Grim Reaper strikes again / Igorot 'nationalism'

BEHIND THE SCENES

Alfred P. Dizon

For the past weeks, the Grim Reaper has struck friends, a member of the family, acquaintances and lately Claudio Pancho, 63, the development management officer of the Dept. of Health in Mountain Province who died of cardiac arrest in Bontoc on Monday. Our condolences to the family.   

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(With the celebration of Cordillera Month, Yours Truly would like to share an article he co-wrote with Maurice Malanes for the Philippine Daily Inquirer years ago. A little editing was done to update it. )

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THEY didn’t speak about a nation, not even contemplating of forming one in the future. But they wanted to debate about their ''Igorotness.''  Call it ''Igorot nationalism.'' 

One topic of the 3rd Igorot International Consultation held then in Baguio City was ''Who are the Igorots?''
Most of the 500 participants were Igorots working in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and other countries. Many of them have become citizens in their adopted countries. 

Although second- and third-generation Igorots who were far removed from their native origins, many of the participants were ready to trace and appreciate their origin and to reaffirm the positive values of their culture.
'People from mountains'

Then Commissioner Kate Botengan of the Commission on Higher Education tackled the topic on who the Igorots are and traced how outsiders imposed the Igorot label. 

The term ''Igorot'' is composed of the root word golot, an archaic Tagalog word meaning ''mountain range'' and i, a prefix meaning ''people of'' or ''dwelling in.'' 

The Spaniards first coined the term during an expedition to the Baguio gold mines in 1576. By the 18th century, they were spelling it igorrote. Igorot is thus a general term for mountain people. 

Botengan noted that golot and other words derived from it were ''of lowland origin,'' which were later picked up by the Spaniards and the Americans. 

The Spaniards and the Americans had regarded the Igorots as ''pagans'' and ''barbarians'' who needed to be ''Christianized'' and ''educated'' so that they could be ''integrated'' with the rest of the colonized majority.
Informed about the fabled gold hidden in pine-clad mountains and well-guarded by ''fierce natives'' called Igorots, the Spaniards tried but failed to take a foothold in what is now known as the Cordillera. 

The Spaniards' failure to conquer the highlands is a source of pride for many Igorots until now. 

What the Spaniards failed to do in 400 years, however, the Americans did in a few decades through both hard and soft approaches. 

The Americans used Christianization and education to conquer the hearts and minds of the un-Hispanized Igorots. They also used their Constabulary to subdue those who resisted. 

In no time, the Americans took a foothold of the Igorots' gold fields, particularly in Benguet, whose mining companies were founded by American soldiers-turned-gold prospectors. 

The Igorots were conquerable after all. Thanks to the superiority of American ways and their means of conquest.
Prejudice
Despite the presence of experts in the consultation, the participants were not able to come up with a common consensus on the broader definition of the Igorot and whether ethnolinguistic groups under this broader group should be referred to as such. 

Dr. June Prill Brett of the Cordillera Studies Center of the University of the Philippines College Baguio said other ethnolinguistic groups could not be identified as Igorots.
She said the term had been imposed on them by factors such as the media and tourism. She said it had not been part of their cultural heritage. 

'In Conner town (in Apayao), I was told that Igorots such as myself who come from Bontoc, Mt. Province, are those from the Ibaloy (or Ibaloi) and Northern Kankanaey regions,'' Brett said.
Most Kankanaey tribes are in Mt. Province while Ibalois come from Benguet.
Ifugao participants said they did not want to be called Igorots and preferred to be called Ifugaos. Those coming from Kalinga preferred to be called Kalingas. 

And there's the prejudice that Igorots suffered and continue to suffer under many of their own fellow Filipinos.
Citing her own experience as a student in Manila, Botengan also traced the time when Igorot would refer to someone who was ''dirty, unwashed and unkempt with kinky hair and a tail.'' The label would also refer to someone ''who beats cans while begging in the streets of Manila.'' 

An old dictionary meaning referred to Igorot as ''barbarian, uncouth or uncivilized.'' But journalist Ramon Dacawi, an Ifugao, said Igorot should be redefined as ''good-looking, sturdy, rich or intelligent.''
Botengan notes that the negative perception about the Igorot is slowly changing. She attributes this to the continuing rise to prominence in both government and private sectors of educated people from the mountain provinces who are now willing to proclaim to one and all that they are Igorots. 

Another source of pride is the Igorots' cultural heritage, which has persisted despite inroads of Western religions and so-called modernization. 

But the late Bishop Francisco Claver of the Bontoc-Lagawe diocese, noted ''cultural deterioration'' in the region which, he said, others interpreted as ''progress.'' He was among two final speakers who were asked to discuss about ''immediate and long-term issues Igorots must address collectively.'' 

Claver focused on how the Igorots have finally become fully ''integrated'' into the nation's life, becoming ''full partners and participants in its (the country's) culture of corruption.'' 

The ''culture of corruption,'' the bishop said, is not part of Igorot culture. But he lamented how corruption has become a fact of life in the upland region's political and economic affairs. 

He cited an experience when he was visiting his hometown of Bontoc, Mt. Province, in 1986. An 80-year-old, g-string clad, illiterate, uneducated (''at least in terms of the education your [referring to participants to the consultation] august selves went through in schools'') man came to the bishop's house to complain about election irregularities shortly after the 1986 Edsa Revolution. 

The old man enumerated accusations of fraud, vote-buying, tampering with ballot results and the like. Having not visited his hometown for some time, Claver thought the election troubles were a matter-of-course problems in other parts of the country ''but had not believed would be rife here too in our mountains.'' 

Claver retold and translated the biting question of the old man, who ''shook his head in sheer frustration over the candidates who had won by ballot-tampering'': ''Why do they (the cheating winners) do such things? They lose, that's it. That's what the people intended in their voting. Why should they change the people's will?'' 

To the participants, who were all ears to the bishop, Claver reiterated the question: ''Why indeed?''
Claver said the old man's ''why'' was ''a deeply anguishing question.'' He says the passing of ''a more forthright and honest way of social interaction, its loss, its corrupting'' was what the old man was lamenting and troubled about. 

To this, Claver again posed a challenging question to the consultation participants: ''Do we share his (old man's) sentiments?''
Going back
To Claver, the old Igorot ways of honest and open dealings with one another in their social, economic and political life are worth looking into.

According to him, the deepest part of a culture is its values because these, he says, make up one's identity, ''not dress, not dance, and not even language.'' 

Claver says he focused on corruption because ''it is to my mind the most insidious destroyer of ourselves as Igorots.'' 

Corruption, he says, was ''not part of our inner make-up in the not-too-distant past.''
But he clarified he was not claiming that Igorot ancestors were paragons of honesty and uprightness in every way. 

''There were scoundrels, too, in their day(s),'' he says. ''(But) at least there was a general sense of non-acceptance of underhanded dealings, of thieving from the public purse, of putting one's 'self-aggrandizement' over the common weal.'' 

Part of Igorot culture is a strong sense of right and wrong. But this, the bishop says, is getting lost, as the worst enemies of Igorot folk today are ''our own people'' or what he cynically calls ''Igorots of the three Cs: competent, Christian and corrupt.'' 

They are competent because of their education; thus, they know how to use and manipulate the system. They are also Christian, ''not so much by virtue of religion (but) by the simple fact that they profess Christianity.'' 

But they are also corrupt because they use their competence and ''Christianity'' to put one over their fellows.
Hope
But can Igorots help solve or help lead in the huge task of addressing a national problem such as corruption? Claver believed that the Igorots can help in the ''huge task of national renewal.'' 

''If there is something part of our identity as Igorots that we can contribute to the nation at large, let's find out and let's give it,'' he said. 

The bishop said hope for better days ahead may be found in ''our little people's formula and attempts at creating creativity'' at the grass-root level. 

He cited a lay people's program within his diocese, which seeks to monitor the job performance of elected officials. Those involved in the program were ordinary people who helped guard ballots in the last elections but who realized that it is not enough to have clean elections.