January 2008
-
01.18.08Update on Zennia Aguilan
Mom rues loss of OFW daughter to insurgent attack in Kabul
By Frank Cimatu/InquirerHerminia’s sweet little girl is coming home but it is not the homecoming she wanted for her daughter. Zennia Aguilan, 31, a physical therapist, was killed with five other people on Monday when armed men stormed the Serena Hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Her 60-year-old mother, Herminia Aguilan, was not sure when her body would be brought home. “She’s short and very sweet,” said Herminia, a retired teacher at Saint Mary’s School in the tourist town of Sagada in Mt. Province.
“She called regularly and the last time was when she greeted me ‘Happy New Year,’” she said by telephone.
Zennia, the fifth of seven children, was still small when her father died.
Her only sister is the eldest and a nurse in the United States so Zennia was her mother’s little helper, said her aunt, Mary Padilan.
“She’s very loving especially with kids,” said her cousin Shirley Lebeng. “Zennia wanted to help her family and I don’t think she had a boyfriend. She always gave us gifts,” Lebeng said.
“My daughter is very thoughtful,” Herminia said.
Although originally from Agawa village in neighboring Besao town in Mt. Province, Zennia and her siblings had to stay in Sagada to be with their mother. Continue Reading…
-
01.17.08Igorot Achiever: Nick Domalsin
Thanks to our tipster from Canada who wrote us about the achievements of Nick Domalsin. Here’s what he said:
I would like to contribute something to the article First Igorots to achieve…… in BodyBuilder category. The first Mr. Philippines is Nick Domalsin Sr. in 1962 and he is from Barlig Mt.Province. He founded the Baguio Health Club and the older Ayochok was his student & kabagian also from Barlig.
With that tip, we did some research on Nick Domalsin. Thankfully, we found photos and more information about him which you can see after the jump.
Continue Reading… -
01.17.08iSagada Killed in Afghanistan
Our condolences to the family of Zennia Aguilan especially to Ma’am Herminia. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.
***
From GmaNews.TV: Relatives and friends describe 31-year-old Zennia P. Aguilan as daring, adventurous, kind-hearted, and bright. With this attitude, Zennia left her hometown in Sagada, Mountain Province after completing a course on physical therapy in 2004 to work in Taiwan.Two years later, she moved to Dubai, then to Afghanistan in July last year.
Little did she know that her adventure in Kabul would end her life. Zennia passed away on Tuesday after sustaining serious injuries from explosions when suicide bombers attacked Monday night the only five-star Serena Hotel in the Afghan capital where she worked as a spa supervisor.
Wire reports said at least eight other persons died in the attack.
Shirley Lebeng, Zennia’s cousin residing in Baguio City, described her as modest and a very bright child since her elementary days at the Anglican-run St. Mary’s School in Sagada. “She was good and kind-hearted.”
Lebeng said Zennia’s employer, a European who owns Spa Resources International at the Serena Hotel, telephoned the OFW’s mother and assured her of the repatriation of Zennia’s remains as soon as possible.
Herminia Aguilan, Zennia’s mother, is a retired school teacher in Sagada. She appealed to authorities to help bring her body home soon.
Continue Reading… -
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.
-
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… -
01.10.08Are You a Limahong Descendant?
Legend has it that Limahong, the Chinese pirate who raided Manila back in the 1500s, escaped to the Cordilleras when Spanish/Filipino soldiers regrouped to kick his ass out of the capital.According to the legend, Limahong and his band of pirates sought refuge in the Cordilleras and married the local women. This supposedly explains why a lot of Igorots have some East Asian features. See above photos for instance.
It would be cool to have a pirate for a forefather but the legend is, apparently, only a legend. From the writings of Francisco Antolin in 1789 (translated by William Henry Scott):
1574: At the end of this year the famous pirate Limahon came with many sampans and armed Chinese to take Manila which he was unable to do due to the resistance of the Spaniards. He had to retreat and seek refuge in Pangasinan, and they also drove him from there.
The histories of Father Colin, Father Gaspar, and the Franciscans, refer to this whole affair with considerable detail, and none of them says that any of these Chinese took refuge farther inland in the mountains of the Igorots, but rather that those who survived at liberty took to sea in their sampans, besides some 52 captives and prisoners in the fort in Pangasinan, who returned to China from Manila with the Chinese merchants.
An early account by Father Chirino printed in Rome in 1604 also recounts this event, and says that after the few Spaniards of Manila had vanquished the enemy Limahon, who had brought more than a thousand warriors with him, they made him retreat to Pangasinan, and even from there he was forced to flee from us with light boats which they carried to the sea on their shoulders, leaving the heavier ones in the river and some spoils in their forts and camps, which our forces took.
Thus there is no basis in the early histories for the idea that the Igorots are descended from these Chinese of the pirate Limahon.
So I guess that settles it. But, then again, one can argue that just because no Spanish writer “says that any of these Chinese took refuge farther inland in the mountains of the Igorots” does not mean that it didn’t happen. After all, school history books don’t mention that Gabriela Silang is part Tingguian but this doesn’t mean that she is not. And it’s not like a pirate running away from authorities would shout, “Hey, I’m going to hide in the Cordilleras.”
Anyways, what we find most interesting in Antolin’s writing is the fact that, apparently, questions regarding the Igorot-Chinese link is not a recent “modern day” issue (Read this blog for instance) but dates back to as early as the 1700s.
INFO SOURCE: Nanzan/PDF File. Click here for a non-PDF version. PHOTO CREDITS: Dialoguebetweennations for Vicky’s photo. Girlwithagun for the boy’s picture.
