Monday, September 1st, 1997
Her Family
Ignacia Iuco was born in Binondo, sometimes called as Minondoc or Milongo. Her devotionary surname, del Espiritu Santo, was written in her baptismal certificate. She was baptized on March 4, 1663 in Parian, Manila by Fr. Alberto Collares, OP with Catalina Malinang as her godmother.
Her father, Jusepe Iuco was a Chinese while her mother, Maria Geronima was a Filipina or Yndia as the Filipina was called then.
At that time, it was usual to enter the child’s name on the parish record without the family name of the father. According to Jesuit historian, Fr. Horacio Dela Costa, sj, it was customary among the pious parents to endow their children with devotional names at baptism.
Ignacia was a product of two cultures: Chinese and Filipino.
Ignacia had grandparents Bun and Lisi who hailed from Amoy, China. They were among the Chinese who came to the Philippines and brought their technology, industry, self-help and frugality. Most of the Chinese at that time stayed in the different commercial centers called Parian. On the other hand, the converted Chinese as in the case of Jusepe were given a place in Binondo where their children like Ignacia were brought up as Filipinos and of Catholic upbringing.
Coming from a middle class family, Ignacia was the lone survivor from one brother, Santiago, and two sisters, Rafaela Rodriguez and Juana de la Concepcion.
From her mother, Ignacia inherited special Filipino values such as freedom, justice, peace, family solidarity, dignity and honor, womanhood, hospitality, sensitivity and modesty, cleanliness, simple contentment, and a profound sense of spirituality and religion.
From her father, Ignacia inherited prudence, frugality, docility, self-help, resourcefulness, enterprise, and hard work.
The Call
At the age of 21, Ignacia signified her desire not to marry. Through the spiritual direction of Fr. Paul Klein, sj who advised her to undergo the spiritual exercises or retreat of St. Ignatius of Loyola, she was enlightened to perceive that a stronger faith, a greater love was being asked of her.
The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola is the way of preparing and disposing the soul to rid itself of all inordinate attachments, and after their removal, of seeking and finding the will of God.
What St. Ignatius aimed at in his Spiritual Exercises was faithfully achieved by Ignacia, with God’s special grace and Fr. Klein’s competent guidance. Ignacia disposed her soul to the Spirit in a radical openness (bukas-loob and bukas-palad) to the future and detachment from her will and that of her parents, and thus properly disposed, she sought the will of God, recognized it. and was ready to obey and follow it. It was during this retreat that “God inspired her to remain to serve His majesty.”
It is worthy to note that during her time, there were two existing convents in Manila, that of:
Beaterio de Santa Catalina (or Beaterio de Santo Domingo): which clearly defined its membership, i.e., beatas must be Spanish women.
Santa Clara: they did not give religious profession to native aspirants. The reason was that natives were considered too young in the faith and they were not mature enough to embrace the rigors of religious life.
In such a situation, Ignacia heard her call from God, to live by the sweat of her brow in the service of the Divine Majesty. She left everything, all the conveniences her family could offer her. With only a pair of scissors and needle, she withdrew to the house that was to become the Mother House of the Congregation and started her new life.
The Congregation
Her fame of the exemplary life led numerous native girls and mestizas from various towns to join her. Among her first followers were her niece Christina Gonzales, and two others, Theodora de Jesus and Ana Margarita.
They were more known as the Beatas de la Compania de Jesus because the beatas frequented the St. Ignatius Church of the Jesuits where they received the Sacraments daily. When they numbered thirty-three, Mother Ignacia suspended the admission of more members because the house was small and the group did not have much resources for the maintenance of many. They lived in great poverty, living almost only on a little rice and a little salt which they begged from Fr. Andres Serrano, rector of the College of St. Joseph.
Mother Ignacia used to wear a halter on her neck and the others dragged her through the house, bearing cross on her shoulders; sometimes she prostrated on the ground for the others to step on her; she extended her arm in the form of a cross under the heat of the noonday sun.
The others imitated her. Every night, they used the discipline, slept very little, but spent most of the night in prayer. For scarcity of means for light, they were often in darkness. They used to have supper while there was still daylight, or else, on moonlight nights they supped at the batalan, on banana leaves, having no plates.
Because of these hardships and the rigorous penance they practiced, most of the beatas fell ill. They had to solicit alms as far as Pampanga where they were given much: two bancas and the contents thereof. Such was the fragrance that permeated the city by their way of life, prayer, frequency of the sacraments and penance that not only the Spaniards but also the Mestizos and natives gave them donations. With these donations and the income from their sewing, they were able to enlarge the house and maintain more than 30 beatas.
The Silent Protest
In an era when women of her land were meant to be confined within the limits of the home, Ignacia bravely left for a life with an uncertain future. With nothing but an abiding trust and faith in God and an intense love for souls, she formed an association which accepted the challenge of her times.
Mother Ignacia has a special place among the great Filipinos in history. She was humble, pious and patient person who possessed remarkable courage and willpower to help womanhood by founding a much-needed religious congregation for non-Spanish women. Religious life and the best that education could offer in her times were only for the Spaniards. But she was called to stand side-by-side with them to make the same openings for the natives. In other words, she was called to make a silent protest against the ills of the times and to contribute to the good that was already present in the building of the kingdom of God.
Undaunted by racial bias, which prevailed then not only in society and government, but also in the Church, Ignacia decided in 1684 “To form a religious community to which not only mestizas like herself but pure-blooded native Filipinas would be eligible for admission.”
Mother Ignacia’s founding of a community of Indio women might therefore be interpreted as a silent protest against her race even in matters spiritual. It is also proved that the inferior race of Filipino islanders was capable of achieving what was then considered beyond the endowment.
Her Death
Mother Ignacia died on September 10,1748 right after receiving communion at St. Ignatius Church in Intramuros. Her funeral took place in the same Church where she was honored by the presence of ecclesiastics and Spaniards who bore her coffin. Her spiritual daughters now known as the RVM (Religious of the Virgin Mary) Sisters resolved to recover her remains so that as early as 1959, excavations in what was known to be the site of the Jesuit Church were made. Unfortunately, until today, no remains of Mother Ignacia were found.
The whole Congregation, with the help of their lay friends and the Mother Ignacia Club and Mother Ignacia Movement, however, continues to hope and pray for the beatification of Mother Ignacia.
But beatification is not an easy process. It needs a lot of research, hard work and prayers. It is the formal and official act of the Church of pronouncing publicly that a person is worthy of the title “Blessed”. This is done after a process of proper inquiry into the heroic sanctity of a deceased person who is said to have led a truly holy and exemplary life.
The National Movement for the Cause was launched on May 16,1988 at the Manila Metropolitan Cathedral. On January 25,1989, the CBCP (Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines) after findings of an Ad Hoc Committee formally endorse the Cause for the Beatification of Mother Ignacia.
Posted in In the Basement | 1 Comment »
Thursday, October 17th, 1996
To look back into the historical role of women in my country is to regain moral strength and to reclaim a sense of self strong enough to face a world where women and girls struggle endlessly for justice, equality and personhood. Because to relive women’s history is to unwrap the added distortions to the total image of Filipino women as it has been shaped in the past and to discuss about women’s fate is to discuss about the moral situation of our country as women’s conditions are intimately intertwined with the society; it is, therefore, necessary to look back into the past. And then perhaps when we get there, we will be able to appreciate how women literally used to be publicly regarded in the past.
We might even feel one with them as we see how history fragmented them from such a role that hindered their development as fully Filipino women by heart. For indeed, popular consciousness on women’s high status has been so deeply inculcated in our hearts though such valuing of women has long been elided in concrete context. And because we, Filipinos, though sentimental about our past, seem to be a people without a sense of history so that we tied ourselves to what we thought were Filipino women before and failed to assess and act on what has happened to them in the present. There is no need, however, to discuss on the history of the Philippines, even to take all the significant points when women made history. I only want to cite some historical roles played by certain exceptional, courageous and assertive women in our past most especially those who attempted to contribute in the gradual moral recovery of our country.
A. Pre-Colonial
Geronima T. Pecson, civil libertarian, writer and scholar, in one of her studies noted that: “Centuries before Magellan arrived in the Philippines in 1521, foreign visitors, mostly traders, had written accounts of their observations which showed that the Filipino women enjoyed high social esteem and leadership. There were even woman rulers …” And since Filipinos lived in small scattered communities called barangays which were based on kinship ties and were relying for sustenance mainly on subsistence agriculture, they had no surplus to build temples or palaces for self-glorification.
There was no need to create relations of dependence nor of exploitation so that women had as much role and rights as men except in the case of a defeat in tribal wars when men and women could be bought and sold as slaves. Women were priestesses who held communities united and medics and consolers of souls. The concept of private property then only came later along with the Spanish conquistadores, hence, the concept of woman as property of a man had no historical basis for existing.
Filipino women, therefore, originally used to be women enjoying equal status with men, respected for their human rights and heard for their maternal wisdom. This was where the concept of putting woman on a pedestal as an object of veneration and adulation took its roots.
B. Colonial
When the Spanish intruders came to the Philippines in the 16th century, they demanded the Filipinos to produce surplus by forced labor and paying tribute to the government or dues to the churches to institutionalize the socio-economic structure of the country. The women, then, had naturally become part of such painful struggle and disturbance that relations of dependence and exploitation were created.
If the Filipinos had really come to accept Spanish rule willingly, it was only through the influence of the religious, whom they saw as their defenders against injustice. But even if Spanish colonization contributed much to our being the only Christian country in Asia, it will always remain the primordial culprit for the distorted image and undervalued role of Filipino women today because it was during the Spanish conquest that the transformation of women from highly-respected equals of men to objects of subjugation began.
When the Spanish masters brought in their institutions and transplanted them on native soil, the social being of women was invested with new meanings, new dimensions; or rather, these were imposed on them, and their social consciousness - that is to say, their perception of themselves and of the world changed accordingly. The image of the Filipino woman then became tied to the house whose only duty was to take care of the husband and the children. It also became a father’s good girl, a husband’s subject, and a long-suffering woman with sealed lips and silent sobs and has no right to participate political undertakings.
There were, however, some women who, perhaps unconsciously, refused to accept such imposed image and role like our own heroines Gabriela Silang who after her husband’s death took over the leadership of a rebellion in Ilocos, Gregoria de Jesus who was the wife of Andres Bonifacio and was a full-pledged member of the Katipunan, Trinidad Tecson of the anti-colonial Women’s Masonic Lodge and the other women of the Katipunan and of Malolos, Bulacan who actively campaigned for women’s right to higher formal education.
There was also Madre Ignacia del Espiritu Santo who initiated the retreat movement among Filipino women, thus allowed the Filipino women to reclaim their dignity as children of God. In 1684 - at the very height of the disturbances caused by the exile of Archbishop Pardo - a young Ignacia, a mestiza of Binondo, decided to form a religious community to which not only mestizas like herself but pure-blooded native Filipinas would be eligible for admission. Her piety and penance attracted many so that the Congregation of the Religious of the Virgin Mary was born.
These women led in the maturity of Christian faith in the country. Theirs is a story of women who find bread for their table. Theirs is a story of women who asserted the spiritual strength and depthness of the Yndios whom the Spaniards underrated. Theirs is a story of women with a smile on their lips and prayers in their hearts, ever willing to plunge into the missions of the unexplored Mindanao where they were first called to go.
Today, the RVM Sisters are women for and with others making their feminine genius available not only in the Philippines but in other countries as well. They are Filipino religious women who from a long history of struggle against colonizers strive to be faithful in proclaiming Christ - the one who came to the world so that men and women may have the fullness of life.
Though Filipino women were likewise excluded from full participation in religious life, as has been seen in the case of the convent of Santa Clara, they proved to be perhaps more persistent than the men. Though juridically recognized formal religious life remained closed to them until the end of the Patronato Real, they managed to create what was its equivalent in all but name and law in the beaterio movement, beginning in the late seventeenth century.
The first beaterio envisioned was that of Santo Domingo, originally intended to be for both Spanish and Filipino women. But by the time the obstacles put in its way were finally overcome and it was founded in 1696, its membership was limited to Spanish women. In the meantime, a strictly Indio and mestizo beaterio had come into being, under Jesuit encouragement, though not juridically connected with the Society of Jesus.
C. Modern
The distressing picture in the Philippines where women are seen prominently is exploitation due to the rising flesh industry, export of women as domestics and entertainers, mail-order brides. In the struggle to survive the unending economic crises, Filipino women, with the burden of housekeeping on their shoulders, join the labor force but are paid so little.
There seems to be no room for their intelligence and creativity because society dictates that they should not work but should get married, have children, and stay at home. Hence, the number of women occupying leadership roles in the government is very minimal.
Filipino women experience regular and daily discrimination - the multiple burdens they carry as they have to be confined to the home; the despair of battered wives who cannot separate from their husbands “because of their children” or because of social disapproval and cultural notion of dependence on men; sexual harassment on the job; gang rape in prison cells; prostituted little girls. But their innate common sense, wisdom, inner strength and courage kept on breaking the bonds of their confinement, especially during the times of emergency and need.
These qualities which Filipino women used to enjoy as a status in the Pre-Colonial society are not actually shared by other women from other parts of the world at that time and despite of the imposed identities as women, they still by nature flow in their bloodstreams. No culture can totally efface such qualities from them because they are all given to them by God.
Posted in In the Basement | No Comments »
Thursday, October 17th, 1996
Today’s Philippine media remains oppressive and vindictive about women. It reinforces the traditional image of women as either meticulous or martyred housewives, mothers or domestics, girlfriend, date, mistress and sex object.
Women are portrayed in significantly more home roles than men. The next most dominant role for women outside the home is that of an anonymous employer or of other stereotyped images of women as less important, less intelligent, of less consequence and weaker than men. Filipino women, then, are portrayed as inconsequential, passive, male-dependent, anchored to home and family, concerned mainly about their looks and intent on living a leisurely life. In other words, Filipino women are irrelevant because their collective consciousness of such plight is not yet fully developed.
But the plight of the Filipino women is a paradigm of contradictions in Philippine society. Their lives speak of the struggling of their nation as a whole. Their stories are real and disturbing and with Filipino women naturally gifted with internal courage and strength listening from their sisters, can they afford to turn a deaf ear? Certainly not.
From the roots of babaylanes gifted with both psycho-spiritual healing and political counsel, the women revolutionaries and fighters who faced the full force of Spanish conquerors, and American and Japanese colonizers, to the women professionals and religious who joined to march at EDSA against the dictatorship of Marcos, women’s movement was born and has slowly taken a respectable place in the Philippine society. It has come a long way from the lineage of centuries-old revolutionary struggle to a recent feminist direction on women liberation. And its existence means that Filipino women truly understand gender oppression, that they are after all a relevant race. Hence, Philippine society will definitely be better off if women take the lead in moral recovery.
Some of the women organizations worth mentioning are: the Malayang Kilusan ng Bagong Kababaihan (MAKIBAKA), a radical group led by students during the early seventies which pioneered in the women’s fight for national liberation and the development of a women’s consciousness; the Samahang Progresibo ng mga Kababaihang Pilipino (SPKP) which reportedly reached a membership of 8,000 women and which gradually gave way to the Katipuinan ng Bagong Pilipina (KBP), another group of women which collaborated on certain projects with the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women; and the PILIPINA, a mass-based feminist organization established in 1981 and has founded other organizations with varying concerns such as BUNSO, ANAK, MEDIAWATCH Collective, the Asian Women’s Research and Action Network (AWRAN), the Philippine Women’s Research Collective (PWRC), Women’s Action Network for Development(WAND), Legislative Advocates for Women (LAW), Sama-samang Inisyatiba ng Kababaihan sa Pagbabago ng Batas at Lipunan (SIBOL), the Coalition for Peace and the Lakas ng Sambayanan.
The General Assembly Binding Women for Reforms, Integrity, Equality, Liberty and Action (GABRIELA), too, is another coalition of various multi-sectoral groups which expanded since it was formally established in March 1984. It went nationwide and even got to affiliate with it the Alliance for the International Decade of Women, which had 45 member organizations down South, including Women’s Alliance for True Change (WATCH) and peasant-based community organizations.
Another organization that deserves special mention is the Women’s Desk of the Concerned Artists of the Philippines which is the only organization of its kind. It was able to strongly project itself in public from the very start as a group of feminists composed of artists and media women committed to consciousness-raising through popular media.
Over the years, these women organizations raised the class question in feminism and affirmed the need to restructure society and restructure gender, not just one or the other. It has also caused gender advocacy to move out of Manila into the different regions and provinces, out of schools and universities into the rough and tumble of daily life, hence, the growth of women’s crisis centers, women’s micro-enterprises and community programs to combat domestic violence. But despite all these, certain questions arise and shaken the prospect of real and lasting organization and mobilization of a unified women’s movement in the Philippines: What should be their common goal and commitment? What parameters should be developed and bottom lines set? What unities should bind women organizations and what differences distinguish one from the others? Where does sisterhood end? How should women address the society about equal rights that feminism is not for women only?
A feminist direction has crystallized and is “fast blossoming into a garden of a hundred flowers” because the Filipino women have finally come into a certain degree of consciousness on the massive social patterns of women’s oppression. The long and deafening silence of ethics regarding violence against women is at least coming to an end.
With the women’s movement, women turn their private troubles into public issues by telling their own stories about life. In the process of listening to one another, they are able to discover common themes that bind them more intimately as sisters. And by means of naming their own experiences, and asserting their own worth and dignity as persons, they are able to engage in moral, and not just therapeutic, activity.
Filipino women now begin to question the government, the law and the Church about how women should be regarded. For indeed, women’s movement is deeply ethical in nature because it often relies upon concepts from moral traditions. And since the only material for feminist ethics at this point of time are the concrete experiences and stories about and by women, honesty becomes a primary principle. Only then can feminist ethicists attend to them - analyzing the roots of oppression, rank orderings of value theories and making ethical decisions. But lack of ego or sense of self esteem to remain a major hindrance to women’s autonomy in the ethical field, hence, the necessity for an authentic women empowerment.
Posted in In the Basement | No Comments »