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Basques in the Philippine Islands by Jon Bilbao Basques have been involved in the Philippine Islands since the time of Magellan. It was there that the famed mariner was killed and the Basque Juan Sebastian Elcano took charge of the expedition, becoming the first man to circumnavigate the globe. The Basques Martin de Barrena and Juan de Aroca, compatriots of Elcano, were the first whites to be interred in the Islands (1521). In 1525 Elcano, accompanied by his four brothers, some nephews and 24 Basque officers (among them his friend and protégé Urdaneta), launched a second expedition to the area, but he died at sea. It was Urdaneta who initiated white settlement of the Islands under a royal colonization charter. He named the Basque Legazpi as commander of the expedition, and in 1564 they set sail from Mexico. This expedition contained a large contingent of Basques. One of Urdaneta’s charges was to convert the natives to Christianity, so he brought with him the Basque Augustinian friars Andres de Aguirre, Martin de Rada and Pedro de Gamboa. Legazpi, accompanied by his grandson and son-in-law, was a key figure in the Philippine venture. He invested all of his own money into it, as well as that of many of his Basque colleagues in Mexico. Both Urdaneta and Legazpi brought with them the experience of almost fifty years of Spanish colonizing of the American continent. The natives were not to be used as slaves and missionaries were to teach the Christian faith in the indigenous languages. However, the process of colonizing and settling the Islands was quickly interrupted by the discovery that there was more money to be made in the Oriental trade than in developing local resources. In 1565 Urdaneta attempted what until then had been an impossible voyage, for European navigators, sailing the Pacific from west to east. He discovered that by tacking far to the north, certain wind and ocean currents made the crossing possible. He thereby opened a trade route between Asia and Mexico. As early as 1590 a Spanish merchant purchased 200 ducats worth of goods in Mexico, sold them in Manila for 1400 ducats, and then used his funds to purchase silk which he sold on his return to Mexico for 2500 ducats! Such trade was against the interests of the Crown. The Chinese textiles were cheaper and superior to Spanish ones, and thereby posed a threat to Iberian goods in the American market. Then, too, direct uncontrolled traffic with the Orient presented, at least potentially, a serious tax dodge. New World silver might be used in payment thereby escaping royal assessments on all newly-minted precious metals. Thus, in 1593, the king prohibited all unregulated trade between the Philippines and the American continent. A single maritime route, Manila-Acapulco, was to be served by two royal galleons annually. This imposition had a double effect. First, it killed any motivation to exploit the resources of the Islands, which were many; secondly, it established in Manila a bureaucracy and a society totally dependent on the income produced by the galleons. Thus, the encomenderos, Europeans (including many Basques) who had been given large areas to exploit and colonize, found it more profitable to live in Manila. In fact, the city quickly became a western oasis in an Asiatic world. Chinese and Indian traders brought all kinds of goods (mainly silks and spices) to Manila to be transshipped in the royal galleons. Local clerics, Spanish authorities, widows of Spaniards and many others were given cargo space in the ships. This was then sold to the merchants who purchased goods from India and China. The situation was to remain the same for a considerable time. In 1768, a Basque governor, Simon de Anda y Salazar, petitioned the king for colonizers “because in 200 years since the conquest, all Spaniards are reduced to the ones in Manila, and there is not a single one in the Provinces.” It was governor Jose Basco y Vargas (an Andalusian of Basque origin) who changed things, thanks to a powerful group of Basques established in Madrid (Francisco Cabarrus, president of the Spanish National Bank; Bernardo Iriarte, member of the Supreme Court of State; Francisco Leandro de Viana, former crown solicitor of Manila; Diego Gardoqui, Spanish Ambassador to the USA, and others). In 1785 they established the “Philippine Company,” a trading venture that succeeded the Guipuzcoan Company of Caracas. Many of the Basque merchants who were previously involved in the Guipuzcoan Company became representatives of the Philippine Company in places like Manila, Calcutta, Bombay and other oriental trading ports. They trafficked not only for the Philippine Company, but also for themselves. The nineteenth century Independence Movement of the Spanish colonies of the western hemisphere spelled the end of the galleon system and the Philippine Company. However, by that time (circa 1820), Basques were not only firmly established in the Orient, they had business relations with other Basques in Latin America, notably in Acapulco and Peru (men like Azaola, Arrinda, Azcarraga, Arrechea, Salaberria, and Ayala). During the period immediately prior to and after the First Carlist War (1833-1839), there was a new wave of Basque settlement in the Islands. The settlers did not, however, remain exclusively in Manila. Rather, some ventured further afield to places like Pampanga, Laguna and Batangas. In the late 1930s in the Bicoland region, many Basques started abacá (hemp) and coconut plantations, and in the 1840s on the islands of Negros and Panay, others established sugar plantations. Some of these immigrants were Carlist refugees, as was the case of Ruiz de Luzuriaga on the island of Negros, but the majority were seamen (pilots and captains) involved in the shipping trade. They competed with the Chinese, investing their savings with Basque businessmen such as Zubiri, Matia, Menchacatorre, Aldecoa, Gorostiza, Marcaida, Menchaca, Eguiluz, Aristegui, Laucirica, Inchausti, Azcona and Nessi-Arrola. In some cases Basques were given dangerous territories to explore, pacify and settle, as was the case with Oyanguren. Born in the Guipuzcoan, town of Vergara, in 1847 he was given the task of exploring the Muslim island of Mindanao in the southern part of the Philippines). Oyanguren named the territory under his jurisdiction (the southeastern part of the island) Nueva Guipúzcoa (not, as it is sometimes stated, Nueva Vizcaya, which is a province on the island of Luzon). He gave the name of Bergara (not Nueva Vergara) to the capitol (today the city of Davao). Those names, Nueva Guipúzcoa and Bergara, were officially recognized by the colonial government in January 1849. In December of 1853 another decree of the colonial government divided the territory of Nueva Guipúzcoa into two political-military districts – Bislig and Davao. The names of Nueva Guipúzcoa and Bergara remained in use until 1862, after which time only Davao is used for both the capital and the district. Oyanguren did not die in Manila in 1859, as is generally stated, but in Davao on October 10, 1858. According to the records of the Church of San Pedro in Davao, he was buried the following day in the “Cementerio de Bergara.” In the 1850s the port and province of Iloilo also attracted a Basque contingent, and ultimately emerged as the second most important focus of Basque settlement in the Islands after Manila. It was here that important Basque companies of Manila, like Ynchausti y Compañia, which controlled half a dozen large sugar plantations and a fleet of more than twenty vessels in the inter-island trade, opened branches, Iloilo had Basque-owned businesses of all kinds, and a number of hotels and boarding houses. Basques from the four Spanish Basque provinces were present in the Islands. The most numerous were the Vizcayans due to the fact that the opening of Philippine ports to international trade attracted seamen (captains, pilots, and shipbuilders). The second most important group were the Navarrese, who were involved in trade and in the planting of abaca, coconuts and, later, sugar. The third group were the Guipuzcoans, involved in exploration as Oyanguren and his friend Joaquin Urquiola (from Gaviria) on the Island of Mindanao, or in trading as Jose Joaquin de Ynchausti from Zumarraga, who founded Ynchausti and Company. (His partners were Navarrese: Elizalde, Teus, Yrisarry and others). The Alavese were less numerous, being mostly involved in government administration and later in their own businesses as, for example, the Ayala family. The very few French Basques were established in Manila. Basque trading companies in Manila, like Otadui, Marcaida, Matia y Menchacatorre, and Orbeta, specialized in importing European goods and agricultural machinery. However, it was in shipping that Basques were to excel. Several boats with names like the Bella Vascongada, Bilbaino, Aurrera, Alavesa, Neurea, and Unzueta, were involved before the opening of the Suez Canal in the Liverpool-Bilbao-Manila route as well as the Cadiz-Manila one. The Larrinaga Company, a Basque trading company established in Liverpool, plying the Liverpool-New York and Liverpool-Havana runs, opened offices in Manila. After the opening of the Suez Canal in 1865, Basque immigration into the Philippines increased. The Second Carlist War (1872-1876) created its own refugees. Furthermore, many young men with some schooling in business administration were brought out by the Basque companies involved in agriculture or trade. By this time, the same companies were buying foreign steamships or constructing boats for the inter-island trade. They employed such a number of Basque merchant marine officers that over 90 percent of the captains and pilots in the inter-island trade and the Singapore-Manila, Hong Kong-Manila runs were Basques. So were many of the port officials of Manila, Legazpi, Cebu and Iloilo. The Spanish-American War (1898) did not greatly affect the majority of Basques in the Islands. Some Basque families, such as that of Ruiz de Luzuriaga in Negros, were very involved in the independence movement against Spanish control of the area, but most stayed out of politics. In fact, American occupation gave a new impetus to Basque immigration. Young Basque males who wanted to avoid military service in Spain could join their kinsmen in the Philippines. It was such young men who first brought Basque nationalism to the Basque community in the Philippines. As early as 1907, in the baptismal book of Iloilo’s Church of St. Joseph, there is the Basque language entry “Marco ta Barandiaran ‘tar Erinea.” This nationalist mode of registering a birth was effected by a Navarrese couple from Estella, and is possibly the earliest recorded usage of its kind anywhere in the world. It is clear that Basque nationalist sentiment ran high in Iloilo. On July 31, 1909, the feast day of the Basque patron saint, Ignatius of Loyola, some Basques of the town founded the Euzkeldun Batzokija, the first Basque Nationalist club in the Philippines. The board of directors was formed by two Vizcayans, one Encartado (Western Vizcaya) and one Navarrese. The Club was located in the Hotel Bilbao, which closed after the Second World War. There the club which was known by the name Euskadi (accented on the u) by non-Basques, collected money to help Basques in distress to pay their hospital bills or their way back to the Basque Country. Every year the members celebrated Saint Ignatius’ day with a mass in Basque, followed by a banquet with singing and dancing in the Hotel Bilbao. This religious feast day was observed in the Basque communities of Manila, Legazpi and Cebu as well. Saint Ignatius is more the patron of the Vizcayans and Guipuzcoans, and the Navarrese were inclined to celebrate the fest of their patron Saint Fermin on July 7th. However, at one time many Navarrese participated in the Saint Ignatius Day proceedings as well. For instance, of the group of eight dancers that performed during the festivities in Manila in 1932, two were Navarrese. At the following banquet of Basque nationalists, of the seventeen bachelors, five were Navarrese and the rest Vizcayans. However, with the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, during which Navarra supported General Franco’s revolt against the Spanish Republic, a degree of political tension developed between the two groups. In a photograph taken in 1939 on Saint Ignatius’ Day at the Hacienda La Euskara in San Carlos (Negros Occidental), only one of the twenty-four celebrants was Navarrese. Vizcayans were most outspoken in their opposition to Franco. Since the Philippine press gave little information about the Spanish Civil War, a Vizcayan named Achabal living in Ligau (Albay) decided to listen to foreign broadcasts and publish the information for other Basques. They used to refer to his bulletins as the “Diario de Ligau.” In appreciation of Achabal’s efforts, they bought him the best radio available on the market. During the Second World War Basques were active in guerrilla warfare against the Japanese. A limited account of such effort by Vizcayans is found in a book by Higinio Uriarte entitled A Basque Among the Guerrillas of Negros (published in 1962). But Navarrese also, despite their pro-Franco affinities, supported the American cause, as was the case with the Elizaldes, one of the most prominent Navarrese families of the Philippines. Since the Second World War there has been an exodus of Basques from the Philippines to Australia, Latin America, the United States, and Europe. Those who remain are likely to send their children to Europe or the USA to be educated. Some return to take care of family businesses. However, it is easy to detect a certain nervousness among today’s Philippine Basques. The independence of the Islands ushered in a period of unrest and clouded the future of a European population enclaved in an Asian world. Among the Basques remaining in the Philippines, ethnic identity remains surprisingly strong. Basques flags and motifs decorate their houses and it is not uncommon to find workers of a Basque-owned enterprise with the red, white and green colors of the Basque flag on their shirts, as is the case in the basket factory of Ortube in Irosin (Sorsogon). Basque Christian names (Andoni, Iñaki, Lander, Jon, etc.) are still given to children in families who have resided in the Islands for several generations. Mention should also be made of the jai alai players of Manila. Their work in late afternoons or evenings does not permit them to share the activities of the larger Basque community. Sojourners in the Philippines seldom do they develop close ties with local Basques. After retirement they usually return to the Basque Country or find jobs in frontons elsewhere in the world. The superintendent of the MGM Hotel’s jai alai fronton in Reno, for instance, is a former jai alai player from Manila. Those who remain in the Philippines open restaurants or boarding houses, or seek work with local Basque enterprises. Jai alai has a long tradition in the Orient. Before the Second World War the most important fronton was that of Shanghai; today it is Manila. The results of the games are posted daily in every city in the islands, where there are offices handling the bets. In sum, in the past there was considerable Basque involvement in the society and economy of the Philippines. In recent years the Basque presence has declined notably, but is far from obliterated even today. Unquestionably, the Philippines is one of the prime areas outside of Europe to be influenced by Basque emigration. |
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