Finding the Philippines in Mexico
The Yucatan Peninsula (Photo by Cesar Polvorosa, Jr.)
I turned and walked back toward the pavilion with a pleasant, expectant air, where my family, our friends, and the bride’s relatives were celebrating. I overheard the Mexican staff and local guests speaking Spanish, and I could follow the gist of their conversations. Though I understood Spanish far better than I could speak it, the body language, humor, and warmth felt instinctively familiar. What I had long encountered in books and historical studies suddenly became tangible and alive. The connection was no longer abstract history. It had entered the realm of lived experience.
Historical Connections
What I felt was not merely coincidence or the lingering traces of Spanish colonialism. It was the realization that Mexico and the Philippines were once deeply connected worlds—linked for centuries through trade, religion, migration, and empire. In many ways, the Philippines and Mexico continue to share historical experiences, cultural instincts, and even social realities that remain visible today.
For many Filipinos, Mexico remains a distant country associated with mariachi music, tacos, and colorful fiestas. Yet historically, Mexico may be one of the most important foreign influences in the shaping of Filipino identity. Long before modern globalization, before airplanes and the internet, the Manila–Acapulco galleon trade connected the Philippines to New Spain—colonial Mexico—for 250 years, from 1565 to 1815. During this period, Manila and Acapulco were not peripheral outposts but twin gateways of a trans-Pacific world that carried silver, spices, textiles, culture, porcelain, and ideas across oceans.
The Philippines was governed not directly from Madrid for much of the Spanish colonial period but through the Viceroyalty of New Spain in Mexico City. Mexican soldiers, priests, merchants, and administrators arrived in the islands, while Filipinos traveled to Mexico aboard the galleons. Cultural exchanges flowed continuously across the Pacific. This helps explain why many Filipino traditions often feel closer to Latin America than to East Asia.
The similarities remain striking even today. Deep Catholic religiosity, elaborate town fiestas, extended family structures, emotional warmth, popular devotions, and even aspects of language and cuisine reveal shared historical experiences. Filipino dishes such as tamales and arroz caldo reflect culinary influences transmitted through the galleon trade.
Words in Philippine languages trace their roots not only to Spanish but also to Nahuatl, such as tiyangge (street market), as well as to Mexican Spanish. The baroque churches that dominate many Philippine towns strongly resemble churches across Latin America. Instead of the towering pagodas and temples commonly associated with Asia, the Philippine landscape often features soaring church steeples.
Similar Passions: The Three Bs
The similarities are not merely historical abstractions; they also appear in everyday popular culture. I smiled when resort staff repeatedly exclaimed “Pacquiao!” after discovering my Filipino roots and learning that I could converse in some Spanish. It was another reminder that I should have taken my Spanish courses at U.P. more seriously decades ago.
Indeed, Mexicans and Filipinos share a surprising affection for what some jokingly call the “three Bs”: boxing, beauty pageants, and billiards.
While soccer overwhelmingly dominates Mexican sports culture, basketball also enjoys enormous popularity—another convergence of interests with Filipinos.
The historian Arnold J. Toynbee is often credited with observing that “the Philippines is a Latin American country transported to the Orient by a giant marine wave.” Historians have struggled to verify the original source of the quotation, and it may well be apocryphal. Yet, authentic or not, the line captures an important truth: the Philippines possesses a unique historical and cultural affinity with Latin America that distinguishes it from much of East and Southeast Asia.
There is even an old saying that “Filipinos think like Americans, feel like Spaniards, and act like Malays.” Though simplistic, it reflects the Philippines’ layered historical identity. Spanish colonialism, American influence, and Asian roots combined to produce a society unlike any other in Asia. This cultural hybridity often becomes the invisible bridge that allows Filipinos and Latin Americans to connect with unusual ease.
Yet the ties between Mexico and the Philippines extend beyond food, religion, and shared sentimentality. They also shaped social structures and political institutions whose effects continue to influence both societies today.
Cancun (Photo by Cesar Polvorosa, Jr.)
Encomienda Legacy
Spanish colonialism implanted deeply unequal class structures across both the Philippines and Latin America. Through systems resembling encomiendas or feudal arrangements, land, wealth, and political power became concentrated in the hands of narrow elites. Over generations, this produced entrenched political dynasties, oligarchic control, regional strongmen, and persistent inequality.
Political scientist Benedict Anderson once described the Philippine system as a “cacique democracy,” where powerful local elites dominate political and economic life. Similar structures emerged across much of Latin America. In both regions, politics often became less about institutions and more about families, personalities, patronage networks, and competing oligarchies.
Such conditions also fostered recurring social unrest. Throughout modern history, both the Philippines and Latin America experienced insurgencies rooted partly in inequality and rural dispossession. The Philippines had the New People’s Army, while Latin America witnessed movements such as Colombia’s FARC, Peru’s Sendero Luminoso, and Mexico’s Zapatistas.
Given these historical parallels in political economy, their economic trajectories unsurprisingly reveal striking similarities. In the decades after the Second World War, the Philippines was among the more advanced economies in Asia. Yet over time, neighboring countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and later Vietnam surged ahead.
This mirrored Latin America’s own developmental struggles. During the 1950s and 1960s, several Latin American economies were ahead of East Asia in income levels and industrial development. Yet East Asia eventually overtook them through stronger institutions, industrial policy, export competitiveness, and developmental states. South Korea eventually surpassed major Latin American countries such as Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina in per capita income.
The Philippines, meanwhile, often followed a trajectory more familiar to Latin America: cycles of growth followed by crisis, persistent inequality, corruption scandals, oligarchic concentration, and uneven development. In many cities throughout both regions, gleaming skyscrapers coexist alongside sprawling slums. This reflects the power of path dependency—the way history continues to shape the future in both the Philippines and Latin America.
The Marcos era particularly highlighted these contrasts. While authoritarian governments in parts of East Asia oversaw export-led industrialization and economic transformation, particularly in Singapore and South Korea, the Philippines acquired the unfortunate reputation of being the “Sick Man of Asia.” Political sociologist Peter B. Evans used the concept of “embedded autonomy” to distinguish developmental states from predatory ones. East Asian states often developed strong bureaucratic capacity aligned with national industrial goals, while weaker states became vulnerable to elite capture and rent-seeking.
This does not mean, however, that the Philippines and Latin America are identical. Latin America underwent far deeper demographic transformation under European colonization, including large-scale settlement and the forced importation of African slaves after indigenous populations collapsed from disease and exploitation. The Philippines retained stronger indigenous continuity while simultaneously absorbing influences from China, India, Indonesia, and the broader Malay world.
My inability to communicate with Mexicans in fluent Spanish also reflects another stark difference between the Philippines and Mexico. Spanish became widespread as the primary language of communication in Mexico but not in the Philippines. Unlike Mexico, the Spanish colonizers never intended the Philippines to become a large settler society. They relied on the friars for instruction, who, however, preferred to learn the native languages when teaching the indigenous population. The remoteness of the Philippines from Europe and the fragmented geography of the archipelago likewise contributed to Spanish fluency remaining largely limited to the local elite during the colonial period.
Still, Mexico remains perhaps the closest Latin American parallel to the Philippines. The resemblances are remarkable. Both countries are among the world’s most populous nations, possess vast diasporas, and rely heavily on remittances from overseas workers. In both societies, the United States exerts enormous economic, cultural, and political influence.
Most importantly, Mexico and the Philippines shared more than two and a half centuries of direct colonial linkage under the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The Manila–Acapulco galleons did not merely transport goods. They carried ideas, beliefs, traditions, and social structures across the Pacific.
This forgotten connection helps explain why many Filipinos feel an emotional affinity upon visiting Mexico. The similarities appear not only in churches and fiestas, but also in humor, hospitality, family-centered life, and the resilience of ordinary people confronting inequality and political dysfunction.
A Latin American Past—and Future?
At the same time, history offers cautionary lessons. The Philippines faces the danger of settling into a developmental path resembling parts of Latin America: moderate economic growth accompanied by persistent inequality, corruption, weak institutions, crime, and recurring governance crises.
Years ago, I wrote that Vietnam was poised to overtake the Philippines economically. At the time, it was largely a projection. Today, it has effectively happened by several important indicators. Vietnam’s rise demonstrates how governance, industrial policy, and long-term strategic direction can transform a nation within a generation.
Understanding the foundations of Philippine political economy is therefore essential to discerning the country’s future direction. History does not proceed in a mechanistic fashion. History is not destiny, but it shapes the institutions, class structures, and political cultures nations inherit.
Aspiring to Mexican income levels is a worthy objective. Present-day Mexicans enjoy per capita incomes that are more than three times those of the average Filipino. Mexico thus offers one possible future scenario for the Philippines, but it also serves as a cautionary example. The country continues to struggle with high levels of inequality, corruption, and crime. Rather than following the trajectory of South Korea—or even Thailand—the Philippines may be tracking more closely toward the Latin American model.
What I felt was not merely coincidence or the lingering traces of Spanish colonialism. It was the realization that Mexico and the Philippines were once deeply connected worlds.
Yet this story is not necessarily one of caution or decline. The Philippine–Mexican connection is also a story of extraordinary cultural richness and historical resilience. Out of centuries of exchange emerged societies capable of blending indigenous, Asian, European, and American influences into vibrant and distinctive national cultures. For Filipinos today—especially younger generations and members of the diaspora—rediscovering the Philippines’ historical relationship with Mexico broadens the understanding of Filipino identity itself. The Philippines is not only an Asian nation. In many ways, it is also part of a wider Hispanic and Latin American historical world connected across the Pacific. As I stood on that beach in Yucatán celebrating my son’s wedding, I realized that the sense of home I felt was not accidental. Amid the sound of waves in the gathering twilight, it became another moment of self-discovery. History had crossed the Pacific centuries before me. The ocean separating Mexico and the Philippines may be vast, but the cultural memory carried across it remains remarkably close. And perhaps that is what moved me most. In Mexico, I did not simply discover another country. I encountered a forgotten mirror of the Philippines itself. Cesar Polvorosa Jr. is a professor of International Business and Economics at a Canadian university. He had been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry, and both his poetry and short stories have been anthologized in Asian and North American publications. He is an occasional contributor on economic development, globalization and geopolitics to Business World, Interaksyon and PhilStar. More articles from Cesar Polvorosa, Jr.
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