“The Spirit of Don Papa Lives on in Us All”: Fanaticism and the US Occupation of the Philippines

Abstract

“The Spirit of Don Papa Lives on in Us All”: Fanaticism and the US Occupation of the Philippines Jeffrey Wheatley It is a strange feeling for a historian of American religion to come face to face with a person they study. In this case, the face belongs to Papa Isio, a Filipino insurgent who lived on the island of Negros Occidental in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Papa Isio marshaled elements of Catholic and indigenous Filipino religion in his quest for political power and resistance to the Spanish and US occupations of the Philippines. He claimed for himself a number of impressive titles, including Son of God and the rightful Catholic pontiff. As such, he promised to usher in a new era of political and spiritual independence for the archipelago. When I came across his face recently, he had a new title. He is now “Don Papa” of Don Papa Rum. The rum’s branding, featuring an artistic rendering of him, emphasizes how Papa Isio embodies Negros Occidental and its rich sugarcane, now available to consumers across the world in its distilled form. The Bleeding Heart Rum Company, quoting the International Wines and Spirits Record, has recently touted the rum as the “fastest-growing super premium rum brand in the United States.”1 “The spirit of Don Papa lives on in us all,” [End Page 102] the bottle tells us. What this “spirit” entails, however, has been historically contentious. Whereas Papa Isio is now marketed as a desirable, familiar commodity, he was once, from the perspective of many US Americans and some Filipino officials, a dangerous fanatic. This essay explores representations of Papa Isio’s religio-political commitments. It does so by examining depictions of Papa Isio as a fanatic in US media, scholarship, and governmental reports. It concludes by returning to the Papa Isio portrayed on Don Papa Rum. The amelioration of Papa Isio in the form of a Filipino-produced and globally available commodity provides suggestions on how to—and how not to—think about religious fanatics. This essay serves as a short reflection on a challenge in my broader research, which examines the politics of the concept of fanaticism in American religious history. How might we study fanaticism in a way that goes beyond the dichotomy of fanatics as, on the one hand, religiously delusional and mindlessly violent and, on the other hand, more sanitized interpretations that strip them of their more radical and enchanted religious beliefs and rituals? Many US Americans in the early twentieth century viewed Papa Isio’s “spirit” as more threatening than Don Papa Rum’s quirky, prideful artistic representation of him suggests. He was, instead, a subversive fanatic who threatened the US occupation. In the early twentieth century, anthropologists, military officials, and the US public all took an interest in religiously-inspired rebels like Papa Isio. American media investigated the sources of fanatics’ authority, their rituals, and their material objects. Rarely providing simple, neutral description, these texts exoticized those so-called fanatics and sought, ultimately, to find ways to better control and even eliminate them. His “spirit” or, more precisely, his claim to have spiritual powers, was a source of consternation for US Americans. Eventually imprisoned after surrendering, Papa Isio died in a colonial prison. Dionisio Magbuela, as Papa Isio was known at the time, was a laborer early in his life. He was forced to move multiple times and frequently came into conflict with wealthier landowners. By the late 1890s, he had become a political, religious, and military authority figure on the island. Dionisio was operating within the indigenous tradition of babaylanism on the island. Babaylans were shaman-like religious authority figures, with ritual expertise, prophetic powers, and special authority. Babaylans were traditionally women. In the 1890s, babaylans were increasingly men who embraced more traditional expectations of masculinity. This shift in religious authority was perhaps because Filipinos were increasingly utilizing the powers of babaylanism for [End Page 103] war against occupiers.2 Magbuela began to go by “Papa” Isio to signal that he was the rightful Pope of the Philippines. At that point, he began to incorporate many of the ceremonies and powers attributed to the traditional Roman Catholic...