Clash Of Spirits: The History of Power and Sugar Planter Hegemony on a Visayan Island. In this enlightening and and highly original work, Aguilar examines the social relations, cultural meanings, and politcal struggles surrounding the rise of sugar haciendas on Negros during the late Spanish colonial period and their subsequent transformation under the aegis of the American colonial state. Drawing on oral history interviews and a wide array of sources culled from archives in Spain, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Philippines, the author reconstructs the emergence of a sugar-planter class and its strategic maneuvers to attain hegemony.