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Quote from: ms da binsi on November 09, 2007, 12:09:42 AM
Qing? not Xing? Im not a political person but i am interested on how they live before...

It is read in english phonetics as "Ching" (Qing). It was the last Chinese Imperial Dynasty to rule over Zhong Guo (The Middle Kingdom) a.k.a 'China'. I'm sure you would love it, 'te because it includes the court etiquette of the people (women, men, children).

The book is factual--and a great review of Imperial Doctrine---one that was implemented by the Chinese for over 4,000 years.

Outlaws of the Marsh is a book of epic proportions that gives a glimpse of Chinese history, specifically during the late Song Dynasty. This novel of adventure covers the primal sensations that are universal for all, such as warfare, intrigue, murder, and rise and fall of grace. Thorough reading of the Outlaws of the Marsh Series, written by Shi Nai’an and Luo Guangzhong and translated by Sidney Shapiro, gives to the average reader the basic understanding of the life in ancient China. The authors of this book show awe for the bandits as either chivalric Confucians, who despite their role as social deviants in Imperial Chinese society, who either correct wrongs or try to live a semi honest life or as cold-hearted law breakers.
   
The book begins with the releasing of the 108 spirits by Marshal Hong and their occupation of bodies that would later cause rebellion and strife in the outer provincial regions of Imperial Song (Guangzhong and Nai’an 16). This gives the reader a sense of understanding the kind of ramifications of Imperial decree being ignored by citizens, this case; it is the welfare of Imperial Song. The refusal of Marshal Hong to listen to the monks and the emperor would be paralleled once again by the bandits, who defy government’s want of control, one specific example would be the extermination of Ho Tau’s police force by the Ruan brothers and the later annihilation of the 2,000 troops lead by Commander Huang by the formidable Liangshan Marsh Bandits (Guangzhong and Nai’an 401-402). Although the Liangshan Marsh Bandits slaughtered lives, it was seen as a legitimate organization and its actions necessary since it was self defense, correlating it in a game of kill or be killed. The Marsh Bandits also displayed a sense of mercy and respect for trade, as is exemplified when Chao Gai allows a raid on a traveling merchant caravan and orders that no merchant must be killed during the raiding (Guangzhong and Nai’an 403). As one actually reads the book, one is given the change to get to know the members of the book such as Song Jiang, who happens to be one of the influential members of the Liangshan and shows to us a deeper side of these bandits, one of care and romance. In one incident, Song Jiang marries a child of Mistress Yan, Poxi, out of pity (Guangzhong and Nai’an 408). Such kinds of actions were idealistic and are the epitome of the virtuous outlaw laws of aiding the poor, stealing only from the wealthy, have mercy on the innocent and slaughter the evil.
   
The reader has to understand that the book itself is quite accurate on its history in that such characters were factual in Chinese history such as Song Jiang. There was an actual Song Jiang persona who was the leader of a rebellion that was rampant in the Chinese provinces of Jiangsu, Henan, Hebei and Shandong (Guangzhong and Nai’an 1).  The book itself overall implements factual events such as the rebellions, rampant banditry, governmental military response to the uprisings and lawlessness was observed.
   
The book is written in 3rd person omniscient form, which provides the reader a storyteller format. The use of unique names for the characters, such as ‘Nine dragons’ Shi Jin, ‘Miraculous Strategist’ Zhu Wu and ‘Gorge-Leaping Tiger’ Chen Da (Guangzhong and Nai’an 45). The story is written in vivid and lucrative colloquial diction, which gives an eccentric Chinese tone, always addressing the superior and giving obeisance to royalty or nobility. The reader will get accustomed to this as he continues to read the book and realize the filial piety and social order that was accepted and revered in Imperial China.
   
As an avid reader of historical adventure based books such as Gods and Generals, Red Badge of Courage, etc., this book struck me as one of the best books read. The long list of characters and their special characteristics, sub adventures and stories within a chapter allows one to get lost in the world of the era of Imperial Song. This book, unlike most, is very broad and literally covers an entire world within the pages one reads through. I loved to read this book in that it actually drew me in, I literally could not stop until I finished a chapter. This is an absolute must read.

The following research is the culmination of my semester's independent study with Professor Guo Wu in the tracing of the development of Philippine Nationalism prior to the advent of the Philippine Revolution in the 19th century. I would like to truly dedicate this research paper to my father who so influenced my love of history, and secondly would dedicate it to the life and works of Dr. Jose P Rizal, who's writings in La Solidaridad and whose literary masterpieces such as El Filibusterismo and Noli Me Tangere have infused in me the nature of what true and pure Philippine nationalism was prior to the advent of the demoralization of the Philippine-American War, prior to the subsequent 'Neo-nationalism' of the mid 20th century. The moral and evolutionary fiber of the Filipino is indeed pure, whose mastery in mastering Hispanization was beyond the expectations of the Spanish delegation and even unto the Royal Cortes in Madrid. The unsurmountable and indomitable spirit of human equality, confraternity, liberty and national consciousness is truly a majestic phenomenon. From a feudal barbaric state---to the present---the pinnacle of Hispano-Romano-Greco culture infused into the psyche of an Asiatic state. Philippine nationalism eternalizes the Philippine confraternity with pure Western thought. As the Spanish Empire was part of the Roman Empire--and declared unto the world itself the heir-apparent of Roman-Greco cultural light, so too is the Philippines eternally linked to that confraternity. As a former colony, as one who completely manifested itself vis-a-vis the Pax Hispanica Epoch as a reproduction of Spain--the Philippines too shares the glory of Roman-Greco cultural light.



Abstracto

Este papel se escribe en respuesta al crecimiento que entiende y que anhela saber más sobre la historia Filipino-Española se comparte que ambas. Mayo ambas naciones entienden que se influenciaron, en ambos términos de la economía así como sociabilidad. Es en mi propia opinión personal que España es el instigator del desarrollo evolutivo de las Filipinas en un estado de ' Europeanissimo'. Era España que unió las Filipinas y sin España, allí no sería ninguna ' Filipina. , como filipinos, somos un producto de su imperialismo. Un producto. Desarrollamos y tomamos la identidad del viejo amo. Tal es nuestra historia. Tal es nuestra trayectoria gloriosa.




The Evolutionary Development of Philippine Nationalism:
The Role of Pax Hispanica in Filipino National Identity, and the Spanish Response 



Written by: A. Lorenzo Salvo Salise Lucino Jr.




The basis of this independent study is to examine the development of Philippine nationalism throughout the Hispanization epoch culminating into its rawest form; the Philippine Revolution in the late 19th century, which severed all ties from the Spanish Empire. Considering the gravity and the magnamity of this time epoch, particularly in the means of the revolution and the political developments, this paper will explore deeply into the current political status of Filipinos in the Philippines prior to the rise of nationalist discourse, the factors that did contribute to that discourse and the manifestation of the Philippine Revolution in 1896. I will examine the development of Philippine Nationalism, the Spanish reaction to that political discourse, and the Filipino response vis-à-vis the Philippine Revolution. This paper will also touch into the historical aspect of the Spanish Empire and thus function as a proper case study of the development of Asian nationalism in a European, in this case Spanish, colony. This can also be used to understand the discourse occurring in the rest of colonial South East Asia that were under the control of European powers such as the British, the Dutch and the French. This paper will prove that the Filipino people were not passive recipients in the imperial system.

The Spanish presence in the Philippines has been made manifest for over 300 years, beginning in the 16th century with the arrival of the Spanish conquistador till the independence of the country from Spain in the late 19th century in 1898 . The Spanish Empire was a vast political entity that controlled almost one fifth of the world’s land mass during the height of its political and military strength. The empire was divided into three political forms, the Viceroyalties of New Spain, and Peru, La Plata and Nueva Granada, which functioned as Imperial mega provinces throughout its over seas empire . The Viceroyalties of La Plata, Nueva Granada and Peru were primarily political entities of the Spanish empire that were situated and governed present day continental South America. It was the Viceroyalty of New Spain, present day Mexico and the entire region of south western United States that made political emphasis in the hispanization and the colonization of the Philippines vis-à-vis the Spanish Crown .

The Spanish Empire actually placed the Philippines, or as it was called by Spanish officials as “Las Islas Filipinas,” into the political jurisdiction of the Viceroyalty of New Spain for quite a significant time until the Peninsular War, which resulted in Spain’s loss of its colonial empires in the New World in the early 19th century, primarily the Viceroyalties of New Spain, La Plata, Nueva Granada and Peru. After the independence of Mexico from the Spanish Empire and Madrid’s subsequent losses of its three other Viceroyalties during the Wars of Independence, The Philippine Islands, Spain’s last few foreign possessions, were recalibrated and placed under direct Spanish control as a commonwealth province; the last Spanish bastion in the Orient .

The Spanish program in the Philippines envisaged a radical transformation of native Philippine society. The Spaniards were inspired by their previous experience in Mexico and launched a sweeping social reform in the islands, a reform which was religious, political and economic in scope. Ultimately, these changes were implemented by the Spanish in order to cement the union between the Spanish motherland with its Philippine overseas possession, however, such eventual changes and implications would result in the development of a ‘Filipina Patriatismo’  leading to subsequent pockets of revolts in the archipelago, but eventually into a powder keg revolution in the late 19th century. In consequence, we must examine these particular processes, particularly the religious reforms in the islands, the political reforms, and economic reforms that provided the basis for the formation of the Filipino noble elite that contribute to the development of the intelligentsia, who would go on to eventually spearhead nationalist discourse in the formation of Philippine Nationalism .

This paper will prove that the Filipino people were not passive recipients in the imperial system. When the Filipino people assumed the colonizer’s ideas and finally acquired their culture and their religion, the Filipino people claimed that they had learned the essentials of the supposedly superior civilization and perceived themselves as equals to the Spaniards. The Filipino citizenry embraced the Spanish brand of Catholicism instead of other kinds of Catholicism or Protestantism due to the adaptability of the Spanish brand to the interest of the Filipino people. The nationalist of the late 19th declared that the citizenry used Spanish teachings as a definition of their own national and ethnic identity, then utilized that as a means to finally understanding its journey to modernity didn’t need the tutelage of either Spain or any other foreign power . By the late 19th century, after centuries of Spanish amalgamation and influence, the Filipino people were mature enough to desire its own national independence. This background of Hispanization, Catholicization, and Westernization allowed the Filipino intelligentsia and the pro-independence nationalists to see themselves as superior to the rest of the surrounding Asian peoples, who weren’t westernized in the magnamity that the Philippines were throughout the four centuries of the epoch of Pax Hispanica . Furthermore, the Filipinos at the time envisioned a pre-Hispanic paradise, as made clear by great propagandists such as Jose P. Rizal and Andres Bonifacio.

Religion has been an integral part in the development of Philippine nationalism because it was Roman Catholicism that united the Filipino people under one faith. Prior to the advent of Roman Catholicism, the Philippine archipelago was didn’t share a unifying religious faith, on the contrary there were multiple forms of religions practiced in the islands, ranging from Islam, which were introduced vis-à-vis Arab traders, to Buddhism vis-à-vis Hindu traders and the indigenous form of animistic and ancestral worship . Nonetheless, it is clear that the region was divided and it was Catholic Christianity that allowed the consolidation of Filipino identity.

In the meeting of Philippine and Spanish cultures in the clergy of the Spanish Church were leading protagonists. In order to fully understand the development of this religion in the islands, we need to understand the complex relations of the clergy with the episcopacy and the civil authorities . This clear and precise comprehension of the theocratic elements of Spanish imperialism is imperative in understanding the impact of Spanish culture in the unification of the entire archipelago and the development of Filipino national consciousness. One can credit the Spanish missionaries in the conversion of the local peoples in Luzon, which is the main island in the north, in the Visayas, which is the group of islands that compose central Philippines, and Mindanao, which is the main southern island . The most important missionary groups that provided the basis for mass conversion of the islands were the inexhaustible works of the Augustinians, the Jesuits and the Dominicans.

One particular precedent about the Roman Catholic episcopacy in the Philippines was the limited number of Spanish clergymen throughout the Philippine Islands, and due to the Philippine’s vast distance from Spain’s empire in the new world as well as from the mainland, the innate limited Spanish priests in the archipelago remained small. As a result of this, the Archbishopric of Manila, under the auspices of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, allowed the ordainment of Filipino priests to join the clergy and the missionaries in spearheading the Catholicization of the islands in the south and in the Visayas. Additionally, considering the fact that the Spanish priests and missionaries were limited or didn’t speak the native languages, they relied heavily on Filipino priests and Filipino monks for direct communication with the indigenous people. This form of relationship, a form of empowerment of the Filipino, led to understanding of many Filipino parishioners that in a way the Filipino were equal to the Spaniards because even Filipinos could become priests. Normally, the Spanish Crown would have disproved the allowing of native Indios to become priests as it was in the case in the Viceroyalties of New Spain, Peru, La Plata and Nueva Grenada, but in the case of the Philippines was a separate and distinct one. Unbeknownst to the Spanish that by allowing Filipinos to become priests was a way of empowering the people, to the Filipino people, it was an indirect statement from the Spanish that the Filipinos were indeed equal to the perceived ‘superior’ Spaniard . This definitely was a key and pivotal pillar in aiding the development of Filipino nationalist discourse in later years.

A secondary factor that the Catholic clergy aided in developing was the urbanization of the region. The decentralization of Philippine society clashed with one tradition deeply rooted in Spanish culture. Considering the fact that the Spanish considered themselves the heirs of Greco-Roman urbanisms, the Spaniards instinctively identified civilization with the city. For the Spaniards, man was not only a rational animal gifted with the capacity to receive grace, he was also a social animal living in communion with his fellow man. It was only through this daily social contract with other men that he might hope to achieve the measure of his potentiality. The Spaniards originally documented that the indigenous Filipinos lived without polity, sin policia and was a measure of the barbarity of the indigenous people. That is why the Roman Catholic Church and the Spanish Crown engaged in not only preaching the word of God to the native peoples throughout the archipelago, but also set up ambitious programs for resettling the Filipinos into compact village, or so called Barangays , and thus made up the simplest form of a political unit. 

Originally, the native Filipinos were sedentary farmers are lived in villages that never numbered to greater numbers that would consolidate itself as a city, so the Spaniards, under the influence by Catholic missionaries and the clergy, coerced the Filipinos to live in settlements that would make religious conversion easier as well as provide the basis of civility. In no way was this task of forced coercion an easy tasks for the missionaries as one can read from an account by Archbishop Garcia Serrano in 1622:
Although it is impossible to deny tha the natives would be better instructed and would live in more orderly ways if the small villages (barrios) were to be reduced to the capital (cabecera or poblacion), making one or two settlements of each benefice, they consider it such an affliction to leave their little houses where they were born and have been reared, their fields, and their other comforts of life, that it could only be attained with difficulty, and little fruit would result therefrom. Thus has the experience of assembling the people into communities in Nueva Espana proved, an d so has what little of it has been attempted here. However, in the visit that I shall make in this archbishopric, I shall try to reduce them to as few settlements as possible .

Apart from the Spanish cultural need to urbanize the Philippines, there was also a logical explanation in forcing the Filipinos to live in urbanized communities and away from the rural tendencies of the indigenous people. One aspect was that in the Visayan region, which is the central region of the Philippines, there were tendencies of the Moro people in the south to raid the rural communities in the Visayas. As a result of this custom, several new villages were destroyed by Moro depredations and the Spaniards witnessed this first hand. The Spaniards implemented edicts that would titillate the people in the Visayas region to congregate in urban communities, this way it would protect the people from the debilitating raids of the Moros as the Spanish continued their southern campaign to conquer the entire archipelago and the Moros as well .

The manner in which the Filipinos were placed and resettled into urbanized communities vis-à-vis forced coercion as well as through religious and festive means. Forced coercion was implemented in extreme cases particularly to teach the mountain people the lifestyle of sedentary farming of the urbanized lowland Filipinos in the regions of Manila, Castro, Cavite, Cebu, Cagayan De Oro, all of which developed under Spanish auspices as large urban centers throughout the archipelago. The Spanish clergy as well as the colonial government actually understood the importance of these urban sprawls, particularly in the cultivation of rice products, hemp, agricultural goods, spices, natural resources that would bring rich coffers to the Spanish treasury in Manila as well as teach the Filipino people the ways of ‘civility’, and to Hispanify them. To strengthen and invigorate this Hispanicization process, the newly created urban centers that the Catholic episcopacy built churches and cathedrals. In fact, almost every single town, which were composed of dozens of Barangays, had one church and the larger the town, the larger the church and the rich decorations within its walls. Cathedrals were also built in the super centers throughout the islands, particularly in Manila, Cebu, Cagayan De Oro, Tagbilaran, Davao, Borgos etc. To the success and credit of the Spaniards, these new tactics and policies worked efficiently to organize the Filipino people. Filipinos became religiously devout to their newly acquired Catholic faith and many left the rural communities of the past for the organized Barangays and towns that had churches. They flocked to the rich and colorful church-oriented communities, which set up holidays known as fiestas that celebrated the patron saint of a particular community .

To the Spanish, they considered this complementary union of the people and the successful civilization and incorporation of the Filipino people into the Spanish Empire. However, for historians, one can see that these urbanized communities that were set in place by the Catholic prelates under the approval of the Spanish Crown, provided for the means of the growth of nationalist discourse because for once the Filipino people now were able to communicate with one another unlike ever before due to the urbanized community and enabling the natives to exchange ideas more frequently. Most importantly, it was Roman Catholicism, through the hands of Spain and the Catholic Church that cemented the Filipino people together, and aided their national identity. For once they were a divided people with multiple religions ranging from Buddhism, Islam, and Ancestral worship to animistic religions to having a unified and ecclesiastic faith, Roman Catholicism . It is in Philippine Catholicism that we can observe the development of some kind of social and national identity and the beginnings of pseudo nationalism. Given the disadvantages under which the Spanish clergy had to operate, their efforts would have proved abortive if the Filipinos had not voluntarily responded to some features of Christianity. As it happened, the Filipinos endowed certain aspects of the new religion with a ceremonial and emotional content, a special Filipino flavor which made Catholicism in the archipelago ins some respects a unique expression of that universal religion . One also needs to account for the fact that there were more Filipino priests and clergymen that there were Spanish priests in the Islands, so in all actuality, most of the Filipino people were receiving communion, baptized and given last rites by Filipino clergymen.

As a result, the consequence for the character of Philippine Christianity were momentous; as it was, there were virtually two religions, one was the Catholicism of the Spanish clergy an the Spanish colonists, the other was the folk Catholicism of the Filipinos, a cleavage which sharply delineated along racial and linguistic lines. And as a result of these two differences, which was culminated by the fact that most of the Filipino priests retained the superstitions and cultural traits of the natives and were selective in indoctrinating Spanish culture into the Filipino masses . In consequence, the Filipino clergy made Catholicism fit into Filipino society by applying its own local aura to it, and thus was a way that united the Filipino and created a sense of ‘Filipino Catholicism’, which directly influenced national fervor. For once, the Filipino people had their own ‘religion’ that united all peoples from Luzon in the north, the Visayas in the south and Mindanao in the south .

   A second pillar that aided in the Hispanization of the Philippines and eventually the growth of Philippine nationalism was economics. Prior to the arrival of the Spaniards in the 16th century, the population of the Philippines was documented between 500,000 and 600,000 . By the 18th century, the population hit the 2,000,000 mark and by the mid 19th century, the population of the Philippine colony was at around 8,000,000 people. All of this can be attributed to the surplus agricultural revolution that was organized and scripted by the Spanish colonial government. The growth of encomiendas, which are large farming estates, became rather apparent in the Philippines and with that led to the rise of Filipino nobles or called Principales who worked and collaborated with the Spanish regime. With investment in agricultural output, mineral and raw materials output, the Spaniards profited as well as the growing and rising Filipino elite class, who were educated and composed the basis for the rise of the Filipino intelligentsia. These Principales saw themselves the equals of the Spaniards, as they were fluent in not only economic management of farms, business and trade, spoke and understood Spanish as well as the religious teachings that united most Filipinos. In the Philippines, the class structure in native society remained cohesive due to the functionability of the Principales in working with the colonial government. The native magistracy acted as intermediaries between the material demands of the Spanish regime and the productive capacities of the Filipino masses. Secondly, the Principales were the local, political administrators. The Spanish Empire thereby created the Filipino oligarchy, the ruling elite which emulated the actions of the Spaniards in political, economic, social and religious roles . The active processes of Hispanization of the Philippines led to the ‘civilization’ of the region, however indirectly led to the titillating of a Filipino national movement. As it was these Principales that would eventually compose and fund the bulk of the Filipino intelligentsia, and the Revolutionary movement .

   The last pillar of Hispanization that affected the creation of the Filipino state and the eventual rise of Filipino nationalism was the political spectrum that was in place by the Spaniards and its evolutionary mold into a clearly distinct Filipino identity.

   The Spaniards greatly influenced the development of Filipino nationalism vis-à-vis the manifestation of Political Hispanization. What was rather interesting in the case study of the Philippines is that the Spanish legislation regarded the indigenous population of the empire as legal minors whose rights and obligations merited paternalistic protection from the Crown and its agents. For administrative purposes the natives were treated as its own commonwealth, or known as La Republica de los Indios, with its own code of laws and its own sets of magistrates . Spanish colonists established the creation of political units would provide the basis for the growth of urbanized communities as well as provided a sense of organization. The Royal Crown implemented decrees that called for the creation of Barangays, which were villages that composed as the cell unit that would compose municipalities and later on pueblos, or large towns. Considering the strategic and geographic distance of the Philippines from the Spanish motherland and from its major territories in the New World, Spain was unable to commit significant Spanish bureaucrats in the Philippine Islands as it did in its colonies its Viceroyalties of New Spain, Nueva Grenada, La Plata and Peru . Since the Spanish were handicapped in this predicament, they produced and created political positions for the Filipino people to rule over themselves, a form of local autonomy.

After the conquest of the Philippines in the late 16th century, the Spanish colonial government selected and gave political powers to Filipino royalty, as Principales, which became the rich land owners. Additionally, each Barangays had a village leader or called as Cabeza and had political powers to control and enforce Spanish laws and edicts in their local zone of control. And on a municipal point of view, Filipinos of the Principales social class were appointed as Gobernadorcillos, which were lesser governors of the smaller provinces throughout the Philippines. The Gobernadorcillos would then appoint and select Filipinos to positions of magistrates, registrars, and civil guards that would enforce the laws and religious orders of the Spanish Royal Crown vis-à-vis the edicts of the Spanish Governor General of the Philippines . In all actuality, it was actually the Filipinos who ruled themselves as the Political Hispanization that occurred made it possible that the Filipino masses were ruling and administering themselves, even the ranks of the Guardia Civil, a form of colonial constabulary, were primarily Filipinos. The officers of the Guardia Civil were Filipinos, however, the ranks of General and Colonel were reserved for the Spaniards. In terms of jurisprudence, the Spanish regime provided the Filipinos with an elaborate machinery to enable them to seek redress of their grievances through the courts. A standard practice of the colonial administration throughout the Indies was to recognize the applicability of the customary law of the natives in those cases where it did not violate basic precepts of Spanish-Christian morality. The agents of the Spanish Crown in delivering legal punishment were the local Gobernadorcillos and the local magistrates, who tried civil and religious cases, while major cases were filed and litigated by the Audencia, the major judicial body that composed of Filipino elites as well as Spaniards, similar to a Supreme Court . Such implementations were made manifest by the rule of King Charles II, Governor Corcuera and Governor Cruzalt who both implemented reforms in the creation of the Guardia Civil, retaining and increasing the power of the Principales and the role of the Gobernadorcillos .

In all reality it was the Filipino and its elite ranks that ruled the Philippines, providing the main units for the bureaucracy in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial epoch. Politically, the Filipinos emulated the Spaniards, and understood the philosophical, theoretical, and jurisprudential customs of the colonizer. This innate understanding and the Filipino’s own understanding of his efficacy in ruling the islands, providing the basis of empire gave birth to national consciousness. The birth of Filipino nationalism would rise from this due to the level of autonomy the Spaniards gave to the Filipinos, though were given laws to abide that clearly defined them as Hispanicized. Nonetheless, it was this sense of autonomy that fueled the basis of consciousness. Questions such as: Why should be ruled by a foreign power, when we are ruling our own selves? What is about Spain that makes them superior to ourselves?  were raised in the ranks of the Filipino politicuum. Such questions were raised in the forms of nationalist discourse and pro-independence discourse; though there were different forms. One form was an intellectual form of propangadists, another form was that of a military and revolutionary methodology . The enthusiasm with which the Filipinos adapted themselves to Spanish political forms attests to their capacity for creative social adjustments, particularly the implementation of Spanish marriage laws, tax laws, military conscription, civil cases etc . The kinds of political implementations that were put forth by the Spaniards to solidify the bureaucracy and administrative wheel can be examined in primary documents:
The treasury officials in Manila evidently exercised effective control over the administration of these communal funds. The cajas served to finance the village fiestas, to pay the nominal salaries of local officeholders and to provide sources of graft for Spanish and native officialdom .

The manner in which the islands were governed can be seen through the first hand accounts:
The archipelago was divided into twelve provinces called alcaldias mayors. Some of the more extensive provinces were subdivided into corregimientos. There were eight of these subdivisions. The modern provinces of the Philippines grew out of these seventeenth-century alcaldias and corregimientos, juast as the cabeceras and visitas are the genesis of the contemporary poblacion and barrio. The alcaldes and their eputies, the subdelegates, were the intermediaries between the central authorities in Manila and the Gobernadorcillos in the villages. Occupying a middle position in the administrative chain of command, their primary responsibility was to enforce local policy directives issued in Madrid and in Manila and at times to formulate policy .

It is evident that in the political spectrum, the Filipino was trained by the Spaniards to operate the system on behest of the Spanish Crown and displayed rigidity and effectiveness. It was this Hispanization during Pax Hispanica that led to the Filipino’s literacy in Western political systems that would eventually breed nationalist discourse.

The Filipino response to political Hispanization was in many ways positive and penetrating as their acceptance of certain features of Christianity and clearly reflects their willingness to take part of the system and control the system. The same way as how Filipinos ‘Philippinized’ the Catholic teachings to suite the local superstitions and beliefs, so too did the Filipino people ‘Philippinized’ the Hispanic political process to suite the local views and customs. The manifestation of national identity. Clearly, it is evident that the Spanish implementation of Roman Catholic doctrine, Hispanic economic standards as well as Hispanic political processes led to the development of the Philippines as a functioning and co-dependent state and the Filipino people being active local administrators in that particular state, which in turn was one state that composed the vast Spanish Empire. The gradual development of national consciousness was inevitable as the Spaniards began to give more power to the Filipinos and as the Filipinos increased their grasp in Spanish doctrine and full understanding and mastery of that system. Considering that the Spaniards provided the basis for personal growth and education, the manifestation of national consciousness and identity was inevitable.

So when we consider the basis of the paper, the central question ushers the words of national discourse and nationalism. Philippine nationalism is clearly a phenomenon that was a result of centuries of Western Imperialism. But what is nationalism? Nationalism in itself is defined by the Webster’s dictionary as:
loyalty and devotion to a nation; especially : a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups. Based on the premise that the individual's loyalty and devotion to the nation-state surpass other individual or group interest .

The term nationalism has been amply defined and analyzed by political scientists. First and foremost we must understand that nationalisms differs in form and gravity from one nation to another. The case study of the Philippine Nationalism, which this paper will proceed to go into, will document and point out the various forms of nationalism and discourse.

   By the time the 18th and the 19th century came to pass, the Philippines was already a functioning and operative autonomous state that was run by Filipinos on a local and universal level and though the Filipino society evolved, they were still being treated by the Spaniards as ‘little children’ and abuses were committed on the Filipino by the Spaniards, which led to numerous uprisings throughout the entire country before the full blown Revolution that would take heave in 1896. But nonetheless, these little uprisings are precursors and foreshadowed the looming pro-independence nationalist sentiment that would take clout in the Philippines in the mid to late 19th century. The tradition of revolt was carried into the nineteenth century and uprisings were caused by economic, religious and more importantly political discontent. One particular example of this was the ‘wine’ revolt that occurred in the Illocos region, northern quadrant of the Philippines, in 1807 as a response to Spanish forbiddance of Filipino breweries and home grown alcohol . Another example of this was seen in 1841 when the Filipino revolutionary Apolinario de la Cruz led a rebellion in Tayabas. He not only formed a secret confraternity of pure blooded Filipino men and women. This confraternity was established to address the political grievances of the Spaniards towards the Filipino Indio, and accumulated a massed following of about 20,000, but was eventually crushed by combined Spanish and Filipino troops of the Guardia Civil . 

Despite a lack of early unity of purpose and sustained continuity, a pattern of common grievances emerges from the early Filipino responses to Spanish encroachments on their freedom. One specific aspect that was felt by the Filipino masses was the appropriation of historic Filipino land by Spanish landlords and religious orders. Political grievances were evident in Filipino resentment of the special tax imposed from 1565 to 1884 on all Filipinos except those incorporated in the lower Spanish administrative cadres. These kinds of financial burden was aggravated by its humiliating connotations as a ‘vassalage’ tax towards the Filipino people, who were growing more and more increasingly nationalistic and aware of ‘humanitarian rights’, particularly during the 19th century. One thing was clear, Spain was beginning to loose its grip of control as the development of nationalism in the form of rebellions throughout the country. Spain’s repressive stance against rebellions were to no avail because their suppressive measures, which usually was the execution of rebels and displaying their heads on spikes, failed to stamp out rebellions . On the contrary, Filipino uprisings were a common phenomenon in the early to late 19th century. Let us analyze what influenced the uprisings, which is a form of nationalism.

As we discussed earlier in the paper, the growth of Filipino participation in politics and economics was apparent. The Filipino Gobernadorcillos and Principales and elites were accumulating power and began to send their children and families abroad for education. As a result of this, there was a growth of Filipino nationalism. These students were able to travel throughout Europe and the United States and saw the progression of societies, and noticed how it differed compared to the backwards society that the Philippines were ruled under the ultra-conservative Spanish colonial regime . Additionally to this, by the nineteenth century, various forces transformed Filipino nationalistic sensibilities into broadly based, coherent thought. By the late 19th century, Manila was open to the outside world vis-à-vis foreign trade. The distance between Spain and the Philippines was greatly decreased with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and further increased trade with one another as well as with other empires. The evolution of the Filipino intelligentsia was aided with the greater flow of liberal Spanish literature to the Philippines. The growth of the intelligentsia was unchecked with the passing of the Educational Decree in 1863, which paved for Filipino’s access to education abroad in higher learning and fostered the emergence of the intellectual nationalists. The birth of modern Philippine nationalism was at hand .

   Philippine nationalism was invigorated with the rise of the Filipino middle class, which because of greater educational advantages and contact with foreign newcomers and their ideas, as well as enhanced material power. The Filipino middle class, which composed most of the intelligentsia class, had a sense of communal oneness based upon their Malay ethnic heritage, the members of the new middle class acquired a common language and a para-regional bond that formed the bedrock of the emergent Philippine nationalism. To augment the growth of nationalism was the fact that the Filipinos had acquired representation at the Spanish Cortes. During these periods, the Filipino delegates learned the advantage of direct presence in Spain and the effectiveness of being able to press Filipino demands for reforms. The acquisition of these representation rights in 1837 emboldened the Filipino nationalists to seek further liberalization of the Philippines from the Spanish Colonial government, which still ruled the Philippines as if it were still a middle aged colony. As a response to allowing the Philippines have a taste of freedom and liberal thought, more Filipino nationalists were protesting in Spain and in Manila to change the ultraconservatist policy of the colonial government. However, Spain responded in a rather racial manner. An analysis of a Spanish diplomatic envoy, Sinnibaldo de Mas, and the contemporary view of the Spaniard’s view towards the Filipinos showed how racial the Spaniards were and their inability to compromise with the growing Filipino nationalist movement:
Between Filipinos and Espana there is no other bond of union than the Christian religion. This bond is very powerful and may induce the islands to love and to defend the Spanish domination as a duty. To imagine that the natives will become fond of our government because they judge it good or the best possible I believe a vain project. Their ignorance regarding the condition of other peoples does not permit of their entering into such comparisons. However excellent such Filipino men are, they think it is advantageous for them to withdraw form the yoke and seize the scepter in their own hands and pass by this method from their humble condition of vassals and subjugated to that of masters and mandarins. Keep them simple. Take away the educational system .

Men such as de Mas held onto such desperate views that if the more liberal the Philippines got, the more likely it was to have a revolution. There was a prevailing view that if the Filipinos were denied their recent rights of education and economics, they would remain servile to Spain. Unfortunately for the Spanish, this was impossible. The nationalist discourse in the Philippines led to the growth of a major middle class and a burgeoning intelligentsia class that were being influenced by other western powers and in the democratic processes.

   It is rather interesting in that there were multiple foreign sources that documented the resiliency and growing character of Philippine nationalism, despite Spanish reprisals. One particular individual was the German scientist Feodor Jagor who witnessed the raw form of Philippine nationalism as the major striking feature of Philippine political development and displayed the inevitability of a revolution if the Spanish colonial government continued in its path of conservatism despite the clamor of the Filipino masses for liberalization and increased political rights and addresses of jurisprudential grievances:
The old situation is no longer possible of maintenance. The colony can no longer be shut off from the outside. Every facility in communications opens a breach in the ancient system and necessarily leads to reforms of a liberal character. The more that foreign capital and foreign ideas penetrate there, the more they increase prosperity, intelligence and self esteem, making the existing evils the more intolerable .

   The spread of Philippine nationalism and discourse was dispersed throughout the archipelago by the use of the literary machine, which influenced nationalist discourse and pro-independence zealotry in the Filipino elite class, the middle class to the working masses. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Spanish education had enabled many Filipinos to convey their grievances to Spain. Moreover, the Catholic tradition of scholasticism and intellectual rationalism reinforced Philippine literary nationalism, elevating it to the level of an ethical discourse. Such literary pieces that demanded Filipino identity to be respected were Ninay, La Antigua Civilizacion, which stressed the nostalgia of native romanticism and a separate ‘Filipino’ state free from the yoke of Spanish control. Newspapers were also effective, most famous was La Opinion, which engaged in controversies that not only angered the Spanish colonial government in the Philippines, but was supported by Filipino readers. There were writers such as Jose P. Rizal who wrote two great literary works that inspired the Philippine nationalist movement and eventually the pro-independence movement. These two works are El Filibusterismo  and Noli Me Tangere , which were novels that repudiated the works of the Catholic friars and the brutal policies against the Filipino people. So effective were Rizal’s works that he garnered supporters and readers in Germany, Great Britain, France, the United States and even liberal thinkers in Spain proper. Rizal’s works allowed the formation and evolutionary phase of Philippine nationalism to take a propagandistic form. The works of Rizal led to the formation of a Filipino pro-independence movement party known locally in the Philippines as the Katipunan, or Kataastaasang Kagalanggalang katipnan ng mga Anak ng Bayan (Superem and Venerable Society of the Sons of the People) which stressed for complete severance from Spain .

   In no means were the Filipinos docile and pacific, on the contrary, there were numerous instances and cases of Filipino rebellions against the racist and absolute policies of the Spanish colonial government. The Filipino were forced to take up arms against the colonizers which resulted in bitter relations with the Spaniards and the Filipinos, particularly in the religious sector as well as in the political spectrum. One example that exemplifies the growing drift between Filipinos and Spaniards as a result of violent nationalism can be observed in Sr. Navarero, a Spanish friar who documented the revolving hostilities between Spanish Colonial forces and the Filipino nationalist group, the Katipunan:
The contingent of sons with the three pointed design of the square and apron who left the halls of the college and became the petty leaders and chief revolutionaries who betrayed the mother country and were also the greatest enemies of these who had taught them the little good that they knew, would not have been so numerous .

Even before the augmentation and sporadic spread of the Katipunan, there rampant rebellions that occurred throughout the Philippines as a result of unfair and racist Spanish policies, one example of this was the Dagohoy Rebellion in present day Bohol Province. The rebellion was so popular in the province of Bohol that it took the Spanish over 80 years to finally subdue the rebellion, which amassed a supporter base of over 20,000 rebels . The rebellion was put down by military means and only put a temporary fix to the growing distaste the Filipino people had on the Spanish Colonial Government.

   One of the main complaints made by the Filipino nationalists and pro-independence supporters was the fact that Spain continued to place restrictions on the political and social lives of Filipinos. The local people demanded freedom and liberalization from the clearly racist Spanish Colonial Government. Spain was non compliant and as a response, paved the way for the inevitability of the Philippine Revolution as the last result of the Filipino people to secure those rights. The following was proclaimed by General Emilio Aguinaldo, who would become the first President of the Philippine Republic, and shows the contemporary Filipino passions against Spanish Imperialism:
The Philippines is now a witness to a spectacle unparalleled in her history, a movement for the conquest of her liberty and of her independence, the noblest and highest of all her rights; hers, too, the inspiration of a heroism that shall place her on a plane of equality with civilized nations. We know that the progress of a nation has for its firm foundation her independence and liberty; thus must the citizens treasure this as the noblest and most sublime sentiment…Filipino citizens! We are not a savage people; let us follow the example of civilized Europea and American nations; now is the occasion for shedding our blood for the last time, that we may achieve our beloved freedom .
To bear witness against the Spanish regime, Aguinaldo and his contemporaries had this reason to rebel against the racist Spanish Colonial Regime:
The Spaniards, conquerors of this beloved land, accuse us of ingratitude and claim that after they had civilized us, we would express our gratitude to them by impairing their authority; this is a false and misguided argument. For the civilization they brought to these islands by Spain during the lapse of three centuries is superficial and, fundamentally, vicious, for she has tried to keep the masses in dense ignorance, to extinguish the fire that burns in the hearts of a group of Filipinos who, for no reason other than that they are educated, are the victims of persecution by the government.  Filipinos! The time has come for us to shed blood in order to win our right to freedom. Let us march under the flag of the Revolution whose watchwords are “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity”

Spanish reaction was brutal and swift; and as a result jailed or executed liberal thinkers, including Jose. P. Rizal. The death of Rizal, who was considered the patron of the Katipunan organization , led to the evolution of Philippine nationalism from being propagandistic to militaristic and revolutionary. In ruthlessly hounding out every anti-Spanish element form freemasons to propagandists, Spain herself was beginning to demonstrate to the Filipino nationalists the futility of debates and the futility of ever cooperating again. As a result of Spain’s closed-minded policies of trying to force the Philippines and its enlightened populace to revert back to servility and the Filipino people’s staunch resistance to such depravation of its innate rights as humans as mandated by the theories of European Enlightenment of confraternity, citizenry, and liberty, open revolution erupted throughout the Philippine archipelago in 1896. The Philippine Revolution, which is considered by Philippine historians as the watershed and culminating example of raw Philippine nationalism, led to the development of the Philippine Revolutionary Army, which was commanded by General Emilio Aguinaldo and his general staff. The Revolutionary Army would engage in military battles with the Spaniards until Spain’s surrender to joint American and Philippine forces in 1898. It was in 1898 that the Philippine Revolution finally closed when Emilio Aguinaldo and his general staff declared independence form Spain and the birth of the First Philippine Republic .

The development of Philippine nationalism, as witnessed throughout this paper, is clearly an evolutionary processes that would not have been possible had it not been for the Hispanization that occurred. The proper establishment of Roman Catholicism, which created a national identity as a universal faith for the archipelago, linked the islanders together despite their regionalistic tendencies. The procurement of economic bases, the creation of port trade, hacienda systems, the vast agricultural system that the Spanish put in place under the auspices of Filipino people was effective in creating a rather vivid economic machine in the Philippines. Which in turn provided the basis for the growth of a privileged oligarchic class, which in turn would provide for the basis of the intelligentsia the direct influential power of modern Philippine nationalism. Politically speaking, Hispanization allowed the Filipino to work the Spanish bureaucratic and administrative system. The establishment of a Filipino governorship and civil positions led to the augmentation of the political will and understanding with the already present Filipino oligarchy. Fully augmented, led to the development of a middle class that displayed an evolutionary yearning for independence from Spanish vassalage. The development of Philippine nationalism is clearly an evolutionary phenomenon as a result of Pax Hispanica. The tale of Philippine nationalism is a glorious and splendid case study of how an archipelagic divided state was colonized and transfused with intrinsically western philosophies, cultural dictions and political stratum and evolved into a pseudo-Euro-Asiatic state.


This paper is the intellectual property of the writer. Please do not forge or take this as your own work. Thank  You.

The following are maps of the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade (1565-1821)
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Sr. Don Miguel Lopez de Legaspi---El Conquistadore.

Born in 1502, Miguel López de Legazpi was the youngest son of Don Juan Martínez López de Legazpi and Elvira Gurruchategui. He was born to a noble family and lived in the small town of Zumárraga, in the Basque province of Guipúzcoa in Spain.

Between 1526 and 1527, López de Legazpi worked as a councilor in the municipal government of his home town. In 1528, after Hernán Cortés had established settlements in Mexico, López de Legazpi went to Mexico (New Spain) to start a new life. This was due to the death of his parents and his dissatisfaction with his eldest sibling, who inherited all of the family fortune. In Tlaxcala, he worked with Juan Garcés and Juan's sister, Isabel Garcés. López de Legazpi would go on to marry Isabel and have nine children with her. Isabel died in the mid 1550s.

Between the periods of 1528 and 1559, he worked as a leader of the financial department council and as the civil governor of Mexico City. He was later commissioned by the viceroy, Luis de Velasco, in early 1564, to lead an expedition in the Pacific Ocean, to find the Spice Islands where the previous explorers Ferdinand Magellan and Ruy López de Villalobos had landed in 1521 and 1543, respectively. The expedition was ordered by King Philip II, after whom the islands were eventually named. The viceroy died in July of that year, but the Audiencia and Legazpi completed the preparations for the expedition. On the early morning of November 21, 1564, armed with five ships and 500 soldiers, he sailed from the port of Barra de Navidad, New Spain, in what is now Jalisco state, Mexico.


Arrival In the Philippines
López de Legazpi and his men sailed the Pacific Ocean for 93 days. In early 1565, they landed in the Mariana Islands, where they briefly anchored and replenished their supplies. They fought with Chamorro tribes and left several huts burned to the ground.

López de Legazpi's troops arrived in the Philippine archipelago and landed in the shores of Cebu on February 13, 1565. After a brief struggle with the natives, they left the island for the nearby islands of Leyte and Camiguin. His ships drifted to the coast of Bohol on March 16, 1565. There, he and his crew obtained spices and gold after convincing the natives that they were not Portuguese. He made a blood compact with the chieftain, Datu Sikatuna, as a sign of friendship between the two peoples.

On April 27, 1565, López de Legazpi and his men went back to Cebu, attacking and destroying the village of Rajah Tupas. There, he founded the first Spanish settlements, naming it Villa del Santisimo Nombre de Jesús (Town of the Most Holy Name of Jesus) and Villa de San Miguel (Saint Michael's Town).

In 1567, 2100 Spanish, Mexican soldiers and labourers arrived in Cebu under orders of the Spanish King. They established a city and build the port of Fuerza de San Pedro which became their outpost for trade with Mexico and protection from hostile native revolts.

In 1568, López de Legazpi sent one of his men back to Spain to report on his progress. He himself remained in Cebu and did not accompany his men during the conquest of Manila because of health problems and advanced age. Having heard of the rich resources of Manila, he dispatched two of his Lieutenant-commanders, Martín de Goiti and Juan de Salcedo, to explore the northern region.


The Conquest of Manila

In late 1569, a force of 300 Spanish soldiers, cavalrymen, and several local natives, led by Martín de Goiti, left Cebu and began exploring the Northern regions of the Visayas. They found the islands of Panay and Mindoro, where they encountered Chinese sea-traders in the area. Goiti and Salcedo fought with Chinese pirates on the Eastern coastline of Mindoro and defeated them off the island. The Spaniards later established settlements in the area.

On May 8, 1570, they arrived in Manila and entered Manila Bay. The Spaniards were overwhelmed by the size of the harbour. There, they were welcomed by the Muslim natives. Goiti's soldiers camped there for a few weeks, while pretending to form an alliance with the Muslim king, Rajah Suliman. However, the Spaniards had other plans. They tricked the natives into believing that they were only visiting and staying for a short period.

On May 24, 1570, after quarrels had erupted between the two groups, they marched to the Muslim settlements in Tondo and the city of Manila, where a battle was fought against Suliman's warriors. The heavily armed Spanish soldiers defeated the natives and conquered the area.

In the same year, more reinforcements arrived in the Philippines, prompting López de Legazpi to leave Cebu. He took 250 soldiers and 600 native warriors to explore the regions of Leyte and Panay. He followed Goiti and Salcedo to Manila the following year, after hearing the city had been conquered.

In Manila, López de Legazpi formed a peace pact with the native Muslim councils, Rajahs Suliman, Matanda, and Lakandula. Both groups agreed to organize a city council, consisting of two mayors, twelve councilors and a secretary. López de Legazpi finally established a permanent settlement there on June 24, 1571, and he also ordered the construction of the walled city of Intramuros. He proclaimed the town as the island's capital and permanent seat of the Spanish colonial government in the western Pacific Ocean.

With the help of Augustinian and Franciscan friars, he established a government on the islands. He became the first Spanish governor of the Philippines and worked to convert the natives to the Catholic religion. Those who opposed his rule were tortured and executed, while those who supported him were awarded with encomiendas.

By one account, some 60,000 Filipinos sailed on the galleons from Manila to Acapulco over two-and-half centuries, mostly as crews. Many escaped upon reaching Mexico, never to return to the Philippines. Most of the Filipino sailors were natives or indios. There were also many who belonged to the mestizo class, products of intermarriages between Spanish and native Filipinos who traveled as merchants, technicians or functionaries.

Every year between 1570 and 1815, two galleons sailed from Manila to Acapulco to carry on a flourishing trade monopoly for Spain. One of every five members of the crew was a Filipino native but some historians claim it went as high as 50 to 80 percent Filipinos. The other crew members were Spanish, Mexicans and Portuguese.

I have been obsessed with the idea of tracking down the descendants of Filipinos who had migrated to Mexico. Because most of those ships were built by Filipinos in the Philippines, albeit through a compulsory system of labor called polo, I felt their role in the galleon trade should be recognized. Another point I want to bring out is that Filipinos had been in the New World much longer than any group of Asian.

A book published in Manila last year, "After the Galleons," written by eminent scholar, Dr. Benito Legarda Jr., had tipped me that a community of Filipino descendants could be found in Espinalillo near Acapulco. Another book that I found upon reaching Acapulco made a similar assertion.

Upon landing in Acapulco, I went straight away to Espinalillo in a hired car with a driver, Urbano Morales, acting as guide. Espinalillo, it turned out, was a barrio in the town of Coyuca, a half hour's drive north of Acapulco. The area is known as the Costa Grande, notable for its fine beaches washed by waves from the Pacific Ocean. Its most notable feature is a fresh-water lake 17 miles long that runs parallel to the seashore.

It was like being transported to the Philippines. The area is verdant with tall coconut trees and tropical fruits and plants. Many people walking the streets or staring from the windows of houses looked like Filipinos -- brown, with large eyes and black hair and of medium build. With the driver acting as interpreter, I talked to five or six households to ask if they were descended from Filipinos. They all said they had no idea. One person I spoke to was a woman who claimed she was 112 years old. She does not remember anything said about Filipinos living in their village.

All of a sudden, I realized I was asking the wrong questions. The term "Filipino" is a fairly modern appellation, referring to Spaniards born in the Philippines. Most Chinese in Mexico are actually Filipino! The word "Filipino" was coined only in 1889.During Spanish times, natives from the Philippines were known as Chinos or simply as Manila Men. They thought these Filipinos came from China. This notion persisted in Mexico up to today. Until now, many Mexicans refer to Filipinos as Chinos, and they usually had no family names. When I asked the folk of Espinalillo if they knew of anyone in the village who was of Chino descent, they merely shook their heads.

It was my driver who provided the answer, to my disappointment. He said: "After three or four generations, the thread of genealogy is lost. It becomes difficult to trace ancestry." He was right. Filipinos had been in Mexico for 10 or 15 generations. Their racial identity has become dissipated through intermarriages with other races. Mexico racial mixing is a very rich brew. One has only to look at its people today to reach this conclusion.

Thousands of people captured from India, Burma, Indonesia and Mindanao were collected in Manila and brought to Mexico as slaves. They filled up the labor shortage caused by the decimation of the Mexican Indian population from diseases brought by the Europeans.But one can see that in Acapulco and surrounding towns, Filipinos -- or their mixed versions -- are everywhere, apparent through their skins, black hair, almond eyes and ready smile. You find them in menial jobs as waiters and drivers, sales girls, security guards. They comprise the backbone of Acapulco's tourism industry.

Filipino Clans Take Root in Mexico My disappointment at not finding descendants of Filipinos in Espinalillo did not last long. At barrio Bajo los Ejidos, also in Coyuca in the Costa Grande, I saw a big sign at the side of a house in huge letters. The sign read: Parque Reyna Maganda. In short order, I was talking to a matronly lady, Lupe Maganda, who told me that Parque Reyna Maganda was a barrio park named after her mother who had just died. While we were talking she had an uncle summoned from another house to join us.

Soon we were joined by an old man walking with a cane by the name of Severino Maganda, 85 years old. When I explained to him that Maganda was a Filipino word (meaning beautiful) and that his family must have come from the Philippines, he showed no surprise. He told me that when he was a young boy, his grandmother told him that the Maganda family came from the Philippines. His father and grandfather both lived and died in Espinalillo.

Members of the clan have been living in the Costa Grande for generations and they are reputed to be quite a big clan. Their forbear must have adopted the Maganda name to perpetruate their memory of the Philippines.

In Acapulco itself, talking to knowledgeable people, I learned that there is another big clan in Costa Grande whose forbears came from Manila. This family has the unique surname of H-Luz (pronounced Acheh-Luz). One of its descendants, Rube H-Luz Castillo, has written a book on the history of Acapulco.

There are two other clans by the name of Guzman and Rodriguez, but I did not get to meet anyone of them. I was informed that in another barrio called Carizal, there were also Filipino descendants.

There is a unique private institution called Centro de Investigacion e Informacion Historica de Acapulco. I had a brief interview with its director, Benjamin Galicia Hurtado. Mr. Galicia told me that besides Acapulco itself, the big concentration of Filipino Mexicans can be found in the towns and cities of western Mexico, the coastal areas, in places like Puerto Vallarta, Guaymas, Navidad and San Blas.

In the galleon era, San Blas was an active port second only in importance to Acapulco. San Blas actively traded with Manila in the 1770's, and this trade was not necessarily carries out on the galleons. Skilled women such as sailmakers, shipwrights and carpenters from the Philippines were stationed in San Blas to repair and maintain the galleons.

A Filipino shipwright who became famous in Mexico was Gaspar Molina. Married to a girl from Sinaloa, Molina was commissioned by the Spanish viceroy in Mexico City to build a ship in Baja California to be used by the Jesuit missionaires who were starting to pacify the area. The ship, Nuestra Senora de Loreto, was launched in Loreto in 1760 to the great satisfaction of the Spanish authorities. In 1764, Molina built a second ship which was named Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion.

The Filipinos' big contribution to Mexican culture, according to Dr. Galicia, is in the area of food. In 1618, 74 of the 75 Filipino crew members of the galleon Espiritu Santo abandoned their ship. They were then asked by the local Indians to teach them how to make tuba, the drink derived from coconut trees. In the sidestreets of Acapulco the heady brew is sold as tuba fresca.

The Filipinos also imparted their know-how in making ceviche (seafood kinilaw) and other unique ways of broiling fish and shrimps. The Mexican term for a beach hut is palapa, which is Filipino for coconut fronds.

While it is common knowledge that their mangoes came from Manila, it comes as a surprise to me that the coconut tree, which they call palmera, also originated from the Philippines. The state of Guerrero, where Acapulco is located, is Mexico's biggest producer of coconuts and coconut products.

Juan de Cuellar, a botanist who was sent to the Philippines to study its plants and flowers - he preceded the other famous botanist Fr. Jose Blanco by a hundred years - had a hand in sending many Philippine plants to Mexico. One of the plants that De Cuellar introduced to Mexico was the rambutan which miraculously survived the long trip across the Pacific and thrived in the New World.

Filipino Sailors in the New World Filipinos had been going to the New World since the 16th century. A California historian, Lorraine Crouchett, noted that some Cebuanos sailed on the galleon San Pablo when it made its historic first crossing of the Pacific Ocean from west to east in 1565. Guided by Fray Andres de Urdaneta, the San Pablo was sent by Miguel Lopez de Legaspi to find the return route to Mexico and to obtain supplies for his expedition to settle the Philippines.

The route discovered by Legaspi was used by the Manila galleons to travel to Mexico for 250 years. From that period, Filipinos traveled to the New World regularly. They continued crossing the Pacific long after the galleons were gone.

The first recorded landing of Filipinos in California took place in October 1587, on a frigate that came from Macao under the command of Portuguese galleon pilot Pedro de Unamuno. Unamuno left a written account of his landing at Morro Bay with a crew composed in part by Filipinos "armed with shields and spears." While reconnoitering the place, they were attacked by Indians who managed to kill one Spanish soldier named Contreras and a Filipino crew member. Unamuno was under instructions from the Spanish governor in Manila, Santiago de Veyra, to look for suitable ports for the Manila galleons.

The galleon San Agustin landed at San Francisco Bay in 1595 on a similar mission, also with a crew of Filipinos. The San Agustin, with Carmenho Rodriguez as commander, was sunk by a freak chubasco while lying at anchor, together with its cargo. The party was able to reach Acapulco on a raft which was built with the help of local Indians.

Two years later, the galleon Santa Ana was captured by the English buccaneer Thomas Cavendish while approacing the tip of Baja California. More than a hundred Filipino men, women, and children were forced to get off the ship at the town of San Jose del Cabo. In this town, one of the wealthiest families was a descendant of the Canseco family that used to live in Intramuros, Manila. "All the Cansecos in Mexico came from the Philippines," one family member told me.

Cavendish, with a wealth valued at P3 million at that time, sailed to the Philippines, bringing with him the Spanish pilot of the Santa Ana and three Filipino prisoners. The Filipino prisoners were released in Capul (named after Acapulco) island in the San Bernardino Strait. One of the prisoners, Francisco Mansalay, tipped off the Spanish authorities in Manila on the presence of the English pirates in the Visayas. Before the Spanish could act, however, Cavendish had escaped through the southern backdoor back to England.

Over two-and-a-half centuries, about a hundred galleons were built in the Philippines. Most of them were built in Pangasinan, Albay, Mindoro, Marinduque and Iloilo. Task forces of as many as 8,000 men called cagayan were organized by the Spaniards to cut the trees, convert them to timber and haul them to the shipyards. Able-bodied Filipinos were forced to work in shipbuilding under a compulsory system called polo. Their breastwork of Philippine hardwood could not be pierced by cannonballs. Eight galleons were captured by pirates over the centuries and several were shipwrecked or sank by typhoons.

In 1819, the capital of Spanish California, Monterey, was invaded and occupied for one week by a band of adventurers from South America, where handful of Filipino sailors were involved. The raiders came aboard the warship Argentina, commanded by Hyolite Bouchard, a French adventurer from Buenos Aires, Argentina. South America was in turmoil because of the independence movements and Bouchard was assigned to patrol the Pacific Ocean. The Argentina made a trip to the Philippines where it recruited more Filipino sailors.

In Honolulu, Hawaii, Bouchard ransomed another ship, the Santa Rosa, which was being held by King Kamehameha as payment for sandalwood purchased by the ship's crew who had mutinied and taken over possession of the ship.

The two ships proceeded to Monterey and managed to capture the city with little resistance. The governor of California, Sola, fled to San Francisco City, California, along with the city residents. When they returned one week later, they found that the whole city had been looted and razed. The pirates had disappeared towards South America.

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Source: http://filipinokastila.tripod.com/FilMex.html
Source: http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/redriver/1066/mexico.htm
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Highlights from the Mexican-Philippine Historical Relations Seminar
New York City- June 21, 1997
Source: http://filipinokastila.tripod.com/FilMex.html

Panel headed by Gemma Guerrero Cruz (Miss International 68), MA , Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, and the Philippines Centennial Commission Representative in Mexico.
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1. Manila Galleon Trade connection and the cultural by-product. The seeds of Filipinos grew throughout the coast of Mexico when the Filipinos crew stayed in Acapulco for three months prior to their return to Manila. Sailors kept families in both cities.

2. Summary of her position paper. A notable development of the Galleon Trade was the cultural interchange between the two colonies. What Filipinos today regard as a Spanish influence in food, language, and customs, may in fact be Mexican in origin. The Tagalog word “palengke”, for example, may have originated from the Mexican “palenque”. The Philippines also adopted the Mexican monetary standard, the peso. In exchange, Mexico got the Philippine mango and Chinese silk, a highly prized commodity in Mexico in the 18th & 19th centuries. Lace-making was a skill that traversed the Pacific from Asia and is still an industry today in Olinalia, Mexico.

3. Aculturation gave rise to many cultural elements such as the Nahuatlismos in Philippine speech, the "TUBA" drink or the devotion to the Santo Nino de Sibuu (Cebu). Filipinos introduced the art of making the coconut wine as well . Words of Nahuati origin were assimilated in the Filipino language. These include achuete, atole, avocado, balsa, bangueta, cacahuete, cacao, caimito, calabaza, camachile, camote, calachuche, chico,. chocolate, coyote, nana(y), tata(y), tiangui, tocayo, zacate, and zapote.

4. The Philippine revolution or the Anti-colonial revolution (the name Gemma prefers) that led to June 12, 1898. After discussing this, she challenged the Fil-am audience to study the period 1899 and beyond since the American involvement started. It started with the coming of the American forces composed of volunteers from various states of the US. This explained the names of the various streets crossing the avenues in Malate district like North Dakota, Tennessee, Colorado, etc. All these streets were renamed after the independence date was moved to June 12.

5. One of the Mexican panel members, Cutberto Hernandez Legorreta states in his position abstract, " Very significant to us is the slave, baptized Enrique, who had been recruited somewhere in the Moluccas, bought by Magellan, taken to Lisbon, then to South America, and finally to the Marianas. He was the First man who circumnavigated the earth. He was helped by the Ladron islanders. (Marianas Islander or Chamorros) in the course of the well-known circumnavigation. Later, Enrique came in handy in Cebu for the Spaniards as he was likewise conversant with the Philippine Islanders. It would seem that this might be the first notice on record linking the Chamorros with the Malayan Filipinos. It was later observed the Chamorros, like the Philippine natives, were rice grower, while other Micronesians were not."

6. It is funny that two cultures dominated by Spanish language were communicating in a third language. 7. The story of TUBA brings back memories of my adolescence in the Philippines. On my third drink of "tuba," I could tell the world that the most beautiful women came from the Philippines; Gemma and other Filipinas who won international beauty pageants proved that long time ago. After I’d lose count of my "Tuba" drinks, I could ask the moon if she saw my great-great-grandfather "Enrique" going around the planet in 1521; the panel showed a slide of a composite picture of Enrique and he looks like one of our kind.

8. Memorial names of streets, buildings, and squares change as interpretation of history are re-written. Plaza Bonifacio along the Metro Theatre and Post office building near City Hall used to be called Plaza Lawton. General Henry W Lawton was credited for the capture of the great Apache Chief Geronimo. Like most of the American army officer who fought in the Indian pacification, Lawton was sent to the Philippines to fight the Spanish Military and the Filipino insurrection later. He was killed by the forces of a Filipino General named Geronimo. Insurrection or revolution, they were remnants of Katipunans founded by Andres Bonifacio.

In dedication to the sons of the Beloved Philippine Fatherland---who braved the hard seas and were sent to the Viceroyalty of Nueva Espana (Mexico) to work as mercenaries, and hired hands. Their contribution to the Mexican Revolution and Independence is invaluable.


+++++++++++

The role played by Filipinos â€" or strictly speaking, Filipino-Mexicans, in Mexico’s struggle for independence is largely ignored by most historians. Ricardo Pinzon, an English teacher from a college in Acapulco, maintains the Filipinos were very visible in this struggle.


In fact, according to Pinzon, two Filipinos became brigade commanders in the army of General Jose Maria Morelos in the state of Guerrero in the Pacific Coast of Mexico from 1810 to 1821.

***

Mexico’s fight for independence from Spain was started by a priest, Fr. Miguel Hidalgo in Dolores in 1810. Morelos picked up the fight in Western Mexico and recruited about 200 Filipino-Mexicans to join his army. The Filipinos were placed under the command of General Vicente Guerrero, who later became the first black president of Mexico.

***

The Filipino brigade commanders under General Guerrero were identified by Ric Pinzon as Francisco Mongoy and Isidoro Montes de Oca. They distinguished themselves in battles against government troops that in Guerrero they are regarded as folk heroes.

When Guerrero finally surrendered in 1829, he was accompanied by two Filipinos acting as his aides, Miguel de la Cruz and a certain Atieh.

***

Ric Pinzon traveled from Acapulco to Mexico City for our interview. A great fan of the Filipinos and their contribution to Mexico’s growth as a nation, he is writing a book on the Filipino presence in his country, a fact largely ignored by historians.

Filipino sailors on the Manila galleons had been traveling to Mexico between 1570 and 1815. Many of them married local girls and settled in Mexico.

***

By Pinzon’s estimate, there are about 200,000 descendants of Filipinos in southern Mexico. They are concentrated in the Costa Grande north of Acapulco. The town of Coyuca 35 miles north of Acapulco was called Filipino town in the old days. There is also a large Filipino community in Colima, about eight hours ride north of Acapulco.

***

Pinzon says three former governors of Guerrero, where Acapulco is located, may have Filipino ancestry. Juan Alvarez, born in Espinalillo, a Filipino colony, became president of Mexico. His son, Juan Alvarez, became governor of Guerrero in the 1870s.

Alejandro Gomez Maganda figured in the 1910 Revolution and also became governor of Guerrero in the 1940s.

***

Filipino influence on Mexican culture is very apparent, especially on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, where people today continue to imbibe tuba, the drink derived from the coconut tree. They are also engage in games like kite-flying which they make with papel de China. Their names for their fishing boats is panga, which they suspect is of Filipino origin.

***

In the 18th century, the Manila galleons were attacked by pirates from England and the Netherlands. To fight them off, the Spanish authorities created a small army of Filipinos called the chino brigade in Acapulco. A total of 108 galleons were built in the Philippines during two and a half centuries of its existence. Four were captured by pirates and about 30 were sunk by typhoons.

The trade ended when the Mexican independence movement began in 1810. The last galleon to reach Acapulco was the Magallanes.

********
Source: http://www.ezilon.com/information/article_476.shtml
********

True. I love Pasko season.

The next person is still single.

Santa Baby...

by Kylie Minogue

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0piYwdPD29g

Yes. Mas sexy pa jud!

lol

luuy pood ka, Hazel.

***big hug***

Stay warm over there, ha!

All Falls Down

by Kanye West

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gqkIickfPI&feature=user

We Takin Over

by DJ Khalen feat. Akon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmXaMUvM0Ko

sus..so romantic...

Trying my best to sound un-inebriated. LOL. Celebrating post-examinations.
Fun times

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-c35mBL3qo

For those who record memorable moments and would like to share it here. Tell a story of what happened. 

Enjoy!

As Before I left the house to get a breath of fresh air....this happens....LOL!!




LOL! Pre...what are you doing?


Ya. Bryan had way too much Vodka...


And as i left the apartment.....they all decided to follow me.......drunk...

Taken from last night----Post-examination Party. LOL!!!!
((Law schools and medical schools would not like to see these pictures, LOL!))

+++


JC and his alcohol LOL! {Law school bound}


The radiant Ms. Edwina Flores--and Mr. Alcohol. LOL!!!!!!!


Amber and myself having a normal conversation---while everyone is drunk...


Bryan making sure Edwina doesn't fall down...


Edwina?


And I realized...that they both were drunk..LOL!!!

aww...i wish i was in big island right now (bohol in my mind)

Yeeehawww!!! Road Trip!

Be strong, 'te. Hope you are feeling better now.

This guy is horrible. I can't wait till he gets out of here, what kind of christian is this guy....
Its easy for him and people of the elite who are millionaires, but what about the 40 million Americans who cannot afford insurance? There are children out there who live with this reality---and its just disgusting that this man would do this.

I am sick of him and embarrassed of him. 

On March 16, 1521
When Philippines was discovered by Magellan
They were sailing day and night across the big ocean
Until they saw a small Limasawa island

Magellan landed in Limasawa at noon
The people met him very welcome on the shore
They did not understand the speaking they have done
Because Kastila gid at Waray-Waray man

When Magellan landed in Cebu City
Rajah Humabon met him, they were very happy
All people were baptized and built the church of Christ
And that?s the beginning of our Catholic life

When Magellan visited in Mactan
To christianize them everyone
But Lapu-Lapu met him on the shore
and drive Magellan to go back home

Then Magellan got so mad
Ordered his men to camouflage
?Mactan island we could not grab
?Cause Lapu Lapu is very hard?

Then the battle began at dawn
Bolos and spears versus guns and cannons
When Magellan was hit on his neck
He stumble down and cried and cried

Oh, mother mother I am sick
Call the doctor very quick
Doctor, doctor shall I die?
Tell my mama do not cry
Tell my mama do not cry
Tell my mama do not cry

That?s the end of Magellan
in the island of Mactan long time ago

hahahaha I love this song~~
http://youtube.com/watch?v=oeFtAlFEoOw&feature=related

Very good article. Water is a natural detox.

Some patients prefer that, actually. Don't worry 'te, podiatric surgeries are rather fast and quick. It isn't as time consuming as cardiothoracic surgery, thoracic, orthopaedic, reconstructive surgeries etc.

You would be amazed how fast surgeons go at it. To place an external fixator, set-in-place the bones--and closing the wound takes a surgical team about ~25-30 minutes at most. The patient needs total bed-side care for the next 2 weeks----this is where the role of nurses is indisputable. They literally treat the wound--prevent infection to set in--and keep the patient comfortable. Exciting jud kaayo 'te.

Ma luod diay ka sa dugo, 'te?

Quote from: Ginger on December 14, 2007, 10:16:34 PM
hadlok man picture dong oi...ewwwww! murag kasakit ba ana..

waaaaaaaa ngilo man.

The patient feels nothing, 'te. Prior to surgery, the patient is cleaned and prepared and brought to the surgical room--and given ample amount of analgesics. The patient feels nothing--all the peripheral nerves in the lower extremity would have been numbed. However, when drilling and placing the external fixators, the patient can feel a 'tugging' feeling--as holes are being drilled and placed.

Its actually very interesting and fascinating jud when in the surgical room. The surgeons and  support staff look like carpenters. They are truly in sync with what they do.

Philippine-Spanish Battle
-----

http://youtube.com/watch?v=5vXA3If3N90

Despite Spain's loss, the Revolutionary Government of President Emilio Aguinaldo honored them as worthy enemies.

It was Spain's last stand in the Philippines. A defeat for Spain, and a Victory for the 1st Philippine Republic against the old Colonizer.

To this day, June 30 is marked as Philippine-Spanish Day. To commemorate the relationship our country has with Mother Spain, and our evolutionary separation from Spain as a separate and innate identity.

This documentary shows two Philippine senators visiting the hometown of the Spanish survivors in the Siege of Baler. A show of Philippine-Spanish friendship. Simply beautiful.....~~~

+++++++++++

If you watch this video, in the last minutes of the video--when Senator Edgardo Angara visits Madrid, you can actually see a clip of Spain's monument to Sr. Dr. Jose P. Rizal right in front of the Royal Spanish Cortes (Legislative Government Building). The Rizal monument is like the one in the Philippines--an obelisk. The Mother, afterall, loves its child.

This summer pohon lagi, 'Hazel.

I wish a bridge like that could be built. It would make known to the world that the Philippines has truly awakened. However, I can't help but wonder how ship captains/trollies would react to the said bridge's construction.

The weather here has fluctuated throughout the entire week. We had snow, billizard, hail, rain, sunny days, etc all in one. Right now its foggy and misty outside. Tugnaw na kaayo dinhi! I had to sleep with 2 comforters last night and still was cold.

Salve Tonette!

Well said jud, Ms. Blue.
Everything in moderation jud. Diba?
The spirit is willing but our bodies can only take soo much.

LoL. I had to literally drag myself out of that place--too much fun is bad

False, I feel very jolly actually----thanks to the Christmas Season!!!

The next person  loves chocolates.

Wow. Ms. Orchids, those are beautiful pictures~ so rich in avian species.

Is there bird hunting season in Japan? Or is it illegal to hunt?

great designs

Happy ko kaayo karoon kai a group of my closest friends and I went to have a nice dinner Erie, Pennyslvania (about 40 minute drive north). We celebrated our successful completion of fall semester of our senior year in Allegheny College!!! 1 more semester for me! but some of my companeros are graduating this semester early...to our sadness..
Cute pood kai we exchanged gifts and many hugs--conversations etc. It will be hard because my two friends are graduating this semester; one who is a Political Science major--and will begin Law School this coming Fall semester; and the other is an Environmental Studies major and will be working with a government agency in Washington D.C.
Its hard for me because we've all been close friends since we were freshmen--but memories made this semester will hopefully last our lifetime. We ended our night with some drinks, games, etc. Good friends!!


Hahaha


Crown Royal, anyone? 


Pareng JC---gulping down blackberry Merlot. Drink it man!!! Show your Bicolano skills LOL!


Group picture.





Pre, you had too much to drink.. 

+++++++++++

..I almost got killed by JC---trying to record this but ya...LoL!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=39UDLJ8HumA

@ Ate Ging, hahahaha mao bitaw no? awwww man--talking about pancit and all that stuff is really getting me hungry. Specially considering i just got back from a party---i have the big case of the 'munchies' LOL!

@ sexy Ate (hahahahahahaha),
Sige. Mo share ta sa lechon ha? Ill give you the meat---but i get the skin

Wow! Excellent designing, Agnes. Everything looks great; the t-shirts, the posters and even the model.

True. I can't wait to see both my Mommy Liza and my Dad Rico. As well as give a gigantic bear hug to both my little brothers. Kuya Bran has missed them all soooooo much!

The next person really needs some serious hilut-hilut on the back and on the legs.

Quote from: C2H4 on December 14, 2007, 12:49:24 PM
apil ko sa Pansit Teng!

'te save me some pansit ha, hahahaha! Mo share2x lang ta ba!

Quote from: swakee on December 14, 2007, 01:01:51 PM
my day is almost perfect.... perfectly wrong...ahehehe... wala lang...

What happened in your day diay, Ms. Swakee? Hope all was well for you today. Hapit na raba sa weekend uy! Time to relax soon!

LoL i like this already.

I voluntarily check myself in this institution, this rehabilitation center.

Alone in the dark.

AFGOYE, Somalia â€" A year after the U.S.-backed Ethiopian army toppled a hard-line Islamist regime in Somalia , the country has become Africa's worst humanitarian catastrophe.

Some 200,000 refugees, mostly women and children, have fled from a pro-government offensive to makeshift camps along a 10-mile stretch of sun-baked asphalt that leads from the seaside capital of Mogadishu toward the inland town of Afgoye.

The crisis is brutal on young people.

One night last month, Fatima Sheikh Ali awoke to the deafening crash of mortar rounds on her neighbor's roof. Shrapnel blasted through Ali's tin-walled home in Mogadishu , and sent her 13-year-old daughter, Muna, into her arms, quaking.

Sometime in the chaos of that night, Muna stopped speaking. In an overcrowded encampment of sand and scrub a few miles from the capital, where the family now lives among thousands made homeless by the war, Muna silently collects firewood and looks after her siblings, a worried gaze fixed in her almond eyes.

"She is traumatized," her mother said, and a warren of women who'd gathered around her murmured sympathetically. A nurse with the Somali Red Crescent Society said, "There is nothing to be done. It is a very sad story."

The conflicts in Sudan's Darfur region and in eastern Congo may have displaced more people, but international relief efforts in Somalia have faltered in the face of violence that's emptied entire neighborhoods in Mogadishu .

Most displaced Somalis, such as Muna's family, live in dome-shaped huts fashioned out of spindly tree branches and covered with tattered swatches of fabric or plastic. They sprout from the sand like multicolored mushrooms along the road from the capital.

The United Nations Children's Fund said last week that one-quarter of the refugees around Afgoye were younger than 5. Both sides are using older boys as combatants, and girls who venture out of the camps risk being raped by freelance militias, the agency said.

"Things are now getting absolutely worse," said Christian Balslev-Olesen, the UNICEF representative for Somalia . "There is a dirtiness to this war. Children are a real target."

Fewer than 1 in 10 Mogadishu children attends school now. Muna and her siblings aren't among the lucky ones. Their southern neighborhood of Hodan has seen near-daily fighting as Somali government troops and their Ethiopian allies hunt for insurgents amid the low, whitewashed storefronts.

The restaurant where Muna's father worked as a waiter has been closed since March, when its owners fled the city. Most of their neighbors also have left.

"There is no movement in the streets, no work, hardly any food," said Ali, Muna's mother, who has six other children. "The only sound is the whistling one," she said, a term that Somalis sometimes use to describe the rockets that whiz over their rooftops at night.

Local groups estimate that 6,000 people have died in the fighting this year.

Traveling Somalia's roads is fraught with danger once again. Aid groups and former residents say that Somali government forces, far from ending militia rule, are starting to behave like militias themselves.

Checkpoints have popped up throughout southern Somalia , with government soldiers and allied militiamen demanding payments and harassing civilians and relief workers. According to UNICEF , sick children and pregnant women often are turned away at checkpoints. In some areas, trucks carrying food and other humanitarian aid have to pay tolls of $500 each, U.N. officials said.

Last week, Somalia's internal security chief closed airstrips and ports outside Mogadishu for several hours, leaving nearly 4,000 tons of emergency food aid stuck aboard U.N.-chartered ships floating in the sea.

"There is complete chaos and lack of coordination," said Eric Laroche , the head of the U.N. relief effort.

By making the payments, Laroche acknowledged, "we are creating rich people who are going to be warlords in the future. But that is the tradeoff." Amid one of the poorest harvests in southern Somalia in years, he said, the influx of food aid over the past month seems to have forestalled widespread malnutrition in the camps.

For ordinary Somalis, the government checkpoints are often scenes of terror.

Shukri Mohammed , a weary-faced woman who walked three days on bare, swollen feet to reach the safety of a camp last week, said she was stopped as she left Mogadishu with her seven children.

The poor widow had nothing in her pockets, not even a cell phone. That seemed to annoy the uniformed men at the roadblock.

"Because they didn't get any money from me, they hit me," she said, her 2-year-old son cradled in a ratty blanket tied around her neck. "They used the backs of their guns. They used sticks." She pulled back her pink shawl to show bruises on her arm.

On her first night in the camp named Mustahil, she stored the few items of clothing she'd brought in another family's hut. Then she and her children fell asleep on the sand under an acacia tree.

Mustahil is one of the newer camps outside Afgoye, but in just over three months some 6,000 people have gathered here. One of the elders, Kahiye Yusuf Ali, a lean man whose henna-stained beard glowed a deep orange, said they hadn't received any U.N. food rations yet.

"The children are growing skinnier," he said, pointing at a gaggle of boys, all elbows and knees.

A few hundred yards away, in the Jimcaale settlement, Muna's mother complained that the rations weren't enough for a family of nine.

She sighed. Blasted by rains, their hut was starting to wilt, and her husband was out in the midday heat looking for more wood. She ripped a strip from an empty sack of grain and tied some loose branches tighter. A few feet away, Muna hid her face behind a pale green shawl and kept watch over her young brothers.

"The fighting is different now," her mother said, talking as she worked. "Now it is everywhere. The shelling comes from all sides."

Here, she went on, they felt safe. Maybe in a few weeks they could return home. "If the Ethiopian troops leave Mogadishu , things will be fine," she said.

Muna, standing beside her, didn't utter a word.

SYDNEY (AFP) - A passenger jet has made a historic landing on a new blue ice runway in Australia's Antarctic territory and regular flights are expected to start within a week, officials said Wednesday.

But trips on the Airbus A319 to the Wilkins Runway will be for scientists and research staff only, with no plans to open the airlink to tourists, project manager Charlton Clark told AFP.

The runway is four kilometres (2.5 miles) long, 700 metres thick and moves about 12 metres southwest a year because of glacial drift.

In the first trial landing on Monday, the plane pulled up within 1,000 metres despite the lack of friction to grab the wheels on the ice.

Clark said work had begun on the 10 million dollar (8.7 million US) runway 70 kilometres from Australia's Casey research station in 2005, with crews living in shipping containers.

"Just living in that environment, with conditions of minus 35 degrees and up to a hundred knots of wind, let alone doing the work, was an amazing undertaking," he said.

Using laser levelling technology, they graded and shaved the ice flat and must keep grooming it to keep it snow free.

The runway was named for the adventurer and aviator Sir Hubert Wilkins, who made the first flight in Antarctica 79 years ago.

Scientists and specialists working at Australia's Antarctic field stations, who previously had to spend weeks voyaging to and from the ice by sea, are expected to start flying within a week, he said.

Other nations with Antarctic research stations have been flying to the icy continent for years from countries such as New Zealand and South Africa, but using military aircraft.

The Australian Antarctic Division says its introduction of a modern jet aircraft, which can complete a return journey without refuelling, marks the start of a new era.

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's Royal Ontario Museum unveiled the skeleton of a massive dinosaur on Wednesday that had been lost for decades -- in its own collection.

The 25-metre (85-foot) long Barosaurus, the largest dinosaur ever to go on permanent display in Canada, is part of a new exhibit at the museum's "crystal" addition, which will open to the public on December 15.

"This one has a special place in my heart because of the detective story that went into finding it," ROM curator David Evans said at a press conference.

Evans made the discovery of the rare specimen after he had gone searching for a Sauropod in the United States to round out the museum's existing T. Rex, Triceratops and Stegosaurus collection. On the plane, he read an old article that said the museum in downtown Toronto already had exactly what he was looking for.

"My jaw dropped," said Evans, 27, in an interview. "I just wanted to turn the plane around and come back and root through the collection to see what we had."

The Barosaurus was affectionately nicknamed "Gordo" after the late Gordon Edmund, the curator who originally brought it to the museum in 1962.

Because the ROM did not have the space to display the assembled creature when the skeleton was obtained, the bones were divided among various collections, but without a note saying they belonged to a single animal.

"It's really an exciting day, especially here at the ROM, because I first saw dinosaur skeletons here when I was 4 or 5 years old, and to be part of the rebirth of the dinosaur exhibit at this great museum is really special," said Evans.

"Over the last two days I've spent every moment watching it like an expectant father as it was being put together."

Gordo, who would have weighed in at about 15 tonnes when he was alive, was a herbivore with an extremely long neck and remarkably tiny head in comparison to the rest of its body.

His home will be the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal addition, designed by renowned architect Daniel Libeskind and opened this past summer. It will be the new permanent exhibit space for two galleries of 350 dinosaur and mammal fossils.

"You will see every little tooth , every little bone, every little frill on the back of their neck," said the ROM's director and chief executive, William Thorsell.

"I think you'll see them almost as works of art as well as nature."

In order to accommodate the collection, Thorsell said the ROM had to raise the height of the new space and add steel bracing to the floors in order to hold the fossilized bones.

On Thursday, 27 European leaders will gather in Lisbon to sign a reform treaty, which is designed to streamline E.U. decision-making - an occasion they will unfailingly describe as proud, historic and symbolic. But as they put their pens to the document aimed at bringing the E.U. closer to its citizens, the enduring image is likely to be far less glorious.

Indeed, the whole event has been dubbed a diplomatic vanity trip and an environmental extravagance because, after the signing, the leaders (many of whom only spent only a few hours in the city) will then hop on planes - with their huge entourages and other hangers-on like the media - to meet the next day in Brussels for their regular December E.U. summit.

The reason for this flying circus? Portugal, which currently holds the union's presidency, insisted that the treaty be signed on Portuguese soil and enter the history books as the Treaty of Lisbon. But under the E.U.'s Nice Treaty in 2000, all formal summits must take place in Brussels, home of the E.U.'s main institutions. So the leaders are obliged to meet in the Belgian capital for their scheduled summit, due to take place the day after the signing ceremony.

E.U. officials failed to persuade either Portugal or Belgium to back down so that the hour-long signing ceremony and the summit could take place in a single city. It means E.U. leaders will thus consecrate the treaty revamp with cumbersome travel arrangements that seem to reinforce the impression of the E.U. as run by remote, unaccountable mandarins.

"It is absurd to fly back and forth like that. Symbolically, it sends out the wrong signal," said Jorgo Riss, director of Greenpeace E.U. "In this day and age they could have come up with something more imaginative. They could have held a virtual signing ceremony, over the Internet, which would have combined modern technologies with an environment-friendly policy."

The carbon footprint from the signing rigmarole threatens to overshadow the E.U.'s own strong work in addressing climate change through emission caps. Indeed, the double summit comes just days after Al Gore was awarded his Nobel Prize for his his work on global warming, and at the same time as the high-level meeting on climate change in Bali.

Some E.U. leaders have attempted to counter their jet-setting image by plane-pooling. The prime ministers of the Benelux nations - Belgium's Guy Verhofstadt, the Netherlands's Jan Peter Balkenende and Luxembourg's Jean-Claude Juncker - will share rather than each take a private plane. Similarly, Swedish Prime Minister Frederik Reinfeldt will travel with Denmark's Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and their Finnish and Estonian counterparts Matti Vanhanen and Andrus Ansip will also share planes.

Part of the problem is the way the E.U.'s six-month presidencies bring out national egos. "The current system of ridiculous six-month presidencies means that countries will want to use their time to earn prestige," said Hugo Brady of the London-based Centre for European Reform (CER). He suggested that the Lisbon Treaty could bring an end to such practices, as it will replace six-month presidencies with 18-month stretches jointly shared by three countries, as well as a permanent president to host the summits.

But even if the image of European leaders jetting across the continent fades, there are more enduring travel idiosyncrasies in the E.U. The European Parliament, for example, is split between Brussels and Strasbourg. While the Lisbon and Brussels events are estimated to add between 10 and 15 extra tons of CO2 to the E.U.'s carbon footprint, around 20,000 tons are produced every year by the Parliament's commissioners, officials and aides journeys back and forth to Strasbourg.

Addressing the Parliament in Strasbourg last month, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said France would never give up the monthly sessions in the city. This is despite the growing number of complaints from the E.U.'s 785 Parliament members and 4,000 staff who decamp at the cost of 12 million euros for each session. But here, as with the summit, national prestige continues to hold the upper hand over cost and climate concerns.

ALGIERS, Algeria - Two convicted terrorists who had been freed in an amnesty carried out the suicide bombings at U.N. and government buildings that killed 37 people, an Algerian security official said Thursday.

One of the bombers was a 64-year-old man in the advanced stages of cancer, while the other was a 32-year-old from a poor suburb that has produced many Islamic militants, the security official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The government has offered amnesties to try to end a 15-year Islamic insurgency, resulting in thousands of militants turning themselves in, but sparking fierce criticism from the families of victims.

Al-Qaida's self-styled North African branch has claimed responsibility for the twin truck bombings Tuesday, which came 10 minutes apart. Victims included U.N. staff from around the world, police officers and law students.

President Bush called Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika on Thursday to discuss the attacks and offer his condolences, White House press secretary Dana Perino said.

"President Bush reiterated his commitment to continuing U.S. counterterrorism cooperation in North Africa in order to bring the perpetrators to justice," she said.

The Interior Ministry raised the death toll in the bombings to 37, saying six more bodies had been found in the rubble of the U.N. offices.

In a posting on a militant Web site, Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa described the U.N. offices as "the headquarters of the international infidels' den." It also posted photos of two men it said were the bombers. Both posed with weapons and wore camouflage, with the younger man smiling.

The Algerian security official identified the older bomber, who struck the U.N. offices, as Chebli Brahim, who was suffering from cancer and had two sons killed in army crackdowns on militants.

Brahim was a member of the Muslim fundamentalist party Islamic Salvation Front, or FIS. He was arrested in a sweep of FIS members after the government banned the party, the official said.

The younger bomber, who targeted Algeria's Constitutional Council building, was identified as Charef Larbi, from the impoverished Algiers suburb of Oued Ouchayeh, the official said. He had been arrested on the charge of "supporting terrorist groups" and imprisoned in 2004.

Upon Larbi's release last year, he went into hiding with militants in Algeria's scrubland, the official said.

Algerian newspapers El Watan and L'Expression reported similar background details about the bombers.

Insurgents battling Algeria's government have largely focused on symbols of the military-backed government and civilians. The strike against the U.N. office signaled a change in tactics.

Marie Heuze, chief spokeswoman for U.N. offices in Geneva, said the latest casualty list showed 11 U.N. staffers died in the attack and five were still missing.

The head of the U.N. Development Program, Kemal Dervis, was sent to Algiers by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and has been meeting with the families of the victims and visiting the injured, deputy U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe said.

It was the deadliest single attack against U.N. staff and facilities since August 2003, when the world body's headquarters in Baghdad was hit by a truck laden with explosives. That attack killed 22 people, including the top U.N. envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and was blamed on a group that later affiliated with al-Qaida.

On Wednesday, seven survivors were pulled from beneath chunks of concrete, and one woman was transferred to a hospital where both her legs were amputated, said the chief of the emergency team, Djamal Khoudi.

The U.N. offices are in the upscale Hydra neighborhood of Algiers, which houses many foreign embassies. The U.S. and British embassies stepped up security warnings.

Algeria's insurgency broke out in the early 1990s, when the army canceled the second round of the country's first multiparty elections to prevent likely victory by an Islamic fundamentalist party. Islamist armed groups then turned to force to overthrow the government, with up to 200,000 people killed in the ensuing violence.

Until recently, the insurgency had been dying out, with militants' ranks dwindling after military crackdowns and amnesty offers.

But late last year, the main Algerian militant group changed its name to al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa and began waging larger-scale bombings â€" signs that Islamic fighters were regrouping.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Argentina's new president reacted angrily Thursday to U.S. charges that a suitcase full of Venezuelan cash seized by customs was intended to finance her campaign, calling it an example of "garbage in international politics."

President Cristina Fernandez also suggested that anyone who might think a female president is more easily influenced is wrong.

The disclosure came Wednesday in a Miami court hearing for a criminal complaint against four men arrested and charged with being illegal Venezuelan agents who attempted a cover-up.

U.S. prosecutors said a suitcase filled with nearly $800,000 was a campaign contribution to Fernandez, who was inaugurated this week as Argentina's first popularly elected female president. They said recorded conversations of those involved indicate the scheme reached to the highest levels of the Venezuelan government.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's government called it a "fabricated scandal."

Fernandez said she remains undeterred in her quest to deepen "relations with all Latin American nations and also friendship with ... Venezuela."

"This president may be a woman but she's not going to allow herself to be pressured," said Fernandez, alluding to the scandal. She called it an example of "garbage in international politics."

She also took a jab at U.S. officials, complaining that "more than friendly nations, they want countries ... subordinated" to them.

In Washington, the State Department declined to comment on the specifics of the case, but said it had been aware of the investigation and renewed U.S. concerns about alleged attempts by the Chavez government to meddle in other Latin American countries.

"We have talked about their interference in the affairs of other countries. They have tried to insert themselves into various elections throughout the region and in several cases it has backfired," spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters, citing the specific example of Peru.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro called the charges "a desperate effort by the United States government using ... the judicial branch for a political, psychological, media war against the progressive governments of the continent."

In Buenos Aires, Argentine Justice Minister Anibal Fernandez called the charges punishment for the government's good relations with Chavez.

He noted that Fernandez has promised even stronger trade and energy ties with Venezuela than her husband, former President Nestor Kirchner. "What is happening is stupidity, and in the current framework, I think it is a reprisal that arises from the United Sates' attitude toward Venezuela," he told government news agency Telam.

The allegations of campaign funding sent clandestinely from Caracas to Buenos Aires will give new ammunition to Chavez's critics who accuse him of meddling in other Latin American countries and using oil money to bolster alliances.

The revelations will also put Cristina Fernandez on the defensive just days after she was sworn in.

The complaint said "neither the true source nor the intended recipient of those cash funds had been disclosed." Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Mulvihill said in court, however, that the FBI recorded a conversation in which one of those arrested said the Fernandez campaign was the intended recipient of the money, which was seized by Argentine customs authorities in August.

Charged with failing to register with the U.S. as agents of a foreign power were Venezuelans Moises Roman Majonica, 36; Franklin Duran, 40; and Carlos Kauffmann, 35; and Uruguayan citizen Rodolfo Wanseele, 40. All were arrested Tuesday night and will remain in custody pending a bail hearing Monday.

If convicted, they face up to 10 years in federal prison and $250,000 in fines.

The Venezuelan-American man who carried the suitcase, Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, was not charged. Argentina asked the U.S. in August to extradite him on fraud charges, but the new case suggests the Miami businessman has gone from suspect to key witness.

Kenneth L. Wainstein, Assistant U.S. Attorney General for National Security, said the complaint "outlines an alleged plot by agents of the Venezuelan government to manipulate an American citizen in Miami in an effort to keep the lid on a burgeoning international scandal."

Prosecutors said in court that evidence against the men includes FBI recordings of conversations between some of them and senior officials in Venezuela's office of the vice president, intelligence service and justice ministry.

In repeated conversations with Antonini, the four allegedly sought to keep secret the Venezuelan source of the money.

The criminal complaint said Duran told Antonini the matter was being handled at "the top of the Venezuelan government." It said another suspect, Kauffmann, told him his "future actions might put the life of Antonini's children at risk."

The complaint said during one conversation with Antonini, Duran identified the person who took the cash aboard a plane chartered by Argentina's state energy company as an assistant to the chief executive officer of Venezuela's state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA.

Officials have said Antonini was accompanied by Argentine officials and three low-level PDVSA employees, including the son of the top PDVSA official in Argentina. That manager stepped down as a result.

The attorney for Duran and Kauffmann, Michael Hacker, said his clients are innocent and "have led squeaky-clean lives."

WASHINGTON (AFP) - After six hard years of war, the United States is awakening to the idea that "soft power" is a better way to regain influence and clout in a world bubbling with instability.

And nowhere is the change in thinking more advanced than in the US military, which is pushing for greater diplomacy, economic aid, civic action and civilian capabilities to prevent new wars and win the peace in Iraq and Afghanistan.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates caught the spirit in a much praised speech at Kansas State University last month, calling for a dramatic increase in spending on civilian instruments of power.

Such an appeal would have been unthinkable not long ago, as Gates himself acknowledged, saying it was a "man bites dog" story.

"I think having stubbed our toe badly on Iraq, people are realizing that we weren't doing that well, and it's time for a change," said Joseph Nye, a Harvard professor and former senior Pentagon official.

Nye popularized the term "soft power" in books and essays which argue that a key source of US clout is its ability to attract friends and allies by investing in the international good.

"Since 9/11, the United States has been exporting fear and anger rather than the more traditional values of hope and optimism," a report by a commission Nye co-chaired with Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state, warned last month. As a result, it said, "Suspicions of American power have run deep."

The United States needs to pursue a positive vision that goes beyond the war on terrorism, it said.

The response of the Bush administration has been "a mixed bag," Nye said.

"But I do think that the view that we have not had smart power in terms of combining the various instruments we have, that we have underinvested in soft power, is represented in the Gates' remarks," he said.

Gates pointed to the huge disparity between the Pentagon's half trillion dollar budget and the State Department's 37 billion dollars.

Its 6,600 diplomats amount to the crew of a single US aircraft carrier, he said.

The US Agency for International Development has been slashed from 15,000 to 3,000 people, and the US Information Agency was dismantled, he said.

Underfunded and undermanned, US civilian agencies have not kept up with the demand for experts in war zones, leading to bitter complaints from US military officers that they have been left holding the bag.

General James Conway, the Marine Corps commandant, recalled recently that after the march on Baghdad in 2003, his marines were sent to stabilize southern Iraq.

"We were told to expect local governance teams and governance support teams which would help us with those functions and many, many more," he said. "Those teams did not arrive."

Marines have to be prepared to perform those tasks in future conflicts, he said.

But the right answer is to fund agencies "that we know are going to be players with this soft power (so) that they could develop sort of an expeditionary mentality and people who are anxious to get overseas and get their hands dirty," Conway said.

The State Department is seeking funding for a deployable corps of civilian experts.

But it is the military that has taken the lead in thinking about ways to harness civilian expertise to create security, raising fears in some quarters of a more militarized foreign policy.

The model is a new Africa Command that the Pentagon is establishing to help strengthen security in a troubled continent.

It is supposed to have a senior State Department official as its deputy and components from other civilian agencies.

"The risk is that it may end up being overly military and not enough of the others in part because of money and bodies. State for example is very worried about it for that reason," said Robert Hunter, a former US ambassador to NATO.

The military wants civilian agencies to do more to prevent wars, but is not waiting for them to get their act together, analysts say.

Instead, it has stepped up thinking and planning for what it calls "phase zero," military jargon for conflict prevention.

"I think they've come to the conclusion that insurgencies are really hard to fight. And so it would be better if they could not have the conflict in the first place," said Robert Perito, an expert at the US Institute of Peace.

"In conflict prevention, of course, there is very little military component to that. It's mostly all political and economic. That's the other thing that is going on," he said.

BALI, Indonesia - Nobel laureate Al Gore said Thursday the United States is "principally responsible" for blocking progress at the U.N. climate conference, and European nations threatened to boycott U.S.-led climate talks next month unless Washington compromises on emissions reductions.

The former vice president urged delegates to take urgent action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, and told them that the next U.S. president will likely be more supportive of international caps on polluting gases.

"My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali," said Gore, who flew to Bali from Oslo, Norway, where he received the Nobel Peace Prize for helping alert the world to the danger of climate change.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said Thursday Gore was wrong in blaming the United States for holding up progress. "I think he is incorrect," she said.

Kristen Hellmer, a member of the American delegation in Bali, said of Gore's remarks: "The U.S. is being open and working very constructively with the other countries that are here. We are rolling our sleeves up and really working to come up with a global post-2012 framework."

Earlier, the United Nations warned that time was running out for an agreement aimed at launching negotiations for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012 and the talks in Bali were in danger of "falling to pieces."

The United States, Japan and several other governments are refusing to accept language in a draft document suggesting that industrialized nations consider cutting emissions by 25 percent to 40 percent by 2020, saying specific targets would limit the scope of future talks.

European nations said they may boycott a U.S.-led climate meeting next month unless Washington compromises.

"No result in Bali means no Major Economies Meeting," said Sigmar Gabriel, top EU environment official from Germany, referring to a series of separate climate talks initiated by President Bush in September. "This is the clear position of the EU. I do not know what we should talk about if there is no target."

It is a continuation of the September White House meetings called the Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change, proposed for Jan. 30-31 in Honolulu, according to Kristy Hellmer, spokeswoman White House Council on Environmental Quality.

The European Union and others say the proposed emissions caps reflect the measures scientists say are needed to rein in global warming and head off predictions of rising sea levels, worsening floods and droughts, and the extinction of plant and animal species.

The U.S. invited 16 other major economies, including European countries, Japan, China and India, to discuss a program of what are expected to be nationally determined, voluntary cutbacks in greenhouse gas emissions.

Perino said that while there were some voices calling for a boycott of the Washington meeting, it did not appear to be the official position of the EU. She said such comments were "not constructive to a conversation where everybody wants to get together for this meeting to talk about a framework for moving forward."

"And it's not just the United States who has expressed concern and surprise that the draft document included a specific reduction number. The specific reduction number was what was supposed to be negotiated after the Bali conference, once a framework was in place," Perino said.

The Bush administration views the major economies process as the main vehicle for determining future steps by the U.S. â€" and it hopes by others â€" to slow emissions. But environmentalists accuse the U.S. of trying to undermine the U.N. process.

Gore urged delegates to reach agreement even without the backing of the United States, saying President Bush's successor, who will take office in January 2009, would likely be more supportive of binding cuts.

"Over the next two years, the United States is going to be somewhere it is not now," he said. "I must tell you candidly that I cannot promise that the person who is elected will have the position I expect they will have, but I can tell you I believe it is quite likely."

Gore, who helped in the final negotiation of the Kyoto pact in 1997, also called for implementing a successor agreement two years early, in 2010. The first implementation period of the Kyoto pact expires at the end of 2012.

"We can't afford to wait another five years," he said.

U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer said he was worried the U.S.-EU deadlock could derail the process and that a final "Bali roadmap" would contain an agreement to negotiate a new climate deal by 2009, but may not include specific targets for emission reductions.

"I'm very concerned about the pace of things," he said. "If we don't get wording on the future, then the whole house of cards falls to pieces."

The United States delegation said while it continues to reject inclusion of specific emission cut targets, it hopes eventually to reach an agreement that is "environmentally effective" and "economically sustainable."

It also noted that that the conference was the start of negotiations for a new climate pact, not the end.

"We don't have to resolve all these issues ... here in Bali," said Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky, the head of the U.S. delegation.

The United States is the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases and the only major industrial country to have rejected Kyoto, which expires in 2012. It has been on the defensive since the conference began Dec. 3.

The Kyoto Protocol requires 37 industrial nations to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by a relatively modest average 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

Bush has argued that the pact would harm the U.S. economy and cutbacks should have been imposed on poorer but fast-developing nations such as China and India.

The talks in Bali are scheduled to wrap up Friday.

Mr. Ferniz, great still shots.
Looks very beautiful.

Ah mao ba. So is formal wear alright, Ms. Agnes? Or do you want casual wear?

Hazel, go first ba...mo tan-aw pood ta.

hahaha any picture?

hahaha pictures??
LOL!!

hahaha. guapo jud no?
I cannot deny it---formal shoes and colognes are my vices.

But it doesn't compare to the styles you ladies have...

Ah okay, thanks LOL!
I'll try the roasted chicken then, Hazel beb. Im wondering how my housemates will react to this ..

if you say its good, then it must be good. Right Hazel beb?

timian herbs? i've never heard of that before, Hazel, but ill try to find it in the grocery store today. How should I cook the chicken? I-roast? Barbecue?

Hazel, I'm going to try this recipe later this week. It sounds really good.
Pero ang problem is that ug mo ka-on ta sa eggplant--mo igit-igit pood ta afterwards.

sup old! are you really that old? lol

Our classes are over! Semester is over and these next two days are our 'study' days, so I decided to sleep in today. But I got a surprise call from someone--LOL!
So far my day has been great. Just came back from a nippy jog at the gym. Saw some hot chics jogging around----so I enjoyed the view.

Ah. Life is so good.

Magneto.

She's so seductive in her latest movie, "Awake"

wowowowow!

Intense.

As of late I've been listening to my dad's 90's jazz cds.

I have no idea. I was wondering as well.

Quote from: Barbaro on October 08, 2007, 03:16:22 AM
It's bad when you fail morally. It's worse when you don't repent.

Luis Palau

I like it.

Hahaha. Who said I would ask for anything else more than a mere massage?


LOL! Hadloka pood ka pre. Ngano man, naa diay law sa bohol against extra services?? LOL!
Joke ra uy!

Try living the single life for a while man. Less stress that way.

In the Philippines?

One other interesting and rather fascinating aspect of podiatry is the reconstructive and repositionary aspect of the medical subspecialty. If a patient suffers a blunt force to the femur or the lower extremity that results in total breakage of the osteoblast (bone structures), podiatric surgeons can literally re-align the severed bone vis-a-vis external fixators.

This summer I've observed podiatric surgeons and orthopaedic surgeons in a group practice place external fixators on patients. Rather captivating process, actually. The patient is in heavy analgesics so he/she can't feel anything---as their bone and tissue are drilled as if was a mere piece of wood. Amazing kaayo.

+++++++

Post operative. Patient w/ external fixators on the lower extremity--to repair blunt force breakage of the dorsal ridge of the Tibia.


Forms of external fixators.


Radiograph of site of breakage; external fixators addressed to fix and re-align the breakage.

Internal medicine is the branch and specialty of medicine concerning the diagnosis and nonsurgical treatment of diseases in adults, especially of internal organs. Doctors of internal medicine, also called "internists", are required to have included in their medical schooling and postgraduate training at least three years dedicated to learning how to prevent, diagnose, and treat diseases that affect adults. Internists are sometimes referred to as the "doctor's doctor," because they are often called upon to act as consultants to other physicians to help solve puzzling diagnostic problems. While the name "internal medicine" may lead one to believe that internists only treat "internal" problems, this is not the case. Doctors of internal medicine treat the whole person, not just internal organs. According to the American Medical Association, specialists of internal medicine earn between $175,000 to $350,000 per year.

++++++++

Internists hold either an allopathic (MD,MBBS,MBChB,etc) or osteopathic (DO) degree. They are not to be confused with "Medical Interns," who are either physicians in their first year of residency training (in countries like the USA), or last-year medical students (in countries like Colombia). Although Internists may act as primary care physicians, they are not "family physicians," "family practitioners," or "general practitioners" (whose training in certain countries includes the medical care of children, and may include surgery, obstetrics and pediatrics). General Internists practice medicine from a primary care perspective but they can treat and manage many ailments and are usually the most adept at treating a broad range of diseases affecting adults.

Internal Medicine sub-specialists may also practice general internal medicine, but can focus their practice on their particular subspecialty like cardiology or pulmonology after completing a fellowship. (Additional training of 2-3 years)

In the USA, adult primary care is usually provided by either family practice or general internal medicine physicians. The primary care of adolescents is provided by family practice, internists and pediatricians. The primary care of children and infants is provided by Family Practice or Pediatricians. Thus, there is overlap.

Caring for the whole patient

Internists are trained to solve puzzling diagnostic problems and handle severe chronic illnesses and situations where several different illnesses may strike at the same time. They also bring to patients an understanding of preventative medicine, men's and women's health, substance abuse, mental health, as well as effective treatment of common problems of the eyes, ears, skin, nervous system and reproductive organs. Most older adults in the United States see an internist as their primary physician.

Subspecialties of internal medicine

Internists can choose to focus their practice on general internal medicine, or may take additional training to "subspecialize" in one of 13 areas of internal medicine, generally organized by organ system. Cardiologists, for example, are doctors of internal medicine who subspecialize in diseases of the heart. The training an internist receives to subspecialize in a particular medical area is both broad and deep. Subspecialty training (often called a "fellowship") usually requires an additional one to three years beyond the standard three year general internal medicine residency. (Residencies come after a student has graduated from medical school.)

In the United States, there are two organizations responsible for certification of subspecialists within the field, the American Board of Internal Medicine, and the American Osteopathic Board of Internal Medicine.

The following are the subspecialties recognized by the American Board of Internal Medicine[1].

    * Cardiology, dealing with disorders of the heart and blood vessels
    * Endocrinology, dealing with disorders of the endocrine system and its specific secretions called hormones
    * Gastroenterology, concerned with the field of digestive diseases
    * Hematology, concerned with blood, the blood-forming organs and its disorders
    * Infectious disease, concerned with disease caused by a biological agent such as by a virus, bacterium or parasite
    * Medical oncology, dealing with the study and treatment of cancer
    * Nephrology,dealing with the study of the function and diseases of the kidney
    * Pulmonology, dealing with diseases of the lungs and the respiratory tract
    * Rheumatology, devoted to the diagnosis and therapy of rheumatic diseases.

The ABIM also recognizes additional qualifications in the following areas

    * Adolescent medicine
    * Clinical cardiac electrophysiology
    * Critical care medicine
    * Geriatric medicine
    * Interventional cardiology
    * Sports medicine
    * Transplant hepatology

Internists may also specialize in allergy and immunology. The American Board of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology is a conjoint board between internal medicine and pediatrics.

The American College of Osteopathic Internists recognizes the following subspecialties.

    * Allergy/Immunology
    * Cardiology
    * Critical care medicine
    * Endocrinology
    * Gastroenterology
    * Geriatric medicine
    * Hematology/Oncology
    * Infectious diseases
    * Nuclear medicine
    * Nephrology
    * Pulmonology
    * Rheumatology

Principles of diagnosis

The main tools of the doctors are the medical history and the physical examination, but this holds particularly true for internal medicine. Subtle descriptions of disease (e.g. cyclic shallow and deep breathing, as in Cheyne-Stokes's respiration, or persistently deep breathing as in Kussmaul's) or physical signs (e.g. clubbing in many internal diseases) are important tools in guiding the diagnostic process. In the medical history, the "Review of Systems" serves to pick up symptoms of disease that a patient might not normally have mentioned, and the physical examination typically follows a structured fashion.

At this stage, a doctor is generally able to generate a differential diagnosis, or a list of possible diagnoses that can explain the constellation of signs and symptoms. Occam's razor dictates that, when possible, all symptoms should be presumed to be manifestations of the same disease process, but often multiple problems are identified.

In order to "narrow down" the differential diagnosis, blood tests and medical imaging are used. They can also serve screening purposes, e.g. to identify anemia in patients with unrelated complaints. Commonly performed screening tests, especially in older patients, are an X-ray of the chest, a full blood count, basic electrolytes, renal function and blood urea nitrogen.

At this stage, the physician will often have already arrived at a diagnosis, or maximally a list of a few items. Specific tests for the presumed disease are often required, such as a biopsy for cancer, microbiological culture etc.

Treatment

Medicine is mainly focused on the art of diagnosis and treatment with medication, but many subspecialties administer surgical treatment:

    * Cardiology: angioplasty, cardioversion, cardiac ablation, intra-aortic balloon pump
    * Gastroenterology: endoscopy and ERCP

Pulmonology: Bronchoscopy

    * Nephrology: dialysis
    * Critical care medicine: mechanical ventilation

hahahahha! how about you Ate Belle? Did you try Cognac yet?

hahaha maybe you can show me the techniques, 'te. I'll be a naive and over anxious graduate, who will need a crash course with the realities of medical practice. LOL!
'te have you ever seen a patient with massive fungal growth in the toes?
I've seen several nasty ones this summer---my God. There was this one case where a patient (40is) had pseudomonis growth on her calcaneal surface---which lead to a massive ulcer growth in the ball of her right feet. Infection spread right up to her ankle--and caused a massive deterioration of her dorsal digital vein. The result was a sporadic infection all the way to her primary and distal phalanx. It was so sad tho...she ended up loosing here entire metatarsal because the infection severed the vein---treatment besides a surgical option was inevitible. She could have saved herself from this-----had the patient seen a podiatrist as soon as possible. Patient waited over 8 months---and it was 8 months too late.

Quote from: ms da binsi on December 13, 2007, 10:01:41 AM
akong pasyente di gyud ko mo nguko kay dalhon raman sa Podiatrist, kay unya ma infected daw..

shalan, atong mga lolo ug lola wa may infection2x...

That is typical in a podiatrist's clinic. Most of the patients are usually geriatric, have some form of peripheral neuropathy--leading to excessive gangrinic growth on the lower appendicular appendages. When I was doing surgical internship this summer with the Ohio College of Podiatric Medicine--we actually had a patient who had his entire upper leg infected with dry gangrene. The patient was elderly and due to him being immuno-supressed, surgeons evaded going into surgery for as long as possible. However when his thigh region started to manifest sporadic gangrene and tertiary infection---they rushed him to the surgical unit. I was actually there to see him during pre-op--and was able to go into the room and observe the surgical amputation (TUAA)Total upper appendicular amputation. The patient survived the surgery, however, died of infection several days later. It was a successful surgical operation, however, due to the patient's compromised immune system (patient was over 90 y.o---a war veteran)--total recovery was already based at 50% likelihood.

Surgically and medically, it was a success. But the patient's body was...unwilling.

The Moral:

Always take care of your feet and your ankle. Clean it, cut it, and if some sort of infection is observed, make sure to see your local podiatrist.

For a while, actually, I was planning to go into Podiatric Medical School.

haha romantic man gud, Ms. Orchids

Podiatry, more appropriately "podiatric medicine" is a field of healthcare devoted to the study and treatment of disorders of the foot, ankle, and the knee, leg and hip (collectively known as the lower extremity). The range of disorders podiatry can address largely depends on the scope of practice laid down in national, state, and/or provincial jurisdiction.

A podiatrist, (pronounced "poh-dye-eh-trist") or foot doctor is a podiatric professional, a person devoted to the study and medical treatment of disorders of the foot, ankle and lower extremity. The term originated in North America but has now become the accepted term in the English speaking world for podiatric medical school graduates: Doctors of Podiatric Medicine (D.P.M.).

Scope of practice

The differences in podiatric medical and surgical practice are determined by state law. Podiatrists are often defined as physicians in most States. Each state allows or limits the practice of podiatric medicine to the foot, ankle, and in many States, portions of the leg or related leg structures.

This may include surgery above the ankle and leg in 44 states. Most states require completion of a residency or a post-graduate training to practice. Most podiatric surgeons work in surgery centers or hospitals performing both medical and surgical treatments for patients. As in many other specialties, some podiatrists work in nursing homes and some perform house calls for patients. Podiatric patients range from newborns and infants to the geriatric.

Medical and orthopedic practice

Some podiatrists limit their practices to the non-(hospital) surgical treatment of patients. Because much work in podiatric medicine and surgery involves cutting of some kind, many procedures are considered surgical by insurance companies including tasks such as the cutting of nails, removing of corns or callus, which the general public would not ordinarily consider to be surgery. These podiatrists use their skills in handling arthritic, diabetic, and other medical problems associated with the feet and lower extremities. Some use devices fitted in shoes (orthotics) or modify the shoe itself to make walking better or easier. Some practices focus on sports medicine and treat many runners, dancers, soccer players, and other athletes.

Surgical practice

Within the scope of practice, podiatrists are the experts at foot, ankle & related leg structures surgery. Some podiatrists have primarily surgical practices. Some specialists complete additional fellowship training in reconstruction of the foot, ankle and leg. Many podiatric surgeons specialize in minimally invasive percutaneous surgery. Most podiatrists utilize medical, orthopedic, biomechanical and surgical practices. Indeed, surgical podiatric principles rest on a base of orthopedic and kinesthetic knowledge.

Job opportunities and salary

The US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics expects the need for podiatrists to rise, but slowly because podiatrists tend to have long careers before retirement. The Journal of the American Podiatric Medical Association (JAPMA) reported in 2006, the average salary for a practicing podiatrist in the United States in 2005 was approximately $130,000-$250,000.

Ah mao ba? Na suko diay si Hec nimo?

LOL!

Make sure you find me the hottest babes in Bohol ha?
Taga-i ko kanang....discount price ba..LOL!

Hook a brother up, yo!

kaluuy pood nimo, pre. Maybe next year?

Good job tapping into it, man.

Do unto others what you would have others do unto you.

LOL. Ate uy, you have such an addictive laugh, and you can brighten anyone's heart. Anyday.
I am so very grateful to have met a person like you. My dear Ate .

I also am extending extra big bear hugs to:
Ate Belle, Hazel, Ate Ging, Happy, Pareng Bambi, Brod Mike, Ms. Orchids
Everyone, ha! LOL

by Philip Larkin

+++

Always too eager for the future, we
Pick up bad habits of expectancy.
Something is always approaching; every day
Till then we say,

Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear,
Sparking armada of promises draw near.
How slow they are! And how much time they waste,
Refusing to make haste!

Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks
Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks
Each big approach, leaning with brasswork prinkled,
Each rope distinct,

Flagged, and the figurehead with golden tints
Arching our way, it never anchors; it's
No sooner present than it turns to past.
Right to the last

We think each one will heave to and unload
All good into our lives, all we are owed
For waiting so devoutly and so long.
But we are wrong:

Only one ship is seeking us, a black-
Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back
A huge and birdless silence. In her wake
No waters breed or break.

by Khalil Gibran

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Love one another, but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup, but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread, but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone.
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together.
For the pillars of the temple stand apart.
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

I ne'er was struck before that hour
With love so sudden and so sweet.
Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower
And stole my heart away complete.

My face turned pale, a deadly pale.
My legs refused to walk away,
And when she looked what could I ail
My life and all seemed turned to clay.

And then my blood rushed to my face
And took my eyesight quite away.
The trees and bushes round the place
Seemed midnight at noonday.

I could not see a single thing,
Words from my eyes did start.
They spoke as chords do from the string,
And blood burnt round my heart.

Are flowers the winter's choice
Is love's bed always snow
She seemed to hear my silent voice
Not love appeals to know.

I never saw so sweet a face
As that I stood before.
My heart has left its dwelling place
And can return no more.

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again.
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me.

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth.
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say - My love! why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again.
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Mind is the master planner that molds and makes
And man is mind and forever more he takes,

The tools of thought and shaping what he wills
Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills

He thinks in secret and it comes to pass
His environment is but his looking glass.

awwwwwwwwww.....
so sweet.

Yea, my housemates Love you now, 'te. LOL!!!!
Bryan was joking around earlier saying "tell her i'll marry her" but ya..I had to tell him that you were already married, LOL!

you know how we college guys are
bu****-on jud!

Yea.
That mouse is dead meat.

LOL!!!!!
Ikaw jud pre uy! hahahaha
ma lingaw man pood ta mo read ani. Katawa pood ta ba.
Hey man, you take it easy alright?

Ah you're very kind for that, pre. Are you going back to Bohol for X-mas or staying 'stateside?

Nice man. You designed that yourself?