Enacted on May 19, 1893 and named after its author, Antonio Maura y Montañer, then the minister of colonies in Spain, the Spanish-era Maura Law was passed chiefly “to confer upon the towns and the provinces of Luzon and the Visayan Islands a greater measure of autonomy.”
Excluding the city of Manila and Mindanao, the law was approved to divide and subdivide Luzon and the Visayas territorially for administrative purposes. It was the equivalent of the 1991 Local Government Code and may aptly be considered as the first local government law.
Least pointed out as feature of the decree are the provisions making Chinese blood as a qualification for the positions of captain, municipal lieutenants, substitutes, and delegates. Future wartime president Jose P. Laurel, in his ‘Local Government in the Philippine Islands (1925)’, explained that the positions were honorary and gratuitous but was obligatory.
To be elected captain, a member of the tribunal (municipal council), the number one qualification was a native or Chinese mestizo. The philosophy behind the prerequisite is financial status given that the positions do not carry compensation.
The other qualifications require that the official is not over twenty-five years old; a town resident for four years preceding the election; knows how to write and speak Spanish; and has been a cabeza de barangay for four years in service “with all his accounts settled, and in possession of good public and private reputation, or must have been for two years a gobernadorcillo, or captain, or chief lieutenant, or for six consecutive years a cabeza de barangay without unfavorable record.”
Elsewhere, the Maura Law repeated this ‘Chinese mestizo’ requirement under the qualifications of a cabeza de barangay. Like in the first instance, it is a primary criterion.
As cabeza de barangay, the Chinese mestizo holds office for three years and can be reelected indefinitely. He receives, as compensation, fifty percent of the taxes collected and has the power “to require the services of one or two persons to help him in [his] work.”
The use of Chinese mestizo as condition is quite interesting. In the first case, which was for an elected position, the Maura Law tacitly highlights the need to choose public officials with financial knowhow, liquidity, knowledge about taxes, and probity. In the second instance, he is paid and given the privilege to have an assistant to help in the collection of taxes.
Antonio S. Tan, in ‘The Chinese Mestizos and the Formation of the Filipino Nationality’ (1986), explains the role the Chinese-Filipino has played in national growth:
“The Chinese mestizos were an important element of Philippine society in the 19th century. They played a significant role I the formation of the Filipino middle class, in the agitation for reforms, in the 1898 revolution, and in the formation of what is now known as the Filipino nationality. In contemporary times their role in nation-building continues.”
In ‘Chinese and Chinese Mestizos of Manila: Family, Identity, and Culture, 1860s-1930s’ (2010), Richard Chu makes his case on this issue more profoundly during the time the Maura Law as put in place:
“That man Chinese mestizos did no politically identify themselves with the ‘Chinse could also be explained by how China and the Chinese, both in China and other parts of the world, were being perceived. Since China was the ‘poor and sick man of the Orient at that time, Chinese mestizo intellectuals could not have or did not aspire to be identified with her…
“Because the Chinese mestizos agitated for reforms and played a leadership role in criticizing the Spanish colonial regime, the Spaniards began to be ‘haunted by the fear of an indio revolution by the Chinese mestizos,’ whom they regarded as ‘troublemakers’…
This might have been the reason why in the early 1980s, the Spanish authorities sought to diminish the ranks of the Chinese mestizos by discouraging intermarriages between the Chinse and local women. Although the reason given was the Spanish colonial government’s desire to protect local women from marrying unscrupulous Chinese subjects in the Philippines by requiring the latter to first undergo Catholic conversion and Spanish naturalization… one another reason may have been to reduce the number of Chinese mestizos in its colony.”
In contemporary times, the ‘Chineseness’ factor, which is challenged by the growing advocacy against racism and similar themes, has limitedly been identified only with certain issues. While there are individuals, for reason of jealousy and personal bias, have used ‘Chineseness’ as a malicious slant, the role Chinese mestizos have taken in the global economic arena reflects in large measure the trade success of the entire Filipino nation.
(The author is a member of the Davao Historical Society Foundation, trustee of Manila Railroad Club, founder of Philippine Industrial Archaeology Society and former member of the Philippine National Historical Society, Inc.)
