Aimee Lorraine C.

Capinpuyan HI 165 B

2/27/2012

Maguinoo: Relatedness Beyond Consanguinity in the Caraballo Mountains What makes a family? Some might say a family is a group of people related by blood or marriage. In the Philippines, however, kinship ties can transcend easily the boundaries of biology and lineage. Social sciences writer Mark Dizon published an article saying, Among the Aeta and indios, friendship and kinship were related and in fact inseparable. Dizons article, entitled Social and Spiritual Kinship in Early Eighteenth-Century Missions on the Caraballo Mountains, explores the construction and effects of kinship ties among the people living in the Caraballo Mountains. Dizon bases his study from records left by missionaries working in Luzon. He writes that in the Caraballo area (Nueva Vizcaya, Nueva Ecija, Aurora), natives placed great importance on the family, and family was something that natives made a conscious effort to establish through maguinoo. (Here Dizon uses the word to denote the collective set of practices and beliefs by which people aim to create relatedness, instead of the social class.) In maguinoo, friendship equated to kinship. Locals built kinship with non-relatives through everyday affective actions such as visiting each others families, asking about the well beings of the family members, sharing food, and living together. Dizon also stresses the importance of kinship idioms in maguinoo. Relatedness could be demonstrated by referring to ones friend as a sibling, uncle, aunt, cousin, or parent. Dizon even says that the spread of Catholicism in the Caraballo Mountains was aided by the missionaries usage of kinship idioms like our Mother Church, or Father and Brother, in reference to the missionaries. Even though these terms were not created by the Church to denote actual familial ties, they helped the missionaries assimilate into rural societies. I find it interesting that something as simple as how the missionaries chose their words, or how the natives interpreted those words, could make such a big impact on the course of history. What if the Catholic Church had chosen to use different idioms? Perhaps the missionaries would have been met with more resistance in the local communities. However, we know that wasnt the case. Dizon says that the image of a lone missionary wandering into a village was not the case in the Caraballo Mountains. Missionaries usually had an alreadyChristianized local to serve as a guide for them. In fact, the article makes it sound like the natives were very cordial to the missionaries, once a kinship had been successfully established through maguinoo. Dizon says that missionaries could take part in maguinoo through the practices described above. He mentions a Father Alejandro Cacho, a priest who was tasked with the conversion of a village called Buhay, who writes, The way [to resolve conflicts] seems and is ridiculous. I stroke their beards, I hug them,

and, although faked, I laugh with them, and other playthings that they hold in high esteem. They make me poorer since everything needs to be fixed with tobacco, glass beads, and food and putting on a brave face. As seen above, maguinoo was not race exclusive, and on a broader scale, it was not even limited to the world of the living. Natives felt such strong spiritual kinship with their dead that they believed the intervention of the dead to be the key to the well-being of the kin group. However, as superimpositions of Christianity and native religions surfaced, missionaries banned converts from practicing their old religion. To the natives, this meant abandoning beliefs in the anitos and spirits, who were supposed to be their dead relatives. Thus, some natives opposed conversion, as this entailed breaking the spiritual kinship they had with the deceased. Some natives even declined conversion with the knowledge that they would go to hell, because missionaries had led them to believe that this was where their unbaptized ancestors resided. Whether or not those natives actually understood the concept of Catholic hell is beside the point. What the above practice illustrates is the depth of the bond that the living believed to have with their dead. This, for me, is a very striking characteristic, as it shows how even death cannot break kinship. Moreover, I find that the importance of the maguinoo system manifests itself in modern times. Although the article does not discuss the origins of maguinoo, we know for sure that it existed even before the coming of the Spaniards. Hence, amidst all the complaints about Filipinos lacking a national identity, maguinoo is something we can chalk up to being truly ours. It paints the picture of the values we Filipinos pride ourselves in respect, hospitability, and kindness. Kinship idioms are still being used; we address strangers as ate or kuya. We call our friends mare or pare. Common maguinoo practices, such as checking up on each others families and sharing meals, are still very much alive today. What this means for me is that if we were taught the core of our society is the family, then maguinoo, by blurring the boundaries between friends and relatives, is what ties all families to each other. Demonstrated in the simple ways Father Alejandro called ridiculous, maguinoo still as a reminder that we are all, in some way, connected.