Slavery in the Philippines

Work is one of the vital resources known to men. We need men to do different jobs to keep the economy from flourishing and these are what we consider to be the workforce. Today, work is not free, but in some remote and even anonymous places for many, slavery is present. Today I want to talk about slavery in the Philippines. This may seem isolated for this blog, but somehow I feel like it influenced Filipino culture.

Let me arrange it in chronological order. That will make pre-Hispanic Filipino slavery our first. In Tagalog, alipin means slave and it is uripon in Visayas. There are two castes of slaves in Tagalog. First, one level higher than the other is aliping namamahay. The word ‘namamahay’ means “one who lives in a (house or somewhere else?)” and is derived from ‘bahay’ which means house. Slaves of this class have the right to have their own house. The second is called aliping sagigilid. Sagigilid is derived from ‘gilid’ which means side. They have no right to own a house and only live within their master’s estate near the latrine.

Slavery as the natives know it continued during the early years of the Spanish in the Philippines. Of course, there was another spell that came up during that time. This is what they called “pole and service” that serves the encomiendas.

Polo and service is the forced labor for 40 days of men between the ages of 16 and 60 who were required to provide personal services to community projects. One could be exempt from polo by paying the falla (corruption of the Spanish lack, meaning “absence”), a daily fine of one and a half reals.

It was disabled during the 17th century. However, there are still people who secretly acquire slaves.

Still in this period, in the south where some areas have not yet been pacified by the authorities, slavery still persists and many neighboring Christianized towns were even assaulted. They were selling their victims in nearby Southeast Asian countries where the slave market is flourishing.

During the American period, there is an absence of slavery in much of the country except for the ‘alila’ who is a servant (with charges, a little less than that of a slave and who is compensated in some way) and slaves in remote areas. from Mindanao. Other than that, there are none.

Let’s continue slavery in remote parts of Mindanao. This still continues today even though the law prohibits it. In this case, the victims are kidnapped and then sold to a family. The former slaves were much luckier than these victims. At least the former slaves can buy their freedom, but these victims cannot, as they could be a threat to their master’s family if the authorities find out.

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