“There is no such thing as a free lunch.” The adage that economists used to explain opportunity cost also applies to the invisible cost that comes with every gain or action. The environment and humans who are dependent on them usually pay the price. But billing is not evenly distributed. Dues are charged asymmetrically across genders too.
While credit on the colonial masters’ account got debited from all the subjugated, women paid more. When colonization downgraded Filipino women to a much lower status, the “babaylan” spiritual leader lost not only her job, but also her political standing. Later generations suffered loss too.
Around 460 years ago, Spanish conquistadors invoked 15th-century papal bulls that authorized Christian monarchs to claim lands inhabited by non-Christians. They legitimized colonial theft with their religious zeal for converting “heathen” pagans. So, they unabashedly claimed the cluster of islands that navigator Ferdinand Magellan stumbled upon in 1521. Twenty years later in 1543, explorer Ruy López de Villalobos named the islands after the prince who would later become King Philip II of Spain.
From 1565 to the end of Spanish rule in the Philippines in 1898, conquistadors applied the Regalian Doctrine or “Jura Regalia.” American colonizers maintained it, and then the Philippine government constitutionalized it. The principle that originated from Spanish law, Jura Regalia, states that all lands and natural resources not otherwise privately owned belong to the state. In the 1500s, the “state” was the Spanish monarchy.
The Civilizing Mission
For 300 years, the Spanish Crown extracted tribute and forced labor from the native populations of the islands they now “owned” under Jura Regalia. Imposing the feudal “encomienda” system on the colony, the crown authorized an “encomendero” to Christianize and “administer” the people of the land assigned to him. On paper, the encomendero was the king’s “colonial grantee,” not the landowner. But in practice he took over native lands.
Likewise appointed on a fixed term, the Governor-General was the entire colony’s chief executive, its highest judge, and military captain general. He remitted revenues to Spain and protected the empire’s assets against other European or religious claims. Since he represented the crown, he also came from the nobility. Under him were his territorial governors and the encomenderos. Only men likely motivated to maximize personal gain filled those temporary positions far from home.
With manpower in short supply, Spain replaced the impossible-to-supervise encomienda system with the “hacienda” system. Haciendas were large privately owned agrarian estates. And through “patronato real” (royal patronage), the crown brought in another patriarchy, religious orders, who were even more effective in evangelizing pagans and also extracting wealth. The Catholic church hierarchy sent religious men to settle remote countrysides in the colony. There they stayed with no term limits, learned the language, and acquired huge haciendas.
Over time, the diminishing profitability of spices and the waning Manila-Acapulco galleon trade of luxury goods prompted a switch in colonial strategy. To maintain the remote colony despite setbacks, governors mandated growing nothing else but global cash crops like tobacco and sugar cane, especially in certain regions. Planting food crops became clandestine, with the restriction fomenting revolt.
Meanwhile, untold profits accrued effortlessly to land-owning religious orders and friars who rented out their large haciendas to “inquilinos” (leaseholders). They leveraged their colonial dominance over the inquilinos who came from the local elite, and later, Chinese mestizo families.
The Road to Perdition
The colonial enterprise established a foothold by appropriating the pre-existing barangay (village) political structure and its datu (chieftain) leadership. The datu and his family were not only absorbed but institutionalized as the “principalia” or local aristocracy. The datu evolved into the “cabeza de barangay,” the head of the barangay. He collected taxes and enforced the “polo y servicio” or forced manual labor required of able-bodied Filipino men aged 16 to 60. He became the intermediary between Spaniards and the tribute-paying masses.
By repurposing political structures, the colonizers coopted the ruling class. They imposed strict patriarchy on local leadership previously based on lineage and capacity rather than sex. In the past, a daughter could become the chieftain without issue if the datu had no son.
The pre-colonial Filipinos gave equal importance to maternal and paternal lineages. So, women enjoyed a higher social and economic status. The bilateral kinship system allowed them to inherit and own property, engage in commerce, and divorce.
More significantly, the patrilineal datu military-political leadership shared dual authority with the matrilineal spiritual leadership. The “babaylan,” the barangay’s priestess and healer, also actively participated in decision-making as complementary power. Her input prevented one-sided male-centered actions that could impact the whole barangay. This mechanism for consultation maintained egalitarian balance.
A Story that Power Needed to Tell
The Center of Babaylan Studies describes the babaylan as a woman recognized by Philippine indigenous communities as “someone who can mediate with the spirit world, has her own spirit guide, and is given gifts of healing, foretelling, and insight.” A man who dressed, lived, and presented himself as a woman could also become a babaylan. So, the exalted spiritual leadership role was assigned to the feminine gender, and not exclusively to the female sex.
The babaylan held immense authority because she could travel to the “anito” spirit world. Her capacity for trance and ability to interpret signs allowed her to foresee the future. She could then guide the datu in making critical decisions regarding agriculture, justice, migration, or even waging wars.
Unfortunately, the colonial order superimposed by the Spaniards could not accommodate women spiritual leaders. The new patriarchy had no room for the babaylan. The Spanish friars saw them as rivals, and their influence in the community as a threat to Catholic conversion. The Babaylan’s spiritual authority directly competed with the “frialocracia” in the battle for souls and the loyalty of native populations. So, friars not only discredited babaylans, but they also demonized them as witches and sorcerers.
Erased But Not Vanished
Still, the healing practice survived, especially in areas beyond Spanish control. The babaylan appellation did not. Some babaylans actively resisted persecution. But most went underground. They continued to provide healing and divination services by incorporating Catholic elements into their rituals and prayers. They made the practice appear Christian, at least on the surface.
They also likely passed their incantations, now called “orasyon,” and their knowledge of herbal medicine to men who became “albularyos,” today’s herbalists. Men took over as secular folk healers. But the job to appease “unseen spirits” believed to be causing ailments still rested on women mediators’ shoulders.
Women healers perform rituals to determine any offense that the sick may have unknowingly committed. Even today, Filipinos in rural areas believe that spirits inhabit trees, mounds, bodies of water, and spots in the forests that should never be disturbed. So, the healer intercedes and makes amends on behalf of the afflicted when “encroachment” has occurred.
Named after the “action” or specialized service they provide, women healers are now called “mansusuob” if they perform “suob” or smoke cleansing. Those who employ traditional massage are called “manghihilot.” Although the “manghihilot” may also provide pre-natal, childbirth, and post-partum care by offering advice, prayers, and rituals.
Hiding in Plain Sight
The Spaniards attacked the “babaylan” label in ecclesiastical writing as the enemy, so they banned the title. But on the ground, they could not replace the services rendered by babaylans as mediators and spiritual healers. American colonizers, on the other hand, had no evangelization narrative to help disguise their imperial intentions. Through their centralized mass education system, however, they recoded anything outside the biomedical framework as backward and incompatible with the Filipino claim to modern nationhood.
Americans framed public health as the “civilizational metric.” A healthy, productive colonial labor force and their embrace of Western standards in sanitation, hygiene, and conventional medicine proved the success of the American civilizing mission—to prepare Filipinos for independence.
“Benevolent Assimilation,” America’s official colonial policy in the Philippines, embodied this “legitimating ideology.” Americans came as friends to uplift and guide Filipinos to self-governance. In truth, they were establishing strategic military and naval presence to project power in the Asia-Pacific region.
This “benevolent” colonial enterprise also had no room for women spiritual healers. Further pushed to the fringes, whatever remained of the babaylan did not threaten Americans because she was “evil.” Instead, she and the practice were now regarded as rural and unscientific by the educated majority who identified as urban and modern.
Notwithstanding, the babaylan did not disappear completely. Filipinos continue to publicly espouse what is imposed while quietly following tradition. Sadly, women leaders paid a steeper price to keep it going.
It is tempting to simply “move on” and dismiss the babaylan as a casualty of colonization, a job loss, and a title erased. In fact, a load-bearing architecture of the once egalitarian, gender-plural, and consensus-driven society was dismantled, and its benefits denied many generations thereafter.
Attempts to reclaim the babaylan culture now underscore what was lost.
