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.