Cordillera Day rites slated April 22 to 29

BAGUIO CITY -- The Cordillera Peoples Alliance will hold Cordillera Day celebrations from April 22-29 in Abra, Apayao, Kalinga, Benguet, Ifugao, Mountain Province and Baguio.

A total of at least 6,000 delegates are expected to attend the celebrations, which is guided by the central theme “Fight for Land, Life and Rights.”

Abie Anongos, CPA secretary general said urgent issues affecting the Cordillera indigenous peoples will be tackled during the celebration, including “plunder” of ancestral lands due to large mining, large dams and militarization; climate change impacts, oil price hikes, genuine regional autonomy, and looming energy and geothermal projects.

Specific issues and campaigns will be tackled in each celebration, such as the expansion of big businesses, cutting of trees, and environmental degradation of Baguio.

Each celebration will come up with resolutions, action plans and declarations directed at addressing the above issues, and to lobby local government to act on these to uphold indigenous peoples’ rights.

The specific venues and dates of the provincial celebrations are Amtwagan, Tubo, Abra (April 23-24); Lower Uma, Lubuagan, Kalinga (April 24); Guina-ang, Bontoc, Mountain Province (April 22-24); Conner, Apayao (April 24); Tupaya, Lagawe, Ifugao (April 29) and three areas for the Benguet celebration: Gold Creek, Itogon (April 20), Mount Pulag (April 23-24), and Tabeo, Mankayan (April 28).

A CPA press statement said Cordillera Day traces its beginnings April 24, 1980, when Kalinga pangat Macli-ingDulag, one of the prominent leaders of the successful resistance of the Bontok and Kalinga indigenous peoples’ to the World Bank funded Chico River Basin Hydroelectric Dam Project, was killed by when soldiers belonging to the Philippine Army’s 4th Infantry Division, under Lt. LeodegarioAdalem.

This did not cow the Bontok and Kalinga indigenous peoples, but further firmed up the resistance to the Marcos dictatorship, militarization and exploitation of the ancestral land. The anti-Chico resistance later broadened into a mass mass movement of the Cordillera peoples and advocates into the struggle for the defense of ancestral land and for genuine regional autonomy.

From 1981 to 1984, the commemoration of the death of MacliingDulag was called Macliing Memorial.

The commemoration evolved as Cordillera Day in 1985 to symbolize the widening unity and solidarity among the different indigenous peoples of the Cordillera, and with advocate and support groups at the regional, national and international levels. The first celebration of Cordillera Day was held in Sadanga, Mountain Province in 1985.

It was in June 1984 that the CPA was founded and took the lead in the celebration of Cordillera Day, from 1985 to present.