Spanish-Filipino mestizo costume,
1800s

Chinese-Filipino mestizo costume,
1800s

Spanish-Filipino mestizo costume,
1800s
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- An important impact of Spanish rule in the Philippines
is the creation of a mestizo culture with
entrenched landed interests and a highly skewed land distribution.
- The Spaniards made the local datus
head of the barangays, who eventually acquired large landholdings.
- Some of the barangay heads were natives, but many
important families arose at this time through the intermarriages of two types:
First, the Spanish-Indio mestizo
that had a higher status: it is a socially exclusive class from which the scholars and
literatis of Manila emerged and today have close ties to Spain and the United States;
Second, the Chinese-Indio
mestizo that had a lower status: this class blended with Filipino rural
cultures; it also acquired large tracts of land through money lending. From this class
emerged an important economic group of Filipino-Chinese in the Philippines today. This
class competed with migrant Chinese in trade but were less successful in business.

Chinese chow-chow sellers
in Manila, 1800s
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- The Spanish colonization of the Philippines was not
absolute.
- Some areas of the archipelago were not successfully
subjugated by the Spaniards, especially in some Muslim territories in Mindanao and the
mountain regions of Luzon island where tribal cultures continue to exist until today.
- The continuing conflicts with Muslim Filipinos and
highland Luzon tribal peoples who were never Christianized ultimately led to arrangements
for autonomous regions in Mindanao and northern Luzon.
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A moro-moro play depicting
Spanish war against Muslims
in the Philippines

Muslim Bethrotal
ni Carlos V. Francisco, 1958
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