Legitimate Claimants

In the last issue, I asked how the reader would feel when people who are not from his place talk about their forbears sacrificing so much for the improvement of a place.  

I, for one, do not feel good about it, especially when I see or hear of relatives or friends or neighbors who are being mocked because they are trying to fight for their rights over lands that belonged to their ascendants.  

Again, I would  say that there are those who claimed lands that are not really their forebears’, or who claimed more than they should.  This does not mean that there are no legitimate claimants.

Unfortunately, those who are not legitimate claimants are the ones getting recognized.  The legitimate ones are given a difficult time,  asked to submit so many requirements to prove their claims.  

Anyway, I would like to continue with my story about La Trinidad, or share what little I learned about the place.  Later, when I pick up some info, I will share the same if and when there is or are, and when there is still a time and a place where I can share the same with everyone who would like to know.

From the book of William Henry Scott entitled The Discovery of the Igorots, I read that the Distrito de Benguet which was established in 1846 referred only to La Trinidad which the Ibalois called Benguet., or shime khawad an ni eman benget  long before the Spaniards came.  The place was the first target of the Lt. Col. Guillermo Galvey’s travel to Los Pais de Igorrotes in 1829.  Galvey burned the houses of the Igorottes when he came to the place in search of the illegal tobacco plantations.  He also burned the fields of the Igorottes.  Then he called the place La Trinidad after his wife.  

In 1850, when the La Union  province was created as a militarily governed province, it absorbed the 1846 Distrito de Benguet, or La Trinidad.   The research made by Scott showed that there were more Igorots in that La Union province than lowlanders at that time.    To be continued.