbe dead They invoke Lhe importance of mourning (damay)

which because it rekindles ties between lhe living and dead the past and

future constitutes the historical and affective boundaries ofthe national community l~

Women personify lbe beloved nation waiting to be rescued yet they

I~n general the conditions that make their resClIe both possible and

desirable As nurturing mothers imd vulnerable lovers womau-nation

figures take up arms plan battles 8l1d demand accountability from

characters and audiences alike They are objects of masculine conten shy

tion but they are also active interlocutors in the debate over the futllTC

dlSPOftion of their body politic

49 1111 LOI 48

Part of what fenuergt women~ position so complegt is the remarkable

fact thal fathers arc either marginal or iJbsent in these plays The forshy

eigners who covet the woman-nation are constructed as illegItimate or

unacceptable fathers Collaborators arc often depicted as less than hushy

man almost animal because of lheir association wilh money Patriot shy

protectors as lovers are not yet husbands and tend to occupy shifting

positions as characters in need of defense as much as they setk to defend

the nation When taken together tbese masculine roles have tbe effect of

deferring the emergence of any kind of paternal hegemony within the

world of the nationalist dramas Just as the relationship between Ihe

nation and its people crystallizes in opposition to the avaricious and

monopolizing intentions of the colonial state so it would seem that the

gender differences between women and meD do not coalesce around a

paternal figure of authorit)~ instead these differences come up against

and before the persislent fihJUre of the motherland This is not to say that

men and women were considered equal only that the inequality inhershy

enl in gender formations was called into question cast as provisional

and contlitional under specific historical circwnstanccs Gender in these

plays does not come across as a series of fixed and natural categories but

as a set of negotiable positions in the articulation ofnationhood ill the

absence of a symbolic father that would serve as a point of reference in

the gendering of social relations at a time of intense turmoil and uncershy

laint) it is conceivable that the association between woman and nation

in the dramas did Dot simply reproduce gender stereotypes it suggested

alternative role~ as well enablmg women to speak and act in the defense

o the body politic agamst the designs of colonizing ~)lhers Small wonshy

der then that the women arc as ardent theater-goers even 10 urnes of

political stress as their husbands brothers and sons (RIggs 46)

Nationalist melodramas indicate that the imagmg of the nation a1

woman did not i_nvariably translate into a rwed gender hierarchy

Rather the ambiguous con~truclion of gender categories in the plays

arose from the specificity of FilipInO Dotions of kinship historically

articulated in relation to the turbulence ofwar the reolutionary expecshy

tations of freedom (kalayaaD) and the absence of a slable patriarchal

stale between 1i99 and 1905 What made the plays significant was that b

imagining the nallon as woman they projected a nouon of the nation as

distiller from the state And such was indeed imaginable al that parlicushy

iO

lar historical moment when rhe structures of authority-colonial as

well as familial-were up fix grabs Thus did nationalist Jramas allow

for a certain play on the meaninggt of male and female The unresolved

stalus of gender roles (where for In~tance a display of utter weakness

rather than confident mastery can be a mole attribute as much as it is a

womans) wldelscores once again the differences between the represhy

sentational operations of the census and plays Where the fonner was

organized around tlle production of a stable state apparatus that would

rule paternally over a radalized and gendered people the laLLer were far

more concerned with imaging the nation as an extended family predishy

cated less on a patriarchal principle of authority than as a general econshy

omy ofreciprocal obligations freed from the violence of colonial rule

Unlike the census then nationalist plays did not seek to represent

the population as implacably bound to gender and racial categories

subjecllo the continuous gaze ofwhite benevolence Their seditiousness

consisted precisely in providing alternative sources of knowledge and

power-sources into wllich colonjal agents were assinlilated but as figshy

ures disruptive of reciprocal obligations As melodramas they depicted

social desires in motion thereby reintroducing a deep sense of conshy

tingency into LJe narrative of recent even ts on the levels of language and

gender For where white love prescribed manly discipline the love of

nation postulated a different kind of bondage one where a network of

supervision gave way to a spectacular commerce in learsJ5 As Tolentino

wntes in dedicating his play Luhnllg Tagalog to the motherland

Weeping WI hout ceasing for your children

And weeping always for your sorrows

I have taken care to write thb piece

So that my lears should flow

Together with the tears from your eyes

To you [ offer this it i~ so very fragile

Because It IS from me

StllJ accept this

For I have nothing more valuable to gIve (Riggs 352)

51 IVIite Love

Part of what fenuergt women~ position so complegt is the remarkable

fact thal fathers arc either marginal or iJbsent in these plays The forshy

eigners who covet the woman-nation are constructed as illegItimate or

unacceptable fathers Collaborators arc often depicted as less than hushy

man almost animal because of lheir association wilh money Patriot shy

protectors as lovers are not yet husbands and tend to occupy shifting

positions as characters in need of defense as much as they setk to defend

the nation When taken together tbese masculine roles have tbe effect of

deferring the emergence of any kind of paternal hegemony within the

world of the nationalist dramas Just as the relationship between Ihe

nation and its people crystallizes in opposition to the avaricious and

monopolizing intentions of the colonial state so it would seem that the

gender differences between women and meD do not coalesce around a

paternal figure of authorit)~ instead these differences come up against

and before the persislent fihJUre of the motherland This is not to say that

men and women were considered equal only that the inequality inhershy

enl in gender formations was called into question cast as provisional

and contlitional under specific historical circwnstanccs Gender in these

plays does not come across as a series of fixed and natural categories but

as a set of negotiable positions in the articulation ofnationhood ill the

absence of a symbolic father that would serve as a point of reference in

the gendering of social relations at a time of intense turmoil and uncershy

laint) it is conceivable that the association between woman and nation

in the dramas did Dot simply reproduce gender stereotypes it suggested

alternative role~ as well enablmg women to speak and act in the defense

o the body politic agamst the designs of colonizing ~)lhers Small wonshy

der then that the women arc as ardent theater-goers even 10 urnes of

political stress as their husbands brothers and sons (RIggs 46)

Nationalist melodramas indicate that the imagmg of the nation a1

woman did not i_nvariably translate into a rwed gender hierarchy

Rather the ambiguous con~truclion of gender categories in the plays

arose from the specificity of FilipInO Dotions of kinship historically

articulated in relation to the turbulence ofwar the reolutionary expecshy

tations of freedom (kalayaaD) and the absence of a slable patriarchal

stale between 1i99 and 1905 What made the plays significant was that b

imagining the nallon as woman they projected a nouon of the nation as

distiller from the state And such was indeed imaginable al that parlicushy

iO

lar historical moment when rhe structures of authority-colonial as

well as familial-were up fix grabs Thus did nationalist Jramas allow

for a certain play on the meaninggt of male and female The unresolved

stalus of gender roles (where for In~tance a display of utter weakness

rather than confident mastery can be a mole attribute as much as it is a

womans) wldelscores once again the differences between the represhy

sentational operations of the census and plays Where the fonner was

organized around tlle production of a stable state apparatus that would

rule paternally over a radalized and gendered people the laLLer were far

more concerned with imaging the nation as an extended family predishy

cated less on a patriarchal principle of authority than as a general econshy

omy ofreciprocal obligations freed from the violence of colonial rule

Unlike the census then nationalist plays did not seek to represent

the population as implacably bound to gender and racial categories

subjecllo the continuous gaze ofwhite benevolence Their seditiousness

consisted precisely in providing alternative sources of knowledge and

power-sources into wllich colonjal agents were assinlilated but as figshy

ures disruptive of reciprocal obligations As melodramas they depicted

social desires in motion thereby reintroducing a deep sense of conshy

tingency into LJe narrative of recent even ts on the levels of language and

gender For where white love prescribed manly discipline the love of

nation postulated a different kind of bondage one where a network of

supervision gave way to a spectacular commerce in learsJ5 As Tolentino

wntes in dedicating his play Luhnllg Tagalog to the motherland

Weeping WI hout ceasing for your children

And weeping always for your sorrows

I have taken care to write thb piece

So that my lears should flow

Together with the tears from your eyes

To you [ offer this it i~ so very fragile

Because It IS from me

StllJ accept this

For I have nothing more valuable to gIve (Riggs 352)

51 IVIite Love