PANGASINAN: AN ETHNOCULTURAL MAPPING

-marot nelmida-flores-

History and Culture always take a back seat in this age of global network and cyber transactions or what most young scholars describe as a postmodern world. Understandably, the focus is always on the global market and the pursuit of international status and recognition. The locale and the national are suddenly rendered imagined cultures and spaces, its historical and cultural import as romantic constructions of the elite.

But basic education still has its responsibility to inform young Filipinos about their ethnic origins, language, history and culture. The subject of identity and ethnicity is still paramount in the interest of humanity in search of knowledge and homeland. Histories and cultures are not only constructed by the elite for language in itself has different forms of expression and articulation not exclusive to the written language of the elite.

This morning, I will present to you an ethnocultural mapping of Pangasinan. What is ethnocultural mapping? It is an alternative form of mapping which focuses and privileges culture and lifeways as a response to the rigid mathematical orientation of the cartographic tradition of mapping in earlier centuries. Even geography these days as a discipline is no longer confined with physical mapping but has already embraced the idea of cultural or mental spaces with its cultural geography as a subdisicpline. The radical trend has been borne out as a result of the rigidity of scientific inquiry relating to space. In short, ethnocultural mapping does not deal alone in terms of leagues as in earlier days or modern-day geographic measurements. While calculations and measurements are still instructive in ethnocultural mapping, its foremost objective is to interrogate the construction of mental pictures of a certain place/space/region/locale in terms of its culture and lifeways.

I will attempt to cover quite a comprehensive array of topics this morning but because of the usual lack of material time when it comes to presentations, I will make use of visual images with a summary of each topic’s historical and cultural import for brevity. The major topics to be covered are the following:

1.  Prehispanic relations between the people of the coast (Panag-asinan or where salt is made) and the people from the Interior (Caboloan or where bolo, a specie of bamboo abounds); the political mapping made by the early Agustinian friars who named the entire region as ‘Pangasinan’ and obscured the precolonial coast-interior dichotomy of Panag-asinan and Caboloan;

2.  The controversial Kingdom of Tawalisi and Princess Urduja as ilustrado/anacbanua response against Eurocentrism;

3.  The Virgin of Manaoag and the manag-anito/babaylan tradition of Pangasinan; and,

4.  The Cattle Caravans of Ancient Caboloan as a feudal gypsy cart in the metropolis amidst globalization.

( I will also flash some institutional landmarks, archetypes and icons in the context of modern-day Pangasinan to situate the province amidst the race towards urbanization, cosmopolitanism and globalization. <in the powerpoint>)

What is the first thing that comes to mind to outsiders when ‘Pangasinan’ is mentioned? The 3 Bs – namely, bangus, bocayo, bagoong? Or for pilgrims, the miraculous image of the Our Lady of Manaoag? Or for foreign tourists, either they go see the famous 100 islands in Alaminos or seek the help of the many faithhealers that we have from almost every town or municipality to cure their ailments?

PANGASINAN is all of these and more. But let us not allow only the outsiders to define our sense of identity. Let us not even tolerate Manilacentric negative views about us to predominate and hence emasculate our strong aspirations through state policies that seek only to undermine our selfhood and social location. But how can we let Pangasinan people talk about themselves presupposing we know what we want and where we’re heading when we don’t even know our past, who we are or what we’ve become?

Panag-asinan-Caboloan (the coast-interior prehispanic settlements)

The word Pangasinan is not an ethnic name. It is rather toponymic. According to Amurrio (1970; p. 257), Pangasinenses may have had an ethnic name but was perhaps lost through the centuries.

As a toponymic term, Pangasinan means ‘land of salt’ (panag-asinan/pinag-aasinan) from the root word asin with the prefix ‘pang’ and suffix ‘–an’, denoting place. In the Iluko creation myth Angalo ken Aran, the place has been cited as the land of ‘Thalam-asin’. While salt is also found in the Ilocos Region and in Manila Bay, salt coming from Dasol and Bolinao are superior in quality. And because of salt, Pangasinan is able to produce the best bagoong from the monamon fish that abound along the coast. The town of Bolinao got its name from this fish. In Tagalog, Visayan and in Bicol, ‘bolinao’ means ‘monamon’. Lingayen is popular for its own variety of bagoong which is brandnamed maniboc.

But there is another name that refers to the interior plains of the province, which is not widely known. This place is called Luyag na Caboloan or ‘Place of Caboloan’. Caboloan is from the root word ‘bolo’ (a specie of bamboo) with the prefix ‘ca’ and suffix ‘–an’, meaning place. Caboloan is a place where ‘bolo’ is largely found. In earlier times, settlements which abound in ‘bolo’ include Mangatarem, Binalatongan (San Carlos), Gabon (Calasiao), Mangaldan, Manaoag, Mapandan, Malasiqui, Bayambang, Tolong (Sta. Barbara), Gerona, Camiling, Paniqui and Moncada. Even some parts of La Union province rich in ‘bolo’ were once upon a time within the Luyag na Caboloan matrix, making these towns later under the political jurisdiction of Pangasinan. This explains the thriving bamboo-based industry in the area supported by NACIDA. With the commercial production of bamboo and rattan merchandise, the cattle caravans surfaced as the mercantile outlet for these goods. (We will dwell on the cattle caravans later.)

Another toponymic name, Caboloan first appeared in a grammar book written by Fr. Mariano Pellicer in 1840, entitled, Arte de la Lengua Pangasinana o Caboloan. As Vicar Provincial of Pangasinan and cura parroco of Lingayen, Fr. Pellicer knew the existence of an earlier work on Pangasinan grammar done in 1690 but was no longer in circulation in his time. Based on this earlier work, Fr. Pellicer wrote his own book. In Retaña’s Biblioteca Idiomatica Oriental (1906), Pangasinan was synonymous to Caboloan. The use of Caboloan remained until about the 19th century. The entire region was then known generally as Pangasinan when Spanish forces adopted the name of the coastal villages which they first occupied, to refer to the whole place (Cortes; 1974, pp. 1-2). Thus in pre-hispanic times, Pangasinan referred only to the coastal areas while Caboloan to the inland plains .

Today, the political formation of Pangasinan is bounded on the west by the province of Zambales, on the north by Lingayen Gulf, the northeast by La Union province, on the east by Nueva Ecija, and on the south by the provinces of Tarlac and Pampanga. From the time of the conquest of Santiago Island in Bolinao by Juan de Salcedo’s men in May 1572, historians and scholars placed Zambales and La Union and some parts of Tarlac under Pangasinan. Interestingly however, in a letter dated 9 December 1572, the account of the tributes collected by Martin de Goiti listed Bolinao as another province separate from Pangasinan (The Philippines Under Spain, Book III; 1991, p.17). Sometime in the middle of the 18th century, the province of Zambales was created. La Union became a province in 1850 and towns which were previously under Pangasinan such as Rosario, Sto. Tomas, Agoo, Aringay, Caba, San Fernando, and Bacnotan were now considered to belong to the new created province. The creation of Tarlac as a province in 1875 removed the towns of Gerona, Paniqui, Camiling and Moncada from the territorial jurisdiction of Pangasinan. A number of municipalities were reterritorialized while new ones were created under the American Government (Cortes; 1990, p.5).

In 1903, the western towns of Bolinao, Anda, Alaminos, Bani, Agno, Burgos, Mabini, Dasol, and Infanta which were part of the province of Zambales from mid-18th century, were turned over to Pangasinan for lack of funds and administrative problems (PF-NGOs; 1st ed., 1995). These towns were classified previously as Zambal because residents in these areas, particularly Bolinao and Anda speak the Sambal language. It is only after these were reclassified as Pangasinan towns when residents of Bolinao called their language distinctively, Bolinao. Another reason why these were under Zambales before 1903, is because they could not be reached from the capital of Lingayen on foot. The rolling formation of these towns from the Zambales ranges and the thick forests prevented commercial interaction between the residents of these areas and the coastal towns from Sual to San Fabian and the interior towns from Aguilar to Malasiqui and Mapandan. Bolinao can only be reached through the coastal waters with the use of native boats such as baloto, lanson, viray, lampitaw and ponting (Bolinao Town Fiesta Souvenir Program; 1998). This isolation made Sual the westernmost town in Pangasinan. The topographic factor also explains why these western towns lagged behind the central plains in terms of progress and urbanization. Sual only became significant when in 1855, a port was established as a result of the opening of the Philippines to international trade by the British in 1834. In fact, Sual’s ancient port area boasts of more berths than Subic’s according to some observers.

The provincial government has been more concerned with the industries and investment potentials in the densely populated central plains and the coastal towns of Lingayen Gulf than in these sleepy western towns. Because the central towns are more populous, voters in these areas are prioritized in the allotment of election campaign funds. State concern over the material life of the central plains is best concretized with the construction of the dike (1935) and continuous fortification of it to prevent the Agno river from inundating the agricultural municipalities from the city of San Carlos to Tayug and particularly, the commercial districts of Dagupan, Lingayen, Binmaley and Mangaldan. After World War II, Pangasinan had been divided into three geographic units: western, central, and eastern. Recent geopolitical subdivisions of the province created six congressional districts.

In the 1999 unpublished dissertation of Prospero de Vera III, he said that contemporary Pangasinan is the 3rd most populated province in the country with an average household size of 5.24 individuals per family and is classified as a 1st class province in Luzon. He noted that recent political climate favored eastern section of the province in terms of infrastructure projects such as the San Roque dam, Asingan-Sta. Maria bridge, and the San Nicolas-Sta. Fe, Umingan-San Jose road networks. While sleepy western towns were less developed than the hegemonic central plains because of their historical isolation, eastern municipalities were able to recuperate from being underdeveloped because of their road connection to northern Baguio and southern Manila. As trade routes, eastern section cannot be inevitably ignored by progress and urbanization.

Coastal Dagupan was part of the original Panag-asinan. In post-World War 2 however, Dagupan’s saltbeds have been converted into fishponds. Dagupan’s famed bangus was born. How did this happen? The great flood of 1935 which inundated the agricultural fields in the central plains which also swept away the Colegio de San Alberto Magno in Calmay necessitated the construction of the dike which diverted the major flow of the Agno river from Dagupan, Binmaley, Calasiao and San Carlos to western areas such as Labrador and Sual. With the construction of the dike, the natural landscape has been altered and what used to be once the whiplashing Agno river delta (Dagupan-Binmaley-Lingayen) are now tributaries of the Agno, if not ubiquitous fishponds of Binmaley up to Dagupan. Calmay district however remains as the confluence of 2 major river systems: Agno and the Bued-Angalacan. This explains not only the vulnerability of the Colegio de San Alberto against floods but the brackish water that farms the delicious Dagupan bangus almost to perfection. With freshwater that is low in salinity, Dagupan is no longer a place suitable for saltmaking,but for bangus farming. And because this has become a more lucrative business than saltmaking, Dagupan is slowly ceasing to be a place for panag-aasinan but rather panag-babangusan.

To date, Dagupan city is part of the congressional district of again but now embattled House Speaker Jose de Venecia. It also forms part of the so-called CAMADA (Calasiao, Mangaldan, Dagupan) or those comprising district 4, considered to be the hub of rapid urban growth. According to the 1995 Mid-Decade Goals Reports for Provinces, Cities and Municipalities prepared by UNICEF, Dagupan city has successfully met all its targets for child welfare such as education, nutrition and sanitation, health (i.e. full immunization for children and women) except for salt iodization. A big irony for a salt-rich province. Dagupan’s rapid urbanization has caused some environmental problems though such as lack of housing, potable water, waste disposal and traffic. These sociological headaches are also being felt by peripheral communities as far as Villasis and the newly citified Urdaneta.

Princess Urduja and the Kingdom of Tawalisi

It actually all started with the debate on the location of the Kingdom of Tawalisi in the 19th century. No less than our national hero Jose Rizal constructed his own theory about the exact location of the Kingdom of Tawalisi contained in his letter to Dr. A.B. Meyer of Dresden, Germany. Rizal’s hypothesis was contained in the eminent historian Austin Craig’s pamphlet entitled, “The Particulars of the Philippines Pre-Spanish Past,” which came out in 1916.