UCLA

Spanish colonialism significantly altered the landscape of the Philippines from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century, most notably though missionization and converting locals to Catholicism. Dominant historical narratives assert that Filipinos, like many other colonized or Hispanized peoples, resisted colonialism through either fighting or retreating, which neglects to acknowledge the agency of colonized peoples, and the ways in which local traditions were maintained through time. While many lowland Philippine polities did convert and join the Spanish Catholic Church, in the Bikol region, Bikolanos rapidly converted to Catholicism and established some of the earliest Catholic churches in the country. In this dissertation, I explore how Bikolanos created places on the landscape in which they could maintain and perform their new hybridized identities as they adapted in their newly colonized world. Bikolano Catholic religiosity persisted over the years, most visibly through their devotion to Catholic icons like Our Lady of Pe�afrancia who is the focus of today’s largest Marian fiesta in Asia. This use of religious iconography suggests a unique response to the Spanish, in which Bikolanos utilized Marian devotion to maintain their changing Catholic/Bikol identity and their autonomy over the landscape. I identify and discuss places on the Bikol landscape that are essential components of the Pe�afrancia devotion, and I explore how and why these places became sites of meaning, memory, and importance for Bikolanos. I argue that although these places are intended for Catholic rituals, they are intentionally localized to maintain distinctly Bikol and Filipino Catholic attributes. This subversive strategy permitted Spanish-period Bikolanos to stay “Bikol” while also becoming Catholic, which is a strategy still utilized today as Bikolanos maintain their fervent traditional devotion in a rapidly modernizing world. My analysis and discussion show that places – specifically Catholic churches, but also other smaller spaces – are markers on the landscape that dictate how local Catholic devotion is practiced while also ensuring that memory and meaning persist across centuries. This research is an important step in recent trends to explore nuanced responses to Spanish colonialism in the Philippines and the ways Filipinos used to landscape to express and maintain identity through difficult times.