Swallows and sacred lakes
Arnesto Aguilar has two tattoos on his arms: ‘Faith, I was fooled’, which he had done, he explains, ‘when my first love left me for another man’, and ‘Kid Aguilar’ from his time as a boxer. The latter has a particular poignancy, for even now, at 72, he has risen to the fight and outwitted his brother in a political struggle.
The swallows’ nests – the key ingredient in highly prized Cantonese bird’s nest soup – stacked nearby in an ice cooler are proof of his triumph. But something is amiss. He has more than a kilogram of nests, worth £3,000 – the fruits of just a month’s labour – and he makes even more money from the 75 pesos (£1) levied on each tourist who lands on his beach. Yet his family lives miserably, in a small, overcrowded wooden cottage.
Contradictions such as these are apparent wherever I go on Coron Island, in the southern Philippines. Take Ernesto, for example, a community leader who embodies some bewildering juxtapositions: a one-time boxer, minister in the local Protestant church, businessman and landowner, elder by culture and political appointee by election. All land is supposedly communal on the island, but Ernesto talks about ‘owning’ Banul Beach and the nearby caves, with their large colonies of swiftlets.
Enchanting island
I have come to Coron to see how the Tagbanua – the indigenous people of the Calamian archipelago – are faring seven years after being granted self-rule. There are seven subgroups of Tagbanua in the 163 islands that constitute the Calamian group, and all have been making claims for autonomy in their ancestral lands under the provisions of the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997. Coron’s Tagbanua were the first to gain autonomy in 2003, gaining control of 24,446 hectares, comprising the island and a 200-metre band of water around its coast.
It’s an enchanting island. From the distance, it’s reminiscent of a crown. Up close, it’s equally enigmatic: it has rugged cliffs, mountainous domes, eight lakes and rich karst forest that flourishes on the grey-purple limestone. And around its shores there are lagoons of jade-green waters, pristine beaches and coral reefs.
Its 2,000 inhabitants live at the back of two large bays that are embroidered with dense mangrove forests. Their political leader is Rodolpho Aguilar, a wiry and rather shifty man of 60 who is the chairperson of the konseho, the ruling council of 16 elders. On my arrival, I arrange a meeting with all of the council members at Kayangan Lake in order to present myself, but only Rodolpho turns up. This seems telling as, although the political organisation is supposedly constituted of three layers, I later discover that the Aguilar family holds all of the reins: the brothers Ernesto and Rodolpho, and their nephew, the ‘captain’ of Banung-daan village (the captains of the island’s two villages are a redundant relic left over from the Filipino administrative structure).
Kayangan Lake is Coron’s prime money spinner. The many thousands of tourists who come to the island each year must pay 200 pesos to enter the lake, in addition to the 75 pesos charged for visiting any of Coron’s beaches. ‘We use the money for various things,’ Rodolpho tells me. ‘Some of it goes to protecting and controlling the island.’
He’s being vague and contradictory, just as I remember him being six years earlier, when I had visited the island a year after autonomy. I ask him for more specifics. He talks about a plan to siphon water from Cabugao Lake to alleviate the shortages in the villages, and about the grants provided to the sick and to promising students. I had heard about the water project six years ago – it was a ‘plan’ then, too.
Later, when I speak to Josefa Garcia of Saragpunta, the NGO that is assisting the Tagbanua in gaining control of their ancestral land, she tells me that she has heard local people complain that only a few families have access to the money for hospitalisation or education. ‘Things are not going well on Coron Island,’ she says. ‘The harmony and unity that existed before turned into strife as soon as money from tourism started to come in. Then the leaders started fighting one another, dividing under the two factions of the warring brothers, Ernesto and Rodolpho.’
Power struggle
The power struggle arose during the early days of self-rule, when the Tagbanua Foundation, the precursor of the konseho, took over Banul Beach to open it up for tourism. This alarmed Ernesto, whose family had historical ownership of the beach. He feared that Rodolpho would first usurp the beach and later commandeer the caves above, where large colonies of swiftlets nest. Now Ernesto’s family has wrested back control of the beach and collection of the levy. Rodolpho has been trumped; rumours suggested he had been forced to ‘willingly’ step aside.
Yet Rodolpho still presents himself as the ‘leader’. So, before my visit, I asked him for permission to visit the island’s interior and stay overnight (outsiders need permission to visit any part of the island not open to tourists). He resorted to delaying tactics, talking about consultations and meetings, a process that would take months. He had done the same six years earlier, but this time, I’m better prepared, and three days later, I arrive on Coron unceremoniously, as the guest of a friend of Al Linsangan, a local tour operator, who accompanied me.
In Banung-daan, where we land, we visit Ernesto. He shows us the freshly printed Bible that he had helped translate into the Tagbanua language. ‘We started in 1960,’ he says, ‘and it took us 48 years to finish the translation.’
He shows us the birds’ nests, and talks about his large family – 20 of them crammed in the small wooden cabin. ‘We need three kilograms of rice every time we eat,’ he says. They’re one of the richest families on the island, and they are well dressed. But why don’t they live in a larger house, or more than one house? Is it virtuous modesty? Or is it a facade designed to conceal their true wealth?
I don’t have a chance to ask; Ernesto has church services to attend to, and we have to walk across the island to the village of Cabugao. Ernesto’s preoccupation with matters of the church is a common theme on the island, where traditional Tagbanua culture is dying out. ‘The Tagbanua have lost a lot of their cultural expressions,’ says Al, who lived on Coron for two years, working on an environmental-awareness project. ‘It’s only in major events such as births, marriages and deaths that traditional ceremonies are still practised.’
There are no longer any traditional markings or shrines on the island, nothing even that commemorates the legendary ancestors – the three heroes who lived in caves and could fly, and protected the islanders from the Moro marauders.
But I did notice a striking difference between the villages of Filipino fishermen and their counterparts in Coron: the islanders were impressively clean, their houses spaciously set in courtyards, and there was no alcoholism. I was surprised by the orderliness; there was poverty, but there was no squalor – and that, perhaps, is the greatest achievement of self-rule.
The poverty itself is puzzling. Few islanders seem to be benefiting from the money the konseho is making, and the north coast, where tourism is flourishing, might as well be a different planet. Most islanders scrape a living by fishing with home-made harpoons and octopus traps, and cultivating bananas, mangoes, cashew nuts and root crops.
Endlessly bewitching
‘Despite the problems in Coron Island,’ says Janet Fahrenbach, president of the NGO Friends of the Calamian Sea, ‘it’s still positive that the Tagbanua are getting self-rule in their ancestral lands. It prevents developers from moving in.’
Other environmentalists make the same point. ‘If you’re an official in the local government,’ says Garcia of Saragpunta, ‘it’s easy to manipulate papers and shift ownership of the land. But it’s much more difficult to do so if the land is under the title of ancestral domain.’
Just before my visit, Saragpunta had managed to gain autonomy for another two subgroups of Tagbanua. Calawit was deemed the greatest success, and Garcia showed me an ambitious sustainable-management plan for the island (no such plan currently exists for Coron). But for now, it’s Coron that gets all the attention as the island itself is endlessly bewitching and has immediate tourist potential.
As tourism booms in the Calamian islands, there are big sharks circling. A clique allegedly working under the wings of the governor of Palawan, Joel Reyes, is snapping up land that’s ripe for tourism development. Two Tagbanua representatives recently sold Dibatoc Island to a private investor, despite the fact that the sale is illegal under the provisions of the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act. And Rodolpho told me that the konseho is planning to build a restaurant and some tourist bungalows near Kayangan Lake on Coron Island.
‘On Coron Island, the conflict is about the management of funds, and the National Commission for Indigenous Peoples is planning to intervene and mediate,’ Garcia says. ‘We have learned from the mistakes of Coron Island, and now we’re doing things differently. Now we draw up a sustainable development and protection plan before the area becomes an ancestral domain, and in this way, the management plan will be officially locked into the application for ancestral ownership.’
Philippines - co-ordinates
When to go
The high tourist season is between December and May, when the climate is cooler and drier, with no risk of typhoons. In Palawan, the southwest monsoon (June to October) is considered the wet season. The best time for sea travel and scuba diving is from March until May.
Getting there
Busuanga Island can be reached from Manila by daily internal flights with several local airlines. The flight time is around an hour. Transfers go via jeepney to the harbour in Coron Town, from where boats run over to Coron Island, five kilometres to the south. Alternatively, the SuperFerry from Manila to Coron Island departs once a week and takes 13 hours.
Further information
British citizens holding a valid passport do not need a visa for stays of up to 21 days.
June 2010
The swallows’ nests – the key ingredient in highly prized Cantonese bird’s nest soup – stacked nearby in an ice cooler are proof of his triumph. But something is amiss. He has more than a kilogram of nests, worth £3,000 – the fruits of just a month’s labour – and he makes even more money from the 75 pesos (£1) levied on each tourist who lands on his beach. Yet his family lives miserably, in a small, overcrowded wooden cottage.
Contradictions such as these are apparent wherever I go on Coron Island, in the southern Philippines. Take Ernesto, for example, a community leader who embodies some bewildering juxtapositions: a one-time boxer, minister in the local Protestant church, businessman and landowner, elder by culture and political appointee by election. All land is supposedly communal on the island, but Ernesto talks about ‘owning’ Banul Beach and the nearby caves, with their large colonies of swiftlets.
Enchanting island
I have come to Coron to see how the Tagbanua – the indigenous people of the Calamian archipelago – are faring seven years after being granted self-rule. There are seven subgroups of Tagbanua in the 163 islands that constitute the Calamian group, and all have been making claims for autonomy in their ancestral lands under the provisions of the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997. Coron’s Tagbanua were the first to gain autonomy in 2003, gaining control of 24,446 hectares, comprising the island and a 200-metre band of water around its coast.
It’s an enchanting island. From the distance, it’s reminiscent of a crown. Up close, it’s equally enigmatic: it has rugged cliffs, mountainous domes, eight lakes and rich karst forest that flourishes on the grey-purple limestone. And around its shores there are lagoons of jade-green waters, pristine beaches and coral reefs.
Its 2,000 inhabitants live at the back of two large bays that are embroidered with dense mangrove forests. Their political leader is Rodolpho Aguilar, a wiry and rather shifty man of 60 who is the chairperson of the konseho, the ruling council of 16 elders. On my arrival, I arrange a meeting with all of the council members at Kayangan Lake in order to present myself, but only Rodolpho turns up. This seems telling as, although the political organisation is supposedly constituted of three layers, I later discover that the Aguilar family holds all of the reins: the brothers Ernesto and Rodolpho, and their nephew, the ‘captain’ of Banung-daan village (the captains of the island’s two villages are a redundant relic left over from the Filipino administrative structure).
Kayangan Lake is Coron’s prime money spinner. The many thousands of tourists who come to the island each year must pay 200 pesos to enter the lake, in addition to the 75 pesos charged for visiting any of Coron’s beaches. ‘We use the money for various things,’ Rodolpho tells me. ‘Some of it goes to protecting and controlling the island.’
He’s being vague and contradictory, just as I remember him being six years earlier, when I had visited the island a year after autonomy. I ask him for more specifics. He talks about a plan to siphon water from Cabugao Lake to alleviate the shortages in the villages, and about the grants provided to the sick and to promising students. I had heard about the water project six years ago – it was a ‘plan’ then, too.
Later, when I speak to Josefa Garcia of Saragpunta, the NGO that is assisting the Tagbanua in gaining control of their ancestral land, she tells me that she has heard local people complain that only a few families have access to the money for hospitalisation or education. ‘Things are not going well on Coron Island,’ she says. ‘The harmony and unity that existed before turned into strife as soon as money from tourism started to come in. Then the leaders started fighting one another, dividing under the two factions of the warring brothers, Ernesto and Rodolpho.’
Power struggle
The power struggle arose during the early days of self-rule, when the Tagbanua Foundation, the precursor of the konseho, took over Banul Beach to open it up for tourism. This alarmed Ernesto, whose family had historical ownership of the beach. He feared that Rodolpho would first usurp the beach and later commandeer the caves above, where large colonies of swiftlets nest. Now Ernesto’s family has wrested back control of the beach and collection of the levy. Rodolpho has been trumped; rumours suggested he had been forced to ‘willingly’ step aside.
Yet Rodolpho still presents himself as the ‘leader’. So, before my visit, I asked him for permission to visit the island’s interior and stay overnight (outsiders need permission to visit any part of the island not open to tourists). He resorted to delaying tactics, talking about consultations and meetings, a process that would take months. He had done the same six years earlier, but this time, I’m better prepared, and three days later, I arrive on Coron unceremoniously, as the guest of a friend of Al Linsangan, a local tour operator, who accompanied me.
In Banung-daan, where we land, we visit Ernesto. He shows us the freshly printed Bible that he had helped translate into the Tagbanua language. ‘We started in 1960,’ he says, ‘and it took us 48 years to finish the translation.’
He shows us the birds’ nests, and talks about his large family – 20 of them crammed in the small wooden cabin. ‘We need three kilograms of rice every time we eat,’ he says. They’re one of the richest families on the island, and they are well dressed. But why don’t they live in a larger house, or more than one house? Is it virtuous modesty? Or is it a facade designed to conceal their true wealth?
I don’t have a chance to ask; Ernesto has church services to attend to, and we have to walk across the island to the village of Cabugao. Ernesto’s preoccupation with matters of the church is a common theme on the island, where traditional Tagbanua culture is dying out. ‘The Tagbanua have lost a lot of their cultural expressions,’ says Al, who lived on Coron for two years, working on an environmental-awareness project. ‘It’s only in major events such as births, marriages and deaths that traditional ceremonies are still practised.’
There are no longer any traditional markings or shrines on the island, nothing even that commemorates the legendary ancestors – the three heroes who lived in caves and could fly, and protected the islanders from the Moro marauders.
But I did notice a striking difference between the villages of Filipino fishermen and their counterparts in Coron: the islanders were impressively clean, their houses spaciously set in courtyards, and there was no alcoholism. I was surprised by the orderliness; there was poverty, but there was no squalor – and that, perhaps, is the greatest achievement of self-rule.
The poverty itself is puzzling. Few islanders seem to be benefiting from the money the konseho is making, and the north coast, where tourism is flourishing, might as well be a different planet. Most islanders scrape a living by fishing with home-made harpoons and octopus traps, and cultivating bananas, mangoes, cashew nuts and root crops.
Endlessly bewitching
‘Despite the problems in Coron Island,’ says Janet Fahrenbach, president of the NGO Friends of the Calamian Sea, ‘it’s still positive that the Tagbanua are getting self-rule in their ancestral lands. It prevents developers from moving in.’
Other environmentalists make the same point. ‘If you’re an official in the local government,’ says Garcia of Saragpunta, ‘it’s easy to manipulate papers and shift ownership of the land. But it’s much more difficult to do so if the land is under the title of ancestral domain.’
Just before my visit, Saragpunta had managed to gain autonomy for another two subgroups of Tagbanua. Calawit was deemed the greatest success, and Garcia showed me an ambitious sustainable-management plan for the island (no such plan currently exists for Coron). But for now, it’s Coron that gets all the attention as the island itself is endlessly bewitching and has immediate tourist potential.
As tourism booms in the Calamian islands, there are big sharks circling. A clique allegedly working under the wings of the governor of Palawan, Joel Reyes, is snapping up land that’s ripe for tourism development. Two Tagbanua representatives recently sold Dibatoc Island to a private investor, despite the fact that the sale is illegal under the provisions of the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act. And Rodolpho told me that the konseho is planning to build a restaurant and some tourist bungalows near Kayangan Lake on Coron Island.
‘On Coron Island, the conflict is about the management of funds, and the National Commission for Indigenous Peoples is planning to intervene and mediate,’ Garcia says. ‘We have learned from the mistakes of Coron Island, and now we’re doing things differently. Now we draw up a sustainable development and protection plan before the area becomes an ancestral domain, and in this way, the management plan will be officially locked into the application for ancestral ownership.’
Philippines - co-ordinates
When to go
The high tourist season is between December and May, when the climate is cooler and drier, with no risk of typhoons. In Palawan, the southwest monsoon (June to October) is considered the wet season. The best time for sea travel and scuba diving is from March until May.
Getting there
Busuanga Island can be reached from Manila by daily internal flights with several local airlines. The flight time is around an hour. Transfers go via jeepney to the harbour in Coron Town, from where boats run over to Coron Island, five kilometres to the south. Alternatively, the SuperFerry from Manila to Coron Island departs once a week and takes 13 hours.
Further information
British citizens holding a valid passport do not need a visa for stays of up to 21 days.
June 2010
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