66. NATURALLY BEAUTIFUL DINAPIGUE & THE DUMAGATS

NATURALLY BEAUTIFUL DINAPIGUE & THE DUMAGATS

Dr. Troy Alexander G. Miano

09 April

2018

The Isabela Tourism Office, being the Secretariat in the 2018 Bambanti Festival was given the chance by the Provincial Governor, Festival Director General and the Provincial Administrator to visit, explore and document the beauty of coastal Isabela. The southernmost coastal town of Dinapigue was our choice since it is more accessible than the other three coastal LGUs of the province. To reach Dinapigue, we traversed the two provinces of Quirino and Aurora exiting from Ipil junction in Echague passing through Jones and San Agustin towns and entering Quirino by Maddela up to Nagtipunan. The first town after the boundary of Quirino and Aurora provinces is Dipaculao and after reaching the junction at barangay Dinadiawan, we made a left turn to Dinalungan town. We made a short stop at the 409 year old Casiguran town and meditated and prayed at the miraculous Nuestra Señora dela Ermita Chapel. We continued our zigzag journey for another 50 kilometers passing through Dingalan town until we reached Dibulo, the first barangay of Dinapigue.

After eight hours of travel from my hometown Cabatuan, we reached the poblasyon of Dinapigue – Barangay Digumased and had a photo spree at the “I ♥ DINAPIGUE” pedestal and arc. Our first itinerary is an outreach activity with the Dumagats of Isabela particularly in Sitio Landing located adjacent an old airstrip by the seashore. We had a storytelling activity, distributed loot bags gifts and slippers to children including used cloths and chicken and egg arroz caldo (rice porridge) for everyone. All the staff including my wife were glad to be with the Dumagats. Our activity gave us an inner glow of fulfilment and jovial feeling. There are other Dumagat settlements in Dinapigue are located in Sitio Salulog in Dibulo and the Anggo Group in Dibubunan. After the outreach, we decided to camp at Digumased Beach, built a bonfire and had our dinner.

Dumagats origin is the same with the Aeta's in Northern Luzon. Surfing the noypicollections.blogspot.com, their ancestral origin is traced from Negrito's which is one of the earliest inhabitants in the Philippines. They are found in the hillsides and mountains of Quezon, Bulacan, Rizal and Laguna provinces. The term "Dumagat" is thought to be derived from the word "rumakat", "lumakat" or  "lumakad" which signifies the migration of early Negritos in the Philippines by walking in land and not by the sea.

Dumagats before are nomadic people, they stay for a while in a place, build their temporary house and get their food from natural resources around them through hunting and gathering crops in the wild. After the sources are depleted, they move in another place to gather again food in the wild. They don't know how to cultivate soil for multi-cropping and no sustainable living. They wear g-string for men and skirts wrap around the body for women. Dumagats before are animists and their belief is differ from person to person. They have their own language used among themselves. They did not have wedding ceremony but a simple conversation only between two parties during a union.  

Today, many of them wear the same as the lowlands. Some of them were already literate after some efforts of governments, missionaries and volunteers in the past. They stay now in one place and start to cultivate land for multi-cropping. They are producing native products like rattan in exchange for the goods of lowlanders. Some of them are working with lowlander's farm. There is also improvement in their religion, they adopted some belief of Christians for believing in only one God.

The LGUs Comprehensive Land Use Plan documents gave a brief historical development of the southernmost coastal town of Isabela. A sitio of San Mariano, Isabela, the Dumagats are the original inhabitants of the locality. The indigenous people primarily depend on hunting and fishing for their living. The first migrants were the Igorots who worked for a mining company and the Ilocanos who purposively searched wildlife for food and fertile land to till. The mid-1950s marked the first wave of migrants to Dinapigue with the entry of two timber license agreement (TLA) holders: the Luzon Mahogany Timber Corporatioin (LUZMATIM) in 1954 and the Pacific Timber Export Corporation (PATECO) in 1956 which brought along with them the skilled workers they require in logging. This era also marked the start of a logging industry in the area.

In the early 1960s, more migrants arrived with the copper-manganese mining operation of the ACOJE Mines at Mount Dimakawal. The company stopped its operation after less than a decade, leaving behind an airstrip and a 24-kilometer stretch of road linking the municipality to the province of Aurora. Migration to the town was attributed mainly two factors. The first is the continuous operation of the logging companies, wherein one had established a saw mill within in the town proper. This attracted workers especially those who were displaced by other logging companies as a result of logging moratorium. Seeking employment and often finding none, these job hunters ended up speculating on the vast and fertile areas of Dinapigue for agriculture. The latter is also the reason why landless people from Isabela and the neighboring province of Aurora, and even as far as Benguet and Quezon Provinces, migrated.

On June 21, 1969, by virtue of Republic Act No. 5776, Dinapigue was segregated and separated from San Mariano and was constituted into a distinct and independent municipal district. The first batch of elected municipal officials, headed by Mayor Juan O. Dirige assumed office in 1972. It became a regular municipality in the implementation of Batas Pambansa Bilang 337.

To commemorate the 155^th founding anniversary of the province of Isabela in 2011, I gathered the etymology of the 34 municipalities and three cities of the province. Due to the distance of the municipal hall, Dinapigue town was the last entry in the pamphlet entitled “Pinagmulan ng Pangalan ng mga LGU ng Isabela”. After numerous interviews and validation, I was able to come up with three versions. According to the Local Government Unit (LGU), stories are told that the town derived its name from the name of tribe leader whom the Dumagats always prefer to. The name stuck as migrants started coming in and referred to the place as “Dinapigue”. Local residents narrates that the word was derived from the Dumagat term “dinapigue” or “dinapigui” referring to the hind legs of wild pigs or "baboyramo" which were once abundant in the locality at the foot of the thick Sierra Madre Mountain Range. "Di" means "from" or "many" and "pigue" means "hind legs". However, some locals would not accept the “hind legs” version and believes that the name "Dinapigue" was derived from the names of the lovers Dina and Pigue who were deprived of their love because of tradition. In the coastal towns of the provinces of Isabela and Aurora, localities were named after Dumagat terms using the prefix “di” which means “from” or “abundant”.

The following day, from the town center in Barangay Digumased, we travelled over an hour to the north to Barangay Bucal Sur and reached the extraordinary Bonsai Forest in Sitio Sumanget, Dimaluadi, saw pitcher plants and picked up wild strawberries along the way. After lunch, after an hour drive from the town center and a 30-minute hike, we reached the imposing Dibulo Falls.  – the highest waterfalls I have seen in my life approximately 100 meters high. After a quick dip, we headed back to town and had dinner at the mayor’s farm also located in the same poblasyon barangay.

Other tourist attractions in this coastal LGU are the newly discovered Dipalale Cave in Ayod, underground water systems, coral mountains, twin coves, Dinapigue Point Observatory Ridge, Dinapigue Hanging Bridge and the 254 steep steps of the Municipal Lighthouse Landscape where one can see the coastline of northeastern Luzon, Philippine Sea and the Pacific Ocean in the horizon. The six barangays of Ayod, Bucal Norte, Bucal Sur, Dibulo, Digumased and Dimaluade are naturally beautiful.