{"id":3604,"date":"2016-01-15T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2016-01-15T12:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/multiracial.com\/site\/?p=3604"},"modified":"2018-04-05T19:21:11","modified_gmt":"2018-04-05T19:21:11","slug":"whos-hispanic-whos-filipino","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/2016\/01\/15\/whos-hispanic-whos-filipino\/","title":{"rendered":"Who’s Hispanic? Who’s Filipino?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who’s Hispanic? Who’s Filipino?<\/h4>\n

by Emily Monroy<\/a><\/em>
\nJanuary 15, 2016<\/h4>\n
\"Emily<\/a>

Emily Monroy<\/p><\/div>\n

A few years ago, I wrote an essay called \u2018Who\u2019s White<\/a>?\u2019 I asked this question about several individuals, both famous (controversial shooter George Zimmerman) and not-so-famous (two boyfriends of mine). I ended the piece by discussing whether my daughter, who is part American Indian on her father\u2019s side (he\u2019s from Nicaragua), would be considered White or not. Conclusion: maybe, maybe not.<\/p>\n

Since then, a few new developments have occurred. Members of a Scandinavian club whose events I occasionally attend seem to think that my daughter looks Italian \u2013 which doesn\u2019t surprise me because both her father and I have some ancestry from Italy. I wasn\u2019t so prepared, though, when at least two people asked me if my daughter was part-Filipino (both were Filipino themselves, incidentally). In one case, the question came after I mentioned that my daughter had a Spanish last name from her father: having been under Spain\u2019s rule for more than 300 years, most surnames in the Philippines are Spanish. One of my daughter\u2019s surnames is Ramos, the name of the Philippines\u2019 12th<\/sup> president. In the other instance, a man working at my daughter\u2019s school thought she might be Filipino because of her eyes.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll concede that my daughter could probably \u2018pass\u2019 as a Filipino mestiza (Spanish word used in Latin America and the Philippines for a woman of mixed racial origins). These exchanges also got me asking my own questions: How Spanish are Filipinos? Are they an Asian people who just happen to have Spanish names? Or are they, like most of the inhabitants of Spanish America, all mestizo?<\/p>\n

Several schools of thought exist on the subject. The first is that the majority of Filipinos do have a Spanish ancestor somewhere down the line, evidenced, they say, by the fact they have a Spanish last name. For example, my father\u2019s housekeeper informed him that she was indeed part-Spanish because her family name was Narvaez (my father was sceptical, by the way). One Spanish-language book on the history of the Philippines says that millions of Spaniards fathered mestizo children in their East Asian colony.<\/p>\n

In contrast, others deny that Spaniards or Europeans in general had much genetic impact on the Philippines and its people. A website run by a Filipino Canadian humorously states, \u2018Dear Filipinos, Stop Claiming that You\u2019re Spanish! You (probably) aren\u2019t.\u2019 He goes on to say, \u2018Mating was not a prerequisite to adopt the Spanish name \u2013 merely converting to Christianity and swearing allegiance to Spain was enough.\u2019 Some sources explain that Filipino natives were assigned Spanish names for census purposes (of interest, some native surnames, such as \u2018Bondoc,\u2019 remain; as well, Chinese family names are found among individuals descended from immigrants from China to the Philippines).<\/p>\n

Without taking either school of thought as gospel, I decided to investigate their claims myself. My semi-educated guess was that Filipinos would have more European ancestry than other Asians but less than Latin Americans, for example. My research bore my predictions out. One study in the American Journal of Human Genetics from the early 2000s found that 3.6% of Filipino males possessed a Y chromosome (a chromosome passed from father to son) of European origin. (This figure would not cover people like my Filipino mestizo ex-boyfriend, who could \u2018pass\u2019 for Hispanic or even Italian but probably didn\u2019t have a European Y chromosome because his Spanish ancestry came from his mother\u2019s rather than father\u2019s side.) According to a more recent study from the journal Genetics, Filipinos demonstrated a \u2018modest amount of European genetic ancestry,\u2019 while another report by one of the authors estimated that at least 5% of Filipinos\u2019 genetic background came from Europe. Both those studies showed that Filipinos were more European than were other East Asians.<\/p>\n

In contrast, Latin Americans\u2019 genetic ancestry is believed to be about 50% European1<\/sup>, with the rest being mainly Native American and African. A study from Colombia similarly found that about 94% of Y chromosomes in men there came from Europe, even if most of these men\u2019s mtDNA (which is passed from women to children of both sexes) was Native. Hence, it appears that Hispanics have approximately 10 times more European ancestry than do Filipinos, despite their homelands both being under Spanish control at one point or another.<\/p>\n

The reason for this discrepancy lies in the fact that far fewer Spaniards ventured to the Philippines than to the Americas; thus a large mestizo population did not have the chance to emerge in the former. The result of this discrepancy is that Latin America (other than Brazil, which was conquered by Portugal) basically became a cultural outpost of Spain whereas the Philippines did not. To provide one example, although indigenous Filipino languages contain a considerable number of Spanish words, Castilian Spanish as a whole did not take hold in the Philippines as a mother tongue other than in the small mestizo community \u2013 and not even among all of them; my ex-boyfriend, for instance, only learned (some) Spanish in school. Nor was Spanish particularly used as a lingua franca, a role filled to some extent by the English brought by the Americans who took over the Philippines from Spain in the late 1800s.<\/p>\n

What has the outcome been of Spain\u2019s general lack of influence in the Philippines? On the positive side, had the Spanish language become widespread there, Filipinos might not have learned English so well \u2013 well enough that many of them are able to find work as nurses, nannies and other positions in much of the Anglo-Saxon world, including Canada. Of interest, Puerto Rico, another former Spanish colony that was eventually ceded to the United States, never adopted English widely even as a second language, as surveys on bilingualism among Puerto Ricans have shown. On the negative side, some Filipinos feel somewhat disconnected from the \u2013albeit limited \u2013 role Spain and its heritage have played in their country. There is a demand, for instance, to reinstate the Spanish language as a compulsory subject in Philippine schools and universities. In my opinion, this might not be a bad idea: while perhaps of lesser utility than English, Spanish is still a useful language to know.<\/p>\n

So in the end, I\u2019ll hand it to the \u2018Stop claiming that you\u2019re Spanish\u2019 website author that most Filipinos do not have Spanish or other European ancestry. But to say that Spain had no influence, either genetic or cultural, on the Philippines does not give the full picture either.<\/p>\n

\u00a0——————————-<\/sup><\/p>\n

1<\/sup> \u2018Admixture, Cultural and Biological,\u2019 Razib Khan (http:\/\/www.unz.com\/gnxp\/admixture-cultural-and-biological\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\n

Emily Monroy is a professional translator and is of Irish, Italian and Norwegian descent. Born in Windsor, Ontario, she now resides in Toronto. Her articles have appeared in several publications, including <\/strong>Interracial Voice<\/u><\/a>, Cats Canada, and <\/strong>Urban Mozaik<\/u><\/a>. She welcomes feedback on her articles. You can contact Emily <\/strong>here<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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