Filipino Mestizos
[1] The word mestizo itself is of Spanish origin; it was first used in the Americas to describe people of mixed Amerindian and European ancestry.
In addition, Chavacano (a creole language based largely on the Spanish) is widely spoken in Zamboanga and neighboring regions, as well as Cavite and Ternate.
[6] In addition to Manila, select cities such as Bacolod, Cebu, Iloilo or Zamboanga which had important military fortifications and commercial ports during the Spanish era also had sizable Mestizo communities.
The Spaniards restricted the activities of the Chinese and confined them to the Parián which was located near Intramuros, which later they could only live outside it if they became Christian, baptized under the Spanish friars.
Initially, many of the Chinese who arrived during the Spanish period were Hokkien initially from "Chiõ Chiu" (Zhangzhou) and some from "Chin Chiu" (Quanzhou), then later Amoy (Xiamen) and many from "Chinchew" (Quanzhou) who were usually merchants and rarely Macanese Cantonese or Taishanese from Macau and "Cantón" (Guangzhou or Guangdong province in general), who usually worked as cooks or laborers ("cargadores" coolie) or artisan craftsmen.
The Chinese residents of the islands were encouraged and sometimes incentivized to intermarry with other native or Spanish Filipinos and convert to Roman Catholicism.
Both native Filipinos and Chinese who lacked surnames were encouraged to adopt one from the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos, an alphabetical list of Spanish family names, introduced by the government in the mid-19th century.
The Spanish deliberately implemented incentives to entangle the various races together to stop rebellion:[20][21][22] It is needful to encourage public instruction in all ways possible, permit newspapers subject to a liberal censure, to establish in Manila a college of medicine, surgery, and pharmacy: in order to break down the barriers that divide the races, and amalgamate them all into one.
This last plan appears to me more advisable, as the poll-tax is already established, and it is not opportune to make a trial of new taxes when it is a question of allowing the country to be governed by itself.
This regulation will produce an increase in the revenue of 200,000 or 300,000 pesos fuertes, and this sum shall be set aside to give the impulse for the amalgamation of the races, favoring crossed marriages by means of dowries granted to the single women in the following manner.
In a word, by these and other means, the idea that they and the Castilians are two kinds of distinct races shall be erased from the minds of the natives, and the families shall become related by marriage in such manner that when free of the Castilian dominion should any exalted (native) Filipinos try to expel or enslave our race, they would find it so interlaced with their own that their plan would be practically impossible.
[24][25] Persons of pure or mostly Spanish descent living in the Philippines who were born in Hispanic America were classified as Americanos.
Persons who lived outside of Manila, Cebu, and areas with a large Spanish concentration were classified as such: naturales were baptised Austronesians of the lowland and coastal towns.
Persons of Aeta descent were also viewed as being outside the social order as they usually lived in tribes beyond settlements and resisted conversion to Christianity.
Among them was Sir John Bowring, Governor General of British Hong Kong and a well-seasoned traveler who had written several books about the different cultures in Asia.
He described the situation as "admirable" during a visit to the Philippines in the 1870s: The lines separating entire classes and races, appeared to me less marked than in the Oriental colonies.
"[26]Another foreign witness was English engineer, Frederic H. Sawyer, who had spent most of his life in different parts of Asia and lived in Luzon for fourteen years.
[34] In the late 1700s to early 1800s, Joaquín Martínez de Zúñiga, an Agustinian Friar, in his Two Volume Book: "Estadismo de las islas Filipinas"[29][30] compiled a census of the Spanish-Philippines based on the tribute counts (Which represented an average family of seven to ten children[35] and two parents, per tribute)[36] and came upon the following statistics: The Spanish Mestizo population as a proportion of the provinces widely varied; with as high as 19% of the population of Tondo province [29]: 539 (The most populous province and former name of Manila), to Pampanga 13.7%,[29]: 539 Cavite at 13%,[29]: 539 Laguna 2.28%,[29]: 539 Batangas 3%,[29]: 539 Bulacan 10.79%,[29]: 539 Bataan 16.72%,[29]: 539 Ilocos 1.38%,[30]: 31 Pangasinan 3.49%,[30]: 31 Albay 1.16%,[30]: 54 Cebu 2.17%,[30]: 113 Samar 3.27%,[30]: 113 Iloilo 1%,[30]: 113 Capiz 1%,[30]: 113 Bicol 20%,[37] and Zamboanga 40%.
