Exhibiting (July 2008) in the Ayala Museum in Makati, Manila is the most comprehensive gold collection shown after Martial Law (hidden, I suspect from the gold-mania that Marcos was known to be obsessed with). The coverage is impressive ranging from pre-historic/hispanic to the turn of the century and displays artifacts that are not even shown on history textbooks. Gold ear rings, intricate bracelets and necklaces, paper-thin death masks provide ample evidence of the wealth that Magellan and later conquistadores imagined that they could access once the islands were occupied. Gold however did not become the main extractive motive of Spanish colonization. While these were readily available and obviously naturally abundant (until now the rivers of Surigao are being panned for gold), the volume required would have meant re-organizing the local communities into large scale labor. Spain did not actively colonized the islands until another century after Magellan stumbled upon to it in 1521. By then the consumption needs of Europe have shifted to silver mined in great quantities in New Spain (Central America) and Spices from Southeast Asia (Moluccas). The colonization of the Philippines added a new product for European consumption – chinoiserie and to which the Chinese were more than willing to produce in large quantities in exchange for Mexican silver. Thus the galleon trade was born and remained the major economic activity of the Spanish Philippines until the early 18th century. Human labor in the form of polos and servicios were the “gold” that never was and where the population (and its attendant depopulation by people trying to escape force labor) was re-organized single-mindedly for that purpose. While Europe enjoyed a renaissance and enlightenment, the Philippines languished in medieval monkdom. Only until the English East India entrepreneurs saw plantation economies in sugar, tobacco, rice, and hemp did the colonial authorities awaken, belatedly, to the call of economic reform. By that time, a generation of revolutionaries were born.