Title:
Parental Dominance
Date Created:
2021-06-06
Description:
Perhaps missionaries sought to improve native cooking during fiestas and left the everyday rice and fish diet alone. Father San Antonio explains that the natives were ready believers of the new religion. “They are the most inclined to the Church and its feasts and ceremonies, but it is necessary to use the force of the whip to get them to hear mass on holidays of obligation and to confess and receive communion... They are very reverent to the Father Ministers because of the superiority they recognise in them, but at the same time make fun of them,” he writes. The indios were capable in any trade which they work at, he observed and “would be even more capable if they were less lazy or if their greed for temporal goods were greater. Because of this, they have always been, are, and will be poor, not caring to have more than is necessary to eat today”. Food accounts are interspersed among observations praising what the environs and era offer as well as perplexing evaluations that are patronising and condescending. It is within such a conflicting background that culinary changes occurred. Food studies cannot be separated from their social milieu.
Subjects:
Spain -- Colonies -- Asia -- Religious life and customs Fasts and feasts -- Catholic Church Filipinos -- Attitudes
Exhibition:
J San Antonio
Source:
Virgin Mary on a book cover 1613. Engraved by “Thomas Pinpin y Domingo Loag, Tagalos”. Indio food was considered food of the poor so its cooks went unnoticed. But native scribes and printers were deemed talented by Father San Antonio.
Type:
Image;Still Image
Format:
image/jpeg
Source
Preferred Citation:
"Parental Dominance", Philippine Food History, Felice P. Sta. Maria
Reference Link:
felicepstamaria.net/items/coll227.html