Kalinga people of the Philippines
“Kalinga” comes from the common noun kalinga, which means “enemy,” “fighter,” or “headhunter” in the Ibanag and Gaddang languages.
“Kalinga” comes from the common noun “kalinga,” which in the Ibanag and Gaddang languages means “enemy,” “fighter,” or “headhunter.” People from Cagayan and Isabela thought of the Kalinga as enemies because they attacked Ibanag and Gaddang land to take heads. So, the name is wrong because it has nothing to do with geography or ethnicity. Still, this name has become the official name for the people, and even the natives themselves use it.
Depending on how you count them, Kalinga has a different number of cultural groups. Still, people who know about Kalinga culture agree that there are more than 30 of these groups. Northern Kalinga culture groups include Banao, Buaya, Dao-angan, Gubang, Mabaca, Poswoy, Salogsog, Ammacian, Ballayangon, Limos, Pinukpuk, Wagud, Allay / Kalakkad, Biga, Gamonang, Gobgob, Guilayon, Nanong, and Tobog. The Dakalan, Gaang, Lubo, Majukayong, Mangali, and Taloktok groups live in the eastern part of Kalinga. In southern Kalinga are the Bangad, Basao, Butbut, Sumadel, Tongrayan, Tulgao, Lubuagan, Mabungtot, Tanglag, Uma, Ablog, Balatoc, Balinciagao, Cagaluan, Colayo, Dalupa, Dangtalan, Guina-ang, and Magsilay-Bulen. Other culture groups are Aciga, Colminga, Dallak, Dugpa (Limos-Guilayon), Magaogao, Malagnat, Malbong, Minanga, Pangol / Bawac-Pangol, and the Kalakkad, also called Gaddang. Many Kalinga also call themselves “Upper Kalinga,” which includes the more mountainous towns of Balbalan, Lubuagan, Pasil, Tanudan, and Tinglayan, or “Lower Kalinga,” which includes Pinukpuk, Rizal, and Tabuk.
The Kalinga used to live in the southern half of what is now the province of Kalinga-Apayao. Republic Act 7878, which was passed on February 14, 1995, made Kalinga and Apayao into separate provinces. Kalinga is one of the six provinces in the Cordillera Administrative Region. The Cagayan Valley is to the east, Abra is to the west, and Mountain Province is to the south. It is made up of 311 970 hectares of land, and Tabuk City is its capital.
The weather in the province varies, with temperatures between 17 and 22 °C. From January to April, the upper western half of Kalinga is dry, and from May to September, it rains. The warmest months are March and April. The eastern half of Kalinga has a dry season for three months, with the hottest months being May and June. The rest of the year, it rains.
The province is rough and mountainous, and the Chico River, which comes from Mount Data and flows into the Cagayan River, cuts through the middle of it. Chico River is fed by several streams: Tinglayan in the south, Pasil in the middle, and Mabaka and Saltan in the north. The Kalinga also has a number of small lakes. In Tabuk and Rizal, there are large plateaus and floodplains.
Most of the province is open grassland that can be used for grazing, but the higher elevations in the west are covered with forests of rich pine trees. The most rice is grown in the flat areas of Rizal and Tabuk. Rice is also grown on irrigated and rain-fed terraces in other parts of the province, but not as much.
As of 2010, there were 201,613 people living in the province of Kalinga. Of those, 65.8% said they were Kalinga. The rest were Ilokano (18%), Bago (2.4%), Bontok (2.9%), Applai (2.2%), Kankanaey (2%), and Tagalog (1.1%). Several groups of Kalinga use distinct dialects or languages, namely, Lubuagan, Butbut, Mabaka, Limos, Majukayang, Tinglayan, and Tanudan. All over the province, people speak Ilokano.
Kalinga History
People think that the Kalinga and other Cordillera people came from southeast or eastern Asia in separate groups. The first people to move to northern Luzon may have shared a culture, but as the economy, water supply, population density, and ecology changed, the mountain people of northern Luzon started to have different cultures. This led to the different ethnolinguistic groups of Ibaloy, Bontok, Ifugao, Kalinga, and Sagada.
The first mountain people may have lived off of root crops until they learned to do swidden farming, then wet rice farming, and finally irrigated terraced farming. But because it is hard to tell how old the rice terraces are, it is hard to know exactly how long these people have lived in their mountain homes.
Chinese plates, jars, brass gongs, and agate beads were some of the valuable heirlooms that were passed down from one generation to the next. They are good signs that there was a lot of trade between Chinese traders and the Kalinga and between lowlanders and the Kalinga before the Spanish arrived. But it seems that this kind of trade stopped when the Spaniards came. The Spanish tried to subjugate and control the mountain peoples for the following reasons: to take advantage of the rich gold deposits in northern Luzon; to protect or expand the territory they had already taken; to convert the “pagans” to Christianity; and to find new and interesting products. During the three centuries of Spanish colonial rule, the people of the Cordillera fought against Spanish control and were successful.
The main reason the Spanish went into Igorot land was to get gold. A Spanish historian named Antonio de Morga wrote in 1607 that the Ilocano refined and sold the gold that the mountain people had mined. When Spain fought the Thirty Years’ War against the Protestants and the Dutch in 1618, King Philip III’s government needed gold badly. The king told Governor-General Alonzo Fajardo of the Philippines to make friends with the Igorot so that the Spanish could use their gold mines. In 1620, the Dominicans and the Jesuits said that God told them to go on military expeditions. But both of these and the search for gold failed. The Igorot gold mines were not taken over by the Spaniards for another 200 years.
The area around Kalinga stayed away from Christianity and Western Europe, so people from the lowlands of Cagayan Valley, Abra, and Ilocos who fought against Spanish rule moved there. The Dominicans who worked along the lower Chico River on the eastern side of the Cagayan Valley tried to convert the Kalinga to Christianity first. However, there was no evidence that the Spaniards ever got closer to the mountain peoples than through Santa Cruz and Tuga. When the Christians of Cagayan Valley rebelled in 1718, it was a big setback for the Spaniards. People from the missions went to the mountains to get away from trouble. After the revolt, the Spaniards left Tuao, Tuga, and Santa Cruz, and the missionary program as a whole went downhill.
In the second half of the 19th century, the Spanish government set up political-military areas called comandancias. These areas covered the mountains of northern Luzon. Their goal was to stop tribal uprisings and protect Christianized lowland areas that were close to dangerous areas. In 1859, when Isabela province was made, the Comandancia of Saltan was in charge of the Kalinga. In 1889, Kalinga was turned over to the Comandancia of Itaves in the province of Cagayan. But the Spanish were not able to control the Kalinga, even though they set up who knows how many military posts on Kalinga land.
People in northern Kalinga were more influenced by Spain than people in southern Kalinga. Before the American period, the main way into the mountainous interior was from the north. During that time, trails and roads were built from the south. So, trade and Spanish activities in the mid-1850s led to northern Kalinga becoming more like the rest of the world.
Meanwhile, neither the Spaniards nor the Christians who lived in the lowlands had any effect on the southern Kalinga, Bontok, and Ifugao. So, the culture of the southern Kalinga became like that of the Ifugao and Bontok, who live to the south of it. The Ifugao and Bontok may have taught the southern part of Kalinga how to grow rice with water and how to do other things in society.
During the time Spain was in charge, the local government system with elected officials in charge was not used. The most important thing that the Spanish did in the late 19th century was to help trade and make the Ilocano, Tinguian, and Kalinga get along better with each other. This was made easier by the trails that had already been made to keep up military posts. Old hostilities between regions died down, which led to peace pacts and marriages between these groups.
During the Revolution of 1896, the mountain people attacked the Spanish garrisons on their own. At first, they helped the Katipunero because both the lowlanders and the highlanders were mistreated by the colonizers. Even though a civil government was set up in the mountainous areas, the revolutionary government didn’t pay much attention to the highlands because it was focused on building a strong and effective government in the lowlands. Soon, the people who lived in the mountains saw that the revolutionary troops stationed in the main centers didn’t act any differently than the Spanish forces. During the time of the revolution, social and economic conditions also got worse. Not taking care of roads and trails stopped trade. Headhunting started up again, the mountain tribes started fighting among themselves, and farming stopped. As the Catholic missions left, the people who had become Christians went back to their old ways of worship.
During the Philippine-American War from 1899 to 1902, General Emilio Aguinaldo made Lubuagan the capital of the Philippine Republic for 72 days, from March 6 to May 17, 1900. But when the Americans started getting closer, he had to leave the camp. He got away from Tabuk, went to Cagayan, and then to Isabela. A year later, he was caught there.
The mountain people were happy when the Americans, who were more subtle in their colonial rule, let them keep their tribal way of life and government. In 1900, US President William McKinley told the Philippine Commission that the Americans had set up a separate form of government for the northern Luzon mountain area. Dean C. Worcester was in charge of all non-Christian tribes in the Philippines except for the Muslims. He was the Secretary of Interior for the Philippines. In 1901, the task of assimilating the mountain people was given to the Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes, which was part of the Philippine Commission. In 1905, this bureau became part of the education bureau. The colonial government’s first job was to set up law and order and build roads and trails. For example, when a road was built to Baguio in 1905, it let people from the lowlands move into the land of the mountain people.
In 1912, the Philippine Commission made the old Mountain Province, which was made up of seven sub-provinces based on ethnicity: Amburayan, Apayao, Benguet, Bontoc, Ifugao, Kalinga, and Lepanto. In the 1920s, parts of Amburayan, Lepanto, and Benguet were added to Ilocos Sur and La Union, and other parts were added to Bontoc. So, this change in land borders led to the creation of the five sub-provinces of Benguet, Bontoc, Ifugao, Kalinga, and Apayao. The governor ran the Mountain Province, and each sub-province was run by a lieutenant governor.
From 1908 to 1915, Lieutenant Governor Walter F. Hale, who the Kalinga called “Sapao,” made sure that the Americans were in charge in Kalinga. Even though many people didn’t like how he ruled, he was credited with making the Kalinga peaceful. Under his leadership, there were fewer cases of headhunting in the area, and the indigenous peace-pact system, or bodong, was strengthened.
During the second decade of American colonization, education, health, and cleanliness became more important. The main goal of education policy in colonial times was to teach English. For the mountain peoples in particular, the Bureau of Education set another goal: to give them vocational training to meet their unique needs. Medicines and vaccinations were used to keep people healthy. Hygiene was taken up by the schools. In Kiangan (Ifugao), Bontoc, and Lubuagan, hospitals were set up (Kalinga). In their work to teach and convert, American schoolteachers and missionaries tried to get rid of the traditional Kalinga belief that sickness was caused by bad spirits. The Roman Catholic Church, the American Episcopalian (Protestant) Church, and the United Brethren were the first missionaries to work in the Mountain Province (Protestant).
During the Japanese Occupation, the mountain tribes stayed loyal to the Americans. The Kalinga fought as guerrillas and gave Americans a place to stay. The work of missionaries and teachers stopped.
When the Philippines got their independence on July 4, 1946, there were not many changes in the Mountain Province. The lack of care for Kalinga was shown by how poorly roads and trails were kept up and how few were being built.
Then, in June 1966, Republic Act 4695 got rid of the old Mountain Province. The new provinces of Benguet, Ifugao, and Kalinga-Apayao were also made by the act.
The fight against the Chico River Basin Development Project, a project of the Marcos government that was paid for by the World Bank, was an important turning point in Kalinga’s recent history. On May 13, 1975, 150 papangat (peacemakers) from Kalinga and Bontoc came together to form the Bodong Federation Inc. They did this to stop the building of four hydroelectric dams that would flood their villages and rice fields. For the first time, the Kalinga and Bontok came together as one tribe and said they were ready to defend their ancestral land through armed resistance. They sent petitions and delegations to Malacaan, but President Marcos said their pleas were too emotional and told them to make sacrifices for the country’s progress. Then, Marcos sent his army to the area.
The Kalinga put up barriers to keep construction equipment and materials from getting in. While the men fought the soldiers at the dam site, the women tore down the soldiers’ tents. In a protest march, 300 men and women carried tents, cots, kerosene lamps, shovels, and all the construction tools they could carry to the provincial military headquarters in the town center. They walked from late afternoon until early the next morning. In one scene, the women laid down in the road to stop the delivery trucks, and in another, they bared their breasts to stop the soldiers.
After Lieutenant Leodegario Adalem of the 44th Infantry Battalion killed Butbut tribal chief Macli-ing Dulag on April 24, 1980, the growing number of military operations in the area became a national and international issue. At the same time, they shot at Pedro Dungoc’s house and set it on fire. Pedro was Macli-ing Dulag’s neighbor and spokesman. He had also written the pagta (law) for the bodong, which brought the Cordillera elders together against the dam. Dungoc got away and joined the New People’s Army, where he stayed until his death in 1985.
The killing of Macli-ing Dulag brought the people of the north closer together. On February 13 and 14, 1982, there was another bodong with the leaders of Mountain Province, Kalinga-Apayao, Abra, and Ilocos Sur. In November 1983, Adalem was given a 14-year prison sentence, but militarization did not stop. When the World Bank pulled out of the project in the early 1980s, the popular resistance of the Kalinga and other Cordillera people worked.
President Corazon C. Aquino signed Executive Order 220 on July 15, 1987. This created what is now called the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR), which is made up of six provinces. Before this, Ifugao and the sub-provinces of Kalinga and Apayao were in Region II, while Abra, the City of Baguio, Benguet, and Mountain Province were in Region I.