Colonial Modernity and Indigenous Epistemologies: A Postcolonial Reading of Environmental Ethics in Pre-Independence Filipino Zarzuelas

This study investigates the intersection of colonial modernity, environmental governance, and indigenous environmental epistemologies within pre-independence Filipino sarswelas (zarzuelas) produced between 1900 and 1935. As the Philippines transitioned from Spanish theocratic rule to American bureaucratic and extractive capitalism, theatrical performance emerged as a primary cultural battleground for contesting shifting relations between human communities and the nonhuman world. Utilizing a postcolonial ecocritical framework combined with indigenous Filipino philosophical concepts—particularly pakikipagkapwa (shared inner self/relationality) and loob (relational interiority)—this paper analyzes how playwrights such as Aurelio Tolentino, Severino Reyes, and Patricio Mariano registered ecological transformations on the dramatic stage. The analysis demonstrates that while colonial authorities mobilized legalistic and scientific discourses to reframe the archipelago's forests, waters, and rural hinterlands as raw materials for commodification, early Filipino zarzuelistas embedded subtle pastoral counter-narratives that preserved animistic, reciprocal land relations. By reading the dramaturgical spatialization of the gubat (forest), patag (lowlands), and ilog (river systems) against the backdrop of colonial forestry acts and land privatization, this article reveals how pre-independence stagecraft functioned as an archive of environmental resistance, offering critical insights into the long genealogy of ecological dispossession and environmental humanities in the Global South.