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In the land of the Ivatans

Text & photos by Earl D.C. Bracamonte, Contributor

02/01/2009

In the northernmost frontier of the archipelago, time stands still. Forget what the weather forecasts say; in these parts, Nature makes its own course. Nothing is predictable about the weather. If it were, then try explaining where the rains come from on a perfectly clear day. One minute it is sunny, the next thing you know, the skies are overcast. Some blame it on the north Siberian wind; others simply shrug and say it has always been this way.

It is said that no one dies of typhoons in Batanes. This is because of the sturdy houses of the Ivatans, along with their ability to decipher their unpredictable climate. Weather reading by the townsfolk is more accurate than Pagasa — the Ivatans simply know when a storm’s coming. They say it’s when the sun turns pinkish orange and/or grazing cattle and birds seek shelter in the crevices and gulleys even on a perfectly sunny day. The Ivatans, too, take their shelter in advance. This is just one of the enigmas engulfing the myth and magic that is Batanes.

The island group comprising Batanes came to be 35 million years ago through coral reef formation, uplifted by tectonic plate movement. It is a very young land mass compared to mainland Philippines.

It was only in 1783 — 200 years after Magellan landed on our shores — that Batanes was annexed to the Spanish government, becoming the last colonial outpost in the East. If there was one thing the Spaniards could take credit for, it was introducing the use of mortar, a combination of lime and stone, that built the Savidug and Chavayan stone houses erected during the era. The most famous of these stone structures is the House of Dacay, a Unesco Heritage Site built in 1850 and one of five houses that survived the great earthquake in 1887, where its equally popular resident, 85-year-old Florestida Estrella (aka Lady Mother), still regales visitors with her bittersweet stories.

The Filipino bayanihan spirit was then, and still is, a safety net of the Ivatans. They relied on each other for the accomplishment of home building, harvesting and even in burying their dead.

It is their surviving culture, way of life and the untouched, intact landscape that won for the island province three citations for the Unesco World Heritage Sites list. Efforts, however, must be sustained so Batanes shouldn’t be de-listed after being inscripted. That’s why the liveng or hedgerows, shrubs marking property boundaries, are maintained as they shelter different types of habitat from mountain tops to the lowlands. These mosaic-looking property delineators, made up mostly of nitrogen-fixing shrubs, low trees and reeds, have provided sustainable agriculture for a long time to the Ivatans, aside from acting as erosion control and windbreaker.

Of the many trees of peculiar interest is the Arius, an endangered specie in the world yet growing in profusion on the islands. Of the reeds, the endemic plant voyavoy stands out. Likened to the pandan but actually a part of the palm family, its leaves are made into the vakul, a woman’s farming gear covering the head and back from the wind and rain, and the vanayi, the men’s planting vest that covers the head and torso.

In Batanes, every family has land to till: Acres upon acres of land. The custom has been that even government employees still tend their crops early in the morning before reporting for work. They then check their grazing animals after work in the afternoons. This practice of sustainable agricultural land technology (SALT) has been around for centuries; just like the rice terraces of the Cordilleras.

Despite its diminutive size, being the smallest province in the country, Batanes has a high endemism of flora and fauna because of its isolated location. Many species of plants and animals are found only in the island group, making the province an important bio-diversity conservation site. It is the only province in the Philippines that was declared, by Congress, in its entirety, as a protected area.

There’s also a move to preserve the Nakamaya burial grounds in Basco. Shaped in the traditional wooden boat of Batanes called tataya, these resting places are testimonies to the values of the prehistoric Ivatans, who believed in life after death. The general direction of the boat-shaped burial grounds face the sea which, according to an old folktale, is the final resting place of a man.

Radioactive carbon dating test on the human skeletons discovered in the burial site markers in Chuhangin and Sabtang show a date of practice to these burials: Between 355-70 B.P. (before the present) or approximately A.D. 1600. This manner of laying the dead can only be found in Batanes and the Scandinavian countries in Europe.

Batanes is an archipelago within an archipelago. Of the 11 islands comprising the Batanes Group, only three are inhabited: Batan, Sabtang and Itbayat, the largest. The rest-Mavudis (Yami), Misanga, Ditarem, Siayan, Dinem, Vuhos, Adekey and A’li-serve as grazing lands. The first cave in Itbayat Island, the Torongan Cave, was discovered 4500 years ago; a thousand years earlier than the one found in Indonesia. This shows that Austronesian people moved and passed through our islands from Taiwan before the rest of Southeast Asia. Ivatan, by the way, is part of the Austronesian family of languages and is simply not a local Batanes dialect.

The Austronesian race is the larger ancestral family from where the modern peoples of Southeast Asia and Oceania descended. World knowledge about this race increased in recent decades as a result of scholarly studies.

To fully maximize the tourism potential of Batanes by attracting the right visitors, the provincial government of Batanes, under the leadership of Gov. Telesforo Castillejos, embarked on a campaign dubbed “Visit Batanes ’09,” from a master plan anchored on conservation, i.e., local practices, traditions and values.

“We want to invite the proper tourists to further the conservation efforts of the province, especially on waste disposal. We’re looking at managing 20,000 tourists a year. Because residents are not aware of the wealth of their heritage, they tend to change it into something culled from the Western world, thinking it’s cool. That’s why we’re coming up with the community stay program wherein visitors live in residents’ homes with the entire locale as hotel lobby. Efforts are now centered on preserving what’s naturally Batanes ‘cause it’s what tourists come to look for in the first place,” enthused Prof. Robert Bastillo, consultant to the Batanes Eco-Cultural Tourism Industry.

With 16,000 very hospitable, and indomitable, people, the population growing at the rate of 1.5 percent annually, the island province is far from over-populated. Twenty years ago, Batanes was part of the country’s Top 20 poorest provinces, not to mention its worst malnutrition history. Not anymore! The latest Human Development Index (HDV) shows Batanes as one of the Top 10 provinces of the Philippines and one of the best places to live in!

We got to sample crispy kamote fries at the town of Itvud where pilgrims flock in droves to the Church of the Miraculous Medal. The delectable fries were served on the folded, albeit crease-resistant, leaf of the endemic tipoho tree. This was after passing by Honesty Cafe, where no vendor guides his fare. Since “honesty is the best policy,” you simply pay the right amount or get the right change from the sales canister.

Adventurous palates might want to check a bottle or two of palek, a strong local brew from sugar cane. And never leave the island(s) without sampling the endangered coconut crab tatus and the flying fish daing, dibang.

Our sightseeing brought us to the tempestuous seas of Batan Island. Valugan Beach manifests the volcanic effusions from Mt. Iraya and is considered an important geologic formation in the archipelago. The geomorphic resource provided by Valugan Beach provides a rich information in the land formation of Batanes isles.

The beach consists of smooth spherical boulders in different sizes found along the seashore at the eastern foot of Mt. Iraya. They are andesite(s) stones and cover the entire beachfront. These stones are hosts to several shellfish and mollusks that provide food and sustenance to the Ivatans, especially those living near, and around, Basco.

The stones also provide a natural shore protection for the eastern side of Basco while contributing substantially in the enhancement of the aesthetic value to the seascape, as well as landscape, of Batan Island. The presence of the element Strontium proves that the rocks in the island came from the upper crust of the earth’s mantle, like those found in the hot spot volcanoes of Hawaii. The elemental level is so high that a Geiger counter would sound off warnings inside houses built with these volcanic rocks.

Should you wish to capture a panoramic view of Batan Island, simply visit the Chawa Mahatao view deck. And if you want to feel the island’s eight-wind direction that changes all the time, go to Rakuh a’ Payaman, a communal grazing and pasture land of domestic livestock.

Many devastated homesteads are now rebuilt and repopulated. One of these is the Ruins of Soong Song, near the western end of the Island, that was wrecked by a tsunami in the 1950s.

Batanes has been nominated for inscription unto the Unesco World Heritage Sites List as a cultural landscape. By definition, a cultural landscape bears witness to the combined works of man and Nature that produced outstanding values for mankind.

The outstanding features of Batanes as a cultural landscape are its hedgerows (liveng) and their sustainable farming systems (payuhuan), their sustainable fishing practices (mataw), its cooperative traditions (kamanidungan/kapanidungan), their communal ownership of precious resources like pasture and cogon lands (rakuh a’ payaman), their traditional settlements of vernacular houses and the priceless archaeological sites like the fortresses (idjang) in Sabtang Island.

Together, these features depict a native people at their native best in mastering a harsh environment and fashioning out a dignified and sustainable existence even in isolation.

Today, Batanes stands as a unique and outstanding testimony to the evolution of the Austronesian race over thousands of years with the enriching influences of Spanish and other cultural spheres.

It could be the distance from mainland Luzon or simply its inaccessibility by water travel that made Batanes intact to this day. It is, for lack of a better phrase to describe it, “a land where time stands still.”

For more detailed information, simply get in touch with consultants Prof. Bob Bastillo (0929-5465498; 0916-7705455), Christian Narito (0927-4702818) or EJ Lagrimas (0927-4191008). You may also browse the governor’s Web site at www.purocastillejos.com.