“City Mayor Lauds Nullification by NCIP of
Spurious CALTS”
That’s the title I gave the story about the nullification
of the ‘spurious’ CALTs issued by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples
by the NCIP itself.
It is a very sad news for people who are working on the
recognition of their land claims by the body that was promised to help them
with their land problems that began after the Americans started reserving lands
in their territory for various purposes.
And earlier too when the Spaniards will not give certificates of title
to lands possessed by the Igorots for the reason that they have not yet
identified the areas they want to reserve for government purposes.
Once when I started working with some people who were
struggling for the recognition of their ancestrals, I was told that the whole
Benguet land was surveyed in the name of my great-grandfather. And he identified portions thereof for his
children, who, unfortunately were mostly women.
Parts of the land that I was told was surveyed in my great-grandfather’s
name, and which my informants said were my great-grandfather’s land have become
lands for the public such as the Wright Park and its adjoining areas, the
United States Military Reservation which included the Camp John Hay, the Export
Processing Zone, the airport, and the Philippine Military Reservation.
Sad to say, I cannot find documents to support that
story, and I was not able to have the informants document their story before
they died.
I did however see a sketch of land that identified the
area claimed by the late Mateo Carino for his daughter Josefa and whose
surrounding areas were marked as Tierras de los Igorottes de Loakan, Tierra del
Igorotte Mateo Carantes, Tierra del Igorotte Pisla, Tierra del Igorotte Piraso.
The land identified as Tierra del Igorotte Mateo Carino
is the land where the CAP Building and other buildings now stand, even I
believe, the area now known as the Scout Barrio. The place was known as Embanao
Which means wide
The land identified as Tierra del Igorotte Piraso is on
the west side of the land where the CAP
Building is. There is no boundary marked
on the west side of that land identified as the land of the Igorot Piraso, but
from what my mother told me as to where her father and his wife by a second
marriage once lived before the Americans came, I believe that the late Piraso
and his clan, the Baticalang clan did own in the native parlance that land that
included the land where the Vallejo Hotel now stands.
My late grandfather and his wife Solicam Baticalang once
lived on that land where the Baguio Cathedral now stands. Solicam was the sister of Piraso and
Pinaoan. Piraso was an Igorotte leader
at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th
century.
Pinaoan was the father of Molintas who was appointed a
president of the township of Baguio in the first decade of the 20th
century.
The Baticalang Clan lived and some descendants still live
in the areas surrounding the Jungletown where the Vallejo Hotel now is.
Josephine Abanag who has been claiming the Wright Park
area claimed it on the basis of her relationship with the Pirasos. She once told me that she land she was claiming
was the portion of Samay Piraso, the cousin of her grandfather Molintas. Samay had no direct heirs. She claimed to be the heir of Samay Piraso in
lieu of the child she (Samay) never had.
The other area on the southeast side of the land that
Mateo Carino fought for even up to the United States Supreme Court was the land
of the Igorots Pisla which I believe should have been written as Pistola and I
believe that that was what my late cousin Solomon Carantes believed too because
he had it surveyed in the name of our cousin John Sho’dang. And I think he did not just believe it. He knew it was so. My father once said he used to plant bananas
there when he was very young.
The north and northeast side of the land the late Mateo
Carino fought for were marked as the Tierra del Igorotte Mateo Carantes.
Once, when the lands around the now Airport area were
being surveyed for issuance of Free Patents, the late Mateo Carantes reportedly
replaced the name of Ugasya which his brother in law placed as the owner of
that parcel of land where the EPZA and MOOG buildings now stand. He argued that the new law says it should be
the name of the man to be placed as the owner of the land.
His act made his brother-in-law comment thus “Dja gwara I inta’djun Bahag dja bu’day shi
Doakan? Is there a (parcel of) land
that Bahag brought to Loakan? Bahag was
the name used by the late Mateo Carantes reportedly they were evading capture because
of their joining the Aguinaldo group.
The John Hay area is still part of the old Doakan. And I believe that that parcel of land marked
as the land of the late Mateo Carantes is part of the land surveyed earlier in
the name of Kalias, the father of Ugasya who became the wife of Mateo Carantes,
Dingbey who became the wife of Molintas Pinaoan, Bayas who married Tekel and in
whose name that part of Loakan where the late Kalias built his first house in
Loakan was titled in 1910 for the reason that the late Bayas was no longer
around because of death leaving her a widow before the Americans came, Mayshas
who was a Mrs. Abodiles before her death sometime in the first decade of the
1900s, Bogan whom her husband Bangcoyao left a widow in the early 1900s, Pot-og
who was bitten by a snake when he was a teen-ager, and Tagdi whose portion of
Kalias’ land was taken by his ‘ex- father- in- law as penalty for his leaving
his first wife Josefa Carino.
That story about the late Tagdi or Tagley has not been a
favorite topic of the Tagley family for quite some time. It was only after I joined a group of
ancestral land claimants that a blood relative on my father’s side and a
relative by affinity on my mother’s side (if Baticalang was not a relative of
Kalias) told me that the land which the late Carino fought for was the land of the
man who left his wife who was a daughter of the late Mateo Carino.
I asked my mother about it. She said yes, her father married Josefa
because her mother Bayosa always let her attend to another person’s baby thus
giving them no time to consummate their marriage. He felt that Bayosa did not like him to marry
Josefa. So he left.
Before they got married, he tilled her land, that part
which is now the Athletic Bowl. He
brought his carabao there to help him serve his ‘lady love.
When he could not make their marriage work, he left with
his carabao, and married Solicam instead. They lived where the Baguio Cathedral now
stands. Solicam had her first baby
there. She was also going to have her
second baby there, but when the Americans arrived, she and her husband left for
that portion of the family land where the Bell Church now stands. The place was called Bisil because it was sandy. Bisil is Ibaloi for sand.
When he learned from the Americans that it is not good
for close relatives to marry, he was thankful because, as my old cousin on my
mother’s side once said, ‘Kasinsin nen
Tagdi si Bayosa.
When my mother’s sister got
married to a son of the late Josefa, her brother-in-law reportedly told her “Ah, si’khayo I engitudoy ni eg etuloy”
Ah, you are the ones who
continued what was not continued, or pursued.
Despite what happened, the late Tagdi did not harbor bad
feelings against the girl/woman he was asked to marry at a young age. He even reportedly helped her son go to law
school.
These details made me believe that what the grand old man
Caoi said about the area reserved for the United States Military Reservation
was the land of the late Kalias, even the lands now known as Loakan Proper,
Liwanag, Apugan, and its surrounding area.
The late Caoi Binay-an called Kalias as the founder of Loakan.
My late mother learned from her father that when Kalias
found Loakan, he called his cousin Bay-osan, and a young man named Batil and
together, they turned the swamp that is now the landing field for airplanes
into a rice land.
When the Americans, the descendants of the three men,
Kalias, Bay-osan and Batil had the lands they planted to agricultural plans
patented.
The lands in Loakan were
the first ancestral lands titled. They
were the free lands of the natives that the United States of America granted
Certificates of Title to after the Benguet Igorots hounded the office of the
late Governor William A. Pack “singly and by delegation” to ask for the return
of their lands that the US government proclaimed as public lands as soon as
they came to the Philippines. To be
continued. B.T.Pistola
