Ifugao Resistance Against Spanish and American Colonization

Our travels this past week were nothing short of amazing. I have never in my life seen a more beautiful place than the Batad Rice Terraces. The intricacy of the terraces themselves, balanced so delicately on the sides of the mountains, combined with the friendliness and hospitality of the residents could not have been encapsulated by our readings alone. I am so grateful that we had the opportunity to witness such beauty, and in my opinion the arduous work of climbing the hills brought new insight into our group and maybe brought us closer together?
Our experiences in the terraces really got me thinking about the notion of peri-colonialism that was presented by Stephen Acabado (2016), who defines, “pericolonial archaeology as the study of groups who were not directly colonized by a foreign force, but that shows parallel culture change with groups who were directly colonized (pg. 3).” The Ifugao were really able to resist direct subjugation of “reduccion,”during the Spanish colonial rule, thereby withstanding direct military conflict. The Ifugao people, who fled to the highlands during Spanish Colonial rule in the Philippines were able to create their own economy and political system through the cultivation of the wet rice terraces and were not reliant on the economy of the Spanish Empire as were people in the lowlands who were directly colonized. According to Acabado, however, they were still affected indirectly by “colonialism” (I am using this term even though my understanding of the reading is that this terminology is outdated) in the sense that as the empire was changing, their way of life was changing analogously (p. 7). While I agree with Acabado’s hypothesis that the Ifeugo people were able to resist influence from the Spanish empire by fleeing to the highlands, I be
lieve that they were not able to withstand the forces of American colonialism as effectively based purely on their geographical location.
One of the foremost differences between the Spanish and American colonial periods was that the Spanish were not able unify Filipinos as one people. Although the name of the islands is derived from one of the Spanish monarchs, they were unsuccessful at unification largely due to the effectiveness of the aforementioned resistance. Where the Spanish were unsuccessful, the Americans were victorious (Rafael p. 33). According to Rafael (2000), “The re-formation of natives as colonial subjects required that they become visible and therefore accessible to those charged with their supervision (p.23).” The Americans were able to achieve this (visibility of all Filipinos) by implementing a census and compiling report in 1905 that served as a means for consolidating and categorizing the variety of people archipelago. In the case of the Ifeugo, their proximity to the empire was able to serve as a buffer to the oppression and control of the regime, but they were unable to escape the homogenization of the census (Rafael, 2000, p. 33).
My experience in Batad in the highlands was very opposite to that in the lowlands in Manila. Everywhere you look in metro Manila there is evidence of the relationship, whether past or present, between the Philippines and the United States, and even Spain. In Batad, life, moves at a different pace, and although they were unified under the census with the lowlands, they still live a very different lifestyle today. At first glance and without historical context, it would still appear today that the Ifugao are operating outside the constraints and restrictions of metropolitan life in the Philippines. In my opinion, that is the power of the implementation of the census during American rule: it’s invisibility.



















References

Rafael, V. (2000). White Love and Other Events in Filipino History. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.
Acabado, S. (2016). The Archaeology of Pericolonialism: Responses of the “Unconquered” to Spanish Conquest and Colonialism in Ifugao, Philippines. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 1-26.