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

Let me organize it in chronological order. That will make pre-Hispanic Filipino slavery our first. In Tagalog, alipin means slave and is uripon in Visayas. There are two slave castes in Tagalog. First, one level higher than the other is aliping namamahay. The word ‘namamahay’ means “the one who lives in a (house or in another place?)” And it is derived from ‘bahay’ which means house. Slaves of this class have the right to have their own home. The second is called aliping sagigilid. Sagigilid is derived from ‘gilid’ which means side. They do not have the right to own a house and only live inside their master’s farm 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 type that emerged during that time. This is what they called “polo and service” that serves the parcels.

Polo y servicio is the forced labor for 40 days of men between the ages of 16 and 60 forced to render personal services to community projects. One could be exempt from polo by paying the falla (corruption of the Spanish Foul, which means “absence”), a daily fine of one and a half reals.

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

Even in this period, in the south where some areas were still not pacified by the authorities, slavery still continues and they even raided the multiple Christianized neighboring cities. They sold 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, in addition to the ‘alila’, who is a servant (with burdens, a little less than that of a slave and somehow compensated) and the slaves in isolated areas. of Mindanao. Other than that, there are none.

Let’s continue slavery in remote areas of Mindanao. This still continues today despite the law prohibiting 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 knew about it.

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