Click to view full screen
- Title:
- Feeding Evacuees
- Description:
- It was an October night in the early 1600s. Sentries at Imalus (Guimaras) lit a signal, so all indios of Ilong-ilong ran and hid. The Dutch in 10 galleons met no opposition there because the Spanish alcalde-mayor with his more than 200 Spaniards and 2,000 Indians from encomiendas fled inland. Medina with 2 other missionaries was at the nearby parish of Otong. They buried church valuables, stored others on a caracoa that loyal indios moved to a hidden creek, then fled. The Otong convent lost its ranch of cattle totalling more than 500 head and more than 100 mares. “For as the cattle were tame and came to their usual resorts, the enemy caught some and shot others.” All buildings were torched. Medina and his Augustinian brothers trudged in the rain to Baong. “Although the convent was poor, yet they (assigned priests) acted as if they were wealthy,” Medina writes. “They shared all the rice and beef of the convent with all the [evacuees likely including natives] who kept coming every moment.” Medina then moved north to Passi where two companies of infantry from Sugbú had arrived as reinforcements. Natives refused to help them initially until the priests started to. The Passi convent like all others served as hosteleries, feeding the military till all their substance was gone. Instead of conscripting indios to increase his troops, the commandant “spent the time in scandalous feasting.” Moving to Dumangas, he and his men gorged on coconuts and sugarcane in “hoggish greed” where “more of them died than if they had fought with the enemy.” While Dutch and Borneans raided the Visayas, in Ilocos, pirates harassed Chinese trading vessels heading to and from Manila. Filipinas was still unstable as it reached its 50th year. Missionaries and indios rebuilt destroyed infrastructure and farms together at the grass roots. They secured the local food system strained by foreign attacks.
- Subjects:
- Dutch Voyages and travels
- Exhibition:
- Juan Medina 50
- Source:
- Naval battle between Dutch and Spanish vessels. 1600s. Detail on “Insular Indiae Orientalis Praecipuae”by Jodocus Hondius 1606. From the PHIMCOS Exhibit, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, 2017.
- Type:
- Image;Still Image
- Format:
- image/jpeg
Source
- Preferred Citation:
- "Feeding Evacuees", Philippine Food History, Felice P. Sta. Maria
- Reference Link:
- felicepstamaria.net/items/coll123.html