Spanish Corruption on the Tagalog’s Social Designation

Many preserved archives of historical manuscripts, records, and documents

particularly about the Philippine history has been produced either by outlanders, or for
outlanders -often are informed on the sociocultural and political processes based from
their western perspectives on categories like social science, economics, and politics.
The ambiguous nature of the Tagalog’s social system and structure before and even
after the Spanish colonization have been presented according to the flawed vision of
the writers because of their unwillingness and unappreciative view of the society.
Beginning with the institutional reports presented to the Spanish government,
followed with the theories which consequently misrepresent the Tagalog’s social
structure the reconstruction began containing the various aspects of the Western
society and applying their entrenched leadership and social class structure.

Commissioned by the Spanish civil authorities, Plasencia’s report became the

basis for the implemented Spanish laws and policies in the Philippines which allows
the Spaniards to not only govern but also reconstruct and reconfigure the Tagalog’s
society. But for the historians the originality of the information is subject to doubt.

“These chiefs rule over few people; sometimes as many as a hundred houses,
sometimes even less than thirty. This tribal gathering is called in Tagalo a barangay.
It is inferred that the reason for giving themselves this name arose from the fact (as
they are classed, by their language, among the Malay nations) that when they came to
this land, the head of the barangay, which is a boat, thus called, became a dato. And
so, even at the present day, it is ascertained that this barangay in its origin was a
family of parents and children, relations and slaves. There were many of these
barangays in each town, or, at least, on account of wars, they did not settle far from
one another. They were not, however, subject to one another, except in friendship and
relationship. Their chiefs, in their various wars, helped one another with their
respective barangays.”

There were extensive collections of surviving Tagalog scripts, documents and

summons written by the friars for the advantages of the Spanish local population but
in the late 16th century and beginning of 17th century, none of these has the word
baranggay (Woods, 2004). Perhaps what was wrong in Plasencia’s account was the
concept of how he viewed the society. The confusion of Plasencia’s data stems from
the inadequacy of Spanish political terminologies to be able to comprehend the
Tagalog social structure. Further, the Spanish descriptions on the Taglog’s society
appears to not fit the Tagalog’s designation of social strata. The word barangay is
widely accepted as the basic political unit of the Tagalog society but later on it was
replaced by the Spanish word barrio - a part of a pueblo. Different definitions were
took into account because the indigenous terms for the different political entities did
not existed or have not survived. But still this was used by the Spaniards to reshape
leadership and restructure the society. The Spaniards sought to focus on the local
elites rather than the local structures which was supported by John Leddy’s Phelan on
Pigafetta’s account: “the Spaniards did not find kinglets in the islands; hence they
tried to create them.”
 Woods, D.L. (2005, October 4). From Wilderness to Nation: the Evolution of
Bayan. Retrieved from: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/24m1q0f9