Sunday, January 27, 2008

The Highlands: Gran Cordillera Central

Mountain range. English has just one word for it; Spanish is more precise distinguishing between sierra and cordillera. Sierra literally means saw-toothed, and by analogy is applied to a mountain range longer than it is wide, and characterized by lofty peaks that give it a ripsaw outline. Cordillera refers to mountain ranges, packed alongside each other, numerous peaks some not too high, others not too low spread out more widely rather than in a straight line as the Sierra Madre of Luzon. Sierras tend to form where the continental plates subduct beneath another as in the case of the Pacific Plate, which subducts along the Philippines’ eastern coast forming the Sierra Madre.

The provinces of Kalinga-Apayao, Mountain Province, Ifugao and Benguet which with Abra forms the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR, created in 1987 by Executive Order 220) was formerly known as one Mountain Province before 1966 when political correctness and sensitivity (or is it gerrymandering) subdivided the uplands between the Ilocos and Cagayan Valley. Mountain Province, established 1908, was the American translation of the Spanish Provincia Montañosa by which this seemingly impenetrable cordillera was known. The cordillera itself was labeled in old maps as Carballo, later the term applied to the southeastern side of the cordillera.

The Highlanders

These highlands in the center of northern Luzon is fraught by a number of misconceptions, principal among these is that its indigenous inhabitants are “primitive.” This an unfortunate legacy of colonial xenophobia, which classified peoples according to preconceived and unsupportable stereotypes of race, the white Caucasian being the most advanced and the colored races the least. Typical is Fray Francisco Antolin’s assessment of the highlanders as “warlike,” or his dismissive attitude toward the Igorot’s claims at “the contentment they take in their own land with their poor clothes and rough foods, sleeping on the trails wherever night happens to catch them, and praising the government of their leaders.” He says that they are like the deluded ancients who feigned enjoyment of a Golden Age, when they are nothing more than “Indios just like the rest—difficult to understand because of the variety and contradiction of their actions and customs” (p. 33).

The Cordillera’s indigenous peoples continue to surprise with their level of sophistication in technology and governance and practical knowledge of nature. To cite an example UNESCO has recognized the Cordillera’s rice terraces as “World Heritage,” citing it for the happy marriage of natural site and a human site, or to use UNESCO’s heritage term, a synthesis of natural-site and built-site. The terraces have been singled out as an outstanding example of hydrology;precious water is conserved and used efficiently by the careful planting of communal forests on the peak of the mountains and a well-planned system of canal and sluices to irrigate the rice paddies carved on the steep mountain slopes. As for governance, the Cordillera peace pact, known in some languages as budong or pechen in Bontok is an example of tribal democracy in action. Pacts between villages and clans, and today even whole areas, are forged through careful negotiation and respected.

Great care, then, must be taken when speaking of the Great Cordillera’s inhabitants because as Fray Antolin says there are a variety of them. The generally accepted list include the Apayao or Isneg, Bontoc, Kalinga, Kankanai (northwest), and Ibaloy (southeast) of Benguet, Ifugao, and Tinggian or Itneg. The Cordillera Schools Group spells Bontok with a “k” when referring to people and “c” when referring to a place and adds Ikalahan as a group name.

While these are convenient divisions, based on ethnolinguistic characteristics, the list hides the diversity found among peoples who identify themselves with specific communities or ili. An ili is a closely-knit cluster of villages usually bound by ties of kinship. Each ili has a more or less defined territory, based on tradition and custom. The Apayao, last to fall under American rule in 1923, referred to themselves in relation to particular places, for instance, Ibulus from Bulus, or Imandaya for dwellers upstream and Imallod for dwellers downstream. The term Isneg is probably of Ilocano origin and is used as a convenient term although some of the people prefer to call themselves as Apayao.

Furthermore, and this is the second grievous misconception, the ili or communities are not as isolated as labels like taong bundok, taga-bundok or primitive tribe connote. These are lowlander terms applied disparagingly to peoples and communities that the lowlanders may have not even met.

Long before the colonization of the lowlands, peoples of the Cordillera were actively trading with the lowland. Fray Antolin, writing in 1788 reports that while the highlanders wore loincloths made of bark or a tough fiber, but some groups, especially the Igorotes, traded gold with the lowlanders in Ilocos and Pangasinan for such items as cloth and cotton G-strings. On the eastern side, Ifugaos traded rice in Nueva Vizcaya for animals, iron implements made by their blacksmiths forged from cast iron originally obtained from the lowlands for other commodities. The mountaineers also brought down copper for trade. The presence of heirloom Chinese porcelain, used for ritual drinking, attests to the porosity of the mountain culture and the activity of the highland market.

It might be safe then to think of the peoples of the Cordillera as a continuum of relations, relations of trade even of culture brought about by intermarriage and constant exchange. Many technologies and artifacts are shared by these people: upland rice cultivation, backstrap or back tension loom, basket weaving, woodcarving. Dwellings while differing in details all are made of wood and grass thatch. Some are built above ground others ground hugging. Dress may differ in color and accessories but traditionally women wore a skirt and jacket, and men G-string called wanno by the Ibaloi. Some wore a jacket and older men, wrapped their torso with a blanket. Ornaments include headgear, jewelry of gold, glass and stone beads, and heavy earrings called ling-lingo.

Music and chants, usually of oral epics, and dance have similarities. Social organization, where the leaders come from the elders of the clan and clan villages are the smallest unit of organizations, and belief systems are similar.

A third misconception, again spawned and fostered by colonialism, is calling the indigenous peoples “wild and ferocious.” Some groups have been labeled as “head-hunters.” This stereotype is perpetuated by erroneous etymology given the word igorot; some writers claim without any linguistic or philological warrant that the term means headhunter. Perhaps they mistake its word root to gilit which in Tagalog means to flay, generally applied to fillet fish for salting and drying. Or gulok meaning knife. The root of igorot as Cordillera historian William Scott points out is golot, meaning mountain range. Its Tagalog cognate is gulod. Hence igorot simply means mountaineers or highlanders.

“Head-hunting,” as the unfortunate term seems to connote, was not and never was a quotidian sport. While severed heads have been documented, these should be taken in the context of conflict and retribution. When tribal wars occur there is death. Or when an injustice has been committed, for instance violations of the peace pact, destruction and stealing of property, and murder, the highlanders had to seek justice. Cordillerans had a graduated system of retribution for various crimes but murder created a blood-debt which a clan or family was obliged to honor. It is in this context that the taking of heads occurred as proof that the blood debt usually assigned to a clan member to avenge had been satisfied. Colonizers seizing this spectacular display of “tribal savagery” as they labeled it would project the practice as characteristic of the “salvajes infieles” the savage infidels. On the balance colonialism had its own savage practices like the Spanish garotte and other forms of torture. And during the Philippine-American war, the American military introduced the notorious “water cure” to extract information from prisoners.

Colonization and the Search for Gold

If the peoples of the Cordillera did attack lowland settlements, these attacks were often provoked. Colonialism exerted the pressure of upland migration, as lowlanders unwilling to submit to the exactions of the colonizers moved into territory that was traditionally recognized by the Cordillerans as their own. These “remontados” or “vagamundos” as the Spanish authorities called them eventually settled in the highlands and pushed the mountaineers, whom anthropologist have theorized began themselves as strand dwellers up and up, further into the mountain fastness of northern Philippines. These pressure may have been one reason why the mountaineers attacked Christianized frontier settlements, like Aritao, forcing the military to build fortifications and assign a detachment of soldiers.

The Spanish can also be faulted for its insatiable need for gold as a way to balance the finances of the colony and not depend on the annual situado or subsidy from Mexico. The search for the fabled mines of the “igorot gold” was official policy.

During the second decade of the 17th century there were a number of expedition up and into the highlands. In 1620, Pangasinan governor Garcíaa de Aldana y Cabrera led a party of soldiers, two Dominican military chaplains, a brother and a notary of mines and registry to the highlands. This expedition was organized for the expressed purpose of making a preliminary survey of gold mining near the contemporary site of Baguio. The group reached as far as La Trinidad but no further. Along the way, the Domincans celebrated Mass, which was duly noted by the notary public, Thomás Pérez. Jesuit chronicler Francisco Colin reports that in 1623 an army marched for seven days at the rate of three leagues a day to conquer and pacify the tribes of the Cordillera and search for their fabled gold mines. The expedition was headed by Sargeant Major Francisco Carreño, commander of Pangasinan and Ilocos. The expedition was marked with minor clashes with the indigenous inhabitants. The 1623 expedition led by Captain Alonso Martín Quirante involved exploring a wider area, visiting numerous villages and mines and collecting samples of ore for assay in Manila and Mexico. The Quirante expedition resulted in a comprehensive picture of land, resources and peoples of Benguet. Robert R. Reed (1976) remarks: “during the two centuries that followed, scarcely a decade passed without military of religious thrusts into some part of the mountain realm. But the Manila officialdom was usually occupied with more immediate political and military challenges elsewhere and proved unable to amass sufficient resources for permanent occupation of the high lands. Accordingly, the would-be conquerors were always repulsed and the Igorots remained independent” (p. 36).

Spanish explorers, whether military or ecclesiastic, ascended the highlands two passageways. Using the rivers of the plains as passageway, the highlands were entered either through the west or the east. The southwestern entrance was through the Agno River, which brought explorers from Pangasinan to the mines of Acupan and Apayao. The western entrance was through the Abra River, which explorers traveled from Vigan to the highland of Bangued and beyond. The eastern route passed through what was generically called Cagayan, later, Nueva Castilla and later subdivided into provinces of Isabela, Cagayan, Nueva Vizcaya and Nueva Ecija. Nueva Vizcaya was the jump-off point to the land of the Ifugao. Through the western routes the Augustinians had reached as far inland as Ituy. The Dominicans followed in their track in the 18th century. Passing through Asingan, Pangasinan they reached the Ituy. The Dominicans launched various expeditions of exploration and evangelization in 1739 and 1755. In 1788, the Domincans launched more than one expedition resulting in a picture of Leaban and Tinok area accessible through Dupax, Nueva Vizcaya. Report from one of the expedition provided the names and number of settlements encountered and documented the mountain trails taken by the highlanders from Dupax to the mines in the mountains.

The 18th century, while providing an better picture of the terrain and the peoples, did not result in long lasting mission stations in the uplands. The impetus for such explorations was often defensive as raiding sorties of highlanders threatened the security of the Christianized lowland communities. The answer to such physical threat was two-fold: first, the establishment of military garrisons and fortified structures in fronteir area and second, the sending of military and evangelizing expeditions to the mountains to secure if not the pacification of the inhabitants at least an assurance to keep the peace.

It is in the 19th century, that Spanish presence in the Cordillera becomes a permanent reality. Believing in the curative properties of the upland, the Spanish military sought to establish a sanatarium and a hill station in the Cordilleras.

The Last Conquista

But the beginning of “the last Spanish conquista” of the highlands was prompted by the economic reasons. In 1780, the colonial government, wishing to put the Philippines on a sound and self-sufficient financial footing, decided to control the cash crop tobacco by supervising planting and harvesting and processing of the leaf crop and by impossing heavy taxes on its use. The north, where the crop was extensively cultivated was hard hit by this monopoly. The mountaineers involved themselves in a clandestine trade of the commodity outside the purvey of government control. The uplanders expanded their cultivation of the crop and traded with the lowlanders.

In response to this perceived economic threat and affront to the government, between 1829 and 1839, Don Guillermo Galvey led a series of more than 40 bloody military expeditions to the high country. Villages and tobacco fields were razed, trading disrupted and inavertently the troops introduced smallpox which decimated the upland peoples. While illegal traffic in tobacco did not cease, the incursions made possible the permanent presence of the Spaniards in the Cordilleras. In 1846, the Benguet comandancia politico-militar was established. Other politico-militar districts were established and although Spainish hold was tenuous and sporadic uprisings, the most serious in 1881, did occur, settlements were established that were at least superficially hispanized and were nuclei of colonial influence. These settlements were Tiagán (established 1847), Lepanto (1852), Bontoc and Saltán (1859), Itaves (1889), Amburayan, Apayos, Cabagaoan and Llavac (1890), Binatangan, Quiangán and Cayapa (1891).

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