What’s Baguio to Wood and Wood to Baguio

INQUIRER NORTHERN LUZON

Inquirer Northern Luzon : What’s Baguio to Wood and Wood to Baguio
By Maurice Malanes
Inquirer Northern Luzon
Posted date: June 10, 2009

AUTHOR and former University of the Philippines Baguio Prof. Ricardo Torres Jr. has long been familiar with Leonard Wood Drive in Baguio City, but he discovered something that awakened his basic “researcher’s instincts.”

The road was named after the American colonial governor general who helped establish Baguio as a hill station where he and other colonial officials, sick soldiers, sojourning colonials, mine prospectors and bored wives of colonial masters in Manila would come to relax and recuperate.

But Torres, who authored books on development, had an interesting discovery about Wood, which, he said, could make the colonial official “a stuff of legends” and possibly “a perfect material for Regal Films.”

Wood captured Torres’ enthusiasm in 2007 when he visited Culion, Palawan.
Culion in Philippine history books is described as a “leper colony.” The place used to carry a stigma as the island was developed as a sanitarium to segregate and find the cure for people affected with the Hansen disease or ketong (leprosy).

On his last day in Culion, Torres was walking toward the old town and in the middle of the old plaza, he saw a big monument under the shade of old acacia trees. On the faded memorial plate of the monument reads: “Dr. Leonard Wood: Built by patients and friends of Dr. Wood.”

“I didn’t know Leonard Wood was a physician. I only knew him as a road,” Torres said in a paper he read during the Baguio Centennial Conference at UP Baguio in March.
Torres was among dozens of academics, researchers and historians who presented papers—all valuable fragments of Baguio’s history—during the conference, which was UP Baguio’s contribution to the city’s celebration of its centenary this year.

“I was intrigued why Leonard Wood deserved a road in an upland city and a monument in a far-flung, God-forsaken island town,” he said.

Awakened instincts

He typed “Leonard Wood biography” on Google and it provided 239,000 search results in 0.23 seconds. “Leonard Wood” alone had 1,160,000 results in 0.15 seconds.

Among other things, Torres discovered a Fort Leonard Wood for military personnel in Missouri and a Leonard Wood Institute that does military researches to help the US Army brace for the future.

Closer to home is a Leonard Wood Leprosy Research Center in Cebu. And it was Wood who advocated the search for cure and care of leprosy in Culion, ordering the allotment of a big chunk of the colonial budget for this.

Torres discovered that Culion was Wood’s “second Cuba.” Described as a physician with a passion, Wood helped eradicate yellow fever in Cuba.

But Torres’ search always points to Philippine history when nationalism and the clamor for independence from the United States was a raging movement.

Wood had strongly opposed this movement because the soldier and physician, Torres noted, believed that the Philippines was not ready for independence as the country and its people had a very poor and pathetic public sanitation.

Torres had another interesting note: Upon Wood’s advice, his wife got hold of the largest gold tiara that was unearthed in Butuan in southern Philippines in 1922.

Many colonial faces

History described Wood as harsh, heartless, ruthless, uncompromising and tactless. As governor general from 1921 to 1927, Wood was “impatient” with Filipinos agitating for independence. In 1923, he banned the display of photographs of Filipino heroes in public schools.

The famous remark of Commonwealth President Manuel L. Quezon, “I prefer a government run like hell by Filipinos to a government run like heaven by Americans,” was said to have been made in reference to Wood.

And Wood’s dispute with Quezon included Baguio, said Torres. While Wood was advertising Baguio as the year-round national capital, El Debate, a magazine that Quezon controlled, “expressed that it is wrong to [advertise] Baguio since it is already popular and needs no propaganda” from someone like Wood.

The famous American writer Mark Twain also characterized Wood as a “colonial savage.” Twain cited how Wood in 1906 ordered and later justified the massacre of 600 Moro men, women and children in Mindanao.

Despite Wood’s ruthlessness and heartlessness, Torres noted another side of the colonial ruler, which could be worth considering at least in terms of governance and exercising political will.

Wood did not only push to develop Camp John Hay when he was commanding general of the Philippine Department from 1906 to 1908. He strove to develop Baguio as “an educational center of forum” for indoctrinating Igorot peoples.

When the basic infrastructures for the city were being built, Wood persuaded Mayor Eusebius Julius Halsema and the city council to fund a nursery for pine and eucalyptus trees to reforest barren areas, expressing alarm over the massive cutting of trees in the city.

He was said to be so concerned about the health of the population that, during one visit here, he dismissed the city physician for failing to contain 15 cases of typhoid fever.

Wood has ambitions, too

“Wood was a man with many colonial faces; a dedicated physician, a ruthless soldier and a military administrator with ambitions to be the next president of America,” Torres said.

He was a dedicated part of America’s Manifest Destiny. On a crusade and on the road to be a legend, Wood imposed a cure for countries that were, in his opinion, unable to govern themselves, Torres said.

Interestingly, Baguio helped cool Wood’s head. Torres noted how Wood and his wife would drive to Baguio “to relax from the rigors of colonial administration.”
He would take long walks and plan for its development and “you can perhaps hear him—no cutting of trees or I’ll shoot you,” Torres said.

According to him, Wood embodies one of the “idols of history” and perhaps the history of Baguio and the Philippines gives an “overemphasis on great men.”

Wood’s monument in Culion, said Torres, is an “idealized representation” of the ruthless man that was friend to the lepers but a burden to public finance.

“From another angle, Wood was made part of history by the councilors of Baguio, those who defined power,” he said. “In Culion, however, it was powerless Hansenites (lepers) that enshrined him to be part of history.”

In Baguio, Wood deserves that road named after him only if roads are for legends, Torres said.

After independence and after Wood, Baguio, he said, is now being built for lowland migrants, tourists, visitors, excursionists, traders and the ukay-ukay (used clothes) crowd.

As Baguio celebrates its centenary, Torres has posed a challenge as the city continues to idolize Wood: “Has anyone asked what happened then to the home of the Ibaloi? Is this part of history now just a mere representation?”