354 Book Reviews

Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society

under Early Spanish Rule. By VICENTE L. RAFAEL. Ithaca and London: Cornell
University Press, 1988. Pp. xiii, 230. Plates, Bibliography, Index.

An evaluation of this innovative approach to Spanish colonization of the Filipinos and

their conversion to Christianity will be influenced by the reviewer's attitude towards
post-structuralism which forms its framework of analysis. My own bias is manifested in
the preface, where Dr. Rafael expresses his gratitude to myself "because their work
differs so much in style and substance from my own that I have constantly found them
indispensable in formulating my ideas about the Philippines" (p. xii). I shall confine
myself then not to a discussion of general method, but to a few key objects of analysis.
Rafael's choice of publications, from the Doctrina Cristiana, of 1593, through gram-
mars, dictionaries, manuals for confession and pastoral handbooks, complemented by
two major works by Filipinos — a 1610 Spanish grammar in Tagalog and the Pasyon of
1703, a Tagalog epic based on the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus, provides
a good spectrum.
As implied in the book's title, language is seen as an instrument of power, though
two-edged. Translation not only communicated the Christian message [up to a point],
but also subverted "the ideological grounds of colonial hegemony" (p. 21). Not only
Spanish ideas of authority and submission were conveyed by translation, but Tagalog
responses which "alternately supported and deflected the exercise of Spanish power"
(p. 21).
One of the strengths of post-structuralism is its heuristic value in uncovering hidden
agenda. The problem, however, lies in whether the plausible insights can be
verified with empirical evidence. The book makes numerous thought-provoking asser-
tions and inferences. In the absence of empirical confirmation, however, reflection
often suggests simpler, purely pragmatic answers to the hypotheses.
For example, rather than missionaries being motivated in their painful efforts to write
Tagalog grammars and dictionaries by their intent of "claiming native souls" (p. 26) for
God and king, one might venture that they believed they had a message of utmost
urgency, which could only be communicated, however inadequately, in the language of
the people deprived of the Good News of the Gospel. The submission to the king was
not their task.
Rafael, however, insists on the identification of, or at least inextricable relationship
between, two realities very distinct in the mind of most sixteenth-century Philippine
missionaries, however much the distinction may have been blurred in later centuries —
conversion (to Christianity) and conquest (by Spain). Far from practice in America
determining the character of the Philippine evangelization, as Rafael asserts, it often
brought about a contrary reaction. Taught by bitter experience in America, the disciples
of Vitoria, from the first Augustinians to Bishops Salazar and Benavides, firmly main-
tained that the king of Spain had no temporal rights in the Philippines. There is, of
course, no denying that there was an intimate relationship of conversion and conquest
by the very fact that the king of Spain was Patron of all the churches of the Indies. But
to say that "subjugation [was] prescribed by conversion" (p. 21) is to ignore the fierce
struggles in the Philippines in the last three decades of the sixteenth century. Rafael is
not unaware of the impassioned discussions in Manila, but apparently does not realize
Book Reviews 355

the irreconcilable bases for Spanish rule held by the contending parties. The mis-
sionaries believed (though royal jurists and conquistadores did not) that Spain's con-
quest could not be justified without reference to her missionary mandate to bring the
Gospel to non-Christian peoples. But they did not necessarily accept the converse,
namely, that the missionary enterprise did justify Spanish temporal rule. These same
Philippine missionaries flocked to Japan, even in the face of torture and death, without
giving the least thought to Spanish rule being involved in their efforts to convert the
Japanese. The "ceremony" of 1598, in which Filipinos declared their willingness to
accept the king of Spain as their lord (which Rafael inexplicably equivalates with the
farcical requeriminento of 1510 in America), was for the missionaries the first clear title
for the king to exercise sovereignty over the land and people. Rafael's statement that
the missionaries were alarmed at the thought of a "submission that implicated only the
natives' bodies and omitted their souls" (p. 156) is correct but not in the sense in which
he intends it. For the missionaries the submission of bodies against people's wills was
pure force and injustice, and in this sense they wished a submission "of the soul" which
would freely ratify it. But the submission of "the soul" to the Gospel was an entirely
different thing, not of itself implying submission to Spanish authority.
Likewise betraying an ignorance of the European background invalidating his specu-
lation is the section on sexual transgressions taken from a confessional manual used by
the priest to aid the penitent. In spite of Rafael's perceptions of a "clerical interest
[which] typically took on a certain luridness" and of a "feverish desire" to know "his
most intimate acts and desires" so as to overpower the penitent (pp. 104-105), the
explanation is much more simple. Such confessional manuals were common in Europe
all through the Middle Ages for use by theologically ignorant clergy. Made more
imperative by the prescription of the Council of Trent (1564) concerning the integrality
required in confession, translation to Tagalog no doubt led to multiplication of ques-
tions for clarification, precisely because of the inadequacy of the priest to express him-
self properly. Today such a dialogue seems bizarre, but it had nothing to do with the
domination of a colonized people. Besides its similar use in Europe, one could reflect
that the missionaries, as sinners, were subject to the same discipline, as far as the occa-
sion should occur. Who then was gaining power over them?
Finally one must observe the ahistorical character of many of Rafael's lines of evi-
dence, as selections meant for new converts of the sixteenth century are mingled with
those dating 200 years later. Whatever may have been the quality of the conversions of
the first years of Spanish efforts, Filipinos were not only active in deflecting, as Rafael
asserts, but in assimilating Christian belief. The neglect of historical for literary analysis
is perhaps inherent in post-structuralism. Finally, cleverly as the whole book is inte-
grated into a scene from one of Rizal's novels, it does not convince that the interpreta-
tion is more real by its literary artifice; perhaps the contrary.

Loyola School of Theology, Manila John N. Schumacher, SJ