Years ago, I got hold of a soft copy of the BIBAK magazine of North California that included an interview with the late Eugene Pucay, Sr. (1901-1992), a true-blue Baguio boy who talked about the city’s past and his experiences living in Ibaloy land that would later become a city under a charter order crafted by American colonizers, mostly for their benefit.
The old man Pucay who was an appointed member of the Baguio City Council by President Ramon Magsaysay in the mid-50s was also a teacher, church leader, and a sportsman who narrated in that interview about how the early Ibaloys of Baguio were evicted from the center to give way to the development of a forthcoming city.
In 1909, the American-made charter was issued, making the Baguio center a city. In 1911, the 10-year-old Pucay, along with his parents and relatives, was evicted from Abanao, the neighborhood where he was born, to Guisad Valley which became their permanent place of residence.
In his story, Mr. Pucay talked about how and why they moved out from where the Sunshine Grocery now stands on Abanao Street. The Americans told the Ibaloys, “Alright, you get out of here and we will give you a place further away. That’s where you will live.”
With the arrogant manner the Americans said “get out”, it appeared as if the colonizers had more entitlement or ownership over the lands in Baguio than the first Ibaloy settlers. The Americans just told them to move out from the center because their “animals were making the road dirty,” referring to the unpaved dirt road.
After they moved out from Abanao in 1911, an American trader took over and put up an establishment called the Benguet Store. This was the same situation with the other Ibaloy settlers in Baguio. It was plain and simple land grabbing.
No Ibaloy was left or allowed to continue residing in the center. Even the Ibaloy siblings Pinaoan and Piraso and their families who had a house where the Empire Cinema stood on Abanao Road were driven away. They relocated back to their old houses at Duvan or Lucban Valley. The Carantes family also moved from Session Road to Lucban.
Take note, the article said the Ibaloys “paid for the lands” that the government surveyed as relocation sites. A case of rubbing salt into the wound or adding insult to injury. They were uprooted from their land in the center of Baguio because it was to be sold to lowlanders who had money, then they also had to pay for the land where they were to be relocated.
There were Igorots who maintained ownership of lands very near the center, one of whom was the Sepic family that tilled gardens in the Campo Filipino area. But they were also asked to move at least one kilometer away from the spot where the city hall was later built.
Sepic was an Ibaloy farmer who tilled patches of vegetable gardens extending from where the Maharlika building now stands to Campo Filipino and the Bureau of Plant Industry. He and his family were evicted because the Americans “cannot stand the smell of animal manure.” The old man and his family never said a word, they just moved to Naguilian, San Luis and Asin Road.
The Burnham Park area was a swamp where animals wallowed. The Americans later excavated it and developed it into a big concrete pond. In Mr. Pucay’s account, the place where their relatives stayed near the swamp was called “Apdi.” The spot where the cement horses are on Abanao Road today was the exact place where horses drank.
The old man claimed the present location of the city hall was only a “caballoreza” where animals sheltered during typhoons. The Carinos who were animal traders built the stables and corrals of the animals. So whenever anyone caught animals, they drove them to the corrals.
The article said, “The Americans did not buy the territory (referring to the Baguio area), but the Philippine government occupied the city of Baguio and made it into a reservation. Until now, the city hall is a squatter. The city of Baguio has no land of its own. It is a reservation of 49 square kilometers.”
And so, every time this month of the year comes and organizers for the inauguration of the Baguio City charter invite the Ibaloys to the parade and merry-making, I could only tell them that I cannot join because of my conviction that the city charter gave the American colonizers basis to “officially grab” and dispose of the lands which we now call Baguio City.
I repeatedly mentioned in this opinion column that when the American government in the Philippines made the Baguio Charter of 1909, that launched the beginning of a systematic way of land grabbing Ibaloy ancestral lands, with a semblance of legitimacy. The IPRA was crafted to correct this.
Today, the government issues all kinds of land titles, the latest of which is through the residential free patent application (RFPA). Certainly, there are questionable land titles, especially even after the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the National Commission for Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) signed an agreement.
In the interest of the smooth processing of titles and to avoid overlapping procedures, it was agreed that the NCIP takes charge of ancestral land applications leading to the issuance of titles. On the other hand, the DENR would continue its mandate of processing title applications over areas outside ancestral land applications.
Somewhere along the way, everyone concerned with the processing of titles, whether these were for public lands or Baguio Ibaloy ancestral lands, stumbled and bumped their heads. When they got up from the ground, they did not seem to respect the agreement anymore, and proceeded to violate what was supposed to be a smooth process, and questioned each other’s actions.
The agreement that became a disagreement cannot be repaired, not even by the courts. What is worse is that there were cases where the court issued unfair decisions that favored illegal acts, leaving the complainants helpless.
All these could be faulted on the charter that was forced on this unusually beautiful health resort, to make the lands more saleable for the moneyed businessmen from the south. Without the American charter, there would not have been a Baguio City.
The land could have grown otherwise and its people could have set up a government of their own. The roads and public schools could have been named after them. The Ibaloys to this day could probably still be the landowners of the areas at Teachers Camp, Country Club, PMA, Navy Base, Camp Allen, BPI Guisad, and the central townsite reservation.
The Baguio Charter issued in September 1909 was the day Benguet lands were grabbed wholesale by the American colonial government. The merrymaking and anniversary celebrations today are but artificial events that cannot heal the scars left by the Baguio Charter of 1909.
