The Filipino Bureaucrats

Gobernadorcillo On the municipal level, the “little governor” or

gobernadorcillo (later replaced by the capitan municipal in 1894), headed the pueblo or municipio.

Any Filipino or Chinese mestizo, 25 years old, literate in oral and written Spanish, and who had been a cabeza de barangay (barrio administrator) for four years, could be a gobernadorcillo

This was the highest government position a Filipino could attain during the Spanish regime, and together with the parish priest, his role was considered highly significant in a town.

• Among his multifarious administrative duties was the preparation of the padron (tribute list), recruitment and distribution of men for the draft labor, communal public work (as in the construction and repair of minor bridges) and the quinto (military conscription), postal clerk, judge in civil suits involving P44.00 or less.

Indeed, he intervened in all administrative cases pertaining to his own: lands, justice, finance, and the armed forces.

He was assisted by three supernumeraries or inspectors (tenientes de justicia) who supervised matters such as boundaries of cultivated fields (sementeras), branding of livestock (ganado) and police (policia); constables (alguaciles); four tenientes segundos; lieutenants of disticts (tenientes del barrio), and a secretary (directorcillo).

Cabeza De Barangay Tax and contributions collector for the

gobernadorcillo.

They were exempted from taxation.

It was Philip II who conferred upon the barangay chief the title of cabezas de barangay to “show them good treatment and entrust them, in our name, with the government of the Indians, of whom they were formerly the lords”

Like the gobernadorcillo, he was responsible for peace and order in his own barrio and recruited polistas for communal public works

The Manual del cabeza de barangay (1874) required literacy in Spanish, good moral character, and property-ownership as qualifications for cabezas who served for three year terms

By the mid-nineteenth century, cabezas who had served for twenty-five years were exempted from forced labor