My Friends and I, We Were To Overthrow the Government

I was sixteen going on seventeen, I just joined a movement that aims to overthrow the Government. . . .

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The indigenous Igorot tribes are one of, if not, the hardiest people living in the islands ‘still named after King Philip II of Spain’ (as one of my friends insists to call it). The Igorot’s harsh and tough environment undoubtedly shaped their hardy constitution. There was rarely anyone who did not work very hard. For how could they not? In order to have sustenance, the Igorots have to till the rugged, arid mountains they fondly call their home.

Sunrise  over Maligcong rice terraces

Apart from his preserved rich but dynamic pre-colonial culture, the rugged, chilly mountains is all the Igorot got. Even so, within the given constraints of his exacting environment, he learned to adapt and make the best use of his lot. The Igorot forebear, with just his bare hands and a few rudimentary tools, painstakingly carved the steep mountains into a masterful engineering monument of rice and vegetable terraces. With foresight, he knew that the rice terraces, the forests, the clear streams and rivers, are enough to nourish and sustain many more generations of his descendants – for lifetimes after lifetimes. And indeed, in spite of his landlocked and austere location, a contrast to the sunny, wide, and fertile plains of the lowlands, the formidable, cloud-hidden mountains never failed to yield everything necessary for his survival. The Igorot thus survived, and thrived.

Banaue rice terraces

For many hundreds of years, the various Igorot tribes did not need or expect much from the Government. After all, they have always provided for themselves. They built functional irrigation systems and colossal rice terraces without a centralized authority ordering or commanding them. They built without the use of forced labor or slavery. Each tribe was self-subsistent, and aware, that it existed long before there was a Government. . . .

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I was sixteen, newly arrived in the city – “to do college”. I was very lucky. A year before that, Mother told me that I could not do college – because we have no money. Father had just died, where would she get the money to send me to college?

But I was lucky. Unexpectedly lucky. . . I got a scholarship, from the Government!

When I arrived to the city, I knew nothing of the city and the people in the city. So I obeyed everything my elders told me to do – to be a good girl, basically. They put me in a convent dormitory for girls. There, they said, the convent nuns would make sure that I prayed, and followed the rules.

In the dormitory, a roommate looked down on me, for being a mountain girl, an Igorot, and for being poor.

But in campus, I met new good friends. Exuberant, free-spirited, intelligent friends. They told me that we – The People – whether we hail from the lowlands or the highlands, are poor, because of the Government. That no matter how hard we work, even if we work to our deaths, we will remain poor and wretched because of the Government, and its accomplices.

“But we are scholars of the Government!” I told my new friends, aghast at their plans to overthrow the Government. My friends then told me to listen, very carefully, as they tell me the ‘truth’. That the truth is, it is our right to be given education by the Government. To where do The People’s taxes go, but to be rightfully spent for The People’s free access to education, as well as for the provision of other basic needs for all the citizens of the State?

My friends then showed me facts, statistics, the well researched and well analyzed data regarding the Government’s spendings and transactions. They told me about the Government’s unjust deals and crooked laws and agreements with other nations’ governments, business entities, and the big banks. One of these, which directly disadvantaged my people, was the standing Mining Act that gave mining companies the freedom to devastate tribal lands, allowing 100% foreign control and ownership of these lands, and these companies having the right to displace and resettle people – all this without having to consult the indigenous inhabitants of the land.

My friends’ arguments about overthrowing the Government sounded all too logical. They believed that we – The People – have put the Government in its place. So when it fails in its responsibility and breaks its ‘Social Contract’ with The People, we have all the right to bring down the Government.

I thought of my father. I thought of my mother. I thought of all the people who would be unceremoniously displaced to clear the way for Government-Business projects that would only essentially benefit the few. I thought of the mountains and rice terraces crumbling once the mountains are excavated. I thought of the fresh streams and rivers, polluted. I thought of the dense forests and their animal inhabitants, wiped out.

I could then, clearly, and reasonably see why the Government must, indeed, be overthrown.

My friends claimed that our problem is structural: that the problem of our country, and of the world at large, is embedded in the prevailing economic and political structure. And that our goal is to crush this oppressive and unjust structure and replace it with an alternative.

I was sixteen, going on seventeen; together with others who were more or less of the same age as me, we were fearless, we were dangerous, we were adventurous, we were idealistic – we were ready to face Death – to offer our young lives, for what we believed was a just and noble cause.

“Improvement of the Race”

Before: the Igorot in the village chewing betel nut? haha

After:  being groomed in a hair salon 😀

 

 

 

 

 

 

A young Igorot farmer, dubbed as the “Carrot Man” has recently become an overnight sensation in Philippine social media. He was working on a farm in Bauko, Mountain Province, when two traveling tourists from Manila spotted him by the roadside carrying a basket full of carrots. Captivated by his charming looks, they snapped several photos of him which they posted on Facebook “for everyone to admire”.

Unanticipatedly, his photos went viral and social media went abuzz over a very ‘good-looking’, industrious man from the Cordilleras. Netizens started to wonder and search for this young man’s whereabouts and identity. They likened his looks to a number of Asian celebrities.

The young man was soon identified to be Jeyrick Sigmaton. Jeyrick happens to be from my hometown. It is a usual practice in my hometown that after the heavy tasks of planting and harvesting rice, farmers may travel to other municipalities to look for temporary jobs. This was what Jeyrick was doing in Bauko Municipality when he was spotted by the tourists who took his photos.

For several days, the “Carrot Man” was trending on Philippine social media that television networks competed in a bid to interview him. The television network that won the bid traveled all the way from Manila to search for him in his far-flung mountain village in Ogo-og, Barlig.

On February 28, a popular TV show aired an episode about the Carrot Man wherein an anthropologist and a historian were invited to comment on the Carrot Man phenomenon. The TV host, Jessica Soho, reported that good-looking Igorots with aquiline noses, like Jeyrick, are the product of intermarriage between Igorots and American and British priests and missionaries who arrived in the Mountain Province in the early 1900s. The historian, Dr. Jimmuel Naval from the University of the Philippines, backed the TV host’s story as he stated that the ‘Caucasian’ features of some Igorot people was brought by Anglican missionaries who intermarried with Igorot natives resulting to an “improvement of the race” of the indigenous Igorots. Many Igorots and non-Igorots alike were disturbed by these preposterous and inaccurate statements coming from a multi-awarded journalist, and a University of the Philippines professor of history.

I normally would not involve myself with whatever the social media is going crazy about, so it took me some thinking whether to write this blog post about the “Carrot Man”. The fascination towards this young man from my hometown has brought to the surface enduring and prevalent issues confronting the Filipino psychology, sense of identity and history.

First of all, contrary to Dr. Naval’s statement, Jeyrick and others who look like him, are not necessarily Caucasian-looking. People like Jeyrick, who have aquiline nose, are everywhere in Igorotland and in other Asian countries, and these people do not necessarily have Caucasian ancestry.

Below, on the left side with a black and white shoes, was my father as a young man in 1952. He had a lighter skin color and an aquiline nose. Just like his parents who had the same features as him, he could pass as a Caucasian, but could as well pass as a Japanese or even Chinese, or indigenous Taiwanese. He is of pure Igorot stock.

The point being, there is nothing wrong with having a mixed bloodline and looking like a ‘Caucasian’ with aquiline nose and fair-colored skin. But at the same time, there is also absolutely nothing wrong with having a “pure” Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian, Asian, Filipino ancestry with a flat, broad nose and brown skin color. The professor from the University of the Philippines seemed to be uninformed of the fact that people with aquiline nose exist in every race, and we do not need to have a Caucasian ancestry in order for our race to be considered “improved”.

Secondly, both Jessica Soho and Dr. Naval’s claims that western missionaries intermarried with Igorots in the early 1900s is historically unproven. In my hometown of Barlig, and in other municipalities in the Mountain Province, it is unheard of that a western missionary ever married a local woman. If the historian, Dr. Naval, has read history books about the Mountain Province, he would have known that there was not such an intermarriage as he claimed. The missionaries who came to the Mountain Province usually came from two countries: United States and the Netherlands or Belgium. The Catholic priests were not allowed to marry, so even in theory, it would have not been possible for them to intermarry with the locals. The Anglican missionaries, on the other hand, according to history books, brought along their wives. There has never been an Anglican mission in Barlig where Jeyrick comes from.

In my hometown, specifically, we have the oral tradition of ub-ufok and ug-ukud where the elders can orally recite our intricate genealogy and tribe’s history from the day our town was starting to be inhabited. These oral genealogists and historians even remember the very personal names of our early ancestors – the first settlers in our hometown. Nowhere in this oral recitations of genealogy was it ever mentioned that someone from our tribe married a Caucasian missionary. A record of such intermarriage was clearly absent both in history books written by scholars and in our genealogy as accounted by our oral historians.

It is strange for a history professor from a renowned university to say that having an aquiline ‘Caucasian’ nose means “improved” race.

It is surprising that a historian, who is looked up to as having authority over his subject matter, goes on to make an erroneous claim about the history of an ethnic group he has not studied.

I guess the real issue here stems from the long-standing and popular notion among many Filipinos regarding the identity and physical features of the Igorot people. For hundreds of years, from generation to generation, the Filipino majority maintained the notion that the word ‘Igorot’ refers to having dark-skin, thick-lips, flat nose, curly-haired barbaric tribes who wear g-strings as their normal everyday clothing. And so when the “Carrot Man” was identified as an Igorot, there was such a fuss; like as if Jeyrick Sigmaton is an anomaly as he did not fit lowlanders’ notion of what an Igorot looks like. Then comes the national television show where a historian claims that Jeyrick Sigmaton looks the way he does because of a Caucasian ancestry that improved his race!

It is a sad fact that Filipinos attribute beauty and good looks to having an aquiline nose and Caucasian features.

It is a sad fact that Filipinos attribute the Carrot Man’s handsome looks on his physical features when such features is not at all unusual in Igorotland. What sets Jeyrick apart is not his good looks based on his aquiline nose and cute dimples as many in social media are always pointing out. But for a people who have strong tendency to only look at external appearances, they do not see that it is the Carrot Man’s innocence and purity that makes him so comely.

When asked which Filipino actress or actor he admires, Jeyrick could not name anyone. Oh, in case the lowlanders don’t know, in the mountains, we are not really that starstruck, so it was not surprising that the Carrot Man could not answer their question about celebrities. And would anybody find it strange that this 21-year-old man does not know what a ‘mall’ is?  Again, in the mountains, we don’t have that consumerist malling culture prevalent among lowland Filipinos.

Enauchi ay Jeyrick, your fate has summoned you. Wherever it leads you, be sure to take care of your soul. The grandparents are looking after you.

Early to mid 1900s Sagada Igorot Man – Masferre Collections