A century of Cordillera vegetable salad

A century of Cordillera vegetable salad

Source: Inquirer Author: Maurice Malanes Date: 2001-01-10

BENGUET – The cold winds bite, like frozen needles pricking the bones. But why did the mountain folk come to Atok, Benguet, and called it their home?



Any day of this balmy season, from noon to late evening, thick fog hugs the environs of Atok’s Barangay Paoay (pop: 3,552), some 50 kilometers north of Baguio City.



Trekking along the winding road from Sitio Sayangan along the Halsema Highway to Paoay’s plateau (7,500 foot above sea level) is like going up a stairway to a cloud-blanketed heaven.



The hardy Kankanaey and Ibaloi folk came to Atok not just because the place was near heaven. Suited to growing tropical vegetables, the once thickly forested area promised abundance.



Ever since a former soldier of the American colonial government at the turn of the 20th century set foot in Atok, Barangay Paoay through the years has been transformed into what it is today--a salad bowl.



Some migrant Chinese, who were among those the Americans recruited to help build Kennon Road from 1902 to 1911, followed suit and introduced intensive vegetable farming.



Once mere hired hands of vegetable plantation owners, the Kankanaey and Ibaloi folk learned to grow vegetables and turned Paoay and the other six neighboring barangays of Atok (pop: 16,000) into a vegetable district.



The vegetable industry soon spread to the neighboring towns of Buguias and Kibungan (particularly Barangay Madaymen), both in Benguet, and some towns of Mt. Province. Now considered a ``vegetable belt,’’ these areas supply 80 percent of the country’s tropical vegetables.



Century-old



The Cordillera’s multimillion-peso vegetable industry is almost a century old. And in a country, which loves and honors anything American, the upland folk must be historically sentimental toward Paoay as they are toward Camp John Hay and Kennon.



In the early 1900s, a certain Guy Haight came and fell in love with what he saw atop a plateau-–grassland surrounded by mossy and pine forests.



A member of the US Army’s engineering corps, Haight was among the American soldiers and officials who colonized the Philippines after the Filipinos defeated the Spaniards in 1898.



Contracting lung disease (probably an early stage of tuberculosis) after helping supervise the building of Kennon, Manila’s main link to Baguio, Haight was advised by a doctor to look for a place as cold as his Philadelphia hometown.



Unlike other former American soldiers who explored the Cordillera for its fabled gold mines, Haight settled in what is now Paoay and became a farmer. He married an Igorot lass from Suyoc in Mankayan town, also in Benguet, and built a grass-thatched house and log cabins on the grassland, the best part of the dominantly mountain village.



Some photographs of the houses and of Haight’s family now hang at the living room of the house of former Atok Mayor John Haight, now 71, a grandson of Haight.



The elder Haight ordered vegetable seeds from his parents in Philadelphia, and, with the help of Igorot laborers, he grew cabbage, turnip, rhubarb, lettuce, sugar beet, carrot, celery, parsley and potato. He also grew oats and rye, whose stalks and leaves were fed to cows, horses, pigs, carabaos and other livestock.



Haight’s almost 30-hectare farm and house were an ideal organic farm. The soil was virgin and fertile then.



Thus, there was no need for chemical fertilizers. But later, Haight used compost in his farm that consisted of decayed weeds and livestock manure.



Haight’s produce was marketed to Baguio. His clients were fellow Americans, many of them colonial officials on vacation at Camp John Hay, and Filipinos who learned to eat cabbages and other newly introduced tropical vegetables.



With no road link to Atok, Haight had to hire porters and had to mobilize his horses to transport on foot the vegetables to Baguio. Each porter had to carry an average of 30 kilos, says Celo Haight-Tan, now 82, whose late father Selo, a.k.a. Toki Lawangen, was recruited by Haight as ``tent boy.’’



Celo, a native of Kapangan, Benguet, was barely 12 years old when he was hired. The boy was rendering labor during the construction of Kennon as payment for community tax. Celo soon assumed the family name of his American master.



Celo and his family also spoke American English. ``We came to learn our language only when we went to school in Kabayan (a neighboring town),’’ recalls Haight-Tan, the fourth of the late Celo’s 10 children.



The old Haight died in 1926. But planting tropical vegetables, which he introduced, continued.



Enter the Chinese



After the construction of Kennon in 1911 and of the American military barracks and buildings in Baguio, which Chinese migrant workers helped build, the remaining Chinese laborers saw new opportunities.



They surveyed La Trinidad Valley and other areas in Benguet, which included Paoay and other villages in Atok, and found these areas promising for agriculture.



In Paoay, the Chinese introduced intensive farming and new varieties of cabbage, such as pechay and wombok, aside from head cabbage, celery, carrot, broccoli, lettuce and potato.



With intensive farming, the Chinese had to use chicken dung mixed with ashes, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, recalls Paoay barangay chair Dewey Tomas, a former child laborer in a Chinese farm in the 1950s.



But the Chinese were also basically organic farmers, according to Baguio-based Dr. Charles Cheng and Katherine Bersamira in their 1997 book ``The Ethnic Chinese in the Cordillera: The Untold Story of Pioneers.’’



The Chinese also introduced composting, recycling of organic matter, crop rotation, using insect predators to control pests, and some irrigation techniques, say Dr. Cheng and Bersamira.

Clan reunions replace'cañao' tradition in Benguet

Reprint

Clan reunions replace

'cañao' tradition in Benguet

by Maurice Malanes, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 9 May 2000

TIME was when the mountains of Kibungan town in Benguet

would echo the beats and rhythm of gongs and solibaos (native

drums) and the cries of pigs and carabaos being slaughtered

and offered to the gods and spirits during traditional feasts

called cañao or pedit.

Abundant farm harvest and good swine and cattle production

would be enough reasons to hold the cañao.

In these feasts, members of the community would gather in the

home of the host family to dine and wine, to dance the sadong

(usually performed by girls and women) and the tayaw (usually

done by men), and to sing the day-eng (an extemporaneous

chanted poetry).

For the host family, the cañao was a way of sharing with the

rest of the community blessings the gods and spirits bestowed

or what may be considered the family's surplus. The cañao or

pedit is thus a thanksgiving feast.

In thanking the heavens, a traditional priest would pray: ''O

gods and spirits of the heavens, bless members of this family

(referring to the cañao's host family). Let their cattle and

livestock become more productive. Let their rice, peas, grains,

camote (sweet potato) and other crops bear good harvest. Spare

this family from ailments and bless the family members with

long, healthy lives. O gods and spirits, we are asking all these

so that tomorrow or one of these days, we can again celebrate

your blessings for this family and have the chance again to

honor you and pay our respects.''

As a community affair, the cañao or pedit had also served a

social purpose. Through this affair, each member of the

community, in the spirit of bin-nadang or cooperation, would

help out in all activities.

The whole community would gather firewood, pound rice, fetch

water, slaughter animals and cook, and would participate in

religious rituals, such as dancing the sadong and the tayaw,

playing the gongs and drums, and joining in the religious

chants. In the early days, the cañao had thus helped strengthen

community spirit and unity.

Also through the cañao, families and clans were able to trace

their blood lineage and family tree.

Vanishing tradition

But in Benguet towns, such as in Kibungan, which used to hold

traditional feasts at least twice or thrice a month until three to

four decades ago, the cañao is now slowly vanishing.

The reasons are both economic and cultural. In Kibungan now,

there just are not enough animals to butcher, unlike in the early

days when, as Lakay (old man) Paguli recalls, there were more

animals than people.

The mountain town, which is 67 kilometers northeast of Baguio

City, also used to be self-sufficient in staples such as rice and

camote.

These days, however, Kibungan folk have to buy their rice from

Baguio because of a growing population and the lack of

government support services, such as small irrigation systems,

to improve farm production.

Populated by about 16,000 Kankana-ey folk, Kibungan has also

been saturated by various Christian sects, some of which

preach that the cañao tradition is ''unchristian,'' if not ''the work

of the devil.''

But as more and more Kibungan folk are turning their backs on

the cañao tradition, more and more are also looking for ways to

restrengthen community spirit and family and clan ties. Clan

reunions have thus emerged in recent years.

Tracing ancestry

Like the cañao, clan reunions enable members to get to know

one another better by tracing common ancestors.

Unlike the cañao, however, each family head of the clan

contributes to the cost of holding a reunion.

In the recent grand reunion of the Gelwan-Dangsuyan clan, one

of the biggest in Kibungan, for example, each family head

chipped in P150 mainly to cover the cost of lunch and dinner.

Each one of the over 500 clan members gathered was excited

and happy about the grand reunion held in the home of Ganaya

Bay-an Bolislis, the only surviving elder of the Tamang

sub-clan.

But the grand affair apparently lacks the festive mood of the

cañao of yore. The affair was rather formal, complete with a

program of activities, during which all sub-clans were presented

on a stage installed with a sound system.

There was a spice, however, to all the formalities: each sub-clan

presented ice breakers, such as country and folk songs and

children's dances, which integrated traditional dance steps.

Folk singing

And the singers, mostly young men and women, were good at

aping the late John Denver, Kenny Rogers, Joan Baez and other

American country and folk singers.

Some elders did not want to be outdone. Gaerlan Wance and

Celino Cayad-an, both World War II veterans, sang songs they

learned from their American senior officers in the last war.

That American country and folk songs are tops in Kibungan

and other Benguet towns is an interesting subject for

sociocultural research. But that's another story.

What is clear is that cultural practices accompanying the cañao

tradition are now on the way out.

The mambunong (a traditional priest), who leads the religious

rituals in a cañao, no longer has a place in a clan reunion. In the

recent Gelwan-Dangsuyan grand reunion, for example, a young

Pentecostal pastor, who married a woman of the clan, led

members in a praise and worship rite.

Guitars and sound systems have replaced the beats of gongs

and drums. Hawaiian dances performed to the tune of ''Pearly

Shells'' and ''Tiny Bubbles'' and other dances, such as one

played to some weird beat called ''Dayang-Dayang'' have

replaced the traditional sadong and tayaw.

Hardly heard now is the day-eng, an extemporaneous poetry

that is sung by elders as they pass around a common cup of

tapuy or rice wine.

This poetry is also a form of discourse because one leads and

opens up a topic, and another responds by agreeing or

disagreeing through metaphors and lots of folk wisdom-laden

philosophical thoughts.

Cultural artifacts, such as traditional dresses and heirlooms, can

be preserved in museums. Not so with a cultural heritage such

as the day-eng, which has to be continually practiced for it to

continue to breathe life.

Brave new world in museum work unfolds in Baguio

Inquirer Northern Luzon
Brave new world in museum work unfolds in Baguio

By Maurice Malanes
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 03:40:00 05/07/2008

BAGUIO CITY – This museum, perhaps the first of its kind in the country, will tell a community’s story from the perspective of its people.

The Baguio Historical and Mining Museum will rise on one of the city’s historic sites – Dominican Hill, where the ruins of a monastery lie. It will be led by its foundation, chaired by Philippine Ambassador to Germany Delia Albert, in time for the city’s centennial celebration in 2009.

“There’s a brave new world in museum work – one that employs modern technology, such as biotechnology, but…offers an atmosphere of warmth, which encourages collaboration with and participation from the community,” says Marian Pastor Roces, who has been appointed curator of the proposed museum.

Roces describes the project as “community-centered,” meaning residents can participate and collaborate with the museum staff to interpret data rather than have these interpreted by outsiders.

“This is a museum that learns from the community and tells the community’s diverse stories of interaction,” she told reporters during the project’s launching on May 2. The stories include not only those from the past but also those that are “continuing, unfolding,” she said.

How Baguio evolved as a chartered city because of the mining industry that boomed in the early 1900s in the neighboring gold-rich communities of Benguet is one such account.

Albert, a native of Baguio, says the mining industry’s growth is intertwined with the city’s development. She points at the four yellow dots against a green backdrop in the official seal, representing the four original neighboring mining communities in Benguet.

A lot of stories related to the mining industry still need to be told, Albert said. She cites the Kankanaey and Ibaloi traditional mining experts who claim they can find gold in rocks by using their tongue and saliva.

Even before American colonial soldiers-turned-gold prospectors came and founded the forerunners of today’s big mining corporations, the Spanish colonial government had also heard of gold guarded by “fierce natives” in the Cordillera’s pine-clad mountains.

Collaboration

Written accounts showed that Spaniards had organized gold expedition teams that reached Benguet through horse trails built by the Igorot natives through forced labor.

The historical and mining museum will incorporate all these stories, according to foundation officials. In fact, there is still a wealth of unstudied pre-20th century materials about Baguio in museums around the world, which can be reproduced and stored here, says Roces.

She cites 19th-century maps of Baguio and archives of tourist photos that can help tell how Baguio evolved into a metropolis.

Among the key sources of museum materials are the Philippine National Archive, University of Chicago, Michigan State University, US Army Archives in Maryland, Leiden University, Smithsonian Institution, Museum fur Volkenkunde in Vienna, the British Museum, and Musee du Quay Branly in Paris.

In this “brave new world of museology (museum studies),” collaboration is the key word, Roces says. And how will this collaboration with the community work?

Roces and her staff will facilitate the creation of a body of local experts – from academics and elders or pioneers to a wide range of professionals – to gather historical data and artifacts and later collectively interpret and represent these in various documentation forms (video, photographs or manuscripts).

“Data gathering won’t only be done by academics; even neighborhood groups can gather old photos from other neighbors, for example,” she says. “It’s going to be an entire series of action and process that involves community participatory mechanisms from beginning to end.”

Leonora San Agustin, curator of the Baguio-Mountain Provinces Museum, agrees on the need for experts. She cites an innocent-looking rock given to her by former Baguio Mayor Francisco Paraan. “I didn’t know what the rock was for until a traditional miner told me it was where traditional miners would grind gold ore,” she says.

“We need all the experts we can mobilize, especially now that our local miners are disappearing with demise of the mining industry here,” says San Agustin.

Heritage conservation

A product of more than four years of planning and consultation, the Baguio Historical and Mining Museum is “a positive step for heritage conservation,” Maria Isabel Ongpin, the foundation president, says. It is “an idea of Baguio residents, past and present,” she says.

Albert says the project would give people who have ties with Baguio a reason “to be proud once more of this fantastic city that reared us.”

The city government, however, has yet to amend a resolution turning over the Dominican Hill property to the museum foundation. The resolution does not include the turnover of the monastery ruins.

“We need the building first,” says Albert. The 33-room Dominican monastery was the city’s most expansive stone structure before 1920, according to the book, “City of Pines.”

The people behind the museum project have already ironed out plans to beat a very tight deadline, as the city counts down to its centennial on Sept. 1 next year.

Roces says the new museum would employ state-of-the-art technology in helping the local community gather and interpret data. “It’s going to be high-tech, but congenial,” she says, noting how technology sometimes alienates, if not intimidates, some people. “So we have to create a special encounter for people to dialogue and communicate with one another.”

The secret is building it with a “delightful yet elegant” ambience, she says.

Some old-timers are enthusiastic about the project and its site, which overlooks the city. “I live there and it’s a perfect, beautiful place for us to chat, dialogue and meditate as we watch the sunset,” Paraan says.

The museum intends to become a repository for the memorabilia of residents and tourists, a science center that is at the same time a crucible for art, a high-tech learning facility, a tourist destination and national and international crowd draw, and a space for encounter, dialogue, meditation, and festivity.

It will be divided into five spaces: a study center on urbanization, oral history and family memorabilia trust, a Philippine center for geology, an international center for jewelry design, and a study center for Cordillera-lowland cultures encounter.

Museum is biggest currency collector

Reprint

Museum is biggest currency collector

Source: Inquirer Author: Maurice Malanes Date: 2000-02-15

BENGUET'S provincial museum is the

most unique in the country, not only

because it houses, among other

things, a human mummy returned by a

thief but also because it is probably the country's biggest

collector of currencies worldwide.



The museum at a building beside the provincial capitol in La

Trinidad town has collected currencies from at least 100

countries, says Amando Furunda, the museum's assistant

officer in charge.



The collection includes old and new coins and paper bills from

the Philippines and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region,

South America, North America, Europe and Africa.



How the collection began was no accident. It was started by

residents who have a strong historical and anthropological

sense, Furunda said.



One of the first items in the collection is a legal tender printed in

the jungles of Apayao during World War II.



Then provincial administrator Francisco Tiotioen donated the

bill and two Mt. Province emergency notes, which were as good

as cash during the war, said Loly Moises, provincial librarian.



The notes were among the first items to be displayed when the

museum was inaugurated in June 1979.



Moises, who initially supervised the museum, said she did not

expect that the notes would encourage other people to expand

the currency collection.



The book, ''Japanese Occupation of the Philippines,'' by

historian A.V. H. Hartendorp reveals how the emergency notes

evolved.



Hartendorp wrote that the notes, totalling P1,000, were printed

by US Army Maj. Ralph Frager in his Apayao jungle retreat

during the war.



Frager, a West Pointer with the 26th Cavalry, was authorized by

the American government to print the notes to be used in areas

unoccupied by the Japanese.



The major was assigned to do reconnaissance and intelligence

work in far north Luzon. There, American soldiers installed a

clandestine radio communication network directly linked to San

Francisco in the US mainland.



The Apayao notes (from five centavos to P10) were produced

by a makeshift printery from plates cut from battery boxes made

of hard rubber. All notes bore serial numbers. The plates were

destroyed immediately after printing.



The Mt. Province emergency notes, on the other hand, were

printed after the government ordered the payment of salaries of

local officials and employees from December 1941 to 1946 when

the war ended.



After Tiotioen's donated notes were exhibited, local and foreign

tourists started contributing coins and paper bills. Thus, most

of the additions are not relics but modern currencies.



But some residents continue to give old coins and paper bills.

Among the latest addition to the collection is a 1.69-gram

irregularly shaped silver coin believed to be used during the

Spanish galleon trade in the 1700s. The coin has a cross on one

side and the Spanish royal seal on the other.



The coin is similar to the macuquinas or cobs

(Spanish-American dollars) used in Irish and British colonies in

the earlier centuries.



The only incentive of coin or paper bill donors is that their

names are duly acknowledged and displayed with their

donations. But some would prefer to be anonymous.



Cultural repository



Another interesting attraction of the Benguet museum is a

human mummy returned by a thief after he reportedly suffered

from mysterious ailments.



The thief probably got sick because he stole the mummy, said

Furunda. Rats have also eaten parts of the preserved corpse so

the thief's negligence might have angered the mummy's spirit, he

added.



Unlike the most celebrated Apo Anno, a mummy which was

returned in May 1999 to Buguias town, the mummy at the

museum is still unknown. Once identified and once the place

where it was stolen is traced, the mummy will be finally returned.

This will entail elaborate rituals to appease the mummy's spirit.



Other items on display are cultural artifacts, such as old

porcelain Chinese jars, wooden plates and bowls, rain gear made

of grass, gold panning equipment made of stones, gongs and

drums, bark cloth, tapis or wrap-around skirt and g-strings and

old furniture.



The old Chinese jars reveal that Benguet and other parts of the

country had a flourishing trade with China and other Asian

neighbors even before the Spanish colonizers came.



From the bark cloth--a wide bark from a certain tree made soft

through pounding and beating--to the tapis and g-string, the

museum can give the visitor an idea about how the Igorots of

old protected their bodies from the elements.



Like history, which continues to be written, the museum can

continue to be enriched by adding more previously hidden

artifacts.

Igorot dances in pure form

(Note: I am reprinting this on this blog as part of my online compilation of articles written before. I'll be reprinting later other articles, which were written ages ago.)

Igorot dances in pure form

Source: Inquirer Author: Maurice Malanes Date: 2000-10-03

WHAT differentiates Igorot dances, or any other indigenous

folk dances, from waltz, tango and other ballroom dances? A lot

of things.


One can learn ballroom dances from an instructor but learning

Igorot dances is not simply knowing the steps and

synchronizing these with the rhythm of gongs and drums.


To really learn Igorot dances, with all their cultural trimmings

and meanings, one must go to the village where these are

performed for religious or spiritual purposes.


Ike Picpican, Saint Louis University museum curator, is anxious

about how theater performers are uprooting indigenous Igorot

dances from their ''cultural base'' because ''the dance tradition is

deeply rooted in the upland folk's day-to-day life.''


He stresses the need to ''preserve the indigenous spirit and

context'' of Igorot dances when these are performed by artists.

He notes how stage or theater performers have ''stylized'' and

introduced innovations, which, he fears, will ruin the essence

and spirit of the traditional dances.


Igorot professionals themselves must show how the dances

''should'' be performed, he suggests.


Picpican cites Baguio City Mayor Mauricio Domogan, an Igorot

of the Bago tribe, who can really perform Igorot dances, beat

gongs and drums, and sing and chant Igorot songs and poems.


Picpican also cites how Domogan chastised young Igorot

performers for wearing ba-ag or g-string over their underwear

while performing traditional Cordillera dances.


For Picpican, Domogan--who often dons nothing but a g-string,

Igorot necklace, a traditional head gear and a sangi or native

rattan backpack during special occasions such as meetings of

local officials--is a model ambassador of Igorot culture.


Picpican also lauds the Ifugao provincial board for passing a

resolution which requires the ''appropriate and corresponding

attire, music and cultural background'' of Ifugao rites, dances

and songs or chants when these are performed on stage.


Even if performed with the ''appropriate and proper'' attire and

cultural backdrop, Igorot dances or any other rituals done on

stage or at Baguio's Burnham Park are still not in their pure form

as sought by cultural purists or preservationists like Picpican.


Once presented on stage, Igorot dances become adulterated.


Cultural reality


But these cultural shows, like other performing arts, must at

least mirror cultural reality to meet the standards of cultural

guardians like Picpican.


To the Igorots, their dances and other cultural rites are as

sacred as Christian church rites. Guardians of Cordillera culture

consider it ''sacrilegious'' when cultural rites are done for other

purposes, such as to attract tourists.


For example, the attempt of the tourism ministry in the early

1980s under the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos to lure

tourists by showcasing Igorot culture through what was called

the Grand Cañao had invited protests from Igorot professionals

and student activists.


The Grand Cañao, they cried, did not only mock Igorot culture

but also commercialized it.


Over the years, some Igorot dances have taken a new twist. To

the dismay of their fellow Igorots, some mountain folk during

the Christmas season would go from house to house in cities as

far as Manila, bang their gongs and perform Bontok dances as

their way of soliciting gifts.


Also in recent years, some Igorot dances have been

transformed as a medium of protest. Igorot folk protesting the

entry into their communities of big mining companies, for

example, would intersperse their pickets with Igorot dances and

gong beats at the gates of the Department of Environment and

Natural Resources.


No matter what the purists say, Igorot dances through time will

assume various forms, simply because unlike cultural artifacts,

traditional dances cannot be preserved in museums.


And as the original reasons for performing Igorot dances, such

as the elaborate cañao feasts, continue to disappear, the

Cordillera needs culturally sensitive stage or theater artists

(who, according to Picpican, know the cultural base and context

of dances) to continue to breathe life into the Igorot dances.

The dances can die unless continually performed.