Wikipedia

Filipino immigration to Mexico

Filipino Mexicans (Spanish: Mexicanos Filipinos) are Mexican citizens who are descendants of Filipino ancestry.[1] There are approximately 1,200 Filipino nationals residing in Mexico.[2] In addition, genetic studies indicate that about a third of people sampled from Guerrero have Asian ancestry with genetic markers matching those of the populations of the Philippines.[3]

Filipino Mexicans
Model of the ship San Pedro de Cerdeña on display at the San Diego Fort in Acapulco
Total population
1,200 Filipino nationals residing in Mexico
Regions with significant populations
New Immigrants: Guadalajara, Tapachula, Coatzacoalcos, Juchitán and Mexico City. Descendants: Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Coastal regions of Jalisco, Colima, Michoacán, Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Chiapas
Languages
Mexican Spanish, Tagalog, English and other Philippine languages
Religion
Roman Catholicism minority of Islam and Irreligion.
Related ethnic groups
Overseas Filipino, Asian Mexicans

History

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Filipino immigration into Mexico expanded alongside the Manila-Acapulco Galleon trade, that formally began in 1565, with the successful return trip of the galleon ship, the San Pedro, headed by Friar Andrés de Urdaneta who had originally sailed out the island of Cebu in the Philippines.[4] The trade route served as an economic connection between Spain, New Spain, and the Spanish East Indies. Throughout its two hundred and fifty years active, it transported goods, sailors, travelers, Asian migrants, and slaves between Manila and colonial Mexico.[5]

Embassy of The Philippines in Colonia Veronica Anzures, Mexico City

In 1574 Spain decreed that Spanish colonists could not enslave natives, but Indigenous chiefs were allowed to retain their rights to slaves.[6] This was through the indigenous alipin system. This created a legal process that allowed enslaved natives to challenge for their freedom, but also created a court system where slaveholders could claim ownership through the court.[6] The Manila-Acapulco galleon trade allowed officials to acquire slaves during their stay in the Philippines, licensing their travel to Mexico and then again to Spain but as historian Tatiana Seijas observes, the record keeping in the Philippines during this time allowed for traders to circumvent this, leaving no paper trail.[7] Hernando de los Ríos Coronel expressed concerns to an increasing number of male slaves being boarded on the Galleons through reports on overcrowding and poor ship conditions.[8] Incidents with the transportation of enslaved women on the galleons led the King of Spain to ban their boarding completely, however, as Seijas notes, it was largely ignored and a quarter of early enslaved crossings were women.[9]

Filipinos were also pressed into service as sailors, due to the native maritime culture of the Philippine Islands. By 1619, the crew of the Manila galleons were composed almost entirely of native sailors, many of whom died during the voyages due to harsh treatment and dangerous conditions. Many of the galleons were also old, overloaded, and poorly repaired. A law passed in 1608 restricted the gear of Filipino sailors to "ropa necesaria" which consisted of a single pair of breeches, further causing a great number of deaths of Filipino sailors through exposure. These conditions prompted King Philip III to sign a law in 1620 forcing merchants to issue proper clothing to native crews. During this period, many Filipino sailors deserted as soon as they reached Acapulco. Sebastian de Piñeda, the captain of the galleon Espiritu Santo complained to the king in 1619 that of the 75 Filipino crewmen aboard the ship, only 5 remained for the return voyage. The rest had deserted. These sailors settled in Mexico and married locals (even though some may have been previously married in the Philippines), particularly since they were also in high demand by wine-merchants in Colima for their skills in the production of tubâ (palm wine).[10][11]

Christianized Filipinos comprised the majority of free Asian immigrants (chino libre) and could own property and have rights that even Native Americans did not have, including the right to carry a sword and dagger for personal protection.[5] They often owned coconut plantations in Colima, an example from 1619 was Andrés Rosales who owned twenty-eight coconut palms. Others were merchants, like Tomás Pangasinan, a native of Pampanga, who was recorded to have paid thirteen pesos in taxes for the purchase of Chinese silks from the Manila galleons in the 17th century. The cities of Mexico, Puebla, and Guadalajara had enough Filipino neighborhoods that they formed segregated markets of Asian goods called Parián (named after similar markets in the Philippines).[5]

The descendants of these early migrants mostly settled in the regions near the terminal ports of the Manila galleons. These include Acapulco, Barra de Navidad, and San Blas, Nayarit, as well as numerous smaller intermediate settlements along the way. They also settled the regions of Colima and Jalisco before the 17th century, which were seriously depopulated of Native American settlements during that period due to the Cocoliztli epidemics and Spanish forced labor.[10] They also settled in significant numbers in the barrio San Juan of Mexico City, although in modern times, the area has become more associated with later Chinese migrants.[5] A notably large settlement of Filipinos during the colonial era is Coyuca de Benítez along the Costa Grande of Guerrero, which at one point in history was called "Filipino town".[12]

Influence

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The Filipinos introduced many cultural practices to Mexico, such as the method of making palm wine, called "tubâ",[13][14][15] the mantón de Manila,[16][17][18] the chamoy,[19] and possibly the guayabera (called filipina in Veracruz and the Yucatán Peninsula).[20] Distillation technology used by bootleggers for the production of mezcal was also introduced by Filipino migrants in the late 16th century, via the adaptation of the stills used in the production of Philippine palm liquor (lambanog) which were introduced to Colima with tubâ.[21][22]

Filipino words also entered Mexican vernacular, such as the word for palapa (originally meaning "coconut palm leaf petiole" in Tagalog), which became applied to a type of thatching using coconut leaves that resembles the Filipino nipa hut.[5]

Various crops were also introduced from the Philippines, including coconuts,[23] the Ataulfo and Manilita mangoes,[24][25] abacá, and bananas.

A genetic study in 2018 found that around a third of the population of Guerrero have 10% Filipino ancestry.[3]

Historical records

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Colonial-era Filipino immigrants to Mexico are difficult to trace in historical records because of several factors. The most significant factor being the use of the terms indio and chino. In the Philippines, natives were known as indios, but they lost that classification when they reached the Americas, since the term in New Spain referred to Native Americans. Instead they were called chinos, leading to the modern confusion of early Filipino immigrants with the much later Chinese immigrants in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Intermarriage and assimilation into Native American communities also buried the true extent of Filipino immigration, as they became indistinguishable from the bulk of the peasantry.[10][26]

Another factor is the pre-colonial Filipino (and Southeast Asian) tradition of not having last names. Filipinos and Filipino migrants acquired Spanish surnames, either after conversion to Christianity or enforced by the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos during the mid-19th century. This makes it very difficult to trace Filipino immigrants in colonial records.[10]

Notable Mexicans of Filipino descent

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See also

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References

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  1. ↑ "Filipinos in Mexican history". www.ezilon.com. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 13 January 2022.
  2. ↑ "Welcome to Manila Bulletin Online". Manila Bulletin. Archived from the original on 2009-02-09. Retrieved 2017-02-15.
  3. 1 2 Wade, Lizzie (12 April 2018). "Latin America's lost histories revealed in modern DNA". Science. Retrieved 14 July 2021.
  4. ↑ Slack, Edward R. (2009). "The Chinos in New Spain: A Corrective Lens for a Distorted Image". Journal of World History. 20 (1): 38. ISSN 1045-6007.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Carrillo, Rubén. "Asia llega a América. Migración e influencia cultural asiática en Nueva España (1565-1815)". raco.cat. Asiadémica. Retrieved 19 December 2016.
  6. 1 2 Seijas, Tatiana (2014). Asian slaves in colonial Mexico: from chinos to Indians. Cambridge Latin American studies. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. p. 68. ISBN 978-1-107-06312-9.
  7. ↑ Seijas, Tatiana (2014). Asian slaves in colonial Mexico: from Chinos to Indians. Cambridge Latin American studies (1. publ ed.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. pp. 83–85. ISBN 978-1-107-06312-9.
  8. ↑ Seijas, Tatiana (2014). Asian slaves in colonial Mexico: from Chinos to Indians. Cambridge Latin American studies (1. publ ed.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. pp. 78–79. ISBN 978-1-107-06312-9.
  9. ↑ Seijas, Tatiana (2014). Asian slaves in colonial Mexico: from chinos to Indians. Cambridge Latin American studies. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. p. 79. ISBN 978-1-107-06312-9.
  10. 1 2 3 4 Guzmán-Rivas, Pablo (1960). "Geographic Influences of the Galleon Trade on New Spain". Revista Geográfica. 27 (53): 5–81. ISSN 0031-0581. JSTOR 41888470.
  11. ↑ Machuca, Paulina (2019). "To make tuba in Mexico and the Philippines. Four centuries of shared history". EncArtes. 2 (3): 214–225. doi:10.29340/en.v2n3.82.
  12. ↑ "Cultural exchanges between Mexico and the Philippines". Geo-Mexico. Retrieved 14 August 2022.
  13. ↑ Astudillo-Melgar, Fernando; Ochoa-Leyva, Adrián; Utrilla, José; Huerta-Beristain, Gerardo (22 March 2019). "Bacterial Diversity and Population Dynamics During the Fermentation of Palm Wine From Guerrero Mexico". Frontiers in Microbiology. 10: 531. doi:10.3389/fmicb.2019.00531. PMC 6440455. PMID 30967846.
  14. ↑ Veneracion, Jaime (2008). "The Philippine-Mexico Connection". In Poddar, Prem; Patke, Rajeev S.; Jensen, Lars (eds.). Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures – Continental Europe and its Empires. Edinburgh University Press. p. 574. ISBN 978-0-7486-3027-1.
  15. ↑ Mercene, Floro L. (2007). Manila Men in the New World: Filipino Migration to Mexico and the Americas from the Sixteenth Century. UP Press. p. 125. ISBN 978-971-542-529-2.
  16. ↑ Arranz, Adolfo (27 May 2018). "The China Ship". South China Morning Post. Retrieved 19 May 2019.
  17. ↑ Nash, Elizabeth (13 October 2005). Seville, Cordoba, and Granada: A Cultural History. Oxford University Press. pp. 136–143. ISBN 978-0-19-518204-0.
  18. ↑ Maxwell, Robyn (2012). Textiles of Southeast Asia: Trade, Tradition and Transformation. Tuttle Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4629-0698-7.
  19. ↑ Tellez, Lesley. "The Spicy, Sour, Ruby-Red Appeal of Chamoy". Taste. Retrieved 1 November 2021.
  20. ↑ Armario, Christine (30 June 2004). "Guayabera's Origin Remains a Puzzle". Miami Herald. Retrieved 10 April 2015.
  21. ↑ Zizumbo-Villarreal, Daniel; Colunga-GarcíaMarín, Patricia (June 2008). "Early coconut distillation and the origins of mezcal and tequila spirits in west-central Mexico". Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution. 55 (4): 493–510. doi:10.1007/s10722-007-9255-0.
  22. ↑ Bruman, Henry J. (July 1944). "The Asiatic Origin of the Huichol Still". Geographical Review. 34 (3): 418. doi:10.2307/209973.
  23. ↑ Gunn, Bee F.; Baudouin, Luc; Olsen, Kenneth M. (22 June 2011). "Independent Origins of Cultivated Coconut (Cocos nucifera L.) in the Old World Tropics". PLOS ONE. 6 (6) e21143. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0021143. hdl:1885/62987. PMC 3120816.
  24. ↑ Rocha, Franklin H.; Infante, Francisco; Quilantán, Juan; Goldarazena, Arturo; Funderburk, Joe E. (March 2012). "'Ataulfo' Mango Flowers Contain a Diversity of Thrips (Thysanoptera)". Florida Entomologist. 95 (1): 171–178. doi:10.1653/024.095.0126.
  25. ↑ Adams, Lisa J. (19 June 2005). "Mexico tries to claim 'Manila mango' name as its own". The San Diego Union-Tribune. Archived from the original on 11 October 2018. Retrieved 11 October 2018.
  26. ↑ Slack, Edward R. (2009). "The Chinos in New Spain: A Corrective Lens for a Distorted Image". Journal of World History. 20 (1): 35–67. ISSN 1045-6007. JSTOR 40542720.
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