Exercise 2.3.

1 The Rizal Law

Name: Sophia Marie S. Santos Section: A41

Instructions: Write a 500-word essay on your view on the history of friar lands and the
conflict between the landlords and tenants in Hacienda de Calamba. Use the following
questions as your guide. Be guided by the rubric below in writing your essay.

Questions:
1. What is the broader history of the friar lands?
2. Why did Hacienda de Calamba become a site of agitation in the late 19 th
century?

The question of the friar estates became one of the causes of the Philippine
Revolution. The friars held most of the lands, particularly in the Tagalog area. Mortgage
foreclosures and outright land seizures were common. As the friars grew in authority,
abuses among Filipinos occurred, as did abuses committed by the friars against their
constituents/ flock. Friars or religious organizations owned a thousand hectares of land
in the archipelago, and these properties were kept for generations. The financial impact
of these possessions was inconvenient due to the high rentals demanded of them. The
regulars refused to hand over their parishes to the Filipino seculars. Therefore, the
secularization of the churches became an issue. The friars' excesses are vividly shown
in Rizal's Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, Del Pilar's La Soberania Monacal en
Filipinas, and Lopez-Jaenas' Fray Botod. Several gobernadorcillos led the first and only
open anti-friar march against severe church abuses in 1888, notwithstanding its failure.
Many failed Filipino revolts in the 18th and 19th centuries were also based on friar
abuses.
Because of the Agrarian conflict between 1881 and 1891, the Hacienda de Calamba in
Laguna province turned hostile. Before returning home from Europe in 1887, Rizal was
fully aware of the escalating land battle in the town of Calamba, Laguna, between the
hacienda management and a group of tenants. These tenants, including his family and
some cousins, rented agricultural properties from the Dominican Order, which owned
the enormous productive hacienda in Laguna province. The dispute was exacerbated
by additional circumstances like as low harvests and crops damaged by harsh weather
and disease, as well as unjustified increases in rentals, land seizure, and other
exploitative tactics of the hacienda administration. To summarize a lengthy narrative,
the Dominicans won the lawsuit in a higher court in Manila and the Supreme Court in
Madrid. However, Rizal utilized the struggle in Calamba as a source in his renowned
novel. The agrarian crisis in Calamba, which intensified in 1887 and led to the eviction
of tenants from their property in 1890, spurred Rizal to create a Filipino community on
the British-controlled island of Borneo.
Exercise 2.3.2 The Battle of the Haciendas
A. Instructions: In the issue of the friar lands in the Philippines during the Spanish
colonial period, the two largest friar lands were always being compared – the
Hacienda de Calamba and the haciendas in Negros. In the table below, compare
and contrast those haciendas by citing different aspects of the two friar lands –
physical aspects and their policies.

Use the following reading material as reference.

 Aguilar, F. (2017). Colonial sugar production in the Spanish Philippines:
Calamba and Negros Compared. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 48(2),
237-261.

Calamba Negros
Calamba targeted the religious order the Negros have prospered in their sugar
Spanish eventually backed with economic business, even though most local
backing for the colonial state. planters and millers could not compete in
terms of financial and technical backing
from the central authority.
The Calamba focuses on the institutional Negros developed in a culture where
environment that created the situation people sell goods and services in a single
through production mode and social market.
development.
Calamba has a closed world and It created a variety of haciendas of
economy and an ethnically formed diverse ethnicities in the context of the
society. state's development operations.
The monastery estates implemented the Negros have no political objective, and
religious order that is farmed and the friar order creates tension throughout
improved in Calamba's agricultural tracts. the state.
Because of the items offered to foreign Iloilo mostly depends on loans and capital
merchants in Manila, which are Chinese advances from foreign merchant firms, on
moneylenders and intermediaries, most which the sugar haciendas in Negros rely.
Chinese Mestizos can deliver their funds.
An enclosed economy trade based on the Foreign commercial houses' wealth and
local capital and technology. technology served as the cornerstone of
the sugar business in Negros.
Calamba is regarded as Dominican Negros has sugar planters that have
proprietors relying on leaseholders, socially managed the area allotted to
primarily Chinese Mestizos, in the sugar cane growing and have the ability
economy. to sell and correct the product to
customers.
 B. Instructions: Synthesize what you have learned about the formation of the
haciendas during the Spanish colonization of the Philippines.

The actual colonization operation began in 1565 when Miguel Lopez de Legazpi
signed friendship contracts with the local leaders. Then he established a Spanish
settlement on Cebu Island to convert the locals to Roman Catholicism. Friar lands may
be traced back to the early Spanish colonial period when Spanish conquistadors were
handed lands as haciendas in exchange for their service to the Spanish crown. Around
120 Spaniards were awarded either vast swaths of property known as sitio de Ganado
mayor or lesser areas known as caballerias. The hacienderos, or owners of the
hacienda, did not develop their holdings. One explanation is that Spaniards were not
expected to stay in the Philippines permanently. After serving in the nation, several of
them returned to Spain. The Hacienda de Calamba was previously held by Spaniards
who gave the land to Jesuit friars in order for him to live permanently in the Jesuit
convent. However, with the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Philippines, the hacienda
passed into the hands of the Spanish colonial authorities. Don Clemente de Azansa
purchased the land in 1803. Following his death. The hacienda was later sold to the
Dominicans, who claimed possession until the late nineteenth century. A hacienda is a
type of estate most commonly seen in the Spanish Empire's colonies. Many haciendas
were utilized as mines, factories, or farms, and some were used for all of these
purposes. Haciendas were modest commercial businesses founded with the primary
purpose of producing money. It isn't easy to define the term hacienda precisely.
However, it usually refers to a considerable estate. Traditional haciendas were arranged
in a distinct hierarchy influenced by paternalistic civilizations. The landowners were at
the top of this social arrangement, while the laborers were at the bottom. The hacienda
system evolved with time, but the working conditions of the laborers deteriorated.