Observing the changes in native society during the 194 years of Spanish control from 1571 to 1765, one cannot fail to note their continuity with pre-Spanish patterns or their slow evolution.  This gradual adjustment of the Pampangs to the new regime over the course of nearly two centuries was possible because, the Spanish, deeply involved in the galleon trade,¹ brought no social or economic revolution and were more than content to allow native political power to remain with the old ruling class.  The province was merely an outpost of an empire which had already begun to stagnate in a near-medieval framework, and Spain, suffering from limited resources and vision, simply did not possess the personnel to plan a new course of development for Pampanga or to administer it properly.  To convert the natives to Catholicism and have them remain loyal to the government in Manila was sufficient.  The Pampangans expressed loyalty by supplying rice, lumber, and soldiers for the disposition of the colonial establishment and, once these obligations had been fulfilled, were left free to manage their domestic affairs.

Pre-Hispanic society

     "In spite of some scanty evidence of late Neolithic culture in Pampanga, there is no proof that settlement was continuous from that time onward.  Indeed, a mysterious gap exists between 1500 B.C. and 900 A.D., and the discovery of burial sites in Porac containing Chinese pottery from the late T'ang, Sung, Yuan, and Ming periods would indicate only that Pampanga harbored settlements from the late ninth or early tenth century.²

   The use of Chinese pottery, which lingered into the early years of the Spanish regime, suggests long-standing links between Pampanga and the outside world, whether with nearby regions or directly with Chinese merchants plying the Philippine coastal trade.³  Nor did the Pampangans rely solely on such coastal contacts.  An early Spanish account concerning the Pampangans and the neighboring Tagalogs reported that they are keen traders, and have traded with China for many years, and before the advent of the Spaniards, they sailed to Maluco, Malaca, Hazian [Acheh?], Parani [Patani?], Burnei, and other kingdoms.⁴ Pampangans went to Batavia as late as the first half ot the seventeenth century, i.e. even after the arrival of the Spaniards.⁵ But, rapidly drawn into the Spanish trading orbit of Manila, they had given up their seafaring ways by 1650 and thereafter became almost exclusively an agricultural people.⁶

     From a variety of sources one can discern the major outlines of Pampangan society just prior to 1571, the year of the Spanish conquest.  Especially useful in this task is a study of Pampangan legal customs attributed to Father Juan de Plasencia, who wrote so ably on Tagalog society as well and apparently found some differences existing between the two societies.

     At the beginning of the Spanish period, all of the major settled areas of Pampanga were situated along the water routes, mainly in the south nearer the Rio Grande de la Pampanga or along its tributaries a little farther north.  The eleven most important communities were Lubao, Macabebe, Sexmoan, Betis, Guagua, Bacolor, Apalit, Arayat, Candaba, Porac, and Masicu (later Mexico), with the first three probably the oldest.  The rest of the province was covered by forest and inhabited by the Negrito and Malay forest dwellers who were later to be pushed out as the Pampangans began to clear the land for their fields.⁷  The residents of the southern towns, primarily sedentary farmers, lived in autonomous villages called barangays, which varied considerably in size.  The earliest realistic estimate of population, in 1591,⁸ suggests that the area was fairly heavily settled, even two decades earlier. Rice was the major crop (judging from how quickly the Spaniards came to depend on the Pampanga staple) though fish, meat, and fruit were also in adequate supply.

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¹The galleon trade was essentially an exchange of products from China for Mexican silver, with Manila serving as the entrepot.  Since hardly any native products
   were involved and native merchants were not allowed to participate, this trade remained mainly a foreign activity with which the Pampangans were not
   concerned.  For a full discussion of the galleon trade, see William Lyttle Schurz, The Manila Galleon (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1939).
²H. Otley Beyer, "Outline Review of Philippine Archaeology by Islands and Provinces," The Philippine Journal of Science, LXXVII (July-August 1947), 226-227.
   For a fuller account of the findings at two sites (called "Gubat" and "Balukbuk") in Hacienda Ramona, Porac, see Alfredo E. Evangelista, "Field Work and
   Research," Asian Perspectives, IV (1960), 85-86.
³Fay-Cooper Cole, "Chines Pottery in the Philippines," Field Museum of Natural History: Publication 162: Anthropological Series, XII, No. 1 (1912), 10.  On the
   extensive nature of that trade see Robert Fox, "The Archeological Record of Chinese Influences in the Philippines," Philippine Studies, XV (January 1967),
   41-62.
⁴"Relation of the Philippinas Islands [ca. 1590]," B&R, XXXIV, 377.
⁵Bernard H. M.Vlekke, Nusantara:  A History of Indonesia (The Hague: W. van Hoeve, 1965), p. 157.
⁶The whole subject of the Spanish stifling of Filipino external trade needs further treatment.  Hiterto almost no attention has been paid to this topic in spite of
   its obvious relevance to discussions of continuity in native society before and after the conquest.  Such matters have been considered seriouisly in the
   Indonesian context since they were raised by Jacob van Leur in Indonesian Trade and Society (The Hague and Bandung: W. van Hoeve, 1955).
⁷Luther Parker, "Some Notes on Pampanga," (n.d. unpublished MS), LPC, p. 3.
⁸This estimate of 39,000 "souls" only covers the population of five communities in Pampanga:  Betis, Lubao, Macabebe, Candaba, and Apalit ["Relacion de las
   encomendias existentese en Filipinas, el dia 31 de mayo de 1591 anos," pp. 10-12, in W.E. Retana, Archivo del bibliofilo filipino, IV (Madrid: Minuesa de los
   Rios, 1898).

     The Pampangans seem to have possessed a fairly advanced material culture.  Not only was Chinese pottery used extensively but these people wove their own cloth out of cotton obtained by barter for rice from other groups to the south and may have achieved considerable skill in metal working, for a native of Pampanga, Pandaypira, cast cannons for the Spanish.⁹

     In terms of religion, at least one community, Lubao, had come under the influence of the Muslim thrust from the south, just as a number of western Luzon communities with access to the coast had been converted to the new faith.¹⁰  An official Spanish report in 1576 stated:

         [Pampanga] has two rivers, one called Bitis and the other Lubao, along whose banks dwell three thousand five hundred
         Moros, more or less, all tillers of the soil.¹¹

     The above was one of the very few references to an Islamic community in Pampanga, but perhaps Muslims inhabited Betis and Macabebe as well.  In 1571, a force from Macabebe under their own chief fought with Raja Soliman (possibly from Lubao) against the Spaniards at Tondo.¹²  Later, in 1572, only Lubao and Betis resisted the Spanish; in fact, the conquerors had to skirt both communities and pacify them after the rest of the province had fallen.¹³  This military challenge to the Spanish conquistadores may well have resulted from Islamic presence in those towns.  However, other than the armed opposition of Islam to the advancing Spaniards, no evidence has survived of the faith's penetration into the province.  No mention was made of mosques or religious worship among the people or even how long ago they had been converted.  Certainly the area was not entirely Islamic since many people still practiced animistic rites.  An early Spaniard observed:

     Their houses are filled with wooden and stone idols . . . for they had no temples.  They said that the soul entered into one
     of these idols at the death of any of their parents or children. Consequently, they reverenced them and asked them for life,
     health and riches.  Those idols were called anitos.¹⁴

     Pampanga village society appears to have contained three classes:  the chiefs or datus; the freemen or timagua (timawa in Kapampangan); and the slaves.¹⁵  The datu of the barangay normally determined when the planting and harvesting were to take place, served as military leader, and was judge in most cases not involving himself.  A datu held a special position before the law and could only be tried in special cases by a tribunal of datus from nearby villages.  Nevertheless, the datu did not wield absolute power in the village.  In the first place, he was bound in most of his actions by a traditional code that imposed limits upon his behavior and prescribed definite procedures in judicial matters.  Secondly, though the position of datu seems to have been hereditary, only the most powerful one ruled the village.  With several in any village, a datu could be replaced if his position weakened through excesses or for other reasons.  The position was by no means one of complete control unless a specific datu demonstrated enough strength to enforce his power by sheer might.  Aside from his executive, judicial, and military power, he had no special occupation.  He, too, farmed and wove his own cloth like the other members of the community.

     Below the datus were a group of people known as the timawa or freemen.  Aside from certain responsibilities to the datu at the busy time of the agricultural year, the timawa were able to devote the rest of the time to their own pursuits.  Freemen were subject to the datu in legal cases but possessed a privileged position relative to the slave class, with their right to own property and marry freely.  Beneath the timawa stood the slaves.  Slavery meant primarily severe debt peonage rather than chattel slavery and was not a permanent state.  Manumission by paying back debts was possible, and a timawa could become a slave by failure to pay a private debt or a legal fine.  Slavery was hereditary, and the children could be separated from their parents if the slave had more than one owner.  On the other hand, a slave and a timawa could marry, in which case only half of the children could be held in servitude.  A slave was bound to full service to his or her master and was subject to severe penalties for violation of the law.  There is no information on what percentage of people were slave or free but, given the elaborate laws dealing with penalties for both groups, there can be little doubt that there were many members in each.¹⁶

     Plasencia in his account of Pampangan laws did not mention a class of noblemen comparable to the maharlica (lords) described in his study of the Tagalogs.¹⁷ Such evidence of independent development in neighboring societies tends to confirm the theory that even pre-Spanish rural Philippine society was heterogeneous.

     The idea of private property in the form of slaves, gold, and homes did exist in Pampanga: property could be forfeited for crimes, given as a dowry, and willed to children.  Yet, seemingly, agricultural land belonged not to the individual but to the community and was under the supervision of the datu as to its use only.  Shares were based on the number of people working the land, which meant that a slaveholder received more of the harvest than an individual farmer.

     Plasencia's writing contained no hint of supra-barangay organization prior to 1571.  Raja Soliman, who led a combined force against the Spaniards, has been called by one writer "the most powerful of the chiefs of the region,"¹⁸ but it may be his strength lay in his ability to convince rather than command other datus to fight with him.  Or, conceivably, it was only the common cause of Islamic resistance that held the army together.

     In sum, the institutions of sixteenth-century Pampanga were well adapted to the basic needs of the environment.  The agricultural system was producing food in surplus, craft skills had reached significant levels, and trade brought contact with the outside world.  A code  of customary law prevailed to preserve order, a functioning system of local government existed, and the class structure offered relative security for members of the community -- indeed, was so useful and resilient that it persisted in somewhat modified form well into the twentieth century.  Native society showed great strength and, as we shall see, survived the imposition of Spanish authority, remaining intact for more than three centuries.

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⁹On Pampangan material culture see Antonio de Morga, Historical Events of the Philippines, trans. H.E.J.S. Stanley (Centennial Edition; Manila: Jose Rizal
  Centennial Commission, 1962), (original 1609), pp. 23, 266; Letter from Alcalde Juan de Alcega, Pampanga, May 13, 1591, to Governor-General Gomez Perez
  Dasmarinas, B&R, VIII, 79-95.
¹⁰Thomas J. O'Shaughnessy, "Islam -- Surrender to God," Philippine Studies, XV (January 1967), 120.
¹¹Governor Francisco de Sande,  "Official Report to the Council of the Indies [June 7, 1756]," B&R, IV, 80.
¹²H. Otley Beyer and Jaime C. de Veyra, Philippine Saga (3rd ed.; Manila: Capitol, 1952), pp. 50-51.
¹³Joaquin Martinez de Zuniga, O.S.A., Estadismo de las Islas Filipinas (Madrid: Minuesa de los Rios, 1893), I, 469-471; Esteban Vitug, "Pueblo of Lubao," LPC,
    pp. 1, 5., 1965), p. 157.
¹⁴"Relation  of the Philippinas Islands," B&R, XXXIV, 378.
¹⁵LPlasencia does not give the Capampangan term for slave, but Berano suggests two possibilities: alipan and anac diquing.
¹⁶Juan de Plasencia, O.S.F., "Customs of the Pampangas in Their Lawsuits (ca. 1589)," B&R, XVI, 321-329.
¹⁷Juan de Plasencia, O.S.F., "Customs of the Tagalogs (ca. 1589)," B&R, XVI, 173-196, passim.
¹⁸Edward J. McCarthy, Spanish Beginnings in the Philippines, 1564-1572  (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1943), p. 82.

Social and economic Hispanization

     Following the defeat of Raja Soliman in 1571, the conquest of Pampanga proceeded fairly rapidly.  The only real resistance came from Lubao and Betis, but by 1572 priests resided in both communities.  So complete was the conquest that in 1574 Pampangan soliders fought by the side of their conquerors to repel the attacks of the Chinese pirate Limahong.  By 1597 Augustinian friars manned churches in all eleven of the major Pampangan communities.

     In spite of serious problems of corruption and maladministration among the clergy in the early years of the seventeenth century (mainly because of rivalry between Mexican and Spanish friars), by 1612 there were 28,200 Pampangans eligible to receive the sacraments,¹⁹ and probably by the middle of the century almost all of the natives came under the sway of the Catholic Church.  With the addition of churches in Magalang in 1606, and in Minalin in 1650, there were thirteen Augustinian missions in the area before the close of tje seventeenth century.  Pampangan settlement still remained primarily along the water routes, except for the missions of Porac and Magalang, both inland, which the church maintained for nomadic Negritos and forest Malays.²⁰  Corpuz has observed that the Spanish forced resettlement in many areas of the Philippines in order to facilitate conversion and administration of the natives.  This resettlement was not necessary in Pampanga because the Pampanans were already sedentary people who showed themselves susceptible to the preaching of the friars.  All that remained for the latter to do was to move into the established communities, set up their missions, and later build their churches.  The exceptions, of course, were Magalang and Porac, which stayed almost to the nineteenth century as missions stations, though even in these two communities the people were encouraged (usually without much success) rather than forced to settle in the vicinity of the church.

     In the eighteenth century, the erection of churches indicated the rise of new settlements at Mabalacat (1712), Santa Rita (1726), San Fernando (1756), Santa Ana (1759), San Luis (1762), Santo Tomas (1767), and San Simon (1771).²¹  Mabalacat, like Magalang and Porac, was a forest outpost.  The other new communities were located in the rice-growing south and were merely extensions of older towns which had spread out due to population growth and increased rice cultivation.  San Fernando, for example, had its origin when outllying barangays (now called barrios) formerly within the sphere of Bacolor and Mexico²² became large enough to form a new center.  The fact that it was new is reflected in its Spanish rather than Pampangan name.  This process was repeated in all the towns named after saints.  The pattern, then, was not one of migration to the northern forest lands but rather of an expansion of older communities through a slow, steady growth of population over roughtly two hundred years.²³

     Manila came very early to depend on the fields of Pampanga for its food.  Governor de Sande wrote in 1576:

     The province which in all this island of Luzon produces the most grain is that called Pampanga . . . This city [Manila] and all
     this region is provided with food -- namely, rice which is the bread here -- by this province, so that if the rice haarvest should
     fail there, there would be no place where it could be obtained.²⁴

     Again and again during the seventeenth century, Spanish reports refer to the fecundity of Pampanga and to the dependence of the city of Manila upon its rice.²⁵  As late as 1766, the Frenchman Le Gentil still marveled at the great fertility of Pampanga which could produce two rice crops a year.²⁶  In addition, the settled areas of Pampanga along the river routes opened onto Manila Bay, permitting easy delivery by boat at a time when water was the only means of transportation.  For example, the Ilocos region ro the north, while as fertile as Pampanga, could only send food to Manila when the prevailing winds were adequate for sailing down the west coast of Luzon.  Thus it was the combination of highly fertile soil and easy access to Manila that made Pampanga especially valuable to the Spanish settlement.  And the dependence of the government on the province undoubtedly encouraged officials to maintain good relations with Pampanga's leaders.

     Yet the province could not always meet the needs of Manila, and on at least one occasion the Spanish were responsible for the Pampangan failure.  In 1583, Pampangans were sent to work in the gold mines of Ilocos and not allowed to return in time for the planting season.  In the following year when great food shortages ensued in both Pampanga and Manila, over one thousand people starved to death in the area of Lubao alone.²⁷  The famine of 1584 and the corruption and harsh exactions of Spanish officials led to a rebellion and an attempted invasion of Manila; only army intervention prevented its success.28  But there was no more unrest for the next eighty years.  The number of Spaniards and Chinese entering the city leveled off, the Spaniards learned the necessity of treating the natives of Pampanga properly, and the farmers learned to increase production to meet the demands of their conquerors.

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¹⁹Gregorio Lopez et al., "Status of Missions in the Philippines [ca. 1612]," " B&R, XVII, 193-194.
²⁰Antonio Mozo, Noticia historico natural de los gloriosos triumphos y felices adelantamientos conseguidos en el presente siglo por los religiosos del orden de
    N.P.S. Agustin en las misssiones que tienen a su cargo en las islas Philipinas, y en el grande imperio de la China . . . (Madrid:  A. Ortega, 1763), p. 28.
²¹Parker, p. 6; Mariano A. Henson, The Province of Pampanga and Its Towns (4th ed. rev.; Angeles, Pampanga:  By the author, 1965), p. 113.  Casimiro Viray,
    "Historia del San Luis, de la Provencia de la Pampanga, Islas Filipinas," LPC, p. 5.  Although Santo Tomas and San Simon were established after 1765, both
    settlements developed during the period under consideration.
²²Clemente Ocampo, "Datos historicos sobre el pueblo de San Fernando, cabecceria de la Pampanga, I.F.," LPC, p. 1.
²³The creation of new towns is a better indicator of the growth of population than the existing census figures.  The most reliable estimates for Pampanga prior to
    1850 are:  1591, 50,000 - 60,000; 1818, 106,381.  The first figure is no more than an educated guess, and the second includes the province of Tarlac [U.S.
    Bureau of Insular Afairs, A Pronouncing Gazetteer and Geographical Dictionary of the Philippine Islands (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1902),
    p. 30,    footnote 10].  The slow rise in population may well have been due to periodic epidemics like the one of influenza which struck Pampanga in 1688.
    This epidemic followed a year of drought and locust plague in 1687 which probably led to extremely short crops and subsequently weakness and starvation
    [Casimiro Diaz, O.S.A., "Conquistas de las Islas Filipinas," B&R, XLII, 268-269].
²⁴De Sande, "Official Report," p. 80.  See also, "Ordinance of the Royal Audiencia, December 7, 1598," B&R, X, 307-309.
²⁵See, for example, Juan de Medina,  "Historia de la Orden de S. Augustin de Estas Islas Filipinas [1630],"  B&R, XXIII, 244-245;  Letter from Fiscal Rodrigo Diaz
    Guiral, Manila, July, 1606, to King Philip III, B&R, XIV, 157-158;  "Description of the Philippines, 1618" B&R, XVIII, 96.
²⁶Guillaume Joseph Hyacinthe Jean Baptiste Le Gentil de la Galaisiere, A Voyage to the Indian Seas, trans. Frederick C. Fisher (Manila: Filipiniana Book Guild,
    1964), p. 36.
²⁷Letter from Fray Domingo de Salazar, Manla, 1583, to King Philip II, B&R, V, 212-221.

     Pampanga was subject to three different taxes in the seventeenth century:  the polo, the vandala, and the head tax (tribute).  The polo was a system of corvée used primarily to build and maintain the Spanish defense fleet and harbor installations.  Pampanga
supplied woodcutters, shipbuilders, and various other laborers in fulfillment of the polo.  The vandala was in essence a tax exaction of rice to feed the Spanish army and navy.  Both the polo and the vandala were imposed extensively during the Dutch wars from 1608 but less and less frequently thereafter.  There was no such abatement of the head tax because Manila continued to need rice and the head tax, usually paid in rice, was the city's main source of supply.  In addition, there were continual demands for lumber.  In 1707, for example, when the seminary of St. Clement was established in Manila, the Pampangans were called upon to supply the lumber.²⁹  Moreover, many Manila galleons of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were also constructed of Pampangan lumber.

     Only once did anything happen to mar the Pampangans' record of loyal and valuable service to the Spanish up to 1896.  In 1660 one group of woodcutters protested the polo, but a brief display of force by the Spaniards, government promises of amelioration, and the lack of support from most Pampangan leaders ended the unrest without a single battle or death.³⁰   The Pampangan chief most instrumental in suppressing the woodcutters' revolt, Don Juan Macapagal, earned Spanish praise and trust and was called by them to lead (as Master of the Camp) a Pampangan contingent against the threatened invasion of the Chinese pirate Koxinga in 1662.  Later he was awarded an encomienda by the king for his long and faithful service.³¹

     If food and lumber were the most important resources Pampanga offered the Spaniards in the early years, manpower for the Spanish army was also very much in demand.  As noted above, the Pampangans helped defend Manila during the threatened invasion of Limahong in 1574.  In 1603 they not only took a major part in what amounted to a Spanish-led massacre of the Chinesee population around Manila but also joined the looting of Chinese quarters afterward.³²  As a result of their role in suppressing the Chinese, some Pampangans were awarded captaincies in the Spanish army, though it is perhaps ironic that Pampangans were thus honored not solely for participation in the slaughter but also for being the most "reasonable" and "civilized" of the native groups.³³  From 1603 to the end of the Spanish regime, a Pampangan contingent served in the colonial army.  In the seventeenth century it fought against the Dutch and served as an occupation force in the Moluccas, took part in campaigns against a rebel group in Panay and against the Moros, and participated in another massacre of the Chinese in 1640.³⁴  In the eighteenth century, besides opposing the marauding Muslims, Pampangans turned out in full strength to defend the Spanish regime against the invading British.³⁵

Political Hispanization

    Before beginning a topical analysis of teh development of Pampangan society, some discussion of the administrative system devised by the Spaniards to govern the province is necessary.  Though the Spanish relied on the Augustinian friars to supervise local affairs, they also employed secular officials, including native leaders.  The Spaniards organized Pampanga as an alcaldia or province in 1571,³⁶ initiallly to meet the needs of pacifying, taxing, converting, and adjusting to Spanish ways the Pampangan natives.  Legaspi and his successor Guido de Lavasares divided the province into encomiendas or areas of jurisdiction, which were given over as rewards for faithful government service to individual Spaniards for "civilizing."  Possesion of an encomienda could be very lucrative as the encomendero collected taxes and retained revenue in excess of the tax due in Manila.  An enterprising encomendero could make a small fortune by collecting more than the specified amounts.

     The crown reserved certain encomiendas for itself, the funds from which were to be used at the personal discretion of the king, but income from a crown encomienda could also be manipulated.  The alcalde mayors, official government representatives in the province and precursors of the modern provincial governor, who served primarily as supervisors of tax collection for the officiales reales (royal officials) in Manila, often used crown encomiendas as a source of private income.  An unsigned government report of 1582 designated the office of alcalde mayor in Pampanga as prone to corruption.³⁷  So profitable were the positions of encomendero and alcalde mayor that they were given by governor-generals as sinecures.  A group of Dominican priests wrote to Spain in 1610 complaining that an alcalde mayor of Pampanga, though incompetent, stayed in office because he was the relative of an important member of the Audiencia.³⁸

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²⁸Letter from Don Juan Ronquillo, Manila, June 24, 1586, to King Philip II, B&R VI, 238.
²⁹Pedro Rubio Merino, Don Diego Camacho y Avila, Arzobispo de Manila y de Guadalajara de Mexico, 1695-1712 (Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios
    Hispano-Americanos, 1958), p. 421.
³⁰Diaz, XXXVIII, 139-166.
³¹Events in Manila, 1662-63," B&R, XXXVI, 228; Nicholas Cushner, S.J., Spain in the Philippines  (Rutland, Vt. and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1970), p. 107.
³²Miguel Rodrigues Maldonaldo, "True Relation of the of the Sangley Insurrection in the Filipinas," B&R XIV, 128-135.
³³Letter from the Audiencia, December 18, 1603, to King Philip III, B&R, XII, 160.
³⁴Father Gregorio Lopez, "Relation of Events in the Filipinas during the Years 1609 and 1610," B&R, XVII, 105; etter from Governor Alonso Fajardo de Tenza,
    August 15, 1620, to King Philip III, B&R, XIX, 111; Letter from Governor Alonso Fajardo, December 10, 1621, to King Philip III, B&R, XX, 151; Letter from
    Governor Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera, August 20, 1637, to King Philip IV, B&R, XVIII, 349; "Relation of the Insurrection of the Chinese," B&R, XXIX,
    214-215, 229.
³⁵William Draper, "A Journal of the Proceedings of His Majesty's Forces on the Expedition against Manila," B&R, XLIX, 88.
³⁶Augustin de la Cavada, Historia geografica, geologica y estadistica de Filipinas (Manila: Ramirez y Giraudier, 1876), I, 235.
³⁷"Report," B&R, V, 204.
³³Letter from Baltasar Fort, O.P. et al., Manila June 30, 1610, to King Philip III, B&R XVII, 97.

     The encomienda system eventually turned out to be a failure in Pampanga.  A sharp conflict in 1576 between Governor de Sande and the heirs of Guido de Lavasares, the second governor of the Philippines, over the disposition of encomiendas³⁹ was followed in 1620 by enactment of an ordinance turning over to the crown the jurisdiction of all private encomiendas in Pampanga and neighboring provinces, as they fell vacant, in order to insure that more tax revenues would reach Manila.⁴⁰  Although some private encomiendas were subsequently awarded, this ordinance gradually prevailed and the burden of administering the province fell increasingly on the alcalde mayors, or alcaldes.  Furthermore, a Spanish law adopted in the sixteenth century, and kept in effect until 1768, prohibited all but necessary Spanish personnel -- such as alcaldes, encomenderos, parish priests, and some soldiers -- from living in the provinces.  In 1588 there were eleven encomenderos and one alcalde, or twelve men with administrative responsibility.⁴¹  By 1738 there were only 1,119 tributes under the care of encomenderos and 9,025 under the supervision of the alcalde.⁴²  Sometime during the eighteenth century the last of the private encomiendas was eliminated and they are mentioned no more in the records.

     Native rulers, now serving as officials of the Spanish regime, took up the slack created by the loss of the encomenderos.  A series of Spanish administrative acts around 1600 created the pueblo or municipalty system of government which the major Pampangan settlements one by one adopted over the next two hundred years.⁴³  In Pampanga, as elsewhere, a fair amount of authority was placed in the hands of the gobernadorcillo, the elected head of the pueblo and the highest ranking native in the Spanish bureaucratic system.  The gobernadorcillos, charged with tax supervision as well as extensive executive and judicial responsibility on the local level, were chosen yearly, after endorsement in Manila, by a limited electorate.  For the pueblo of Macabebe the names of the gobernadorcillos can be traced back to 1615.⁴⁴  The central government came to rely on the gobernadorcillos and parish priests to keep Pampanga's pueblos loyal and productive.  That the job was well done is obvious from the record.

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³⁹De Sande, "Official Report," p. 80; Morga, Historical Events, p. 14.
⁴⁰Letter from Governor Alonso Fajardo, Manila, August 15, 1620, to King Philip III, B&R, XIX, 149.
⁴¹Letter from Bishop Domingo de Salazar, June 25, 1588, to King Philip II, B&R, VII, 35-36.  Scattered information, difficult to integrate, on encomiendas in
    Pampanga can also be  found in Letter from Miguel de Loarca, June 1582, to King Philip II, B&R, V, 85-87; "Account of Encomiendas from Governor
    Dasmariñas, May 31, 1591," B&R, VIII, 101-103; "Report of Governor Rodrigo de Bibero, August 18, 1608," B&R, XIV, 245, 252; Juan Grau y Monfalcon,,
    "Memorial informatorio al Rey," B&R, XXVII, 82.
⁴²Juan Francisco de San Antonio, Chronicas de la apostolica provincia de S. Gregorio de religiosos de n.s.p. San Francisco en las islas Philipinas, China,
    Japon . . . (Sampaloc: Juan del Sotillo,  1738-1744), I, 77.
⁴³The pueblo was the old Spanish name for the modern municipality.  For mroe on the municipality system, see chapter 1, footnote 12.
⁴⁴Pelagio Nungaybungay.  "Datos historicos del pueblo Macabebe, Pampanga," LPC, pp. 1-5.