January 16th, 2008
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01.16.08Land Scam in Baguio?
Ramon Tulfo is not my kind of columnist but he does have interesting “exposes” sometimes. In his December 22, 2007 column he writes about a Cordillera official who is reportedly selling Baguio ancestral lands.
Hah! If Tulfo’s story is true, we are totally clueless as to who this official is but maybe some of you know.
From Ramon Tulfo’s On Target:
During the time of President Marcos, a judge of the defunct Court of First Instance approved the titling of Burnham Park in Baguio City to a private person.
Up to now, that kind of scam is going on in Baguio City.
There is reportedly a racket in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources where ancestral lands of native tribes are auctioned off illegally.
The Court of Appeals recently nullified land auctions conducted by the DENR in Baguio, calling them scams.
An official of the Cordillera Autonomous Region, a professed close friend of a former Cabinet secretary, is reportedly selling ancestral lands of Igorot tribesmen in the City of Pines.
Secretary Lito Atienza, please look into this matter!
SOMEWHAT RELATED POST: The Biggest Landgrabber of Them All
INFO SOURCE: Inquirer.
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01.16.08War Allies
From Time Magazine/August 13, 1945
In the steep Caraballo Mountains of northern Luzon, a battalion of the 127th Infantry Regiment last week came upon a vast road block—a chasm blasted by retreating Japs.
A battalion commander, Lieut. Colonel Powell A. Fraser, had his jeeps dismantled, called for native bearers. Scores of volunteers—sturdy, brown-bodied Igorot women —eagerly picked up wheels, engines and other parts, carried them along paths which at one point soared 2,000 feet above the road. On the other side of the chasm the jeeps were reassembled, and Fraser’s men sped after the Japs. The Igorot women stayed behind to help the engineers rebuild the road.
Related Posts:
It Was Also a Women’s War
Those Gallant Igorots -
01.16.08Love in the Age of Emails
Here’s a story we found at the San Francisco Chronicle. It is a good and interesting read.
Averil Pooten Watan and Mark Watan: The pull of ancestors
By Louise Rafkin/San Francisco ChronicleIn 1995 they were teenagers. Mark Watan, 18 and a native of San Francisco, and Averil Pooten, 16, a Londoner, were youth delegates to a world conference for Igorots in Los Angeles. An indigenous tribal people from the mountains of the Philippines, Igorots remained independent in the face of the Spanish colonization and, as a result, had a unique history. Both Averil and Mark, second-generation Igorots, hailed from families who convened every few years to preserve their rare cultural and spiritual traditions.
The world of second-generation Igorot expats was small. Fewer than 20 families had settled in England and not many more than that in California - and both thought of those in their local populations as siblings, or cousins. So finding each other, with a shared passion for ancestry but without sticky family ties, well, that was interesting! Averil found Mark hilarious and loud, yet sweet. As for Mark, Averil was spunky and gorgeous. At the close of the conference, Mark scrawled out his e-mail address.
Continue Reading…
