Who Are the Cuyonon? Ethnic Identity in the Modern Philippines
JAMES F. EDER
James F. Eder (james.eder@asu.edu) is Professor of Anthropology at Arizona State University.
The Journal ofAsian Studies 63, no. 3 (August 2004):625-647. © 2004 by the Association for Asian Studies, Inc.
JAMES F. EDER
James F. Eder (james.eder@asu.edu) is Professor of Anthropology at Arizona State University.
The Journal ofAsian Studies 63, no. 3 (August 2004):625-647. © 2004 by the Association for Asian Studies, Inc.
Cuyonon and Cuyo
Few Filipinos even know where Cuyo is, and probably only those Americans
with a fine-grained knowledge of World War II in the Pacific might recognize
Cuyo as the nighttime rendezvous point for the three Mindanao-bound PT boats
that spirited General Douglas MacArthur and his staff away from Corregidor in
1942. But, Cuyo figures more prominently in a local history revolving around the
Catholicization of its populace by the Spanish in 1640 and subsequent centuries
of indecisive conflict in the Sulu Sea between the Spanish and the feared "Moros"
(Muslim seafarers emanating from the Sulu zone) for political control over the
Palawan region. In part a product of this regional colonial history, Cuyonon
evolved their own distinctive version of Hispanized or "lowland" Philippine life.
Cuyonon in the Ethnographic Atlas
Until well into the twentieth century, to be Cuyonon was to be born in Cuyo, to
speak Cuyonon (a language classified in the Western Visayan group of Philippine
languages {Zorc 1977}), to be Catholic, and to fish or farm for a living. In these
circumstances, one could confidently locate Cuyonon on the map and easily
dis¬tinguish Cuyonon from a distance--or so it seemed-based on their farming
and fishing techniques, housing, clothing, baskets, and other characteristic
village-level cultural traditions.
How might Cuyonon have appeared in a hypothetical ethnographic-atlas entry
that described their way of life during the 1930s, on the eve of World War II
and of the great mid century surge ofmigrants out ofCuyo for homesteads on
Palawan Island? Such an entry might have begun by describing Cuyo itself. All
of its fifty square kilometers, much of it rocky and hilly, had long been cleared of
forest, and the island was densely settled. In 1939 Cuyo's 17,500 people lived in
ten villages and a small townsite. The great majority of these people were
subsistence agriculturalists who aimed to grow or gather almost all of their own
food. The rural economy centered on short-fallow and increasingly unproductive
rain-fed cultivation of upland rice, corn, sweet potato, yams, and plantains; a
typical family owned one to two hectares ofland. Fish and other marine foods,
not farm animals, provided most of the animal protein in the Cuyonon diet. To
obtain these foods, men and women employed nets, traps, hook-and-line fishing,
and-most typically Cuyonon-a variety of hand-gathering techniques in the
intertidal zone.
Cuyo's inhabitants had few opportunities for earning or spending money.
Some men and women earned small cash incomes from secondary occupational
special¬izations such as carpentry, basketry, mat weaving, and palm-wine
collecting. A few women sold small quantities of subsistence foods or engaged
in petty trade in the townsite, and a few farmers with sufficient land to grow
coconuts produced and sold copra. But broadly distributed land ownership, the
absence of an agricultural labor market, little access to consumer goods, and
few opportunities for investment or higher education all limited socioeconomic
differentiation in Cuyo villages.
Social life revolved around two calendars, one agricultural and the other
religious. While common throughout the year, visiting neighbors in the
afternoon, drinking palm wine with friends at dusk, and gathering in the evening
to sing or tell stories occurred most frequently during the leisurely postharvest
period. Among social activities of a more formal sort, dances were popular with
young and old alike. Here young people pursued friendships and courtships
begun during the agricultural season, and older persons were called upon to
perform traditional Spanish and indigenous dance forms. Dances could be held
in conjunction with baptisms, birthdays, marriages, and other social events.
Village musicians came in groups with their instruments-guitars, banjos, flutes,
and drums-and performed in return for free drinks.
The annual village fiesta excited considerable interest. All attended the komedia
(plays or parodies acted out to music by elaborately costumed players). The
most common play reenacted the violent seventeenth-century confrontations
between Christians and Muslims at Cuyo. A morning Mass, cockfights, and an
intervillage athletic competition were also standard fiesta fare. Finally,
churchgoing was an integral part of traditional social life. The most important
events of the religious calendar led up to, and culminated with, Easter.
Throughout lent, groups of women gathered to sing a Cuyonon translation of
the Passion. Holy Week saw a steady progression of masses and processions.
On Saturday night, people remained awake, listening to the erekay (humorous
ballads involving riddle-like exchanges between old men and women). Before
dawn people attended Mass and then joined one of two processions, whose
meeting would symbolize the reuniting of Mary and the resurrected Christ on
Easter Sunday (see Eder 1982, 31-40).
Cuyo Remembered
Although I am confident that Cuyonon today would recognize and, I would
like to think, even approve of such a representation of their "traditional lifeway,"
their own sense ofCuyonon-ness is deeply embedded in more-subjective
rememberings and imaginings of what everyday life in Cuyo was once
like-rememberings of a way of life that stands in nostalgic contrast to the
present. At least among older Cuyonon, perhaps the most commonly heard
observation is that in Cuyo "the social aspect of life" mattered most. Even work
is remembered for its affective satisfactions, as enjoyed in reciprocal farm-labor
parties or in the groups of men and women going down to the sea at low tide.
The real pleasures in life, however, occurred when the day's work was done and
the annual harvest was in. Older Cuyonon unabashedly emphasize how leisured
Cuyonon once were: in Cuyo, pagkatebas ara ren i obra, or "when the harvest
was in, there was no more work." Cuyonon recall the postharvest months in
Cuyo as a time when people did little more than gather food at the seashore,
drink palm wine, socialize, and sleep. There were some minor subsistence chores
during these months, bur the general routine was one of relaxation. As Cuyonon
say, they worked nine months of the year to live the remaining three.
The common thread in all such memories of Cuyo is the notion that Cuyonon
once lived for the social in life, not the economic. According to a government
official in Puerto Princesa City born and raised in Cuyo: "In Cuyo there really
was a feeling that, once one had sufficient rice, everything was 'O.K.' The side
dishes served with rice were easily obtained, perhaps banana hearts given by a
neighbor, or mollusks taken from the sea. Migrants to Palawan say that Cuyonon
are lazy, but they really are capable of hard work. It's just that they really had it
good in Cuyo. When the harvest was in it was paayad-ayad [taking it easy} and
paineminem [drinking}" (Eder 1982,40). In the same way, other Cuyonon
nostalgically recall a Cuyo where people were "poor but happy," "really had
things good," and "didn't need much, so they never had to work very hard" (see
Eder 1982, 36-40).
Few Filipinos even know where Cuyo is, and probably only those Americans
with a fine-grained knowledge of World War II in the Pacific might recognize
Cuyo as the nighttime rendezvous point for the three Mindanao-bound PT boats
that spirited General Douglas MacArthur and his staff away from Corregidor in
1942. But, Cuyo figures more prominently in a local history revolving around the
Catholicization of its populace by the Spanish in 1640 and subsequent centuries
of indecisive conflict in the Sulu Sea between the Spanish and the feared "Moros"
(Muslim seafarers emanating from the Sulu zone) for political control over the
Palawan region. In part a product of this regional colonial history, Cuyonon
evolved their own distinctive version of Hispanized or "lowland" Philippine life.
Cuyonon in the Ethnographic Atlas
Until well into the twentieth century, to be Cuyonon was to be born in Cuyo, to
speak Cuyonon (a language classified in the Western Visayan group of Philippine
languages {Zorc 1977}), to be Catholic, and to fish or farm for a living. In these
circumstances, one could confidently locate Cuyonon on the map and easily
dis¬tinguish Cuyonon from a distance--or so it seemed-based on their farming
and fishing techniques, housing, clothing, baskets, and other characteristic
village-level cultural traditions.
How might Cuyonon have appeared in a hypothetical ethnographic-atlas entry
that described their way of life during the 1930s, on the eve of World War II
and of the great mid century surge ofmigrants out ofCuyo for homesteads on
Palawan Island? Such an entry might have begun by describing Cuyo itself. All
of its fifty square kilometers, much of it rocky and hilly, had long been cleared of
forest, and the island was densely settled. In 1939 Cuyo's 17,500 people lived in
ten villages and a small townsite. The great majority of these people were
subsistence agriculturalists who aimed to grow or gather almost all of their own
food. The rural economy centered on short-fallow and increasingly unproductive
rain-fed cultivation of upland rice, corn, sweet potato, yams, and plantains; a
typical family owned one to two hectares ofland. Fish and other marine foods,
not farm animals, provided most of the animal protein in the Cuyonon diet. To
obtain these foods, men and women employed nets, traps, hook-and-line fishing,
and-most typically Cuyonon-a variety of hand-gathering techniques in the
intertidal zone.
Cuyo's inhabitants had few opportunities for earning or spending money.
Some men and women earned small cash incomes from secondary occupational
special¬izations such as carpentry, basketry, mat weaving, and palm-wine
collecting. A few women sold small quantities of subsistence foods or engaged
in petty trade in the townsite, and a few farmers with sufficient land to grow
coconuts produced and sold copra. But broadly distributed land ownership, the
absence of an agricultural labor market, little access to consumer goods, and
few opportunities for investment or higher education all limited socioeconomic
differentiation in Cuyo villages.
Social life revolved around two calendars, one agricultural and the other
religious. While common throughout the year, visiting neighbors in the
afternoon, drinking palm wine with friends at dusk, and gathering in the evening
to sing or tell stories occurred most frequently during the leisurely postharvest
period. Among social activities of a more formal sort, dances were popular with
young and old alike. Here young people pursued friendships and courtships
begun during the agricultural season, and older persons were called upon to
perform traditional Spanish and indigenous dance forms. Dances could be held
in conjunction with baptisms, birthdays, marriages, and other social events.
Village musicians came in groups with their instruments-guitars, banjos, flutes,
and drums-and performed in return for free drinks.
The annual village fiesta excited considerable interest. All attended the komedia
(plays or parodies acted out to music by elaborately costumed players). The
most common play reenacted the violent seventeenth-century confrontations
between Christians and Muslims at Cuyo. A morning Mass, cockfights, and an
intervillage athletic competition were also standard fiesta fare. Finally,
churchgoing was an integral part of traditional social life. The most important
events of the religious calendar led up to, and culminated with, Easter.
Throughout lent, groups of women gathered to sing a Cuyonon translation of
the Passion. Holy Week saw a steady progression of masses and processions.
On Saturday night, people remained awake, listening to the erekay (humorous
ballads involving riddle-like exchanges between old men and women). Before
dawn people attended Mass and then joined one of two processions, whose
meeting would symbolize the reuniting of Mary and the resurrected Christ on
Easter Sunday (see Eder 1982, 31-40).
Cuyo Remembered
Although I am confident that Cuyonon today would recognize and, I would
like to think, even approve of such a representation of their "traditional lifeway,"
their own sense ofCuyonon-ness is deeply embedded in more-subjective
rememberings and imaginings of what everyday life in Cuyo was once
like-rememberings of a way of life that stands in nostalgic contrast to the
present. At least among older Cuyonon, perhaps the most commonly heard
observation is that in Cuyo "the social aspect of life" mattered most. Even work
is remembered for its affective satisfactions, as enjoyed in reciprocal farm-labor
parties or in the groups of men and women going down to the sea at low tide.
The real pleasures in life, however, occurred when the day's work was done and
the annual harvest was in. Older Cuyonon unabashedly emphasize how leisured
Cuyonon once were: in Cuyo, pagkatebas ara ren i obra, or "when the harvest
was in, there was no more work." Cuyonon recall the postharvest months in
Cuyo as a time when people did little more than gather food at the seashore,
drink palm wine, socialize, and sleep. There were some minor subsistence chores
during these months, bur the general routine was one of relaxation. As Cuyonon
say, they worked nine months of the year to live the remaining three.
The common thread in all such memories of Cuyo is the notion that Cuyonon
once lived for the social in life, not the economic. According to a government
official in Puerto Princesa City born and raised in Cuyo: "In Cuyo there really
was a feeling that, once one had sufficient rice, everything was 'O.K.' The side
dishes served with rice were easily obtained, perhaps banana hearts given by a
neighbor, or mollusks taken from the sea. Migrants to Palawan say that Cuyonon
are lazy, but they really are capable of hard work. It's just that they really had it
good in Cuyo. When the harvest was in it was paayad-ayad [taking it easy} and
paineminem [drinking}" (Eder 1982,40). In the same way, other Cuyonon
nostalgically recall a Cuyo where people were "poor but happy," "really had
things good," and "didn't need much, so they never had to work very hard" (see
Eder 1982, 36-40).
For their assistance during my fieldwork and for sharing their
own perspectives on what it means to be Cuyonon, I thank Ester
Timbancaya Elphick,Jose T. Fernandez and Fe Tria Fernandez,
Fr. Jesus de los Reyes, Andrew del Rosario, Carolina San Juan,
Alonzo Timbancaya and Erlinda Timbancaya, Jesus de la Torre,
and Jane Timbancaya Urbanek. Earlier oral versions of this
article were presented to a faculty seminar at the University of
Aarhus in September 1999, at the fourth European Conference on
Philippine Studies in September 2001, and at the Center for
Southeast Asian Studies at Northern IllinoisUniversityin
September 2002. I thank the Aarhus seminar participants,
particularly Lars Kjaerholm and Martijn van Beek, for their
helpful comments and suggestions. I am similarly indebted to
Ester Elphick, Carlos Fernandez, Kerri Flanagan, Anne
Goldberg, Hjorleifur Jonsson, Melanie Hughes McDermott, Oona
Paredes, and Martijn van Beek for their comments on subsequent
written versions. Funding for this research was provided by an A.
T. Steele travel grant from the Center for Asian Studies and a
research award ftom the Program for Southeast Asian Studies,
both at Arizona State University.
own perspectives on what it means to be Cuyonon, I thank Ester
Timbancaya Elphick,Jose T. Fernandez and Fe Tria Fernandez,
Fr. Jesus de los Reyes, Andrew del Rosario, Carolina San Juan,
Alonzo Timbancaya and Erlinda Timbancaya, Jesus de la Torre,
and Jane Timbancaya Urbanek. Earlier oral versions of this
article were presented to a faculty seminar at the University of
Aarhus in September 1999, at the fourth European Conference on
Philippine Studies in September 2001, and at the Center for
Southeast Asian Studies at Northern IllinoisUniversityin
September 2002. I thank the Aarhus seminar participants,
particularly Lars Kjaerholm and Martijn van Beek, for their
helpful comments and suggestions. I am similarly indebted to
Ester Elphick, Carlos Fernandez, Kerri Flanagan, Anne
Goldberg, Hjorleifur Jonsson, Melanie Hughes McDermott, Oona
Paredes, and Martijn van Beek for their comments on subsequent
written versions. Funding for this research was provided by an A.
T. Steele travel grant from the Center for Asian Studies and a
research award ftom the Program for Southeast Asian Studies,
both at Arizona State University.
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Tourism. Ethnicity, and the State in Asian and Pacific Societies, ed.
Michel Picard and Robert E. Wood. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.
ANTHIAS, FLOYA. 1998. "Rethinking Social Divisions: Some Notes
Towards a Theoretical Framework." Sociological Review 46(3):505-35.
BARNES, R. H. 1995. "Being Indigenous in Eastern Indonesia." In
Indigenous Peoples of Asia, ed. R. H. Barnes, Andrew Gray, and
Benedict Kingsbury. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Association for Asian Studies.
BEEK, MAR TIJN VAN. 2000. "Dissimulations: Representing Ladakhi
Identity." In Perplexities of Identification: Anthropological Studies in
Cultural Differentiation and the Use of Resources, ed. Henk Driessen and
Ton Otto. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.
BRASS, PAUL R. 1991. Ethnicity and Nationalism: Theory and
Comparison. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications.
BRUNER, EDWARD M. 1999. "Return to Sumatra: 1957,1997."
American Ethnologist 26(2):461-77.
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Philippines. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Consciousness, Practice, and the Signs of Inequality." Ethnos
52(3-4):301-23.
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"Introduction." In Images of Contemporary Iceland: Everyday Lives and
Global Contexts, ed. Gisli Palsson and E. Paul Durrenberger. Iowa City:
University of Iowa Press. EDER, JAMES F. 1982. Who Shall Succeed?
Agricultural Development and Social Inequality on a Philippine Frontier.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. ---. 1987. On
the Road to Tribal Extinction: Depopulation, Deculturation, and Adaptive
Well-being among the Batak ofthe Philippines. Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press.---. 1999. A Generation Later: Household
Strategies and Economic Change in the Rural Philippines. Honolulu:
University of Hawai'i Press.
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Highlands: Religion and Society among the Buid of Mindoro. London:
Athlone Press.
GIDDENS, ANTHONY. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and
Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.
GREENWOOD, DAVYDD J. 1985. "Castilians, Basques, and
Andalusians: An Historical Comparison of Nationalism, 'True' Ethnicity,
and 'False' Ethnicity." In Ethnic Groups and the State, ed. Paul R. Brass.
London: Croom Helm.
GUPTA, AKHIL, and JAMES FERGUSON. 1992. "Beyond 'Culture':
Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference." Cultural Anthropology
7(1):6-23.
HOLLAND, DOROTHY, WILLIAM LACHICOTTE JR., DEBRA
SKINNER, and CAROL CAIN. 1998. Identity and Agency in Cultural
Worlds. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
JOCANO, F. LANDA. 1968. Sit/od Society: A Study in the Kinship and
Social Organization of a Moubtain People of Central Panay. Institute of
Asian Studies Monograph Series, no. 2. Quezon City: University of the
Philippines Press.
JONSSON, HJORLEIFUR. 2001. "Serious Fun: Minority Cultural
Dynamics and National Integration in Thailand." American Ethnologist
2(11578.
KEARNEY, MICHAEL. 1996. "Introduction." Latin American
PerspectilJes 23(2):5-16.
KERKVLIET, BENEDICT J. 1979. "Land Reform: Emancipation or
Counter¬insurgency?" In Marcos and Martial Law in the Philippines, ed.
David A. Rosenberg. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
KEYES, CHARLES. 2002. "Presidential Address: 'The Peoples of
Asia'-Science and Politics in the Classification of Ethnic Groups in
Thailand, China, and Vietnam." Journal of Asian Studies 61(4):1163-1203.
KIPP, RITA SMITH. 1993. Dissociated Identities: Ethnicity, Religion,
and Clan in Indonesian Society. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
LEBAR, FRANK M., ed. 1975. Philippines and Formosa. Vol. 2 of Ethnic
Groups of Insular Southeast Asia. New Haven: Human Relations Area
Files Press.
LI, TANIA MURRAY. 1999. "Marginality, Power, and Production:
Analysing Upland Transformations." In Transforming the Indonesian
Uplands: Marginality, Power. and Production. Amsterdam: Harwood
Academic Publishers.
LLAMZON, TEODORO. 1978. Handbook of Philippine Language
Groups. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
LOPEZ, MARIA ELENA. 1987. "The Politics ofLand at Risk in a
Philippine Frontier." In Lands at Risk in the Third World:
Local-level Perspectives, ed. Peter D. Little and Michael Horowitz.
Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.
MACDONALD, CHARLES. 2001. "Relationships Between Ethnic Groups
in Palawan." Paper presented at the fourth European Philippine Studies
Conference, Alcala, Spain, September 9-12.
MEDINA, LAURIE KROSHUS. 1997. "Development Policies and
Identity Politics: Class and Collectivity in Belize." American Ethnologist
24(1): 148-69.
MOERMAN, MICHAEL. 1965. "Ethnic Identification in a Complex
Civilization: Who Are the Lue?" American Anthropologist, n.s.,
67(5):1215-30. 1968. "Being Lue: Uses and Abuses of Ethnic
Identification." In Essays on the Problem of the Tribe, ed. June Helm.
Proceedings of the annual spring meeting of the American Ethnological
Society, 1967. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
NATIONAL COMMISSION ON INDIGENOUS PEOPLE (NCIP). 2001.
"Cultural Communities of Palawan." Mimeograph. NATIONAL
STATISTICS OFFICE (NSO). 1990. "Provincial Profile: Palawan."
Manila: National Statistics Office.
ORTNER, SHERRY B. 1998. "Identities: The Hidden Life of Class."
Journal of Anthropological Rmarch 54(1):1-17.
PAREDES, OONA THOMMES. 2000. "Studying Mindanao through
Southeast Asian Ethnographic Themes." Kinaadman, no. 22:1-81.
PIETERSE, JAN NEDERVEEN. 1996. "Varieties of Ethnic Politics and
Ethnicity Discourse." In The Politics of Difference: Ethnic Premises
in a World of Power, ed. Edwin Wilmsen and Patrick McAllister.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
PROSCHAN, FRANK. 1997. "'We Are All Kmhmu, Just the Same':
Ethnonyms, Ethnic Identities, and Ethnic Groups."
American Ethnologist 24(1):91-113. ---. 2001. "Peoples of the Gourd:
Imagined Ethnicities in Highland Southeast Asia." Journal of Asian
Studies 60(4):999-1032.
ROSEBERRY, WILLIAM. 1989. Anthropologies and Histories: Essays in
Culture, History, and Political Economy. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers
University Press.
SCHENDEL, WILLEM VAN. 1995. "The Invention of the 'Jummas':
State Formation and Ethnicity in Southeastern Bangladesh."In Indigenous
Peoples of Asia, ed. R. H. Barnes, Andrew Gray, and Benedict
Kingsbury. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Association for Asian Studies.
SIDER, GERALD. 1986. Culture and Class in Anthropology and History.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
STEEDLY, MARY MARGARET. 1999. "The State of Culture Theoty in
the Anthropology of Southeast Asia." Annual Review of Anthropology
28:43-54
STEPHEN, LYNN. 1996. "The Creation and Re-creation of Ethnicity:
Lessons from the Zapotec and Mixtec of Oaxaca."Latin American
Perspectives 23(2):17-37.
THOMAS, NICHOLAS. 1992. "The Inversion of Tradition." American
Ethnologist 19(2):213-32.
WRIGHT, TIMOTHY W. 1975. "Calamiane Field Station." Master's
thesis, University of Hawai'i.
ZORC, R. D. F. 1977. The Bisayan Dialects of the Philippines:
Subgrouping and Reconstruction. Pacific Linguistic Series C, no. 44.
Canberra: Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies,
Australian National University.
A LIVELY EXCHANGE OF IDEAS AMONG SOCIAL scientists and
historians regarding issues of identity has greatly energized Asian studies in
recent decades. Scholarly discussion of identity has taken many forms and has
pursued many themes, but among Asianists two topics stand out. First,
studies of national identity have explored the legacy of colonial frameworks
for various nation-building projects and have focused attention on the role of
state power in forging the markings of identity and belonging (see, for
example, Keyes 2002). Second, a rich tradition of study of ethnic and other
minority peoples has shown how traditional markers of difference are
sometimes curtailed by national policies and are sometimes appropriated for
celebrations of national unity, even as minority peoples may themselves
contest or resist such state-sponsored intrusions and appropriations in defense
of traditional ethnic identities and attachments to place (see, for example,
Jonsson 2001).
By projecting ethnic diversity safely onto the hinterlands, states (wittingly or
not) enhance the unmarked category of the national majority by making the
homogeneity of that majority, as it were, more self-evident. And at least in
Southeast Asia, social scientists interested in matters of identity have abetted
this enterprise by fixing their gazes disproportionately on the uplands, in good
part due to traditions of concern with minority peoples but also (or so it
seems) on the presumption that the state's heavy hand has long since
reworked the identities of majority peoples into a common (and comparatively
uninteresting) set of molds. In this article, however, I will draw on a case
from the Philippines to show that the concerns about maintaining identity and
ties to place conventionally associated with various hinterland peoples may
figure significantly in the lives of lowland peoples as well, suggesting that even
among the ostensible (and often highly mobile) "majority" populations of the
region, the forging of national cultures and identities remains a tenuous and
only partially successful project.
The considerable ethnolinguistic diversity of the Philippines has of course long
been recognized both within and beyond the nation. But while the cultural
differences that distinguish the various upland-dwelling indigenous peoples
have received extensive study, cultural differences among peoples of the
Hispanized lowlands remain poorly understood; an appreciation of precisely
how and when ethnic identity matters among lowland Filipinos has proven
elusive.
My own interest in these matters was awakened over the course of my most
recent visits to Palawan, the frontier island in the Philippines where I have
long conducted ethnographic fieldwork. There I have become intrigued by
the changing manner in which the ethnic identities of the various peoples
indigenous and migrant to the Palawan region are being constructed by a
variety of influences and actors: government policies, nongovernmental
(NGO) workers, anthropologists, and-most crucially¬the peoples of the
region themselves. Of special interest to me is one particular people, the
Cuyonon, native to small and isolated Cuyo Island, lying midway in the Sulu
Sea between Palawan Island and Panay Island (see map). Throughout the
twentieth century, settlers from Cuyo established frontier communities up
and down Palawan, intermingling both with the island's indigenous peoples
and migrants from more distant places in the Philippines.
Like the members of myriad other lowland Philippine ethnolinguistic groups
(Ilocanos, Bicolanos, Boholanos, and so forth), Cuyonon today find
themselves in a world where migration and local mobility, out-group marriage,
and various state¬sponsored modernity projects have undermined the
traditional geographical and social basis for links between people and place.
1For some lowland Filipinos, claims of ethnolinguistic membership have hence
been rendered of uncertain utility and meaning. Like their counterparts in other
lowland Philippine ethnic groups, many Cuyonon have thus come to wear their
Cuyonon identities lightly (if at all), opting instead to embrace a more general
(and more modern, or at least more serviceable) "Filipino" identity, one shared
with millions of other Filipinos whose own lives those of Cuyonon
increasingly resemble
.
historians regarding issues of identity has greatly energized Asian studies in
recent decades. Scholarly discussion of identity has taken many forms and has
pursued many themes, but among Asianists two topics stand out. First,
studies of national identity have explored the legacy of colonial frameworks
for various nation-building projects and have focused attention on the role of
state power in forging the markings of identity and belonging (see, for
example, Keyes 2002). Second, a rich tradition of study of ethnic and other
minority peoples has shown how traditional markers of difference are
sometimes curtailed by national policies and are sometimes appropriated for
celebrations of national unity, even as minority peoples may themselves
contest or resist such state-sponsored intrusions and appropriations in defense
of traditional ethnic identities and attachments to place (see, for example,
Jonsson 2001).
By projecting ethnic diversity safely onto the hinterlands, states (wittingly or
not) enhance the unmarked category of the national majority by making the
homogeneity of that majority, as it were, more self-evident. And at least in
Southeast Asia, social scientists interested in matters of identity have abetted
this enterprise by fixing their gazes disproportionately on the uplands, in good
part due to traditions of concern with minority peoples but also (or so it
seems) on the presumption that the state's heavy hand has long since
reworked the identities of majority peoples into a common (and comparatively
uninteresting) set of molds. In this article, however, I will draw on a case
from the Philippines to show that the concerns about maintaining identity and
ties to place conventionally associated with various hinterland peoples may
figure significantly in the lives of lowland peoples as well, suggesting that even
among the ostensible (and often highly mobile) "majority" populations of the
region, the forging of national cultures and identities remains a tenuous and
only partially successful project.
The considerable ethnolinguistic diversity of the Philippines has of course long
been recognized both within and beyond the nation. But while the cultural
differences that distinguish the various upland-dwelling indigenous peoples
have received extensive study, cultural differences among peoples of the
Hispanized lowlands remain poorly understood; an appreciation of precisely
how and when ethnic identity matters among lowland Filipinos has proven
elusive.
My own interest in these matters was awakened over the course of my most
recent visits to Palawan, the frontier island in the Philippines where I have
long conducted ethnographic fieldwork. There I have become intrigued by
the changing manner in which the ethnic identities of the various peoples
indigenous and migrant to the Palawan region are being constructed by a
variety of influences and actors: government policies, nongovernmental
(NGO) workers, anthropologists, and-most crucially¬the peoples of the
region themselves. Of special interest to me is one particular people, the
Cuyonon, native to small and isolated Cuyo Island, lying midway in the Sulu
Sea between Palawan Island and Panay Island (see map). Throughout the
twentieth century, settlers from Cuyo established frontier communities up
and down Palawan, intermingling both with the island's indigenous peoples
and migrants from more distant places in the Philippines.
Like the members of myriad other lowland Philippine ethnolinguistic groups
(Ilocanos, Bicolanos, Boholanos, and so forth), Cuyonon today find
themselves in a world where migration and local mobility, out-group marriage,
and various state¬sponsored modernity projects have undermined the
traditional geographical and social basis for links between people and place.
1For some lowland Filipinos, claims of ethnolinguistic membership have hence
been rendered of uncertain utility and meaning. Like their counterparts in other
lowland Philippine ethnic groups, many Cuyonon have thus come to wear their
Cuyonon identities lightly (if at all), opting instead to embrace a more general
(and more modern, or at least more serviceable) "Filipino" identity, one shared
with millions of other Filipinos whose own lives those of Cuyonon
increasingly resemble
.
In Palawan's frontier society, however, Cuyonon must not only choose between
tradition and modernity; they must also navigate a politically and culturally
charged distinction between migrants and locals that sometimes privileges those
who can claim or forge links with place. If Cuyonon have discovered economic,
political, or social advantage in being perceived as local as well as modern, then
efforts to forge links with place in Palawan are complicated by frontier-society
ambiguity about what "being local" in fact means-and hence about how best to be
local, a matter that implicates other kinds of identities besides ethnic ones. Thus,
some Cuyonon claim: ties to Palawan by self-consciously asserting a reinvented
Cuyonon identity (which has considerable nostalgic appeal but risks charges of
parochialism and ethnic divisiveness). Others attempt to claim an "indigenous"
identity (an identity also associated with Palawan's upland or "tribal" peoples,
from whom Cuyonon have long distanced themselves), while still others identify
themselves as "Palawenios" (a still¬evolving provincial identity of uncertain
meaning).
That any particular effort to forge links with place in Palawan is vulnerable to
contestation or to alternate readings makes the Cuyonon case of special interest
and suggests the explanatory goal of this article: to show how the complex and
fluid political economy of the Palawan region interacts with an individual's
social-class position and location of residence to influence his or her efforts to
navigate these overlapping choices about identity-and hence help determine what
being Cuyonon means in the modern Philippines.
Underlying this explanatory effort is a modest, but I believe worthy, ethnographic
goal: to say something of the Cuyonon themselves, members of a woefully
under-studied category of Philippine peoples sometimes described as the "minor"
or "less well known" lowland peoples. For if the cultural distinctiveness of the
lowland Philippines generally is under appreciated (Cannell 1999), the more so
the respective cultural traditions of particular demographically small and
geographically localized groups. At the same time-and by locating upland and
lowland identities alike within a larger system of difference-I also hope to
encourage further discussion about the future of cultural differences generally in
the lowland Philippines, whose various peoples have long since ceased to live
conveniently (for social scientists) in the locales assigned to them on classic
ethnographic maps (Gupta and Ferguson 1992) and have instead intermingled
(and intermarried) with one another throughout the archipelago.
tradition and modernity; they must also navigate a politically and culturally
charged distinction between migrants and locals that sometimes privileges those
who can claim or forge links with place. If Cuyonon have discovered economic,
political, or social advantage in being perceived as local as well as modern, then
efforts to forge links with place in Palawan are complicated by frontier-society
ambiguity about what "being local" in fact means-and hence about how best to be
local, a matter that implicates other kinds of identities besides ethnic ones. Thus,
some Cuyonon claim: ties to Palawan by self-consciously asserting a reinvented
Cuyonon identity (which has considerable nostalgic appeal but risks charges of
parochialism and ethnic divisiveness). Others attempt to claim an "indigenous"
identity (an identity also associated with Palawan's upland or "tribal" peoples,
from whom Cuyonon have long distanced themselves), while still others identify
themselves as "Palawenios" (a still¬evolving provincial identity of uncertain
meaning).
That any particular effort to forge links with place in Palawan is vulnerable to
contestation or to alternate readings makes the Cuyonon case of special interest
and suggests the explanatory goal of this article: to show how the complex and
fluid political economy of the Palawan region interacts with an individual's
social-class position and location of residence to influence his or her efforts to
navigate these overlapping choices about identity-and hence help determine what
being Cuyonon means in the modern Philippines.
Underlying this explanatory effort is a modest, but I believe worthy, ethnographic
goal: to say something of the Cuyonon themselves, members of a woefully
under-studied category of Philippine peoples sometimes described as the "minor"
or "less well known" lowland peoples. For if the cultural distinctiveness of the
lowland Philippines generally is under appreciated (Cannell 1999), the more so
the respective cultural traditions of particular demographically small and
geographically localized groups. At the same time-and by locating upland and
lowland identities alike within a larger system of difference-I also hope to
encourage further discussion about the future of cultural differences generally in
the lowland Philippines, whose various peoples have long since ceased to live
conveniently (for social scientists) in the locales assigned to them on classic
ethnographic maps (Gupta and Ferguson 1992) and have instead intermingled
(and intermarried) with one another throughout the archipelago.
1The social circumstances that I characterize in this article as reflective of "modernity"
in particular, the dissolution of ties between people and place are associated by some
scholars (see, for example, Giddens 1991) with the conditions of "late modernity
in particular, the dissolution of ties between people and place are associated by some
scholars (see, for example, Giddens 1991) with the conditions of "late modernity
Ethnic Diversity in the Philippines
Students of Philippine ethnology have long recognized an ethnographic map of
the nation said to include seventy-five or more distinct ethnolinguistic groups,
each with its own designated locale somewhere in the archipelago (see, for
example, Jocano 1968, 12; LeBar 1975, 15).
The precise number of such groups, of course, is subject to periodic revision
and dispure depending on the classificatory criteria employed (Llamzon 1978,
18), but whether in the ethnographic imagination or in the national
consciousness, the Philippines is a nation of extraordinary ethnolinguistic
diversity. Similarly imbued in both the national consciousness and the
ethnographic imagina¬tion is the fundamental structural principle by which this
diversity is ordered: the upland-lowland distinction, whereby in the lowlands are
peoples who were colonized, Christianized, and otherwise intensively engaged by
the Spanish, while in the uplands are peoples who largely escaped that
engagement and have kept at least some of their indigenous cultural traditions
intact (Cannell 1999, 3; Gibson 1986, 15).
On the upland side of this national ethnic divide, cultural differences are
generally acknowledged, and the cultures and lifeways of at least some upland
peoples have been extensively studied by anthropologists. Whether because
ofsuch study or because of political (and identity-reaffirming) efforts to secure
ancestral domains against further alienation by lowland migrants, many particular
upland Philippine peoples¬the Ifugao and the T'boli, for example-are today quite
well known within and beyond the nation.
Less clear and less studied, however, are the cultural differences that distinguish
the various peoples who fall on the lowland side of this divide, peoples who are
indistinguishable from one another in clothing, occupation, or physical
appearance and among whom Tagalogs, Ilocanos, and the Cebuanos are
probably the best known. True, these and other lowland peoples do (or did)
speak different languages, and language-group membership is sometimes a basis
for political mobilization or at least an influence on one's view on certain political
issues (e.g., electoral contests or the ongoing debate about the relative emphases
that English and Pilipino-itself based on Tagalog-should receive as national
languages). In addition, some particular low¬land peoples stand out by virtue of
their visibility in Philippine history. Tagalogs, for example, figured prominently
in the revolution against Spain, while Ilocanos dominated the stream of early
Filipino migrants to the United States. And again, there are the local ethnic
stereotypes of some lowland peoples that even casual visirors to the country
may soon encounter: Cebuanos are happy-go-lucky, Ilocanos are thrifty,
Pampanguenos are good cooks, Bikolanos love their chili peppers, and so on.
Popular stereotypes aside, however, when and how does ethnicity matter in the
Philippine lowlands? To what degree do the people who can variously be
classified in one or another lowland group have what we, as outsiders, might
wish to call an ethnic group "identity" (see Cannell 1999, 248)? From the
perspective of language use and with the seemingly inexorable linguistic spread
of Tagalog, Cebuano, and English throughout the archipelago, many lowland
group memberships may seem not to mean much at all anymore. This appears
particularly true of those numerically small and geographically localized lowland
peoples, such as the Cuyonon, who have heretofore appeared distinctive
primarily (or even only) by virtue of their natal languages and the cultural
traditions that they encoded.
Students of Philippine ethnology have long recognized an ethnographic map of
the nation said to include seventy-five or more distinct ethnolinguistic groups,
each with its own designated locale somewhere in the archipelago (see, for
example, Jocano 1968, 12; LeBar 1975, 15).
The precise number of such groups, of course, is subject to periodic revision
and dispure depending on the classificatory criteria employed (Llamzon 1978,
18), but whether in the ethnographic imagination or in the national
consciousness, the Philippines is a nation of extraordinary ethnolinguistic
diversity. Similarly imbued in both the national consciousness and the
ethnographic imagina¬tion is the fundamental structural principle by which this
diversity is ordered: the upland-lowland distinction, whereby in the lowlands are
peoples who were colonized, Christianized, and otherwise intensively engaged by
the Spanish, while in the uplands are peoples who largely escaped that
engagement and have kept at least some of their indigenous cultural traditions
intact (Cannell 1999, 3; Gibson 1986, 15).
On the upland side of this national ethnic divide, cultural differences are
generally acknowledged, and the cultures and lifeways of at least some upland
peoples have been extensively studied by anthropologists. Whether because
ofsuch study or because of political (and identity-reaffirming) efforts to secure
ancestral domains against further alienation by lowland migrants, many particular
upland Philippine peoples¬the Ifugao and the T'boli, for example-are today quite
well known within and beyond the nation.
Less clear and less studied, however, are the cultural differences that distinguish
the various peoples who fall on the lowland side of this divide, peoples who are
indistinguishable from one another in clothing, occupation, or physical
appearance and among whom Tagalogs, Ilocanos, and the Cebuanos are
probably the best known. True, these and other lowland peoples do (or did)
speak different languages, and language-group membership is sometimes a basis
for political mobilization or at least an influence on one's view on certain political
issues (e.g., electoral contests or the ongoing debate about the relative emphases
that English and Pilipino-itself based on Tagalog-should receive as national
languages). In addition, some particular low¬land peoples stand out by virtue of
their visibility in Philippine history. Tagalogs, for example, figured prominently
in the revolution against Spain, while Ilocanos dominated the stream of early
Filipino migrants to the United States. And again, there are the local ethnic
stereotypes of some lowland peoples that even casual visirors to the country
may soon encounter: Cebuanos are happy-go-lucky, Ilocanos are thrifty,
Pampanguenos are good cooks, Bikolanos love their chili peppers, and so on.
Popular stereotypes aside, however, when and how does ethnicity matter in the
Philippine lowlands? To what degree do the people who can variously be
classified in one or another lowland group have what we, as outsiders, might
wish to call an ethnic group "identity" (see Cannell 1999, 248)? From the
perspective of language use and with the seemingly inexorable linguistic spread
of Tagalog, Cebuano, and English throughout the archipelago, many lowland
group memberships may seem not to mean much at all anymore. This appears
particularly true of those numerically small and geographically localized lowland
peoples, such as the Cuyonon, who have heretofore appeared distinctive
primarily (or even only) by virtue of their natal languages and the cultural
traditions that they encoded.
Ethnic identity does still matter in the lowland Philippines, I believe, but (for
reasons that I will explore) it matters more for some people than for others.
Helpful here is a perspective on identities of all kinds that envisions them as
social products, lived in and through activity in worlds of structure and
constraint, yet also con¬tinuously self-fashioned (Holland et al. 1998, 3-9).
Entangled with such self¬understandings-"the imaginings of self in worlds of
action" (5)-is the "emotional resonance" (3) that identity can have for the bearer,
a matter that deserves particular attention in the lowland Philippines, where
emotional attachments more than (distinctive) cultural traditions may best explain
the continued salience of ethnic identity.
Furthermore, when and how particular lowland identities matter must itself be
understood in relation to a national grid of identities-ethnic, regional, and
religious-upon which Filipinos of all kinds are today pressed to locate themselves.
Here, I find useful the concept of positionality, proposed by Floya Anthias to
help theorize how the social divisions of gender, ethnicity, and class relate to
one another. Also drawing on the analogy of a grid, Anthias argues that social
divisions crosscut and mutually interact, coalescing at particular conjunctures to
produce specific and differentiated social outcomes (1998, 531). Eschewing the
conception of individuals as having singular identities, Anthias posits that these
social outcomes may entail seemingly contradictory positions on a variety of
grids-class, ethnic, and so forth¬and hence can only be fully explained in terms
ofall the intersecting social categories and influences that produce them and not
just by analysis of one (507, 532). To draw on the metaphor of clothing, the
labels associated with the positions that result are not so much donned and
discarded as they are different layers, which can be worn in different order at
different times (507). Particularly in the lowland Philippines, I would add, this
process is determined in good part through the choices that people make about
themselves: even those who find their social positions on one grid relatively
fixed-whether by their neighbors or by the state-may enjoy considerable latitude
to move, in effect, to a different grid and choose to be located there instead.
More is at stake with lowland Philippine ethnic identity, then, than some simple
principle of situational ethnicity, of the sort long familiar to students of Southeast
Asian ethnology (see, for example, Moerman 1965), whereby (for example)
lowland Filipinos are Cebuanos or Hiligaynons or Warays for some purposes,
Visayans for others, or simply Filipinos for still others.2 To frame our
understanding of ethnicity in the lowland Philippines in terms of such "nesting
series" models ofethnic identity diverts needed attention from important
relationships between ethnic identities of any sort and the other sorts of identities
entailed by Philippine modernity. Hence in the case considered here: Cuyonon are
not only Cuyonon for some purposes and Filipinos for others; they may be
Cuyonon or something else entirely-Palawenos, locals, Protestants, and so
forth----depending on their own particular locations in a complex frontier
society. More generally, how lowland Filipinos of all kinds locate themselves and
are located by others on a national landscape of identities depends less on social
situations of the moment than on more-perduring political economic
circumstances.
reasons that I will explore) it matters more for some people than for others.
Helpful here is a perspective on identities of all kinds that envisions them as
social products, lived in and through activity in worlds of structure and
constraint, yet also con¬tinuously self-fashioned (Holland et al. 1998, 3-9).
Entangled with such self¬understandings-"the imaginings of self in worlds of
action" (5)-is the "emotional resonance" (3) that identity can have for the bearer,
a matter that deserves particular attention in the lowland Philippines, where
emotional attachments more than (distinctive) cultural traditions may best explain
the continued salience of ethnic identity.
Furthermore, when and how particular lowland identities matter must itself be
understood in relation to a national grid of identities-ethnic, regional, and
religious-upon which Filipinos of all kinds are today pressed to locate themselves.
Here, I find useful the concept of positionality, proposed by Floya Anthias to
help theorize how the social divisions of gender, ethnicity, and class relate to
one another. Also drawing on the analogy of a grid, Anthias argues that social
divisions crosscut and mutually interact, coalescing at particular conjunctures to
produce specific and differentiated social outcomes (1998, 531). Eschewing the
conception of individuals as having singular identities, Anthias posits that these
social outcomes may entail seemingly contradictory positions on a variety of
grids-class, ethnic, and so forth¬and hence can only be fully explained in terms
ofall the intersecting social categories and influences that produce them and not
just by analysis of one (507, 532). To draw on the metaphor of clothing, the
labels associated with the positions that result are not so much donned and
discarded as they are different layers, which can be worn in different order at
different times (507). Particularly in the lowland Philippines, I would add, this
process is determined in good part through the choices that people make about
themselves: even those who find their social positions on one grid relatively
fixed-whether by their neighbors or by the state-may enjoy considerable latitude
to move, in effect, to a different grid and choose to be located there instead.
More is at stake with lowland Philippine ethnic identity, then, than some simple
principle of situational ethnicity, of the sort long familiar to students of Southeast
Asian ethnology (see, for example, Moerman 1965), whereby (for example)
lowland Filipinos are Cebuanos or Hiligaynons or Warays for some purposes,
Visayans for others, or simply Filipinos for still others.2 To frame our
understanding of ethnicity in the lowland Philippines in terms of such "nesting
series" models ofethnic identity diverts needed attention from important
relationships between ethnic identities of any sort and the other sorts of identities
entailed by Philippine modernity. Hence in the case considered here: Cuyonon are
not only Cuyonon for some purposes and Filipinos for others; they may be
Cuyonon or something else entirely-Palawenos, locals, Protestants, and so
forth----depending on their own particular locations in a complex frontier
society. More generally, how lowland Filipinos of all kinds locate themselves and
are located by others on a national landscape of identities depends less on social
situations of the moment than on more-perduring political economic
circumstances.
"2Cebuanos, Hiligaynons, and Warays are three of a congeries of related but linguistically
distinct lowland peoples inhabiting the Visayan Island region of the central Philippine
archipelago.
distinct lowland peoples inhabiting the Visayan Island region of the central Philippine
archipelago.
Cuyonon on Palawan
Cuyonon inclined to imagine Cuyo in this fashion do not, however, live there.3
They live primarily on Palawan, where Cuyonon and their offspring have come
to greatly outnumber Cuyonon living in Cuyo. To be sure, Cuyonon have also
come to live in Manila as well as in other countries, but the story of how
Cuyonon have come to see Cuyo and themselves and how others have come to
see Cuyonon is preeminently one of the settlement and development of the
Palawan region-and necessarily of the other peoples who live there as well.
Peoples of the Palawan Region
Numerous tribal, Hispanized, and Muslim peoples are indigenous to the Palawan
region (see map). Three tribal peoples can be found on Palawan Island itself: the
Tagbanua, the Pala'wan, and the Batak. On various outlying islands are peoples
who experienced intensive and prolonged engagement with the Spanish colonial
regime: the Cuyonon, the Agutaynen (native to Agutaya Island), the Cagayanen
(native to Cagayancillo Island), and the Calamianen (native to Busuanga, Coron,
and other islands of the Calamiane group). Finally, two Muslim peoples are
indigenous to the Palawan region: the Molbog (native to Balabac and neighboring
islands) and the]ama Mapun (native to Cagayan de Tawi Tawi). All but the last
fall within the present administrative boundaries of Palawan Province.
In the course of the twentieth-century settlement of Palawan Island, all of the
Hispanized and Muslim peoples just mentioned, together with diverse other
peoples from throughout the Philippine archipelago, came to settle on Palawan,
thus intermingling-and coming into conflict with-the several indigenous peoples
already present. In this fashion, Palawan came to have its own characteristic
version of the nation's upland-lowland distinction (see Gibson 1986; Cannell
1999), with the important proviso that the portion of the island's population
consisting of "lowland peoples" is of recent and varied origin. Hence, Palawan
never had the sort of long¬established, culturally homogeneous lowland
population found (for example) in Hocos or Bikol, and historically speaking there
are no "Palawefios" in the same sense that there are "Ilocanos" and "Bikolanos."
The Twentieth-Century Settlement of Palawan Island
There are, to be sure, Palawenos. The story of how there came to be more than
750,000 of them by the end of the twentieth century-in a region that had only
about 35,000 inhabitants in 1903-is long, complex, and intimately connected with
developments in the nation as a whole and (more specifically) the development
policies of the Philippine state. In broad view, the filling in of Palawan's frontier
has been driven by the same basic forces that drove the filling in of other, older
frontiers in central Luzon, the Cagayan Valley, and Mindanao. People, often poor
people, seek to escape high population density and attendant land and other
resource scarcity in long¬settled "homelands," such as Panay or the Hocos
coast, by emigrating to less-settled areas that appear to offer more economic
promise. Seen more critically, Philippine land frontiers have historically served as
a politically convenient "safety valve" to relieve some of the pressures caused by
government inability or unwillingness to control population growth or to resolve
agrarian problems in the more densely populated lowlands (Kerkvliet 1979, 119;
Lopez 1987).
Down to midcentury, immigration was by national standards comparatively
limited, and Palawan was not the demographically important settler destination
that provinces such as Davao del Sur, Zamboanga del Sur, Cotabato, Bukidnon,
and even Rizal were. The decades following the Second World War, however,
brought a large surge of immigration to Palawan that has continued to the
present. Government census data show that the population of the Palawan region
has increased about fifteenfold since the 1903 census, with population growth on
the main island of Palawan being particularly dramatic: from 56,360 persons in
1948 to 102,540 persons in 1960; 400,323 persons in 1990; and approximately
600,000 persons in 2000. This growth, of course, reflects the combined
contributions of immigration and natural increase, but the average annual growth
rate for mainland Palawan municipalities from 1980 to 1990, for example, was
4.27 percent, a rate considerably larger than that attributable to natural increase
alone (Eder 1999, 23-27).
That Palawan is today home to numerous different kinds of peoples has become
something of a local truism. The 1990 census, for example, reported that
fifty-two different languages and dialects are spoken in Palawan's homes (NSO
1990), a substantial portion of the total number of languages found in the
Philippines and more than reported for any other province. Early in the twentieth
century, migrants from Cuyo and other outlying islands of the Palawan region
mostly accounted for such migration as there was to the Palawan mainland.
Pressed by land scarcity in Cuyo and lured by agricultural opportunity on
Palawan, growing numbers of Cuyo's farmers traveled by sailboat to plant upland
rice in the island's fertile, virgin forest soils and, later, to settle there. By
midcentury, however, the stream of migrants came increasingly from the nation
as a whole. Although both indigenous and Muslim peoples from elsewhere in the
Philippines also number among migrants to Palawan, most originate in the
densely populated lowlands ofLuzon and the Visayas and include Tagalogs,
Ilocanos, Masbatefios, Bikolanos, Cebuanos, Boholanos, Negrenses, and
Hiligaynons.
Although the Philippine census does not classify persons according to
ethnoli[lguistic group membership, some rough estimates of the size and
distribution of the Cuyonon population are possible. The National Commission on
Indigenous People (NCIP) estimates that in 2000 there were approximately
170,000 persons of Cuyonon ancestry in Palawan Province as a whole (2001, 1).
Although NCIP pop¬ulation estimates may be inflated for political purposes, this
particular figure accords well with my own rough estimate of 150,000 Cuyonon,
which is based on municipality-by-municipality key informant interviewing.
Subtracting the approx¬imately 30,000 persons who today live in Cuyo (a
population that is overwhelmingly Cuyonon and that due to out-migration has
increased little since World War II) and another 10,000 or so persons of
presumed Cuyonon ancestry who live on various other outer islands, about
100,000 to 120,000 Cuyonon today live on Palawan Island and account for
15-20 percent of its total population.
Cuyonon inclined to imagine Cuyo in this fashion do not, however, live there.3
They live primarily on Palawan, where Cuyonon and their offspring have come
to greatly outnumber Cuyonon living in Cuyo. To be sure, Cuyonon have also
come to live in Manila as well as in other countries, but the story of how
Cuyonon have come to see Cuyo and themselves and how others have come to
see Cuyonon is preeminently one of the settlement and development of the
Palawan region-and necessarily of the other peoples who live there as well.
Peoples of the Palawan Region
Numerous tribal, Hispanized, and Muslim peoples are indigenous to the Palawan
region (see map). Three tribal peoples can be found on Palawan Island itself: the
Tagbanua, the Pala'wan, and the Batak. On various outlying islands are peoples
who experienced intensive and prolonged engagement with the Spanish colonial
regime: the Cuyonon, the Agutaynen (native to Agutaya Island), the Cagayanen
(native to Cagayancillo Island), and the Calamianen (native to Busuanga, Coron,
and other islands of the Calamiane group). Finally, two Muslim peoples are
indigenous to the Palawan region: the Molbog (native to Balabac and neighboring
islands) and the]ama Mapun (native to Cagayan de Tawi Tawi). All but the last
fall within the present administrative boundaries of Palawan Province.
In the course of the twentieth-century settlement of Palawan Island, all of the
Hispanized and Muslim peoples just mentioned, together with diverse other
peoples from throughout the Philippine archipelago, came to settle on Palawan,
thus intermingling-and coming into conflict with-the several indigenous peoples
already present. In this fashion, Palawan came to have its own characteristic
version of the nation's upland-lowland distinction (see Gibson 1986; Cannell
1999), with the important proviso that the portion of the island's population
consisting of "lowland peoples" is of recent and varied origin. Hence, Palawan
never had the sort of long¬established, culturally homogeneous lowland
population found (for example) in Hocos or Bikol, and historically speaking there
are no "Palawefios" in the same sense that there are "Ilocanos" and "Bikolanos."
The Twentieth-Century Settlement of Palawan Island
There are, to be sure, Palawenos. The story of how there came to be more than
750,000 of them by the end of the twentieth century-in a region that had only
about 35,000 inhabitants in 1903-is long, complex, and intimately connected with
developments in the nation as a whole and (more specifically) the development
policies of the Philippine state. In broad view, the filling in of Palawan's frontier
has been driven by the same basic forces that drove the filling in of other, older
frontiers in central Luzon, the Cagayan Valley, and Mindanao. People, often poor
people, seek to escape high population density and attendant land and other
resource scarcity in long¬settled "homelands," such as Panay or the Hocos
coast, by emigrating to less-settled areas that appear to offer more economic
promise. Seen more critically, Philippine land frontiers have historically served as
a politically convenient "safety valve" to relieve some of the pressures caused by
government inability or unwillingness to control population growth or to resolve
agrarian problems in the more densely populated lowlands (Kerkvliet 1979, 119;
Lopez 1987).
Down to midcentury, immigration was by national standards comparatively
limited, and Palawan was not the demographically important settler destination
that provinces such as Davao del Sur, Zamboanga del Sur, Cotabato, Bukidnon,
and even Rizal were. The decades following the Second World War, however,
brought a large surge of immigration to Palawan that has continued to the
present. Government census data show that the population of the Palawan region
has increased about fifteenfold since the 1903 census, with population growth on
the main island of Palawan being particularly dramatic: from 56,360 persons in
1948 to 102,540 persons in 1960; 400,323 persons in 1990; and approximately
600,000 persons in 2000. This growth, of course, reflects the combined
contributions of immigration and natural increase, but the average annual growth
rate for mainland Palawan municipalities from 1980 to 1990, for example, was
4.27 percent, a rate considerably larger than that attributable to natural increase
alone (Eder 1999, 23-27).
That Palawan is today home to numerous different kinds of peoples has become
something of a local truism. The 1990 census, for example, reported that
fifty-two different languages and dialects are spoken in Palawan's homes (NSO
1990), a substantial portion of the total number of languages found in the
Philippines and more than reported for any other province. Early in the twentieth
century, migrants from Cuyo and other outlying islands of the Palawan region
mostly accounted for such migration as there was to the Palawan mainland.
Pressed by land scarcity in Cuyo and lured by agricultural opportunity on
Palawan, growing numbers of Cuyo's farmers traveled by sailboat to plant upland
rice in the island's fertile, virgin forest soils and, later, to settle there. By
midcentury, however, the stream of migrants came increasingly from the nation
as a whole. Although both indigenous and Muslim peoples from elsewhere in the
Philippines also number among migrants to Palawan, most originate in the
densely populated lowlands ofLuzon and the Visayas and include Tagalogs,
Ilocanos, Masbatefios, Bikolanos, Cebuanos, Boholanos, Negrenses, and
Hiligaynons.
Although the Philippine census does not classify persons according to
ethnoli[lguistic group membership, some rough estimates of the size and
distribution of the Cuyonon population are possible. The National Commission on
Indigenous People (NCIP) estimates that in 2000 there were approximately
170,000 persons of Cuyonon ancestry in Palawan Province as a whole (2001, 1).
Although NCIP pop¬ulation estimates may be inflated for political purposes, this
particular figure accords well with my own rough estimate of 150,000 Cuyonon,
which is based on municipality-by-municipality key informant interviewing.
Subtracting the approx¬imately 30,000 persons who today live in Cuyo (a
population that is overwhelmingly Cuyonon and that due to out-migration has
increased little since World War II) and another 10,000 or so persons of
presumed Cuyonon ancestry who live on various other outer islands, about
100,000 to 120,000 Cuyonon today live on Palawan Island and account for
15-20 percent of its total population.
"Indeed, as I learned in the course of several visits to the island, Cuyonon in Cuyo are variously
perplexed or amused by the notions that "mainland" Cuyonon entertain about past and present
life in Cuyo. That life there was and remains"difficult" -that is, that making ends meet is a
constant challenge-was the sentiment most often expressed to me on this topic.
.
perplexed or amused by the notions that "mainland" Cuyonon entertain about past and present
life in Cuyo. That life there was and remains"difficult" -that is, that making ends meet is a
constant challenge-was the sentiment most often expressed to me on this topic.
.
Discussion
Paul R. Brass has observed that most treatments of ethnicity focus on the
conflicts and other relationships among ethnic groups to the relative neglect
of the differences that can and do arise within groups 0991, 246-49). In the
objectified and hence homogenizing view ofethnic groups that results,
according toJan Nederveen Pieterse, what should be demonstrated-for
example, the degree to which ethnic identity actually figures in various
everyday lives-is taken as a given, and the negotiation of ethnicity in
relation to other forms of difference is taken for granted 0996, 30). To ask,
then, how one can be modern on Cuyonon terms risks reifying Cuyonon
identity when, as I have tried to show, Cuyonon themselves disagree on
how to proceed-on what to do, in effect, with their Cuyonon-ness. But,
why and how do they disagree?
This is where I believe attention to links to place is helpful. If we subsume
claims of a Cuyonon identity under a wider set of claims of connection with
Palawan and then ask why these latter claims vary, we see that differently
situated people have different reasons for asserting such claims, assertions
that implicate Cuyonon identity in different ways. Motive is therefore an
important and interesting variable here. Particular Cuyonon may variously
claim links to place out of nostalgia or for the promise of economic or
political gain: a retired schoolteacher assembles and publishes a book of
Cuyonon folk songs, a Cuyonon politician who has spent most of his life in
Manila campaigns locally under a "native son" banner, an upland Cuyonon
farmer illegally settled on state-owned forest land attempts to secure his
tenure by claiming to be an indigene, and so on. Granted, this is a simplistic
way of viewing motives, but the points to be made here are that the reasons
that people have for claiming or reaffirming ties to place do differ and that
we can usefully ask why a particular claim is made in a particular context.
Class position is one important influence on the particular form that ethnic
and other claims of connection with Palawan take. The relationship between
class and ethnicity in general has received considerable scholarly attention
(Roseberry 1989; Sider 1986), particularly in latin America (Kearney 1996).
Most efforts to introduce class issues to discussions of ethnicity and
national identity show either that ethnic movements are an idiom of class
conflict or that expressions ofethnicity can be related to expressions of
class and political power (see, for example, Medina 1997; Stephen 1996).
But, class can also usefully be considered in the spirit of Brass's
observation, noted earlier, that greater attention is needed to variation within
ethnic groups regarding how ethnic identities are defined and expressed
(see, for example, Greenwood 1985).
Well-off urban Cuyonon, for example, more easily "promote their
Cuyonon-ness" because they have the economic means to demonstrate
simultaneously that they are also progressive and modern. Poorer rural
Cuyonon, in contrast, also wish to be viewed as progressive and modern
but may find that distancing themselves from "things Cuyonon" works best
to achieve this end. Ethnic pride and ethnic politics thus largely concern
those in the upper rungs of Cuyonon society, persons who can afford
socially to display public markers of rusticity that would mark more
ordinary Cuyonon as simply rustic.
Thus far, I have treated place in general and Palawan in particular as
timeless and unproblematic entities, but these notions too require critical
attention: the places to which people variously claim connection change
over time. Palawan as a place is still being produced, and one of the major
players in the production of Palawan is the Philippine state. I approach the
causal role of the state with some trepidation, because it seems to me that
role is more easily asserted than demonstrated. Indeed, I find it ironic that
much recent scholarship aimed at problematizing culture or deconstructing
essentializing models ofethnic identity should appear to take state influence
on culture and identity as an unproblematic given. Reviewing culture theory
in the anthropology of Southeast Asia, Mary Margaret Steedly (1999)
similarly discerns a tendency to comprehend the state
in ways analogous to older, totalizing models of culture.
Granted, states have indeed perpetuated and even created ethnic differences
(Comaroff 1987; Pieterse 1996), but the Philippine state does not speak
with a single or consistent voice about such matters. Thus, the Philippine
state helps produce Palawan (and hence also Palawenos), but it also helps
perpetuate the nationwide upland-lowland distinction that divides Palawan,
even as it has vacillated (above) on the question of where particular people
such as the Cuyonon might lie with respect to this distinction.9Again, the
Philippine state helps produce the uplands and related notions of a culturally
distinct upland identity, but it has also long fostered migration of lowland
settlers into those same uplands.
Kathleen M. Adams's research on tourism and national integration in
Sulawesi provides a helpful comparative perspective on the process
whereby provincial political units such as Palawan may come to acquire
quasi-ethnic regional identities that then compete for allegiance with
preexisting ethnolinguistic identities. Reviewing growing evidence for the
forging of a panethnic provincial identity in South Sulawesi, Adams
describes how ethnic intermarriage and increasingly frequent references by
academics, journalists, and ordinary people to alleged South Sulawesi
cultural traits have helped lay the foundation for a common regional
identity, although the degree to which certain groups-in this case, the
Toraja and the Chinese-will find this regional identity congenial remains to
be seen (1997, 168-69). (A newly evolving regional "Jumma" identity in
Bangladesh similarly competes with established local-group identities [see
van Schendel 1995}.)
Again, Martijn van Beek reports how notions of a distinctive Ladakhi
identity came into being-indeed, were made necessary-in the course of
Ladakhi struggles for regional autonomy for Jamma and Kashmir. But
despite public references to an ostensibly shared and unproblematic Ladakh
identity-in political negotiations, in promoting Ladakh as a tourist
destination or as a prospective recipient ofdevelopment aid, the inhabitants
of Ladakh do not agree on what that identity might consist of. Ladakhi
identity ultimately convinces not by virtue of any rootedness in Ladakhi
culture, but by its correspondence with the hegemonic discourse of the
Indian state about identity and difference (2000, 181-82). (Entire nations,
ofcourse, can similarly be produced [see, for example, Durrenberger and
Palsson 1996}.)
The role of the Philippine state and its colonial predecessors in making the
distinction between uplanders and lowlanders a structural feature of
Philippine social life has been widely noted (Cannell 1999; Gibson 1986).
Here again, we find a helpful comparative perspective from Indonesia.
Using the concept of marginality as a point of departure, Tania Murray Li
(1999) shows how representations of the Indonesian uplands in terms of
marginality-representations embodied in a range of academic, governmental,
and popular discourses and practices-have strongly colored the manner in
which upland peoples and lifeways have been apprehended by others and in
ways that have served the economic and political interests of powerful
others. In the elision of categories that results, according to Li, "upland
people become equated with indigenous people, tribal people, traditional
people, forest-dependent people or shifting cultivators, belying the
enormous diversity ofethnic groups and social classes that occupy upland
terrain, and the alliances and identities formed in situ" (1999, 23-24)
.
Broadly similar processes have long been at work in the Philippines.
What we see in the evolution of a Palawefio identity, I believe, is the
reconfiguring ofPalawan itself on the national stage. Long marginal to the
Philippine state, Palawan and its inhabitants were once comfortably located
entirely within the socially constituted uplands.lO The developments of the
last hundred years, however, have rendered the category "upland
peoples"-as broad and elastic as it has proven throughout Southeast Asia-
to be inadequate to categorize Palawan's residents, hence, "Palawenio."
Through a process of excluding Palawan's indigenous peoples while
making everyone else sound more like people elsewhere in the Philippines,
Palawan is drawn into the nation and the national consciousness on a
familiar structural principle, and its inhabitants are, as it were,
domesticated. Palawan, in short, needed Palawefios if it were to be fully
part of the Philippines.ll The production of Palawan and the reproduction
of the upland-lowland distinction have both necessarily affected the
construction of Cuyonon identity, by both Cuyonon themselves and others.
Thus far, I have treated Cuyonon as unproblematic lowlanders, based on
their Hispanized cultural traditions and their extensive participation in
lowland social and political life, and this is certainly how Cuyonon see
themselves.
Cuyonon, however, have an upland farming technology; and on the
forested agricultural frontiers of upland Palawan, where early Cuyonon
pioneers are believed to have learned the practice of long-fallow shifting
cultivation from local Tagbanua, Cuyonon and Tagbanua can today lead
disarmingly similar everyday lives whose commonalities of economic and
social practice are not lost on migrants from Luzon and the Visayas. In a
region where economic activities are often ethnicized, such that ethnic
labels may come to denote ways of living more than primordial attachments
(Paredes 2000), this circumstance helps explain why Cuyonon are
sometimes viewed as natives by ostensibly more progressive migrants-
this even as some Cuyonon have joined some Tagbanua in a common
Protestant religious identity that backgrounds ethnic origins.
One of Palawan's more fascinating aspects is in fact that dichotomous
categories such as upland and lowland, Christian and native, or migrant
and local-all seemingly so serviceable elsewhere in the archipelago,
sometimes do not apply very well to or are confounded by particular
peoples of the region.12 That such category-confounding peoples are often
economically and socially marginal returns us to the matter of social class
and suggests a final complication that I wish to discuss here, one regarding
Cuyonon efforts to navigate contemporary choices about identity. However
inclined some Cuyonon may be to say simply that they are "from here,"
particularly for those who inhabit present-day agricultural frontiers,
indigeneity has class connotations as well as "tribal" connotations.
Although I do not propose that the upland-lowland "system" in the
Philippines can simply be reduced to a class system, neither should we
allow discourse about ethnicity and ethnic differences to obscure very real
(and often asymmetrical) relationships of class and political power
(Medina 1997; Ortner 1998; Stephen 1996).13
These considerations help explain the potential appeal of new provincial
and other regional identities to peoples such as the Cuyonon. These
identities appear better able to insulate the bearer from the unwelcome
associations with lower social class or primitive lifeways to which
traditional ethnolinguistic group identities may become vulnerable. But,
who will decide which cultural representations will inform these new
class-concealing regional identities? Some Cuyonon, for example, would
like "Palaweno" to become in effect a provincialized ethnic identity, or they
would at least like to infuse the Palaweno identity with more Cuyonon
cultural content than to which most non-Cuyonon are likely to agree; that
is, "to be a Palawefio, one should at least be able to speak Cuyonon or some
other language of the Palawan region." As more Cuyonon trace their roots
to Palawan instead of Cuyo, how they come to claim connection with
Palawan-as Cuyonon or as Palawefios-will depend, in part, on how this
question is ultimately resolved.
In sum, Cuyonon today disagree on what to do with their Cuyonon-ness.
Most of those who inhabit rural areas appear relatively unself-conscious
about their ethnic identity. Lacking, like the Bikolanos studied by Fenela
Cannell, a "triumphalist view" of their own culture (1999,254), rural
Cuyonon neither affirm nor negate their ethnic identity so much as they
simply live it, working it out implicitly in the course of everyday social
relationships with others. In contrast, those suburban and urban Cuyonon
who no longer lead a traditional, farming-and-fishing rural lifeway
(particularly if they have not been drawn into an ethnicized competition for
economic, political, or social rewards) may deliberately eschew a Cuyonon
identity in favor of a broader "Filipino" identity, with its modernist promise
of being part of something larger than a Cuyonon identity can offer. Bur for
all Cuyonon and especially for those better educated and better off,
Cuyonon ethnic identity can and does still matter but only in relation to a
suite of other identities and in ways that depend (or so I have argued here)
on the problematic ofplace. In particular, when local rather than migrant
origins become socially salient or when economic or political opportunity
favors those who can demonstrate a local tie, some Cuyonon claim a
connection with Palawan by emphasizing their Cuyonon identity, whereas
others variously claim that they are indigenous (thereby aligning themselves
with Palawan's native peoples) or that they are Palawefios (thereby aligning
themselves with other migrants to Palawan Island and their descendants).
That Cuyonon disagree on how best to claim links to place is in turn
explained by class and other forms of difference.
Paul R. Brass has observed that most treatments of ethnicity focus on the
conflicts and other relationships among ethnic groups to the relative neglect
of the differences that can and do arise within groups 0991, 246-49). In the
objectified and hence homogenizing view ofethnic groups that results,
according toJan Nederveen Pieterse, what should be demonstrated-for
example, the degree to which ethnic identity actually figures in various
everyday lives-is taken as a given, and the negotiation of ethnicity in
relation to other forms of difference is taken for granted 0996, 30). To ask,
then, how one can be modern on Cuyonon terms risks reifying Cuyonon
identity when, as I have tried to show, Cuyonon themselves disagree on
how to proceed-on what to do, in effect, with their Cuyonon-ness. But,
why and how do they disagree?
This is where I believe attention to links to place is helpful. If we subsume
claims of a Cuyonon identity under a wider set of claims of connection with
Palawan and then ask why these latter claims vary, we see that differently
situated people have different reasons for asserting such claims, assertions
that implicate Cuyonon identity in different ways. Motive is therefore an
important and interesting variable here. Particular Cuyonon may variously
claim links to place out of nostalgia or for the promise of economic or
political gain: a retired schoolteacher assembles and publishes a book of
Cuyonon folk songs, a Cuyonon politician who has spent most of his life in
Manila campaigns locally under a "native son" banner, an upland Cuyonon
farmer illegally settled on state-owned forest land attempts to secure his
tenure by claiming to be an indigene, and so on. Granted, this is a simplistic
way of viewing motives, but the points to be made here are that the reasons
that people have for claiming or reaffirming ties to place do differ and that
we can usefully ask why a particular claim is made in a particular context.
Class position is one important influence on the particular form that ethnic
and other claims of connection with Palawan take. The relationship between
class and ethnicity in general has received considerable scholarly attention
(Roseberry 1989; Sider 1986), particularly in latin America (Kearney 1996).
Most efforts to introduce class issues to discussions of ethnicity and
national identity show either that ethnic movements are an idiom of class
conflict or that expressions ofethnicity can be related to expressions of
class and political power (see, for example, Medina 1997; Stephen 1996).
But, class can also usefully be considered in the spirit of Brass's
observation, noted earlier, that greater attention is needed to variation within
ethnic groups regarding how ethnic identities are defined and expressed
(see, for example, Greenwood 1985).
Well-off urban Cuyonon, for example, more easily "promote their
Cuyonon-ness" because they have the economic means to demonstrate
simultaneously that they are also progressive and modern. Poorer rural
Cuyonon, in contrast, also wish to be viewed as progressive and modern
but may find that distancing themselves from "things Cuyonon" works best
to achieve this end. Ethnic pride and ethnic politics thus largely concern
those in the upper rungs of Cuyonon society, persons who can afford
socially to display public markers of rusticity that would mark more
ordinary Cuyonon as simply rustic.
Thus far, I have treated place in general and Palawan in particular as
timeless and unproblematic entities, but these notions too require critical
attention: the places to which people variously claim connection change
over time. Palawan as a place is still being produced, and one of the major
players in the production of Palawan is the Philippine state. I approach the
causal role of the state with some trepidation, because it seems to me that
role is more easily asserted than demonstrated. Indeed, I find it ironic that
much recent scholarship aimed at problematizing culture or deconstructing
essentializing models ofethnic identity should appear to take state influence
on culture and identity as an unproblematic given. Reviewing culture theory
in the anthropology of Southeast Asia, Mary Margaret Steedly (1999)
similarly discerns a tendency to comprehend the state
in ways analogous to older, totalizing models of culture.
Granted, states have indeed perpetuated and even created ethnic differences
(Comaroff 1987; Pieterse 1996), but the Philippine state does not speak
with a single or consistent voice about such matters. Thus, the Philippine
state helps produce Palawan (and hence also Palawenos), but it also helps
perpetuate the nationwide upland-lowland distinction that divides Palawan,
even as it has vacillated (above) on the question of where particular people
such as the Cuyonon might lie with respect to this distinction.9Again, the
Philippine state helps produce the uplands and related notions of a culturally
distinct upland identity, but it has also long fostered migration of lowland
settlers into those same uplands.
Kathleen M. Adams's research on tourism and national integration in
Sulawesi provides a helpful comparative perspective on the process
whereby provincial political units such as Palawan may come to acquire
quasi-ethnic regional identities that then compete for allegiance with
preexisting ethnolinguistic identities. Reviewing growing evidence for the
forging of a panethnic provincial identity in South Sulawesi, Adams
describes how ethnic intermarriage and increasingly frequent references by
academics, journalists, and ordinary people to alleged South Sulawesi
cultural traits have helped lay the foundation for a common regional
identity, although the degree to which certain groups-in this case, the
Toraja and the Chinese-will find this regional identity congenial remains to
be seen (1997, 168-69). (A newly evolving regional "Jumma" identity in
Bangladesh similarly competes with established local-group identities [see
van Schendel 1995}.)
Again, Martijn van Beek reports how notions of a distinctive Ladakhi
identity came into being-indeed, were made necessary-in the course of
Ladakhi struggles for regional autonomy for Jamma and Kashmir. But
despite public references to an ostensibly shared and unproblematic Ladakh
identity-in political negotiations, in promoting Ladakh as a tourist
destination or as a prospective recipient ofdevelopment aid, the inhabitants
of Ladakh do not agree on what that identity might consist of. Ladakhi
identity ultimately convinces not by virtue of any rootedness in Ladakhi
culture, but by its correspondence with the hegemonic discourse of the
Indian state about identity and difference (2000, 181-82). (Entire nations,
ofcourse, can similarly be produced [see, for example, Durrenberger and
Palsson 1996}.)
The role of the Philippine state and its colonial predecessors in making the
distinction between uplanders and lowlanders a structural feature of
Philippine social life has been widely noted (Cannell 1999; Gibson 1986).
Here again, we find a helpful comparative perspective from Indonesia.
Using the concept of marginality as a point of departure, Tania Murray Li
(1999) shows how representations of the Indonesian uplands in terms of
marginality-representations embodied in a range of academic, governmental,
and popular discourses and practices-have strongly colored the manner in
which upland peoples and lifeways have been apprehended by others and in
ways that have served the economic and political interests of powerful
others. In the elision of categories that results, according to Li, "upland
people become equated with indigenous people, tribal people, traditional
people, forest-dependent people or shifting cultivators, belying the
enormous diversity ofethnic groups and social classes that occupy upland
terrain, and the alliances and identities formed in situ" (1999, 23-24)
.
Broadly similar processes have long been at work in the Philippines.
What we see in the evolution of a Palawefio identity, I believe, is the
reconfiguring ofPalawan itself on the national stage. Long marginal to the
Philippine state, Palawan and its inhabitants were once comfortably located
entirely within the socially constituted uplands.lO The developments of the
last hundred years, however, have rendered the category "upland
peoples"-as broad and elastic as it has proven throughout Southeast Asia-
to be inadequate to categorize Palawan's residents, hence, "Palawenio."
Through a process of excluding Palawan's indigenous peoples while
making everyone else sound more like people elsewhere in the Philippines,
Palawan is drawn into the nation and the national consciousness on a
familiar structural principle, and its inhabitants are, as it were,
domesticated. Palawan, in short, needed Palawefios if it were to be fully
part of the Philippines.ll The production of Palawan and the reproduction
of the upland-lowland distinction have both necessarily affected the
construction of Cuyonon identity, by both Cuyonon themselves and others.
Thus far, I have treated Cuyonon as unproblematic lowlanders, based on
their Hispanized cultural traditions and their extensive participation in
lowland social and political life, and this is certainly how Cuyonon see
themselves.
Cuyonon, however, have an upland farming technology; and on the
forested agricultural frontiers of upland Palawan, where early Cuyonon
pioneers are believed to have learned the practice of long-fallow shifting
cultivation from local Tagbanua, Cuyonon and Tagbanua can today lead
disarmingly similar everyday lives whose commonalities of economic and
social practice are not lost on migrants from Luzon and the Visayas. In a
region where economic activities are often ethnicized, such that ethnic
labels may come to denote ways of living more than primordial attachments
(Paredes 2000), this circumstance helps explain why Cuyonon are
sometimes viewed as natives by ostensibly more progressive migrants-
this even as some Cuyonon have joined some Tagbanua in a common
Protestant religious identity that backgrounds ethnic origins.
One of Palawan's more fascinating aspects is in fact that dichotomous
categories such as upland and lowland, Christian and native, or migrant
and local-all seemingly so serviceable elsewhere in the archipelago,
sometimes do not apply very well to or are confounded by particular
peoples of the region.12 That such category-confounding peoples are often
economically and socially marginal returns us to the matter of social class
and suggests a final complication that I wish to discuss here, one regarding
Cuyonon efforts to navigate contemporary choices about identity. However
inclined some Cuyonon may be to say simply that they are "from here,"
particularly for those who inhabit present-day agricultural frontiers,
indigeneity has class connotations as well as "tribal" connotations.
Although I do not propose that the upland-lowland "system" in the
Philippines can simply be reduced to a class system, neither should we
allow discourse about ethnicity and ethnic differences to obscure very real
(and often asymmetrical) relationships of class and political power
(Medina 1997; Ortner 1998; Stephen 1996).13
These considerations help explain the potential appeal of new provincial
and other regional identities to peoples such as the Cuyonon. These
identities appear better able to insulate the bearer from the unwelcome
associations with lower social class or primitive lifeways to which
traditional ethnolinguistic group identities may become vulnerable. But,
who will decide which cultural representations will inform these new
class-concealing regional identities? Some Cuyonon, for example, would
like "Palaweno" to become in effect a provincialized ethnic identity, or they
would at least like to infuse the Palaweno identity with more Cuyonon
cultural content than to which most non-Cuyonon are likely to agree; that
is, "to be a Palawefio, one should at least be able to speak Cuyonon or some
other language of the Palawan region." As more Cuyonon trace their roots
to Palawan instead of Cuyo, how they come to claim connection with
Palawan-as Cuyonon or as Palawefios-will depend, in part, on how this
question is ultimately resolved.
In sum, Cuyonon today disagree on what to do with their Cuyonon-ness.
Most of those who inhabit rural areas appear relatively unself-conscious
about their ethnic identity. Lacking, like the Bikolanos studied by Fenela
Cannell, a "triumphalist view" of their own culture (1999,254), rural
Cuyonon neither affirm nor negate their ethnic identity so much as they
simply live it, working it out implicitly in the course of everyday social
relationships with others. In contrast, those suburban and urban Cuyonon
who no longer lead a traditional, farming-and-fishing rural lifeway
(particularly if they have not been drawn into an ethnicized competition for
economic, political, or social rewards) may deliberately eschew a Cuyonon
identity in favor of a broader "Filipino" identity, with its modernist promise
of being part of something larger than a Cuyonon identity can offer. Bur for
all Cuyonon and especially for those better educated and better off,
Cuyonon ethnic identity can and does still matter but only in relation to a
suite of other identities and in ways that depend (or so I have argued here)
on the problematic ofplace. In particular, when local rather than migrant
origins become socially salient or when economic or political opportunity
favors those who can demonstrate a local tie, some Cuyonon claim a
connection with Palawan by emphasizing their Cuyonon identity, whereas
others variously claim that they are indigenous (thereby aligning themselves
with Palawan's native peoples) or that they are Palawefios (thereby aligning
themselves with other migrants to Palawan Island and their descendants).
That Cuyonon disagree on how best to claim links to place is in turn
explained by class and other forms of difference.
Modern Complications
In these circumstances, Cuyonon themselves-like many of their ethnic
counterparts elsewhere in the Philippines-have become less and less
distinguishable from other lowland Filipinos by the sorts of traditional
"ethnographic atlas" terms discussed earlier. Particularly in Puerto Princesa City,
the capital of Palawan, where numerous Cuyonon pursue urban occupations
intermingled with members of many other lowland groups, only the use of the
Cuyonon language itself appears to distinguish ethnic Cuyonon from others, and
even then Cuyonon often employ Tagalog or English in the interests of
practicality or modernity.4 The just-discussed settlement of Palawan by lowland
Filipinos from elsewhere in the country is one important cause of these
developments. Other causes include state-sponsored promo¬tion of education
and tourism in Palawan, growing local access to the national media, frequent
marriages between Cuyonon and members of other lowland ethnolinguistic
groups, geographic mobility of Cuyonon within and beyond Palawan, Cuyonon
religious conversion to various Protestant denominations, and growing class
differences among Cuyonon themselves.
All these developments, part and parcel of modern Philippine life, have made it
increasingly difficult for Cuyonon to locate themselves clearly on a national
landscape of ethnic identities. This difficulty has been augmented by the efforts
of others in Palawan to construct or reconstruct other sorts of identities and
links to place-efforts that affect how Cuyonon see themselves and are seen by
others. .
Cuyonon in the Modern Philippines
And yet surely, one cannot safely conclude from all this that Cuyonon culture
and identity are somehow "disappearing." For one thing, Cuyonon are
demograph¬ically numerous, and for another, "being Cuyonon" clearly still
means something to those who are Cuyonon. Indeed, for the many older
Cuyonon inhabiting rural Palawan (many of whom were born and raised in
Cuyo), Cuyonon identity is an unproblematic fact of life realized daily in
language and lifeway and not something to be deployed or backgrounded
strategically. Their understandings of what being Cuyonon means square with
common-and older anthropological-usage of the term ethnic group to refer,
simply, to people who share a common (and distinctive) culture and a common
ancestry. Most older Cuyonon, I believe, would readily recognize themselves in
the sort of ethnographic account of Cuyonon culture given earlier. As one
patiently explained to me, in response to my persistent questioning about the
seemingly problematic aspects of contemporary Cuyonon identity, most older
Cuyonon "just don't worry about those things" (interview, February 15, 2002).
My analysis below, in contrast, applies primarily to younger urban and suburban
Cuyonon who were for the most part born and raised outside Cuyo and who (to
varying degrees) have left traditional rural lifeways behind. For them, ethnic
identity is problematic for the reasons discussed above and in ways that resonate
with those newer scholarly approaches to ethnicity that emphasize choice and
circumstance, rather than primordial tie, and that draw more on discourses
about ethnic identity than on entries in an ethnographic atlas.5 For the growing
numbers of people of Cuyonon ancestry in this second category, what precisely
does it mean today to be Cuyonon?
Cuyonon and Modernity
Any answer to this question must take account of the other sorts of
identities¬regional, class, and religious-that also figure in contemporary
Philippine life. Cuyonon today are also busy being Filipinos-in particular,
modern Filipinos, who are in turn busy being all sorts of different things.
One useful way of rephrasing the question is, hence, to ask, how can one
be a modern Filipino on Cuyonon terms?
This phrasing of the question, however, risks the presupposition that it has an
affirmative answer-that is, that it is indeed possible to be modern on Cuyonon
terms and that at least some Cuyonon attempt to do just that. I believe, however,
that we must also consider here the null hypothesis: that it is in fact not possible
to be modern and Cuyonon at the same time and that in practice Cuyonon do not
even attempt to do so. While simplistic, this either/or phrasing of the matter is a
prudent counter to more-beguiling but perhaps equally simplistic "have your cake
and eat it too formulations of the sort with which I began. In the event, as I hope
to show here, there is evidence on both sides, with an individual's class position
and rural or urban residence being important influences.
Choice of language is clearly a crucial variable here in view of the observation
made earlier that in many contemporary settings only use of the Cuyonon
language itself distinguishes Cuyonon from others-an observation often repeated
by Cuyonon with whom I spoke. In particular, the language that Cuyonon
parents use to speak to their children reflects a family's economic position in a
way that nicely illustrates the influential role of social class in identity matters
both in the past and in the present. A generation ago, the great majority of
Cuyonon-those living in rural communities and fishing or farming as a way of
life-spoke Cuyonon in the household and to their children. A smaller number of
more prosperous "middle class" Cuyonon had begun speaking Tagalog to their
children, reasoning that it would give them a head start in school; a handful of
elite Cuyonon families spoke English to their children to better prepare them for
future professional careers, reasoning that Cuyonon could be learned in the street
and Tagalog in school. Today this situation has been radically altered. Virtually
all rural-dwelling Cuyonon speak Tagalog to their children, while more
prosperous and upwardly mobile suburban and urban Cuyonon living in and near
Puerto Princesa City speak English to their children. Only in a handful of
prominent Cuyonon households do parents, out of self-conscious concern for
"cultural survival," speak Cuyonon to their children, now reasoning that Tagalog
can be learned in the streets and English in school.
Whether this experiment in language preservation will be successful remains to
be seen, but these same prominent Cuyonon families, together with others in
Puerto Princesa City and Manila, are also involved with other and more broadly
based efforts to preserve and promote "Cuyonon culture." The Cuyonon
Association has been formed, one of the Sunday Masses at the Puerto Princesa
Cathedral is now said in Cuyonon, a local musical group has produced and
marketed several cassette tapes featuring "traditional" Cuyonon music, several
local radio stations feature once-a-week Cuyonon news-talk programs, and so on.
One may reasonably conclude from these observations that at least some
Cuyonon have indeed found ways to be modern on Cuyonon terms with the
proviso that the particular ways that they have found reflect the lifestyles and
concerns of relatively well off urban dwellers. What, however, about their more
numerous rural-dwelling counterparts? Any efforts that they might make to be
"modern on Cuyonon terms" are less likely to be driven by the sorts of "cultural
survival" concerns that animate some town-dwelling Cuyonon.6 Furthermore,
most of the traditions that rural Cuyonon carry forth into modernity are not as
distinctively Cuyonon as are the particular Cuyonon "traditions" that most interest
well-off urbanites.
Ttue-and leaving wealth differences aside-as familiarly Filipino as contem¬porary
house styles, diet, and forms of entertainment might appear to casual passersby
in rural Palawan communities, ethnic markers or flourishes in these and other
realms do continue to signal Cuyonon ethnicity to knowledgeable observers.
Some such markers are small, even incidental: an example would be the
distinctive square Cuyonon nigo, or "rice winnower," that contrasts with the
ubiquitous round winnowers employed by Tagalogs and Visayans. Other
differences, such as distinctively Cuyonon expressions of Catholic religiosity,
run deeper. For rural and urban Cuyonon alike, the culinary traditions of Cuyo
Island-in particular, a preference for seaweed, mollusks, and other "simple"
foods simply prepared-continue to inform both the contemporary diet and
modern self-image (Eder 1999, 157).
But in general, rural discourses juxtaposing traditional and modern lifeways
are more broadly conceived, with much of the traditional defined by the
socioeconomic realities of rural Philippine life and most of the modern defined
by the capitalist consumption standards enjoyed or promoted by a larger world.
This said, rural Cuyonon-like virrually all other rural Filipinos-are indeed daily
engaged with reconciling tradition and modernity, albeit in often prosaic ways
and with the complication that there are different traditions, and-one
suspects-alternative modernities, the latter likely gendered, such that men and
women have characteristic (but overlapping) areas of concern.
For those rural men, for example, whose routine social horizons extend to
Puerto Princesa City, decisions about what sort of food and drink to serve
visiting townsfolk must reconcile the guest's likely desire for an authentic rural
culinary experience with one's own wish to appear modern (i.e., citified) in this
same realm. Among the better off, one popular compromise is to serve imported
scotch (in lieu ofsuch rural standbys as gin or rum) together with traditional
rural favorites such as linegeb (barbecued fresh fish wrapped in banana leaves)
or kinilaw (fresh raw fish marinated in vinegar, ginger, and chili pepper), the
latter prepared to urban hygienic standards.
Similarly among women, traditionally more preoccupied with household
well-being, the pathways to modernity in realms such as health care and
education for children neither coincide with nor contravene traditional culrural
wisdom in an unambiguous fashion. How, for example, does a modern woman
have a baby, in a (modern) hospital or at home, with the assistance of a
(traditional) midwife? Even matters of household wherewithal aside, the
choice is still not clear; some rural Cuyonon women calculate that the money
saved now on an expensive hospital bill could be used later to purchase
modern appliances and household furnishings (Eder 1999, 158-59).
Again, however, rural Cuyonon who strive to reconcile the traditional and the
modern in these and other ways mostly do so without implicating specifically
Cuyonon cultural themes. And although I have not studied the matter, my
impression is that the same is true of many Cuyonon who live in Puerto Princesa
City; particularly for those less well off economically, many aspects of Cuyonon
culture-and Cuyonon identity itself-appear of uncertain relevance to the struggle
to get ahead in town. There, for example, are young men and women of
Cuyonon ancestry-still Cuyonon in the eyes of their rural counterparts-whose
own notions of how best to achieve a more modern life, powerfully influenced
by peer groups that include the offspring of migrants from Manila and other
centers of modernity, may lead them to disclaim a Cuyonon identity altogether.
Such persons may speak Tagalog exclusively and even if they can still speak
some Cuyonon deny that ability when asked. Or, they may deflect a question
about their ethnic ties by explaining that their parents were "from Cuyo," much
as some Americans might seek to deflect a question about their religious beliefs
by citing the church that their parents attend (leaving unstated the implication that
they themselves are not members).
continued next column
In these circumstances, Cuyonon themselves-like many of their ethnic
counterparts elsewhere in the Philippines-have become less and less
distinguishable from other lowland Filipinos by the sorts of traditional
"ethnographic atlas" terms discussed earlier. Particularly in Puerto Princesa City,
the capital of Palawan, where numerous Cuyonon pursue urban occupations
intermingled with members of many other lowland groups, only the use of the
Cuyonon language itself appears to distinguish ethnic Cuyonon from others, and
even then Cuyonon often employ Tagalog or English in the interests of
practicality or modernity.4 The just-discussed settlement of Palawan by lowland
Filipinos from elsewhere in the country is one important cause of these
developments. Other causes include state-sponsored promo¬tion of education
and tourism in Palawan, growing local access to the national media, frequent
marriages between Cuyonon and members of other lowland ethnolinguistic
groups, geographic mobility of Cuyonon within and beyond Palawan, Cuyonon
religious conversion to various Protestant denominations, and growing class
differences among Cuyonon themselves.
All these developments, part and parcel of modern Philippine life, have made it
increasingly difficult for Cuyonon to locate themselves clearly on a national
landscape of ethnic identities. This difficulty has been augmented by the efforts
of others in Palawan to construct or reconstruct other sorts of identities and
links to place-efforts that affect how Cuyonon see themselves and are seen by
others. .
Cuyonon in the Modern Philippines
And yet surely, one cannot safely conclude from all this that Cuyonon culture
and identity are somehow "disappearing." For one thing, Cuyonon are
demograph¬ically numerous, and for another, "being Cuyonon" clearly still
means something to those who are Cuyonon. Indeed, for the many older
Cuyonon inhabiting rural Palawan (many of whom were born and raised in
Cuyo), Cuyonon identity is an unproblematic fact of life realized daily in
language and lifeway and not something to be deployed or backgrounded
strategically. Their understandings of what being Cuyonon means square with
common-and older anthropological-usage of the term ethnic group to refer,
simply, to people who share a common (and distinctive) culture and a common
ancestry. Most older Cuyonon, I believe, would readily recognize themselves in
the sort of ethnographic account of Cuyonon culture given earlier. As one
patiently explained to me, in response to my persistent questioning about the
seemingly problematic aspects of contemporary Cuyonon identity, most older
Cuyonon "just don't worry about those things" (interview, February 15, 2002).
My analysis below, in contrast, applies primarily to younger urban and suburban
Cuyonon who were for the most part born and raised outside Cuyo and who (to
varying degrees) have left traditional rural lifeways behind. For them, ethnic
identity is problematic for the reasons discussed above and in ways that resonate
with those newer scholarly approaches to ethnicity that emphasize choice and
circumstance, rather than primordial tie, and that draw more on discourses
about ethnic identity than on entries in an ethnographic atlas.5 For the growing
numbers of people of Cuyonon ancestry in this second category, what precisely
does it mean today to be Cuyonon?
Cuyonon and Modernity
Any answer to this question must take account of the other sorts of
identities¬regional, class, and religious-that also figure in contemporary
Philippine life. Cuyonon today are also busy being Filipinos-in particular,
modern Filipinos, who are in turn busy being all sorts of different things.
One useful way of rephrasing the question is, hence, to ask, how can one
be a modern Filipino on Cuyonon terms?
This phrasing of the question, however, risks the presupposition that it has an
affirmative answer-that is, that it is indeed possible to be modern on Cuyonon
terms and that at least some Cuyonon attempt to do just that. I believe, however,
that we must also consider here the null hypothesis: that it is in fact not possible
to be modern and Cuyonon at the same time and that in practice Cuyonon do not
even attempt to do so. While simplistic, this either/or phrasing of the matter is a
prudent counter to more-beguiling but perhaps equally simplistic "have your cake
and eat it too formulations of the sort with which I began. In the event, as I hope
to show here, there is evidence on both sides, with an individual's class position
and rural or urban residence being important influences.
Choice of language is clearly a crucial variable here in view of the observation
made earlier that in many contemporary settings only use of the Cuyonon
language itself distinguishes Cuyonon from others-an observation often repeated
by Cuyonon with whom I spoke. In particular, the language that Cuyonon
parents use to speak to their children reflects a family's economic position in a
way that nicely illustrates the influential role of social class in identity matters
both in the past and in the present. A generation ago, the great majority of
Cuyonon-those living in rural communities and fishing or farming as a way of
life-spoke Cuyonon in the household and to their children. A smaller number of
more prosperous "middle class" Cuyonon had begun speaking Tagalog to their
children, reasoning that it would give them a head start in school; a handful of
elite Cuyonon families spoke English to their children to better prepare them for
future professional careers, reasoning that Cuyonon could be learned in the street
and Tagalog in school. Today this situation has been radically altered. Virtually
all rural-dwelling Cuyonon speak Tagalog to their children, while more
prosperous and upwardly mobile suburban and urban Cuyonon living in and near
Puerto Princesa City speak English to their children. Only in a handful of
prominent Cuyonon households do parents, out of self-conscious concern for
"cultural survival," speak Cuyonon to their children, now reasoning that Tagalog
can be learned in the streets and English in school.
Whether this experiment in language preservation will be successful remains to
be seen, but these same prominent Cuyonon families, together with others in
Puerto Princesa City and Manila, are also involved with other and more broadly
based efforts to preserve and promote "Cuyonon culture." The Cuyonon
Association has been formed, one of the Sunday Masses at the Puerto Princesa
Cathedral is now said in Cuyonon, a local musical group has produced and
marketed several cassette tapes featuring "traditional" Cuyonon music, several
local radio stations feature once-a-week Cuyonon news-talk programs, and so on.
One may reasonably conclude from these observations that at least some
Cuyonon have indeed found ways to be modern on Cuyonon terms with the
proviso that the particular ways that they have found reflect the lifestyles and
concerns of relatively well off urban dwellers. What, however, about their more
numerous rural-dwelling counterparts? Any efforts that they might make to be
"modern on Cuyonon terms" are less likely to be driven by the sorts of "cultural
survival" concerns that animate some town-dwelling Cuyonon.6 Furthermore,
most of the traditions that rural Cuyonon carry forth into modernity are not as
distinctively Cuyonon as are the particular Cuyonon "traditions" that most interest
well-off urbanites.
Ttue-and leaving wealth differences aside-as familiarly Filipino as contem¬porary
house styles, diet, and forms of entertainment might appear to casual passersby
in rural Palawan communities, ethnic markers or flourishes in these and other
realms do continue to signal Cuyonon ethnicity to knowledgeable observers.
Some such markers are small, even incidental: an example would be the
distinctive square Cuyonon nigo, or "rice winnower," that contrasts with the
ubiquitous round winnowers employed by Tagalogs and Visayans. Other
differences, such as distinctively Cuyonon expressions of Catholic religiosity,
run deeper. For rural and urban Cuyonon alike, the culinary traditions of Cuyo
Island-in particular, a preference for seaweed, mollusks, and other "simple"
foods simply prepared-continue to inform both the contemporary diet and
modern self-image (Eder 1999, 157).
But in general, rural discourses juxtaposing traditional and modern lifeways
are more broadly conceived, with much of the traditional defined by the
socioeconomic realities of rural Philippine life and most of the modern defined
by the capitalist consumption standards enjoyed or promoted by a larger world.
This said, rural Cuyonon-like virrually all other rural Filipinos-are indeed daily
engaged with reconciling tradition and modernity, albeit in often prosaic ways
and with the complication that there are different traditions, and-one
suspects-alternative modernities, the latter likely gendered, such that men and
women have characteristic (but overlapping) areas of concern.
For those rural men, for example, whose routine social horizons extend to
Puerto Princesa City, decisions about what sort of food and drink to serve
visiting townsfolk must reconcile the guest's likely desire for an authentic rural
culinary experience with one's own wish to appear modern (i.e., citified) in this
same realm. Among the better off, one popular compromise is to serve imported
scotch (in lieu ofsuch rural standbys as gin or rum) together with traditional
rural favorites such as linegeb (barbecued fresh fish wrapped in banana leaves)
or kinilaw (fresh raw fish marinated in vinegar, ginger, and chili pepper), the
latter prepared to urban hygienic standards.
Similarly among women, traditionally more preoccupied with household
well-being, the pathways to modernity in realms such as health care and
education for children neither coincide with nor contravene traditional culrural
wisdom in an unambiguous fashion. How, for example, does a modern woman
have a baby, in a (modern) hospital or at home, with the assistance of a
(traditional) midwife? Even matters of household wherewithal aside, the
choice is still not clear; some rural Cuyonon women calculate that the money
saved now on an expensive hospital bill could be used later to purchase
modern appliances and household furnishings (Eder 1999, 158-59).
Again, however, rural Cuyonon who strive to reconcile the traditional and the
modern in these and other ways mostly do so without implicating specifically
Cuyonon cultural themes. And although I have not studied the matter, my
impression is that the same is true of many Cuyonon who live in Puerto Princesa
City; particularly for those less well off economically, many aspects of Cuyonon
culture-and Cuyonon identity itself-appear of uncertain relevance to the struggle
to get ahead in town. There, for example, are young men and women of
Cuyonon ancestry-still Cuyonon in the eyes of their rural counterparts-whose
own notions of how best to achieve a more modern life, powerfully influenced
by peer groups that include the offspring of migrants from Manila and other
centers of modernity, may lead them to disclaim a Cuyonon identity altogether.
Such persons may speak Tagalog exclusively and even if they can still speak
some Cuyonon deny that ability when asked. Or, they may deflect a question
about their ethnic ties by explaining that their parents were "from Cuyo," much
as some Americans might seek to deflect a question about their religious beliefs
by citing the church that their parents attend (leaving unstated the implication that
they themselves are not members).
continued next column
4That ethnic groups may persist despite the seeming triviality ofany differences in material
culture with neighboring peoples has long been noted in Southeast Asia
(see, for example, Moerman 1968)
culture with neighboring peoples has long been noted in Southeast Asia
(see, for example, Moerman 1968)
Cuyonon and Place
I return now to the earlier-noted complication that in Palawan's frontier social
milieu, a politically charged distinction between "locals" and "migrants"
sometimes privileges those who can claim or forge links to place-and who can
hence claim to be taga Palawan, or "from Palawan." Other things being equal,
a candidate for elective office will fare better at the polls with a "native son"
rather than an "outsider" image, a new development initiative of the national
government will enjoy greater local acceptance if it can be headed by someone
from Palawan rather than by an "outsider," and so on. Being local, in short,
may engender economic, social, or political advantage, whether in these or in
numerous smaller ways.
Furthermore, migrants as an undifferentiated category of people are widely
disesteemed; particularly those who are believed to be recent arrivals, without
established roots in Palawan, are routinely blamed for a variety of environmental,
economic, and social ills. Shoplifting, picking pockets, dynamite fishing, illegal
forest clearing if the work is economically predatory or environmentally
damaging, it is probably that of migrants. At the same time, many migrants have
prospered in Palawan, giving rise to the island's "land of opportunity" reputation
elsewhere in the country, and when pressed on the matter, most local residents
will acknowledge that particular past migrants were "progressive" or contributed
significantly to local development.
In the end, of course, the marriages that frequently occur between long-time
residents and those more recently arrived confound discourses that juxtapose
"migrants" and "locals," as do differing opinions regarding how long one needs to
reside in Palawan before becoming a local or at least ceasing to be a migrant of
the worse sort. On balance, however, Cuyonon prefer to distance themselves
from the "migrant" labe1.7 But, how can links to place best be claimed or forged?
Being Cuyonon, of course, is itself such a link. Cuyonon are, after all, from
Palawan, but depending on one's reasons for claiming a local connection,
asserting a Cuyonon identity is not necessarily the best way to do so today or at
least not a way without pitfalls. First, at least some local residents are put off by
the forefronted "Cuyonon-ness" of some urban Cuyonon and find their behavior
variously amusing, backward looking, or unnecessarily divisive, the latter
sentiment visible in comments such as "Why do they need to have their own
Mass or their own radio programs?" Indeed, such ambivalent or negative
attitudes can extend to Cuyonon themselves, not all of whom wish to identify
with the objectifications of Cuyonon culture promoted by certain of their
compatriots (see Thomas 1992).
Second, although all are agreed that Cuyo and Cuyonon are part of the Palawan
region, Cuyo Island is not, in the end, Palawan Island; and at least some of
Palawan's tribal people, for example, refer to Cuyonon by the same term (dayu,
or "foreigner, outsider") that they employ for other migrants to the island.
Finally, Cuyonon are not alone in constructing Cuyonon identity. Rather,
they are partly at the mercy of outsiders (as Rita Smith Kipp 0993, 186]
describes Karo efforts in this regard), and the sometimes-pejorative notions
that non-Cuyonon entertain about them lead some Cuyonon to distance
themselves from the Cuyonon label, much as do the earlier¬discussed
notions about modernity entertained by young urbanites.
Some Cuyonon, hence, choose to background their Cuyonon identity in favor of
the vaguer claim that they are (in Tagalog) taga rito, "from here," or even that
they are (in English) "indigenous," giving these terms a broader rather than the
narrower construal favored by indigenous peoples and their advocates. Granted,
those who would identify in this fashion risk confusing themselves, in the eyes
of others, with the very Tagbanua and other "natives" whom Cuyonon have long
constructed as backward and otherwise very different from themselves.
Although Cuyonon do not meet the legal criteria of indigeneity established by the
Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) of 1997 and other relevant government
legislation (e.g., the various social forestry programs managed by the Department
of Environment and Natural Resources), Cuyonon claims of indigeneity have
sometimes found favor in inconsistently administered state policies. Under
pressure from a nationally powerful Palawan (and Cuyonon) politician, the Office
of Southern Cultural Communities (OSCC), once the government's lead agency
for addressing the needs and concerns of indigenous people on Palawan,
officially recognized Cuyonon as a "cultural community" (then the officially
preferred term for indigenous people). For some years thereafter, a substantial
fraction of OSCC college scholarships went to Cuyonon applicants. The
scholarship program was eventually terminated, but local NCIP officials maintain
that Cuyonon have never been officially "derecognized" by the
government-hence, their keeping of a Cuyonon population count, cited earlier.
Anomalous government policies aside, many Cuyonon (both rural and urban)
today do prefer to distance themselves from the Cuyonon as well as from the
migrant label, and they find the claim that they are, simply, "from here" as useful
means to do so. Access to resources may again be at stake. For example, some
poorer upland¬dwelling Cuyonon may emphasize a shared indigeneity with
Tagbanua and other tribal peoples of Palawan to advance a moral claim on scarce
upland resources or, more particularly, to position themselves as potential
beneficiaries of one or another of the various government and NGO
development-assistance programs aimed at these latter peoples. Lest such claims
appear unduly self-serving, Palawan's uplands have been filling up with Cuyonon
migrants and their offspring for more than h<llf a century, and many Cuyonon
on Palawan who are second-or even third-generation residents quite
understandably regard themselves as "indigenous," albeit in a different sense
than that employed by and for the Tagbanua and Batak, among whom many
upland-dwelling Cuyonon today live.5
Still another possibility for someone wishing to background his or her Cuyonon
identity while claiming a local tie is to identify as a "Palawefio," but there are
diffi¬culties here as well. Ttue, a strict interpretation of the term would appear to
limit it to all and to only the various peoples of the Palawan region shown in the
map, making Cuyonon Palawefios by definition. In practice, however, the term is
used more broadly and more ambiguously than this and at times even appears to
exclude Cuyonon subtly, just as it implicitly excludes indigenous peoples, to
mean in effect "migrants from outside Palawan who have made Palawan their
home" (i.e., people who also seek to establish ties to place but cannot do so on
ethnic grounds, as Cuyonon can).
Further complicating local understandings of the term Palawefio is local
environmentalist discourse that backgrounds issues ofgeographical origins and
length of residence in favor of a "green" rendering of the term to mean, in effect,
"someone who cares about Palawan's environment." Because many of the NGO
activists and others involved in local environmental issues are not from Palawan
and are hence vulnerable to the politically perilous charge that they are "outside"
troublemakers, such a construction of the term Palawefio provides the
environmentalist community with some needed political cover. Such a
construction, however, does not square well with the motives of those Cuyonon
who might claim to be Palawefios in the interest of being first in line to
utilize-rather than to preserve-Palawan's considerable natural resources.
Instructive here is the heated controversy that recently surrounded a proposed
cement plant in southern Palawan. Because of the plant's likely environmental and
social impacts-the plant itself would lie on the coast, but quarrying would be
necessary in the forested interior, within the ancestral domain of indigenous
Pala'wan-a broad coalition of forces opposed its construction. The plant proposal
was eventually withdrawn, in part because opponents succeeded in portraying
the project as the work of outside capitalists attempting to profit at Palawan's
expense, notwithstanding the fact that several prominent Cuyonon business
leaders were also involved. In the rhetoric of the opposition, however, all (good)
Palawefios should naturally have opposed the plant's construction, and those
Cuyonon who would have profited from the project or who otherwise supported
it were offended by the insinuation that they were hence not Palawefios or at
least not good ones.
I return now to the earlier-noted complication that in Palawan's frontier social
milieu, a politically charged distinction between "locals" and "migrants"
sometimes privileges those who can claim or forge links to place-and who can
hence claim to be taga Palawan, or "from Palawan." Other things being equal,
a candidate for elective office will fare better at the polls with a "native son"
rather than an "outsider" image, a new development initiative of the national
government will enjoy greater local acceptance if it can be headed by someone
from Palawan rather than by an "outsider," and so on. Being local, in short,
may engender economic, social, or political advantage, whether in these or in
numerous smaller ways.
Furthermore, migrants as an undifferentiated category of people are widely
disesteemed; particularly those who are believed to be recent arrivals, without
established roots in Palawan, are routinely blamed for a variety of environmental,
economic, and social ills. Shoplifting, picking pockets, dynamite fishing, illegal
forest clearing if the work is economically predatory or environmentally
damaging, it is probably that of migrants. At the same time, many migrants have
prospered in Palawan, giving rise to the island's "land of opportunity" reputation
elsewhere in the country, and when pressed on the matter, most local residents
will acknowledge that particular past migrants were "progressive" or contributed
significantly to local development.
In the end, of course, the marriages that frequently occur between long-time
residents and those more recently arrived confound discourses that juxtapose
"migrants" and "locals," as do differing opinions regarding how long one needs to
reside in Palawan before becoming a local or at least ceasing to be a migrant of
the worse sort. On balance, however, Cuyonon prefer to distance themselves
from the "migrant" labe1.7 But, how can links to place best be claimed or forged?
Being Cuyonon, of course, is itself such a link. Cuyonon are, after all, from
Palawan, but depending on one's reasons for claiming a local connection,
asserting a Cuyonon identity is not necessarily the best way to do so today or at
least not a way without pitfalls. First, at least some local residents are put off by
the forefronted "Cuyonon-ness" of some urban Cuyonon and find their behavior
variously amusing, backward looking, or unnecessarily divisive, the latter
sentiment visible in comments such as "Why do they need to have their own
Mass or their own radio programs?" Indeed, such ambivalent or negative
attitudes can extend to Cuyonon themselves, not all of whom wish to identify
with the objectifications of Cuyonon culture promoted by certain of their
compatriots (see Thomas 1992).
Second, although all are agreed that Cuyo and Cuyonon are part of the Palawan
region, Cuyo Island is not, in the end, Palawan Island; and at least some of
Palawan's tribal people, for example, refer to Cuyonon by the same term (dayu,
or "foreigner, outsider") that they employ for other migrants to the island.
Finally, Cuyonon are not alone in constructing Cuyonon identity. Rather,
they are partly at the mercy of outsiders (as Rita Smith Kipp 0993, 186]
describes Karo efforts in this regard), and the sometimes-pejorative notions
that non-Cuyonon entertain about them lead some Cuyonon to distance
themselves from the Cuyonon label, much as do the earlier¬discussed
notions about modernity entertained by young urbanites.
Some Cuyonon, hence, choose to background their Cuyonon identity in favor of
the vaguer claim that they are (in Tagalog) taga rito, "from here," or even that
they are (in English) "indigenous," giving these terms a broader rather than the
narrower construal favored by indigenous peoples and their advocates. Granted,
those who would identify in this fashion risk confusing themselves, in the eyes
of others, with the very Tagbanua and other "natives" whom Cuyonon have long
constructed as backward and otherwise very different from themselves.
Although Cuyonon do not meet the legal criteria of indigeneity established by the
Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) of 1997 and other relevant government
legislation (e.g., the various social forestry programs managed by the Department
of Environment and Natural Resources), Cuyonon claims of indigeneity have
sometimes found favor in inconsistently administered state policies. Under
pressure from a nationally powerful Palawan (and Cuyonon) politician, the Office
of Southern Cultural Communities (OSCC), once the government's lead agency
for addressing the needs and concerns of indigenous people on Palawan,
officially recognized Cuyonon as a "cultural community" (then the officially
preferred term for indigenous people). For some years thereafter, a substantial
fraction of OSCC college scholarships went to Cuyonon applicants. The
scholarship program was eventually terminated, but local NCIP officials maintain
that Cuyonon have never been officially "derecognized" by the
government-hence, their keeping of a Cuyonon population count, cited earlier.
Anomalous government policies aside, many Cuyonon (both rural and urban)
today do prefer to distance themselves from the Cuyonon as well as from the
migrant label, and they find the claim that they are, simply, "from here" as useful
means to do so. Access to resources may again be at stake. For example, some
poorer upland¬dwelling Cuyonon may emphasize a shared indigeneity with
Tagbanua and other tribal peoples of Palawan to advance a moral claim on scarce
upland resources or, more particularly, to position themselves as potential
beneficiaries of one or another of the various government and NGO
development-assistance programs aimed at these latter peoples. Lest such claims
appear unduly self-serving, Palawan's uplands have been filling up with Cuyonon
migrants and their offspring for more than h<llf a century, and many Cuyonon
on Palawan who are second-or even third-generation residents quite
understandably regard themselves as "indigenous," albeit in a different sense
than that employed by and for the Tagbanua and Batak, among whom many
upland-dwelling Cuyonon today live.5
Still another possibility for someone wishing to background his or her Cuyonon
identity while claiming a local tie is to identify as a "Palawefio," but there are
diffi¬culties here as well. Ttue, a strict interpretation of the term would appear to
limit it to all and to only the various peoples of the Palawan region shown in the
map, making Cuyonon Palawefios by definition. In practice, however, the term is
used more broadly and more ambiguously than this and at times even appears to
exclude Cuyonon subtly, just as it implicitly excludes indigenous peoples, to
mean in effect "migrants from outside Palawan who have made Palawan their
home" (i.e., people who also seek to establish ties to place but cannot do so on
ethnic grounds, as Cuyonon can).
Further complicating local understandings of the term Palawefio is local
environmentalist discourse that backgrounds issues ofgeographical origins and
length of residence in favor of a "green" rendering of the term to mean, in effect,
"someone who cares about Palawan's environment." Because many of the NGO
activists and others involved in local environmental issues are not from Palawan
and are hence vulnerable to the politically perilous charge that they are "outside"
troublemakers, such a construction of the term Palawefio provides the
environmentalist community with some needed political cover. Such a
construction, however, does not square well with the motives of those Cuyonon
who might claim to be Palawefios in the interest of being first in line to
utilize-rather than to preserve-Palawan's considerable natural resources.
Instructive here is the heated controversy that recently surrounded a proposed
cement plant in southern Palawan. Because of the plant's likely environmental and
social impacts-the plant itself would lie on the coast, but quarrying would be
necessary in the forested interior, within the ancestral domain of indigenous
Pala'wan-a broad coalition of forces opposed its construction. The plant proposal
was eventually withdrawn, in part because opponents succeeded in portraying
the project as the work of outside capitalists attempting to profit at Palawan's
expense, notwithstanding the fact that several prominent Cuyonon business
leaders were also involved. In the rhetoric of the opposition, however, all (good)
Palawefios should naturally have opposed the plant's construction, and those
Cuyonon who would have profited from the project or who otherwise supported
it were offended by the insinuation that they were hence not Palawefios or at
least not good ones.
The Kmhmu of northern Laos, according to Frank Proschan (1997), similarly embrace without
apparent difficulty two seemingly contradictory folk models of ethnicity, one corresponding to
scholarly emphasis on its situational aspects and the other to the notion that ethnicity is
primordial. The deep and unquestioned sense that older Cuyonon have of their ethnic identity
resonates with Proschan's (2001) argument,again with reference to the Kmhmu, that
well-established indigenous conceptions of ethnicity predate the colonial encounter in the region.
6Rita Smith Kipp similarly observes that the more self-conscious manifestations of Karo ethnicity
happen outside Karoland (1993, 160)
7These considerations help explain the seeming anomaly that Cuyonon have never considered
themselves to be "Visayans," despite the considerable linguistic and cultural affinities between
Cuyonon and various western Visayan peoples, particularly the Kinaray'a and the Hiligaynon.
Indeed, Cuyo Island is actually closer geographically to the western Visayan island of Panay
than it is to Palawan. If a larger "Bisaya" cultural identity is today commonly embraced by
peoples of Visayan origin throughout the central and southern Philippines, however, it has little
appeal to Cuyonon in a regional context, where many poorer (and allegedly troublesome)
migrants are Vi sayans and where advantage may be had by emphasizing origins within, rather
than beyond, the region.
8R. H. Barnes (995) similarly concludes that in parts ofIndonesia it may be impossible to
distinguish between indigenous and intruding "peoples" usefully.
apparent difficulty two seemingly contradictory folk models of ethnicity, one corresponding to
scholarly emphasis on its situational aspects and the other to the notion that ethnicity is
primordial. The deep and unquestioned sense that older Cuyonon have of their ethnic identity
resonates with Proschan's (2001) argument,again with reference to the Kmhmu, that
well-established indigenous conceptions of ethnicity predate the colonial encounter in the region.
6Rita Smith Kipp similarly observes that the more self-conscious manifestations of Karo ethnicity
happen outside Karoland (1993, 160)
7These considerations help explain the seeming anomaly that Cuyonon have never considered
themselves to be "Visayans," despite the considerable linguistic and cultural affinities between
Cuyonon and various western Visayan peoples, particularly the Kinaray'a and the Hiligaynon.
Indeed, Cuyo Island is actually closer geographically to the western Visayan island of Panay
than it is to Palawan. If a larger "Bisaya" cultural identity is today commonly embraced by
peoples of Visayan origin throughout the central and southern Philippines, however, it has little
appeal to Cuyonon in a regional context, where many poorer (and allegedly troublesome)
migrants are Vi sayans and where advantage may be had by emphasizing origins within, rather
than beyond, the region.
8R. H. Barnes (995) similarly concludes that in parts ofIndonesia it may be impossible to
distinguish between indigenous and intruding "peoples" usefully.
9Por example, the tenurial instruments available to upland farmers under various social
forestry programs of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources vary accordingly
as the prospective applicant is an indigenous person (for whom communal tenure is deemed
appropriate) or a migrant low lander (for whom individual leasehold is deemed appropriate).
10Granted that even a hundred years ago, visitors to the region did recognize and attempt to
categorize the ethnic diversity that they encountered; for example,one visitor from North Borneo
to southern Palawan at the end of the nineteenth century reported the presence of Muslims and
other both coastal and interior ("wild") tribal peoples (personal communication, Charles
Macdonald, September 9, 2001). The issue is not the past absence of ethnic variety in
Palawan,but what was made of that variety by the Philippine state.
11A good recent example of how the state needs Palawefios to conduct its business was provided
when the European Economic Community-funded Palawan Tropical Forest Protec¬tion
Programme (PTFPP) sought a Filipino codirector to supervise the program together with a
European counterpart. A suitably qualified Palawefio was needed for this position, bur it was not
necessary (or even particularly desirable) that this person be a Cuyonon.Cases such as these
have led some Cuyonon to conclude that they cannot compete effectively for their share of
state-conttolled resources except as Palaweiios.
Yet, state signals on this matter are mixed; Cuyonon have sometimes secured government
scholarships on the grounds that they are members of a "cultural minority" group-hence, my
earlier emphasis on motive in choices about identity. When the resources of the government are
at stake, however,acting in terms of identities that the state does not recognize clearly does
people little good.
12Thus, in the Calamiane region of northern Palawan, the strong cultural and linguistic
affinities between Calamiane and Tagbanua suggest a common ancestry in the relatively recent
past (Wright 1975, 49). Situations such as these present a strategic opportunity to study the
creation and evolution of the Hispanized Filipino/tribal Filipino dichotomy in the more remote
parts of the country. Charles Macdonald (2001) reports an analogous situation in southern
Palawan, where a little-known people, the Panimusan, apparently lie at the tribal Filipino/
Muslim Filipino interface.
131 have argued elsewhere (1987) that the Batak, an indigenous people ofupland Palawan, must
be comprehended as a subordinated fragment of a wider class system as well as in traditional
ethnolinguistic group terms.
.
forestry programs of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources vary accordingly
as the prospective applicant is an indigenous person (for whom communal tenure is deemed
appropriate) or a migrant low lander (for whom individual leasehold is deemed appropriate).
10Granted that even a hundred years ago, visitors to the region did recognize and attempt to
categorize the ethnic diversity that they encountered; for example,one visitor from North Borneo
to southern Palawan at the end of the nineteenth century reported the presence of Muslims and
other both coastal and interior ("wild") tribal peoples (personal communication, Charles
Macdonald, September 9, 2001). The issue is not the past absence of ethnic variety in
Palawan,but what was made of that variety by the Philippine state.
11A good recent example of how the state needs Palawefios to conduct its business was provided
when the European Economic Community-funded Palawan Tropical Forest Protec¬tion
Programme (PTFPP) sought a Filipino codirector to supervise the program together with a
European counterpart. A suitably qualified Palawefio was needed for this position, bur it was not
necessary (or even particularly desirable) that this person be a Cuyonon.Cases such as these
have led some Cuyonon to conclude that they cannot compete effectively for their share of
state-conttolled resources except as Palaweiios.
Yet, state signals on this matter are mixed; Cuyonon have sometimes secured government
scholarships on the grounds that they are members of a "cultural minority" group-hence, my
earlier emphasis on motive in choices about identity. When the resources of the government are
at stake, however,acting in terms of identities that the state does not recognize clearly does
people little good.
12Thus, in the Calamiane region of northern Palawan, the strong cultural and linguistic
affinities between Calamiane and Tagbanua suggest a common ancestry in the relatively recent
past (Wright 1975, 49). Situations such as these present a strategic opportunity to study the
creation and evolution of the Hispanized Filipino/tribal Filipino dichotomy in the more remote
parts of the country. Charles Macdonald (2001) reports an analogous situation in southern
Palawan, where a little-known people, the Panimusan, apparently lie at the tribal Filipino/
Muslim Filipino interface.
131 have argued elsewhere (1987) that the Batak, an indigenous people ofupland Palawan, must
be comprehended as a subordinated fragment of a wider class system as well as in traditional
ethnolinguistic group terms.
.
Final Thoughts
This has proven a marvelous topic to pursue, in good part because Cuyonon
themselves so enjoy talking about it. I have also discovered here, however, a
difficult balancing act of my own. I know that I can no longer safely regard the
sorts of rural Palawan communities that I have long studied as the principal locus
for the reproduction of Cuyonon culture and identity.
Although Cuyonon as a people may not be as extensively delocalized as are the
Karo (Kipp 1993) or the Toba Batak (Bruner 1999) of Indonesia, Cuyonon
culture today similarly emerges in diverse transnational spaces (Bruner
1999,474-75), spaces that extend not only to Puerto Princesa City and Manila but
also to San Francisco and Chicago.
But if observations such as these have given rise to new anthropological
understandings about how ethnicity "works" in the modern world,
understandings that I must today necessarily engage in my own research, I
cannot in the end muster the same enthusiasm for the music cassette tapes that
some urban Cuyonon produce and celebrate that I have long brought to the study
of distinctively Cuyonon ways of farming and fishing.
I hence find comfort in the fact that most Cuyonon do still live in tural
communities. At least for now, they too continue to reproduce Cuyonon culture
and identity, albeit not to the satisfaction of those urban Cuyonon who
self-consciously teach Cuyonon to their children and decorate their homes with
Cuyonon baskets. Hearing the ethnic voices of these rural Cuyonon remains, I
believe, an important-and decidedly traditional-anthropological challenge.
This has proven a marvelous topic to pursue, in good part because Cuyonon
themselves so enjoy talking about it. I have also discovered here, however, a
difficult balancing act of my own. I know that I can no longer safely regard the
sorts of rural Palawan communities that I have long studied as the principal locus
for the reproduction of Cuyonon culture and identity.
Although Cuyonon as a people may not be as extensively delocalized as are the
Karo (Kipp 1993) or the Toba Batak (Bruner 1999) of Indonesia, Cuyonon
culture today similarly emerges in diverse transnational spaces (Bruner
1999,474-75), spaces that extend not only to Puerto Princesa City and Manila but
also to San Francisco and Chicago.
But if observations such as these have given rise to new anthropological
understandings about how ethnicity "works" in the modern world,
understandings that I must today necessarily engage in my own research, I
cannot in the end muster the same enthusiasm for the music cassette tapes that
some urban Cuyonon produce and celebrate that I have long brought to the study
of distinctively Cuyonon ways of farming and fishing.
I hence find comfort in the fact that most Cuyonon do still live in tural
communities. At least for now, they too continue to reproduce Cuyonon culture
and identity, albeit not to the satisfaction of those urban Cuyonon who
self-consciously teach Cuyonon to their children and decorate their homes with
Cuyonon baskets. Hearing the ethnic voices of these rural Cuyonon remains, I
believe, an important-and decidedly traditional-anthropological challenge.
