READING the original sources of history has many advantages. I personally find them extremely entertaining to read, the amount of things the reader can learn is amazing and, most importantly, it allows you to keep away from your mind false ideas that are repeated over and over again. One of those ideas is that “Filipinos were easy to convert.” Well, yes and no. It depends.
I would like to illustrate this with the mission that the Dominicans opened for a brief period in the last frontier of the Cordilleras: Apayao. Their inhabitants were and are today the Isneg and in the Spanish chronicles they are called “Mandayas.” After a lot of patience and effort, they finally accepted a priest and conversions were coming smoothly until they revolted in 1639. What happened? How was a quiet mission in the mountains suddenly dismantled? The inhabitants ran amok and for very good reasons.
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