Education, Religion, and Economics

Hampered as they may have been in other policy areas, American officials directed considerable attention toward public education. The Spaniards had constructed a few schools, but because the graduates—automatically regarded as nuevo Christianos —became subject to full taxation (Philippine Commission 1901, FF:545), education had not been popular with the highlanders (see also Russell 1983:271). American secular schools, by contrast, were accepted in almost every Benguet district; the leaders of Buguias even offered to build a schoolhouse without state assistance (Philippine Commission 1901, FF:547–548). Within a decade, local residents educated in village schools began to replace Ilocanos as teachers and municipal secretary-treasurers throughout the Cordillera (Fry 1983:68).

American missionary activity largely bypassed northern Benguet, ensuring religious continuity and concord throughout the prewar period. Buguias Christians today argue that missionaries neglected their region because it was too peaceful; the bellicose central Cordillerans presented a more urgent target. But whatever the motives behind it, this bypassing of Buguias by church agents was to have significant consequences for subsequent cultural change.

American capitalists were a more potent force in the area. They excavated several gold mines in southern Benguet, inherited a Spanish copper mine at Mankayan, and for a period mined gold at Suyoc. They also claimed vast stands of pine to supply supports and headworks for their many mining operations. These actions were to have damaging repercussions on the indigenous peoples in the postwar period, but before the war their effects in Buguias proper were relatively benign. Most mine workers were immigrants from the more densely populated central Cordillera, and they presented a good market for Buguias traders during their periodic trips home. American mineral operations in the Suyoc/Mankayan

area simply bolstered the Buguias economy; the indigenous diggings were left to their rightful owners, and the laborers brought in to work the deeper American mines formed a new set of customers.

The American rulers also sought to "create new wants" among the Benguet people to spur development, but it is uncertain how they hoped to accomplish this (Fry 1983:100). If Buguias prospered during the American period it was because of local initiative rather than American agency. Overall, the generally well-meaning administrators had poor understandings of the local economy; Governor Pack, for instance, hopefully proclaimed in 1907 that the cattle industry was "only in its infancy" (Philippine Commission 1907, v. 1:278), evidently unaware that most suitable pasture areas had long since been developed.