Remembering the decade of ferment and upheavals in Cordillera history 06-07-09

	NORDIS WEEKLY July 9, 2006
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Remembering the decade of ferment and upheavals in Cordillera history
LA TRINIDAD (July 6) — Almost one month after Rafael Markus Bangit, a Kalinga peacemaker was gunned down, the decade immediately before the murder of Macliing Dulag, another Kalinga chieftain martyred during the Cordillera struggle against the Chico dam project, was the highlight of a forum on Cordillera struggles. Held at the Benguet State University (BSU) on July 6, the forum is part of the month-long celebration of the government issuance forming the Cordillera as a region. A political analyst and former university professor inspired the youth in the audience to be proud of their rich heritage as Igorots as she clarified issues concerning the holding of two Cordillera Day and recalled the 1970-1980 decade, which she called the decade of ferment and upheavals in the Cordillera peoples’ history. A scion of the clan which has claims to Camp John Hay and several other communities in Baguio City, Prof. Joanna K. Cariño, who is also a founding member of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA), traced the history of the Cordillera Day on April 24 each year to the murder of Dulag Macliing in 1980. Cariño, in a blow by blow account of the local regional history of peoples’ struggles, stressed that the decade before the death of Macliing is a decade of ferment and upheaval. She recalls that local folk in Abra, Mountain Province and Kalinga fought the Cellophil Resources and the Chico River Dam Projects, two foreign-funded business initiatives of then Ferdinand Marcos dictatorial regime. Cellophil was a logging and timber pulp concession which occupied and denuded a very vast tract of forest in Abra and Mountain Province in the 70’s, that was met with popular resistance. The Chico River Dam Projects was foiled by the Bontoks and Kalingas in about the same time in our history, said Cariño. “Long before the first EDSA people power revolution, there had been people power initiatives in the Cordillera when whole communities rose up to defend ancestral lands, life and resources,” she said, adding most of these communities even armed themselves in defense of the Cordillera homeland. “It was in tribal elders’ meetings along the Chico River that I learned a lot about our ways as Igorots,” Cariño told an awed studentry at BSU. According to Cariño, five years after the death of Macliing, in 1985 Cordillera elders decided to convert the yearly Macliing memorial, which was then gathering a multitude, to a Cordillera Day, following the formation of the regional alliance in 1984. This is what the Igorot actvists and advocates not only in the Philippines but in other parts of the world, celebrate as Cordillera Day, she stressed. According to Cariño, CPA has since lobbied for a bill in Congress to regionalize Cordillera provinces, which were then part of regions I (Abra, Mountain Province, Benguet) and II (Ifugao, Kalinga-Apayao). She remembered a delegation to Malacañang to ask then President Corazon Aquino to stop the Cellophil and Chico projects, the recognition of ancestral land rights and the right to self-determination, and to lobby for the appointment of officers-in-charge in towns and provinces. “Cory reneged from her position to include us in a constitutional commission and to have legislation in our favor,” Cariño recalled, despite some provisions in the 1987 Constitution which recognized indigenous peoples’ rights. She revealed that when the late Catholic priest turned rebel Conrado Balweg split from the New People’s Army to form the Cordillera People’s Liberation Army (CPLA), he forged a peacetalk with the Cory government in 1986. A year after that, on July 15, 1987 she issued Executive Order 220 that established the Cordillera Executive Board and the Cordillera Regional Assembly. Cariño lamented that CPA was no longer a part of the whole process that it started. EO220 gave the CPLA a privileged position and Balweg lord over the new Cordillera Administrative Region, Cariño said. Among historical notes, Cariño also traced the evolution of the term Igorot, from a simple descriptive I-gulot (from the mountains) to the derogatory Spanish Ygollotes infieles, an inferior group of minority barbaric headhunters. Annecdotes and reactions challenged the younger Igorots to be proud to be Igorots after Cariño’s talk. # Lyn V. Ramo Post your comments, reactions to this article
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	NORDIS WEEKLY July 9, 2006
Home \| To bottom	Previous \| Next
Remembering the decade of ferment and upheavals in Cordillera history
LA TRINIDAD (July 6) — Almost one month after Rafael Markus Bangit, a Kalinga peacemaker was gunned down, the decade immediately before the murder of Macliing Dulag, another Kalinga chieftain martyred during the Cordillera struggle against the Chico dam project, was the highlight of a forum on Cordillera struggles. Held at the Benguet State University (BSU) on July 6, the forum is part of the month-long celebration of the government issuance forming the Cordillera as a region. A political analyst and former university professor inspired the youth in the audience to be proud of their rich heritage as Igorots as she clarified issues concerning the holding of two Cordillera Day and recalled the 1970-1980 decade, which she called the decade of ferment and upheavals in the Cordillera peoples’ history. A scion of the clan which has claims to Camp John Hay and several other communities in Baguio City, Prof. Joanna K. Cariño, who is also a founding member of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA), traced the history of the Cordillera Day on April 24 each year to the murder of Dulag Macliing in 1980. Cariño, in a blow by blow account of the local regional history of peoples’ struggles, stressed that the decade before the death of Macliing is a decade of ferment and upheaval. She recalls that local folk in Abra, Mountain Province and Kalinga fought the Cellophil Resources and the Chico River Dam Projects, two foreign-funded business initiatives of then Ferdinand Marcos dictatorial regime. Cellophil was a logging and timber pulp concession which occupied and denuded a very vast tract of forest in Abra and Mountain Province in the 70’s, that was met with popular resistance. The Chico River Dam Projects was foiled by the Bontoks and Kalingas in about the same time in our history, said Cariño. “Long before the first EDSA people power revolution, there had been people power initiatives in the Cordillera when whole communities rose up to defend ancestral lands, life and resources,” she said, adding most of these communities even armed themselves in defense of the Cordillera homeland. “It was in tribal elders’ meetings along the Chico River that I learned a lot about our ways as Igorots,” Cariño told an awed studentry at BSU. According to Cariño, five years after the death of Macliing, in 1985 Cordillera elders decided to convert the yearly Macliing memorial, which was then gathering a multitude, to a Cordillera Day, following the formation of the regional alliance in 1984. This is what the Igorot actvists and advocates not only in the Philippines but in other parts of the world, celebrate as Cordillera Day, she stressed. According to Cariño, CPA has since lobbied for a bill in Congress to regionalize Cordillera provinces, which were then part of regions I (Abra, Mountain Province, Benguet) and II (Ifugao, Kalinga-Apayao). She remembered a delegation to Malacañang to ask then President Corazon Aquino to stop the Cellophil and Chico projects, the recognition of ancestral land rights and the right to self-determination, and to lobby for the appointment of officers-in-charge in towns and provinces. “Cory reneged from her position to include us in a constitutional commission and to have legislation in our favor,” Cariño recalled, despite some provisions in the 1987 Constitution which recognized indigenous peoples’ rights. She revealed that when the late Catholic priest turned rebel Conrado Balweg split from the New People’s Army to form the Cordillera People’s Liberation Army (CPLA), he forged a peacetalk with the Cory government in 1986. A year after that, on July 15, 1987 she issued Executive Order 220 that established the Cordillera Executive Board and the Cordillera Regional Assembly. Cariño lamented that CPA was no longer a part of the whole process that it started. EO220 gave the CPLA a privileged position and Balweg lord over the new Cordillera Administrative Region, Cariño said. Among historical notes, Cariño also traced the evolution of the term Igorot, from a simple descriptive I-gulot (from the mountains) to the derogatory Spanish Ygollotes infieles, an inferior group of minority barbaric headhunters. Annecdotes and reactions challenged the younger Igorots to be proud to be Igorots after Cariño’s talk. # Lyn V. Ramo Post your comments, reactions to this article
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