The encomienda system of local administration would be phased out in the 17th century when the organization of regular provinces was already possible and after it had served to establish the large-scale private landownership of the colonialists.
Under the guise of looking after the spiritual welfare of the people, the encomenderos collected tribute, enforced corvee labor and conscripted native soldiers. They arbitrarily extended the territorial scope of their royal grants, usurped ownership over the lands previously developed by the people and put more land to cultivation by employing corvee labor. It was convenient for the colonialists to convert into agricultural lands the clearing made from the forests as a result of the timber-cutting necessitated by various construction projects.
Public building, private houses, churches, fortifications, roads, bridges and ships for the galleon trade and for military expeditions were built. These entailed the mass conscription of labor for quarrying, timber-cutting, hauling, lumbering, brickmaking and construction work in nearby or faraway places.
The central government was set up in Manila to run the affairs of the colony. Its head was the Spanish governor-general who saw to it that the Filipino people were compelled to pay taxes, render free labor and produce an agricultural surplus sufficient to feed the parasitic colonial officials, friars and soldiery. On the one hand, the governor-general had the soldiery to enforce the colonial order. On the other, he had the collaboration of the friars to keep the people in spiritual and economic enslavement. He enriched himself fast within his short stay in office by being the chief shipper on the Manila-Acapulco trade galleons and by being the dispenser of shipping permits to merchants.
The Manila-Acapulco trade in certain goods coming from China and other neighboring countries yielded high revenues for the central government and the business-minded religious orders from the late 16th century to the early 19th century. It eventually declined and was replaced by the more profitable export of sugar, hemp, copra, tobacco, indigo and others on various foreign ships after the first half of the 18th century and all throughout the 19th century. The large-scale cultivation of these export crops was imposed on the toiling masses to provide more profits for Spanish colonialism.
At the provincial level was the alcalde-mayor as the colonial chieftain. He exercised both executive and judicial powers, collected tributes from the town and enjoyed the privilege of monopolizing commerce in the province and engaged in usury. He manipulated government funds as well as drew loans from the obras pias, the friars’ chest for “charities,” to engage in nefarious commerce and usury.
At the town level was the gobernadorcillo, the top puppet official formally elected by the principalia. The principalia was composed of the incumbent and past gobernadorcillos and the barrio chieftains called the cabezas de barangay. It essentially reflected the assimilation of the old barangay leadership into the Spanish colonial system. Membership in the principalia was qualified by property, literacy, heredity and, of course, puppetry to the foreign tyrants.
The most important regular duties of the gobernadorcillo and the cabezas de barangay under him were the collection of tribute and the enforcement of corvee labor. Their property was answerable for any deficiency in their performance. However, the gobernadorcillo usually made the cabezas de barangay his scapegoat. To avoid bankruptcy and keep themselves in the good graces of their colonial masters, these puppet officials also made sure that the main burden of colonial oppression was borne by the peasant masses.
In the classic fashion of feudalism, the union of church and state suffused the entire colonial structure. All colonial subjects fell under friar control from birth until death. The pulpit and the confessional box were expertly used for colonial propaganda and espionage, respectively. The catechetical schools were used to poison the minds of the children against their own country. The Royal and Pontifical University of Santo Tomas was established as early as 1611 but its enrolment was limited to Spaniards and creoles until the second half of the 19th century. The colonial bureaucracy did not find any need for natives in the higher professions. Among the masses, the friars propagated a bigoted culture that was obsessed with novenas, prayerbooks, hagiographies, scapularies, the passion play, the anti-Muslim moro-moro and pompous religious feasts and processions. The friars had burned and destroyed the artifacts of precolonial culture as the handiwork of the devil and assimilated only those things of the indigenous culture which they could use to facilitate colonial and medieval indoctrination.
In the material base as well as in the superstructure, friar control was total and most oppressive in the towns situated in vast landed estates owned by the religious orders. In the colonial center as well as in every province, the friars exercised vast political powers.