Introduction
The Buguias people remade their landscape only through great effort. Their labors were of necessity socially organized; each person's work was determined, in large part, by his or her place within the community.
As in most human groups, individuals had widely varying abilities to select their own tasks and to command the labor of others. Such power was generally determined by age, gender, and family position for individual ability and personality, but more importantly, by the control of productive resources.
The Commoners,which cultivated their own dry fields and often labored together in cooperative projects. While overtly independent, most remained in chronic debt to their wealthier relatives and neighbors
· Commoner Men cared for, but rarely owned, livestock.
· Commoner Women, labored long hours in their uma fields. As was true in all classes, tasks were gender-segregated
· Commoner Men and Women inhabited discrete economic spheres.
The elite ’Baknang class’’, commanded others to work on their own sometimes grandiose agricultural projects.
The Servants and Slaves, remained ever at the beck of the rich, who could also entice commoners to work for them with wages
The Itinerants from less prosperous Cordilleran communities; Sometimes Immigrant
Power relations reflected back on the landscape of prewar Buguias.
Buguias was increasingly subdivided into private and semiprivate plots. This was no smooth progression, however, as three conflicting tenure systems-one indigenous, one American-imposed, and the third of mixed provenance—formed separate arenas of contention.
The Three systemsevinced some movement toward individualized tenure, both reflecting and furthering elite power; society of fluid classes, not lithified estates.
A common-born person could rise to wealth, while highborn scions frequently fell. Moreover, class divisions were tempered by interclass genealogical and marital links. Cross-class family ties formed a potential vehicle for upward movement.
Each class was marked by its own mobility patterns, closely tied to inheritance customs and redistributive obligations.
Moreover, The exercise of power in local politics, the legitimation of class through ritual, and the creation of wealth in trade all contributed in essential ways to the Buguias social formation
The Commoners
Animal Sharing
· Commoners typically received their animals on loan, as infants or yearlings, from the village elite, with the understanding that any offspring would be shared
· Commoners would usually sell their own shares for cash, sometimes to their own patrons—who might immediately "lend" them back again.
· Pastol agreements typically favored the lender, since he could claim the first offspring
· Buguias few blacksmiths did little but work metal, and even expert basket weavers might easily ignore animal husbandry
Animal lending Arrangements.
1. When a female piglet was transferred, the caretaker would usually keep the entire first brood, and two of every three in subsequent litter.
2. If the loan piglet were a mature sow, the owner could usually take the choice one of every three piglets.
3. Few commoner women could have two or three brood sows; occasionally they owned one outright, but more commonly they "leased" all.
4. Caretakers could not easily acquire breeding stock, for their own shares were typically devoted to rituals or sold for cash.
5. Cattle and water-buffalo lending was more prestigious though not as ubiquitous as hog lending.
Death of The Animal
· The Baknang would be expected to give a feast and freely distribute his windfall meat.
· The Baknang could claim all offspring, although many often simply let their credits accumulate through subsequent breeding rounds
Labor Organization and Gender
Buguias women had considerable social standing and authority compared to women in many parts of the world, but men nevertheless held greater political and religious power, and it was they who ultimately ruled prewar Buguias.
The few men who mastered female farming skills were teased but grudgingly admired, as were those women who reached proficiency in such male tasks as blade sharpening
Other seasonal tasks, such as rice transplanting, fell strictly to women, and still others, such as rice harvesting, were shared by members of both sexes.
Women often joined their husbands in digging puwals, usually accomplished in labor-exchange ogbo groups. Ogbo labor debts were strictly accounted, and a woman's contribution was valued the same as a man.
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| Working Roles
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| Women | · Women toiled primarily in the dry fields. They often would return home, heavily laden with sweet potatoes, only when dark fell. Also, task to Work in the kitchens and piggeries afterwards · Women usually labored in their fields alone, some of their arduous tasks could be lightened through cooperative labor exchange (ogbo) · Women's work was spatially concentrated and temporally demanding. · If a woman, was abandoned by her wastrel spouse, had to place her mischievous children in a deep hole so she could attend to her crops. · Women simply could not abandon their fields for more than a few days at a time. |
| Men | · Commoner men worked far fewer hours than did women · Adult males undertook those tasks requiring travel outside the community. · Spatially dispersed and much less consuming. · The male commoner's only routine job was cattle oversight; the conscientious pastol would once or twice daily determine the whereabouts of his stock · Men often tended small children (feeding their babies premasticated sweet potatoes). · Men generally cultivated the family dry field only if their wives were ill or recovering from childbirth. · Men usually handled the heavier burdens: clearing new umas, weeding pastures, mending and building fences and trails, cleaning canals, constructing and rebuilding terrace walls. · Few select older men, however, found full employment as ritual specialists. |
The Elite and their Servants
The Baknangs
The animal-owning baknang class was internally stratified
1. The smallest "baknang of pigs" might have a dozen animals let out to neighbors and relatives.
2. The richest could own hundreds of cattle, hogs, water buffalo, and horses. But these very wealthy Baknang were few; in the early American period,
One of the Baknangs that lived in Buguias, Central was Danggol, although by the later colonial period this number had doubled. To include Berto Cubangay; ’Danggols son’’ and Paran, an immigrant from a village to the east.
Most Baknang Women were little removed from the economic milieu of their poorer relatives; few indeed escaped the drudgery of the uma.
The Roles of Elite Men are strictly with managerial and financial work: overseeing livestock, supervising rice-field construction and pasture maintenance, and lending money and conducting trade.
Also, The Elite Men was a community leader. These men essentially governed Buguias both in the indigenous and the American-sponsored systems, organized its religious practices, and headed its traditional courts
Unlike their poorer relatives, they seldom directly engaged with the land; rather, they directed others—their servants, assistants, contract workers, and livestock caretakers.
Slaves, Servants, Itinerants, and Clients
In the early years of the century, entire families living to the east of Buguias were often forced by brigands (robbers) to flee their homes, and many sought the protection of powerful families in Buguias. In return, they would provide labor services for a number of years.
The servile classencompassed a varied group. Some individuals voluntarily tied themselves to wealthy patrons.
Elderly widows and never-married women, hard pressed to live alone, could usually enter a Baknang household in exchange for hog tending, fire keeping, and dry-field cultivation.
The Elite man could sometimes protect another person in accused of a crime, and receive labor in exchange.
A note example, was Kabading an immigrant Kalanguya; was inconclusively tried, by ordeal, for witchcraft. Reach out Paran (Baknang) for protecting him from further hazing. On the Contrary, Kabading built five rice terraces, four of which became the property of his benefactor.
Immigration of Slaves
Wealthy traders purchased slaves with animals, blankets, or cash from the Ifugao. On the Contrary, Slaves remained bound for life in Buguias, but they were not traded; and their positions differed little from those of the other servants. Their owners sometimes encouraged them to marry local commoners, and their children did not automatically remain in bondage.
The Elite Men hire by contract itinerant workers, whom usually Northern Kankana-ey or Kalanguya men. But Northern Kankana-ey never stayed long, while Kalanguya, culturally and genealogically tied to the Buguias people; not uncommonly married and remained.
Servile married couples and elderly women usually lived in small huts near the main residence, while unmarried male retainers and itinerant workers are more often lodged in crude "bunkhouses."
The elite couplesalways provided patronage for their workers, paying for their funerals and sometimes their weddings, and in general assuring their places within the community.
Social Mobility
Class and Family
Social classes in prewar Buguias interdigitated along kinship lines. All baknangs had near relatives of the commoner class, and all commoners were tied not too distantly to elite families. Virtually the entire community traced its ancestry to the Kalanguya hunter Lumiaen, who arrived in Buguias in the early nineteenth century.
Most elite families stemmed from Basilio, Lumiaen's wealthy son, while most commoners traced their lineage to Siklungan, his poorer offspring. But since kinship was reckoned cognatically, lines crossed and complex relationships linked most families. The generally poor immigrants were excluded from the Buguias family tree, but they could be grafted to it through marriage.
Many individuals married across class lines; since customary law proscribed unions even between second cousins, the pool of potential mates was limited. Powerful families, in attempting to concentrate their wealth, sometimes allowed cousins to marry, or, alternatively, selected for their children elite spouses from other villages.
Moreover, poor individuals could rise, whereas children of the rich regularly fell.
Inheritance and Downward Mobility
Elite couples periodically diminished their wealth through ritual extravagance, and their fortunes could be entirely consumed at their own funerals. A month-long wake of a true baknang could consume an entire herd. Rice terraces generally devolved as inheritance, but inauspicious funeral auguries might call for their sale to cover additional animal sacrifices.
Family heirlooms, especially Chinese vases, also passed to the succeeding generation, but these only displayed potential status. Furthermore, since all children of the large elite families would inherit a share, no one child ever received adequate wealth to maintain class position. Even the sons of the topmost couples had to earn elite status—although they would receive substantial succor all along the way.
Shares of Wealth
· The wealthier brother (or, occasionally, brother-in-law) could sometimes exploit his siblings' distress and acquire their properties.
· The eldest sibling, having had a longer period in which to accumulate wealth.
· The youngest usually secured the largest share of the family bequest; inheritance accords could be contentious
· The ailing parents might seek to establish concord before they died.
Community's elders often had to negotiate, and enforce, settlements. The elders would weigh many considerations, including the financial assistance the parents had previously given to each child, as well as the help each heir had provided the parents. Education counted as a parental gift, depriving some of the earliest graduates of any property legacies.
Occasionally a baknang line would sink entirely to commoner status
Upward Movement
Marrying the daughter of a Baknang provided a good business en-trée, but the wedding costs, borne by the male party, were restrictive. Still, a young man recognized by his prospective father-in-law as outstandingly clever and industrious might find wedding loans readily forthcoming. Nor was it absolutely impossible for one to prosper through personal efforts in animal husbandry.
One man named Calayon, for example, climbed from poverty to mid-level baknang status, although it took him an entire lifetime. Calayon first trafficked in chickens, moved on to hogs, and finally graduated to cattle leasing.
Slaves, remained impoverished. Although their children were not necessarily bound, most did remain servile; a good marriage provided their best route to independence. Today, their descendants still constitute the poorest segment of the community.
Land Tenure
Individuals exerted control over different parcels of land, and power relations on the landscape. Most land remained under communal tenure, but elite men were increasingly privatizing individual parcels. Privatization had indigenous roots, but flourished under an American land policy that generated several conflicting tenure systems. The contradictions among them would cause considerable strife, but not until the postwar period.
Indigenous Tenure
Under indigenous tenure, all community members theoretically had unrestricted access to the forests and grasslands surrounding the village, although de facto land use even here proved unequal.
Open lands used primarily as pastures were divided into semi-discrete sections by natural and artificial barriers. Each caretaker usually grazed his cattle in pastures near his home, although the animals often could wander relatively freely toward the higher slopes.
Cultivators gained the privilege of permanent cultivation by investing in permanent improvements, such as stone walls. Since land remained relatively plentiful throughout the prewar period, however, few conflicts erupted.
In the middle years of American rule, some Buguias cattle lords adopted the techniques of land improvement to lay claim to private pastures.
· House lots also formed de facto private property since occupation was not easily disputed
· Door-yard produce, for instance, was considered free to all, and children regularly exercised the privilege
· In rare cases Poor couples could even be forced out of their homes by individuals with competing ownership claims.
· Rice terraces were the most completely privatized element within the indigenous land tenure system; only they could be inherited, bought, sold, and mortgaged.
· The land-tenure system thus reflected and reinforced distinctions of social power.
The American Intervention
The first American surveying team arrived in Buguias in 1903, determined to isolate private land from the "public domain’’
The surveyors sought out property owners, hoping to award them with genuine titles. But American conceptions of land tenure clashed with the indigenous system, and the officials sent to carry out the work lacked the dedication that would have been necessary for success.
The surveyors, received little help from the mistrustful residents. Most Baknangs, suspicious of the surveyors' intentions, put forward dummy owners; one such newly propertied man was a poor, blind, and completely pliant priest.
American land policy was revised in the 1930s
A new cadastral survey, less fraudulent than the earlier one, measured only cultivated plots and awarded titles to the actual cultivators.
· Municipal Tax declaration arrangement were formed
· The elite welcomed the tax-declaration system
· The poor resented it during this period, as they could scarcely afford the requisite taxes.
· Considerable pasturage and even some forest stands were made quasi private through tax declarations
· Indigenous communal usufruct rights were not thereby cancelled, but the preexisting tendency toward land privatization was strengthened.
Declarations of rights to a parcel- an individual had simply to declare ownership annually and pay a small municipal tax. Such property boundaries were loosely fixed through descriptions of natural features.
Three incompatible land-tenure systems
1. Insular Government in Manila,
2. American-recognized municipality
3. Body of customary law.
Individual rights to land and its products varied both within and among each of these disparate systems. The contradictions did not surface until the postwar period, but the inhabitants of Buguias in the later twentieth century are vexed by the land-tenure policies of the American bureaucracy
Land Tenure and Class
The Baknang household, with its attendant workers, formed a larger production unit than did the commoner's nuclear family, allowing the wealthy couple to cultivate extensive dry fields and door-yard gardens.
· Elite families has exclusive rights to two further productive sectors: private pastures and pond fields.
· A true Baknang couple would always serve their guests dried meat and alcohol.
· Elite monopolized the best pastures and converted the prime agricultural sites into private rice fields, a substantial portion of the fruits of these lands flowed back to the people of Buguias at community feasts.
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