Cordillera Central (Luzon) - History

History

The Philippines, named after King Philip II of Spain in 1618, was already of interest to Spain before the Spaniards even reached the land. In 1565, reports of huge gold mines in the Cordillera reached the Viceroy of Mexico, which led to the first official Spanish expedition to the Cordillera in 1576. King Philip III, waging the Thirty Year War which needed funding, sent orders for large expeditions to the Philippines.

In 1620, Captain Garcia de Aldana Cabrera offered the resisting Igorot tribal leaders clemency if they were willing to accept Catholic religion, obey the Spanish government and pay a fifth of all their mined gold to the Spanish King. They refused and the Spanish conquerors built forts and organized military troops to start the exploitation of the gold mines.

During the years that followed, the Spanish managed to trade gold despite setbacks from the Igorots, who because of their resistance remained relatively independent from Spanish rule. The price that the Igorots had to pay for this independence was that they became different from their colonised brothers. The Philippines staged Asia’s first nationalistic revolution in 1896, and declared its independence on June 12, 1898.

The newly founded country was soon taken over by the United States of America. The US was the first foreign nation to fully invade the highlands of the Gran Cordillera to push the mining operations in the territory.

Actually, the United States of America was ceded The Philippines at the Treaty of Paris (1898), which officially ended the hostilities of the Spanish-American War. Immediately after this war, the Philippine-American War pitted the gallant Philippine peoples against yet another foreign occupier, and actual hostilities did not end until 1913. The result of these conflicts led to the USA declaring The Philippines a protectorate, which is a form of colonialism with local autonomy. The USA established strategic military bases in The Philippines, with the consent of the established government in Manila. During World War II, the Japanese temporarily overtook the American presence, causing Philippine people to fight alongside by joint the US and Philippine Commonwealth Military in order to extricate the Japanese by 1945.

On September 27, 1927, the Benquet Consolidated Mining Company discovered one of the richest veins of gold ever, at a time when the USA was entering the Great Depression. This was the start of a real gold rush into Cordillera region: in 1929, there were 94 mining companies, by 1933 there were 17,812.

This extreme growth had tremendous results for the landscape; it changed the original one way Mountain Trail into a busy highway despite the road slides and cuts that occur up to this day. Again, similar to the fight against the Spanish, the indigenous inhabitants protested against the destruction of their land and the neglecting of their rights. Mining operations continued to grow and by 1939 the Philippines ranked among the world’s leading gold producers, and second to the state of California among US producers.

From 1936 to 1946 the Philippines was granted domestic self administration under the Commonwealth of the Philippines as a transitional period to complete independence. From 1941 to 1945 the country fell under Japanese rule, and was liberated by military forces of the United States of America, and dare inside by the combined forces of the Allied Philippine Commonwealth military forces and local Igorot and Cordilleran guerrilla forces in Northern Luzon. The USA subsequently recognized Philippine independence on July 4, 1946.

The independent republic’s policy shifted towards the integration of the ‘cultural minorities’ into mainstream culture. In 1966 the Philippine Congress passed the ‘Separation Bill’, dividing the old Mountain Province into four new ones: Benguet, Mountain Province (Bontoc), Ifugao and Kalinga-Apayao. The political elite hoped that the creation of several provinces would, by increasing the region’s representation, increase development spending in the area.

Under the Marcos’ administration, politicization of the Cordillera took a new turn. National government development projects in the area were against the interests of the indigenous peoples, and were strongly resisted by them. Particularly important were the Chico River Dam project and the Cellophil project. The first threatened to inundate traditional villages, the second gave outsiders control over vast forest lands. Resistance resulted in increased regional consciousness rather than local ethnic consciousness.

This period is known for its arbitrary arrests, disappearances and torture. With the killing of Benigno Aquino in 1983, the human rights situation further deteriorated.

In 1986, because of financial fraud, Marcos had to step back from office and was succeeded by Corazon Aquino. Under her leadership the human rights situation started to improve; political prisoners were released, repressive laws were repealed and all relevant UN Conventions were ratified.

However, the Aquino administration failed to tackle substantial issues such as land reform and the restructuring of the economy. After the collapse of the negotiations between the government and the National Democratic Front (NDF), Aquino declared the “Total War Policy”, aimed at recovering New People’s Army (NPA) controlled areas and to destroy the NPA’s organizational and infrastructure base. The NPA had moved into the Cordillera to assist in the resistance against the projects.