Sifting
Through Perceptions: A Fresh Look at Baao's Beginnings
An
excerpt from "Baao Vignettes" by P.B.Robosa
Authors’s
note: So that a new Municipal official seal could be submitted to the National
Government, it became a matter for the local government to establish and
clarify once and for all the town’s foundation date .I was one of those invited
to provide some explanation to the question and in the process finally
appreciated the extent or lack thereof of our knowledge of our past. In looking
at our past, we are provided an opportunity to appraise our origins and along
the way look into ourselves. Having done so, we can understand our actions and
reactions to the changes and struggles we continue to face.
In
the early months of 1889, Lt. Jose Taviel de Andrade of the Civil Guards went
on inspection tour of the towns of Southern Luzon. A talented artist, his
inspections produced illustrations of the towns he visited and one among these
was that of the town center of 19th century Baao. His illustrations from Baao
bore three vignettes; a squatting man with a child, a bell tower and a scene of
the town “poblacion” showing a cross at the center of a group of palisaded
houses.
A
modern commentary of this illustration presumes that the cross was intended to
commemorate the town's still unverified founding by St. Peter Baptist in the
twilight of the 16th century. Carefully read, the commentary echoes the opening
passages on the work on the history of Baao by the Franciscan scholar Fr. Felix
de Huertas who implies that the circumstances regarding the foundation of the
town is unconfirmed. This statement has gained much acceptance with writers but
is in direct contradiction to the Catholic Church’s pronouncement that the
Franciscan saint did indeed found the town in 1590.
Although,
to modern historians, the town’s foundation date marks only the start of the
town’s recorded history, the 1590 foundation date is, nevertheless, significant
as the formation of the town as a religious and political unit during the
Spanish regime. Be that as it may, between Huertas and the Catholic Church,
whom do we believe? Is their a way to verify which of these claims is correct?
Published
in 1865 and widely available, Huertas’ Estado Geografico, Topografico,
Estandistico, Historico-Religioso de la Provincia de San Gregorio Magno, has
become a popular reference source for the historical records of Philippine
towns. Aside from being based on the Franciscan records Huertas had available
to him, his concise chronological presentation of his data makes his book a
handy source especially for amateur historians.
Baao’s
own Luis Dato in his attempt to provide clarification to the unrecorded origin
of Baao readily quotes Huertas even as he pointed out that Huertas’ claims
contradict data by that of another Franciscan author, Eusebio Gomez-Platero.
While Huertas cites the tradition that Baao was founded in the time of Peter
Baptist, he discards this information and puts forward a latter date that agrees
with his records and his strict definition of a “foundation”. Because of
Gomez-Platero’s biographies on Franciscan priests serving in Bicol towns, we
are lead to doubt Huertas’ records when the village had priests administering
to it years before the village Huertas’ claims became an independent religious
unit. Thus later, Dato unable to be sure of Huertas’ and Gomez- Platero’s
claims left the question of the town's origins to “the assiduity of future
local historians.”
Up
until recently, except for the Catholic Church's uncompromising statement on
the foundation of Baao as recorded in their directory, there was no
authoritative source available to be found of the “foundation” of the town. In
Dato’s time, this lack of definitive source led him to write in resignation
that Baao’s origins “are shrouded in myths and legends”. Although his statement
holds true when we speak of pre-Hispanic Baao, other documents that have come
to light today if that if we are to speak of the formation of the town at the
time of Spanish conquest, this statement quite mistaken and needs correction.
What
are then the available data, at present, of the origins of the town? Except for
Huertas’ difficulty in agreeing with the established assertion of the Church,
there is really no significant opposition to the 1590 date. The problems
Huertas encounter are due to two reasons: First, although the tradition of St.
Peter Baptist's founding Baao is firmly established by his sources, the
documents to which he decides to give credence rather than tradition, mentions
Baao only in 1656, sixty-six years later than the traditional date of 1590.
Second, he is honest about his uncertainty of the meaning of the term
“foundation” as to whether this happened during the conversion of the people
or, during the time the town formed its own civil or religious unit.
Because
of existing documents that were once unavailable to him, we may now be able to
smooth out some of his difficulties. Regarding documents mentioning Baao at the
earliest time, Huertas’ sources are antedated by documents found in Blair and
Robertson's The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898. The books reprints the original
and translations of the documents "The Status of Encomiendas, 1591"
and Bao or Baao was already mentioned as an encomienda with more 700
inhabitants a year after the 1590 traditional foundation. This invalidates by
66 years Huertas’ claim the town was first mentioned in documents.
Regarding
Huertas’ qualification for the foundation of the town as to whether foundation
was to mean during the conversion of the inhabitants or, by Baao’s formation
into a separate religious and political unit, the following excerpt below
appears to give us the answer:
King
- His majesty has another encomienda also) Nabua by name, numbering one
thousand and eighteen whole tributes, or four thousand and seventy-two persons.
The villages of this encomienda are near together. They used to have four
ministers, for they visit the two following encomiendas. There are in Nabua two
Franciscan friars.
Bula:
Dona Maria de Ron - The village of Bula belongs to Dña. Maria de Ron. It is
four leagues from Nabua. It has two hundred and six whole tributes, or eight
hundred and twenty four persons. It is visited from Nabua.
Bao:
Minor son of Sebastian Perez - These fathers of Nabua visit also the encomienda
of the minor son of the late Sebastian Perez, called Bao. It has one hundred
and seventy tributes, or seven hundred and four persons. Like Nabua, the
capital, it used to have four friars, but now has not more than two. These
encomiendas are not well administered but five religious would be sufficient
for it.
Buy:
Sebastian Garcia - likewise these fathers of Nabua visited and instructed the
encomienda of Buy, which belongs to Sebastian Garcia; but they can do so no
longer. It is two leagues from Nabua, and can receive instruction from no other
place. It has three hundred and twelve tributes, or one thousand two hundred
and forty-eight persons, who will receive instruction, when Nabua the capital,
has the said five ministers.’
The
document, aside from negating Huertas’ sources, also render somewhat erroneous
the statement that Baao's "conversion" cannot be considered as a
“foundation”. How can the conversion of the people and village of Bao qualify
as the time of foundation of Baao? Using even Huertas’ own criteria, a
convincing argument can be made to reconcile both events.
An
“encomienda” in the beginning of the Spanish conquest of the Philippines is a
royal charge to a person (in Baao’s case a Spaniard named Sebastian Perez) to
collect tributes from the inhabitants of a village. In exchange, the
“encomendero” must provide protection, justice and instruction to the faith
while he and his heirs maintain the encomienda. Thus, if Baao was converted and
was an encomienda in 1590, a rudimentary civil and religious unit was formed
with the intent to provide order, justice, instruction including catechism and
rites of the Catholic faith. This would sufficiently satisfy Huertas’ own
definition of a “foundation”, the formation of a political and religious unit
under the Spanish crown.
The
above passages in addition, by supporting Baao's foundation in 1590, also
overturn what we now know as misconceptions of Baao's origins. For instance,
because of Dato’s use of parts of Huertas in his frequently reprinted “Brief
History of Baao”, when he commences with Baao as a “visita” of Bula, Baaoeños
in general assume that Baao was originally a part of Bula like a modern barrio
connected to a “Bula poblacion”. If we follow this line of thinking but pushing
back time 66 years before, Baao, Bula and Buhi, were originally once “Barrios”
of Nabua.
The
Spanish dictionary defines "visita" as a religious term referring to
a village with a chapel where services where periodically performed by a
visiting priest. The priest so assigned makes scheduled visits to the place
because of the difficulty posed due to the lack of roads and conveyance between
these inland villages. Unlike modern “Barrios” which are originally “Sitios”
which are found within the boundaries of and later to be carved out from
existing municipalities, Nabua, Bula, Bao, and Buy were all originally separate
encomiendas with no clear boundaries and separated by great distances.
Politically,
since there was no defined boundaries of the encomiendas or visita, being a
visita would not mean affiliation or continuity with another, as do modern
barrios to town centers but affiliated simply religiously, by being
"visited" from one place due perhaps to proximity or convenience. Let
us repeat this line from the Account of Encomiendas to clarify this
arrangement: “likewise these fathers of Nabua visited and instructed the
encomienda of Buy, which belongs to Sebastian Garcia; but they can do so no
longer. It is two leagues from Nabua, and can receive instruction from no other
place.”
Thus,
being an encomienda, Buhi like Baao, from the beginning was not part of any
place but was an independent village on its own. Also from this example, it
appears that the “visita” stage was simply part of a process that each village
might undergo or might lose depending on the conditions and availability of
clergy that would be able to administer to the village. Take the cases of Buhi
and Bula; Buhi a decade earlier was administered from Nabua but in 1591 was
not, Baao became independent of Nabua when it became a “visita” of Bula even if
the latter was still also a visita of Nabua. It was not 100 years later that
Bula became independent of Nabua.
But
what is most remarkable when we study these passages is that it gives us a hint
to what it was like during Baao's conversion. Note that while the other
encomiendas in the list were being "visited" by friars from Nabua,
Bao is mentioned, to have recently had its own friars. We know from records
that Nabua,. Bula and Buhi were founded a decade or more earlier than Baao and
should have reached a degree of stability at this time, Baao was reportedly not
visited by friars but "used to have four but now has no more than
two". What happened in Baao prior to 1591 that required the services of four
friars and still required two a year later? Was the 1591 account simply
reporting the aftermath of a mass conversion of the people of Baao in 1590?
It
is likely that Baao as a separate civil or religious unit may have regressed or
was neglected in the years following its conversion like Buhi in 1591 though
converted 20 years before. These lapses may have accounted for the loss of
records of the town in Huertas' sources. The 1591 document is a clear picture
of the formation of Baao, a year after its conversion and a record of the
establishment of Spanish government and religion. From that point, Baao entered
the gates of recorded history and the Baaoeños ceased practicing their native
culture and religion.
How
true then is the tradition that Baao was founded by Saint Peter Baptist?
Huertas mentions the tradition that “the town was founded in the time of our
Holy Custodian Fr. Pedro Bautista" which covered the period in 1590 to
1591 when St. Peter Baptist was elected custodian of the Franciscan Missionaries
in the Philippines. Beloved by the Franciscans, St. Peter Baptist is the
subject of many stories and legends. But according the Saint’s biographers
(Gomez-Platero's Catalogo Biografico and Sta. Inez's Cronicas) in 1590 he
traveled to the Bicol region and founded several villages with Bao among them.
He stayed in the region until 1591 when he returned to Manila to assume
guardianship of the Manila convent. He finally sailed for Japan in 1593 as
envoy to the court of Taicosama, dying there later in 1597 as a martyr.
None
of his biographers though, specifically mentions details of him founding Baao
and most were writing many years later after the supposed event. It is
important to note though that all the same, his biographers agree to the dates
regarding his travels particularly the years 1590 and 1591 when he was in
Bicol. Accordingly, it would indeed be plausible that he passed by Baao or if
he did not, caused his brother Franciscans to convert the Baaoeños in 1590. If
these events are true as the Church believes and claims them to be, indeed St.
Peter Baptist had a hand in the conversion of the Baaoeños and in so doing
founded the present day Municipality of Baao which today accepts 1590 as its
foundation year.
We
might not know for sure if the Cross that was in the center of Baao in 1889 did
indeed honor St. Peter Baptist, but he was much endeared to his brother
Franciscans, it would be uncharacteristic for them to let the opportunity slip
for creating another legend for a great man.
