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Who were the first Filipinos?
Believe it or not, they were Spaniards.
During the Spanish occupation of the Philippines, "Filipinos" was a term used for Spaniards
born in the Philippines. They were also known as creole or insulares.
Aside from the creole, there were other inhabitants of the Philippines. The native inhabitants
were called indios while the Spaniards who came from Spain were known as peninsulares.
Intermarriages between these two classes gave birth to the Spanish mestizo. The Chinese
merchants who also settled in the Philippines and intermarried gave us the mestizo sangley or the
Chinese mestizo.
So when did the Filipino identity as we know it emerge from these groups?
Various historians say there may have been event triggers such as the death of the priests
Gomez Burgos and Zamora, the growing economic progress at the time, and the enduring resentment
of the indios that may have contributed to the desire for a national identity.
In his book, diplomat Leon Ma. Guerrero calls Jose Rizal The First Filipino, because Rizal
was the first to desire to unite the archipelago and, in Guerrero's words "envision a compact
and homogenous society of all the old tribal communities." Historian Ambeth R. Ocampo
adds that Rizal called his countrymen Filipinos even at a time when the term was yet used
mostly for creoles.
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