“Era público y notorio” [It was well known and infamous]

The phrase appears repeatedly in a 1674 report that in all likelihood was never meant to see the light of day: it was submitted by seventeenth-century Archbishop of Manila, Felipe Fernández de Pardo (OP), who was also a member of the Dominican Religious Order. In it, Archbishop Pardo's fellow confrere Fr. Juan Santos (OP) reports the testimony of many villagers who lived in or around the mission-town settlement or doctrina called Bolinao in the Zambales region, concerning the many atrocities perpetrated on the people of Bolinao and the outlying settlements by the missionary prior or regional superior, Recollect Fr. Padre Martín de San Pablo [OAR]. It was “well known and infamous,” for example, the Recollects would exact a tribute from the settlements, which missionaries had no authority to do; or that they engaged in forms of contraband; that they would coerce the young men and women who had not yet come of age to be conscripted into forced labor by the colonial government, to work as servants for the missionary priests; that the religious would publicly whip any members of the mission town for disobeying their orders.