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69 The New Order With the depopulation of the northern islands in 1698, Spanish government in the Marianas settled into a benevolent but heavy-handed despotism on the southern islands. The governor’s title was gobernador político-militar, wherein he combined all civil and military responsibilities in direct authoritarian rule. He issued orders by edicts (bandos) and also acted as judge and chief of police. The legal system of the Marianas, like the Philippines, came under the church’s ecclesiastical law as well as the Spanish civil and criminal code called the Law of the Indies, which had been created originally for the Spanish colonies in the Americas but was amended to apply to the Philippines and the Marianas as well. There was no separation of church and state. Spanish justice in the colonies employed retributive punishment , often severe, including fines, confiscation of property, forced labor, lashing, and executions (the latter carried out only in Manila for Guam convictions ). All this was normal in European colonies worldwide at the time. The highest authority in each district (comprising a parish with a village center) in the Marianas was an alcalde. He was appointed by the governor from among active or retired Spanish or mestizo officers. His main duties were to maintain order in his district , to manage farming, and to raise cattle on estancias (large ranches) on crown lands. In the early 1700s parishes grew to six: Agaña, Agat, Umatac, Merizo, Inarajan, and Pago. Rota was a separate parish but was administered at times together with Umatac, resulting in close ties between those two parishes. Owing to the meagerness of natural resources in the Marianas, large numbers of Spaniards were never attracted to settle in the islands. Consequently the system in the early Spanish colonial period of awarding private encomiendas (royal land grants) to Spaniards, as in the Philippines and other colonies , was not followed in the Marianas. The absence of private encomiendas on Guam protected the remaining Cha­ mor­ ros from massive land alienation, as happened elsewhere to indigenous peoples in the Spanish empire. In addition to retaining much of their ancestral land, Cha­ mor­ ros remained largely free of tribute, taxes, and church tithes under Spanish rule. Cha­ mor­ ro land tenure, however, changed under the Spaniards. The Spaniards introduced the concepts of land ownership by government for defense and other official needs, and by individuals and institutions for private use. Communal ownership by Cha­ mor­ ro families of ancestral properties gradually devolved under Spanish rule into the hands of the new principalía class that replaced the old chamorri families. Spanish male primogeniture inheritance CHAPTER 5 Oasis in the Ocean 1698–1800 70 Chapter 5 and pattido (the division of Cha­ mor­ ro family land, orally or in writing, among all children by parents), superseded the traditional Cha­ mor­ ro matrilineal system. Control of land, however, remained communal for families through the concept of “our land” instead of “my land.” Baptismal Hispanicized family names slowly replaced most indigenous Cha­ mor­ ro names. A small elite class of families called “high people” (manak‘kilo) evolved out of the principalía class. This privileged group lived in the center of Agaña in houses of coral masonry. They adopted Spanish manners and clothing and were educated in the Spanish language, but they continued to speak Cha­ mor­ ro at home. These families gradually came to own the largest portions of private land on Guam. The Catholic Church also became a major landowner as land was bequeathed to it by parishioners. The small Agaña elite, a kind of local “city” gentry of about twelve families, tended to marry Spaniards and become mestizos. They remained socially aloof from the ordinary “low people” (manak‘papa or taotao‘tatte) of predominantly Cha­ mor­ ro origin, who lived mainly in peripheral parts of Agaña and in rural areas. The manak‘papa women tended to marry Filipino soldiers since a high proportion of the Cha­ mor­ ro men had been killed in the Spanish-Cha­ mor­ ro Wars, but the children were raised speaking Cha­ mor­ ro, not the various dialects spoken by their Filipino husbands or the Spanish spoken by the elite. Many ordinary Cha­ mor­ ros never owned property under the Spaniards. These landless manak‘papa worked mostly as hired laborers on the lands of the principalía or on the crown ranches. Manak‘papa who leased land or who managed to retain their ancestral properties worked on small ranch...

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