Following Marcelo H. del Pilar’s insight that “Spain abdicated its sovereignty in favor of monk rule in the Philippines,” this talk establishes the legal and institutional bases of Spanish rule overseas, with attention to the role assigned to the religious Orders in the aftermath of the incomplete conquest of the Philippines. Specifically, I analyze the peculiar character of friar and Jesuit authority: while both served as agents of the Crown, neither were subject to the Crown or even official Church laws and authority. The exploration of this paradox reveals the full implications of the institutional anarchy of Spanish rule overseas. These included numerous cases of violence, contraband, rape, and fraud perpetrated and masked by the religious Orders. The net effect of this institutional anarchy was the perpetuation of an unfinished conquest that left a lasting cultural legacy of native resistance to both the conquest and Christianity in the Philippines.

“Decolonization as an unfinished Project” is one of the proposals of this congress. However, this ambitious affirmation cannot be carried out in our theologies without taking into account what are the origins and understandings that generated the Spanish imperial colonial thought. It is a question, therefore, of situating the genealogies of these epistemologies that transformed the human condition, reality, and the known world and that many name today as the first globalization. Hence, approaching the relations between the Philippines and the Spanish empire is necessary to locate and trace those beginnings. The approximation between these two worlds and its consequences can be studied, beyond the historical facts, through the history of the ideas that appeared, by the effects that they caused in political, economic and religious relations, and also by looking at the transformation that they exercised over the natural world and its resources turned into merchandise. Locating the genesis of these colonizing processes allows us to broaden the matrix of our theological intelligibility, since it forces us to resignify: the genealogies, the epistemic memories, the inductive methodologies, as well as the theological places from which we are elaborating our theological production. The decolonial perspective in times of Vatican II, in addition to a review of theological frameworks, is on the one hand an impulse to move away from «theologies of naivety» or «theologies of limbo» that are alien to epistemic or ecocidal injustice. On the other hand, decolonial hermeneutics becomes a challenge to elaborate «theologies of the common» produced by those who have not yet been «validated» nor have they had «the right of appearance».

Today the Philippines is third in the list of countries with the most number of Catholics. Of a total of 105 million people, 89% are affiliated to the Roman Catholic Church.In 2021, the Philippines celebrated the 500th year anniversary of the arrival of Christianity when a tribal settlement agreed to take part in a mass baptism initiated by the captain of the colonizing expedition, Fernando Magellan. However, it was the expedition led by Miguel Lopez de Legazpi in 1565 that cemented Spanish colonial rule in the archipelago leading to the establishment of the institutional/hierarchical Church. Taking into context the close interfacing of the Vatican and Madrid (as manifested in the passage of Papal Bulls establishing the legitimacy of Patronato Real), there was a close collaboration between the processes of colonization and evangelization. The colonial rule was abusive in regard to how the colonizers treated the native population. First they established the reduccion system, patterned after their colonial strategy in Central/Latin America to hasten proselytization. Given the theological and pastoral praxis of the medieval Church, this meant an aggressive drive to vanquish all aspects of the indigenous belief system practiced by the indigenous communities for thousands of years. Eventually as a result of their brutal subjugation, there erupted hundreds of revolts across the archipelago. In the course of history, a greater sense of unity evolved among some of the lowland peasant communities that consolidate the collective will of the oppressed to rise up against their oppressors. The Union waged a revolutionary war against the Spanish colonial forces for five years until finally the Spanish rule was vanquished which led to the establishment of a Republic, the first to be declared in Asia. The first seeds of what could be referred to as the beginnings of a “native liberation theology” arose in various forms with some of the insurrections that erupted against Spanish colonial rule. This constituted the nascent decolonization of the manner of interpreting the Bible highlighting its liberation content which would reach a new height in theological circles in the Philippines in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. In the 1960s, the political-economic-social structures of the Philippines worsened in regard to its governance system. This led to the worsening poverty situation of the majority and the lack of social justice in all fronts. Vatican II and eventually the declaration of martial law by the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos who ruled from 1972 to 1986 heighted the development of what would be decolonial theologizing. The Marcos dictatorial regime was eventually vanquished through a People Power revolution in February 1986 which led to the restoration of democratic practices in the Republic. However, despite the reforms under Mrs. Cory Aquino until today, the poverty situation worsened owing to the neo-liberal policies imposed by the State apparatus. This was further worsened with gross human rights violations and in-attention to the need to push for ecological justice under President Rodrigo Duterte who won the elections in 2016. Owing to the persistence of this kind of socio-eco-political situation, a movement within faith-based institutions has once more arose with a strong decolonial with a theological perspective advocating for a militant response that listens to both the cry of the oppressed poor and the harassed planet!

N.A.