By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
The plain part of the place was covered by tall grasses called ledda. Wild game and fishes were abundant. “Even during the day time, the deer came near the village. Because there were still no guns at the time, the men used nets to catch deer. The wild pigs also destroyed kamote even when these were planted near the huts. The hills were forested so the monkeys came near. There were also birds as large as turkeys which we called kalong. With the arrival of more people, the kalong just vanished,” Alejandro says.
Alejandro adds that aside from the wild pigs, the plants of the colonists and the native Kalingas were also at the mercy of grasshoppers “which were like the clouds” and rice birds which were so many so that when they flew “they covered the sun.” This was the reason the native Kalingas did not plant wide areas, according to Alejandro.
Not long after the Cervantes Colony was established, a school was opened in Tuga but it only offered grades one to four so that those who wanted to pursue their education went to the elementary school in Naneng which was then the center of the frontier town. Just like himself, those who went to school were overaged by today’s standards. He was eighteen when he was in grade five, the last grade he finished.
Sometime later, the level land from Gobgob in the south up to Tuga were distributed by the government to the colonists. According to Alejandro, the native Kalingas with the exception of one named Binuloc were not interested in the land so it was the colonists who got the land. He recalls that their family had a chance to increase their landholding this time in the heart of the Laya Plains where then Municipal District President Baac had urged the family to stake land but a tribesmate of Baac named Sokao opposed their settling in the area. Although they have already prepared a wide grassy field for plowing, they had to discontinue the work and go back to Tuga because they did not want any trouble with Sokao. However, Agustin remained in Laya so that during the opportionment of the valley, one of his sons was allotted a lot but not as wide as the land they started working on earlier.
The colonists bought their farm and home needs in Tuao, Cagayan to the north riding on carabaos.
Just like other settlers in Tabuk, the Cervantes colonists lost some members to malaria. To protect the colonists from the dreaded disease, the government distributed quinine and aspirin. Alejandro says that despite the threat of malaria and unlike the Bontoc colonists many of whom returned to their villages for fear of becoming the next malaria victim, they determinedly stayed in the new land given to them by the government. The family suffered casualties namely his grandmother Sylvia Acosta who died of an illness at Naneng where they stopped on the way to Tuga in 1927 and his younger brother succumbed to an illness which caused his body to swell while they were already in Tuga.
Bulanao
Bulanao straddles the so-called second plateau of the Tabuk Valley and some part of the so-called third plateau adjoining it.
According to the account of the late Lauro Arizala published in the booklet titled “The Dream … he believed … to survive,” the first settlers of Bulanao were Francisco Viloria and Pastor Florendo, two Ilocanos from Balaoan, La Union. Viloria was a teacher in the elementary school in Naneng and Florendo was his relative. Together with their wives and some Kalinga native guides, the duo hunted and fished in Bulanao in the summer of 1934. Liking what they saw, they applied for homesteads in the area and these were granted the following year. Immediately, they started working on their homesteads.
Bulanao being malaria-infested just like the rest of the Tabuk Valley and its environs, the two pioneers had supplies of anti-malaria tablets and slept in mosquito nets. As part of the precautionary measures, they ate their supper early and then went right into their mosquito nets. They resisted the temptation of hunting down the animals that went near their hut in the night to avoid getting bitten by mosquitoes. This way, they were able to avoid getting sick of malaria for a few years.
In April 1935, Arizala who hailed from San Antonio Zambales who was then teaching at the Kalinga Academy in Lubuagan also obtained a homestead in Bulanao. He worked in his land every summer vacation. The following year, Arizala’s townmate Marcos Abegania also brought his family to Bulanao. A little later, Abe Omao of Lubuagan joined the homesteaders. He applied for pasture land in which he raised cattle. In 1937, Juan de Jesus who originally came from Pangasinan but settled in Isabela for awhile also came to Bulanao with his family to homestead.
According to Arizala, the opening of the road from Calanan, Tabuk to Cagayan in 1937-1938 brought in many Ilocano immigrants from the Cagayan and Isabela to the Tabuk Valley. Very few of these newcomers settled in Bulanao because of the dreaded malaria and also the difficulty of getting potable water except from the carabao wallows which pockmarked the land. Being a plateau, the water level in Bulanao is around 16 to 18 meters deep with big stones below the ground which rendered digging wells for water almost impossible.
Arizala further wrote that in 1939, through the initiative of Assemblyman Saturnino Moldero, Sr., the Laya Public Land Subdivision Party No. 3-A of the Bureau of Lands came to survey and subdivide all public agricultural lands in the whole Laya plain (Tabuk Valley) and neighboring plains into homesteads, townsites, barriosites, future government building sites, schools, parks, roads including the reservations for the proposed irrigation system from the Chico River. The third plateau in Bulanao was allocated as future government center.
With the completion of the survey, the settlers who were scattered over the plain applied for residential lots in the townsite in Bulanao thus emerged a small barrio. To take care of the education of the children, a small school building made of indigenous materials was constructed. Bennett Molintas was assigned as the first teacher. **(To be continued)
