The Principales of Philip II: Vassalage, Justice, and the Making of Indigenous Jurisdiction in the Early Colonial Philippines

In early May, 1590, native chief Don Felipe Tuliao of Guagua (Pampanga, the Philippines) testified, at the request of Spanish Governor Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas, about the current state of local justice. A year before, Dasmariñas had mandated to summarily conduct, i.e. resolve orally without keeping written records, all the local lawsuits, and he requested that the Crown make his order irrevocable. To achieve his goal, the governor resorted to the testimonies of principales, as the Spaniards called the indigenous rulers of the Philippines. According to principal Tuliao, since “the lawsuits are determined verbally without writing”, natives no longer filed “unjust lawsuits proven with false witnesses” or spent their goods on “the many fees that the judges and their officials” required. In Tuliao’s opinion, a royal confirmation of summary justice “would be a particular merced (favor) to these islands” because it dealt with two obstacles in the dispensing of justice explored in this paper: the shortage of colonial magistrates and the abuses that they performed against the natives.1 Tuliao’s testimony provides insight into the dispensing of justice by the Spanish Crown to its Philippine subjects—a key strategy for keeping the newly conquered islands under its control. Thus, the question arises, which principles governed the administration of justice in the early colonial Philippines and how did the Crown manage this?