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.