The Spaniards

All Spanish attempts to gain control of Benguet ended in failure until the middle of the nineteenth century, when a series of wellequipped military expeditions subdued virtually every village. Although the inhabitants of the Amburayan Valley continued to resist until the 1880s, Buguias and its neighbors resigned themselves to paying tribute shortly after mid-century (Scott 1974:306).

Evidently, the Spaniards maintained their position in Benguet

partly by scaling down their usual tribute demands: highlanders paid only one-seventh the dues exacted from lowlanders (Scott 1974:238). Yet even these relatively light demands heavily burdened the majority of Benguet's people. Commoners could not easily afford these "tokens of non-Christian vassalage," while the additional labor duties, purportedly for public works, were much abused and universally despised. It was mainly the elite who found advantages in Spanish hegemony, gaining further leverage over their subordinates as their political power was formalized, and encountering safer conditions for their trading endeavors (Scott 1974: 239; Wiber 1986: 17).