Wenceslao Retana’s “El Indio Batangueño,” a Translation [Part X]

This page is the 10^th installment of the AI-assisted transcription of Wenceslao Emilio Retana’s book about Batangas in the late 19^th century.

He was a 19^th century Spanish civil servant, colonial administrator, biographer, political commentator, publisher, and bibliographer. His work on Batangas will sound condescending by present day standards, but should nonetheless provide valuable insight into life in the province in the 19^th century.

The india is not as immodest as some suppose. In her dealings with Europeans, she is far more modest than is generally believed. And yet, from a very young age, the india — especially those of the lowest class—has a full notion of what the world is; she does not pass through that period called childhood. Her passage from infancy to adolescence seems sudden. This does not surprise those of us who know the life of poor indios and the cramped bahays in which they live. In a miserable hut, parents and children sleep piled together.

Money can sway them, though not all. Thus there is no shortage of practical men who, instead of speaking to the meticulous dalaga, speak to her parents, offering a certain sum that is enough to satisfy their ambitions. It is not always effective, and there are cases in which the girl flatly refuses to obey her parents.

Love among the indios is a beautiful and constant idyll. In their language they have countless tender, expressive, and ardent — yet always decent — phrases with which they communicate their emotions. They swear by everything; they promise undying love, even until death. They call each other “my darling,” “my soul,” “sweet dove,” “beautiful lily,” and many similar things.

The woman is not as expressive as the man, especially when she is in love with a European. His vehemence overwhelms her, yet she never ignores anything he says, though she almost always pretends an indifference bordering on stoicism. We were never able to get an india to look at us directly, with that ardor in the gaze that some women have — those who seem to listen with their eyes, feel with their lips, and for every syllable the man pronounces, they give some nerve of their body a new movement. The india listens impassively, almost always without looking directly at the man who is courting her.

Generally, the india appears calm and serene, rarely angered. Jealous and long‑suffering at the same time, she bears her lover’s whims with resignation; and if he claims he despises flirtations, she begs him, she cries, asking him not to forget her. If she is married, she sometimes arms herself with intense energy, and seized by natural indignation, reminds her husband of his old vows and moral duties; she has moments when she rejects him, but she never seeks revenge, nor desires to retaliate against the woman who has stolen her husband’s love.

The unmarried woman seduced by her lover usually resigns herself, because in time she ends up marrying the man who seduced her. But if he abandons her and marries another, she does not always choose to place obstacles to prevent the marriage, nor does she denounce him before the courts. Parents worry very little about their daughter’s future: if she can marry, good; if not, the same.

A selfish interest often leads parents to prefer that their daughters not marry: daughters are more useful at home than sons. The india is very hesitant, no doubt because she sees in her father an eternal watchdog and in her mother an Argus. At the same time, she has a kind of religious fear, and the force of custom weighs so heavily that it is extremely rare for her to run away with her lover when her parents oppose the marriage. Statistics from the year ’85 give only two examples in the entire province.

Many, upon the death of their parents, find themselves alone, helpless, and on the verge of living a miserable life. Fortunately, some marry even after having given birth. Not all indios care much that the woman they will marry has had a child by another man. In fact, some prefer a woman who has already given birth to one who is still a maiden, because many believe that every woman, sooner or later, must fall victim to a bad temptation. Thus, those who marry a single woman who has had children say: “Better—now she will never again be bad; that temptation has already passed.”

There are indios who, unable to bear a disappointment, do not wish to survive it. To carry out their tragic intent, they prefer hanging above all other means: they hang themselves from a tree or from the roof of their house. A few throw themselves into the water.

Forest‑dwelling indios enjoy a certain autonomy that often leads to serious cases of immorality. An isolated bahay, sometimes two kilometers from the nearest one, in a place where no one would suspect the presence of people, is silent witness to cases of celibacy, if not incest. Solitude has great power — who can doubt it? For this reason, on certain paths through the forest, we have sometimes repeated the poet’s words.

“He begets children with his mother or his sister—and dies without knowing how he has lived!”

Even in domestic servitude, and even in what in the Peninsula is called “labor service,” meaning those who work in the fields, one sees many examples of immorality. In how many houses have we encountered unmarried women who are pregnant? And this is not the worst of it — the masters often allow it, even when they have daughters of marriageable age. Many times, because the master himself is the father of the child his servant carries.

Cohabitation is what abounds most; adultery does not reach the level it attains in other countries. The indio does not desire married women very much, and if she has had children, even less; he prefers the single, young woman. It is not rare to hear that some lecherous old man keeps a mistress of thirteen years.

Moreover, the married india is chaste and corrects herself, as priests attest: when asked in the confessional whether they have anything against the sixth commandment, they simply answer, “I am married.”

The life of the tenant farmers who live in the countryside is painful, miserable, and full of constant privations. Fortunately, the indio of the lowest class does not have, as we have said, great aspirations; he condenses all his desires into very little. For this reason, he bears his misfortune with resignation, never realizing it, even when he lacks sustenance.

It is extremely rare for a tenant farmer not to have utan with his master; a debt that creates a kind of slavery to which he is subjected. Generally, indios who devote themselves to agricultural labor begin their service by creating a debt that increases gradually as time passes. Harvest time arrives, and from the handful of pesos the master should give him, he receives only a pittance, for the rest is deducted to amortize the utan. Thus the tenant farmer continues in debt.

He is never without debt, yet he is always without a cent, because whatever he gets, he spends. Thus the utan never disappears; the utan holds him down, and that perpetual debt dulls the already limited diligence of the servant.

And yet the master cannot dismiss him; he would lose the money he advanced, and he would lose a man who, although he does little, is not convenient to abandon—replacing him would cost 40, 50, or even 100 pesos to pay off the new man’s utan. Thus masters and servants both suffer the consequences of a passive force, a true social problem whose knot is the troublesome utan. The day that system disappears, agriculture and industry will follow more prosperous paths.

The recent measure that annulled the old law forbidding loans of more than five pesos to an indio should not have been extended to those with no property, and in general, to servants and laborers. The system of asalariomas, as the ancients called it, is more widespread than one might think.

To establish oneself as a farmer of a modest estate, one must first spend two or three thousand pesos — or more — on servants, all of whom have debts and cannot enter another master’s service unless they pay what they owe to the one they are leaving. The man who sets himself up must therefore settle, one by one, all the debts of the servants or laborers he wishes to employ.

We have thought much about who is to blame for things being this way; and although it is true that much fault lies with the servant for being wasteful, much more lies with the master, who gives each servant only 4, 5, or at most 6 pesos annually, plus food, buyo, tobacco, and two ordinary suits a year.

(The third or fourth part of the profits from the land he oversees.)

No matter how orderly the indio may be, he has many things at hand on which he can spend the half‑peso given to him each month. And he cannot leave, because he will not always find a new master generous enough to pay his utan; and if he emancipates himself, being a debtor, he will have to go to jail, for his master, who is also his creditor, takes good care to file a complaint against him before the gobernadorcillo, and if necessary, before the judge of first instance.

Those who serve inside the house, as well as the tenant farmers, often marry a fellow servant. The master pays for the wedding—or rather, advances the money they need to marry. And the children born of this marriage are condemned to serve from birth, never having a cent, for their wages go toward the slow amortization of their parents’ eternal utan.