PART II
VITALITY AND VULNERABILITY:
FLUCTUATIONS IN THE POSTWAR ECONOMY, 1946–1986

Introduction

The postwar transformation of the economic and ecological bases of Buguias society was rapid and complete. Within a few years, dry fields had been marginalized, pastoralism was fading, and the livestock trade was derelict. The Buguias people had become full-time commercial farmers, buying agricultural chemicals produced overseas and growing produce for the Manila market. In tracing this transformation, the second half of this work is ultimately concerned with a question that receives increasing attention as the analysis proceeds: to whit, in what ways and to what extent was this dramatic material transfiguration reflected in social and cultural change.

In Part I, Buguias was viewed in a largely synchronic framework. For the postwar period, a more diachronic approach becomes not only possible (the texture of documentable chronological detail being much finer) but in many ways preferable (the pace of change having increased sufficiently to lessen the utility of a single-moment analysis). The shift is one of emphasis, however; as with any historical geographic inquiry, this work must illuminate not only the flow of events but also the simultaneous differentiation and interaction of distinct places.

Such dual organizational imperatives have been accommodated here by hinging the analysis on the period between 1972 and 1974, a watershed within the postwar era. Up to that point, the vegetable-producing districts experienced rising prosperity; afterward, the dominant tone became one of crisis and restructuring. The chapters concerned with the earlier period detail the establishment of vegetable culture. Because this was an expansive time, when new agricultural technologies were fitted to the local environment and when a new economy offered prosperity to most (and riches to a few), the stress here is on successful adaptation. To explicate the basis of this new prosperity, both the evolving agricultural ecology and the development of the market on which it depended are explored at length.

Social conflicts did not disappear during this period, however, and some were even exacerbated. More ominously, environmental safeguards maintained during the prewar period were gradually eroded. By the end of the 1960s, the stable economy of the prewar

years had been replaced by a vibrant but precarious one. This new vulnerability, and the undercurrents of discord that had remained subdued throughout the fifties and sixties, became increasingly clear and urgent as a succession of shock waves in the global economy began to undermine the community's collective livelihood. The chapters concerned with the difficult years since the early 1970s accordingly deal explicitly with the breakdown of harmony, opening with a lengthy exposition of the market crisis before focusing explicitly on ecological deterioration and social turmoil.

6
The Establishment of Commercial Vegetable Agriculture

Introduction

The Buguias economy transformed rapidly in the immediate postwar years. Just as the old way of life perished in the war, a new livelihood developed in commercial vegetable production. Although a few individuals sought to recreate the antebellum practices, an inherent ecological contradiction between the old and the new regimes steadily pushed the Buguias people further into market gardening. Since free-ranging cattle would quickly ruin vegetable plots, pastoralism steadily diminished. At the same time, sweet potatoes and rice were removed from the prime fertile sites, to be replaced by carrots and cabbages. By the late 1950s, virtually all Buguias residents had become market gardeners.

The transition to vegetable farming was ongoing. It demanded continual adjustments, as the changing market called for new crop mixes and as the diffusion of innovations allowed new growing techniques. The early years saw the most rapid change, and although minor improvements would continue to appear, the basic cropping system—one fine-tuned to produce a variety of vegetables in a diversity of microhabitats—was firmly in place by the end of the 1960s.

The new economy called for a new attitude toward agriculture. Previously, the Buguias people had based their planting decisions on field characteristics and family needs, guided by historically rooted agronomic precepts. They acted rationally, but not strategically; subsistence was readily attained, and households did not compete in agricultural production. But in vegetable farming, individual cultivators were forced to adopt explicit farming strategies;^[1] henceforth, the market ensured that each household would succeed or fail on the basis of its decisions each cropping session. The

all-important ledger balance came to depend on which crops were chosen, when and where they were planted, how much skill and attention went into their care, and last, but by no means least, on the vicissitudes of the market at harvest time. Market fluctuations, although beyond control, were not entirely unpredictable, and herein lay the primary terrain for strategy. Vegetable farming came to be seen as a deadly serious game, involving an elusive interplay of skill, fortitude, and luck.

As pastoralism was displaced by vegetable growing, the animal trade vanished and Buguias lost its prime economic position as a local trade hub. The previously integrated local economy was now turned inside out by the extractive power of the global exchange system. With the entire region now funneling its produce to the national capital, Buguias, poorly served by the developing dendritic (or branching) road system, was reduced to an economic backwater.

Postwar Adjustments

The Aftermath of War

In 1946, the people of Buguias faced the monumental task of rebuilding their economy and society. Simply to reclaim their old fields required much labor and capital. But labor was short, and the old cash-generating system no longer functioned. And even those retaining money simply could not find livestock to purchase and thus could not rebuild their herds. Not only Buguias, but the entire southern Cordillera—and indeed much of the country—lay devastated. Rebuilding the trade circuits that formerly supported the economy would have been a project of many years.

Ultimately, the Buguias people would have been able to resurrect their old economy only if both the cloud-forest communities and Suyoc had also been able to restore their prewar routines. But both were demolished. The cloud-forest villages of Tinoc and Tucucan lay at the center of Yamashita's last redoubt, and according to census figures the population of the encompassing municipality fell from 12,873 persons in 1939 to 3,540 in 1948 (Republic of the Philippines 1960a , v. 1, pt. ii:35). The Suyoc people survived in larger numbers, but their economy was ruined; although they

could reclaim their diggings, they could not counteract the relative decline in the value of gold.^[2] The residents of Suyoc continued sedulously to mine their lodes, but no longer would their bullion make them the baknangs of northern Benguet, nor would it underwrite trade fortunes for the Buguias merchants.

The Rise of a New Economic System

Although the restoration of the prewar economy was impossible, new opportunities emerged. Vegetables had provided only supplementary income in prewar days; now demand was suddenly voracious and supply short. Prices rose accordingly. In 1947, a kilo of cabbage could fetch as much as so pesos ($5 U.S.) on the Manila market (Hamada 1960), an astonishing price even by 1980s standards. Throughout much of Benguet, individuals with access to transport and seeds, and familiar with vegetable culture, responded quickly.

The people of Buguias were soon converting their rice terraces and dry fields to cabbage gardens. Before the war, terraces had occasionally produced vegetables in the off-season, but now a few farmers devoted them to cabbage year-round. The dry-season vegetable crop (replacing rice) brought particularly high prices since there was little competition at this time, growers along the Mountain Trail seldom being able to irrigate. Although vegetables remained for a few years a cash-producing sideline for most, a few gambled everything on the market. A boom was on, and vegetable sales brought in the capital needed to rebuild a vigorous new economy. As money became available for rebuilding terraces and extending the agricultural infrastructure, the labor shortage became more acute, and wages pushed higher than ever.

The forces behind the postwar cabbage boom remain elusive. The traditional supply zone near Baguio was once again furnishing vegetables, as were a number of new locales. Official statistics nevertheless indicate a slightly smaller production of cabbage in 1948 than in 1938, while the potato yield is shown to have tripled in the same decade (Goodstein 1962:129)—yet the immediate postwar boom in Benguet was in cabbage much more than in potatoes.

One possible explanation for the decline in the national cabbage harvest just as Benguet's yield expanded lies in a shift toward high-

land production. As late as 1948, according to official figures, less than half of the total cabbage acreage in the Philippines lay in the Cordillera (Republic of the Philippines 1954, v. 3, pt. ii:2944). But the mountains, blessed with far superior climatic conditions for cabbage growing, soon supplied the bulk of the national harvest. Such an account, however, must remain speculative, given the paucity and unreliability of official records; most census reports simply fail to differentiate among vegetables, and few tables designate province of origin.

On the side of demand, the American military presence was crucial. Before Japan's surrender, the U.S. Army had planned to use the Philippines as a staging ground for the assault on the home islands. In preparation, a large military force was retained in the archipelago, and in requisitioning the necessary supplies to sustain the troops, the U.S. set the Philippines awash in currency, perpetuating for a time the hyperinflation initiated during the last year of the war (D. Bernstein 1947:218). Cabbage, as one of the few available vegetables familiar to the American soldiers, was no doubt in great demand.

Through the 1950s and 1960s the demand for temperate vegetables steadily expanded with production growing apace. By 1959, the land area devoted to cabbage had increased almost sevenfold over the 1948 figure, with almost all of the new acreage being in Benguet. Official potato acreage increased at a similar rate, growing from 548 hectares in 1948 to 2,500 in 1963, and to 3,600 by 1972.^[3] Davis (1973:50) ties the long-term increase in temperate-vegetable consumption to rapid urban growth and accompanying dietary changes, a convincing thesis.

The Mountain Trail Vegetable Hearth

The cabbage boom that transformed the economy of Buguias had little impact at first on neighboring Agno Valley communities. Along the Mountain Trail, however, the effect was massive. This cool ridge-top zone, well suited to cabbage, also boasted a road that, although narrow, unpaved, and dangerous, was passable to vehicles. The resulting advantages of climate and transport attracted thousands of settlers to the ridge. Where only a handful of families had lived before the war, a string of fast-growing market towns soon sprouted.

Among the new settlements was Natubleng, a new village sitting on a plateau only a few miles from Buguias. A handful of Buguias families had relocated here in the 1930s, but in the war's immediate aftermath many more moved up to clear small gardens in the scrubby oak. But no highlanders had the capital necessary to establish sizable farms. This would fall to another immigrant group: the Chinese of Baguio City.

Chinese and Japanese farmers had long grown vegetables in the Baguio-Trinidad area, and when the Japanese were forceably repatriated after the war, the Chinese gained financial control of the industry (Davis 1973:51). As large-scale Chinese growers prospered, they looked to expand their operations along the Mountain Trail, seeking relatively flat plateaus plentifully supplied with water. Among the best were Sayangan/Paoay in Atok municipality (formerly known as Haight's Place) and Natubleng. Backed by a shadowy financial network extending from Baguio to Manila, and relying on the wage labor of local villagers, these Chinese planters cleared gardens of 10, 20, and even 30 hectares.

Of the four or five Chinese farmers clearing land in Natubleng, one named Singa is particularly remembered in Buguias. Singa tilled his large farm with local labor bound by a variety of arrangements. During the peak season, as many as 115 persons worked for wages, on a daily or monthly basis. Those workers whom Singa came to trust were eventually set up as sharecroppers on subsidiary plots.

Laborers came to Singa's farm from throughout the entire upper Agno Valley, but especially from the smaller villages south and east of Buguias. People from these areas seldom had the wherewithal to purchase seeds, and they yet lacked knowledge of vegetable culture. But working for Singa they quickly learned the new techniques, and most were able to save the small sum needed to begin gardening on their own. Many returned home, seeds in hand, after a single cropping season. In their home villages they planted cabbage in small plots, sufficient to furnish the pittance of cash they needed. Thus the late 1940s saw the vegetable-growing frontier rapidly extend to many peripheral villages of the former Buguias economic sphere.

The Chinese may have dominated the early vegetable industry, but they by no means wholly displaced the independent cultivators along the Mountain Trail. Throughout the 1950s, highlanders

with a minimum of financial backing continued to migrate to the ridge-top zone to clear and claim new lands. Most cultivated gardens of under 1 hectare, but a few grew wealthy enough to finance larger operations requiring day laborers.

While a few growers still burned brush for soil nutrients, most had turned by the early 1950s to chemical sources. The large-scale Chinese farmers, closely connected with Baguio wholesalers, doubled as fertilizer distributors. In northern Buguias municipality, however, local baknang entrepreneurs entered the chemical business. For many of the Chinese and Igorot elite, the retail selling of agricultural supplies eventually supplanted gardening as an economic mainstay.

These early postwar years saw a major reworking of the economic map of greater Buguias. A line could now be drawn down the length of the region, separating the Mountain Trail zone, with its nucleus at Natubleng, from the Agno Valley (excluding the Lo-o Basin) and points east. The former area, essentially under Chinese financial domination, supported numerous medium and large farms. The latter area, for the time being, was characterized by small market gardens still supplementing subsistence-producing dry fields. But this was only the most general of a series of fine geographical divisions that were to emerge over the next several decades.

The Ecology of Early Vegetable Production in Buguias

New Techniques

The vegetable-growing techniques adopted by Benguet market gardeners were largely of Chinese provenance (Davis 1973:53). The gabbion , a heavy hoe foreign to the native tool kit, was now the main agricultural implement. Gardeners used this tool primarily to construct ridges, generally between and 60 to 80 centimeters wide. Once this task was completed, cabbage seedlings would be transplanted in rows of three or four plants lateral to the ridge top. Intervening furrows drained the fields in the wet season and irrigated them, where possible, in the dry. In the early years, growers watered seedlings manually, scooping moisture from the furrow and pouring it around the base of each plant.

After the year's first harvest from the dry fields, many gardeners would immediately replant, hoping to get a second crop before the rains diminished. After the second harvest they would fallow the plot. Before the next replanting, growers would dig the field again so that the furrow-and-ridge pattern would be reversed, thus incorporating any silt that had been deposited in the furrow into the cropping medium.

Vegetables in the Uma

Since few gardeners possessed terraces, most planted vegetables in their old dry fields. Since cabbage plants, unlike creeping sweet-potato vines, provided the soil little protection, erosion on sloping plots could be greatly accelerated; to counteract this, farmers began constructing narrow contour ridges. Another problem was soil fertility. Cabbage, unlike the sweet potato, languished on the exhausted soils typical of most dry fields. Farmers responded by applying ash or, if they could afford it, chemical fertilizer. Because some of the added nutrients remained in the field after the vegetable harvest, subsequent sweet-potato plantings proved quite productive. Since most Buguias residents continued in the early postwar period to grow for subsistence, many began to alternate their plantings between cabbages and sweet potatoes.

The extent of preexisting dry fields in Buguias soon proved inadequate to support both market and subsistence cultivation. By the early 1950s, gardeners began to clear new fields in pastures, using the puwal technique, and in shrub or forest land, using the swidden method. But clearing new land for permanent vegetable plots required arduous work. After burning, farmers now had to remove roots before they could create a furrow-and-ridge pattern. In the late 1950s, when carrots emerged as Buguias's main crop, this job became more difficult still, since even a small obstacle could mar the appearance of the carrot root.

Terraced Gardens

Although the Buguias people increasingly turned their rice terraces into year-round vegetable gardens, conversion was never complete. They still desired the native rice, which was yet unobtainable on the market, for beer brewing. Furthermore, even the most dedi-

cated commercial growers would occasionally return a terrace to paddy in order to rehabilitate the soil. Where vegetable culture had compacted the earth, a season of flooding would render it again friable. But rice growing was demoted to a minor pursuit and was always rushed so that the fields could be returned to the more profitable production of vegetables. Seedbed preparation, plowing, flooding, and even transplanting were now conducted in haste, leading to low average yields.

The Buguias people constructed several new terrace systems in the early postwar years, financing them through cabbage profits. Some of the new terraces served initially for both rice and vegetables, but others were made expressly for vegetable culture. By the mid-1950s, the Buguias people discovered that simpler, less sturdy structures would suffice for the new crops, substantially reducing terrace construction costs. In the former pasturelands, several individuals experimented with sod-walled terraces, an especially cheap alternative. Although these would last ten years at most, they were so inexpensive to construct that many found the investment worthwhile. Gardeners irrigated their vegetable terraces where possible, but in general even a dry terrace was preferred over a sloped field, since the latter was both more difficult to work and more vulnerable to soil erosion.

Farming and Ranching in Conflict

Several of the surviving members of the Buguias elite still hoped at war's end to recreate the pastoral economy. After a few years, cattle could again be purchased in Cervantes, and several Buguias baknangs had reaccumulated enough capital to begin rebuilding their herds. In the intervening years, however, unfenced garden plots had invaded many of the best pastures. Before long the community was embroiled in a classical struggle between agriculturalist and pastoralist. The former, anxious to avoid the considerable expense of fencing, called for a change in customary law to reflect the transformed economy, while the cattlemen advocated returning to the antebellum status quo.

Following customary precedent, the contestants argued and settled their dispute in tong tongan deliberations. Despite the high status of the leading pastoralists, the gardeners had numerical ad-

vantage and economic logic on their side. The new rules thus called for the constraining of all livestock to fenced pastures, pens, or tethers. Whichever option they chose, would-be graziers now faced considerable expense: tethered animals had to be moved to a fresh site every few hours, and lands completely dedicated to pasture would require extensive fencing.

The few men who endeavored to enclose pastures seldom managed to mark off areas larger than 10 hectares. Since few commoners fenced their lands, the Buguias cattle barons could now lend few animals. And those who did fence their pastures had difficulty mobilizing the labor necessary to maintain grazing capacity. Soon Eupatorium and other noxious weeds infested most enclosed sites. Because of fencing costs, graziers increasingly withdrew into areas naturally barricaded by slope breaks, gullies, and other obstacles. They also learned to divert water to accentuate erosion in small gullies, thus creating superior barriers. Since pastoralists often skimped when they had to fence, their animals periodically escaped, and the conflict thus continued to smolder. Cattle owners and tenders were frequently assessed for crop damages, and irate gardeners who maimed trespassing animals were sometimes levied fines as well. As such incidents mounted, gardeners clamored for stricter fence regulations.

Most Buguias men still hoped to raise cattle, but this was usually possible only if one were willing to move them about on a tether. With the new labor demands in the gardens, the average household was limited to a single animal. Responsibility for the family cow now generally passed to children and the aged. Theoretically, leashed cattle could be pastured anywhere, so long as they did not damage gardens, but conflicts erupted nevertheless. Animals often pulled loose and ruined gardens, but more problematically, households sometimes quarreled when one claimed the right to pasture its cow in an area that the other sought to convert to a vegetable plot. Ultimately, securing a tax declaration would give the prospective gardener the right to determine land use, so long as he or she actually began to cultivate the site.

The new rule especially hindered hog raising, as swine could not forage effectively if tied, and they required much tighter fences than did cattle. Henceforth, hogs were increasingly confined to small houselot pens. After the transformation of customary law,

the few traditionalists who clung to large scale swine raising were forced to relocate, for a household could not raise more than a few hogs unless the animals could forage. Such couples thus moved up to the higher zone east of Buguias proper, where many of the village's swine had ranged in the prewar days. Gardens and fences were still uncommon here in the 1950s, and mast-producing oak trees abounded nearby. Eventually, however, most free-roaming hogs even in these remote districts disappeared under pressure from the advancing vegetable frontier and from the steady progress of individual tax declarations.

Continuing Agricultural Development

Recession and Revival

By the early 1950s, the cabbage boom in central Buguias had fizzled. Lack of quality seeds undercut Buguias growers, who were evidently outbid by more prosperous farmers along the Mountain Trail. A more serious problem was oversupply. As new land was cleared along the Mountain Trail, the cabbage harvest expanded apace. The Buguias gardeners could not easily compete with their ridge-top rivals, who enjoyed inexpensive transport and a cool climate better suited to cabbage. But as prices dropped, even the most favored areas suffered, and not a few Benguet farmers began to revert to subsistence crops. By the early 1950s, the market often glutted (Baguio Midland Courier May 10, 1953), and the nascent vegetable industry fell into its first recession.

Crisis was staved off in part by new crops. Unlike cabbage, other vegetables, heretofore largely limited to the Baguio region, remained fitfully profitable. Carrots especially attracted Buguias farmers, as they thrived in the moderate climate and rich soils of the Agno Valley. A sack of carrots, however, did make a heavy burden to carry up to the Mountain Trail roadhead. Lighter crops, including peas, beans, and bell peppers, were thus also attractive. Along the Mountain Trail, potatoes came to rival cabbage as the mainstay, but the market for this crop also began to reach saturation.

The real break for Buguias truck gardening came in 1958, when a branch road was pushed down the Agno Valley as far as the center

of the village. Now growers could truck their produce a mere 15 kilometers to Abatan and the Mountain Trail. As transport costs diminished, carrots emerged as Buguias's prime crop. Other vegetables also proliferated, as the Agno Valley began to reap the benefits of its equable climate. By the early 1960s, the economy of Buguias rested squarely on some half-dozen temperate and subtropical vegetables.

Agricultural inputs boosted the renewed vegetable expansion of the late 1950s. Growers could now increasingly afford chemical fertilizers, and the use of lowland chicken manure spread. Although some gardeners had used DDT as early as the late 1940s, the late 1950s marked the widespread adoption of the backpack sprayer and the introduction of various special-purpose insecticides. Insecticides helped growers as much by saving labor (from the arduous task of insect plucking) as by allowing higher yields. High-quality fungicides, introduced in the same period, probably had an even greater impact, since wet-season humidity fostered vigorous fungal growth. Growers had earlier applied a copper-sulfate powder mixed with hydrated lime, but this attacked human skin as effectively as it killed fungus. With the safer new products, potatoes could be competitively grown in the Agno Valley, and the tuber crop increased approximately tenfold.

The Agricultural Cooperatives

A state-initiated cooperative marketing and supply scheme also stimulated the vegetable industry in the late fifties. The co-op movement received impetus not only from the state's desire to enhance local economic development but, perhaps more importantly, from its wish to rid the vegetable industry of alien—meaning Chinese-control (Baguio Midland Courier Jan. 8, 1956). Local and national leaders concurred that to stabilize the vegetable market, seen as a prerequisite for orderly development, they first had to uproot the Chinese growing and marketing organization. This "cartel" was said to practice "unfair trade . . . and cutthroat competition" (Hamada 1960). The Chinese could be displaced, they hoped, by local cooperatives united under government supervision.

In 1952, the Farmer's Cooperative Marketing Association (FACOMA) appeared in Benguet (Fry 1983:220), the first of its

kind. Branches of FACOMA soon sprouted in several municipalities; these in turn all operated under the aegis of the government's Agricultural Credit and Cooperative Financing Administration (ACCFA). The state directed the FACOMA to distribute subsidized fertilizers and biocides and to assist in produce marketing. In both areas, middlemen were to be eliminated, to the benefit of farmers and consumers alike. The Central Cooperative Exchange in Manila supplied chemicals, both domestic and imported. The Benguet FACOMA eventually purchased several large trucks for hauling vegetables to market and agricultural chemicals back to the farm areas, while the ACCFA financed several centrally located warehouses, from which vegetables could be shipped directly to Manila.

The FACOMA co-ops enjoyed modest success through the 1950s and early 1960s. Though perennially undercapitalized, they did provide credit to a few local entrepreneurs, nourishing a locally run agribusiness infrastructure. But early hopes that the co-ops would wrest financial control from the Chinese were soon dashed (Baguio Midland Courier May 5, 1963; Hamada 1960). The Chinese merchants had created a sophisticated and perennially solvent organization; where the co-ops usually worked on consignment, they could generally offer cash to the currency-strapped farmers (Fry 1983:220; Baguio Midland Courier May 10, 1953). They also enjoyed immediate knowledge of marketing conditions in Manila, thanks to extensive radio connections with local operatives there.

Faced with the failure of the cooperative effort to oust the Chinese, the Igorot gardeners resorted to political action. As early as 1955, FACOMA leaders trekked to Manila to protest the presence of "alien" farmers and dealers along the Mountain Trail (Baguio Midland Courier Dec. 4, 1955). As the political pressure intensified, then-president Ramon Magsaysay opted for direct action: in 1956, he signed into law Executive Order 180, commanding the summary expulsion of all Chinese farmers from the Mountain Trail vegetable district (Fry 1983:220).

Magsaysay's antialien policies were part of a larger program designed to aid small farmers throughout the Philippines, to ensure the ecological sustainability of highland agriculture, and to solidify state authority in rural areas. Government officials fretted over the unconstrained vegetable industry; gardens were increasingly being cleared in Mount Data National Park, erosion was accelerat-

ing, and watersheds were being denuded. By official criteria, some 94 percent of all Benguet vegetable farms were illegally occupied (Baguio Midland Courier Jan. 8, 1956). Magsaysay viewed the Chinese evictions as a necessary precondition before land titles could be awarded to the indigenous gardeners, most of whom were at the time considered squatters in their own homeland. Legal land ownership, it was thought, would encourage ecologically sound agriculture just as it would promote local economic development.

Magsaysay's death in 1958 cut short these ambitious plans. Much to the disappointment of Benguet leaders, the Chinese remained, although some would be expelled some ten years later. The cooperatives persisted for some years, but as government support diminished, most slowly withered; others, however, fell quickly owing to local corruption (Fry 1983:221).

Crops and Field Types

By the 1960s, Buguias possessed a stable and intricate system of market gardening. Diversity marked both the crop assemblage and the techniques employed; growers could now choose different crops for each microhabitat. Complex cropping schedules allowed farmers to exploit environmental variation efficiently, just as it gave Buguias an advantage over other Benguet vegetable districts where crop ensembles and growing strategies were more limited. This helped offset Buguias's higher costs of transport and labor. Since the basic system developed at this time persists to the time of writing (although with some important changes noted in later chapters), the following discussion has been worded in the present tense.

Seasonal Patterns

The oscillation of wet and dry seasons shapes the basic form of Buguias agriculture. The first rains usually arrive in late April. Plantings on dry fields, especially those with clay-rich soil, can now begin, although cautious farmers wait for the more reliable rains that come in middle to late May. By July, the soil is saturated; most mornings begin with sunshine, but afternoons are usually drenching. July may also see the first typhoon. Through the wettest months good drainage is vital, especially for root crops. Fungal

growths also plague most crops in this season; although these can be counteracted with fungicides, farmers avoid growing susceptible crops in damp and shady areas. Wind may also destroy certain crops in the typhoon season, although topography creates limited areas of partial protection.

The rains usually diminish in October, but typhoons can strike in November and lingering showers sometimes persist through December. This late rainy season is in many respects the ideal cropping period. Although soils are still moist enough for sowing, they are seldom too wet, and they dry gradually as the plants mature. In unirrigated fields with heavy soil, residual moisture allows cropping to continue into the early weeks of the true dry season. By February, however, all dry fields have been harvested and left fallow until the spring rains. Irrigated crops, on the other hand, thrive during the arid months. With sunshine plentiful and humidity low, fungus is minimized, and the warm weather of March and April favors even such subtropical crops as bell peppers.

Soils and Topography

Buguias has diverse soils. Before the war, dry fields had been limited to clay areas, which alone would support year-round cultivation. But the postwar transition gave all soils agricultural utility. Indeed, light soils are now often preferred during the typhoon season, since they drain readily and are always friable. Heavy soils are now disparaged as difficult to cultivate, and, since they easily waterlog, they may be left unplanted in the rainy season. Chemical fertilizers and imported chicken manure obviate concern for soil fertility, and even sterile subsoil horizons exposed by mass wasting—or on purpose—can be profitably farmed. Indeed, the very diversity of soils has allowed the Buguias growers to develop complex and flexible cropping strategies.

The main soil types of Buguias, by local classification, are as follows:

Loboy: A heavy loam found in flat areas; favored for umas. Often rich in organics.

Komog: Weathered dioritic rock; an infertile and light subsoil.

Lagan: "Mountain sand"; sterile, very light.

Tapo: Alluvial silt; very fertile, of medium weight and water retention qualities. Good for umas but previously little used because of potential flooding.

Oplit: Clay soil; good for umas, but very hard to work. Good nutrient and water-holding capacity. Usually found in flat areas and depressions.

Liang: "Red clay" subsoil. Avoided in the past; very low fertility.

(Most soils are of hybrid form. The best uma soils, for instance, are those with a high clay component, but not necessarily pure oplit. Many farmers favored an oplit-loboy mixture for their uma fields.)

Having adopted a diverse vegetable agriculture, the growers of Buguias have to consider more than just fertility, moisture retention, and drainage when selecting a cropping medium. Subsoils (komog, liang ) are now valued because one can easily build a quasi terrace simply by removing the overburden and exposing the lower-soil horizons until a flat space emerges. Given its light, friable texture, one can harvest a good crop on a komog bench even during the wettest months. And liang, always avoided in the past, is now valued for the ruddy appearance it imparts to carrots and potatoes.

Truck farming also allowed the cultivation of topographic zones previously considered nonarable. Steep slopes are now favored for wet-season root crops, and shady northern exposures are valued for lettuce in the dry season. Even the alluvial deposits along the small streams of eastern Buguias can now be farmed, yielding especially large harvests if check-dams are constructed to trap additional sediment. But this is a risky strategy, since a single typhoon can destroy an entire field. But with the change to vegetable farming, Buguias residents became professional risk-takers; their agricultural endeavor, as they perceive it, is now one of continual gambling.

Vegetables

By the mid-1960s, carrots occupied the prime position among Buguias vegetables. They can be grown throughout the year and in all soils. During the dry season they are grown on irrigated ter-

races, and in the rainy months on inclined fields. The former crop yields larger harvests, but the latter often brings higher profits because of the season's hazardous growing conditions.

Carrots are relatively pest-free, although leaf spot demands continual spraying. Labor demands remain high through the first month, as the carrot seeds germinate with difficulty and the seedlings are delicate. Several days of dry weather can destroy a neglected field of young plants. Continual and meticulous weeding must persist through the first month. But once carrots are well established they survive many disasters, especially typhoons, comparatively well. In light soils, carrots produce long, straight roots, while in heavy soils they yield squat, bulky roots. In general, fertile soils produce larger carrots, but here they must be harvested as soon as they mature, regardless of market conditions. In poorer, lighter soils, by contrast, the roots can remain in the ground (except at the height of the rainy season) for weeks or even months without losing texture or flavor.

Buguias gardeners continue to grow cabbage, although to a much lesser extent than they did in earlier years. Cabbage grows better at higher elevations, but it is valued in Buguias for its low labor requirements and relative price stability. By the 1960s cabbage had become primarily a wet-season crop; if grown in the dry months it must be sprayed incessantly to minimize insect damage. Leaf mold, a perennial wet-season curse, is controllable with fungicides, but excessive rain can simply rot the heads, especially those of the Chinese cabbage. But some farmers still prefer Chinese over European cabbage because it matures more rapidly. And a more delicate Chinese crucifer, the flowering pechay , may be harvested after only five or six weeks, attracting a few growers who want an especially fast turnover.

Some growers favor potatoes for their low labor requirements and long-term storage potential. In Buguias, potatoes are cultivated in all but the rainiest months (July through September), when leaf mold and strong winds can be devastating. Gardeners avoid heavy soils throughout the wet months. Potatoes are occasionally infected with leaf wilt, which is not treatable (although crop rotation can reduce losses). Potatoes yield most heavily on newly cleared fields, especially those in the higher elevations of

eastern Buguias. Buguias farmers often devote irrigated terraces to potatoes in the dry season, when many other Benguet vegetable districts lack sufficient water to produce a crop.

The edible-pod snow pea, like the carrot, is grown year-round. During the typhoon period, the slender cane trellises that support the vines are vulnerable to wind damage, so growers generally plant peas in this season in protected microhabitats. Peas are also favored in gardens far from any road, since they bring high prices per unit weight.

Snap beans flourish in the wet season, especially on sloped fields. At this time, insect pests are few, yet temperatures are high enough for good growth. Although fungus does attack, it is easily controlled. Bean plants, twining up cane poles, also suffer wind damage, but not to the same extent as the softer and more ramified peas.

Peppers, both "bell" and the "Chinese yellow," also thrive during the wet season. Gardeners sow them in seedbeds in March, the time of maximum sunshine and warmth. Transplanted as the southwest monsoon arrives, the plants fruit in the wettest months. Farmers could grow peppers for harvest during the dry season, but they would then compete with the lowland pepper crop, favored by easy access to the Manila market.

Buguias farmers also grow celery in the wet season. This most demanding of crops thrives only on highly fertile soils. Slope is also critical, for celery requires good drainage but abundant moisture at all times. Gardeners avoid shady areas that would foster fungal growth. Still, celery easily fails, and even if it flourishes, a poor market can render it virtually worthless.

Lettuce can be grown throughout the year, but in the dry season it requires careful water monitoring and in the wettest months it often rots; four days of continuous light rain can destroy a crop. Some growers favor lettuce for its fast growth (two months or less) and for the high prices it sometimes brings. But lettuce is an inflexible crop; when mature it must be harvested and shipped without delay.

The above discussion outlines a few of the considerations that Buguias farmers juggle when deciding what to plant. But it does not exhaust them. All growers, for example, rotate different crops

through their fields to minimize nematode infestations. Periodic flooding of terraced fields brings some relief, but for most farmers, field rotation is the only prophylactic.

The Survival of Subsistence Cropping

Buguias farmers continued to grow subsistence crops even after becoming full-fledged market gardeners. Some occasionally plant their vegetable plots to sweet potatoes, and many grow a few tubers along field margins. A few wealthier farmers continue to plant rice, and nearly every household keeps a cow, a hog or two, and several chickens. The door-yard garden, as before, supplies various foodstuffs to established families. Coffee growing persists as well, but only for home consumption. Moreover, a new source of "subsistence" has emerged in the market crops themselves. A typical Buguias meal now consists of lowland rice, an occasional bit of dried fish or tinned meat, and a "viand" of boiled vegetables from the garden's seconds.

But unlike many other peoples who have recently been integrated into the world economy (see, for example, Grossman 1984: 6), the Buguias people have not maintained a level of subsistence cultivation that either substantially subsidizes their cash-cropping endeavors or that could act as a fallback in the event of market collapse. Home-grown crops now provide little more than supplements; since the late 1950s, local agriculture has been incapable of providing the staples the community requires. Nor could the earlier ways be easily revived. Population has greatly expanded, necessary skills have vanished, the old agricultural infrastructure has disappeared, and the prewar trade network—previously vital for "subsistence"—is beyond resurrection. If the Buguias people were forced, by market conditions, to subsist directly from their own territory, their impoverishment would be drastic. No one in Buguias even contemplates abandoning commercial farming.

The Agroecological Transition

In recent years many geographers have linked the transition from subsistence to commercial agriculture with substantial environmental degradation (see Grossman 1981; Richards 1983; Blaikie

1985). Some have further argued that commercial farming inevitably brings a dangerous agroecological simplification, as intricate, historically rooted techniques suited to local habitats are replaced by an imported monocropping package based on massive chemical subsidies (Grossman 1981). For the Buguias people, this view represents a half-truth. Vegetable culture here is unarguably dependent on dangerous biocides and fertilizers, and it has brought severe environmental degradation. This will be analyzed in some depth below, but at this point it is helpful to recognize that it also evinces a remarkably complex environmental fit that has evolved through the detailed knowledge and ready experimentation of the farmers themselves. As deplorable as their continual spraying of poisons might be, one must applaud the Buguias farmers for their adaptation of a technically complex temperate-vegetable agriculture to the many microhabitats of their homeland.

The socioeconomic dislocations that often accompany the spread of cash-cropping into new territories may be profound enough to generate not only "subsistence malaise" (Grossman 1981:232), but, in some instances, mass starvation as well (amply illustrated for northern Nigeria by Watts [1983]). But as Watts also recognizes (1983:267), during times of "buoyant commodity prices" the living standards of even the poorest producers can substantially improve. This occurred in Benguet's vegetable districts from 1946 to 1972. Indeed, one might argue that commoditization helped prevent famine, for in the two decades after the war, only the less commercialized areas of the Cordillera experienced severe food shortages.^[4] Varied environmental agents, including drought, rat invasions, and typhoons, caused these famines, although certainly governmental neglect must also take blame. In Buguias, however, a diverse, year-round commercial agriculture proved remarkably able to withstand such ravages; neither destitution nor even particularly lean times struck the market gardeners during these years. This is not to imply that cash-cropping represents a superior agricultural adaptation; the point is simply to recognize that, in these years , commercial agriculture proved instrumental to, rather than destructive of, a kind of environmental buffering. The problem is that this "safeguard" proved susceptible to secular market trends just as it brought about long-term environmental degradation. In the long run, severe new problems would appear.

Strategies in Vegetable Farming

Buguias farmers must weigh many factors in choosing among cropping options. They base their choices on an intimate knowledge of field and crops characteristics as well as on their access to labor. But they also attempt to anticipate market conditions. Vegetable prices fluctuate predictably through the seasons, but erratically week by week. To some extent, market seasonality cancels environmental seasonality; when the production of a particular vegetable is difficult or perilous, its market value will usually be correspondingly high. Regional diversity adds another layer of complexity. In the dry season, for example, when cabbage can hardly be grown in Buguias, it does very well in irrigated Mountain Trail gardens.

Ultimately, the cropping strategies selected vary with the personalities and life histories of individual farmers. Some opt for conservative plans promising reasonable returns regardless of market conditions or environmental perturbations, although even the most cautious farmer cannot always avoid unprofitable crops. Other gardeners deliberately choose risk, gambling on the chance of a windfall. Precarious strategies include planting a crop during its season of maximum hazards, or sowing a dry field at the first rain, in hope that more will soon follow.

Crop Variability

The riskiest crops, lettuce and celery, are marked by pronounced price swings. This volatility reflects meteorological sensitivity, since neither crop will endure weather extremes. But the rapidity of price fluctuations, often severalfold in less than one week, baffles scholars and farmers alike. Conventional explanations cite the unfathomable machinations of the Chinese "cartels," but this is mostly conjecture.

Not uncommonly, a Buguias farmer confronted with miserable prices will allow a lettuce or celery crop to rot in the field, since harvest and shipping costs would not be recoverable. The perishability of both vegetables adds further risks; even a transport delay, common during the landslide-prone wet season, may doom a mature crop. For precisely this reason, however, a truckload of lettuce

or celery brought in when the price curve peaks can bring its owner the elusive "jackpot" harvest.

A risk-averse farmer does well to choose cabbage or potatoes. These are, without rivals, the leading crops of Benguet, and their large area of supply combines with steady demand to dampen price swings. Furthermore, both crops may be stored for sale when prices rise. Cabbage remains reasonably fresh if held in a high-elevation storehouse for up to one week, whereas potatoes can last several months. Nevertheless, neither crop shows a flat price curve. Severe weather can bring on rapid changes of fortune, and a series of typhoons can block transportation, allowing those farmers retaining road access to reap extraordinary profits. Either crop, however, can be overplanted in any given season, depressing prices and leaving most growers with little if any profit.

Other vegetables generally yield reasonable returns, although all are subject to periodic gluts and shortages. Carrot prices fluctuate erratically only in certain years. In 1986, however, carrots climbed from 1.5 pesos a kilo to 7 pesos a kilo then promptly fell back to 3 pesos a kilo, all in the span of a little more than one month. At the start of this sequence farmers shipping carrots lost money, in the middle they profited greatly, and at the end they broke even. This oscillation especially perplexed local market experts, since it occurred during the dry season, a period of general price stability.

Environmental (Mis)fortune

The wild card in the gardener's deck is the typhoon. A tropical depression can destroy crops in a geographically unpredictable pattern just as it can block the market access of specific regions by triggering landslides. A storm can benefit Buguias farmers if it wreaks greater damage in competing districts than it does at home. Similarly, a landslide can be a boon or a calamity, depending on its precise location. A massive break on the Mountain Trail between Trinidad and Kilometer 73 can devastate Buguias, preventing transport for as long as one month. (Small trucks might still reach market by traveling south on the Agno Valley Road through Kabayan, but slides frequently block this road south of Buguias in the rainy season: see map 8, p. 187.) A slide on the Agno Valley Road north

of Buguias is distressing, but farmers can still return to their old ways and carry produce to the Mountain Trail at Kilometer 73. A disruption of the Mountain Trail north of Kilometer 73 can actually benefit Buguias by blocking the market access of Lo-o, Mount Data, and other northern produce districts. And even what may appear to be the worst imaginable calamity can have positive attributes. Two fierce typhoons in 1989, for example, demolished the transport infrastructure throughout Benguet, but when lettuce hit 70 pesos a kilo and carrots topped 40, Buguias farmers chartered a helicopter to fly their produce to Baguio, profiting handsomely in the process.

The dry season is thus the time of relative quiescence, whereas the typhoon months are marked by unrelieved suspense. Although everyone endeavors to cultivate year-round, until the late 1970's, arid-season cropping was constrained by a lack of irrigation facilities. Accordingly, during these years the wet months formed the main cropping period. But the Buguias farmers have never shied away from the risks so entailed. Indeed, many have welcomed them, pinning their hopes not so much on steady income as on a jackpot. Their belief that the flow of luck is largely controllable promotes this attitude; the new economic realities only affirm traditional ideology on this score.

Insurance Strategies

Buguias farmers employ several tactics in anticipating the vagaries of price. Some simply observe what crops others are planting, especially in the premier vegetable districts along the Mountain Trail, and then try to avoid whatever seems currently popular. But information is always too limited to make this strategy truly effective; only a fraction of Benguet's farms are visible from the road between Buguias and Baguio. Buguias farmers also watch the arrival of the first rains with great interest, since most Benguet gardeners depend on rainfall. If precipitation comes late, harming dry fields on the Mountain Trail, cabbage planted on Buguias's irrigated fields may be more remunerative than usual. Farmers even try to anticipate typhoons; if they foresee a large storm they will quickly harvest any relatively nonperishable crop, such as cabbage, and ship it forthwith to a storehouse in Baguio or Trinidad. If the typhoon in-

deed strikes, these prescient farmers will profit; if not, they will incur a loss, since their now-wilted cabbage will command a reduced price.

Many farmers would ideally cultivate a mix of crops in all seasons to spread their chances. But those with small gardens (0.2 hectares or less) have limited options. Wealthier growers are able to cultivate more diverse assemblages, and a few large growers living elsewhere in Buguias municipality even maintain widely separated garden plots located in different climatic zones—a strategy that provides calamity insurance without diminishing the possibility of a jackpot. Outside development experts have advised farmers to stagger their plantings even in individual fields to gain security against market drops (FAO 1984:22), but this practice has not spread to Buguias. Such serial plantings complicate labor scheduling, and, more importantly, they decrease the chance of superprofits.

Cropping strategies also vary because of partial specialization. Each crop requires specific techniques that are unevenly known by different farmers. Some individuals devote more time than others to mastering the culture of demanding vegetables such as celery. These semispecialist growers hope to gather at least above-average yields, if not extraordinary profits. Crop periodicity adds still another dimension. Young farmers especially seek to maximize their jackpot chances by squeezing in as many crops as possible. By concentrating on fast-growing vegetables and by carefully timing seedbed planting and transplanting schedules, they can harvest four or even five crops from a single irrigated plot. Such frenetic work, however, discourages most farmers.

The Spatial Reorganization of Exchange

After its economic transformation as before, Buguias depended on trade for its livelihood. But whereas the community had once formed the hub of an essentially local circuit, it was now reduced to an outlying production zone for the national market. For centuries, Buguias had been tenuously linked to the international economy through the Suyoc gold trade; now it was directly dependent on global resource flows.

As the position of Buguias and neighboring communities shifted vis-à-vis larger economic structures, the spatial patterns of the local economy reformed. This process manifested itself, in part, in the emergence of distinct agricultural regions, one of which was coterminous with the territory of Buguias Village. But for local exchange, it was the road network, connecting the vegetable districts with the Baguio and Manila markets, that emerged as the organizing framework.

The Displacement of Buguias Central

The immediate postwar years saw the rapid rise of Buguias Junction (Kilometer 73 of the Mountain Trail) as the new trade center of the greater Buguias region. Before the Agno Valley Road reached Buguias in 1958, all local vegetables had to be ported to this site. A number of Buguias residents soon moved to Kilometer 73, both to farm and to take advantage of the emerging market. As commerce began to settle in place, the tradition of peripatetic trade withered.

On market days (Thursday and Sundays), those Buguias farmers with produce to sell would begin their strenuous hikes to the Mountain Trail hours before dawn, lighting their way with pine torches. The habitués of the market at Kilometer 73 included many others as well; since few Buguias traders now ventured into the cloud forest, its residents also began to trek to this emergent entrepôt.

As its marketplace grew, Buguias Junction displaced Buguias Village as the center of the regional meat trade. The Agno Valley no longer produced many animals, nor did its traders procure meat in the eastern oak woodlands. But demand persisted, even strengthening in times of high vegetable prices. The few Buguias residents who had purchased trucks for vegetable hauling now began to import animals directly from the lowlands. But within a few years, Ilocano entrepreneurs discovered this profitable trade, and before long lowlanders all but monopolized the transport of livestock.

The Rise of the North

Buguias Junction's ascendancy proved short-lived; by the 1960s exchange had jumped to other centers. Buguias itself reclaimed a minor commercial role as it gained road access and as the cloud-

forest people began to hike to the village for their needs. But this did not last long either, since Buguias was soon far overshadowed by two new mercantile villages in the northern part of the municipality: Abatan and Bad-ayan.

Abatan, situated on the junction of the Mountain Trail, the Agno Valley Road, and the Mankayan-Cervantes Highway, had long been a natural market site. A few permanent businesses clustered around the crossroads in the prewar period, to be joined by several more following the armistice. But Abatan developed slowly. Some attribute its retarded growth to the arrogance of certain Lo-o baknangs who had established the first stores. These early merchants would reportedly intimidate any potential competitors, in some instances simply expelling them from town. Not until Northern Kankana-ey and Ilocano merchants arrived—people not so easily bullied—did Abatan flourish. The northern traders first dickered in a new periodic market, but gradually a number of them constructed permanent stores. By the early 1970s, Abatan reigned as the premier trade depot of northern Benguet and as the new de facto seat of the Buguias municipal government.

Lo-o, only a few kilometers east of Abatan, did not suffer as the latter town rose. Rather, the two communities were close enough to form something of a single trade hub, and a number of small businesses also emerged in central Lo-o. Lo-o also benefitted from its thriving agricultural high school and from the Buguias Town Fiesta, celebrated annually on the school grounds.

Bad-ayan, while never rivaling Abatan, gradually emerged as the second trade center of the Buguias region. Exchange gravitated here during the early 1950s, when Bad-ayan marked the terminus of the Agno Valley Road, and it expanded when a periodic market was established in 1957. Permanent stores were soon built by Badayan residents, and two of them evolved into fully stocked agricultural supply houses. By the 1960s, road extensions to the east gave the village a growing hinterland of its own. Now Bad-ayan was the most accessible town to the cloud forest of western Ifugao province.

Gradually a stable periodic market system developed, linking the various old and new commercial centers of northern Benguet. David Ruppert (1979) discovered in the 1970s that just over half of the market vendors in Abatan were Igorots (mainly Northern Kankana-ey), the others being largely Ilocanos and Pangasinanes. Virtually all were women. By the mid-1980s, many vendors rotated

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Map 7.
The Changing Spatial Structure of Buguias Trade.

from Lo-o on Wednesdays, to Bad-ayan on Thursdays, to Abatan on Fridays and Saturdays, and finally to Mankayan on Sundays before journeying to Baguio or even Manila to purchase new supplies.

The Market in Buguias Central

When the Agno Valley Road was finally pushed south to Buguias, local trade temporarily revived. Thursdays and Sundays were des-

ignated market and produce-shipping days; vegetable traders would then drive their large trucks to the center of town, where they would be greeted by growers descending from the surrounding farmlands with their harvests. After selling their vegetables, farmers would shop in the periodic market and in the half-dozen or so permanent stores that had recently opened. But the shops of Buguias offered fewer goods at higher prices than their rivals in the northern towns, and the market was a local affair, unable to attract the professional peripatetic vendors.

When marketing innovations in the 1970s permitted farmers to ship their vegetables on any day of the week, the Buguias market withered to virtual extinction. Most farmers continued to devote Sundays and sometimes Thursdays to socializing in the center of town, but by the mid-1980s only a single used-clothing trader offered any substantial goods in the marketplace.

Connections with the Global Economy

The Benguet vegetable farmers became entangled in the world economy not primarily as producers for a global market, but rather as consumers of agricultural supplies produced in the metropolitan states. Certainly international economic ties are implicated in vegetables sales—the tourist hotels of Manila and the American military bases are large and steady produce customers—but little is exported. By contrast, most of the industry's inputs are imported. Russell (1983) has argued persuasively that the companies supplying these goods extract a substantial surplus from the vegetable growers.

The transport systems of economically subservient regions often assume a dendritic pattern, in which roads effectively channel resources from the interior to an export entrepôt without developing corresponding internal connections (see C. Smith 1976). Benguet is no exception. Here too a dendritic pattern is readily discerned in the still-developing road network. Internal transport remains tortuous, for almost all trunk and feeder routes culminate in Baguio, from which point a busy highway leads directly to Manila.

The agricultural inputs employed by the Benguet farmers fit into three major categories: fertilizers, biocides, and seeds. Each developed its own pattern of supply and distribution, in which one can trace the global geographic patterns underlying the vegetable in-

dustry. As of the later 1980s, Benguet is linked to all of the world's centers of economic strength, including several emergent ones.

Approximately 40 percent of the typical farmer's fertilizer budget goes to chicken manure. This input is domestic, produced on poultry farms in central Luzon. Tagalog merchants truck manure into the mountains, often delivering it (sometimes on their backs) to very remote locales. Chemical fertilizers are of two major kinds: ammonium sulfate, providing nitrogen, and so-called complete, a balanced plant food. Although the Philippine government has made efforts to foster a domestic fertilizer industry, most supplies are imported. At present, the largest suppliers, especially of ammonium sulfate, are Taiwan and South Korea.

Biocides (including insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides) are largely manufactured offshore by multinational corporations. As of 1986, four companies predominated, two German (Hoescht and Bayer), one Anglo-Dutch (Shell), and one American (Union Carbide). While their products are sold by local distributors, these companies maintain a strong presence in the vegetable industry, particularly through their advertisements and other competitive activities.

In the early days of vegetable growing, American companies supplied most seeds. Gradually they have been supplanted by Japanese competitors; today only lettuce seeds are routinely imported from the United States. Seed potatoes have been generally procured from western Europe, but local supplies (developed largely by a Philippine-German cooperative project on the slopes of Mount Data) are becoming increasingly available. Quality seed procurement has long been a bane of the Benguet farmer. The demand for seeds of early maturing cultivars especially is often unsatisfied (FAO 1984). Moreover, several Buguias farmers complain that they cannot grow several potentially profitable crops, such as scalloped squash, because they are simply unable to obtain seeds.

The multinational agrochemical companies dispense much selfserving information to Benguet farmers through their field agents. Indeed, these agents, rather than government extension personnel, are the main source of new technical information (Medina n.d.:2). Many, if not most, company operatives are local residents, usually graduates of the agricultural college in Trinidad. These agents organize meetings for growers when they have a new chemi-

cal to sell, selecting "demonstration farmers" who receive the product free in exchange for cultivating "test plots." The typical recipient is a successful farmer who possesses an easily visible roadside garden. Other farmers then inspect the experiment to judge whether the new input is worthwhile.

Such advertisements often prove successful for the sponsor. Farmers use substantial quantities of chemicals, although applications have decreased somewhat since the crisis of the early 1970s. Previously, many growers used biocides prophylactically and to great excess (Medina n.d.:2). But despite the recent decline, the spraying of biocides is incessant, and the environmental and medical consequences appalling.

In short, the postwar transformation both reordered Buguias's agrarian ecology and repositioned the community within the global economy. In so doing, it undermined the old bases of social hierarchy: pastoralism and Cordilleran trade. But at the same time, the new order presented abundant opportunities for the elite—both old and new—to (re)assert dominance. Here one may find both striking discontinuities between the prewar and the postwar eras and profound carryovers as well.

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1. Headman of Buguias, 1901. Courtesy, Worcester Collection, University of Michigan. Themeda pasture
is visible in the background, with scattered young pines in the higher areas. On the far left, several
fence lines may be distinguished.

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2. A Group of Buguias Men, Circa 1900. Courtesy, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.
Intensively cultivated uma fields, stone walls, and small houselot gardens are visible in the background.

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3. Puwal Cultivation, Circa 1900. (Originally titled "Igorots breaking ground with pointed
sticks, Baguio, Benguet.") Courtesy, Worcester Collection, University of Michigan.

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4. Southern Cordilleran Traders, Circa 1900. (Originally titled "Igorot carriers on the trail.")
Courtesy, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago. These merchants have likely just returned from the
lowlands, where they would have purchased the dogs. In Buguias, women seldom joined such expeditions.

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5. Buguias Village in 1986. Only the central part of the community is visible.

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6. Sloped Fields and Pine Forests near Buguias, 1986. This area, just south of the village, has experienced
rapid field expansion and forest retraction in recent years. Note the roadway in the foreground.

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7. Carrot Harvest, Buguias 1986.

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8. Bulldozing "Mega-Terraces," East of Buguias, 1986. The bulldozer cuts deeply into the subsoil,
a nutrient-poor but friable material that will make an adequate cropping medium once fertilizers are applied.

[Full Size]

9. Manbunung (Pagan Priest) and Sacrificial Hog, Buguias 1985.
The blood-soaked taro slices on the animal's back symbolize cash.

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10. Ritual Dancing in Buguias, 1985.
Wearing a death shroud, the dancer is performing in the stead of one of his ancestors.

7
The Sociology and Economics of Vegetable Production, 1946–1972

Introduction

The postwar agrarian transition reformulated social relations in Buguias. In the old days, commoners acquired livestock from their wealthy confreres by entering a pastol contract. When these same commoners switched to vegetable growing after the war, their capital requirements ballooned. Now they needed cash both to purchase agricultural inputs and increasingly to buy subsistence goods imported from the lowlands. To meet this demand, new forms of credit emerged to take their place alongside the old.

Labor recruitment was also transformed in the poastwar period. Previously, most commoners had relied largely on family labor, augmented with reciprocal labor exchange (ogbo) for the occasional heavy task. The elite, for their part, could also entice workers through the payment of meat (dangas). After the war, the bases of both ogbo and dangas eroded. Commoners now found themselves needing additional hands regularly, but no longer could they readily promise their own labor in return. For related reasons, the elite found their meat offerings inadequate to attract as many workers as they required. Both parties now had to pay cash wages.

Class and gender relations in Buguias responded to the new economy's pressures with subtle and overt adjustments. The preexisting class structure, although temporarily upset, soon restabilized more or less as before, with one critical difference: for the first time, a handful of regional vegetable merchants and farmers transcended the local economy and established themselves as provincial elites. Relations between the sexes changed even more dramatically. In the new economy, women and men suddenly carried the same tools and toiled at the same jobs. Moreover, a small set of women traders emerged as wealthy entrepreneurs, an unprecedented development.

Restructured Social Relations

Class Stratification

The postwar economic transformation initially acted to level class positions in Buguias, but the old system of stratification was soon reestablished, albeit in modified form. In the early years, vegetable growing presented an economic opportunity for the common people unmatched in earlier days. The local baknangs continued to seek laborers in the traditional dangas fashion, but as the going wage increased, their attempts were increasingly frustrated. In response, real wages paid for agricultural and pastoral work doubled in a few years. But despite the higher potential wages, most commoners now wished to act independently of the elite, and the very term baknang began to carry pejorative connotations in some quarters.

Yet Buguias remained a stratified society. Immediately following the war, many wealthy families coasted on paybacks for loans they had extended before the conflict began; others exhumed the cash reserves they had buried before the final devastation. More importantly, a handful of families retained ownership of most terraces, and if they were slow to plant them to cabbage, they were quick to lease them to willing experimentalists. By the second postwar decade, the elite had discovered the profitability of farming their own extensive and well-watered lands for themselves. Meanwhile, the Buguias baknangs continued to lend money, usually at 5 percent interest per month, allowing them to reap an additional harvest from the vegetable boom. Berto and Apisa Cubangay even managed to perform a second pedit at the stratospheric level of "25" in the late 1940s. But after Berto's death in 1951, there were no longer any true baknangs in Buguias. But the vegetable economy continued to present opportunities for accumulation, and by the late 1960s a new group of wealthy people, primarily from nonbaknang lineages, had arisen.

This scenario was played out only in Buguias proper. The traditional Lo-o elites maintained and even augmented their positions by leasing their extensive terraces to Chinese entrepreneurs and by establishing businesses in Abatan. In contrast, the new communities of the Mountain Trail, having no traditional elite class, experienced de novo stratification. There the most successful farmers

rapidly amassed money and land, soon joining the Chinese planters in the local "aristocracy." In some areas the first migrants were able to assume the position of "lead family," but continued success depended on access to capital, usually through family connections in the valley communities.

Living Standards

By the 1960s, the lot of the average person in Buguias had improved markedly from prewar standards. People recall this melioration primarily in terms of diet. With the rise of market gardening, lowland rice became a staple food, while sweet potatoes were demoted to a supplementary position. Now the common farmer could also purchase dried fish, an occasional tin of meat or seafood, distilled liquor, and kerosene for cooking and lighting. Clothing and housing standards also improved; most couples replaced their thatch roofs with galvanized iron sheets, which, although unappealing to the (Western) eye, are locally regarded as far superior to thatch.

But the populace did not share equally in this new bounty. Some had inadequate lands to support their often sizable families in the new style. The poorest fifth of the population could not afford boiled rice as their mainstay; instead they subsisted on a watery rice gruel supplemented with sweet potatoes. But as before, the poor received community subsidies; they ate high-quality food at communal feasts, they could gather fruit on the waysides, and now they could glean the remains of harvested vegetable fields.

Many of the wealthier couples continued to live in much the same style as their poorer contemporaries. As before the war, they devoted the bulk of their riches to religious ceremonies. But the very rich—those who traded vegetables on a large scale—rose to a new level of consumption. Several couples built large, modern houses in both Buguias and Trinidad, filling them with a variety of consumer goods.

Despite the common academic notion of "subsistence affluence" (Sahlins 1972) giving way to "commercial deprivation" in the global periphery, the rise in living standards that accompanied agricultural commercialization in Buguias is paralleled in many other peripheral societies. While many scholars still hold to a view that

William Clarke (1988) has felicitously labeled "edenism" (a recurrent myth, once popularized by Rousseau and later spread with the countercultural impulse of the 1960s), it is now clear that many subsistence economies were anything but prosperous. As Dennett and Connell (1988: 281) say of one group of New Guinea highlanders, "They have no wish to retreat to the 'subsistence affluence' and nobility that have sometimes been thrust upon their ancestors." Whatever the costs of commercialization have been, the Buguias people unanimously voice the same sentiments.

Gender Relations

More permanent than changes in class structure was the postwar transformation of gender relations. Before the war, most agricultural tasks were strictly segregated by sex. Although husbands and wives occasionally worked together, women usually toiled in the dry fields while men tended livestock and conducted trade. Moreover, each gender previously possessed its own distinctive tool kit, although there was little stigma attached to, and sometimes even genuine admiration for, individuals competent in using the implements of the other sex. But the tasks of vegetable gardening were never divided by sex. True, most men continue to avoid tedious tasks, such as weeding, in preference for more strenuous chores, but such choices have devolved into family matters, no longer arbitrated by cultural expectations.

Vegetable trading allowed for a different restructuring of gender roles by opening a new window on the larger world. One of the central jobs of vegetable trading, namely vehicle driving and maintenance, remained firmly in the male domain. But this is a special assignment that few men ever hold. Of much greater consequence was the opening of trade itself to women. Before the war, women had conducted local barter, but none engaged in professional longdistance commerce. Yet by the 1960s, women came to dominate the much-enlarged retail sector in Buguias, while several female traders reached the highest level of prominence in the profitable vegetable business. Although these merchants have generally worked with their husbands, in several notable cases it is no secret that the genius lies on the distaff side.

Before the war, women had worked extremely long hours, while

men had enjoyed relative leisure. This too changed in the reconstruction; vegetable culture demanded continual applications of labor, much of which could only be drawn from men. In the vegetable economy, most Buguias residents agree, men toil in the fields just as hard as women do. But women still work longer hours, since they are also responsible for more domestic tasks. Moreover, fathers no longer supply the childcare they once did; children now are likely to be taken into the fields, or entrusted to an older sibling, cousin, or grandparent.

One could argue that the rise of female-run businesses reflects not so much a change in gender relations as a reconfiguration of economic spheres that elevated the traditional female activities to a higher level. Women had always bartered vegetables; now the vegetable trade was the community's economic pivot. Yet other indicators suggest a more fundamental transformation. For the first time, for instance, a few women entered the animal trade—just before the entire endeavor vanished. More significantly, women could now aspire to political office. Although this has yet to occur in Buguias, in 1986 the barangay, or village, leader of Suyoc, as of several other Benguet villages, was a woman.

Beyond a doubt, the men of Buguias still control the community, continuing to dominate the tong tongan and other political forums. Women are also still socially constrained; Bridget Hamada-Pawid (personal communication) argues that in all of the Cordillera, only among the Ifugao do women drink, gamble, and socialize freely with their male peers. Nor can women in Buguias hold the high offices of religious authority, those of manbunung and mankotom. But overall, the position of women is undoubtedly higher than it had been in the prewar period.

Capital and Labor

In the early postwar years, virtually all Buguias residents made tax declarations on their vegetable fields. Land availability was no problem; in fact, arable land was more abundant than before, now that light soils could be cultivated. Nor did the average farmer suffer labor constraints. Family workers sufficed for most tasks, and in the few bottleneck periods, such as time of harvest, neighbors would usually assist. Since growers now planted on different sched-

ules, no longer were there periods of concentrated work throughout Buguias. But if land and labor were reasonably abundant, capital was scarce. And in the new economy, capital had become vital.

Sources of Capital

Throughout the postwar period, most young couples have been strained to purchase the seeds, fertilizers, and biocides needed for a successful farming venture. Many turn to their wealthier neighbors and relatives, or to vegetable traders, to acquire a stake. In the usual arrangement, called "supply," the backer purchases all inputs and the borrower provides all labor with net profits divided equally. A typical supply contract covers only a single crop cycle; the financing of the next planting depends on the success of the first. A single highly profitable harvest can often cover the expenses of the subsequent crop, provided the increase is not set aside for a feast. A low price at harvest, however, can force the laboring couple to negotiate a new supply agreement, and perhaps even to borrow extra money to purchase necessities before the next crop is due.

Caught between price fluctuations and religious obligations, most farmers have fallen deeply into debt. If desperate, they can "mortgage" their land in a salda arrangement. As Davis (1973:60) explains, salda differs from the Western mortgage in that the borrower theoretically loses claim to the land until he or she repays the principal. In actuality, the original holder usually retains control in exchange for a share, often one-fifth, of the harvest. After a stipulated period elapses, the borrowing couple can retain ownership only if they pay off the interest and the principal. If they default, as was not uncommon during the early vegetable-growing years, the land passes permanently to the creditor. Again, the original owners may still cultivate it, but now as outright sharecroppers. A "bankrupt" couple wishing to avoid sharecropping can declare and clear new lands, but this is an expensive, labor-consuming ordeal—and increasingly so as the more accessible lands have been progressively claimed.

As virgin land grew scarce in the 1960s and 1970s, the practice of salda declined; few farmers now wished to risk their properties. Still, during emergencies (often religious), this could be a poor

couple's sole recourse. On a ritual occasion, a parcel might be mortgaged, not for money but for sacrificial livestock.

Most vegetable dealers have long doubled as agricultural input suppliers, advancing fertilizers and biocides to cash-short farmers in exchange for a guaranteed sale of the prospective crop at a discount. Such deals are often extended, since a poor market at harvest time can quickly send the farmer deeper into debt. Dealers find this consistent with their own interests as well; it ensures them a steady supply of vegetables, and they can always recoup some of their losses through the discounts they receive. The farmers also benefit from the perennial refinancing that does not jeopardize their lands. Davis (1973:208, 209) finds this system mutualistic, as it provides both parties with a measure of security in a capricious business, while Russell (1987) counters that it allows the trader to control the relationship to his or her own benefit. Vigorous disputes do arise when a farmer, encumbered with years of outstanding debt, suddenly dies. In this eventuality, the vegetable dealer might try to collect from the heirs, who in turn may argue that these matters should have been settled years earlier and that the dealer deserves a loss for letting the debt persist indefinitely. Such arguments can only be settled on an individual basis in tong tongan deliberations.

Two additional sources of capital emerged in the late 1960s. The first, local credit cooperatives, played a relatively minor role. The second, a government-backed program of bank loans, proved almost revolutionary. The land boom it precipitated, as well as the subsequent vegetable bust, will be discussed in chapter 8.

Sharecropping

Even though most farmers in Buguias own land, many have inadequate holdings. Land-hungry couples usually look to sharecrop subsidiary plots owned by neighbors and relatives. As a general rule, poorer families sharecrop the fields of wealthier villagers, but household demographics as well as temporary turns of luck also influence tenancy arrangements. Young couples with many children often take on the fields of others, only to graduate from sharecropping later in life. If their children leave Buguias, such a couple might even find themselves with a surfeit of cropland. On a shorter time scale, two households can experience widely divergent for-

tunes depending on their cropping strategies; a couple might let out some of its land to sharecroppers in one year, only to lose some of its own fields (through salda) the next and be forced itself into sharecropping.

Unlike other villages in the region, Buguias Central has not had a single family that has been able to accumulate such expansive tracts of land as to necessitate the extensive use of sharecropper labor. Those couples who garnered great wealth preferred investments other than Buguias land. In Buguias, tenancy and labor arrangements most often link farmers who, despite disparities of wealth, are essentially of the same social class, and often closely related as well.

The population of Buguias mounted rapidly during the postwar period. As the inner village became increasingly crowded, many young couples chose to clear new lands on the higher slopes east of town. Relying at first on a "supply" sponsor, the fates of these gardeners depended on their luck at market, their farming strategies, and their ceremonial expenditures. But farming in any remote area presents heavy demands, since even after the plots are cleared, both supplies and vegetables have to be ported to and from the road. Many young adults therefore have preferred to relocate on the Mountain Trail where they can work as sharecroppers for large-scale growers. Most hope to return eventually and acquire land in Buguias, a reasonable expectation only if they harvest a jackpot crop.

Wage and Cooperative Labor

Even farmers cultivating modest plots often hire wage labor at harvest time. Growers rush their harvests, especially if prices are high and the crops perishable. Most farmers turn to neighbors and relatives with a loose expectation of eventual reciprocation. Wage agreements actually came to be preferred over work exchanges since the implied finality leaves both parties free from future commitments that could conflict with their own schedules. Of course, poorer couples disproportionally rely on wage work, especially after opportunities diminished in the 1970s and 1980s. Nevertheless, wages in Buguias have remained much higher than those along the Mountain Trail, in part because no outside workers (Ilocanos and North-

ern Kankana-eys) lodge here. In 1986, when a full day's labor earned 15 to 20 pesos in Natubleng, workers in Buguias could earn as much as 35 pesos.

One specialized task has been particularly well rewarded with cash, namely the portage of vegetables from field to road. This job requires great strength and stamina, and is usually undertaken by adolescent boys and young men. Growers pay by weight and distance, with some variation for competitive bidding. Those strong enough to carry a number of sacks in quick succession receive ample rewards, and the best can reportedly earn 75 pesos in less than a full day.

Traditional labor exchange, ogbo, has rarely been applied to vegetable harvesting. Davis (1973:58) argues that hired labor is more efficient, a reasonable position considering the complex individual schedules that would have to be meshed as different growers reach hurried decisions on harvesting dates. Voss (1980) sees informal reciprocity in wage-labor agreements and argues that it is a modified form of labor exchange. This view is reasonable when applied to the few remote villages east of Buguias that have formed a semicooperative system of wage-labor exchange to bypass what would be excessive levies for vegetable portage.

Pure labor exchange does persist in select situations. Ogbo is still applied, for example, to the non-urgent but laborious task of new field preparation. Cooperative work parties are also organized along village or hamlet lines for road and trail maintenance, and for the construction of new traditional-style houses. And finally, irrigation system maintenance is performed jointly by all water recipients. Dangas, the prewar system of meat and beer "wages," also survives in attenuated form. Today farmers occasionally hire young men to clear brush or perform other heavy tasks in exchange for meat (often a cow's head) and—equally essential—San Miguel gin.

The clearing of new fields can be accomplished through one's own painstaking labor, through ogbo, or through dangas, but the more prosperous farmers usually hire outsiders on a contract basis. As in the old days, Kalanguya men predominate. Prosperous Buguias growers also commission contract workers to build new terraces, to saw boards, and to perform other skilled or tedious jobs. The worker's daily emolument depends on his rapidity of work, but it often reaches nearly twice the average daily wage. Conten-

tion not uncommonly erupts, however, as contract laborers are tempted to rush through their tasks, leading many employers to complain about the quality of the finished work.

Labor and Credit Elsewhere in Buguias Municipality

Along the Mountain Trail, in Lo-o, and in Bad-ayan, very different linkages between labor and capital have developed. In these areas, a small number of large-scale farmers, many of whom also sell inputs and deal in vegetables, came to dominate their communities. Such growers have managed to raise considerable capital on their own, and many acquired finesse in tapping governmental and other exterior sources. Large-scale farmers have always secured bank loans more readily than have small-scale growers (Russell 1983:96), and the Chinese among them have enjoyed ample financing through their far-flung ethnic networks.

Along the Mountain Trail, in Lo-o, and in Bad-ayan, poor Ilocanos and migrant Igorots (from beyond the vegetable frontier), anxious for even exiguous wages, have provided inexpensive labor. Farmers in these areas accordingly devote only a small percentage of their outlays to their workers; C. DeRaedt estimates that labor accounts for only 15 percent of the average Sayangan farmer's production costs (1983:11), while an FAO report concurs that labor is the least costly "input" for the large agricultural holdings along the Mountain Trail (1984:21).

The Vegetable Trade

The Early Vegetable Traders

As discussed earlier, one Buguias entrepreneur, Pokol, traded vegetables before the war. Pokol died in the conflict, but after liberation several young men of moderate circumstances emulated his career. Purchasing produce both at Kilometer 73 and from small farmers along the Mountain Trail, they transported it at first on buses or in rented truck space to Baguio where they could sell it to Chinese agents.

The most successful of the early postwar vegetable traders, Hil-

ary Camas, soon hired several "commissioners," underlings who would haggle deals with individual farmers. This position served as a stepping-stone for a new set of dealers. One of them, Ernesto Simion, first transported vegetables on the tops of lumber trucks headed to Baguio from the sawmill at Mount Data. Soon, Simion was leasing trucks to haul larger loads. As his business grew his attention shifted to Trinidad, where he contracted to build housing units and warehouses for vegetables. In Buguias, Simion employed subordinates to handle the vegetable trade; several eventually graduated to the position of independent dealer.

Bisna and Stafin Olsim

One of Simion's protégés, Bisna Olsim, eventually surpassed all other vegetable traders of Buguias. Mrs. Olsim was born to a poor couple and was fatherless from an early age. In 1956 she married into a relatively well-off family, but her husband, Stafin Olsim, sojourned through the early years of their marriage as a gold miner in Mindanao. After learning the vegetable trade from Simion and others, Bisna established her own "buy and sell" business. She received some help from family members, who, by her own account, pitied her for being without a father or, temporarily, a husband. Stafin's uncle lent her a truck at favorable rates, and other relatives provided vegetables to her on consignment.

By the time her husband returned, Bisna had saved a respectable sum and had purchased, on credit, a large truck. This proved to be a timely investment; as the FACOMAs collapsed, new opportunities arose for local transporters. Between 1965 and 1970 the Olsims' ascent was meteoric. Soon they needed better market access, which they attained by purchasing property and building a house and storage facility in Trinidad. Twice a week they would now make the six- to eight-hour drive to Buguias to buy vegetables, returning to Trinidad the following day.

By the mid-1970s the Olsims began to ease out of the vegetable trade and to experiment with new lines of business. Several endeavors were not successful. For a number of years they owned and managed a bus company, but the high cost of repairs and the formidable competition from Dangwa Tranco proved discouraging. Similarly, a supply store in Buguias could not compete against the

independent traders and the large supply stores of Bad-ayan and Abatan. But the Olsims' other dealings have more than compensated for these losses. Several land investments in Trinidad proved quite remunerative, and by the 1980s a road contracting business brought excellent returns. They are now fully established as the one truly wealthy family of Buguias—an identity they cultivate despite spending most of their time in the provincial capital.

The other Buguias vegetable traders were less fortunate. Although several attained prosperity, few have approached, and none has maintained, true baknang status. Several suffered business calamities, commonly the loss of a truck or two over a Mountain Trail precipice. Another followed the Olsims in running a bus company, but two disastrous crashes in the 1980s brought financial ruin. Several found misadventure in gambling, usually in the Baguio casino.

Ritual practice has been a two-edged sword in the rise and fall of prominent Buguias families. In one story, often repeated by Buguias Christians, a certain trader's decline appears to have been accelerated by ritual; after each setback he conducted elaborate propitiatory rites, which further consumed his dwindling resources. Those who practice the traditional religion, however, counter by pointing to other instances where a family's imminent downfall was averted, they say, precisely by staging the proper ceremonies.

The Practice of Vegetable Trading

Vegetable trading in Benguet has taken on many forms, confounding generalizations. Individuals holding a small business operate differently from those with larger concerns, while those who continue to farm face different economic circumstances from those who do nothing but trade. Russell (1983:91) suggests a clear-cut taxonomy of Benguet produce traders: the full-time trader is an agent, the farmer-trader is a dealer, the trader who does not own a vehicle is a buy-and-sell, and persons who rent vehicles to traders are transporters. In Buguias, however, these distinctions are not clearly developed. Until recently, most persons working in vegetable commerce were full-time traders. Because conditions changed markedly after the crisis of the mid-1970s, when smaller vehicles became available, the following discussion focuses on the practices

of the full-time vegetable agents as they existed in the heyday of the 1960s.

To prosper in the vegetable business, a trader must keenly forecast price trends and competently manage credits and debts. The ambitious trader must also master the exacting practice of pakyao , or the advance purchase of unharvested crops. If prices are high, or if the trader anticipates a sharp rise, he or she may wish to secure a large future supply. Growers are often amenable, as they may be anxious to obtain cash as early as possible, declining to speculate on the possibility of a future price upswing. To profit on such a deal, the trader must accurately assess the future yield of a given field. And even if the prediction of the harvest volume should prove accurate, the trader could still be crushed if the market were to fall in the interim.

Other hazards can also sink the unwary trader. The vegetable business can be very competitive (despite the fact that farmers are often beholden to specific traders), and it offers thin profit margins. Furthermore, growers do not always repay their debts. Vegetable trading is a social endeavor, and successful agents must maintain good relations with employees, buyers, and sellers (see Anderson 1969). They must also maintain their vehicles against the grinding wear of the rough mountain roads. Fortitude is equally vital; when prices are high, dealers and their crews must work feverishly, often forgoing sleep for several days.

The advance purchase system, and vegetable trading in general, can generate enmity between farmers and dealers. An unscrupulous grower, for example, might resell a standing crop for which he or she has already received payment. A dealer, in contrast, may take advantage of a consignment sale by remitting to the farmer less money than promised, justifying the action through reference to a lowered price or to spoilage. Davis (1973) argues that such potential discord reinforces the tendency for dealer-farmer connections to develop along kinship lines. In Buguias, the deeply embedded genealogical and "co-villager" relationships extending throughout the community have to a great extent safeguarded against these corrupting tendencies.

Since the 1960s and early 1970s, large-scale vegetable traders from Buguias have sent produce to their own storehouses in Trinidad, from which they can sell directly to the Chinese (and, increas-

ingly, Tagalog) merchants who control the Baguio-Manila trade. Smaller traders have usually sold directly in the wholesale section ("New Market") of the Baguio market. The largely Igorot wholesalers of the New Market, numbering some 350 to 400 (Russell 1987:142, 143), offer competitive bids on incoming produce. After cleaning and sorting the produce, they sell it to Chinese or Tagalog traders, who then ship large truckloads to their marketing agents in Divisoria, the vegetable emporium of Manila.

A few of the large agribusiness concerns in the greater Buguias region presently ship vegetables directly to Manila. This requires both a dependable supply of vegetables and a fleet of large trucks. But even those who transport their own vegetables to the capital still have to deal through Chinese middlemen. One wealthy Badayan family, for example, sells produce to their Manila partner for a price somewhere between the Baguio and the Manila wholesale figures. Many large-scale farmer-traders do not find these marginally superior prices worth the effort, and thus continue to deal in Baguio. Several powerful traders, including the Olsims, have attempted to eliminate another rung of intermediaries by acquiring a wholesale stall in the Divisoria market, but so far all such attempts have failed. Most highland observers attribute their ill success to the machinations of Chinese "cartels."

Agribusiness Reconsidered

The most successful indigenous entrepreneurs in Buguias municipality have been those who have integrated farming, trading, and input sales. A prime example is the Maliones family of Bad-ayan. Mrs. Maliones began her career shortly after the war by cultivating a few experimental cabbage patches on soils that local residents had regarded as sterile and worthless, and by selling fertilizer out of a tiny shack. Since then her fields and her sales have expanded continuously. By the 1970s she owned several large trucks suitable for hauling produce directly to Manila, had purchased additional lands on the Mountain Trail, was developing commercial property in Trinidad, and managed one of the best-stocked input and hardware stores in Benguet.

Successful business people like Mrs. Maliones have in many respects been able to thrive precisely because of earlier successes in

gardening. Big farmers with integrated concerns enjoy economies of scale, just as they are buffered from economic and natural disasters. Indeed, one study (Lizarondo et al. 1979) has shown a direct relationship between the size of a farm and the profit per unit area that the grower can realize. This advantage is amplified when one also considers the other aspects of vegetable agribusiness pursued by most large-scale farmers.

Yet in Buguias proper, no large agricultural combine has emerged. While the Olsims' businesses have grown, they have not invested in Buguias agriculture. This is partly because they have seen few opportunities in a district characterized by small owner-occupied farms; yet their very decision to invest elsewhere has contributed to the divergent social and economic evolution of the village. Some locals regret the absence of big growers in Buguias, feeling that this has redounded to the economic marginalization of their once-central place. But while the Olsims have located most of their endeavors in other areas, they nonetheless continue to play prominent roles in the political and ritual life of their natal community. And considering the environmental and social problems that have increasingly impinged upon the Buguias landscape in the past two decades, the Olsims' decision to invest their profits elsewhere may well prove to have been prescient.

8
Economic and Ecological Crisis

Introduction

The health of the Benguet vegetable economy in the 1950s and 1960s masked an underlying environmental deterioration. Soil erosion and exhaustion, water-table depletion, deforestation, and pesticide contamination threatened the sustainability of commercial agriculture from the beginning. During periods of prosperity such problems were not apparent, as nutrient subsidies and imported substitutes allowed continued expansion. But when the vegetable industry suffered a partial collapse in the mid-1970s, environmental degradation began to form an economic constraint. Unable to obtain adequate supplies of commercial fertilizers, farmers could not easily coax crops from the depleted soils. Furthermore, the economic trauma deepened the ecological wound; when the price of petroleum-based fuels suddenly exceeded the means of most farmers, deforestation accelerated.

The Benguet farmers have not, however, merely allowed themselves to be buffeted by adverse economic winds, nor have they succumbed to environmental calamities. Rather, they have responded with a series of innovations, permitting them to continue farming, and, in some instances, to prosper. In the language of human ecology, they have adapted to their precarious condition through continual readaptation, based on opportunistic responses to ever-changing circumstances. But their very solutions have sometimes made matters worse. A few well-off growers, for example, have derived great profits in clearing the high-elevation eastern oak forests, but in so doing they have diminished the water supplies of many lower and older farm districts.

Environmental deterioration puts Benguet farmers in a wrenching bind. To survive they must jeopardize their futures. And with the national economy unable to absorb many rural migrants—at a

time when local population is mounting rapidly—human pressure on the land lies heavier every year. And the growing ecological debacle should not be considered in human terms only. As chemically intensive agriculture expands, natural areas are diminishing and a number of species face extinction.

If one were to seek culprits, both wealthy agriculturalists and certain powerful government officials would have to be named. Large-scale farmers, both Chinese and Igorot, have financed the poorly graded roads and the wastefully bulldozed gardens in the cloud-forest highlands, while military and other high officials have underwritten the illegal clearing of the diminishing pine stands. But to lay all blame at the feet of these individuals would be to obfuscate larger social and economic processes. Almost all local residents approve highly of road and farm development in the cloud forest and they have consistently encouraged it. Most consider the responsible entrepreneurs as the progresso benefactors of the larger community. The denudation of the pine lands is also problematic; Cordilleran residents need fuel and construction lumber, and the profits made here help support a segment of the community.

The conjunction of economic movements and environmental effects presents a seemingly inescapable bind, a tragedy as classically defined. This becomes evident in studying government policy, where actions designed to abet the vegetable industry consistently exacerbate land degradation, while those formulated to protect the environment deepen the farmers' economic plight. As a result, official policies have been ineffectual at best, and occasionally calamitous.

Despite this gloomy prognosis, I am not ready to conclude that the Benguet farm economy is doomed. Nature is surprisingly forgiving; wildlife may be exterminated, but gardening will likely struggle along as farmers devise solutions to each new ecological impasse. And a more fundamental release, based on a complete agroecological reorientation, is not unimaginable. Some farmers are now experimentally cultivating tree crops in hopes that they might support a more economically secure and environmentally benign agriculture for the future. The success of this project, however, depends as much on the well-being of the Philippine economy as on the health of the trees; at present it is hard to say which looks more vulnerable.

Boom, Bust, and Readjustment

Boom

In the mid-1960s, most observers agreed that the Benguet vegetable industry would continue to thrive. The Philippine economy was expanding, vegetable consumption was increasing, and the escalating American presence in Vietnam presented a new market. In 1964, the Mountain Province Development Authority (MPDA), an agency patterned after the TVA (Fry 1983: 228), inaugurated its development program by declaring that vegetable production had not yet reached half of its potential. The MPDA leaders held up Benguet, with its market gardens, mines, lumber mills, and hydroelectric dams, as a model of economic growth for the rest of the Cordillera (MPDA 1964:5).

Because farm expansion was still thwarted by the scarcity of capital, development agents turned to new sources of funding. MPDA planners looked to government functionaries (especially those with the Development Bank of the Philippines) to facilitate new bank loans. As with other Benguet economic schemes, the goal was not merely to assist farmers but also to displace the Chinese, thus "nationalizing" the industry (Baguio Midland Courier , Oct. 9, 1966). In the late 1960s, many Buguias farmers were financing garden expansion through bank loans. Although collateral was necessary, a land claim—through title or tax declaration—proved sufficient. This prompted a minor land rush, as gardeners hurried to declare the remaining open lands in order to qualify for loans.

Development authorities also encouraged the forming of local credit unions, and by 1969 mutual loan associations emerged in both Buguias and Bad-ayan. Official rules limited loans to two times the amount of an individual's savings, and placed a cap of 3 percent on monthly interest payments. Through the early 1970s, these two credit unions operated successfully.

Bust

But the optimism of the late 1960s vanished rapidly in the early 1970s as the vegetable industry suffered two destructive blows: the imposition of martial law in 1972, and the energy crisis of

1973. Soon after assuming dictatorial powers, Ferdinand Marcos attacked Benguet's political leaders and seized the local news media. When oil prices skyrocketed the following year, the Manila government used its new powers to "guide" the country's agriculture through the crisis. Unfortunately for Benguet, it considered vegetable growing an expendable luxury. Fertilizer was now scarce, and authorities earmarked the available supplies for lowland rice and corn, attempting even to prevent delivery to the highlands (Baguio Midland Courier Nov. 25, 1973). The official view was that the world now faced a food crisis, and that the Benguet people should respond by cultivating sweet potatoes and other staples (Baguio Midland Courier Sept. 29, 1974).

The Benguet farmers, of course, continued to grow vegetables. Desperate for fertilizer, they soon resorted to extralegal methods of procurement. The leaders of the Buguias Credit Union were at one point arrested after returning from the lowlands with a truckload of ammonium sulfate; political opponents of the co-op leaders had evidently informed the local military.

The vegetable industry languished through 1974 and 1975. The state eventually allowed fertilizer sales, but supplies remained inadequate. Moreover, fewer persons in the cash-strapped Philippines could now afford temperate produce. On November 2, 1975, the Baguio Midland Courier reported that massive quantities of Buguias vegetables were rotting in the fields. Although many farmers blamed the industry's middlemen, some community leaders began to attribute their dilemma to state policy and international oilmarket manipulations. Local government suffered too; by August 1975, the Benguet treasury had lost some 1,000,000 pesos of tax revenue (Baguio Midland Courier Aug. 29, 1975).

The vegetable industry also had to endure "crony capitalism," Marcos's practice of helping companies that supported his regime at the expense of businesses owned by individuals perceived as enemies. Thus the Philippine Planters Company, a quasicooperative that both manufactured and distributed agricultural inputs, nearly expired when it was ordered to deliver supplies below cost. The main beneficiary was the rival Philippine Phosphate Company, owned by a friend of the president.

The state did not entirely abandon the vegetable industry, however, and as the food scare abated it again devised new credit

schemes. Development authorities futilely attempted to revive the marketing cooperatives, but most farmers now regarded any government meddling with suspicion. Once again, economic planners looked to bank loans. In 1974 the Development Bank of the Philippines put forward a new scheme by which groups of five farm families could receive credit in common, each household acting as a guarantor for the others (Baguio Midland Courier Sept. 22, 1974). And in 1976, the same bank established a branch in Abatan, further facilitating credit procurement in Buguias (Baguio Midland Courier Nov. 30, 1976).

But all such loan programs eventually failed. Even after the vegetable industry partially recovered, few farmers could pay their interest charges. When the banks threatened foreclosures, gardeners lobbied successfully for easier terms (Baguio Midland Courier Aug. 2, 1976). But this only delayed the reckoning; by the late 1970s, some 59 percent of loans to Benguet farmers were delinquent (Buasen 1981:22).

Ultimately, the inability of the Benguet farmers to repay their loans proved disastrous only for the lending institutions. Despite their powers of foreclosure, the banks could not recoup their losses. For delinquent loans secured with titled property, a bank theoretically could sell the land after the borrower had failed for a given period to make payments. In the resulting auctions, however, no one would offer adequate bids; in essence, the growers maintained solidarity against the outside financiers. Land titles thus passed to the banks as "acquired assets," but as assets of no utility. The banks could only hope that the original owner would eventually want to regain the title, necessary if he or she were to sell the parcel legally. But even here the borrowers held the advantage, since the original loans had been greatly devalued by inflation. The banks lobbied for a retroactive inflation index, but with no success.

By the end of the 1970s, official lending institutions refused to extend new credit to the average Benguet farmer, a person now considered an unacceptable risk. Wealthy growers still managed to qualify, but sometimes even they would first have to bribe the responsible loan officer.

The other new font of capital, the local credit unions, have had mixed histories. A few co-ops, notably Bad-ayan's, have continued to thrive, helping local farmers expand their fields and weather un-

favorable markets. The Buguias Central Credit Union, however, crumbled in the mid-1970s. Some former members allege that its officials were too lax and disregarded loan regulations. By the 1980s, capital in Buguias was again scarce, and wealthy farmers and traders again reclaimed the financial structure of the local vegetable industry.

Readjustments

By the late 1970s the Benguet vegetable industry had only partly recovered. Input costs remained stubbornly high relative to the price of vegetables. Moreover, the entire Philippine economy had stagnated, and the market for temperate produce no longer expanded at its previous pace. Growers lived on thinner profits, and suffered losing seasons more frequently.

But a series of agricultural innovations ameliorated the beleaguered vegetable economy. In Buguias, several new crops, notably beets and summer squash, provided some farmers with healthy gains for a few seasons. Beet culture diffused in the late 1970s after a dealer discovered a small but unfilled culinary niche in the festive dishes of the Chinese New Year. Beets brought jackpot harvests for the early adopters, and they came to be the favored crop for a number of fields along Asinan ("salt") Creek that are too saltimpregnated for other vegetables. Summer squash first appeared in Buguias fields after a Chinese wholesaler advised a local dealer of a potential market. Growers soon discovered in squash an ideal crop for the warm months; planted in the early dry season it yields abundant fruit by March. Once the heavy rains arrive, however, the vines wither from fungus infestations. But zucchini squash remains a seasonally important crop in Buguias. Other nearby vegetable districts do not produce it; higher elevation areas, such as Lo-o and the Mountain Trail, are too cold, and farmers in Kabayan (according to Buguias sources) simply do not realize the value of this crop.

Improvements in irrigation technology overshadowed the introduction of new vegetables. In the late 1970s, Benguet farmers discovered that they could efficiently transport water in garden hoses or PVC (polyvinyl chloride) pipes, and that they could use water pressure to power simple sprinklers, known as rainbirds. A rain-

bird can effectively irrigate any field, regardless of slope. Although expensive to install, sprinkler systems offered overwhelming advantages, and within a few years they had been adopted by a large majority of farmers in Buguias and neighboring villages.

As gardeners adopted rainbirds, the available water supply effectively doubled, for in the old ditch delivery systems as much as half of the flow had been lost through seepage and evaporation. Furthermore, the rainbird's gentle sprinkling was found to be more effective than flooding and discouraging to a variety of pests as well. (This same period marked the spread of thrips, small insects troublesome during the dry season but sparing crops that are regularly sprinkled.) Its greatest advantage, however, was in allowing sloped fields to be cultivated year-round; this significantly increased the annual harvests of most growers. As a result, cropping schedules became more flexible, and water conflicts diminished for a period.

Not all Benguet farmers benefited from the rainbird revolution. Many poor growers could not afford hoses, while most farms along the Mountain Trail simply lack water during the dry season. In several favored Mountain Trail locales springs allow some irrigation, but even with rainbird delivery the water supply along the ridge is presently insufficient and is rapidly declining.

Transformation of the Vegetable Trade

Vegetable traders also changed their practices after the economic crisis. In the mid-1970s, the large-scale traders essentially abandoned Buguias. They continued to buy and sell vegetables in Trinidad, but now they purchased from small dealers rather than from individual growers. Russell (1983:93) argues that the introduction of light utility vehicles allowed a new group of small-scale traders to insert themselves between growers and wealthy dealers. As these small traders struggled among themselves, long-term dealer-farmer obligations gave way to more competitive bidding. The large traders then found it more profitable, and less risky, to retreat to Trinidad where they could remain one step removed from the vegetable growers.

Although this scenario partly accounts for the transformation

of trade in Buguias, it must also be noted that the large-scale traders' abandonment of Buguias coincided with the rise of the New People's Army in the local hinterlands. Local interpretations of this timing vary considerably; while some claim that the wealthy capitalists feared imposition of a "revolutionary tax," others argue that the two developments were coincidental.

In any case, by the mid-1980s, a new and diverse system of vegetable trading had emerged in the upper Agno Valley. To this date, the large agribusinesses of northern Buguias municipality continue to transport produce in large trucks, but for the most part they haul only what they grow on their own farms. In Buguias Village, however, almost all vegetables are now carried in light utility vehicles. Of the twelve such trucks present in the village in 1986, five were owned by full-time traders, the others by farmers who transported their own crops and, for a small fee, those of their neighbors. These part-time traders increasingly sell their produce not in Baguio but rather along the Mountain Trail. Tagalog traders, recognizing the trend, now drive up the highway to flag down passing trucks, hoping to haggle a better deal from the road-weary farmers than would be possible in Baguio.

The five full-time vegetable dealers of Buguias presently operate on a local scale and drive small vehicles, but otherwise their practices mirror those of the large-scale traders of the precrisis days. Farmers often sell to the highest bidder, but many are again in debt to, and thus tied to, a specific trader. In some respects farmer-dealer obligations were strengthened in the mid-1980s when traders began to sell rice. They can undersell (or, as is more usual, "underlend") store owners, both because they subsidize their own transport costs (it is inefficient not to carry a backload), and because they do not pay as much tax as a store proprietor. As this has deprived shopkeepers of their most profitable commerce, many now devote most of their time to their own fields, opening their businesses for only a few hours a day.

Despite the adverse economic climate, an ambitious and resourceful individual may still prosper in the vegetable trade. At present, one dealer in particular runs a thriving business, and he may well reach the position of baknang in the space of a few years. This man had been an ordinary farmer when an injury forced him to seek another line of work. Beginning as a commissioner (pur-

chaser) for another trader, he soon graduated to full partner. Not long afterward he bought his own small truck (soon to be joined by a second) and established an independent business. Some observers have attributed his initial success to a simple but clever (and exhausting) tactic: he would tour the Baguio market each evening to discover which vegetables were short, rush back to Buguias to secure a supply, and then return to Baguio in time for the next day's sales.

The Precarious State of the Vegetable Industry

Just as the vegetable industry began to recover from the debacle of the mid-1970s, it received another blow: the assassination of Benigno Aquino in 1983 and the attendant round of inflation and economic decline. Once again, the prices of agricultural chemicals, fuel, and consumer goods increased faster than did those of vegetables. Rice especially escalated in cost, and by 1985 many families could scarcely afford their staple food.

The Buguias people had long since adjusted to an inflationary environment by such means as tying salda mortgages to the price of hogs. But inflation eroded their living standards nonetheless. This is evident by viewing wages in swine equivalents. In 1970, thirty ten-hour days brought in enough money to purchase a large hog (at 10 pesos a day for labor, 300 pesos for the animal); by 1985, nearly twice as many days (fifty-seven) were required to obtain the same hog (at 35 pesos a day for labor, 2,000 pesos for the animal). Fuel provides another index of decline. In the late 1960s, most households living in the village center cooked with kerosene or liquid petroleum gas; by the mid-1980s, the majority had returned to wood, an increasingly scarce and expensive commodity itself.

The current economic standing of Benguet's commercial vegetable farmers vis-à-vis other Igorots who have retained subsistence agriculture is another question, and one on which evidence is mixed. Although market gardeners undoubtedly enjoyed greater prosperity prior to the early 1970s, several scholars claim that they are losing ground to, and may well have been surpassed by, subsistence growers. Carol DeRaedt (personal communication) argues that while vegetable farmers are often perceived as wealthy, mostly

because they handle large sums of money and often own vehicles, this is, in fact, belied by their hopeless debt and ever-declining returns. An anonymous contributor to the First Cordillera MultiSectoral Congress (Cordillera Consultative Committee 1984:167) states this in more certain terms: "[The Benguet vegetable farmers] have become poor relatives to their sisters and brothers who have not adopted cash crop agriculture."

Other evidence suggests that such pronouncements are premature. Beyond doubt, all Buguias residents prefer to risk market participation rather than return to subsistence. Elders remember the prewar days as a time of hardship, for which they voice little nostalgia. Indeed, several elderly individuals refused even to discuss the prewar days, saying simply, "Life was bad—we only ate sweet potatoes." Furthermore, communities previously excluded from market participation for lack of infrastructure have readily adopted commercial growing—even if it entails sharecropping—as soon as road access is gained. Of course, one may argue that local people suffer false perceptions here, but I would prefer to trust their judgments. After all, they have in many circumstances proved themselves keen observers of economic opportunity.

In any case, even if Benguet vegetable growers remain the envy of their subsistence-farming neighbors, the good times will not necessarily persist. Many seemingly intractable problems confront the commercial economy. Most of these are environmental, and will be discussed at length in the following pages. But one specifically economic threat is worth considering briefly here: the growth of a competing temperate vegetable industry in central Luzon.

A good measure of state-supported research has recently been directed toward breeding cultivars that can tolerate the lowland climate, at least during the low-sun season. Some success has been achieved with cabbage and cauliflower. Not only does this contribute to a potential oversupply, but the generally inferior lowland vegetables are often intentionally mislabeled as "Baguio produce," undercutting the market for the genuine product. More significant, perhaps, is the emerging vegetable center of Tagaytay, a few hours drive south of Manila (see Figoy 1984:37). Here a cool ridge top blessed with excellent highway connections to the capital offers an ideal environment for temperate crops. But the Philippine economy

is not expanding quickly enough to absorb the increased supply, and the Benguet farmers may well suffer as a consequence. Despite both declining living standards and the precarious state of the entire industry, the growing of vegetables still presents a strong lure. Many farmers can easily weather economic turmoil and change. In frontier zones, new opportunities for accumulation continually emerge, drawing ever more villages into the commercial network. But the biggest attraction is the jackpot. As long as it is still possible for a lucky farmer to realize great profits on a single crop, few will resist the temptations of the vegetable economy. But as the local population quickly expands, the possibility of a major jackpot harvest will be open to ever fewer farmers.

Demography

Population Trends

Demographic growth has been a crucial component of recent environmental degradation in Buguias. Although the exact pace is impossible to gauge, given the unreliability of early census data, it is clear that the local population grew at a rapid rate during the American period. The available figures show Buguias municipality more than doubling in two decades, rising from 2,611 inhabitants in 1918 to 5,691 in 1939 (Republic of the Philippines 1960a , v. 1, pt. ii:35–2). Not surprisingly, the war interrupted this expansion; the 1948 figures show a gain of only 203 persons during the previous decade.

After the war, when statistics—although still suspect—improve, a demographic boom is clearly evident. By 1960 the municipality had swollen to 8,658 persons; ten years later it had reached 12,402; and in 1980 the figure stood at 17,556 (Republic of the Philippines 1960a , v. 1, pt. ii:35–2 and Buguias Municipality 1983:12). The rate of increase is presently diminishing, and stability in the near future is not likely; even assuming a decline in natality, government statisticians expect Buguias municipality to hold 23,819 individuals by the year 2000 (Buguias Municipality 1983:13). The barangay (village) of Buguias repeats this pattern in miniature; its 1960 population of 869 had increased to 1,300 by 1970 (Republic of

the Philippines 1960a , v. 1, pt. ii:353, and Republic of the Philippines 1970, v. 1(10):1,2), and by 1986 local officials estimated the community's population at well over 2,000.

The social and ecological consequences of this rapid demographic expansion are palpable. Since the national economy does not easily absorb rural migrants, the growing population requires an expanded agricultural base. New gardens must be cleared and existing ones cultivated more intensively. Yet intensification is already advanced; after the "rainbird revolution" most fields produced year-round, and increased labor or chemical inputs yield exceptionally low marginal returns. New irrigation systems could expand dry-season production, but the potential here is also limited. The most feasible option in recent years has rather been the expansion of the garden area, entailing the cultivation of ever more marginal sites. A second option is migration to new agricultural areas, including both the eastern cloud forest and the few frontier zones remaining in the lowlands of Nueva Vizcaya.

Local Attitudes and Population Growth

The Buguias people are well aware of the problems arising from their quickly growing population. Even the ancestors are sometimes asked to intervene; during one recent ritual a manbunung chanted a prayer that might be loosely translated, "We have become many but the land does not become wide, so please help our children who have gone to the lowlands to make their gardens." According to almost all local observers, today's average nuclear family is larger than that of prewar days. While they partly attribute this to decreased child mortality, women generally concur that the birth interval has shortened. Some facetiously conclude that whereas in the prewar period couples required three years to conceive their first child, many today can seemingly produce an infant in only three months.

In exploring these changing fertility patterns, attention must be paid both to cultural attitudes and to the economic role of children. The data here are curious. As in much of the world, Buguias parents generally prize large families, and many saw the postwar fertility increase as a great boon. But, in contradiction to some influ-

ential demographic theorists, the high value the Buguias people accord to numerous offspring is not easily attributable to economic calculations. According to several scholars (Mamdani 1972, Caldwell 1978), one should expect high birthrates where children confer more to the domestic economy than they consume. Under such conditions, the more children a couple have, the more they may hope to prosper. Low birthrates, in contrast, are expected in societies in which children are an economic drain. Yet in Buguias, children are abundant even though they cost much and contribute little.

Young children in Buguias do occasionally labor in behalf of their parents, but school and play consume most of their time. They do, however, care for younger siblings; this does not directly add to the family budget, but it does free their parents. Adolescents, especially young men, often devote themselves to gainful labor, but the money they earn is their own, and few accord significant sums to the family account. Although children as young as six may carry vegetables, even at this age they retain their own wages; parents usually must ask for a part of the earnings, but not all children agree to share. Indeed, young men even in their twenties commonly remain a net financial drain on their parents, supporting themselves periodically but returning home when in financial straits. Education beyond the sixth grade is also a significant cost for those who continue. In short, virtually everyone in Buguias agrees that children are a net expense. It is the few basig couples—those without charges to support—who enjoy unexpected prosperity.

Cain's (1981) demographic thesis focuses in part on social security; couples often have numerous children, he claims, in the hope that at least one will be able to give them adequate care should they become ill or when they reach old age. This theory also fails in Buguias. Here the few elders who are too infirm to work are always supported by their extended families.

The high birthrate in Buguias is perhaps, in contrast, linked to the peculiarly local cultural value of children. Buguias religion revolves around ancestor worship, and most persons believe that the ancestral spirits maintain their power through the actions of their descendants. The more numerous one's progeny, the greater one's chance of attaining a high afterworld position. Childless prede-

cessors—even wealthy ones—are eventually forgotten, excluded from genealogical reckonings. As one elder phrased it (in English), "If you have no children you are erased from the map of Buguias."

Nevertheless, a demographic sea change may be near. Worry about the future availability of farmland is widespread, and some individuals openly question the value of having large families. Parents with inadequate land to support their children properly now endure quiet censure. Women educated up to the high school level, and especially the college level, generally desire only three or four children. Young men, however—especially those without an education—often hope to raise, as they put it, as many children as they can afford.

In accordance with the Philippine national population program, subsidized contraceptives are available from the barangay clinic. Although some couples make use of them, artificial birth control is not a standard practice. Both devout Pagans and Christians feel moral qualms, and many women fear the side effects of certain methods. Contraception may one day be accepted, but as it now stands even couples who (claim to) desire ending their reproductive careers often continue to have children. And regardless of future changes in attitude, the present age structure ensures that the population will continue to expand. Given the economic conditions of the Philippines, social and ecological strains will increase with it. One casualty will certainly be Buguias's forests.

Deforestation

Pine and Oak Forests: 1930–1980

Although pine is vital for local subsistence, government policy under both the American and the Philippine regimes has always favored industrial users, especially the large mining corporations. The state long ago awarded the pines of greater Buguias to the Heald Lumber Company, which constructed two sawmills in the vicinity (at Bad-ayan and Sinipsip on the Mountain Trail) before the war. Not all of the region was logged, however, and several healthy stands survived in and near Buguias Village. To ensure an adequate supply of mine supports, the state has, at various times and with variable success, attempted to prevent the Benguet people

from cutting trees in the concession areas. But through the American period timber was plentiful and most forestry agents were lax in the enforcement of official rules.

By the late 1950s, however, the Buguias people and the government foresters came into sharp conflict. Forest guards were now ordered to require official approval for every pine cut. Furthermore, local residents could no longer make new tax declarations unless their plots were certified as containing no pines. Since agriculture had to expand, gardeners were forced to clear new plots surreptitiously, uprooting all potentially incriminating pine seedlings before the inspection teams could arrive. Although this entailed needless destruction, farmers felt they had no alternative.

Foresters classify the high-elevation oak woodland as non-economic, since its stubby and gnarled trees are worthless as lumber. They do consider it vital watershed, however, a function that became particularly important after two hydroelectric dams were installed on the middle Agno in the 1950s. Most recent government forestry reports have accordingly advocated cloud-forest preservation (see, for example, MPDA 1964). Yet no safeguards have been implemented. The cloud forest of Mount Data, for instance—the source of the four major rivers of the Cordillera (the Agno, Chico, Abra, and Ibulao)—officially lies within a national park, yet most of it has long since been abandoned to cabbage fields. Benguet conservationists, led by Sinai Hamada, publisher of the Baguio Midland Courier , fought hard to protect the Mount Data forests, but to no avail.

Through the late 1960s, the pine forests of Benguet continued to dwindle under pressure from both corporate and indigenous logging. Even when National Power Company agents joined the foresters in pressing for conservation the state could not act effectively; as with other environmental issues, conflicting interests demanded contradictory actions. For example, in January 1969, Marcos banned all cutting in the upper Agno watershed, but Heald Lumber Company protested and within a few days he rescinded the order (Baguio Midland Courier March 9, 1969). In 1975 a more far-reaching ban protected all pine trees within 50 kilometers of Baguio, but a year later, when lumber ran short in the gold mines, Heald again received special exemptions (Baguio Midland Courier Sept. 12, 1975).

Although the Marcos regime could not thwart corporate logging (if indeed it had ever intended to), it could harass Igorot farmers and woodcutters. During the early martial law period, forest guards often arrested decree violators. This period witnessed a renewal of purposeful seedling destruction by local farmers resisting forestry interference. By 1976, however, the enforcement power of the state simply began to evaporate; with the New People's Army (NPA) on the rise, forest guards rapidly retreated. Although the NPA later withdrew from the Buguias region, the state did not attempt to reassert its forestry authority.

Meanwhile, through the 1970s the novel oleoresin industry seemed to portend the salvation of the Benguet pines. The insular pine produces copious, high-quality resin, long used by the Igorots in the form of saleng. When forest researchers discovered that resin extraction would not harm the trees (Veracion 1977), development agents began to encourage local tapping. If the Igorots could tap commercially, foresters reasoned, they would protect old trees and nurture saplings. On February 1, 1970, the Baguio Midland Courier hopefully announced that the solution to the "kaingin problem" (Tagalog for swidden field) had at long last been discovered.

The Buguias people quickly moved into the naval-stores industry. Individuals who had been instructed in the proper tapping techniques obtained licenses; these persons invited others to tap under their permits in return for a percentage of the profits. For a few years a number of residents of the higher reaches of Buguias extracted a substantial supplementary income. But the practice soon proved to be unsustainable; few tappers followed regulations closely, and most trees were over-drained. The fire threat was also heightened since resin often continued to dribble out of the tap scar, and the accumulated deposit would easily combust during a grass burn, in turn igniting the entire tree. Moreover, the tappers seldom realized the desired profits. By the early 1980s, the oleoresin industry lay in ruins.

Recent Forestry Practices in Buguias

Although the state's withdrawal from the forests of Buguias allowed the local inhabitants to develop the resource as they wished, the community government has been unable to reconcile the inevi-

table conflict of interests within the village. A few entrepreneurs have discovered great profits in cutting, hauling, and selling wood, both for lumber and fuel, to outside interests. This small-scale commercial logging owes its existence to the chainsaw, an expensive but profitable investment. By the early 1980s, the buzz of chainsaws emanated daily from the slopes above Buguias, seeming to foretell the demise of the remaining pine stands.

Few Buguias citizens are pleased when the sawyers sell local wood to outsiders. But firewood is in strong demand, especially in Lo-o, where large-scale farmers must provide meals for their many hired workers. Even more profitable is the traffic in construction lumber. The same chainsaws used to fell trees also mill them, and the boards thus crudely produced fetch a high price in the expanding metropolis of Baguio. Four men working half a day can (in 1986) reportedly earn as much as 1,000 pesos, provided they cut a timber stand with good road access. Even under less favorable conditions, saw owners commonly pay their workers 50 pesos for half a day, an impressive wage by Philippine standards. Because of community opposition, commercial loggers usually work surreptitiously, often at night. But this does not substantially limit their operations. In 1983, one particularly valuable stand located on the northeastern border of Buguias Village yielded an estimated 50,000 board feet over a three-month period.

Such profiteering demands protection over and above the cover of dark; usually it entails the complicity of government agents, especially military officials. In exchange for a share of the profits, officers of the Philippine Constabulary have ensured black-market loggers uninterrupted felling and safe transportation. In a few instances, military men have instigated cuts, contracting for lumber that they then sell through their own networks. Barangay officials have lodged protests with the Bureau of Forest Development (BFD), but the foresters are powerless to challenge the military hierarchy.

Conflicts have also erupted between professional sawyers and tax declaration holders. Although some individuals declared pine stands precisely with an eye to their potential timber harvests, in other cases woodcutters have descended on stands without the declaration holder's knowledge. Some woodsmen willingly placate angered declaration holders with cash payments, but others argue

that a tax declaration gives only cultivation rights, and that the plot's trees should be free for the taking. With the rapid rise of such conflicting claims, even tong tongan proceedings have difficulty resolving the contentious issues surrounding local commercial logging.

Yet in a few other Cordilleran regions pine forests have expanded in the postwar period. This is particularly true in Sagada (in Mountain Province), where villagers have assiduously planted seedlings in abandoned swiddens (Preston 1985). But in Benguet, and especially in Buguias, pine stands are in retreat. A few villages in the Buguias region have established communal forests to protect the diminishing resource, but even here removal outpaces growth. Thick stands remain only in the few rough and roadless areas; wherever soils are fertile, gardens encroach and road development follows. Knowledgeable individuals predict that few if any sizable pines will be left near Buguias by the year 2000. Seedlings continue to sprout vigorously, but few seem likely to reach maturity.

The cloud forests face less immediate threats. Valueless for lumber and disdained as firewood, oaks are cleared in large numbers only for garden expansion, or occasionally for speculation. Although the Mount Data forest is now gone and the oaks of eastern Buguias municipality are falling fast to expanding gardens, along the main Cordilleran ridge and eastward into Ifugao province wide expanses of cloud forest remain virtually untouched. They too may disappear as roads push eastward, but not for some years into a very uncertain future.

Development Plans: Social and Agroforestry

Benguet foresters despair over current forest trends. Their daunting challenge is to design programs that at once protect watersheds, ensure timber availability, and yet do not interfere with the Benguet farmers' livelihoods. With this in mind, officials of the Bureau of Forest Development have attempted to foster local participation in arboriculture.

Several Cordilleran scholars have excoriated the very notion of "social forestry," claiming that it represents yet another attempt by outsiders (or by capital, more generally) to gain control of local re-

sources (see Parpan-Pagusara 1984:59). While this may well be true for some projects, the recent plans implemented by the BFD office in Abatan and forwarded by the scholars at Baguio's Forestry Research Institute (FORI) seem neither so ambitious nor so threatening.

For many years forestry officials have touted the Japanese alder (Alnus japonica ), a fast-growing species that both protects slopes and fixes nitrogen. At various times they have distributed free seedlings, which school children were required to plant in the early 1970s. Yet the program has enjoyed only marginal success. As of 1986, seedlings were scarce, and since alders do not regenerate spontaneously here, they are at best maintaining their position. Another social forestry program of the 1960s encouraged farmers to plant pine seedlings around their gardens, but this could not help but fail. Pines shade crops and extract nutrients, while, at the time, the mere presence of trees could jeopardize a land claim. This is the kind of project rightly denounced by Baguio activists, but such approaches have by now been largely abandoned.^[1]

More recently, development agents have begun promoting fruit crops. Orchards would not replenish wood supplies, but they could protect watersheds, minimize erosion, and provide an alternative income should the vegetable industry again falter. In 1976, Benguet planners unfortunately gave top priority to coffee and mango culture (Baguio Midland Courier March 28, 1976). Although coffee is an old Cordilleran crop, disease and market fluctuations have kept it from fulfilling its early promise, and mangoes thrive only on the lowest slopes, where they are still out-competed in the market by the lowland groves.

Temperate fruit offers another possibility. Although winters are not cold enough for true dormancy, Bauko municipality in Mountain Province is able to produce meager crops of both apples and pears, and a team of development workers has suggested temperate fruit culture in the Lo-o basin as well (Duhaylungsod n.d.; Dar 1985). Citrus is another option; several farmers near Baguio have derived excellent returns from small plantings of improved orange and lemon varieties, and one Buguias resident is now nurturing a small orchard. Viral diseases, endemic in indigenous trees, pose a threat, but a joint Philippine and German development program now provides resistant root stocks and advises participants in control methods.

Even if diseases could be eradicated, most Buguias farmers would probably resist fruit growing. The single annual harvest would translate into fewer jackpot opportunities, and growers find the prospect of waiting several years before the first harvest as disconcerting. New orchards also require substantial amounts of capital, and Buguias farmers fear predatory children would deprive them of the long-awaited harvest. Nevertheless, the one citrus grower persists in seeing tree crops as Buguias's hope, a possible substitute for the imperiled vegetable industry. That the community at large could be persuaded to make such a drastic change cannot be ruled out. It would not be the first time the Buguias people had completely reoriented their production system.

Water Shortages, Erosion, and Biocides

Water Shortages

The loss of forest cover has reduced dry-season stream and spring flow throughout northern Benguet, a problem that has become acute along the Mountain Trail. Only the high semiplateaus (Sayangan-Paoay, Natubleng, and Mount Data) have ever had adequate water for dry-season cultivation, but as their vestigal woodlands are gradually cleared, even previously dependable springs have desiccated, leaving farmers desperate for water. Hoses and PVC pipes have allowed some to tap more distant flows, but as the water table continues to drop, many farmers have been forced to abandon cultivation during the dry months.

Lying deep in the Agno Valley, Buguias enjoys a relatively abundant water supply. The Agno still flows strongly and dependably, and the waters of the larger side streams (Toking and Capuyuan) are plentiful. Numerous springs and seeps in the lower valley augment the supply. In the village's higher reaches, however, the dry season is increasingly a time of water stress.

Water scarcity is nothing new to Buguias. Before the war, poorly irrigated rice fields often withered toward the end of the growing period, for it was simply too difficult to bring water out of the deeply incised creek beds or from the main river. As new irrigation

systems were built, terraces expanded, consuming all new deliveries. Growers achieved partial rationing, but disputes could not be avoided.

Vegetables demand less moisture than do paddies, and as carrots and cabbages replaced rice on most terraces, water was temporarily abundant once more. But as new vegetable terraces were built, demand again outstripped supply. Garden hoses and PVC pipes brought another spell of relative plenty—until subsequent garden expansion brought on a new round of water scarcity.

As of the mid-1980s, only specific areas of Buguias experience severe water shortages. In general, the lower valley is still abundantly supplied. On the higher slopes, however, only select fields located near springs or seeps could produce dry-season crops before the spread of rainbirds. When hoses and sprinklers were diffused, the numerous hillside rivulets could also be tapped. But as these are mere trickles in the dry months, gardeners soon quarreled over the scanty seasonal supply. Some hamlets have instituted informal rationing, but gardeners still argue heatedly when water runs low. Some individuals even disconnect their neighbors' hoses at night in order to reconnect their own to the dwindling flow.

Lacking an adjudication precedent, Buguias elders cannot easily mediate the growing number of water disputes. Some irrigators strongly adhere to a local version of the doctrine of "prior appropriation," holding that the individual who first tapped a source should have superior rights. Other water users (generally those who started irrigating later) argue for communal (hamlet-level) control. One party to a recent water conflict became desperate enough to engage a lawyer, a rare and distinctly antisocial move. The attorney allegedly informed his client that neither side had any legal rights whatsoever, and the conflict had to be settled within Buguias. Eventually, in this case, a compromise was reached in tong tongan.

In the dry season of 1986, water quarrels intensified. As gardens and irrigation facilities have spread, many springs and small streams have steadily diminished. Finally, in March 1986, several formerly perennial brooks ceased to flow, destroying a number of standing crops.

Large-scale irrigation systems, tapping the waters of either To-

king or Capuyuan creeks, could eliminate water scarcity through large areas of Buguias, but this would require assistance from the National Irrigation Authority (NIA). So far, only one Buguias hamlet, Tanggawan—traditional home of the elite—has managed to secure such governmental aid.

Erosion

In increasingly large areas, erosion exacerbates water shortages. On Buguias's eastern slopes, many small streams are entrenching, making water delivery even with hoses ever more difficult. Near Asinan Creek the problem is compounded: as the stream has cut downward the salt spring has migrated headward, forcing gardeners to extend their hoses ever further upstream to find fresh water.

Topsoil loss more directly threatens many gardens. Scattered throughout Benguet are former vegetable fields now abandoned for lack of soil (Dar 1985:136). Typhoon-generated erosion, taking the forms of sheet wash, gullying, and slope failure, can be extraordinary. Terracing mitigates the danger, but even the best-engineered terraces occasionally fail. Moreover, most farmers purposefully keep some fields sloped for wet-season drainage. And landslides, slumps, and debris flows may strike regardless of agricultural engineering; a massive flow in central Buguias in the late 1960s devastated several tens of hectares both in its source area and in its deposition zone. Neither place has yet been reclaimed. Farmers usually rebuild small slump scars, even if it takes several years. But even a small slope failure can financially devastate a family if it destroys an entire crop.

Buguias's climate and geology conspire to generate frequent and severe slope failures. Intense and prolonged rainfall periodically saturates a deeply weathered and unstable mantle. Human practices compound the problem. Deforestation and road construction are obvious culprits; many private roads are severely gullied in a single season, while all roadways channel runoff and thus contribute to gullying in nearby fields. Even more destructive is the purposeful diversion of water during floods. When a typhoon strikes, farmers often dig ditches and build embankments to protect their own fields. This funnels the flow into their neighbors' gardens,

who must then redouble their own efforts. A frantic battle ensues, as each grower tries to protect his or her own fields even at the expense of those adjacent.

In the late 1970s the bulldozer appeared as a new agent of erosion. Where agriculture is rapidly expanding, wealthy farmers find it expedient to bulldoze fields of several hectares. Many of the resulting "cut-and-fill terraces" erode severely after a single rainy season. Equipment operators often do not even save the topsoil; instead they merely push it aside to provide a foundation for the terrace fill. This does not usually concern the farmer. Supplied with enough fertilizer, the subsoil yields adequately. And even those agriculturalists who do strive to conserve often find their newly bulldozed fields ravished. One wealthy Buguias couple spent over 30,000 pesos for plastic drain pipes and stone retaining walls for a new field bulldozed near Baguio, but lost virtually the entire investment in a single storm.

With the deforestation of surrounding hillsides, typhoon-induced erosion seems to have become more severe in recent years. The worst disaster to date occurred on July 15 and 16, 1989, when typhoon Goring devastated Buguias, causing fifteen deaths in the municipality. After the storm, the Baguio Midland Courier reported one Buguias elder as saying, "Maybe the gods are angry, there are no more trees on Mount Data."

Many vegetable districts along the Mountain Trail are more susceptible to erosion than is the Agno Valley. Soil loss along the ridge was aggravated, according to most local observers, by careless Chinese farmers who were more concerned with fast profits than with sustainable practices. By the early 1950s, development agents began to focus on erosion control. The state soon insisted that only farmers who had constructed terraces and planted grass or trees on steep slopes could gain land titles. In the 1960s, the Mountain Province Development Authority, with funding from the UN and USAID, initiated a more ambitious bench-terracing project (Baguio Midland Courier July 9, 1967). The irony of teaching some of the world's preeminent terrace engineers how to construct simple earth benches was apparently lost on the sponsors. Moreover, many farmers, particularly sharecroppers, have resisted making the necessary investments for financial reasons, while much land is purposefully kept in slops for wet-season root crops.

Biocides, Human Health, and Faunal Destruction

The biocides continually sprayed on the Buguias landscape have poisoned many farmers as well as entire aquatic ecosystems. Farmers occasionally use officially banned poisons (Medina n.d.); many more overapply legal pesticides and dispose of the residues improperly. In earlier years, growers often washed their backpack sprayers directly in streams, even those providing drinking water. Local ordinances now prohibit this practice, and barangay officials continually warn of pesticide hazards. Buguias residents will not even eat their own cabbage grown in the dry season because they know it is highly contaminated. Few warnings are forthcoming, however, from company agents, the individuals who provide most new information on chemical-intensive agriculture.

Few Buguias streams have potable water, owing both to chemical residues and to amoebic and bacterial pathogens. In the center of town, several spring-fed domestic water systems were installed shortly after the war using the steel pipes supplied as war reparations by the Japanese government. These frequently clogged pipes spew rusty water, but more worrisome are the contaminants entering the spring-boxes in runoff from adjacent fields. In the dry season, desperate farmers often tap the community's drinking water supplies to irrigate their gardens; when the domestic systems are reconnected, the water runs brown for several hours. Barangay officials have battled to maintain and even to improve local drinking water, but funds are limited, and farmers upslope are reluctant to jeopardize their own livelihoods for the benefit of those living in the center of the community.

The effects of pesticide and fertilizer ingestion, derived from field exposure and from eating and drinking, are impossible to evaluate without a medical study. But indirect evidence suggests adverse impacts on human health. Virtually all Buguias residents argue with conviction that people die younger today than they did before the war, despite the much-improved postwar diet. Although this probably results from age-related memory distortion (old people seem much older than they are to children), the community's intellectuals, persons of critical and discerning bent, agree that average longevity may have declined. (A few elders, however, actually

blame the supposed life-span shortening on the varied postwar diet: people today are no longer "preserved by sweet-potato vinegar.") A more plausible culprit would be agricultural chemicals. But regardless of actual mortality trends, acute pesticide poisoning is not an uncommon diagnosis in local clinics.

Pesticides, fertilizers, and silt have destroyed most of the aquatic life that once spiced the local diet. Eels have been virtually extirpated, and other species are now rare. In Lo-o, the surviving river life is simply too contaminated to be edible (Figoy n.d.). In Buguias, sculpins, tadpoles, and water bugs are still avidly consumed, although almost exclusively by the young men who value highly such pulutan (rich snacks that complement gin).

But agricultural chemicals are not the sole cause of faunal destruction. Many land animals have been locally exterminated through habitat destruction and overhunting. In Buguias, the only remaining "game" mammal is the rat, although a few civets may still dwell in the thickets along Toking Creek. Deer survive only in the steep pinelands between Natubleng and the Agno, and although wild hogs still roam the cloud forest of eastern Buguias municipality, they are now rarely seen. Humans long ago drove monkeys out of the Agno Valley, and they now seem to be doing the same in western Ifugao. Snipes, herons, and wild chickens, formerly abundant in Buguias, are gone, victims of overhunting, rice-field conversion, and garden expansion. Song birds are rare and diminishing in number, and such as remain are still avidly pursued by young boys. The migratory birds caught seasonally along the mountain crests continue to return annually, but even they come in smaller flocks than in past years.

A few officials, both local and national, have endeavored to save the Cordillera's wildlife, but all actions have been futile. In 1970, the state declared a large part of the upper Agno basin a game refuge, evidently an empty gesture (Baguio Midland Courier Oct. 4, 1970). Some conservationists saw in martial law a potential wildlife reprieve, since most guns were confiscated (Baguio Midland Courier July 22, 1973); indeed, Kabayan residents credit this move for the survival of the deer herd below Natubleng. But habitat destruction and population expansion join as an inexorable force against which wild animals cannot stand.

Within recorded history, the Cordillera has not supported abun-

dant wildlife; the scarcity of large fauna is repeatedly noted by nineteenth-century German travelers. But this does not make the current destruction of wildlife any less tragic. Nor is faunal extinction the only concern; many of the cloud forest's numerous endemic plants may well be exterminated within the next few decades. While most local residents decry this loss, they, like the Bureau of Parks and Wildlife, cannot prevent it; to do so they would have to counteract enormously powerful forces, cultural as well as economic. For even if agricultural expansion could somehow be contained, the young men of the community show no inclination to abstain from hunting any animal, however rare it might be.

The Vegetable Frontier

Beginning in the late 1960s, and accelerating through the following decades, the high-elevation region of eastern Buguias municipality was opened to commercial agriculture. Although a few vegetables had been grown here since the 1940s, large-scale production was initially held back by poor transport. When feeder roads finally penetrated the pine-oak border zone, gardening was suddenly very profitable; soils were fresh, waters abundant, and weeds and other pests uncommon. But the local inhabitants could not easily harvest the rewards, as they lacked the capital needed both to clear the land and to farm it intensively. Entrepreneurs from the Agno Valley realized the bulk of the profits in most eastern villages.

Geographical Patterns of Expansion

The southern Cordillera's vegetable zone has gradually projected outward in several different salients over the past twenty years. As the road network has been extended, ever more communities have been able to take up commercial farming (see map 8). In the 1960s and 1970s, several projections pushed westward from the Mountain Trail heartland. But further movement to the west is uncertain. In much of Bakun municipality, for example, progress is impeded by steep and rocky slopes and by the locally active New People's Army.

[Full Size]

Map 8.
The Road Network of Buguias and Nearby Locales.
Some of the smaller and more recent roads are not indicated.
Note also that the Agno Valley Road north of Kabayan
Barrio is seldom passable during the rainy season.

Northward, the vegetable frontier has recently enveloped several Northern Kankana-ey villages in Mountain Province. Here local residents who had previously labored on Mountain Trail farms introduced commercial production. Yet these communities essentially retain subsistence orientations, with vegetables forming subsidiary cash crops (see Voss 1983). The same is true in several Ifugao villages in the Kiangan region, where vegetable gardens are presently increasing in acreage.

In recent years, the main thrust of expansion has been eastward from the Agno Valley, particularly in Kabayan (Calanog n.d.) and Buguias municipalities. In greater Buguias, development in the 1960s and early 1970s was concentrated in the north. Contractors gradually extended feeder roads east from Lo-o and Bad-ayan into the oak-covered hills. In 1976, however, the main frontier shifted southward after the Buguias-Bot-oan road was inaugurated. Intended as the first leg of a proposed highway into western Ifugao, this route terminated at the then insignificant hamlet of Bot-oan. Within a few years, Bot-oan had become a major agricultural and commercial center, and the seat of the new barangay of Catlubong, carved out of the territory of Buguias proper.

Bot-oan, sitting on the pine-oak border, is ideal for most temperate vegetables. Here a relatively flat saddle is endowed with abundant water and unusually light and friable soil. Yet the local inhabitants had little interest in vegetable culture before the mid-1970s. A few had grown and sold peas, but most still raised swine for their minimal cash needs. Hog raising no longer yielded much profit, however, in large part because hogs could no longer roam free.

The Bot-oan people, considered the least "progressive" of all the residents of greater Buguias, lacked both the knowledge and the capital necessary to exploit the new opportunities the road provided. But several prosperous couples quickly moved up from the Agno Valley to develop the land. Before long, they composed a local elite, whose exogenous origins their poorer neighbors did not forget. Only one local resident ascended into the elite stratum, a rise made possible by many years of work in the Saudi oil fields.

The outside developers first hired workers, both locals and Kalanguya immigrants from Ifugao province, to clear new gardens. But by the 1980s most had turned to bulldozers. Usually they would turn the newly made plots over to local sharecroppers. Many share-

croppers later cleared their own tiny gardens, giving Bot-oan today a mixture of large and small holdings.

Not long after the road arrived, other entrepreneurs opened a number of stores and a periodic market emerged as well. Impetus for retail expansion came from both the growing local economy and from Bot-oan's newly strategic position vis-à-vis western Ifugao. The village now occupied the closest roadhead to Tinoc and Tucucan. By 1985, several hundred Tinoc residents were making the trek to Bot-oan twice each week, returning home the same day heavily laden with goods ranging from rice and gin to treadle sewing machines and iron sheeting.

More profitable than stores are transport vehicles. During the long wet season few trucks can negotiate the steep climb out of the Agno canyon; the three Bot-oan entrepreneurs who own powerful International Harvesters able to make the climb form an effective, if seasonal, transport oligopoly. Nevertheless, Bot-oan retail prices are on average lower than those of Buguias. Buguias residents find this perplexing and infuriating, and most attribute it to the noncompetitive environment of their own increasingly marginal community.

The Bot-oan road has also allowed the Kalanguya people of Tinoc and nearby villages greater participation in the market economy. Tinoc now lies at the far eastern fringe of the vegetable empire, the position previously occupied by Bot-oan itself, where high-value, lightweight crops can be grown profitably. Peas in particular have made inroads into local swiddens. Physiography itself contributes to pea culture, Tinoc being somewhat protected from the typhoon winds that frequently destroy fragile trellises farther west. After a severe storm, Tinoc growers can reap high profits in the inflated pea market. Lately, a few growers have gambled on other crops; by early 1986, young Tinoc men were carrying fifty-kilo sacks of carrots to the Bot-oan market during price peaks. To date, however, seldom are such vegetables valuable enough to bear the cost of portage over the tortuous, muddy, and leech-infested trail linking the two villages.

In southern Buguias and northern Kabayan municipalities, contractors pushed two other feeder roads to the edge of the cloud forest in the 1970s. Here, in contrast to Bot-oan, almost all local residents had been cultivating small commercial plots since the 1940s,

carrying their produce first to Kilometer 73, then to Buguias Central. Road development allowed some to expand their gardens, but most have remained small operators. Outside entrepreneurs have not found these areas attractive, in part because their slopes are steep and their water insufficient. Furthermore, since the locals already had gardens of their own they have been reluctant to accept sharecropping arrangements.

Continuing Road Development

Eastern Buguias municipality's road development in the 1970s was financed largely by the national government and by the United States, whose motivations were mainly military. At the time, Bot-oan formed an NPA stronghold. By the early 1980s the NPA presence diminished, and state funding evaporated. A road extension into western Ifugao—a remaining NPA refuge—was still planned, but this proved too expensive and dangerous. After the 1984 legislative elections, politicians seemingly abandoned the road, much to the consternation of the Kalanguya people of western Ifugao province.

Through various creative financing schemes, feeder-road construction continues. Wealthy farmers, especially those living in the Bot-oan area, occasionally build private roads. Road developers sometimes convince the barangay to assume maintenance costs, effectively passing all burdens to the public sector. Barangay roads are usually maintained through cooperative work parties, with some communities occasionally purchasing bulldozer time.

Less prosperous farmers sometimes jointly finance road construction in their hamlets. In a typical case, each farmer directly benefitting will donate something on the order of 500 pesos, with wealthier growers usually contributing severalfold more. One such project in Buguias was unsuccessfully negotiated for several years; the interested farmers all sought different corridors, since all wanted close access but none wished to lose any land. Although they finally reached a compromise, one barangay official fears that erosion safeguards were discarded in the process. A similar road in another Buguias hamlet had eroded so quickly that it was downgraded to a buffalo-cart path after several years.

The municipal and provincial governments share responsibility for major roads, generally those entailing construction costs of over 50,000 pesos. Funding is politically charged, as villages compete for road access. In 1985, the Buguias municipal council released funds to extend the Bot-oan road southward toward the upper Capuyuan drainage. Southern Buguias municipality marked this as a victory, since in their eyes the more powerful northern interests usually monopolize road funds. This project also generated some unusual local opposition, as a few elders argued that it would only bring in more gin and associated social ills.

Land Speculation

The new roads east of Buguias have provided opportunities for speculators as well as gardeners. Local land speculation dates to the credit schemes of the late 1960s; bank loans had to be secured with real estate, whether titled or declared, and the only broad areas still available lay in the eastern reaches of the municipality. While property claims were officially limited by one's ability to pay tax (as determined by the assessor), even persons of moderate wealth could obtain tens of hectares of undeveloped land.

Although these lands were initially declared as loan collateral, a few individuals realized their development potential should a road reach the area. By the early 1970s, a handful of speculators rushed to stake out lands along the planned transport corridor between Bot-oan and Tinoc. One wealthy Buguias couple even claimed a plot on the highest pass, intending to build a cafe there to service the buses that they thought would soon ply the Tinoc route. Such explicitly speculative declarations were largely held by residents of Buguias and nearby valley communities, but a few locals also claimed large plots, in part to protect themselves from the outsiders. By the mid-1970s, virtually all lands of any agricultural potential had been declared.

A tax declaration is difficult to define in the cloud forest. Landmarks are rare, visibility through the dense forest is low, and movement is constrained. Some speculators thus cleared their plots of all woody growth. Although most cloud-forest trees readily stump-sprout, continued recutting has reduced these parcels to a low

scrub. This needless degradation has prompted some resentment, but no one is powerful enough to contend with the economic interests involved.

Few of the Buguias speculators reaped the profits they had anticipated. The Tinoc road stalled and the general pace of transport development slackened. When the vegetable industry stagnated, many could not afford their taxes, and therefore allowed their declarations to pass into delinquency. As feeder roads were slowly built, most declarants sold their remaining parcels piecemeal, sometimes at a fair profit, to the wealthy Bot-oan farmers.

But when the municipality initiated extension of the Bot-oan road in 1985, several declaration holders finally made good. It is of interest that the most successful was not a speculator but rather a local ritualist. Many years earlier, this modest man had declared several hectares of relatively flat and rich land near his home and exactly proximate to the future roadway. He managed to pay his taxes, while leaving virtually the entire plot in virgin oak forest. When the road pushed through, his parcel suddenly gained value, and when a wealthy Bot-oan farmer offered him 20,000 pesos a hectare, he happily sold.

In 1975, before even Bot-oan had road access, a hectare of land in this area could hardly have sold for 200 pesos. The following years saw fierce inflation; by 1985, the price of a large animal had increased some tenfold. Yet as this case shows, prime land on the cloud forest fringe could appreciate as much as a hundred times. Clearly, land speculation could yield spectacular gains.

By early 1986, this particular plot had already been bulldozed clear of vegetation and topsoil. The new owner had hired several local residents, who had earlier raised hogs for their cash needs, to sharecrop the land. Potential tenants are not lacking here; the market is a strong lure, and most residents prefer to begin gardening by working for a successful entrepreneur rather than by cultivating a tiny and underfinanced private garden.

Agricultural development in eastern Buguias municipality has primarily benefited three parties: wealthy farmers, a few lucky land speculators, and bulldozer owners.^[2] For most local residents, the results are mixed. Although now more prosperous than before, they must share the risks and the dim future of the vegetable industry. Nor is expansion itself without economic contradictions;

the overall vegetable harvest grows faster than demand, lowering profits elsewhere.

But the eastward march of the vegetable frontier is most threatening ecologically. As the cloud forest of eastern Buguias municipality vanishes and as new irrigation works are installed, stream flows gradually diminish, undercutting Agno Valley irrigators. In several areas of the municipality, formerly verdant rice terraces are now dry, most likely because of water development upslope. As their natural endowment deteriorates, farmers in the lower valley may find it exceedingly difficult to compete with those who have recently developed rich, new lands. And as economic and ecological problems mount, social and political turmoil grows apace.

9
Social Conflict and Political Struggle

Introduction

Although downplayed by classical social theory, conflict is increasingly recognized as a vital force for effecting social transformation. More complex in origin than is suggested by the organic or systems view (where conflict is often little more than the intrusion of discord into a preexisting idyll), and more diverse in its effects than is allowed by the standard Marxist portrayal (as the force behind a preordained historical progression), social friction is highly variable in intensity and outcome, and it must be examined afresh in each setting. Its historical development, social configuration, potential for resolution, and role as an agent of change all vary enormously in differing empirical circumstances.

In Buguias, the lines of fracture are several. Struggles over rights to farmland are especially fierce, occasionally even pitting sibling against sibling. Families are also torn apart by generational rivalry, as the young men of Buguias increasingly withdraw into a subculture of their own. Political battles split the municipality into geographically based factions, just as they reveal hamlet-based cleavages at the barangay level. Class divisions, for their part, pervade all arenas of contention.

The dramatic transformations of the postwar period have raised new forms and objects of discord within the community. This comes as no surprise, for conflicts are generally expected to intensify in times of rapid change (both as cause and effect of said change), and to become particularly acute when economies stagnate or decline. But the relationship is far from simple. Uncertainties can in some circumstances enhance rather than undermine social solidarity, as individuals seek mutual support. Such a seemingly contradictory response is evident in contemporary Buguias, where the pressures of a perilous economy have provoked bitter rivalries, yet where social cohesion and cultural identity have in several ways intensified.

The pivotal ideological dispute structuring both contention and the making of peace in Buguias in recent decades has pitted Pagans against Christians in a complex and ongoing debate whose contours are explored in chapter 10. Meanwhile, a new language of conflict is emerging in political philosophy. In the 1980s, radical Cordilleran activists were increasingly setting the terms of a very different ideological debate, one that may yet redraw the map of the mountain provinces. And revolutionary fighters, both Igorot and lowlander, are attempting not merely to reconstitute the Cordillera's lines of power, but rather to capture the very Philippine state.

Land Conflicts

Contradictions in land law, including discrepancies both within the Philippine land code and between official and customary law, have generated an extraordinary legal quagmire. Property disputes at present form the primary focus of social tension. The roots of these conflicts extend back to the early American period.^[1]

Community and Private Lands

Within Buguias, only a few small plots are under community management. It is interesting that these represent not a survival but rather a new form of communal tenure, one devised to protect dwindling forest resources. When the Americans established the Cordilleran Forest Reserve, they "awarded" each community a small woodlot for common use, that of Buguias covering some 70 hectares. These forests were not respected. They had no indigenous roots, and the larger "public" reserves, although formally ceded to lumber and mining corporations, were still considered village property. Eventually the entire "Buguias Communal Forest" was cleared for gardens. But by the late 1960s, a perceived need to stem forest clearing prompted the reinvention of the communal forest at the local level. Within Buguias, the residents of Demang, the hamlet to the west of the Agno, grew concerned over the use of their wood to support a building boom in the center of town. Realizing that their pine stands would soon be exhausted, the local elders argued for partial closure and communal control. The hamlet accepted their proposal; henceforth outsiders could obtain fire-

wood and lumber only if first granted permission by the elders. To date, no other hamlet of Buguias has established a common forest.

The Americans designated a few communal lands, but the thrust of their land policy was to privatize indigenous holdings in order to facilitate the expropriation of all "unclaimed" land as public domain—which could in turn be consigned to corporate interests. But the colonial government lacked the wherewithal to carry out the requisite surveys, and the hurried examinations they did conduct assured a discordant future.

The first major postcolonial change in land policy came during the Magsaysay era of the mid-1950s. Magsaysay supported a partial land reform as part of his strategy to stanch rural unrest in the lowlands. His Executive Order 180 of 1956 allowed cultivators to claim certain lands within the public domain. Benguet gardeners could now theoretically acquire title to their plots, even if they lay within the Forest Reserve. To guard against soil erosion and watershed destruction, however, the state required each farmer to obtain a release from several government agencies (Baguio Midland Courier April 8, 1956). Such bureaucratic maneuverings proved formidable; each farmer had to negotiate with the Bureau of Forests, the Bureau of Land, the Bureau of Soil Conservation, and several other agencies as well. Later administrations strengthened and extended the rights established under Executive Order 180, but the titling procedure remained cumbersome, while new natural resource laws actually erected additional hurdles.^[2]

The Marcos regime continued to make vain promises and to pass unenforceable laws. In signing Executive Order 87, Marcos only raised new hedges in the maze; now deed-seeking farmers had to gain clearance from the Bureau of Forestry, the Mountain Province Development Authority, the Bureau of Parks and Wildlife, the Reforestation Administration, the Bureau of Highways, and the National Power Corporation. Two years later, Proclamation 548 placed 182,000 hectares of the upper Agno drainage—including virtually all Buguias—into a watershed protection zone (Tauli 1984:82); new titles were to be prohibited here and indigenous forestry and cultivation severely restricted.

After Marcos declared martial law in 1972, the state again tackled the Cordilleran land issue. Presidential Decree 410, signed in 1974, provided for the parceling of all Philippine "ancestral

lands" into 5-hectare private plots (Lynch 1984). Although Benguet was expressly excluded, this act would have threatened the territorial integrity of most Igorot communities had it been enforced. Then in 1976, seeking to combat erosion, the state mandated that no lands of more than 18 percent slope could be titled. This act officially excluded most of Buguias from title application.

Not surprisingly, few farmers have found their way through the land titling labyrinth. Lynch (1984: 195) tells of one man who moved through twelve certification levels before abandoning his quest. Most farmers found the necessary journeys to Manila too expensive and baffling. But a few growers persevered, and in so doing eventually learned to move smoothly through the halls of government. This knowledge enabled them to become legal entrepreneurs of sorts: individuals who could secure titles for others in return for a part of the newly legitimated property.

Legal entrepreneurship required a thorough understanding of Philippine land policy. To title a parcel located within the Forest Reserve, for example, one had to process papers at a series of agencies in the correct order, at each step convincing the responsible officials that the mandated conservation measures had been adopted. To title a plot already classified as Alienable and Disposable yet never before registered, a court order was also necessary.^[3] Unclassified lands presented a different challenge; here the entrepreneur had to use political channels, including Imelda Marcos's Ministry of Human Settlements, to gain reclassification. And presidential caprice could undo successful work; lands in Tuba municipality along the "Marcos Highway," for instance, had been reclassified after years of local activism to allow prepatent titles, but in 1982 Marcos decreed that a 5 kilometer strip on either side of his eponymous road should remain a watershed preserve.

The several legal entrepreneurs have provided a valued service for Benguet farmers. They are perceived as acting in the common good, and their fees are generally considered to be deserved. Their strategy contrasts markedly with that of a more rapacious group of property law operators discussed below under the rubric of "land pirates."

Government policies allowing land titling have been aimed primarily at Mountain Trail growers. Now the center of vegetable culture, the Mountain Trail area was largely untouched by the prewar

American surveys since it was virtually unsettled at the time. In the Agno Valley, by contrast, much prime agricultural land was titled, or at least declared Alienable and Disposable (and thus eligible for titling), during the first years of American rule. As a result, land controversy here often revolves around disputed "real" ownership of long-titled land.

Land Conflicts in Buguias Central

Property disputes in Buguias hinge largely on conflicting interpretations of the shoddy American surveys. The first such survey (made in 1903) has generated the most intractable litigation. Since most community members supported the later property examination of the 1930s, and since the subsidiary oral agreements devised at that time are still remembered, it has proved less contentious. But some of the best agricultural and commercial lands in Buguias remain under fervently disputed 1903 titles.

Land pirates, individuals who attempt to arrogate private parcels through legal conniving, cause the most serious property conflicts in Buguias. Their legal standings derive from colonial blunders; ancestors of the pirates were the compliant dummy owners of the large tracts titled in 1903. At the time, numerous individuals cultivated these plots, and since their holdings passed down and were subdivided during the intervening generations, an even larger group now tills and claims them. That a descendant of the original title holder would go to court seeking the entire estate represents a betrayal of community trust. Not surprisingly, the several land pirates reside not in Buguias but in Baguio City. If they succeed in gaining control, they plan to sell or lease the land back to the present cultivators, making a tidy profit in the process.

A descendant of a dummy owner won the first major case, the court ruling that both the original title and its inheritance were valid under Philippine law. But this individual has not realized his victory, since the occupants have simply resisted the order, hoping that a presidential review will overturn the ruling. A similar case has remained in court, undecided, for ten years. Community leaders fear that another unfavorable decision could endanger the existing unofficial community authority. But the court itself is seem-

ingly stumped by the issue's complexity; the parcel in question has been divided, subdivided, and partly mortgaged and resold on many occasions. Moreover, this involves the delicate and politically charged issue of indigenous land rights, raising questions the jurists may well find daunting.

The most important property struggle in Buguias has a somewhat different origin. The parcel in question, located in the village's very heart, was originally, and correctly, listed as the property of Danggol. It passed through customary inheritance to one of his sons, who, since he did not wish to pay taxes, simply relinquished his claim. One of his brothers then assumed the tax burden in return for the title. When this man subsequently married into a powerful family in Kabayan he lost interest in his Buguias property. But his son (whom I will call "E. K.") decided to press the claim, and he has engaged virtually the entire community of Buguias in court battle.

This struggle is especially significant because of E. K.'s expertise in indigenous land rights. As an officer in OMACC (Office of Muslim Affairs and Cultural Communities), he has traveled to many areas where tribal peoples have been victimized by outside land-grabbers. Although his duties there involved protecting the victims of land piracy, he has used his knowledge and position to enhance his own acquisitions in Benguet.

While E. K.'s actions may at first glance seem hypocritical, at a deeper level they are fully consistent with his official duties. State agencies such as OMACC (and its predecessor PANAMIN [Roccamora 1979]) have endeavored not so much to protect indigenous land rights as to privatize community territory. In so doing, to be sure, they have sought to "give" each indigenous family an allotment. But when land is made fully private, individuals become free to accumulate property through any legal means. E. K. has now set himself to do precisely this, arguing that the Buguias people cling to an outmoded land system that impossibly combines customary and state law. What they must do, he insists, is discard all oral agreements and henceforth work through official channels.

While his case lingers in court, E. K. has met repeatedly with the Buguias people in tong tongan. He is willing to relinquish some claims, but he steadfastly demands rent on all commercial properties. The store owners fear that he may be powerful enough to

force an unpleasant outcome, and most would reluctantly compromise. But as of 1986, no reasonable offer had been made.

The American land-survey system ensured the present-day property conflicts. Customary land rights were too complex to be accurately represented by a simple survey using Western categories of land ownership—even if the survey teams had been trustworthy and adequately funded. As it was, while the Buguias people could only comply with the colonialists on the surface, they had to retain oral agreements to apportion actual land control.

As memory decays, oral agreements are revised retroactively through self-interested reinterpretation—but land titles retain solidity. Yet the Buguias people cannot afford legalities. The mere cost of surveying exceeds the budgets of most farmers. Land titles, even if undisputed, must therefore pass to a single offspring, who must then be trusted by his or her siblings; moreover, this trust must pass into subsequent generations. Some persons have attempted to sidestep such problems by attaching notes to their titles detailing all relevant oral agreements, but these are of questionable legal validity.

Many contemporary land disputes are indeed settled in tong tongan, a testament to the institution's flexibility and to the diplomatic skill of the Buguias elders. But indigenous conceptions of property rights have changed since the war, and aspects of the imposed Western system have been adopted for specific circumstances. As a result, even if the clogged Philippine legal system could be entirely bypassed, customary law could not immediately handle the existing backlog of cases.

Tax declarations and Conflict Settlement

Western land law has failed in Benguet. As the tax-declaration system reveals, the government has reverted to a system of state ownership. In most parts of Benguet, private parties acquire only use-rights through the payment of a fee—a "tax" on property that is not "owned."

This system is replete with contradictions. Municipal governments, hungry for revenue, accept most declarations offered, even

where claims overlap. And at the municipal level it is meaningless that a given parcel may lie within the Forest Preserve, or be designated for watershed protection. This "blindness" does help protect indigenous land rights, but only in a backhanded manner. Yet tax collection and land allocation proceed surprisingly smoothly, as most individuals respect the declarations of others. Controversies arise most commonly over speculative holdings. Neighboring farmers may slowly expand their own gardens into such idle properties, and then claim "ownership" through occupancy.

Since three property legitimation systems (customary agreements, tax declarations, and official titles) intermesh in Buguias, any one couple may hold a staggeringly complicated estate. They may claim different kinds of rights to several dozen parcels. Some of their land may be inherited titled property, the title to which may be held under their own names, in trust by a sibling or a cousin, by a "land pirate" seeking to expel them, or by a bank. In addition, they may have tax declarations located in sectors not classified as Alienable and Disposable. Some of their holdings may be mortgaged by salda, while they may hold the plots of others through the same arrangement. Similarly, they may let out some land to another for a share, while at the same time they may themselves sharecrop another's parcel. Still another lot may have passed unofficially from them to a less prosperous sibling with no expectations of return.

It is thus hardly surprising that land disputes consume so much time and effort. But despite all complexity and contradiction, most conflicts are resolved in the traditional tong tongan forum. The tong tongan participants are entrusted to make peace, and if both disputants are Buguias residents this invariably occurs. The key is compromise, which the elders facilitate by the use of a series of flexible precepts. In land debates the primary considerations are length of occupation, actual land use, and the inheritance wishes of the parcel's previous holders. Elders may also weigh relative wealth, slightly favoring the less prosperous party. Disputed plots are usually divided, and if this is impossible the household receiving the land may be required to give its rival a cash payment. Neither party loses completely. The final agreement is always verbal, and although this leaves an opening for future conflict, it also dis-

penses with any suggestion of legalism, signifying instead that the settlement was agreed upon mutually.

The Rise of Youth Culture

Vegetable portage has provided the young men of Buguias with unprecedented cash incomes. At the same time, the decline of the vegetable industry and the growing scarcity of land have provoked pessimism among many. Enjoying easy money in the present but uncertain about the future, they have developed a distinct youth subculture marked by values variant to those of adult society. According to their parents, the typical bachelors not only lack proper respect for their elders, but are altogether unambitious, embodying the antithesis of the traditionally desired qualities. Many adults find this recently emerged subculture simply appalling. As one elderly man stated, "In the old days we wanted sons, but now we think it is perhaps better to have daughters, since they don't cause as much trouble."

The young men (and women) of Benguet group themselves into informal cliquelike groups (barcadas ), structured primarily by residential groupings and voluntary association. The male barcada presses its members to conform to the bachelor culture and to oppose the ways of the adult world. A few boys chart independent courses while avoiding ostracism, but most remain under the heavy influence of their peer groups.

Boys begin the bachelor's life as soon as they have the strength to carry heavy sacks of vegetables. Many begin to avoid school in the second or third grade to earn portage fees. Even at this age children control their own earnings, often spending them on candy or in gambling. By the higher elementary grades many boys abstain from regular schooling, and by the age of fourteen most are professional vegetable carriers, fully identifying with the bachelor subculture.

The young men usually spend their nights together in the houses of older bachelors. Their work (when they work) is extraordinarily strenuous, but they usually pass many idle hours each day waiting for labor calls, giving rise to their English-derived nickname, "standbys." For supper they usually eat bread and canned foods; few bother to cook the standard fare of rice and vegetables. On lei-

sure days (generally Thursdays and Sundays), they play basketball or volleyball, socialize in the municipality's markets, or scour the riverbed for the rich morsels used to complement San Miguel gin. To a great extent, bachelor culture revolves around drinking; as one young man phrased it, "Every night is a party for us." Not surprisingly, they enthusiastically attend all prestige feasts held in the community, despite the fact that many regard both Pagan and Christian religiosity with cynicism.

If no work is available, young men may be forced to return home temporarily. Most parents readily consent to the return, but familial turmoil not uncommonly follows. American visitors are often asked whether parents in the United States really insist that their sons support themselves once they reach eighteen; as one adult lamented, "We wish we could do this, but it is against our ugali [culture]—no matter how old our children are, we must care for them if they are in need."

The bachelors' worst sin, in the eyes of their parents, is their bellicosity. In normal circumstances most youngsters are irenic and bashful; young men often say that when sober they are too timid even to speak with their elders. But when intoxicated they not uncommonly fight among themselves. Most quarrels stem from geographically based rivalries or family feuds, but on at least one occasion an inebriated youth punched a barangay official who had restrained him, an unthinkable breach of social order. In response, the barangay council attempted to restrict the sale of alcohol at night, but this proved unenforceable.

The apolitical rebellion of the young is not entirely explicable in economic terms. Although many boys may join a subculture that offers a prosperous if brutal present because they face a possibly dismal future, the sons of the truly elite, young men whose careers are secured by doting parents, are not uncommonly the most obstreperous of the bachelors. Furthermore, the current economy is not so weak that any youngster could not build a base for future prosperity by accumulating rather than squandering his earnings. This is, of course, what the elders claim they would have done in the same position.

Many young men do begin to cultivate gardens before they marry, but most have access only to marginal sites. But even the most ambitious are hard pressed; if they do manage to obtain a de-

cent plot they must also convince a wealthier farmer or trader that they are mature enough to be trusted in a "supply" relationship. Since few save any of their earnings, self-financing is not possible. Often their only gardening opportunity is to clear new land in the village's remote upper reaches, entailing much labor and few initial returns. Vegetable portage thus continues to lure, for its rewards are both abundant and immediate.

With marriage, the bachelor lifestyle is no longer tenable, and full-time gardening becomes both possible and attractive. Marriage often brings inherited property (from either side) and thus a chance for decent profits without the arduous task of land clearing. Furthermore, most young women are considered more responsible than their male peers, and wives often coax their husbands toward stability. Finally, the wedding itself usually saddles a young couple with considerable debt, which in itself is said to instill a sense of duty. After marriage, most men begin to heed their elders.

Youngsters eventually abandon the bachelor lifestyle, but some parents find the phase so destructive that they try to shield their sons from it altogether. This is best done by moving to another village where the generational split is less pronounced. The bachelor counterculture is strongest in Buguias, owing mainly to the community's agrosocial environment; vegetable portage, the subculture's economic underpinning, has developed significantly only where small, independent farms are poorly served by roads and where communal work-exchange groups have atrophied. According to some, the cloud forest provides the best refuge; here teenagers are said to be naive, and traditional values persist. Several Buguias couples have accordingly moved up-slope, in part to protect their children from peer groups. Others have sent their sons to distant schools, and a group of Buguias students attend secondary school in Tinoc for this reason.

Contemporary Politics

Benguet and the Philippine Government

Relations between the people of Benguet and the Philippine state began to deteriorate in the 1950s and 1960s, and by the depression years of the mid-1970s crisis was fermenting. The 1950s brought

territorial dispossessions; several whole villages were displaced by two hydroelectric dams constructed on the Agno River, while other communities lost their lands in the 1960s and 1970s to the Loakan airport near Baguio, to the "Marcos Park" (infamous for its giant hollow-headed bust of the former dictator) in Tuba, and to the Baguio Special Export Processing Zone. The national government lost credibility as entire communities were summarily deprived of land and livelihood (Anti-Slavery Society 1983; Cordillera Consultative Committee 1984).

The increasingly poor quality of government services also disturbed Benguet residents (Solang 1984). The foremost issue here was the condition of the roadways, lifelines of the vegetable economy. While the Marcos government laid extravagant concrete highways throughout the Ilocano-speaking lowlands, the Mountain Trail remained a rough dirt track. The Buguias people were also galled by their lack of electricity, despite the high-voltage lines passing through the municipality, and by the minimal attention given to irrigation development.

The state agency overseeing indigenous groups has been another major irritant. This bureau, known in 1986 as OMACC (Office of Muslim Affairs and Cultural Communities), has been reformed every few years, but state policies toward "national minorities" or "cultural communities" have changed little. Several scholars have accused the bureau of intentionally undermining traditional cultures (Roccamora 1979; Anti-Slavery Society 1983) or, at best, of "preserving" them only for the tourist trade. Indeed, in earlier years state agents readily admitted their desire to submerge the "non-Christian" peoples into the single "Philippine Nation" (see Tadaoan 1969:247). In Buguias, a relatively powerful community, such policies have been ineffectual, but they have added another level of bureaucratic interference. If a Buguias farmer seeks a bank loan, for example, he or she must first obtain OMACC permission. Even the charitable OMACC projects are often considered fraudulent.

Local Politics

Political rifts take different forms at the local level. Buguias municipality is unofficially divided into two rival parts: the north, centered on Abatan and Lo-o, and the south, focused on Buguias

Central and, to a lesser extent, Natubleng. The northern district, home of the largest farms and businesses, is more powerful. Buguias Village, despite its several wealthy families, is now a depressed barangay relative to its northern neighbors.

The Buguias people complain that the northerners dominate municipal politics. They accuse mayors from Lo-o and Abatan of refusing to support road projects in the south, instead shunting the available funds northward. National political rivalries are also implicated here; in 1984 and 1985, Buguias's barangay captain was staunchly oppositionist (i.e., anti-Marcos), whereas all the municipal officials supported the dictator and his KBL party. This, according to some, prompted an even greater pinch on the southward flow of municipal funds. Many Buguias residents also remain indignant over the transfer of the municipal seat from their village to Abatan.

But the rivalry between the north and the south is still generally friendly. A series of informal compromises includes an agreement to the effect that northern mayors should be paired with southern vice-mayors, and vice versa. Less easily realized is the corollary notion that mayors should come alternately from the north and the south.

The mayor, more than any other municipal office holder, must intercede between his constituents and state institutions, and it is crucial to have a mayor who will be sympathetic to one's own village's needs. To serve effectively, he must cultivate personal relations with powerful individuals in the provincial and even national governments. For the people of Buguias, Stafin Olsim has long fulfilled this role, first as a private citizen, and after 1988 as the mayor of Buguias municipality. A continual stream of supplicants has long passed through his Trinidad home. Such assistance is invaluable at both the personal and the community levels; as one woman living in a remote Benguet village told me: "Our problem here is that we have no one like Stafin Olsim who can help us with the government."

Pagans comprise the majority of the municipality's population, and virtually every mayor has been of that persuasion. Since most persons agree that a Christian cannot hope for this position, religion plays little role in municipal elections. Indeed, in 1989, following the election of a strongly traditionalist mayor from Buguias

proper, Paganism was virtually institutionalized when the Buguias Town Fiesta included within its celebrations a pedit of "13." At the lower barangay level, however, religious politics may be significant. Some barangays are divided evenly between the two faiths, and campaign rhetoric often has a religious flavor. But other issues may be overriding. Candidates' personalities and positions on specific issues, as well as the rivalries between different hamlets within a single barangay, strongly influence local elections.

Class plays a major yet ambiguous role in local politics. A mayoral candidate must be wealthy. Campaigns themselves are expensive, and, once elected, a mayor must play host at a continual series of negotiations and rituals. Only a wealthy man would command the prestige necessary to consider standing for office in the first place. Yet prosperity alone will hardly ensure political success. An unpopular baknang, one who stints on feasts or who gives no quarter to debtors, cannot expect popular support.

In Buguias, class divisions also reflect an inchoate philosophical divide. Two vague camps have recently emerged. The first, identified with the Pagan traditionalists, supports the prerogatives of wealth—if validated through feast performance; the second, composed of both Pagans and Christians, argues for the rights of poorer persons. But both camps wield similar rhetoric, centering on the necessity of redistribution and accepting class divisions so long as the elite act in the spirit of noblesse oblige. The "traditionalists," however, restrict redistribution to ritual occasions while their rivals call for a more generalized practice.

The intellectual leader of the latter camp is an expert on Pagan ritual and is the village's foremost negotiator. He frequently advises politicians (both Pagan and Christian) and pedit aspirants on protocol, and he conciliates individuals embroiled in intrafamilial religious disputes. When counseling the rich, he reminds them of their obligations to the community (on both sacred and secular occasions) and of their responsibilities to forgive, on occasion, their debtors. Adhering to the tradition of Buguias "spiritual empiricism," he holds as exemplars a certain baknang couple who he says has been scrupulously honest in all business dealings, has offered minimal-interest loans to needy persons, and has celebrated every ritual occasion unstintingly—and who has prospered tremendously in the process.

Martial Law and Revolution

After Marcos declared martial law in 1972, the state began to interfere more directly in local affairs. Individuals were then summarily arrested for tree cutting, and fertilizer delivery was temporarily banned. Acting under a questionable sanitary theory, local military forces demolished pigpens located underneath houses and destroyed all swine fed on human waste. These actions devastated many households living in areas too remote for commercial farming.

Such arrogant policies prompted a quick reaction; by 1972 the revolutionary New People's Army (NPA) started recruiting local students. Shortly thereafter, economic collapse bolstered the budding rebellion. Several knowledgeable Buguias residents estimate that some twenty local students hiked to the eastern mountains to join the mixed Ilocano, Kalanguya, and Ifugao guerilla bands already established there.

Under the leadership of a man from northern Buguias municipality, one guerilla band established an informal base at Bot-oan. In these early years the rebels regularly hiked through Buguias, sometimes asking for food and lodging, on their way to purchase supplies at Kilometer 73. By 1975, NPA territory had expanded to include the whole of eastern Buguias municipality.

The presence of an NPA contingent in Buguias prompted the state to establish a Philippine Constabulary camp north of Lo-o. Soldiers were also billeted in Buguias, where they frequently quarreled with the local youths. Road construction formed another anti-insurgent policy; the major roads east of Buguias were primarily designed for military operations and financed through military channels. The U.S. Air Force, Camp John Hay, and the 206th Home Defense Team together financed the Bot-oan road (Baguio Midland Courier April 27, 1975). The largest battle in the Buguias region marked this road's opening; the inaugurating committee, which included several high-ranking military officers, was met by a well-coordinated, although not entirely successful, ambush (Baguio Midland Courier Feb. 14, 1976).

The increased pressure of the Philippine military, the building of roads, and even the rapid clearing of forests, gradually weakened the NPA's position in Buguias municipality. The rebels also encountered personnel difficulties. The Benguet recruits supposedly

found life in the mountains, characterized by the dull diet of sweet potatoes that their parents had so happily abandoned, to be a trying ordeal. The partial recovery of the vegetable industry in the late 1970s also helped lure the locally born guerillas back to village life. Popular support for the rebels, never overwhelming, also began to evaporate as Buguias citizens increasingly came to see rebellion as more of a threat to their remaining prosperity than as a promise for a more just regime. Meanwhile, the local cadre retreated out of the municipality and into the oak forest fastness of western Ifugao Province.

But the NPA did remain strong in the Tinoc district. This region has been neglected and victimized more than any part of Benguet. Here a mixed group of Kalanguya, Ifugao, and Ilocano guerillas has enjoyed much local support. In the early 1980s they temporarily seized Tinoc, disarmed its police, and imposed a curfew. This guerilla band appears to support itself in part by cultivating marijuana, much of which is supposedly sold ultimately to the American servicemen of Clark Field and Subic Bay.

Since all attempts to construct a road between Tinoc and Buguias have failed, military actions in western Ifugao have been limited. Airborne parties have, however, destroyed Cannabis patches and strafed suspected guerilla bases. Such actions have further turned the locals against the Manila government. In September 1987, NPA fighters raided a munitions supply near Tinoc, and in early 1988 guerillas were again seen in the hinterlands of Buguias.

The CPA

Since the late 1970s, Igorot intellectuals have been increasingly drawn to radical and indigenista thought. They argue that the Cordillera should be locally controlled, and that outside incursions, whether through state interference or capitalist penetration, should be firmly resisted. Following the outline established by the World Council of Indigenous Peoples, many have stressed territorial rights (CPA 1984). Considering the dispossession and exploitation suffered by the Cordilleran peoples, this movement's rapid growth is not surprising. In 1984, several dozen Igorot interest groups joined together under an umbrella organization called the Cordillera People's Alliance, or CPA. CPA leaders sought to establish a mea-

sure of political and economic autonomy for the mountain peoples and to revitalize old cultural patterns in forging a new polity.

The CPA agenda was widely embraced by students in Baguio and by the inhabitants of the northern Cordillera. Few Benguet residents, however, accepted these radical proposals eagerly. To politicize the Benguet people, the CPA initiated in 1986 a student-run educational program; during their summer vacations, groups of students from throughout the mountains visited various Benguet villages (including Buguias) to discuss politics and to circulate a petition calling for Cordilleran autonomy.

The Buguias people reacted to the CPA students in a decidedly mixed fashion. When the discussion focused on control of local resources, land rights, and governmental neglect, consensus readily followed. But more specific points encountered skepticism. Here the CPA was disadvantaged simply by the ages of its representatives; a number of community leaders did not think it proper for such young persons to propose a political course. More substantially, the CPA agenda continually snagged on the issue of intercultural relations; several Buguias leaders expressed fear that any autonomous region would soon be dominated by the northern peoples. As a corollary, they argued that the Benguet farmers would pay a disproportionate share of the region's taxes, just as they had under the old unified Mountain Province.^[4]

A few Buguias residents also found offense in one student's offhand comment that taxes, private property, and monetary interest should be abolished. To a Buguias Pagan, an attack on interest could be construed as a salvo aimed at the very heart of his or her culture, since the entire prestige feast complex rests on interwoven debt relations. Ultimately, the meeting of the CPA youths and the people of Buguias proved frustrating for both parties. It was a clash between two discordant philosophical perspectives; one determined to effect radical change, the other pragmatic and deliberate.

The 1986 Election and Beyond

In 1984, Benguet elected Samuel Dangwa, nephew of transport entrepreneur and war leader Bado Dangwa, to the Philippine legislature. Dangwa ran as an oppositionist (i.e., opposed to Marcos),

but soon transferred his allegiance to the KBL. According to rumor, he did this to extract a promise that the Mountain Trail would be paved. Once Dangwa aligned himself with Marcos, the Buguias municipal elite followed. Several politicians stated (for public consumption) that the entire municipality, except the errant barangay of Buguias Central, would heed their words and vote for Marcos in the 1986 election.

This prediction proved to be grossly unfounded. All but two of Buguias municipality's barangays favored Aquino, most by margins of two to one. When the Marcos family fled the Philippines, spontaneous celebrations erupted everywhere—although several leaders, concerned that their political futures were now jeopardized, were notably absent. Yet it was soon evident that such fears were unfounded when, in 1988, the municipality voted these same men back into office.

The larger arena of Cordilleran politics since the fall of Marcos can only be described as convoluted, if not bizarre. Conrado Balweg, the (in)famous "rebel priest of Abra," soon left the NPA, denouncing it as lowlander-dominated, anti-Igorot, and totalitarian. Balweg's troops then joined forces with the Aquino government in attempting to fashion an "autonomous" Cordilleran government. Meanwhile, the CPA leaders accused Balweg of acting on behalf of the CIA and the still-repressive state; he, in turn, inveighed against the covert Marxist agenda of his attackers. Eventually the government as well turned against Balweg. Moderate Igorot intellectuals, for their part, saw only danger in both camps; most would like local autonomy, but they fear both the revolutionary furor of the left and the largely invented "traditional" communalism of Balweg's group. Most of Benguet's local politicians, for their part, have desired only a continuation of the status quo. Apparently many citizens agree, since in January 1990 the only Cordilleran province to vote in favor of autonomy was Ifugao (on recent Cordilleran politics, see Finin 1990).

As has been alluded to above, virtually all levels of political discourse in Buguias, from barangay campaigns to the contentious relationship between the Cordillera and the Philippine state, involve religion to some degree. Rituals continue to affirm communal solidarity, but with part of the village having converted to Christianity,

the community affirmed has become that of believers rather than that of the village as a whole. As a result, Paganism—the cultural linchpin and economic fulcrum of Buguias life—has become at the same time a focus of contention. It is in this ideological sphere, to which we now turn, that some of the most emotional conflicts within the community occur.

10
Religion in Modern Buguias

Introduction

The economic, ecological, and political life of prewar Buguias was guided by a strong community consensus in religious ideology. That consensus has been sundered since the war by a growing Christian presence, the full import of which has yet to be reckoned. Christian converts today account for roughly a third of the village's population, and their continued proselytizing has made religious belief a primary axis of controversy.

The following discussion opens by introducing the central tenets of Pagan thought, a metaphysics in which earthly fortune is firmly tied to ritual performance. Many of the practices based on this belief were described in detail in the discussion of prewar prestige feasts. In this chapter, additional rituals concerned with "capturing luck" are introduced, and the implications of the whole set of Pagan practices for the community's social structure are analyzed. The remainder of the chapter recaps the relatively brief history of Christian missionizing in the area, presenting in detail both sides of the subsequent ideological debate, and exploring the social and geographic contours of the present standoff between the two groups of believers and their numerous syncretic offshoots.

The "Buguias Paganism System"

The pivot of Pagan thought and practice in Buguias is the capturing of luck through ritual. Fate is believed to be in the hands of the ancestors, who bestow it differentially upon the living in accordance with the rectitude of the latter's propitiations. This tenet has, if anything, been strengthened by the transition to commercial agriculture, entailing as it does a continuous gamble.

Omens and Rites

The cultivation of good fortune begins with marriage. Once a couple has a child, "their blood is out and their luck runs with it." A feast must therefore precede the first birth; if it does not, the union is jinxed. The newlyweds must watch for supernatural signs; if, for example, they spy near their house a lizard facing east, they may rejoice, but a reptile turned to the west will force a short period of separation. Other favorable omens may be encountered at any time throughout one's life; those associated with dreams, insects, or other natural signs (sangbo ) call for expert interpretation so that the promised luck can be captured. Since predicted good fortune can sometimes be expropriated by another more aggressive person, action must be prompt.

Having performed the required rites, a family may not realize the sangbo's promise for some time—occasionally for several generations. Nor will luck ever appear as a mere windfall. Usually it must be activated by undertaking new economic endeavors, or at least through diligent work. But the reception of a sangbo is often motivation enough to strive. As one Buguias resident put it, "I must work hard in my garden because my grandfather had a sangbo, and I am waiting for its manifestation."

Arduous labor alone will not ensure that the sangbo will be realized. While awaiting fortune, one must fulfill all ritual obligations, lest the luck should seek a more worthy beneficiary. If a couple neglects the ancestors their luck will simply "come and go." It is only by supporting sangbos with ritual action and diligent labors that prosperity may be achieved.

Stories of sangbos, both realized and lost, reinforce Pagan ideology by demonstrating the efficacy of ritual. One tale, recounted as far away as Kapangan municipality, tells of a momentous sangbo received by Stafin Olsim; after he was pestered repeatedly by a large, red-striped bee, the elders determined that this presaged success in the truck, bus, or heavy equipment business (the ubiquitous Dangwa buses are red and black). Although Olsim's bus company failed, his family has dramatically prospered in trucking and bulldozing, apparently fulfilling the prophesy.

Other stories recount the foolishness of ignoring supernatural signs. A swarm of bees, for example, once entered the house of a

newly married couple who, being Christians, declined to capture the fortune. The bees then moved to a Pagan household, but one too poor to perform the necessary dawat ceremony. Finally the swarm settled with a couple who, willing and able to seize the promised luck, subsequently rose to become top vegetable traders. Even those already wealthy must heed such messages; one prosperous trader supposedly refused to butcher a pig after consulting a medium over a troublesome dream, arguing that the recommended procedure only reflected the ritualists' greed for meat. Soon thereafter his fortunes reversed, and one by one he lost his trucks and his friends.

To cultivate good fortune, Buguias Pagans perform several rituals other than those concerned with omens or designed specifically to honor the ancestors. Prayers for specific business endeavors cultivate momentary luck and ward against misfortune. Such rites, performed in the prewar period before trading expeditions, were readily adapted to commercial farming. In buton , a ritualist determines the promise of a proposed venture through chicken gallbladder divination; if it is positive, the individual may perform bunat to garner additional luck. Buton and bunat may serve for any risky occasion, including political contests, card gambling, court battles, and, of course, the vegetable trade. Several local manbunungs have even found a lucrative market in the cockpits near Baguio. This has engendered priestly conflict, however, for the more conservative Pagan leaders feel that cash payments (often 250 pesos per cockfight), rather than the traditional emoluments of meat, threaten to undercut the power of the ritual and to discredit Paganism in general.

Feasting and Social Stratification

As in the prewar period, ritual expenses do not level class distinctions. Certainly wealth is redistributed during rituals, and the ability of the elites to accumulate is hampered by their continual ceremonial obligations. But couples of modest means must also celebrate, and although their expenses may be smaller, they often entail a greater proportion of their wealth than do the grand feasts of the baknangs. In prewar days the powerful sometimes took advantage of the financial plight of poorer celebrants to acquire their

lands, but this practice seems in abeyance at present, possibly because the Christian challenge has forced greater caution.

Several writers have recently argued that Benguet prestige feasts no longer effectively redistribute resources because the elite can avoid participating (Voss 1983:230; Russell 1983:239). In Buguias, at least, this is not true. None of the wealthy in Buguias is a Christian, and no well-off Pagan can shirk ritual obligations. Along the Mountain Trail, traditional observances are more lax; yet even there, social pressures as well as religious beliefs motivate most baknangs to continue celebrating ritual feasts. The expectations of reciprocity and of noblesse oblige—as mediated by the council of elders and by the mankotoms—remain at the center of what one resident called (in English) "our Buguias Paganism system."

Beyond a doubt, the pedit series has attenuated since the war, even in the traditionalist stronghold of Buguias. In earlier days, the richest continued escalating the scale of their feasts until they reached the level "twenty-five"; now, few surpass "nine," the point at which baknang status is conferred. Yet because of population increase, a modern pedit of "nine" may well entail the same expenditure as a prewar celebration of "twenty-five" (see map 9). In April, 1986, an Abatan couple performed "thirteen," feasting an estimated 5,000 persons at a total cost of some 300,000 pesos (U.S. $15,000)—an outlay unthinkable before the war. Nor do a wealthy couple's ritual responsibilities end with pedit. Memorial and other services for the dead also consume more money than they did previously. The most powerful individuals, those who aim for political careers, also find themselves burdened with numerous minor feasts, as well as with the expenses incurred as negotiators.

If prestige feasts fail to level wealth in Buguias today it is because the poor continue to celebrate beyond their means. Both worldly and spiritual rationales contribute; ritual performance is needed to secure the goodwill not only of the ancestors but of the wealthy Pagans as well. Russell (1983:238) is on track in arguing that ritual expenditure in Benguet may be "a way to increase bargaining power vis-à-vis the village elite through status enhancement," but in Buguias, this is often a matter less of enhancing than of merely maintaining one's position with kinspeople and co-villagers.

Nonelite celebrants sometimes find themselves in uncomfort-

[Full Size]

Map 9.
The Spatial Dimension of Pedit Feasts. The dark zone indicates the area invited to a pedit of
"nine" held in Buguias Village; the larger, lightly shaded zone (which fully encompasses the
former zone except for the outliers of Tinoc and Binablayan) indicates the area invited to a pedit of
"thirteen" held in Abatan. The larger the feast, the larger the area invited. Determination of the
villages included depends on their proximity to the host village as well as the residence locations
of close relatives of the celebrating couple (hence the presence of "outliers").

able positions. In May of 1986, for example, a couple in desperate debt was convinced by relatives to perform a memorial ceremony (otong ) for the man's deceased mother combined with a lim-lima, or level "five," pedit. Although both spouses professed Christianity, they felt obligated to perform otong, having promised as much to the dying woman; they however wished to avoid the pedit, but they simply could not withstand the pressure. The husband was from a prominent family, and his relatives argued that backsliding could imperil the entire lineage. The feast thus thrust upon them worsened the couple's financial straits dramatically. Since they still had outstanding debts from previous ceremonies, few neighbors were willing to lend, and loans from relatives fell far short of the 60,000 pesos ($3,000) required. They managed to obtain the requisite sum a few days before the ceremony began, but throughout the proceedings their countenances reflected unrelieved gloom.

The wealthy give feasts in part to enhance their power and prestige. Having reached the level of "nine," a man can expect a position of honor at all public occasions, and can gain a powerful voice in tong tongan councils. Yet if such a man does not continue to meet community expectations, the elders will begin to prod, reminding him of his parents' and grandparents' actions, of the need to balance getting with giving, and of the dangers that lurk for those who ignore the dead. If a wealthy couple fails to legitimate their wealth, people will insult both husband and wife behind their backs, and some may move business dealings to competing elites.

In a recent example, a very wealthy couple living on the Mountain Trail had performed only "seven," and this many years previously. Such stinginess, combined with a reputation for unsavory business dealings, cost the family much of its respect. In 1986, a health problem prompted the husband to seek guidance, and when the elders advised pedit—at a level several jumps ahead of their prior celebration—the couple agreed. Once they completed the ritual, negative feelings began quickly to evaporate.

Feast observations are necessary to legitimate wealth, but they are not always sufficient. Individuals who come into wealth quickly face special problems; they may be dismissed as having merely discovered hidden treasure (a fragment of Yamashita's legendary hoard perhaps), or even condemned for having exploited the poor. Here ritual expenditures are but the first step; the nouveaux riches must

also take on the social responsibilities of wealth. Foremost among these is lending money to poorer villagers who wish to observe their own feasts. This too could potentially act as a hidden form of redistribution, if the capital involved could be more profitably invested elsewhere. But the structure of debt relations ensures that in the long run it is the elite who benefit.

Christian Challenge and Pagan Response

The Spread of Christianity

Although Christianity is relatively new to the area, Paganism has not gone unchallenged in Buguias. Spanish missionaries made little progress in Benguet, in part because "nuevo Christianos" were obligated to pay higher tribute. Catholic priests did missionize several large villages, but they ignored Buguias, by one account because the dispersed settlement pattern made missionizing difficult (Perez 1904:191, 192). American proselytizers also bypassed Buguias, according to local Christians, because the new colonists rushed to convert the headhunting peoples of the north. Only after the war did Christian missionaries arrive in the village.

In the early postwar years, the Catholic Church greatly increased its missionary activity in Benguet. Following a pattern established in the American period, Flemish priests staffed most new missions. In thoroughly Pagan areas, such as Buguias, newly arrived priests sought to understand indigenous beliefs, commonly attending local rituals for a time. Such activities were suspended in the late 1950s, following the establishment of a Catholic church and a high school in Abatan. A satellite church soon followed in Buguias, where the Abatan-based priest would visit for monthly masses.

Protestant missionaries also arrived in Buguias shortly after the war. The Jehovah's Witnesses enjoyed early success along the Mountain Trail after an American missionary reached Natubleng in 1948. When converted laborers returned from the Natubleng farms to their home villages, the religion spread. Its members now constitute a distinct minority in many communities; the congregation in Buguias includes a handful of families. The mainstream Protestant

churches began to proselytize in greater Buguias a few years later. They spread in a geographically discontinuous pattern, each church assigning missionaries to a few specific villages. The Assembly of God established a firm base in Buguias, the Wesleyans set up outposts to the north and south, and the Anglicans attracted a strong following in Lo-o. The Lutherans built a hospital in Abatan but made few converts in the region.

The early missionaries gained converts from a variety of social backgrounds. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Catholicism attracted many college students in Baguio, some of whom saw Pagan practices as thwarting economic development and sometimes as threatening their own educations.^[1] Several students later returned to Buguias to form the community's initial Catholic nucleus. Protestants more often came from poorer families; many saw in their austere new doctrines an escape from the burdens of Pagan ceremonials. But Protestantism attracted a few others also; one fairly wealthy woman joined the Assembly of God after numerous, expensive Pagan rituals failed to relieve her of extreme pain during pregnancy.

Conversion has often followed family lines; this has joined with the usual spatial congregation of kin to form a distinctive geography of religious affiliation in present-day Buguias. One hamlet is predominantly Catholic, whereas others, especially those more remote and those wealthier than average, have remained largely Pagan. Gender also plays a role, since more women than men have converted to Christianity. Men sometimes follow their wives into the church, but not a few remain reluctant Christians.

Members of the three Christian sects of Buguias differ in their relations with the Pagan majority. The Jehovah's Witnesses remove themselves from most aspects of village life. Assembly of God members avoid any activities that smack of Paganism or that call for drinking alcohol, but they do interact with their Pagan neighbors on other public occasions. Roman Catholics are yet more ambivalent, as they are not necessarily prohibited from attending Pagan feasts. While objecting strenuously to the religious content of such rites, the Catholic Church leaders recognize that indigenous ceremonies cement family and community ties. A good Catholic may attend a relative's pedit, but he or she is discouraged from joining in ritual dancing or other sacred activities.

Even among its leadership, however, the Catholic community is divided in its appraisal of Paganism. According to some observers, the local church has waffled considerably over the past thirty years, depending largely on the convictions of the priest stationed in Abatan at any given time. The official position at present advocates toleration and hopes for the eventual "Christianization" of public feasting. Thus, community-oriented redistributive feasts receive favor so long as they are undertaken in a Christian context, such as occurs at a house blessing.

Those most at odds with the Abatan church are the so-called "Chrispas," or Chris[tian]-Pa[gan] syncretists. Members of this group, consisting largely of the metropolitan elite, are Pagan when in Buguias but Catholic when in Baguio. Buguias Christians usually view such heteroclites as true Pagans who only feign Christianity to gain acceptance in the city. The self-styled Chrispas, however, see no inherent contradiction between their two belief systems; each has its own place and each covers its own sphere of activity.

Religious Rivalry: the Christian Position

A few Buguias residents appear to have converted to Christianity primarily to avoid ritual expenses. Devout Christians disparage this motive, and they were not surprised that several economically moved converts returned to Paganism on discovering that their new faith did not bring them wealth. Some persons formerly argued that Christians, being unencumbered by rituals, would become more prosperous than their Pagan neighbors, but this view is no longer tenable. Yet the economic debate continues. The most sophisticated Christian thinkers claim that whereas mass butcherings sensibly disposed of excess livestock in the past, today they only consume scarce capital. Moreover, they argue, a couple that saves in order to educate their children—rather than to feast the community and enhance their own prestige—should be respected as self-sacrificing rather than denigrated as self-serving.

The Christian judgment against Paganism aims squarely at the religious-economic linkage the traditionalists expound. They accuse Pagans of subordinating their religious practices to the base desire for worldly riches. Christians point to the silver coins over

which manbunungs chant prayers as evidence that their Pagan neighbors actually worship money. Similarly, in pedit, taro slices soaked in hog blood symbolize coins, naked evidence of Pagan materialism. Christians accuse traditional priests of asking the ancestors to deliver the wealth of Christian outsiders into the hands of feast celebrants, or to send diseases from Buguias to other communities. Some Christians, most notably the Belgian priest, argue that Paganism is based on fear: fear of the ancestors and spirits, and fear for one's afterlife position. Christianity offers an escape from this fear, they say, through its assurance of love, joy, and salvation for all believers.

Christians also censure fervent Pagans for abusing their bodies by working too hard. Elderly men and women in the Pagan community often continue to toil in their fields even when they are ill, a pattern the Christians interpret as further evidence that they value money above all else. Some also disparage certain devout Pagans for wearing tattered clothing, quipping that one can easily distinguish an elderly Christian from an elderly Pagan at some distance. They also claim that the poor Pagan is effectively more impoverished than a poor Christian because the Pagan has to reserve much of his or her money for religious contingencies.

At least one individual converted to Christianity because he felt betrayed by Pagan practitioners. This man, who was studying to become a Pagan priest, noticed at his father's funeral that the corpse was wrapped in a woman's burial blanket, a grave insult to the dead. He convinced himself that this "error" was actually a deliberate move to anger the ancestors and thus withdraw favor from his family line. Pagan leaders insisted it was an honest mistake, and unsuccessfully urged him to consider his advanced age and investment in traditional learning.

The refusal of the Pagans to allow traditional cultural practices to be unlinked from their religious content has created a final arena of conflict. Unlike their counterparts in most other Cordilleran areas, Pagan leaders in Buguias allow no ritual actions to take place in secular contexts. If one wishes to dance to the gongs and drums, one must mark the event with sacrifices. Buguias schoolchildren's annual community performances thus feature dances from other Cordilleran regions rather than those of their own ancestors. Christians point approvingly to the northern Pagans for their less hidebound attitude in this regard.

Pagan Responses

Pagan rhetoricians are quick to counter the criticisms brought against them, and to level their own charges against what they see as the contradictions of Christianity. Christians are hypocritical, they argue, for while claiming that their faith is based on sharing and love, its real hallmark is selfishness. Pagans feed everyone, even dogs and rats, in their holy ceremonies, but Christians feed only themselves. Pagans sacrifice continually to ensure communal prosperity, but Christians work only for their own families. Several Pagan thinkers go so far as to argue that Pagan ritual embodies true Christian charity, enacting the injunction to love one's neighbor as one's self.

These apologists see no problem in their faith's materialism. Indeed, they point proudly to the intimate connection between the spiritual and physical realms as the cornerstone of their religion, citing empirical evidence to prove that proper ritual performance brings economic prosperity. Their religion, they argue, is based on nature and local tradition and is verifiable through observation; Christianity, in contrast, is supported merely by a foreign book.

Since Buguias Pagans see material fortune as the manifestation of spiritual integrity, they must explain how some Christians become prosperous. The usual explanation for the wealth of the few rich Igorot Christians in other communities is that they received heavenly favor through the actions of their Pagan relatives, if not through their own secret Pagan rites. A case often cited pertains to the Dangwa family of Kapangan. Buguias Pagans insist that the Dangwas continue to honor the ancestors despite their professed Christianity. The wealth of non-Igorot Christians, in contrast, is not considered problematic; lowlanders and westerners merely follow their own customs by adhering to the Christian faith—precisely the goal of the Buguias Pagans in cleaving to their own traditions. Paganism clearly advances no universalistic claims; it is specific to a particular locale and to a people with a common culture and a common group of ancestors.

Pagan thinkers dismiss the allegations that they ignore their appearances and abuse their bodies by turning these supposed vices into virtues. Willingness to wear tattered clothing and to work despite illness show a lofty and spiritual attitude; only the vain spend money on appearance, which does not honor the ancestors and

brings nothing to the community. They also lightly shrug off the charge of "illness transfers." One manbunung countered that neighboring communities can simply respond in kind. "I send a sickness to Kiangan and the Kiangan priest sends it back here—before long we are tossing it back and forth just like a volleyball."

Nor do Pagans apologize for refusing to permit secular performances of ritual dances. To allow this, they claim, would be to debase their religion, offend the ancestors, and risk the well-being of Buguias. They find the prospect of turning their rituals into cultural shows, as has happened in tourist locations in Ifugao and Mountain Province, utterly appalling.

The charge that rituals are so expensive as to preclude education in some families is taken more seriously. The most common response is that a balance must be sought between ceremonial and educational investments. Indeed, the theme of balancing traditional obligations and modern demands runs through much Pagan rhetoric. Several children from Pagan households have received college degrees, and it is difficult to argue that Christians as a group value formal learning more than do Pagans.

An empirical bent underlies both Pagan and Christian beliefs. Arguments for both religions adduce physical evidence in support of supernatural causes. But the same phenomenon may be cited as proof by both sides. In a classic case, a prominent individual on the verge of death converted to Christianity and subsequently recovered. Some Christians argue that conversion saved him; Pagans claim that it was the rituals they performed on his behalf that made the difference.

The Geography of Religion

The ideological standoff between Paganism and Christianity throughout Benguet is reflected in a patchwork pattern of religious affiliation. Most southern Cordilleran regions are of mixed Pagan and Christian population, with some dominated by the former religion, others by the latter. Christianity has made more headway in southern Benguet than in the north, yet distinct pockets of Paganism persist throughout the south. Significantly, several of these lie in the political and commercial core of the province. The provincial capital, La Trinidad, has an especially strong Pagan community,

and its manbunungs are noted for their conservatism. Bekkel, a small village on the outskirts of Baguio, originally settled by Buguias immigrants, is also strongly Pagan. In many of the small gold-mining communities of the middle Agno Valley, miners observe both Christian and traditional rituals.^[2] Catholicism, however, predominates in many of the larger but more isolated Ibaloi villages; Kabayan Central, for example, no longer even supports a single practicing manbunung.

Several remote Ibaloi communities have retained a Pagan orientation, but with markedly simplified practices. This appears to be largely a matter of economics. Throughout Benguet, the prewar bases of wealth (cattle raising, mining, and trade) never reemerged after the war, undermining the elites' ability to finance large ceremonies. Only where commercial vegetables provided wealth could the pedit persist. Many Ibaloi villages saw their last graded prestige feast shortly after the war (see, for example, Barnett 1969: 292), although lesser rituals, such as the memorial service, continue to be observed. A similar movement is apparent in some Kankana-ey districts of northern Benguet, where the more isolated villages, cut off from commercial farming, have lost their ability to support large feasts. Some have turned en masse to Christianity. In Bakun Central, for instance, wholesale conversions to Protestantism and Catholicism occurred in the 1960s (Tauchmann 1974). In Kibungan Central—according to Buguias residents—Paganism remains strong, but it has been refocused on curative rituals as pedit has been abandoned. This tendency is the reverse of that present in Buguias Paganism, where it is curative rituals that are now losing favor.

Along the Mountain Trail within Buguias municipality, diverse practices coexist. Some villages have largely converted to Christianity, but most show a rough split between Pagans and Christians. Voss (1983: 229), for example, found that in Buguias municipality's roadside communities some 52 percent of individuals performed Pagan rituals.

Expensive Pagan ceremonies are less frequent along the Mountain Trail than in Buguias Village. The Mountain Trail Pagans actually tease their valley coreligionists for their incessant feasts. While the Mountain Trail's economy allows lavish ceremonies, its social milieu does not encourage them to nearly the same extent as does

that of the adjacent Agno Valley. The highway villages, having sprouted after the war, did not inherit the intricate religious structure that has been transferred from one generation of elders to the next in long-settled areas. Nor was the geographic structure of "ritual congregations" (traditional village units around which all large rituals are organized) reproduced fully in these new communities. To a large extent, postwar migrants to the Mountain Trail found themselves freed from the dictates of an established elite and a council of elders.

But as prosperous farmers have emerged along the Mountain Trail, many of them have desired to legitimate their wealth in the traditional manner. Thus a significant impetus to perpetuate the old system remains, despite the general relaxing of ritual standards. Indeed, some Buguias residents claim that in the past several years prestige feasts have increased along the ridge, as farmers seek confirmation of their social positions while trying to manipulate the flow of luck. But lacking the strictures of the more conservative Paganism of Buguias Village, successful Mountain Trail residents often try to skip stages in the pedit sequence so they can more quickly rise. The Buguias priests, who often officiate here, generally disapprove of such shortcuts, but sometimes countenance them under the circumstances.

The Eastern Frontier

A distinct religious character marks the villages along the vegetable frontier east of Buguias, an area not missionized until very recently. Owing to economic change, large-scale feasts, never frequent here, largely disappeared after the war. Still, most villages not yet commercialized remain primarily Pagan. With the recent arrival of roads and vegetable growing in select areas came Christian proselytizers, mostly from obscure charismatic sects, who gained numerous converts. Particularly significant is the rise of syncretic cults in this frontier zone. Although these exist elsewhere in Benguet, syncretic movements have had little chance to develop in established areas like Buguias, which are marked by both an elaborate Paganism and an orthodox Christianity. The eclectic faiths are rather concentrated where commercialization is most recent.

Several cults of uncertain lineage thrive in the villages of eastern Buguias municipality. One conspicuous group is Milagro (Spanish

for "miracle"), led by a "high priest" from a small hamlet to the east of Bad-ayan. Lay members also perform the group's characteristic curative rituals, relying on crucifixes and holy water as well as animal sacrifices. Milagro, like true Paganism, emphasizes the acquisition of wealth and the honoring of the ancestors.

Perhaps the most doctrinally complex of the syncretic religions, however, the Church of the Almighty God, is centered not east of Buguias but rather in Abatan. Its tenets are eloquently displayed on a series of needlepoint tapestries. The first, a calendar, indicates the holy days; the second illustrates the "Holy Family of the Three Kings" (the topmost monarch being labeled both with the Pagan "Kabunian" and the Christian "Apo Dios"); and the third presents an unusual map of the Buguias region. Lines representing "underground rivers" form the map's basic structure; some of these are indicated as running hot, others cold. Dots symbolize "growing stones," which are said to cause earthquakes when disturbed. The whole is crowned by the following message embroidered in English: "Believe it or not it is true, but please do not say bad things about the Almighty God." That this small sect so emphasizes underground water may reflect the worsening water crisis that marks each dry season in Abatan.

Buguias as a Center of Modern Paganism

Buguias is now the intellectual and ritual center of southern Cordilleran Paganism. The community no longer supports a practicing spirit medium; for this particular service Buguias residents must travel to Paoay (in Atok municipality), where the southern Cordillera's most famous mansib-ok resides. But as amply attested not only by local residents but by outsiders as well, the all-important pedit feasts, as well as other ritual events, are celebrated here more frequently and by a greater proportion of the populace than in any other Benguet community (see map 10). Moreover, Pagan ideology, especially as it theorizes the relationship between wealth acquisition and propitiating the ancestors, is most explicitly and fully articulated by the mankotoms of Buguias. Indeed, even a few of the leading Christians proudly claim that only in their community does Paganism retain both its traditional spirit and its lavish forms.

Buguias's Paganism is in some respects unique, having evolved

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Map 10.
Prestige Feasts Held in Buguias between January and July 1986.

in a direction independent of the traditional religious systems of other southern Cordilleran communities. Among the (once) culturally dominant Ibaloi, the graded prestige feast formerly allowed wealthy couples to legitimate their standing, but it was never viewed as an avenue along which the commoners could advance (see Pungayan 1978). The Buguias ideology, in contrast, holds that all persons may aspire to money and power so long as they are willing to follow the correct path. This tenet, which evidently emerged during the days of the trading economy, has been greatly reinforced by commercial farming. Paralleling this pseudoegalitarian bent is a decline in the position of the manbunung (priest) relative to that of the mankotom (adviser and prophet). In Buguias, the first merely performs rituals, while the latter is both the chief apologist for, and the grand strategist of, Paganism as an explicit ideology. Nowhere else in Benguet is this role so significant (see Hamada-Pawid and Bagamaspad 1985:110).

One index of Buguias's leading position in Benguet Paganism is the frequent employment of its ritual experts by residents of other communities. In June 1986, for instance, the president of the Big Wedge Igorot Mine Association in Itogon Municipality solicited the services of two Buguias manbunungs for a pedit ceremony. Buguias residents in attendance were surprised to find the Itogon youths unfamiliar with the complex procedures and in need of instruction at each step. The resident Bontoc miners were even more baffled, and they took offense on learning that they were expected to eat in village groupings. Buguias manbunungs have also officiated in Baguio City, in migrant Igorot communities in the adjacent lowlands, and on behalf of nominally Christian lowland politicians.

Religious Plurality in Present-Day Buguias

Religious Conflict

While Pagans and Christians debate fervently in Buguias, disputes seldom escalate into open confrontations. At present, leaders of both groups stress mutual respect and seek slow, deliberate change. Relations were more strained in earlier years, with tensions peaking in the 1960s after a Catholic priest hurled to the ground a sacred

Pagan marker, decrying it as the devil's sign. The incensed Pagan community responded with threats, both physical and legal. Later priests acted with more tact, and by the 1970s the two groups had reached an unsteady rapprochement. It is primarily the Jehovah's Witnesses who still occasionally infuriate Pagans, for they alone doggedly try to convert uninterested persons.

The most intense religious struggles occur upon the death of an individual survived by both Pagan and Christian offspring. Unless the deceased leaves explicit funeral instructions—and sometimes even if she or he does—the children may quarrel over the ceremony's religious content. The entire community can become involved in the ensuing arguments and intrigue. According to the resident Catholic priest, Pagan survivors have attempted on several occasions to hide death shrouds in Christian coffins.

Pagans generally respect Christian beliefs, but they nevertheless heavily pressure some converts to return to the fold, willing to accept them as fellow Pagans even if they wish to remain "part-time Christians." Elite family descendants form a particular target, since Pagans believe that even powerful ancestors may falter if denied full homage. The errant cousin or sibling may be reminded time and again of a parent's wish to be honored in the afterlife, of their family's pride and position, and of the need to follow precedent. If such entreaties are unsuccessful, relatives may threaten to deny the recalcitrant couple future business loans. As a result, even confessed Christians occasionally, if grudgingly, celebrate prestige feasts.

Recent Change and Compromise

The leaders of Buguias Paganism by no means espouse an orthodoxy. As elsewhere in the Cordillera, they not uncommonly borrow new observances from neighboring peoples and they often accept innovations in practice. Most elders do argue, however, that change should be gradual and that honoring the ancestors should remain central.

Paganism's postwar history reflects the period's economic and social transformations. A simplified prestige feast ladder now allows young couples to establish themselves more easily. Before the war, a distinct ceremony occurred before the birth of the first child;

this has now been melded with the first pedit. In earlier days, only local sacrificial hogs would do; now, lowland and "mestizo" swine are acceptable, provided they are black. Children now return to school after the first few days of their families' celebrations, whereas before they were kept home for the full duration. The Pagan funeral is also being transformed as the death chair gradually loses favor. Many Pagans now choose to be displayed in an open coffin.

Most Buguias Pagans have also changed their views on the diagnosis and treatment of disease. For a number of years a dual theory has prevailed, holding that illness may result either from natural pathogens (requiring Western medicine) or supernatural agents (calling for ritual and prayers). As late as the 1960s, most Pagans opted first for the spiritual remedy. By the 1980s, however, most had reversed the procedure, consulting the medium only if not cured first by medicine. The Pagan religious leaders see little significance here, since curing-rituals have long occupied a peripheral place in their larger ideological scheme.

A few influential Pagans now seek to establish a deeper understanding with local Christians, particularly Catholics. One Pagan elder moderates the disputes between the two groups, and he counts among his advisees several Christian leaders. He has proposed a compromise through which Pagans would more fully respect Christians while Christians would compensate by holding their own feasts (whether as secular "blow-outs" or to consecrate their own religious occasions). Conciliatory Pagans also ask their Catholic neighbors to honor Buguias's ancestors on All Soul's Day. Indeed, many Pagans acknowledge the efficacy of Christian prayer, especially as demonstrated in the "EDSA Revolution" that overthrew Marcos in February 1986.

The Catholic community, not surprisingly, is divided over the issue of socioreligious compromise. While many Catholics have recently increased their own outlays for feasts, others argue that this would only sustain an unjust economic order and penalize those who cannot afford both schooling and ceremonies.

Catholics face a greater challenge, however, from a new group of charismatic Protestant sects that are aggressively proselytizing in the Cordillera. Foremost in the Buguias region is the "Jesus Is Alive" (JIA) organization, sometimes disparagingly called tumba

tumba , or "falling falling," in reference to its ecstatic prayers. Although much more successful in the eastern frontier zone, JIA missionaries have converted a few Buguias Catholics, a trend worrisome to church leaders. According to one concerned man, the young are more attracted to "jolly religions," like JIA, than to the more contemplative traditional Christian churches.

Trends

One predicts the future of Paganism only at great risk. Most Christians believe that the old religion is in irreversible decline, for both spiritual and economic reasons. Many Pagan leaders are also worried; not only competing religions but also secular education and bachelor cynicism threaten Paganism. One manbunung foresees calamity for the community unless at least one member of each family line continues to mollify the ancestors.

For the moment, the two faiths and a variety of syncretic offshoots uneasily coexist. Despite the reiterated predictions of its demise over the last hundred years, Paganism remains the majority faith in Buguias and in many other parts of the Cordillera as well. Neither education nor economic change consistently undermines its appeal; it is an adaptable faith, which may yet convert or reconvert adherents of other religions. Indeed, a few Ilocanos, Tagalogs, and Chinese, including some wealthy and powerful individuals, have recently called on Benguet's ritual specialists to seek heavenly favor. Clearly it is too soon to say what will become of Buguias's pluralistic religious heritage when the present generation of elders passes away.

11
Conclusion:
Understanding Buguias's Aberrant Development

The central thesis of this work is threefold. First, it demonstrates that a small-scale society can become integrated into the global economic system through small-scale commodity production without necessarily experiencing a breakdown of its communitarian social order. Second, in the circumstances found here, it is not in spite of but precisely because of economic integrations that the underlying ritual system, transformed though it may be, has persisted. Finally, this unusual embrace of indigenous religion and capitalist agriculture imperils the community's ecological foundations, threatening commercial and environmental collapse.

If the environmental problems facing Buguias are painfully familiar, the peculiar linkages between economy and culture that form their social context are not. Having defied the expectations of social theory, Buguias's continued florescence of ritual practice under an essentially capitalist regime challenges us to explain why this community should so diverge from the norm.^[1]

The Commercial History of Buguias

Most small-scale societies are, or were, prior to their incorporation within the global economy, relatively equalitarian. Although often divided by rank, few were stratified by class (Fried 1967). Their economies generally relied not on monetary calculus but on reciprocal exchange, often structured through kinship. Such societies have proved highly vulnerable to the individualizing and economizing pressures inherent in a commercial order.

The villages of the southern Cordillera, by contrast, have long possessed social and economic structures that in many ways anticipated those of state-level formations. Cash-based trade formed a

significant component of their prewar economies, and class stratification was advanced. Elite couples owned the cattle herds and the best lands, and they could pass on at least part of their wealth to their children. Several scholars have argued that imperial machinations rather than autochthonous development produced this elite class of "petty despots" (for example, Voss 1983: 40), but while Spanish and American authorities did bolster the indigenous elite, I would argue that they were able to do so only because a plutocracy already existed. That a baknang class, some of whose members were fabulously wealthy by later standards, predated Spanish rule is quite clear in the historical record (Scott 1974).

The commercialized economy and stratified society of prewar Buguias should not be overemphasized. Some goods were bartered, labor could still be mobilized cooperatively, and the bonds of kinship and community moderated individualizing tendencies. Moreover, the elite did not monopolize power, as most male elders held important places in the tong tongan jury. But such qualifications notwithstanding, the socioeconomic system of prewar Buguias proved in many ways compatible with capitalism.

Elite dominance was underwritten by control of long-distance trade. This was not a unique phenomenon; from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, Southeast Asia's "age of commerce" (Reid 1988), commercial exchange was widespread throughout this part of the globe. In northern Luzon, a trade originating in this period between the gold-producing uplands and ceramics- and iron-bearing Chinese vessels had important ramifications for the Cordilleran hinterland. Supplying hogs to the gold miners allowed highland merchants to accumulate considerable wealth, stimulated the development of an integrated regional economy, and exposed highland traders to the cash-based exchange system of the lowland towns. Buguias's ultimately pivotal position between the consumption centers of the mines and the hog-producing oak-woodland nurtured in the community at large an entrepreneurial ethos. Without the early experience in gold, the southern Cordillera in general and Buguias in particular would have developed along very different lines.

Since a finely stratified society and a highly commercialized economy were firmly in place prior to the Japanese invasion, the major transformations of the postwar period must be located in

other realms of social life. The most fundamental change during this era was the repositioning of the southern Cordillera within the global economy. Whereas Benguet's tenuous economic connection to the prewar international order was through the gold trade, the growth of a chemical-intensive temperate vegetable industry in the postwar era bound the area much more closely to national and international circuits.

The Buguias people entered these wider markets readily. They did not "resist" the new order in any of the common senses of the term. While protesting "alien" (resident Chinese) domination, they embraced the vegetable industry as a whole, including the accompanying extension and intensification of commercial exchange, the final privatization of land, the commoditization of labor, and the institutionalization of usury. Moreover, the community applauded the investment activities of its "progresso" accumulators. Voss (1983), on the basis of work among the nearby Northern Kankanaey of Sagada, argues that despite having adopted certain forms of capitalistic relations, villagers have done so on their own terms and are thus still "resisting capital." In Buguias, such an interpretation is difficult to support. The Buguias people certainly did "accept capital" on their own cultural terms, but their local economy serves the multinational agrochemical companies as well as any.

Geographical Patterns

The relationship between religion and economic change varies significantly across the southern Cordillera along three main axes. Foremost is the survival of ritual feasting in areas of commercial agriculture, generally those along the Mountain Trail and in the upper Agno Valley. Further, within those areas, it is the older valley settlements that retain the most elaborate ritual forms. Finally, a third crosscutting areal pattern follows cultural groupings: villages inhabited by the Southern Kankana-ey tend to be both more "progressive" economically and more conservative religiously than their Ibaloi neighbors. Let us take up each of these patterns in turn.

The survival of prestige feasting in commercialized areas is at one level a simple matter of resources. Before the war, low population densities allowed extensive pastoralism, providing abundant

meat for ritual feasts throughout the area. With rapid demographic growth in Benguet during the late prewar and postwar periods, the ratio of stock to humans declined dramatically, with the consequence that sacrificial animals increasingly had to be imported from the lowlands. Only those villages able to parlay cash crops for meat could continue to celebrate lavish feasts after the war.

The eastern cloud-forest villages, however, many of which have yet to recover their prewar populations, were battered by the long-term depression of the highland gold industry. When the miners of Suyoc could no longer afford prodigious quantities of pork, the oak-woodland dwellers lost their main outlet for hogs and hence their essential source of cash. The increasing availability of cheap manufactured goods administered another blow, destroying the copper-ware industry and impoverishing the iron workshops. The final assault on the old economy was the privatization of village hinterlands; this, coupled with the ban on the open pasturage of hogs, made local meat production much more difficult than it had been.

Given, then, that for economic and ecological reasons prestige feasts persisted only in areas of commercial farming, it remains to be explained why the more elaborate forms survived only in the older villages of the Agno Valley—poor cousins, in fact, to the prosperous Mountain Trail vegetable districts. The answer lies in the local configurations of social power. Whereas the latter communities emerged wholly new after the war, social arrangements in the valley towns carried over from prewar times. Entrenched elders, who benefitted most from the traditional system, used their power to lobby for retention of the old ways. Also significant was the fact that Buguias farmlands never became concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy growers. Here dramatic individual changes of fortune have continued to occur, and ascension into the elite, while increasingly difficult, is still possible. This social and economic fluidity has supported the elders' arguments that anyone can prosper through appropriate ritual observances.

Finally, there is a persistent difference in entrepreneurial ethos between the two dominant peoples of the southern Cordillera: the Ibaloi and the Southern Kankana-ey. Although commercial farms dominate several Ibaloi districts, most continue to produce primarily for subsistence.^[2] In Kabayan, an Ibaloi village directly south of Buguias, vegetables have been grown as cash crops for a number

of years, but poor returns during the 1970s and 1980s persuaded many Kabayan residents to abandon market gardening altogether (Wiber 1985:428)—a response unthinkable in Buguias. Even in the commercialized (and traditionalist) Ibaloi community of Trinidad, graded prestige feasts have declined, although curing and death rituals have persisted. Moreover, the wealthiest farmers here have been able to stint on their ceremonial expenditures (Russell 1989b ).

The key to this widespread difference in commercial attitudes appears to lie in the two peoples' strikingly different histories of class formation. As the onetime premier gold producers of the southern Cordillera, the Ibaloi baknangs sustained a rigidly stratified society, closing their ranks to upward mobility. Marriages did not cross the class divide, and commoners had virtually no hope of reaching elite status. This distinct socioeconomic evolution had repercussions for both commercial attitudes and ritual practices. The relative fixity of hereditary status discouraged commercial risk-taking—on the part of aristocrats as well as commoners. This in turn reduced the economic incentive for holding ceremonies, which among the Southern Kankana-ey were often undertaken to ensure business success. The Ibaloi elite of Kabayan had once used the feast system to acquire the rice terraces of their less-wealthy co-villagers, but with the decline of their economic hegemony after the war they began to abandon the prestige feast altogether (Wiber 1989). Yet at the same time, the Buguias elders were reforming their pedit into the centerpiece of a grand conceptual tableau, one encompassing both a modernizing economy and an age-old cosmos and one that explicitly posits a central role for social mobility.

The emergence of Buguias Central as a center of modern Paganism is thus a product both of the community's economic position in past generations and of its recent development. In particular, all three of the criteria that perpetuate redistributive rituals in the postwar era—the development of commercial agriculture, the existence of a long-settled community run by tradition-minded elders, and dominance by Southern Kankana-ey rather than Ibaloi cultural elements—have converged in Buguias Central, boosting this community to prominence as the center of modern Cordilleran Paganism. By the late 1980s, followers of the leading mankotom of Buguias, the community's prophet and premier adviser, could call him simply "the number one Pagan."

The Ideology of Pagan Economics

The outsider may marvel at the persistence of redistribution in this commercialized economy, but Buguias Pagans view the redistributive aspect of feasting as secondary. Major rituals are above all an investment in future productivity, an indispensable step toward well-being in an undivided economic-social-cosmic totality. Understanding the economic logic embodied in these observances is critical for grasping how this community can at once embrace capitalism and retain its indigenous practices.

Buguias Pagans view ritual expenditures and wealth accumulation as positively linked, holding ritual as the bridge to the ancestral spirits who control each individual's fate. A married couple must work hard to earn the money necessary to honor the ancestors of both spouses, the ultimate fonts of their good fortune. Although an observer might predict that financing repeated banquets would counter capital accumulation, believers are convinced that heavenly favor will ratchet the devoted practitioners continually upward.

Pagans thus incorporate a spiritual element into their understanding of the economy. Where Western capitalists posit a two-stage cycle of accumulation and investment, Buguias entrepreneurs believe in three-stage cycle of accumulation, ritual, and investment. Baldly self-interested acts must alternate with feasting, for only by giving back a part of one's earnings to the ancestors (and, hence, to the community) can one hope to incur their good will. This is presented not as a sacred postulate, but as an inductive observation, to be debated on the basis of empirical findings. Of course, the actual evidence is ambiguous; most celebrants do not particularly prosper, and for those who do, other explanations could be invoked. But to date, no Buguias couples who have shirked major rituals altogether have prospered, giving Pagan apologists their most compelling line of evidence.

The manipulation of fortune is an ancient aspect of Cordilleran religion whose importance has only been enhanced with the move to commercial agriculture. In modern vegetable farming, beset as it is by extraordinary price volatility and frequent natural disasters, every couple's success clearly hinges in part on elements beyond their control. The belief that fate may be managed encourages

people to plunge into this risk-fraught environment—to do such things as plant lettuce in the typhoon season or start a new bus line. The greater the risk, the stronger must be the anticipation of success; major business ventures are usually foreshadowed by signs of prosperity (sangbo). Omen interpreters readily counsel risky strategies, an index of their confidence in divining the flow of future luck, since their own fortunes ride with those of their advisees.

Buguias Pagans do not equate luck with windfall profit. Success is offered but not guaranteed; it must be captured through sincere effort. Earnest work may also help unlock ancient promises delivered to one's forebears. Such sangbo are numerous, providing many households with personal motivations to labor arduously. Operating at multiple levels, such beliefs inculcate a work ethic that far surpasses anything held by Buguias Christians.

Contention, Rhetoric, and Power

Pagan ideology is far from a single orthodoxy. Theories of reality and notions of proper conduct vary considerably; continual debate on such questions creates a shared field of discourse more than a unified body of ideas. Since whole groups of individuals have rejected the ideology of their parents for Christianity, that field of discourse has been widened and partially rent in the postwar period.

Inequalities of power color ideological discussions. Wealthy individuals seek to maintain their positions by manipulating the religious order, while less powerful groups try to counter the status quo or at least to effect compromises. In Buguias the elite cling fervently to Paganism. The richest, the chrispa sycretists, espouse Christian doctrine as well, but all seek to perpetuate the feast system.

Even the elite do not comprise an entirely homogeneous group with respect to this issue. The truly wealthy, a cosmopolitan group residing in the provincial capital as often as in Buguias, can finance their required celebrations at little cost to their businesses or to their accustomed levels of consumption. For these fortunate few, Pagan ceremonies are reasonable social and political investments, yet not indispensable ones; if the feast system were to collapse, their positions would not be jeopardized.

The village-bound middle ranks of the elite have more at stake in the system's perpetuation. This group is largely comprised of elders who owe their positions more to lifelong diligence than to dramatic business successes. They live frugally, saving as much as possible to finance their own and their neighbors' observances. By their clothing one might suspect many of them to be among the poorest members of the community. But their role in Paganism brings them considerable power in the council of elders, and if the feast system were to collapse, these individuals would fall with it.

In general, ritual obligations weigh heaviest on those of intermediate wealth. The poorest can simply decline to celebrate without fear of being turned away from their neighbors' feasts. But this option is not open to the less successful members of respectable family lines, individuals who must endure the financial and social pressures of their richer relatives. If such persons announce that they cannot afford the requisite ceremonies, they are virtually cornered into joining a Christian church. Converting will not convince relatives to desist from their hounding, but it does afford an ideological stance from which to resist, as well as an alternative community. Although all Christians do not convert for economic reasons, Christian leaders recognize that initial leanings toward the church often stem from resentment against the expenses of Paganism and the relentless pressures associated with it.

New Christians in Buguias are encouraged to study the scriptures in order to derive a less worldly foundation for their beliefs. In essence, they are taught to reject the premise that material wealth reflects spiritual worth. The fully converted level the charge of materialism against Paganism, accusing traditionalists of debasing the spiritual with the economic. Pagans, who insist that it is precisely through material goods that the linkages between heaven and earth are made manifest, return the accusation, arguing that Christians prefer to squander their wealth on personal luxuries rather than to share it with the community at large.

Max Weber and the Spirit of Capitalism

Precisely because of the prevalence of redistributive mechanisms and ideologies stressing luck or magic, "tribal" religion has often

been regarded as perhaps motivating production but necessarily as restricting accumulation—hence thwarting economic development (e.g., Goode 1951:136). The same view has been promulgated with regard to Cordilleran Paganism. In the 1960s, for example, Tadaoan (1969:247) expressed the concern of the Commission on National Integration that "pagan beliefs and practices . . . were the root-cause that retarded economic and educational projects."

Specific sects of the universalizing religions, by contrast, have long been believed to inculcate the very spirit of capitalist enterprise. Observing the Protestant affiliation of most European leaders of industry at the turn of the century, Max Weber (1904 [1930]) argued that Calvinistic "worldly asceticism" had been the ideological font of capitalism itself. The Protestant businessman, he argued, would rather invest capital than squander it in sinful pleasures, thus confirming his divine election through his pecuniary success.

Weber's followers have since found a similar ethos in the faiths of other entrepreneurial groups, including Jodo and Zen Buddhism in Japan, Santri Islam in Java, and Jainism and Zoroastrianism in India (Bellah 1968:243). Yet such assertions are rarely made for any but the so-called high religions. As Eisenstadt (1968:18) writes:

It has been claimed that the more "magical" or "discrete" a religious system is, the less it is likely to facilitate the development of more continuous secular activities. The multitude of dispersed religious rituals found in most "primitive" religions were shown to inhibit the development of such sustained effort.

Indeed, converts to universalizing religions have often formed entrepreneurial islands within "tribal" societies.^[3] Legitimating their actions by reference to their new ideologies, market-oriented converts can free themselves from onerous social demands. In Kapepa, Zambia, for instance, most successful commercial farmers are Jehovah's Witnesses who use their beliefs "to justify the repudiation of certain social relationships" (Long 1968:239).

In Buguias, the situation is reversed. Here, Jehovah's Witnesses and other Christians are distinctly less entrepreneurial than are traditionalists; in Buguias it is communitarian Paganism that inculcates both a strong business drive and a remarkable work ethic.

And unlike the people of Kabylia, Algeria (Bourdieu 1977), those of Buguias do not disguise or "socially repress" the connection between social actions and economic gains. The linkage of ritual and accumulation is not only recognized but constitutes the subject of frequent debate.

The symbiosis of religion and capitalism is if anything more tightly forged in Buguias Paganism than in radical European Protestantism. Where early modern Calvinists interpreted wealth as a sign of election, riches for Buguias Pagans are the necessary means to obtain spiritual favor. Far from being fatalistic, their belief is interventionist to the last. "Worldly asceticism," however, quickly evaporates in Buguias's rituals, replaced by an otherworldly hedonism that Weber's bourgeois businessman would find utterly sinful. But the Buguias traditionalists revel in such extravagance only so long as it remains in a ritual context—and Weber may have exaggerated the asceticism of the Calvinist burgher in any case (see Schama 1988:334, and Leroi Ladurie and Ranum 1989:113, 114).

Ritual Economics and the Social Order

The success of the Buguias people in retaining their redistributive feasts by no means generates social equality. But neither exploitation nor social stratification is new to Buguias. Both were deeply rooted in the precolonial social order, and both are perpetuated by the long-term functioning of Pagan economics.

Prestige Feasts and Social Differentiation

Several benefits accrue to elite celebrants, most immediately the legitimation of their wealth and enhancement of their prestige. Material reward may also follow; the respected baknang can attract clients more readily than could a disparaged noncelebrant. And for a would-be political leader, winning the support of the electorate requires major ritual investments.

But the wealthy receive their most substantial long-range benefits from the feast system through financing the rituals of their poorer neighbors. True, ritual loans carry minimal interest, but

weighty debts put the borrowing class in a perpetually subservient position, allowing the elite essentially to control the community. Higher rates of return might be obtained in the short run by investing elsewhere, but the long-term benefits of maintaining a large and docile clientele are significant.

Redistributive ceremonials have been seen to serve the upper strata in other places and times as well. In the chiefdoms of northwest North America, elite villagers enhanced their positions through the potlatch even as they dispensed with much of their property (Drucker and Heizer 1967). The same was once true in Toraja mortuary rites; according to Volkman (1985:6) "ritual was thought to affirm a person's 'place' as a noble, commoner or slave, distinctions based upon descent ('blood') and, at least ideally, coincident with wealth." And whereas the "cargo" feasts of syncretic Catholicism in Mesoamerica have often been analyzed as regenerating social equality (Cancian 1965:137), Cancian found their effects at least in one Chiapas district to be more ambiguous:

Service in the cargo system legitimizes the wealth differences that do exist and this prevents disruptive envy. There is, in effect, sufficient leveling . . . to satisfy normative prescriptions, but not enough to produce an economically homogeneous community [1965:140].

Cancian's observations hold as well for Buguias. Here, too, prestige feasts function simultaneously to redistribute riches and to reconstitute a hierarchical social order. Celebrants transform material wealth into symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1977), and while their prestige no longer allows elite villagers to mobilize labor directly, it does bolster their power in less direct ways.

For the community at large, the survival of the redistributive complex combines with the vagaries of vegetable farming to make for complex movements across class lines. Over a single generation, certain families in every class grow richer, while others, racked by ceremonial as well as other debts, fall lower in the social order. Shanin's (1972) analysis of Russian peasant household mobility patterns—highlighting the interactions of centrifugal (differentiating), centripetal (leveling), and cyclical mobility, and giving weight to chance events in each household's trajectory—provides an apt analogue.

In contemporary Buguias, chance cannot be overemphasized,

for the incorporation of risk into the deepest level of the ideological system influences all forms of mobility. The same belief in the manipulability of luck that supports entrepreneurialism has also proved devastating on occasion by encouraging untoward gambling. When Buguias residents gamed only among themselves, money remained within the community, the luck of the cards acting as a redistributive mechanism of sorts (cf. Mitchell 1988). But gambling has become a net drain for the community since the opening of a casino in Baguio City. If it is difficult for a habitué of Las Vegas or Monte Carlo to accept the inexorability of a slot machine's take, such notions are resisted even more strongly by Buguias Pagans, long schooled to consider luck the province of the ancestors. Of the four Buguias couples to have reached metropolitan elite status in the 1960s and early 1970s, three are said to have lost their fortunes in the plush rooms of the Baguio Casino (see Finin 1990 on Igorot gambling in general).

Analyzing the Social Formation of Buguias

The resulting social and economic structure of Buguias defies all conventional categories; however, all Cordilleran peoples have long been considered "tribal," based on their indigenous small-scale social organization, successful resistance to imperialism for several hundred years, sociocultural distinctiveness from the Philippine lowlanders, and retention of indigenous religion. This categorization is far from perfect; most Cordilleran groups have long been internally stratified, all were eventually brought under American political hegemony, and a large number have for some time been Christian.

The Benguet vegetable growers exhibit "peasant" characteristics as well, and several scholars refer to them as such (Russell 1983; Solang 1984; Wiber 1985). Powerful outside groups extract a large share of the gardeners' produce; labor-exchange practices coexist with wage work; and production is both for the market and for subsistence (see Wolf 1966; Shanin 1973; Scott 1976). The Benguet people have become subject to surplus extraction by both national elites and metropolitan states—a process that many scholars argue is sufficient to turn tribal peoples into peasants (Howlett 1973; Connell 1979; Howard 1980; Grossman 1984).

But the same vegetable growers have also been termed "petty commodity producers," a category related to, but not identical with, that of the peasantry (Russell 1989a; see Watts 1984:20). Unlike peasants sensu strictu , Benguet's rural (or "simple," or "petty") commodity producers cannot retreat to subsistence cultivation in the event of poor commodity prices. Thoroughly enmeshed in commercial relations, they have little to buffer them from the brutal backwash of commodity price collapses.

And finally, Buguias cultivators may even be called "capitalist farmers" inasmuch as they depend on wage labor (at least for portaging vegetables) and exhibit a (modified) capitalist economic logic. This latter attribute may be appreciated by substituting "the Buguias vegetable garden" for "the capitalist farm" in Wolf's (1966:2) classical definition of that economic form, yielding the accurate statement that "[the Buguias vegetable garden] is primarily a business enterprise, combining factors of production purchased in the market to obtain a profit by selling advantageously in a products market."

In short, Buguias vegetable growers can reasonably be classified as tribal cultivators, as peasants, as petty commodity producers, or as capitalist farmers. Each label points to important features of the community; none fully captures its present social and economic complexity. One must thus be careful in using and in interpreting such terms, for the mere act of labeling can create a fundamentally distorted picture.

Materialism and Idealism

The analysis presented above accords primacy neither to ideology nor to economics. The insistence on considering equally both religious belief and social structure springs from the conviction that both the ideal and the material have irreducible roles in human history. Few benefits are to be gained from jumping on either side of this hoary divide, a leap that recent social theory shows an increasing reluctance to make. For Marcus and Fischer (1986:85), "any materialist-idealist distinction between political economy and interpretive approaches is simply not supportable"; for Mann (1986: 19), the long-standing debate between the two has become a "ritual without hope and an end" (see also Errington 1989:296). As Stephen Toulmin (1990) so brilliantly shows, the current task is

precisely to rejoin such dichotomized oppositions sundered by Descartes and maintained in separation by over three hundred years of stultifying, modernist thought.

At present, most scholars interested in economic transformations on the margins of the world economy still rally to the banner of materialism. Here, at least, the heirs of Marx and Comte stand together. Even those who most insightfully probe the interactions of structures and ideas usually vow fidelity to the materialist cause, as no charge appears to be more deadly than that of idealism.^[4]

But I would argue that we would be better off not merely suspending this debate, but rejecting the notion that the two terms can be separated at all. Even when confining oneself strictly to economics one must confront the ineffable and purely ideal premises and trust upon which the entire modern financial edifice rests.

So too in Buguias: ideology and economy, faith and work, discourse and production—these are terms that cannot be disentangled and assigned relative priority. To expend our energies on such futile gestures is indeed to perpetuate a ritual without hope or an end.

Ritual Survival, Ecological Devastation

Of numerous attempts to explain the ecological dimension of ritual, Rappaport's (1967) materialist interpretation of swine sacrifice among the Maring of New Guinea probably is the best known. For Rappaport, the periodic kaiko ceremony, marked by mass immolation of hogs, is a mechanism for regulating the balance between human and animal species. This socioeconomic mode of "ritual regulation" is said to contrast sharply with that of the often ecologically destructive resource allocation mechanisms of the market (Rappaport 1979: 73, 148).

Such a model has no currency in contemporary Buguias.^[5] Although its economy has come to be regulated almost entirely by market forces in the past generation, its ritual regime has not significantly changed since prewar days. One would be hard-pressed to find any "adaptive" qualities in Buguias Paganism, which if anything has predisposed its believers to enmesh themselves in a commercial order that Rappaport deems maladaptive. While retaining

its ritual forms, Buguias has served the global economic system handsomely. The profits earned by a handful of local entrepreneurs pale next to those garnered annually by the chemical and seed companies. How well it has served its own environment is another matter.

Environmental Threats

Contemporary Buguias illustrates the diverse array of causal patterns that converge in any particular instance of environmental deterioration. Within the Philippines, the village occupies a peripheral locale, long neglected and at times actively victimized by the state. Given demographic expansion, poor growers have little option but to clear new gardens on steep slopes, accelerating soil loss in a pattern common to many tropical and subtropical uplands. To this extent, the community conforms to the expectations of political-ecological theory, which emphasizes the marginalization of impoverished growers as the primary cause of ecological despoliation in the Third World (Blaikie and Brookfield 1987). Buguias's most blatant degradation, however, is directly attributable to the elite, particularly to those individuals who use bulldozers to clear carelessly new gardens in the cloud-forest highlands.

To put it most succinctly, the specific forms of environmental degradation evident in Buguias derive from the actions of a stratified, demographically dynamic community with a highly entrepreneurial ethos, engaging in chemical-intensive commercial vegetable production in typhoon-prone tropical upland with a deeply weathered bedrock mantle. Truck crops simply cannot be grown profitably here without large chemical doses, owing to the vigor of insect pests and fungal growths in the moist and mild climate. Massive soil loss is similarly inevitable where root crops are grown in the wet season, when fields must be steeply sloped to allow drainage. And expansion into the eastern cloud forest, while affording entrepreneurs rich fields and cheap labor, not only aggravates local erosion and deforestation but also creates increasingly serious water shortages at lower elevations.

The Philippine state has contributed to the problem, but its actions have been contradictory and confused. Outright government hostility has occasionally threatened the livelihood of farmers, forc-

ing them at times to deforest their own lands. And even the state's well-intentioned environmental safeguards have proved ineffectual, as competing interests have successfully lobbied for contradictory policies. Overall, the state has influenced the vegetable economy most directly through road construction, the consequences of which have been decidedly ambiguous. Roads offer gardeners profound benefits, yet by permitting continual expansion they also further watershed denudation. And even their beneficial attributes are often the unintended byproducts of policies designed primarily to enhance central control; the major roads east of Buguias, for example, were constructed to help the Philippine military combat the New People's Army.

Similar mixed consequences accrue to local land investments. As Blaikie and Brookfield show (1987:9), cultivators can forestall—and sometimes even reverse—land degradation by building walls, terraces, and irrigation facilities. Such works are ubiquitous in Buguias, forming an essential foundation for the vegetable economy. Yet it is precisely the newest and largest of such investments, the megaterraces now being leveled by bulldozers, that cause the worst losses of soil.

The commercialization of agriculture in Buguias has greatly accelerated the pace of degradation, but we should by no means assume that the prewar environment was in any sense pristine. Over the course of several centuries, the Buguias people remolded their landscape to anthropogenic contours. Many Benguet districts were extensively deforested well before the colonial era, and the entire Agno Valley has long been cleared of a number of animal species. More importantly, prewar population growth in Buguias was generating increasing environmental strains, and while it is possible that adaptive solutions could have been devised, it is unlikely that the transition would have been entirely forgiving of the landscape.

In any case, the question is now moot; the Buguias people will not, and cannot, return to subsistence cropping. Nor can they revive old land-management techniques to make their commercial farming more sustainable; the current crop complex lies entirely outside the realm of traditional horticultural methods. More feasible would be the adoption of new, less environmentally taxing forms of commercial agriculture, such as some have suggested might be found in citrus or other fruit crops. Arboriculture would

demand considerable local restructuring, as well as state (and international) assistance, but it may yet prove a way out of the dilemma.

Prospects

As distressing as forest loss, soil erosion, biocide poisoning, and wildlife extinctions are, Buguias's agricultural system is in no danger of immediate collapse. To pronounce commercial farming hopelessly unsustainable here would be premature; the present system could conceivably limp along for years, as farmers devise makeshift solutions for each new ecological impasse. But we must wonder whether they will manage to sustain their living standards while doing so, and how much trauma their lands will suffer as a result.

For the nonce, at least, it would be difficult to substantiate the view that vegetable farmers are worse off for having abandoned subsistence cultivation. Successful engagement in a commercial economy has given Benguet's highlanders a degree of power vis-à-vis the Philippine government uncommon in small-scale indigenous societies, and the Buguias people themselves voice overwhelming approval of the changes they have undergone since the war. But the Benguet vegetable industry confronts an imperiled future. Already the economy is deteriorating, and absent an unforseen miracle, it will continue to do so for some time. Encouraged by their belief in the manipulability of fate to continue pushing back the vegetable frontier, the people of Buguias are indeed wagering the land against high odds.

As a counterexample to received wisdom in much of contemporary ethnography and development studies, the story of Buguias is instructive. But the particularity of the place and time—the uniqueness of Buguias's historical geography—cannot be overemphasized. It is essential to the argument presented throughout this work, as to the theoretical framework in which it has been couched, that generalized conclusions not be extrapolated from this one case. Moreover, the situation described is transitory, a fleeting moment in a historical process that defies prognostication. Schumpeter (1942) insisted that destructiveness was at the heart of capitalism's creativity. Destruction is amply evident in Buguias; whether the process could ultimately prove creative is a question for later years.