Eva Maria Mehl Late Eighteenth-Century Phillippines

Hispanic American Historical Review
Mexican Recruits and Vagrants in Late

Eighteenth-Century Philippines:
Empire, Social Order, and Bourbon Reforms
in the Spanish Pacific World
Eva Maria Mehl
Abstract Between 1765 and 1811, Mexico City sent to Manila, Philippines, about 4,000 Mexicans,
including recruits and vagrants who had been sentenced to military service or public works. At this time, the
Spanish empire was undertaking a military overhaul in the Pacific. However, viceregal authorities used
Manilas need for military replacements to exile individuals who embodied despised moral attributes. The
office of the viceroy was apparently unaware of or unconcerned by the problems faced by Manilas authorities
as they tried to employ these difficult men in defense of the archipelago. By showing that New Spain played a
central role in sculpting Spains relationship with her most remote possession, this article contributes to the
scholarship that challenges the interpretation of the absolutist state as absolute. This transportation process also illuminates that the history of the Spanish Philippines is better apprehended by including the
history of colonial Mexico, and vice versa.
n 1780, 177 Mexican recruits arrived in the Philippines onboard the Naos de la
China, or Manila galleons, the small fleet of Spanish trading vessels that
regularly crossed the Pacific Ocean between Acapulco and Manila from 1565
until 1815. These men were the annual replacements for the Regiment of the
King (Regimiento del Rey), Manilas premier military unit composed largely of
veteran soldiers. The new cohort of 1780 turned out to be a very disruptive
squad who caused tremendous headaches over the following four years. As the
governor of the Philippines, Jose Basco y Vargas, discovered later, most of these
recruits had been drawn from their regimental prisons [and] quite a few were
charged with capital crimes, [so] it is unimaginable how much work they have
given us with their actions and bad example.1 The governor reported to
I want to express my sincere gratitude to Robert Mark Spaulding and Ruth de Llobet for
contributing to this work with their time, insightful comments, and very helpful suggestions.
I am also grateful to the two anonymous HAHR reviewers for their generosity and
constructive comments and to Sean Mannion for his assistance in crafting a more accurate
and precise piece.
1. Jose Basco y Vargas to Matas de Galvez, Manila, 18 June 1784, Archivo General de la
Nacion, Mexico City (hereafter cited as AGN), Filipinas, vol. 61, exp. 5, fol. 210.
Hispanic American Historical Review 94:4
doi 10.1215/00182168-2802534 2014 by Duke University Press
Published by Duke University Press
548
HAHR / November / Mehl
Viceroy Martn de Mayorga in Mexico City that all but a third were totally
worthless and extremely despicable, without question worse than the natives
of these islands, who at least are healthy.2 Through their incarcerations for
drunkenness, unexcused absences, desertion, and a variety of excesses, the
recruits generated significant costs and damaged the service in multiple
ways.3 In 1784, Basco y Vargas was finally compelled to return 40 of these men
to New Spain and to announce the departure of the rest the following year. The
Philippine governor also requested that the viceroy in New Spain stop sending
such questionable individuals, preferring a smaller number of less troublesome
replacements: Even if only 50 arrive, or even less, we will be contented here as
long as they are good.4
Most immediately, this episode illustrates the military, financial, and social
repercussions of the presence of these Mexicans in the Philippines. They disrupted the discipline of local regiments, burdened the administration with
additional costs because of their repeated hospital stays and imprisonments,
lacked motivation and commitment, and, most importantly, proved useless for
their primary task, military service. From a broader perspective, the incident
brings to light the existence of regular connections between colonial Mexico
and the Philippines that were far wider and more diverse than just the lucrative
commercial exchange of Mexican silver for Chinese silk and porcelain as well as
other Asian luxuries.5 Along with merchants, missionaries, bureaucrats, clergy,
and multiethnic ships crews, Mexican recruits and convicts created and
maintained cross-cultural transpacific connections that have received surprisingly little attention from scholars.
Between 1765 and 1811, Manila Bay received 3,999 Mexican troops and
convicts. The majority were veterans and recruits (3,219, or 80.5 percent); 336
(8.4 percent) were victims of vagrancy campaigns or were convicted criminals,
of whom 62 (1.5 percent of the total) had been turned in by their own relatives.
Additionally, 254 of the total were deserters who had been sentenced to the
Philippines (6.3 percent), and 190 (4.8 percent) were convicts shipped to the
2. Jose Basco y Vargas to Martn de Mayorga, Manila, 26 May 1782, AGN, Filipinas, vol.
61, exp. 5, fol. 186.
3. Ibid.
4. Basco y Vargas to Galvez, Manila, 18 June 1784, AGN, Filipinas, vol. 61, exp. 5, fol. 210.
5. This commercial relationship, known as the Manila galleon trade, is at the center of an
extensive body of scholarship, in which Schurz, Manila Galleon, remains the obligatory
reference. More recently, Dennis Flynn and Arturo Giraldez have used the Manila-Acapulco
trade to argue that there existed a highly integrated and China-centered global economy since
the sixteenth century. See, for example, Flynn and Giraldez, Cycles of Silver.
Mexican Recruits and Vagrants
549
Philippines from Spain.6 All these men were part of the major military overhaul
imposed on the Philippines by the Spanish crown in the wake of the British
capture of Manila in 1762 and the citys occupation until 1764. Bourbon
reformers sought to revamp the strategic role of the Philippine archipelago in
the imperial scheme.
The available archival material related to this military effortmostly
judicial files, with a wealth of information in the form of personal stories
raises two interesting and important questions. Why did authorities in Mexico
City deliver such troublesome men to the colonial government of the Philippines when improving the islands defenses clearly required younger,
healthier, and more obedient soldiers and workers? And how did the questionable quality of the incoming human resources affect the ability of colonial
officials to implement the new imperial policies in Manila? Exploring these
themes offers a pathway into the thoughts and practices that underlay the
Spanish empire in the late eighteenth century.
The forced migration of Mexicans to the Philippines has been addressed in
part by Mara Fernanda Garca de los Arcos in her 1996 work Forzados y reclutas:
Los criollos novohispanos en Asia (17561808). Both my work and Garca de los
Arcoss assume that Mexico and the Philippines are historically intertwined.
Yet within that connection, we each pursue a distinct line of inquiry and
research. The Mexican historian offers a detailed description of the recruitment and transportation of these migrants and then concerns herself with
intracolonial relationships in the Spanish Pacific in order to trace and explain
the transmission of cultural elements from New Spain to the Philippines.
My research adds to our knowledge of this period of transpacific history by
examining Mexican recruits and convicts in Manila during the age of the
Bourbon reforms, expanding upon Garca de los Arcoss findings by taking a
broader view of the dynamics within the Spanish empire and by integrating
local and metropolitan interests to explain how Spanish policy operated in
the Pacific.
Two clarifications are in order. One is that due to the nature of the available
archival sources, this article generally adopts the perspective of the imperial
6. These figures are neither definite nor free of problems. Data for some years come
from the reports of governors in the Philippines on the soldiers and convicts who actually
arrived in the archipelago. For other years, these numbers are derived from a panoply of
sources produced in New Spain: lists of Mexico Citys prisons and judicial authorities, official
correspondence of viceroys with Madrid and Manila, reports from officials in charge of
antivagrancy patrols in Mexico City, and passenger manifests of Acapulcos authorities and the
ships masters.
550
authorities in Madrid and the colonial states of New Spain and the Philippines.
With the assistance of secondary sources, however, it also moves beyond the
perspective of the state to illuminate some of the intricate and changing patterns of political, social, and racial forces that Mexican soldiers and convicts
encountered in the archipelago. Second, I am aware that the Philippines was not
a unified political entity during the period under study but was in fact a highly
atomized territory. Furthermore, because only the area surrounding Manila
was under effective Spanish control, the colony is best conceived as a frontier
of the Spanish empire with its own internal frontiers.7 My descriptions, analyses, and conclusions thus pertain chiefly to the political-religious nerve center
of the archipelago and might not be directly applicable to the entirety of the
Philippines.
The sources used here point to a promising future for scholars willing to
consider the Spanish Pacific world as a distinct sphere where the relationship
between colonial power and popular classes can be examined and, more particularly, the impact and limits of the Bourbon reforms in the second half of the
eighteenth century can be assessed. The recent spate of titles on the social and
cultural history of colonial Latin America is extremely inspiring in this regard,
but similar work has not yet emerged for the Spanish Philippines. This article
could serve as a step toward developing a framework for comparative analysis in
a transoceanic context.8
Atlantic history has already demonstrated that oceans are suitable categories of historical inquiry and appropriate frameworks for the analysis of
commercial, biological, and cultural exchanges.9 The history of the Spanish
Pacific world is now beginning to move in a similar direction as historians
become increasingly aware of how the commercial activity of the Manila galleon also created transpacific social and cultural linkages between regions that
in earlier times had separate histories.10 The incidents described at the beginning of this essay showcase how new transpacific relationships shaped the
histories of both sides of the Pacific Basin between the sixteenth and the
7. I thank Ruth de Llobet for her illuminating insights into this matter.
8. Among the social and cultural histories of colonial Mexico that have stimulated
my research are Cope, Limits ofRacial Domination; Viqueira Alban, Propriety and Permissiveness;
Haslip-Viera, Crime and Punishment; Arrom, Containing the Poor.
9. The scholarship on the Atlantic world is too copious to list here. Representative
examples are Armitage and Braddick, British Atlantic; AHR Forum; Greene and Morgan,
Atlantic History.
10. Very stimulating recent studies on the Pacific world include Buschmann, Iberian
Visions; Buschmann, Slack, and Tueller, Navigating the Spanish Lake.
551
nineteenth century. Therefore, the history of the Spanish Philippines is

better apprehended by including the history of colonial Mexico, and vice
versa. This approach would help overcome a traditional divide that has artificially separated these two historical narratives. The Philippines has been
almost exclusively ascribed to the field of Southeast Asian history, and the
historiographical discourse on colonial Mexicoand Spanish Americahas
largely ignored the role of the Philippines as the far western frontier of the
Mexican viceroyalty. This disjunction can be bridged with a history of the
Spanish Pacific world.
Employing the concept of a Spanish Pacific world helps us understand
better the dynamics between Spain and its overseas territories. From the vantage of a densely interwoven Pacific Ocean, we can see more clearly how the
connections between the colonies of Mexico and the Philippines shaped metropolitan policies and steered Spains relationship with its domains in directions
not always foreseen by Madrid. Viceregal authorities used Manilas need for
military replacements to exile individuals who embodied moral attributes
despised by the governing elites in New Spain. Yet the office of the viceroy was
apparently unaware of or unconcerned by the insurmountable problems faced
by the governor in Manila and his subordinates as they tried to employ these
difficult men in defense of the archipelago. By showing that the viceroyalty of
Mexico played a central role in sculpting Spains relationship with her most
remote possession, my study contributes to the scholarship that challenges the
interpretation of the absolutist state as absolute. My work argues that imperial
agendas were ultimately recast to accommodate local and regional interests
in the colonies, that the colonial administrations were significant actors in
determining the practices that actually emerged out of metropolitan directives,
and that recognizing a greater degree of local and regional autonomy on the
part of the viceroys and governors helps us understand how the Spanish empire
was governed.11
11. Historians now see the uneven and often distinctive impact of the Bourbon policies
in the different regions of Spanish America as the outcome of political contestation. See
Andrien, Politics of Reform; Coatsworth, Political Economy; Serulnikov, Customs and
Rules. Arrom, in Containing the Poor, has also articulated the view that local initiatives and
needs influenced metropolitan policies. In a recent forum in HAHR focused largely on
Spanish imperial finances, Alejandra Irigoin and Regina Grafe also emphasized the role of
social negotiation. See Irigoin and Grafe, Bargaining for Absolutism. The heated responses
of Carlos Marichal and William Summerhill reveal that some scholars find it problematic
to minimize the importance of coercion and centralism. See Marichal, Rethinking;
Summerhill, Fiscal Bargains.
552
Shock Waves of the British Occupation of Manila
The British occupation of Manila during the Seven Years War (17561763)
haunted the Spanish imagination for decades. Manila remained under British
control from October 1762 to May 1764, with profound consequences for the
colonys economy and society. After the British had bombarded the city walls
for weeks, Manila surrendered under humiliating terms.12 It was a devastating
blow to Spanish prestige and morale, especially because in August 1762
Havana, Cuba, had also fallen to the British. The loss of these two strategic
strongholds reminded the Spanish quite shockingly of their military and
commercial shortcomings and gave a renewed impulse to the process of reform
the Bourbon dynasty had started in Spain in 1701.
Accordingly, Spanish reformers attempted a significant economic and
fiscal reorientation of the Philippines in the post-1764 era. The vulnerability of an economy that rested almost entirely on the galleons had been
exposed in 1762, when the British seized the Mexico-bound galleon Santsima
Trinidad with a cargo worth several million pesos.13 To achieve greater economic self-reliance, Philippine authorities pressed forward with projects
for the development of the colonys natural resources, the establishment of
a fiscal monopoly on tobacco, and the liberalization of the mercantilist
economy.14
Most accounts of these developments emphasize that the general overhaul of the colonial empire was designed in Madrid, but this interpretation
obscures the interplay of imperial goals and local interests. In the Philippines,
these economic, military, urban, and social reforms were more effective in
Manila and its surrounding areas, where they enjoyed the support of creoles
and other local groups; in the rest of the archipelago, the new policies were
largely ignored. In postoccupation Manila, where social and racial fears had
been stirred yet again, local officials keenly agreed with the changes. Longterm considerations about the meager Spanish presence and the racial
12. Tracy, Manila Ransomed, 2035. Manila had to indemnify the British for the
expenses of the campaign, and British troops were given permission to loot. Foreman,
Philippine Islands, 94115.
13. The economy of Manila depended on the success of the voyage, as practically
every member of the Spanish community there had a stake in the shipment. Schurz, Manila
Galleon, 189, 311.
14. The economic transformation of the Spanish-controlled areas after 1764 has
been thoroughly studied. See, for instance, Abinales and Amoroso, State and Society, 7579;
Owen, Prosperity, 3040; Fradera, Historical Origins, 31518.
553
imbalance that had always characterized the colonial society of Manila and its
hinterland came to the fore.15
The Spanish defeat and British occupation offered opportunities for the
large populations of indios (the Spanish colonial racial term for the natives of the
Philippines) and Chinese to abandon their loyalties to Spanish rule. Indios
participated in the plundering of Manila in 1762, while local grievances against
alcaldes mayores (provincial governors) and parish priests fueled native rebellions in about ten provinces with the explicit support of the principalia (indigenous elite).16 The Chinese community in Manila, whose relations with the
Spanish had always been very volatile,17 responded eagerly to British moves to
open up Manila to foreign trade, which created favorable circumstances for the
development of local exports.18 In 1766 those Chinese who had collaborated
with the invading forces were expelled, and anti-Chinese regulations were
reasserted.
In contrast, Chinese mestizos (people of Chinese and native Filipino
heritage) by and large did not side with the Chinese against the Spanish colonial
government, and some even assisted in rebuilding the shattered economy.19 As
a prime example of how rapidly the racial and social space of the Manila area
was changing at the end of the eighteenth century, Chinese mestizos rose to
economic and social prominence after 1741 as the contraction of the Chinese
population in both Manila and its nearby provinces by the expulsions of 1755
and 1766 reduced economic competition.20 The Chinese mestizo population
grew faster than that of Spanish mestizos.
15. The Spanish population of the Philippines was never large, because the commercial
profits of the galleon trade deterred them from engaging in a system of agricultural or mineral
exploitation. Schurz, Manila Galleon, 3843. Consequently, indios, Chinese, and Chinese
mestizos exceeded the Spaniards in number throughout the colonial period, which was
unsettling for Spanish authorities. Kamen, Empire, 209.
16. Kathirithamby-Wells, Age of Transition, 264. The term principalia refers to the
small local elite of acting and former native village- and town-level officials.
17. Spaniards developed an ambivalent relationship of mutual profit and distrust with
the Chinese community, who had assumed control of Manilas internal economy. Spanish
authorities forced the Chinese to live outside the city walls, and massacres of them by
Spaniards occurred in 1603, 1639, and 1662. Wickberg, Chinese, 1018.
18. Wilson, Ambition and Identity, 4852.
19. Wealthy Chinese mestizos like Antonio Tuason provided critical financial assistance
for the defense of the archipelago in Manila and in the southern provinces in the war
against the Muslims. De Llobet, Orphans of Empire, 6263.
20. Wickberg, Chinese, 2530.
554
It was against this complex and changing backdrop that local officials
developed a plan for restoring imperial power in the Pacific. The traumatic
events impelled the fiscal of the Real Audiencia of Manila, Francisco Leandro
de Viana, to write a reflection in 1765 often cited for its laying out of the bases
for new economic policies in the Philippines.21 But the memorial of this Basque
lawyer was also an analysis of the military weaknesses that the conflict with the
British had made so conspicuous. In his opinion, the defeat had further jeopardized the honor and prestige of Spain in the Philippines.22 Moreover, a recent
rebellion in Pangasinan persuaded Viana that a generalized uprising was to be
expected at any moment. In this regard, he proposed to upgrade the islands
fortifications and to increase the number of Mexican soldiers in Manila and in
the nearby principal port of Cavite from 2,000 to 4,000. Viana generally considered Mexicans to be brave, obedient, and very tough. Although they displayed all vices that are proper to men, he was confident of the deterrent effect
of discipline and punishments. Notwithstanding his passionate praise of
Mexicans, Viana considered it unavoidable that several hundred veterans
from Spain serve as officers if the islands were to have respectable troops.23
Vianas recommendations for the defense and security of the islands were
echoed by later governments. The British occupation was followed by several
decades of intensive campaigns to rebuild and strengthen the military and civil
structures of Manila, which had been gravely affected by the bombardment.24
Expenditures for military wages, fortifications, maritime defense, coastal protection, naval construction, and crew training increased accordingly.25 As for
Vianas proposal to double the number of Mexican troops, governors and other
21. Francisco Leandro de Viana, Demostracion del msero deplorable estado de las
Islas Philipinas; de la necessidad de abandonarlas o mantenerlas con fuercas respetables; de los
inconvenientes de los primero y ventajas de lo segundo; de lo que pueden producir a la Real
Hacienda; de la navegacion, extension, y utilidades de su comercio, Manila, 10 Feb. 1765,
Newberry Library, Chicago, Edward E. Ayer Manuscript Collection, MS 1452 no. 2. Viana
(17301804) supported the creation of a trading company to establish direct commerce
between Spain and the Philippines via the Cape of Good Hope. De Borja, Basques in the
Philippines, 6366.
22. Viana, Demostracion, chap. 1 (this source is unpaginated).
23. Ibid., chap. 3.
24. On the maintenance of civil buildings, fortifications, and other military structures in
the 1770s, 1780s, and 1790s, see Archivo General de Indias, Seville (hereafter cited as AGI),
Filipinas, vols. 787, 915, 92627, 929; AGI, Ultramar, vol. 583; Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Cientficas, Madrid (hereafter cited as CSIC), riel 1164, legs. 1 (1780) and 3
(18101811).
25. Fradera, Filipinas, 150.
555
officials concurred that a larger Spanish and Mexican cultural presence was
necessary to tighten the empires grip in the Philippines. The idea was most
eloquently captured in the mid-1780s by Governor Basco y Vargas when he said
that an equilibrium . . . must exist in these far-off lands between white and
indigenous people to remove all reasons for distrust.26 In the colonial racial
hierarchy, Spanish blood was preferred, but the daunting distances and the
realities of recurring war in Europe allowed Spain to play only a minor role in
supplying its Pacific colony with manpower.27 New Spain was, then, the most
reliable proposition for procuring troops, but as time would prove, what Manila
needed in human resources and what Mexico City couldor wanted to
provide were not necessarily the same thing.
Manila Requests, Mexico City Responds:
Recruits, Vagrants, and Troublesome Relatives
Since the late 1500s, Mexican and Spanish recruits and convicts had routinely
disembarked in the archipelago, but after 1764 Manilas governors requested
with unprecedented urgency strong, moral, and healthy men who could work
on the citys urban reforms and submit to military discipline.28 The vast
majority of individuals who arrived in the Philippines from Mexico and Spain in
the colonial period were recruits for the annual military rotation. By my count,
only 280 soldiers landed in the Philippines in the 1760s, but 1,325 arrived in the
1770s, 526 in the 1780s, and 860 in the 1790s. The ratio of veterans to new
recruits was approximately one to three.
Mexican authorities sometimes dictated the transfer of individuals whose
removal would satisfy local concerns. For example, between 1775 and 1779 the
perception that Cuban regiments were saturated with bad people inspired
the viceroy to reroute to the Philippines 254 deserters who had been sentenced
26. Jose Basco y Vargas to General Intendant Jose de Galvez, Manila, 3 Nov. 1784, AGN,
Filipinas, vol. 61, exp. 5, fol. 238.
27. In the early 1780s Manila asked that new battalions be sent from the peninsula,
but Madrid could only respond with the deportation of criminals and deserters. This proved
to be a phenomenal waste of resources and lives, because most men died during the
journey or arrived in the Philippines in a very debilitated condition. AGN, Filipinas, vol. 57,
exps. 68.
28. Annual transportation of men from Mexico City to Manila started in the 1570s.
Muro, Soldados, 468. This practice had been especially important in the seventeenth
century against the Dutch, when the Spaniards still had a military presence in Ternate,
Moluccas. AGN, Reales Cedulas Originales, vol. 1, exps. 1516. See also Mawson, Unruly
Plebeians.
556
to serve in Havana.29 The military experience of deserters was appreciated

by high-ranking military officials in the Philippines, who frequently pointed
to their quality and usefulness versus the deplorable habits of the recruits.
Occasionally, rowdy soldiers from Mexican battalions and individuals convicted of heinous crimes landed in Manila Bay despite prohibitions to the
contrary.30
In 1779 Spain entered the war for US independence as an ally of France
against Great Britain, an action that again placed Manila under threat of
British attack. The declaration of war gave new momentum to work on
Manilas fortifications and stimulated Mexico City to develop new initiatives
to provide the Spanish outpost in the Pacific with recruits. In 1782 Juan
Cossio, an officer of the Mexican royal treasury, proposed that Viceroy Martn
de Mayorga conduct annual antivagrancy campaigns and sentence some of
those apprehended to military service or forced labor in the Philippines.31
Mayorga approved the project in November 1783, also endorsing Cossios
suggestion that the levies be executed according to the directives of the royal
decree on vagrants, idlers, and troublemakers published in Madrid on May
7, 1775.32 Although it took two years for the system of annual levies to begin
to work smoothly, the 1775 decree was avidly implemented in the decades that
followed. In contrast to the scant 27 convicts banished to the islands between
1765 and 1783, more than ten times as many (295 individuals) were deported
between 1786 and 1811.
The earnest adoption in Mexico of the 1775 decree indicates that the
metropole and New Spain shared perceptions about their ongoing social,
cultural, and economic transformations. The central focus of the 1775 document was the struggle against idleness. That campaign was typical of
the enlightened rationalism of Spanish politicians like Pedro Rodrguez,
Count of Campomanes (17231802), and Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos
(17441811), who linked the empires prosperity to the productivity of its
29. AGI, Filipinas, vol. 926; AGN, Filipinas, vol. 12.
30. In 1791, Governor Felix Berenguer y Marquina reminded Viceroy Revillagigedo
of the 1784 royal order that excluded those convicted of infamous crimes from troop
shipments from Mexico. Felix Berenguer y Marquina to Viceroy Revillagigedo, Mexico City,
29 Dec. 1791, CSIC, ser. Consultas, riel 301.
31. Juan Cossio to Martn de Mayorga, Mexico City, 5 Jan. 1782, Sobre la recluta
que se haca en Mexico y abusos introducidos, de que resulto mandarse enviar gente desde
Cadiz al cargo del teniente coronel Francisco Montalvo (17821786), AGI, Filipinas,
vol. 929, exp. 23, fol. 513.
32. Real Ordenanza para las Levas Anuales en todos los Pueblos del Reino, Aranjuez,
7 May 1775, AGN, Indiferente Virreinal: Ordenanzas, vol. 2356, exp. 10.
557
individuals.33 The new provisions not only called for the prosecution of
unemployed individuals but also aimed at controlling how individuals spent
their free time. The category vagrant included those who were found at
unearthly hours wandering or sleeping in the streets, in gambling houses, or in
taverns.34 It therefore can be argued that a capitalist morality and logic of work
were emerging among the governing and administrative circles in Spain and its
overseas colonies.35 The 1775 decree was one more in a long line of antivagrancy
documents published in Madrid in the 1700s, which together indicate that the
Bourbon government was steering away from exemplary corporal punishment
to a more utilitarian form of discipline targeting the redemption of the individual and providing the empire with cheap soldiers and workers.36
The decision to deport vagrants, idlers, and troublemakers to an outlandish corner in the Pacific was neither an imposition from Madrid nor a passive
response to Manilas pressures. Local and regional circumstances had created in
Mexico City a pool of likely suspects for the viceregal authorities to send the everneedy Philippines, and the 1775 edict provided the legal means and justification
to do so. Viceroy Mayorgas resolution was consistent with a characteristically
Mexican context of urban crisis and elite perceptions about social order. Several
bad harvests and five major epidemics struck central Mexico between 1760 and
1813. In the years 17841787 alone, 40,000 rural immigrants arrived in the
metropolis from the countryside.37 It does not come as a surprise, then, that more
than a third (108) of all Mexican felons deported to the Philippines between 1786
and 1811 were arrested in the triennium 17861788.38 Mexico City could neither
control nor absorb this human inflow and struggled with an expanding underclass, increased crime, and greater risks to public health.39
33. Rodrguez de Campomanes addressed this matter in 1775 in Discurso sobre la
educacion, 14055. Some of Jovellanoss writings can be found in Jovellanos, Coleccion de varias
obras, 5970.
34. Real Ordenanza para las Levas Anuales, Aranjuez, 7 May 1775, AGN, Indiferente
Virreinal: Ordenanzas, vol. 2356, exp. 10.
35. E. P. Thompsons article Time, Work-Discipline remains the classic statement of
work intensification. The shift from an orientation around tasks to timed labor and the
concomitant restructuring of work habits are widely considered necessary conditions for the
origination of industrial capitalism.
36. Pike, Penal Servitude, 13540; Perez Estevez, El problema, 341; Sarrailh, La Espana
ilustrada, 8084.
37. Warren, Vagrants and Citizens, 122.
38. Authorities listed 55 offenders onboard the galleon in 1786, 34 in 1787, and 19
in 1788. There were no galleons in 1789, 1790, and 1791. In 1792, 38 felons were included in
the passenger manifest.
39. Van Young, La crisis, 51123.
558
A cursory look at the charges levied against the men sentenced to Manila
reveals that vagrancy had become an umbrella category encompassing a wide
variety of behaviors. Half the individuals I have tracked were qualified workers
in the textile, metals, and food processing fields. However, at the time of their
arrest they could not prove stable employment. Others who had steady employment were deported to the Philippines on charges of sexual misconduct. Some
vagrants were convicted because they had undressed women in public; others
had intimate relationships out of wedlock, and a few had committed adultery.
Because officials associated material poverty with moral degradation, naked
individuals or those wearing ragged clothing were jailed.40 Other recurrent
charges were petty theft, aggression, forgery, smuggling, and homicide.41
The socioeconomic phenomena described above affected a broad spectrum of Mexican society. Almost half the men levied for the Philippines were
Mexican-born whites, a third were mestizos, and the rest were castizos (the offspring of a Spaniard and a mestizo), mulattoes, and even Spaniards. Almost 50
percent of the arrested were born and raised in the provinces and had only moved
to the capital in the months, or even days, before their detention. Immigrants
were the most likely to be caught in a raid, as they meandered the streets of the
city looking for jobs and were unknown, suspicious faces to local authorities.
I have encountered 62 cases of Mexican and Spanish subjects who spontaneously requested that certain individualstheir offspring, for the most
partbe banished to the Philippines. This was not a novel practice: evidence
indicates that Mexicans had occasionally petitioned for the deportation of
relatives since the early seventeenth century.42 The association of Manila with
crime, punishment, and the unfamiliar was likely reinforced after 1783, when
raids against vagrants intensified in Mexico City and unprecedented publicity
was given to the transportation of men to Manila. The carelessness with which
local authorities handled the deportations further fed the popular belief that it
40. Jose Gavino Ramrez, arrested while wrapped in some cloth and old underpants, was
loaded with vices because ofthe way he dresses. Individuos que deben salir en la cuerda hacia
Acapulco, enero 1795, Jan. 1795, AGN, Filipinas, vol. 34, exp. 13, fol. 358v. Emphasis added.
41. Sixteen-year-old Jose Domingo Aguilar and fifteen-year-old Jose Marquez were
condemned to several years of service in Manila. Aguilar, who used to roam the Plaza Mayor
helping costumers carry their shopping items, ran off with a hen (Vagos enviados a Manila por
el navo de guerra el Montanes, 1802, Mexico City, Dec. 1801, AGN, Filipinas, vol. 51, exp. 16,
fol. 320), while Marquez stole some clothing (Vagos enviados a Manila en la fragata Pilar,
marzo de 1802, Mexico City, Jan. 1800, AGN, Filipinas, vol. 38, exp. 6). It seems likely, though,
that the real motive behind their conscription was not their offenses but their youth and health.
42. Scattered data in AGN attest to this. For the early eighteenth century, see
Caceres Menendez and Patch, Gente de mal vivir.
559
was not difficult to get officials to arrest and condemn an individual on flimsy
grounds.
Approximately a third of the denouncers and requesters in the period
under study belonged to the middle and upper social strata, including Mexican
employees at the royal post office, mining tribunal, customs administration,
audiencia, and royal treasury, along with high-ranking military officers, mine
owners, and hacienda owners.43 Peninsular merchants established in the viceroyalty, one prosperous matriarch, an official of the Ministry of Grace and
Justice in Madrid, and even the bishop of Astorga, Spain, also appear in the
records as petitioners.44 Additionally, some wives asked for their husbands to be
transported to the Philippines because of their constant drinking, gambling,
and overall abusive conduct.45
This small fraction of cases suggests that some elite and nonelite sectors in
New Spain shared the values of enlightened reformers, which adds a cautionary
layer of complexity to the scholarly interpretation that resistance to Bourbon
social and moral reforms materialized in many different Spanish American
settings.46 The reasons offered in support of petitions for deportation lay bare the
prejudices of parents and other relatives against uprooted individuals as well as
a deep appreciation for work ethic, the preservation of marriage, and proper
moral and social conduct. Parents turned in sons who refused to study, learn a
trade, or hold a steady job, deploring their gambling and drinking habits.47
43. Instancia de Agustn de Villanueva Altamirano, capitan del regimiento provincial
de Toluca, para que se destine a su hijo Jose a servir en el regimiento fijo de Manila por
su mala conducta y procederes, Mexico City, 1804, AGN, Filipinas, vol. 19, exp. 1;
AGN, Filipinas, vol. 60, exp. 7, fol. 100.
44. AGN, Filipinas, vol. 8, fol. 114; Sobre aplicar al servicio de las armas de Filipinas
a Manuel Matute por vago, Mexico City, 179294, AGN, Filipinas, vol. 30, exp. 11;
Instancia de Juana Ruiz solicitando que a su hijo Ignacio Ortega se despache a Manila en
primera ocasion, Mexico City, 1782, AGN, Filipinas, vol. 17, exp. 32; AGN, Filipinas,
vol. 39, exp. 5; AGI, Juzgado Arribadas, vol. 287B.
45. Instancia de Mara Josefa Alarcon sobre que a su marido se remita a Manila por su
mala conducta, Mexico City, 1780, AGN, Filipinas, vol. 16, exp. 2, fol. 20.
46. That in many instances colonial vassals opposed the Bourbon civilizing process has
been convincingly argued, for instance, in Voekel, Peeing on the Palace; Viqueira Alban,
Propriety and Permissiveness; Rivera Ayala, Lewd Songs; Curcio-Nagy, Great Festivals, 11517.
47. Judicial processes that showcase these circumstances can be found in Vagos
enviados por el navo de guerra el Montanes, 1802, Mexico City, 1802, AGN, Filipinas, vol.
51, exp. 16, fol. 255; Averiguacion hecha sobre la vida y costumbres de don Juan Fermn
de Oyarzabal, AGN, Filipinas, vol. 8, fols. 16167; Julian Antonio de Hierro, diputado
general de la minera, sobre destinar su hijo a Manila por su mala conducta, Mexico City,
1786, AGN, Filipinas, vol. 19, exp. 39bis; Informacion dada por Juan de Osorio, vecino de
560
Parents also presented offspring who pursued marriages that violated perceived
class and racial barriers.48 In some instances, adultery also constituted sufficient
grounds for one individual to report on another.49
In this manner, the history of convict deportation from Mexico to the
Philippines confirms that persuasion worked alongside more despotic methods
for controlling popular groups.50 By informing on their relatives with the same
descriptions and philosophical justifications that Bourbon reformers applied to
the category of vagrants, actors from various social and ethnic affiliations were
helping the colonial authorities create and impose cultural meanings. The
number of cases that actually made it to the desks of the magistratesand of
which, hence, we have an archival traceis by itself not fully indicative of the
social forces at work. If orthodox standards of social propriety motivated those
who eventually turned in their own kin, it can be assumed that many others were
frustrated with their relatives for similar reasons, even if they never took any
legal steps and are therefore not present in the sources.
It did not escape parents that in the Philippines their offspring would most
likely face physical dangers and psychological challenges. In fact, they admittedly resorted to Manila because their sons recalcitrance had frustrated all
other attempts at rehabilitation. Families had faith in the benefits of exposing
these young men to the discipline of military routine and the authoritarianism
of troop commanders on the islands. In addition, for these custodians, the
harsh, distant, and alien environment made the archipelago a punishment
esta ciudad, sobre la mala conducta y excesos cometidos por Jose Osorio, su hijo, a quien pide se
enve a Manila, Mexico City, 1782, AGN, Filipinas, vol. 17, exp. 14.
48. Julian Antonio de Hierro, deputy at the mining tribunal, presented his son to be
exiled to the Philippines because he insists on marrying a young woman who is related in the
grade of first cousin to two families of mulattoes and Moriscos. Julian Antonio de Hierro,
diputado general de la minera, sobre destinar su hijo a Manila por su mala conducta, Mexico
City, 20 Feb. 1786, AGN, Filipinas, vol. 19, exp. 39bis, fol. 254v.
49. Individuos destinados a las Filipinas y remitidos por la nao Magallanes, 1808,
Mexico City, 1808, AGN, Filipinas, vol. 60, exp. 6, fol. 80v; Vagos enviados por el navo de
guerra el Montanes, 1802, Mexico City, Dec. 1801, AGN, Filipinas, vol. 51, exp. 16.
50. This contention is pervasive in the literature. Scardaville, (Hapsburg) Law, argues
that judicial behavior in late colonial Mexico fostered acceptance of criminal justice
institutions as legitimate rather than as exercising arbitrary power. Beezley, Martin, and
French, Introduction, xiii, claims that persuasion, charisma, habit, and presentations of
virtue were familiar techniques and exhibitions of authority. The essays compiled in Teja
and Frank, Choice, Persuasion, and Coercion, also deliver the idea that persuasion, defined as
voluntary participation in a system of social control, was an important element to achieve
social order along with the use of force. Ibid., xi.
561
preferable to the military outposts of Veracruz, Pensacola, San Juan de Puerto

Rico, or Havana.51
Speed, ruthlessness, and harsh conditions characterized convict transportation. In Mexico City, roundup squads stormed gambling houses and pulqueras
(drinking shops where pulque was consumed) every November or early
December. Following their arrest, detainees could spend several weeks or
months in prison waiting for the announcement that the galleons had arrived
in Acapulco. Deportees had to reach the coast in January or early February for
the galleons to complete their crossing before the beginning of the southwest
monsoon in the Philippines. The galleons impending departure commonly
drove officials to obviate legal safeguards such as the three-day window the
arrested had to provide evidence of an established occupation or the existence of
a wife and other dependents.
The excruciating experience of transport to Acapulco had short- and longterm physical and emotional consequences for many convicts. If their parents were prosperousand benevolentenough, convicts traveled by mule.
Otherwise, they made the three- or four-week journey to the Pacific by foot. If
they missed the westbound galleon, they were assigned to public works in
Acapulco until the following year. Before the voyage even started, convicts
often had descended into a miserable physical condition.52 After setting sail,
there was no possibility of stopping for fresh supplies for at least four months,
when they were in the vicinity of the Mariana Islands.
Imperial Agendas, Local Concerns:
Unruly Mexicans and Social Reform in the Philippines
The majority of the recruits for the annual rotation joined the ranks of the
Regiment of the King, Manilas most important infantry unit, which totaled
about 1,300 men in the 1780s;53 the rest joined other dragoon regiments on the
51. In 1774, Luis de Oyarzabal desired that his brother be sent to Manila precisely
because the long distance from his relatives and the lack of assistance will make him exert
himself and moderate the unreasonable and indolent temper he has shown until now. Luis de
Oyarzabal to Simon de Anda, Mexico City, 10 Mar. 1774, AGN, Filipinas, vol. 8, exp. 4, fol.
114.
52. In 1785, Jose Zamora suffered from sciatica and rheumatism, afflictions the
doctors attributed to the mule ride from Mexico City and the two years spent in the humid
Acapulco prison. Declaration of Josefa Hernandez, Mexico City, Dec. 1785, AGN, Filipinas,
vol. 19, exp. 37.
53. The French navy officer and explorer Jean-Francois de Galaup, Count of Laperouse,
documented this information while visiting the archipelago in 1787. Galaup, Voyage, 375.
562
islands. As for the convicts, the governor of the Philippines decided on their
duties according to the current needs of Manila and the health of the arriving
individuals. Assignments could include military service, labor in a presidio, or,
less frequently, domestic service at homes and convents.54 Judging from the fact
that affluent Mexicans and Spaniards requested that their convicted sons be
attached to the Regiment of the King, it is prudent to say that soldier was the
most honorable of all possible positions.
The fate of the majority of the convicts was confinement in one of the
archipelagos five fortified military settlements. The presidios of Manila and
Cavite were located at the center of Spanish power on the island of Luzon.
Here, felons toiled in repairing the fortifications and other military structures
damaged by the British invasion. At the furnaces of the royal foundry of Manila
prisoners forged grenades, cannons, hand weapons, and firearms to supply
artillery units in the Philippines and even New Spain.55 In Cavite, inmates
participated in a wide range of activities related to this citys status as the primary port and shipyard of the colony.56
The most dreaded presidios were Calamianes, in the western Palawan
islands, and Misamis and Zamboanga, both on the island of Mindanao. At the
outer fringes of the Philippines, these locations were more vulnerable to foreign
attack. Here men performed military service to protect the archipelago against
Muslim incursions. Although the Spanish considered the moros (Spanish for
Moors) rebels against a Spanish authority extending to the whole archipelago,
the southern Muslim populations acted as sovereign states and saw the Spanish
as an external enemy.57
These men were supposed to alleviate the military shortcomings of this
remote outpost of the empire, but the government of the colony unremittingly
complained about the paucity and uselessness of the reinforcements. In 1772,
Governor Simon de Anda reported that barely 80 white men were enlisted in
54. Garca de los Arcos, Forzados y reclutas, 233.
55. M. Francisco Roman to Viceroy Antonio Mara de Bucareli, Manila, 18 July 1774,
AGN, Filipinas, vol. 10, fol. 424.
56. Convicts worked here as carpenters, painters, blacksmiths, and bricklayers, building,
among other things, the galleons for the Manila-Acapulco trade, as noted in Martnez de
Zuniga, Estadismo, 15052. This Augustinian monk (17601818) lived in the Philippines for
over 20 years; his Estadismo was likely composed sometime in 18031805.
57. In a pathbreaking study, James Warren portrayed the Sulu Sultanate in northern
Borneo as an autonomous Malayo-Muslim maritime state and a thriving polity that
established alliances with the Dutch and the English, demanded tribute from neighboring
territories, and vigorously took advantage of the growth of the China trade. Warren, Sulu
Zone, 15664.
563
the Regiment of the King, which in case of necessity could be a problem, as

experience has shown.58 Thirty years later, the situation had not improved.59
Governor Basco y Vargass decision in 1784 to send back to Acapulco about 40
recruits and convicts for having caused wasteful expenses, for being very sick, or
for displaying unmanageable behavior was not an isolated incident. Throughout the decades, the social problems posed by these vagrants were tossed back
to Mexico on multiple occasions, in an ironic boomerang effect.
The shortage of Mexicans and Spaniards in the Philippines was an
impediment to the schemes of colonial authorities but created avenues to social
empowerment for some local groups. In 1809, Manila reported that the
undersupply of Spaniards and Mexicans had placed the defense of the Philippines on the shoulders of indios and mixed-blood individuals, who filled
most positions in the veteran regiments.60 Similarly, the Chinese mestizos
became a major factor in sustaining Manilas reformed defenses. In 1779 a new
urban militia, the Real Prncipe, was established for the offspring of Chinese
fathers and native Filipino mothers. Funded by Chinese mestizos themselves,
this new militia, as historians have reasoned, provided a social base and potential
political platform for some members of this ethnic group.61
Mexican soldiers and convicts underperformed considerably due to the
climate of the islands and a fondness for local pleasures. The heat and the heavy
rains were the nemeses of colonial authorities because they destroy, render
useless, and . . . consume the big shipments of people that arrive from New
Spain.62 Insubordination, gambling, drunkenness, theft, and desertion were
continually associated with Mexicans in the governors communications with
Mexico City. According to Manilas authorities, these evils caused moral and
physical damage, but rigorous discipline and severe punishments would only
reduce even further the number of military effectives available for the islands
58. Simon de Anda to Viceroy Antonio Mara de Bucareli, Manila, 8 July 1772, AGN,
Filipinas, vol. 8, fol. 10.
59. Governor Mariano Fernandez de Folgueras to Viceroy Francisco Javier de Lizana y
Beaumont, Manila, 7 Aug. 1809, AGN, Filipinas, vol. 59, exp. 9, fol. 107.
60. That year, only 100 Mexicans figured in official counts, most of them serving twice
the time they had initially committed to. Ibid.
61. Wickberg, Chinese, 2530. De Llobet has postulated that after the creation of the
Real Prncipe, the status of Chinese mestizos progressed from that of foreigners to that
of subjects of the king, which placed them in a propitious situation to challenge creole
political hegemony. De Llobet, Orphans of Empire, 3841, 6668.
62. Governor Rafael Mara de Aguilar to Viceroy Count of Campo de Alange, Manila,
22 July 1794, CSIC, ser. Consultas, riel 301, leg. 8. European observers described the heat
in Manila as unbearable. Galaup, Voyage, 371.
564
defense. In 1799, the troops were reduced to a skeleton force, and the governor
was pessimistic about finding a solution, because in bodies where the delicate
dignity is lost being arrested is a repose . . . but an excess offatigue for the officials
of honor.63 These troops spent most of their time in hospitals and prisons.
The high desertion rate also torpedoed the utility of Mexicans and Spaniards in the Philippines. Official accounts referred to these imported troops
vicious nature and inherent desire for freedom as motivations to abandon
their ranks. Only very rarely did officials consider how derisory salaries and
draconian conditions might have contributed to swelling desertion numbers. In
Vianas memorial we have one of these few instances. The fiscal advocated a pay
increase for Mexican recruits and officers because to present themselves with
cleanliness and decency in the streets they have to commit a thousand lies and
chicaneries that discredit the military and make it little commendable among
the residents.64
Authorities linked Mexican deserters to the seeming increase of vagrants in
the Philippine countryside and urban perimeters. The preoccupation with
uprooted peasants had started with the British invasion in 1762. The Spanish
prioritized the reconstruction of Manila, but civil and religious authorities
reported the long-lasting effects of the military conflict in the nearby provinces:
domestic trade interrupted, peasants unable to pay the tribute, fields destroyed,
cattle slaughtered, and irrigation systems ruined.65 In addition, scores of prisoners released from jail by the British poured into urban and rural settings;
murders, thefts, attacks on plantations, and highway robberies soared. Twenty
years later, widespread perturbation persisted about the extraordinary abundance of vagrants and the fact that many of them sought shelter in abandoned
houses in Manila. Projects for rehabilitating vacated residences came forth in
the 1780s, precisely when the largest numbers of Mexican recruits and convicts
landed in the Philippines and when the governors displayed the greatest displeasure about their performance. An important part of the disease caused
by the vagrants were the men who after finishing their military or prison
terms disbanded all over the islands, even the most distant, looking for
63. Governor Rafael Mara de Aguilar to Francisco Saavedra, Manila, 31 July 1799,
CSIC, ser. Consultas, riel 302.
64. Viana, Demostracion, chap. 3.
65. Opened in 1771, the Expediente formado sobre averiguaciones del estado de
las provincias en punto a ladrones, CSIC, riel 208, leg. 14, contained reports dated as late as
1787. The file contains accounts produced by the Real Audiencia of Manila, corregidores,
municipal judges, superiors of religious orders, bishops, and the archbishop of Manila.
565
subsistence.66 The efforts to place these individuals under strict surveillance

reveal that they had become a burdensome presence.67
The fact that Manila developed a program against vagrancy similar to that
of late colonial Mexico demonstrates that enlightened principles of order,
economic rationality, and productivity inspired reformers not only in Europe
and the Spanish American colonies but also in the Philippines. The suburban
municipalities of Manila, known as extramuros, or outside the walls, had
become receptacles for a heterogeneous flow of indios driven from the fields,
urban servants dismissed by their masters, deserters, lazy Spaniards, and
other foreigners ( forasteros).68 Here authorities saw only a Babylon of confusion and ugliness where crime was easily concealed. Mixed unions diluted
physical differences, prompting a local magistrate, Pedro de Galarrada, to decry
in 1774 that indios and mestizos all look the same.69 The ethnic intermingling
forged a racial uniformity that paradoxically engendered chaos for officials
struggling to identify ethnic categories.
Manilas municipal authorities tried to force vagrants into a settled existence by compelling them to register in the census and perform military service
or labor in a presidio.70 Vagrancy campaigns could further colonial agendas as
well. For instance, the deportation of vagrants from Manila to Zamboanga
helped advance a colonizing program against the Muslim south, further illustrating how the resistance to Spanish sovereignty in Mindanao and Borneo
determined imperial policies on the islands.71 Bourbon vagrancy reforms were
apparently as ineffective in the Philippines as they were in New Spain. At the
turn of the century vagrants were still associated with rural and urban delinquency, and banditry remained a major socioeconomic phenomenon in the
Philippines throughout the nineteenth century.
Regulations aimed at popular entertainment offer another way to examine
the elites uneasiness toward the hordes of Manilas suburbs, particularly the
66. Simon de Anda to King Charles III, Manila, 18 Jan. 1772, AGI, Filipinas, vol. 929,
exp. 8, fol. 125.
67. In 1802 local authorities attempted to enforce a new regulation that obligated
unemployed Mexicans to spend the night in headquarters. Edict of Governor Rafael Mara de
Aguilar, 27 July 1802, CSIC, riel 206, leg. 2.
68. Real Audiencia of Manila to Simon de Anda, Manila, 20 Mar. 1776, Expediente
formado sobre averiguaciones, CSIC, riel 208, leg. 14.
69. Pedro de Galarrada, Santa Cruz, 22 Oct. 1774, Expediente formado sobre
averiguaciones, CSIC, riel 208, leg. 14.
70. Edicts from 1741 to 1823 in CSIC, riel 2016, leg. 4; AGI, Filipinas, vol. 692; and
CSIC, riel 210, leg. 17.
71. Governor Pedro Manuel de Aranda to the Secretary of the Navy and Indies Julian de
Arriaga, Manila, 16 July 1758, CSIC, riel 311, leg. 1.
566
Mexican recruits and convicts. Enlightenment-based ideals of orderliness and

productivity were behind perceptions of moral decline and social disorder in
the Philippines, but so was the idea that the infamous conduct of Mexicans
corrupted the lower sectors of the native population.72 Reports from civil and
religious authorities heralded the notion that some individualsdrunkards,
gamblers, cockfight playerswere threats to public harmony and were more
prone than others to break the law.73 Underprivileged Mexicans and Spaniards
living in Manila and its environs were promptly included in these reflections.
Their transgressions were seen as a natural continuation of the irregular existence they had led prior to deportation. Despite the existence of gambling
legislation, in the late 1780s missionaries decried the fact that indios found
Spanish card games so amusing that they frequently incurred debt and abandoned their occupations, so that the land [filled] with thieves.74 Decrees
restricted the sale of wine and prohibited the consumption of alcohol in the late
evening, but the thirst of Mexican soldiers for the local coconut wine stimulated
indios to promote its illegal sale.75 The reiterative character of these statutes
denotes that government attempts to intervene in the colonys social and moral
order yielded little success.
Some evidence indicates that Spaniards and Mexicans were also involved to
a certain extent in the complex and shifting political and social arena of late
eighteenth-century Philippines. Upper-class Mexicans and Spaniards formed
the colonial elite of the Philippines; estranged from the Malay population, they
shared occupations, economic interests, and a well-off lifestyle in the intramuros.76 On the contrary, the newcomers, impoverished Mexicans and peninsulares (Spaniards born in the Iberian peninsula), were accused of undermining
72. According to Charles Walker, inhabitants of Bourbon Lima similarly developed a

perspective built on both classic Enlightenment themes and Peruvian sensibilities and
preoccupations. Walker, Shaky Colonialism, 18.
73. Account of Fray Francisco Antonio Maceira, provincial of the Franciscan order,
Dilao, 19 July 1774, CSIC, riel 208, leg. 14. Manilas superior court (audiencia), which also
acted in a governmental, administrative, and advisory capacity (real acuerdo), looked upon
cockfights as well as card and dice games with suspicion because their participants associate
and prepare to go out and steal. Real acuerdo of the Real Audiencia of Manila, 20 Mar. 1776,
CSIC, riel 208, leg. 14.
74. Fray Francisco Gonzalez, provincial of San Agustin, Manila, 28 Aug. 1788, AGI,
Filipinas, vol. 787.
75. CSIC, riel 2016, leg. 4; CSIC, riel 210, leg. 17.
76. Merchants of the transpacific trade, government officials, and members of the
ecclesiastical hierarchy made up the socially, economically, and politically privileged groups
of the colony. Garca de los Arcos, Grupos etnicos, 6768.
567
the submission of the natives. In 1774, authorities from Bulacan, Tondo,

Laguna Bay, and other areas surrounding Manila reported with consternation
that discharged soldiers and deserters were providing indios military training
for the weapons that had been disseminated all over the territory during the
British war.77 There were suspicions that Spaniards and Mexicans were leading
indigenous rebellions,78 although it is more realistic to assume that their
ignorance of the Tagalog language would have limited their ability to communicate and sympathize with the indios.79
Some historians have been tempted to hypothesize that Mexican soldiers
played a substantive role in the development of Philippine national identity and
in the conspiracy of Captain Andres Novales, who proclaimed independence
for the Philippines in 1823. After Mexicos independence in 1821, the colonial
government in Manila designed an overhaul of the bureaucracy in which
peninsulares were promoted into the higher ranks of the administration, displacing creole and Mexican officers now regarded with increasing distrust.
Garca de los Arcos has noted that the Regiment of the King, which had
absorbed a large percentage of Mexican recruits and deportees between the
1770s and 1811, became the bastion of discontent supporting the Novales
mutiny.80 However, any connection between Mexican deportees and the
rebellion is tenuous at best, as the circumstances of the rebellion were more
complicated than they might appear at first glance. As Ruth de Llobet has
indicated, while the Filipino creoles did feel the impact of Mexican independence, the Novales revolt was a response to a series of political and economic
tensions within the archipelago and Manila. In addition, creoles on the islands
developed a permeable and fluid ethnic identity different from the more rigid
and homogeneous understanding ofcreole in Latin America, where it generally
identified those of Spanish descent born in the New World.81
77. Provincial of the Augustinian Recollects to Simon de Anda, Manila, 2 July 1774,
CSIC, ser. Consultas, riel 208, leg. 14.
78. In the summer of 1807, Spanish deserters and vagabond Indians were incriminated in
a rebellion in the mountains of Ilocos. Blair and Robertson, Philippine Islands, 2831.
79. This is what happened in the armed forces, where language difficulties meant that
soldiers and officers recently arrived from New Spain or the peninsula were less likely to
establish a rapport with native Filipino enlisted personnel than with those of Spanish descent
born in the Philippines. Godnez Marn de Espinosa, El ejercito espanol, 506.
80. Garca de los Arcos, Criollismo.
81. De Llobet construes Filipino creoles as an ethnic group of mixed ancestry:
Philippine-born Spaniards, Chinese mestizos, and, to a lesser degree, native elites. De Llobet,
Orphans of Empire, 130, 28388.
568
Light-skinned individuals from Mexico and Spain did little to fulfill

authorities expectations that they would overturn the perceived racial imbalance on the islands. Not only did their numbers remain small throughout the
decades, but it also appears that by the beginning of the nineteenth century
most of them had vanished from the records and mixed with the Philippine
population through predominantly informal temporary liaisons with local
women.82 Garca de los Arcos has postulated that these men assimilated into the
rural native communities, adopted traits of Malay culture, and acted as cultural
vehicles of Mexican influence. She has also theorized that from these unions
with women from popular indigenous groups emerged a good portion of the
Spanish mestizos. On the other hand, little miscegenation occurred between
Mexicans and members of the principalia. Because they usually outnumbered
the peninsulares, these mestizos constituted the largest non-Asian group in the
archipelago.83
The presence of these soldiers and convicts in the Philippines shook ethnic
perceptions circulating in late eighteenth-century official discourse. With the
intensified arrival of these men, local officials often poured criticism on the
performance and character of peninsulares and had ambivalent feelings at best
toward the Mexican reinforcements: they were good soldiers but inclined to
vices.84 After the events of 17621764, Mexicans loyalty was of great value
when measured against the treacherousness of indios and the Chinese. Official
reports were peppered with terms like courageous, vigorous, obedient,
and disciplined to describe Mexicans.85 However, Mexicans proved too weak
in the eyes of authorities to refrain from indulging in their addictions. Their
odious behavior altered officials impression of indios to the extent that the
latter were now commonly described with the most favorable terms. In this
context, officials gained a new appreciation for indios allegiance, relative lack
82. These concerns were old. In 1756, Governor Pedro Manuel de Aranda considered it
unfortunate that so few of the Mexican replacements established roots in the archipelago:
Pedro Manuel de Aranda to Viceroy Marquis of Amarillas, Manila, 24 July 1757, AGN,
Filipinas, vol. 5, fol. 282. Local authorities blamed the proliferation of indias and mestizas of
ill repute on the Mexicans reluctance to formalize relationships that could hinder their return
to New Spain.
83. Garca de los Arcos, Grupos etnicos, 6566; Garca de los Arcos, Forzados y reclutas,
23047, 25160.
84. Court-martial, Madrid, 13 Nov. 1780, AGI, Filipinas, vol. 360.
85. In 1765, Viana described Mexicans thus: They get into the greatest danger with
the same joy with which they go to a dance; in the marches and guard duties, under the sun,
under the rain, and in the most miserable prostrations they are always happy and with good
spirits, . . . and, well, they are very obedient. Viana, Demostracion, chap. 3.
569
of corruption, and better adaptation to climate and food. Praising their fidelity
and sacrifice in the militias, some governors even claimed that units of native
Filipinosunder European supervisionwere preferable to any company
sent from Mexico or Spain.86
Convict Labor and Urban Reforms in the Philippines
Recruits and vagrants may have frustrated some of Spains imperial ambitions in
the Philippines, but with their manual labor they became integral components
of the reconstruction projects and enlightened urban reforms of late eighteenthcentury Manila. The numerous town-planning regulations that sought to control and govern colonial bodies and space are clear proof that elite concerns in
Manila paralleled those of Bourbon legislators in Spain, Mexico, and Peru.87
With these initiatives, legislators in Manila were reacting both to local circumstances, such as the material and social chaos that followed the British occupation, and to the spread of European principles of aesthetics and hygiene.
Such urban reconstruction projects prompt us to reconceptualize vagrants
as workers, a move that recalls recent scholarship on convict labor in the former
British colony of Australia. Revisionist historians addressing the transportees to
Australia have shifted emphasis from criminals to convict workers in order to
highlight the productive labor of these individuals in the antipodes.88 Although
somewhat idealized, this interpretation is necessary for an impartial account of
the contributions of convicts to the formation of colonial societies. More
particularly, this scholarship offers a suggestive alternative to the more
depressing perspective of Mexicans and Spaniards causing havoc as they passed
through the archipelago.
86. In 1794, Governor Rafael Mara de Aguilar described in romanticized terms the
frugality of indios and their tolerance of heat, humidity, hurricanes, thunder, and
earthquakes. Aguilar to Count of Campo de Alange, Manila, 22 July 1794, CSIC, ser.
Consultas, riel 301, leg. 8.
87. Recent titles on the process of urbanization and empire building in colonial
Spanish America are Kinsbruner, Colonial Spanish-American City; Lucena Giraldo, A los cuatro
vientos. Future literature should search for a synthesis and comparison across centuries,
regions, and oceans that includes the Spanish Pacific.
88. These scholars underscore that the majority of transportees were young, fit men
and women with skills useful to an expanding colonial economy; they were guilty of only
minor offenses in their home country. In other words, this literature presents British convicts
as Australias first workforce. See, for instance, Duffield and Bradley, Representing Convicts;
Oxley, Convict Maids.
570
Immediately after the British stopped bombing the bay, Manilas authorities tasked convicts with reconstructing and cleaning the plaza. Year after year,
convicts annexed ravelins and parapets to the walls, restored and relocated
gates, and deepened the moats. Public works also targeted civilian buildings that symbolized Spanish power on the islands, such as warehouses,
accounting offices, hospitals, the royal palace, and the foundry. Authorities in
Manila viewed street cleaning and the removal of waste as fundamental for a
healthier environment and a more beautiful city. In 1764, urban residents
were charged with clearing the fronts of their homes or paying a penalty of 25
pesos, in addition to 50 lashes if they were Spanish, Chinese mestizos, or
indios.89 Later regulations prohibited throwing garbage and dead animals in
the streets, using public spaces as latrines, or allowing sewers to disembogue
into the streets.90
Untidiness, though, continued to be a worrisome problem for authorities.
In 1781 Governor Basco y Vargas ordered the sergeant at the Manila presidio to
assign convicts to beautify the city, clean the streets, pull up undergrowth,
[remove] mud, stones, old house remains, and everything he wanted for the
benefit of the kings service and the common good.91 The hollow impact of
these programs matched the poor results of similar efforts in Mexico City,
which indicates that Bourbon policies produced only modest transformations
in the urban geography of the Spanish American colonies.92
Other projects with a similar enlightened flavor and with convict participation, such as the paving and widening of the streets, aimed at facilitating the circulation of goods, people, and air. At the close of the century,
new granite stones from Canton, China, sped up the traffic of merchandise in city avenues that until then had been impassable in the rainy season and covered with dust in the summer.93 Besides slowing circulation, the
mushrooming proliferation of vendor stands constituted a sanitary problem that induced municipal officials to dictate measures for the free entry
of the winds so that they take away filthy vapors that cause plagues and
89. Edict of Governor Francisco Javier de la Torre, Manila, 2 May 1764, CSIC, riel
2016, leg. 4.
90. Edict of Simon de Anda, Manila, 17 Feb. 1772, CSIC, riel 2016, leg. 4; edict of
Intendant Tomas Gonzalez Carvajal, Manila, 23 Nov. 1787, AGI, Filipinas, vol. 692.
91. Jose Basco y Vargas, Instruccion para emplear diariamente en los trabajos a los
galeotes de la real casa de la fundicion, Manila, 1 Sept. 1781, AGI, Filipinas, vol. 928.
92. Historians have pointed out the limited impact of reformist European ideas in
medicine and public health in colonial Spanish America. Knaut, Yellow Fever.
93. Martnez de Zuniga, Estadismo, 125.
571
contagions.94 In 1797, chaotic clusters of shops still defaced the public

aspect of the city and comprised a weaving of hideouts that shielded every
wicked and criminal.95
Initiatives to address urban insecurity also involved Mexican convicts.
The British attack had damaged several residences that progressively fell
into neglect because the owners had moved to the extramuros.96 The deserted
edifices allegedly became refuges for vagrants and other individuals who
deserved to live in the most faraway places removed from the sight of the rest
of city residents.97 Ironically, when local officials employed forced labor to level
the walls of said residences, Mexican outlaws themselves became instrumental
in fighting the lawlessness of Manila.98
There was also an aesthetic and political rationale behind the urbanization
efforts in post-1762 Manila. The city was the military stronghold, the seat of the
colonial government, the womb of the Catholic faith, and the residential
quarter of Spaniards in the Philippines.99 As a cosmopolitan place and crossroads of people of many different nationalities, the enclave was a showplace for
Spanish imperial prowess. For Philippine legislators, the international reputation of Manila rested on the eradication of animals freely defecating in public
areas, jumbled conglomerations of shops, debris blocking the streets, derelict
buildings, stagnant water, and petty criminals. Ultimately, urban reforms in
Manila served the political ambitions of the metropolitan authorities in Madrid
for beautifying this city and its extramuros so that other nations can see that at
remote distances the Spanish Empire has a city of such good policy.100
Transcending the Imperial Perspective
In assessing the contribution of convicts and recruits to Philippine society, it

would be too easy, in the light of the evidence hitherto presented, to corroborate the arguments of some Filipino historians who lament the negative,
94. Edict, Manila, 23 Nov. 1787, AGI, Filipinas, vol. 692.
95. Governor Rafael Mara de Aguilar to Prncipe de la Paz, Manila, 28 Feb. 1797, CSIC,
ser. Consultas, riel 301, leg. 8.
96. Governor Basco y Vargas bitterly remarked that, despite the copious amounts of
money invested in the fortification of the city, the number of Spaniards in the intramuros was
decreasing. Council of the Indies, Madrid, 31 Aug. 1785, AGI, Filipinas, vol. 362.
97. Governor Pedro Sarrio, Manila, 7 Nov. 1787, AGI, Filipinas, vol. 692.
98. City Council of Manila to Jose Basco y Vargas, Manila, 7 Nov. 1783, CSIC, riel 471.
99. Reed, Colonial Manila, 51.
100. Governor Rafael Mara de Aguilar to Pedro Acuna, Manila, 22 July 1794, CSIC, ser.
Cartas, riel 2, leg. 3.
572
long-lasting consequences of their countrys Spanish and Mexican heritages.101

Undeniably, imperial authorities in Madrid and colonial administrators in
the Philippines had their own reasons for not regarding these men highly.
The performance of men who had neither motivation nor military training
thwarted Spanish plans to transform the Philippines into an imperial stronghold in the Pacific. However, an analysis that relies mostly on sources produced
by the ruling classes has understandable limitations. For instance, the testimonies of Philippine officialdom about the appalling comportment of these
men could have been fueled by the desire to convince Mexico to send more and
better reinforcements. Also, the governors and their subordinates reported on
the behavior of recruits and convicts during their terms but not on their deeds
after they were discharged from service or they finished their prison sentences.
One way to move beyond the colonial gaze is to view these men not as
working pieces of the Spanish imperial machinery in the Pacific but as individuals forced to live in a strange, outlying land. Although there is little direct
testimony from recruits and vagrants themselves, statements from their parents, arguably largely free of imperial political agendas and more directly
concerned with the exiles themselves, shed some light on how the experience in
the Philippines had changed these men and, more specifically, whether the
behaviors that authorities and relatives found so despicable had been reformed
or not. Some parents monitored their sons performance and demanded additional disciplinary measures if behavioral standards were not met.102 A few of
these young men, however, made military or ecclesiastical careers on the islands
that satisfied their forebears, like Jose Antonio Correa, who earned a doctoral
canonry in Manila, or Cristobal Zaldua, who reached the rank of sergeant and
101. The struggles to come to terms with a Hispanic heritage, a majority of Malay and
Chinese ancestry, and a US colonial discourse that demonized the Spanish have noticeably
given Philippine historical self-perception a manifestly anticolonial, anti-Spanish, and anti
Latin American stance. A new generation of Filipino Hispanic literati have denounced this,
such as Chile-based Elizabeth Ann Medina (1954) in her 1999 essay Hispanic-Filipino
Identity: Loss and Recovery, Asociacion Cultural Galeon de Manila, accessed 27 May 2012,
http://www.galeondemanila.org/index.php/es/estudios/126-hispanic-filipino-identity-lossa-recovery-by-elizabeth-medina. Along these lines, other young Filipino scholars have
reappraised hybridity and vindicated the importance of the Hispanic period and its legacy as
an indispensable part of the modern Filipino heritage. See Donoso, More Hispanic; Zialcita,
Authentic.
102. Francisco Antonio Ayerdi canceled his sons allowance after receiving negative
reports about his behavior and later requested that the youth be transferred from Manila
to Misamis, in Mindanao. Francisco Antonio Ayerdi to Domingo Hurtado Saracho,
Texcoco, 20 Feb. 1792, CSIC, ser. Cartas, riel 211, leg. 4.
573
chose to remain in the archipelago despite his fathers plea to return to

Mexico.103 Antonio F. Garca-Abasolo Gonzalez has documented the case of
Pedro Miguel Cordero, who became a baker and gave alms to convents, hospitals, and poor widows in the 1720s.104 A handful of similar stories prove that
redemption in the Philippines was possible, even if elusive. At least some men
had more rewarding experiences on the islands than the negativity of colonial
and imperial reports would lead us to believe.
The officials in charge of vagrancy campaigns in New Spain described
those whom they arrested as useless individuals with a toxic influence on the rest
of society, and Manila authorities were concerned as well about such individuals corrosive sway on the local population. These characterizations could have
been just a matter of perspective. On one hand, many of these supposed
vagrants were merely unemployed members of the working class caught at a bad
personal or economic juncture in their lives. Testimonies of relatives who
turned in these men often reveal dark personal motives and grudges held against
rebellious, unfocused youngsters who had caused intense family trouble but
who certainly were not criminals. It is conceivable that some of these individuals
could find new motivations in a different environment. Many of them stated in
court that they had been trained in one or more trades. These attributes could
serve them well in the Philippines. On the other hand, indios, Chinese, Spanish
mestizos, and Chinese mestizos might have valued the company of men who
defied the empires social norms and authority and who brought to the Philippines a broader view of the world.
Conclusion
The transportation of Mexican recruits and vagrants to Manila demonstrates

one important way in which the historical trajectories of colonial Mexico and
the Spanish Philippines intertwined during the colonial period. In the bodies of
these soldiers and convictsin their arrests, transportation, and laborstwo
103. Correas mother was very pleased to know that her son had blossomed into a
well-educated priest. Jose Antonio Correa to Viceroy Antonio Mara de Bucareli, Manila,
18 July 1772, AGN, Filipinas, vol. 8, fol. 22. In 1800, the royal customs accountant Antonio de
Zaldua requested in Zacatecas that his son Cristobal be sentenced to military service in
Manila for his determination to marry a dancer of the lowest pleb. Zalduas seed was an
otherwise model son educated in philosophy, theology, and math who had started a
promising military career. Seven years later, the elderly, retired royal official longed for
Cristobals return because he had given enough proof of his correction. Antonio de Zaldua
to the viceroy, Zacatecas, 5 Oct. 1809, AGN, Filipinas, vol. 59, exp. 5, fols. 13746.
104. Garca-Abasolo Gonzalez, Formas de alteracion, 27983.
574
processes converged at the end of the eighteenth century: Manilas quest for
better defense, improved social order, and a new ethnic arrangement; and the
Mexican enlightened crusade against vagrancy and the despicable behaviors of
the plebs. Ultimately the two agendas proved incompatible. Inspired by reforms
first developed in Bourbon Spain, New Spains authorities launched a social
cleansing campaign that produced a collective of individuals available for
deportation. Ironically, these men exhibited all the attributes that Manila did
not need. The presence of these men in the Philippines was unquestionably
detrimental to the larger economic and strategic aspirations of the Spanish
empire. The shortage of Mexicans and Spaniards, and the unwillingness of
those few sent to submit to any type of discipline, prevented Madrid from
building a stronger colony on the fringes of the empire.
The larger Spanish Pacific world emerges as an unexpected source of
important new information for the study of Bourbon attempts to intervene in
the social, moral, and economic order of the Philippines from the 1760s to the
1810s. These reforms reveal that the British occupation destabilized Manila
for a long period after 1764. The reforms also show the wide-ranging impact of
the Mexican presence, which was felt beyond the military sphere. In the Philippines pursuit of beauty, moral propriety, and economic rationality, Mexican
convicts had a noteworthy double role. As members of forced labor gangs, they
advanced the official agenda with their work in cleaning and reconstruction
programs. But in a colonial society that shared the same enlightened aspirations
that engendered moral campaigns in Mexico, the devious conduct of these
individuals could be perceived only as a problem. In fact, their addictions,
misdemeanors, and frequent desertion aggravated a social situation in which
the Spaniards had been unable to restore order in the areas affected by the
British invasion. From the point of view of the colonial administration, the
newcomers hindered local efforts to battle vice, crime, and disloyalty. These
transpacific interactions remind us that the experiences of the Spanish Philippines can greatly enrich our understanding of colonial Latin American history and that developments in the Philippines can add directly to the animated
historiographical debates underway on topics such as the nature and extent of
the Bourbon reforms.
This article aims to demonstrate that constructing a coherent Spanish
Pacific world from the geographical, political, and cultural peripheries to which
it has been relegated helps build a wider, more encompassing, and more complete vision of the Spanish empire. The Bourbon attempts to control the moral
and social behavior of colonial populations and to consolidate the military
role of the Philippines in an increasingly threatened Pacific world had to
575
accommodate the interests of Mexican and Philippine authorities, who in turn

were driven more by local circumstances than imperial considerations.
Therefore, this case study offorced migration of Mexican recruits and convicts
to the Philippines enriches ongoing historiographical conversations about how
compromise and cooperation ruled colonial life and molded relations between
colonies and the metropolis more profoundly than did the supposed subordination of these territories to Madrid. Spain had no option but to let Mexico
establish, develop, and ultimately define the nature of the umbilical relationship
between Spain and the Philippines, and Madrid had no real control over the
individuals that colonial administrations transferred from one place to another
within the empire.
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Eva Maria Mehl received a PhD from the University of Alicante, Spain, in 2002 and a PhD from the
University of California, Davis in 2011. She is now an assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled
Mexican Recruits and Vagrants in the Philippines: Punishment and Relationships of Power in the
Periphery of the Spanish Empire, 17651821 that analyzes the process of convict transportation
and military recruitment in the Spanish Pacific during the time of the Bourbon reforms.

Eva Maria Mehl Late Eighteenth-Century Phillippines

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nineteenth century. Therefore, the history of the Spanish Philippines is

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Shock Waves of the British Occupation of Manila

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to serve in Havana.29 The military experience of deserters was appreciated

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preferable to the military outposts of Veracruz, Pensacola, San Juan de Puerto

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the Regiment of the King, which in case of necessity could be a problem, as

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subsistence.66 The efforts to place these individuals under strict surveillance