159. THE PADRE AND THE VILLAVERDE TRAIL
Twice, last July, I was able to traverse the historic Villaverde Trail between
old Barangay Imugan in Santa Fe, Nueva Vizcaya and Barangay Santa Maria East in
San Nicolas, Pangasinan. My first experience was with a colleague in the
Philippine Councilors League, former Mallig Mayor now Sangguniang Panlalawigan
Member Edward S. Isidro who
drove, with me tagging along, at the dangerous trail dotted with landslide
prone terrain on the left and deep ravines on the right coupled with a thick
fog at the zenith. The 48-kilometer concrete road on the Caraballo mountains
was recently inaugurated and opened to public connecting Regions 1 and 2,
cutting my travelling time to TPLEx for about an hour. The highest elevation is
about 4,500 feet. There are two major view decks, one is at the eastern part
facing Santa Fe where one can see the sunrise and the sea of clouds at Malico
Rock View. On the western view deck one can see the province of Pangasinan and
the beautiful sunset at Malico View Point in San Nicolas where my wife and I
had a selfie for posterity. For so long a time, it is on my bucket list to pass
through the rocky and winding Caraballo mountains via the celebrated Villaverde
Trail carved by no less than the great Dominican Spanish road builder, Padre
Juan Villaverde who died on August 3, 1897, exactly 125 years ago.
Fr. Guillermo Tejon, O.P. and Fr. Jose S. Arcilla, S.J. gave a short account on
the life of the diligent Dominican missionary. Fr. Juan Fernandez Villaverde
was born on June 23, 1841 in Lapoblacion, Navarre, Spain to Leon Santos
Fernandez Villaverde and Juana Perez de Vinaspre. He was baptized in the Santa
Maria Parish Church and christened “Juan Jose”. His father died when he was 11
years old after which their family moved to Estella, also in Navarre, where his
younger brother Domingo Nemesio died. To help his family, he worked as a
shoemaker in Estella. That time, her remaining younger sister entered the
nunnery and his mother worked in the monasteries as a way of helping the nuns.
The books “Juan Villaverde, O.P., Missionary and Road-Builder 1841-1897, a
History of the Dominican Missions in Ifugao” and “Philippine Studies” narrates:
“Fr. Juan Villaverde, O.P., a Dominican missionary for thirty years in what is
now the province of Nueva Vizcaya. In 1867, less than ten months after arriving
in Manila, he was assigned to that Dominican mission. He was only 26 years old,
a priest for less than two years. For the next thirty years, he gave the best
of himself to the non-Christian people of northern Luzon. And when he died on
the way to Spain in 1897, stories about him began to spread, almost all of them
exaggerated, but clear signs that he had left a deep imprint in the hearts and
minds of the people he had come to love and tried to bring to Christ.”
“He has left a significant list of writings and maps which now help us to
understand the history and culture of the people he had lived for. Originally
written as a doctoral dissertation, the best thing about this book is that it
whets the intellectual appetite of the reader and makes him want to know more
about Fr. Villaverde…”
“Mainly because of the lack of missionaries, Nueva Vizcaya and the entire
Cagayan Valley region were still an isolated enclave unchanged by Christianity
in the second half of the nineteenth century. When Father Villaverde arrived
there in 1867, he realized the immediate need for a network of roads to
facilitate his own missionary task and to bring the people into contact with
the rest of Philippine society, a necessary step for their socio-economic
development. Like other missionaries elsewhere, he also planned to establish
permanent communities for his prospective converts. Some of these have become
towns today; others disappeared, such as those in which he had tried to
resettle the mountain dwellers. Unaccustomed to the lowland climate, they went
back to the familiar surroundings of their central Cordillera heights. But the
road-building program he initiated was a success. Had he had all the resources
needed, he could have accomplished much more. Still, what he did was more than
enough for a single person to do. The Americans who came at the turn of the
century were practically unanimous in their praise for his work, and made use
of his plans and numerous maps for their own road-building projects. Today,
many of the roads in north-eastern Luzon are modern improvements of the
original Villaverde "trails."
The Municipalities of Solano and Villaverde towns in Nueva Vizcaya province are
very much associated with the famous padre road builder who technically had no
engineering schooling. In 1767, Dominican Father Alejandro Vidal founded the
Gaddang settlement of Bintauan. The following year, it was renamed to
“Lungabang” from the Gaddang word “cave” but was later rechristened to
“Lumabang” for the Spaniard’s euphony. In 1851, it became a village of
Bayombong town. In 1889, the pueblo was permanently named to “Solano” in honor
Governor-General Ramon Solano y Llanderal who authorized the separation of the
barrio from the mother-town. The town was planned by Padre Villaverde, and the
poblacion, as designed, consisted of 14 parallel wide streets, each having a
width of 20 meters. Streets run from north to south and east to west, forming
100 square blocks with an aggregate area of one hectare per block. The padre
also constructed the San Luis Bridge of this town.
Also in 1767, the same Father Alejandro Vidal founded the settlement of Ibung
which eventually became a barrio of Solano, Nueva Vizcaya. On May 28, 1872,
Father Juan Villaverde organized Ibung into a town by virtue of an order coming
from the central government. During the American Occupation, Ibung was reverted
as a barrio of the mother-town Solano due to insufficient funds. On June 22,
1957, Republic Act 1972 sponsored by Nueva Vizcaya Lone Congressman Leonardo B.
Perez, was enacted creating the Municipality of Ibung through the separation of
the barrios of Ibung and Bintawan from Solano. Two years later, on June 21, 1959,
Republic Act 2515 was enacted amending RA 1972 changing the name of “Ibung” to
“Villaverde” in honor of the Spanish missionary who had initiated the first
step in creation of the town.
Towards the end of the Second World War in the Philippines, the Villaverde
trail was traversed by Allied Forces who were chasing retreating Japanese
soldiers. Known as the Battle of Villaverde Trail, the campaign led by the
United States Army and Filipino guerrillas in 1945 forced its way across the
Caraballo Mountains from the Central Luzon plain to the Cagayan Valley breaking
through the Salacsac Passes. Somewhat to the surprise of the Americans, the
Japanese Imperial Army had constructed strong defenses along the narrow and
winding Villaverde Trail, 43 kilometers in length. The campaign began on
February 21, 1945 and concluded with the success of the Americans on May 31 of
the same year. The U.S.'s 32nd Infantry Division, called the Red Arrow
Division, carried out the campaign with assistance from Filipino guerrillas. The
32nd Division suffered heavy casualties during the campaign. U.S. casualties
were 825 dead and 2,160 wounded. About 6,000 soldiers were treated for illness,
disease, or combat fatigue. Japanese losses were estimated of at least 5,750
dead out of 8,750 defenders. The U.S. commander, Major General William H. Gill,
would later say that cost of the battle was too high for what was achieved.
Padre Juan Villaverde was a man of faith and infrastructure. The Spanish
missionary priests played an important part in the civilizing of the northern
wild tribes of the Philippines contributed much to local ethnology focusing on
the Igorrotes, the name applied generally to the hill people of northern Luzon
by Spanish writers. His works with the Ifugaos, who he started his mission on
February 3, 1868, are stipulated in his book, “Informe Sobre la Reduccìon de
los Infieles de Luzon”. According to fellow religious, “They said he had
magical powers. He not only could look like a clean-shaven youth and change
within the second to appear as a long-bearded old man, but could also disappear
at will. By spreading a handkerchief on the ground and uttering the proper
formula, he could travel anywhere, born aloft on his own flying carpet. And he
was immune to danger! Unarmed, he could drive his horses through a hostile
crowd of Igorot warriors, much like Jesus long ago whom the angry Nazarenes had
failed to throw down their hill.”
Padre Villaverde eventually lived to poor health. He was sent back to Spain for
recuperation; however, he did not reach his home country. On August 3, 1897, he
died at the Mediterranean Sea on board the Covadonga at the age of 56 and after
two days he was buried at sea.
Before, it was a foot trail used by the people to communicate between the
Pangasinan and Nueva Vizcaya provinces. In the 1980s, the difficulty of
maintaining the trail, compounded by a very low daily traffic average, prompted
the DPWH to close it to motorists. Its condition worsened after the 1990
earthquake because of massive road slips and landslides that left most parts of
the trail impassable. In 2017, a serious effort was started to build a two-lane
highway thru the two provinces. Just imagine the danger and hardship Pade
Villaverde and his followers had to deal to cut the thickness of the Caraballo
to construct a road for progress.
After a century and a quarter, the people of Cagayan Valley and Pangasinan are
now enjoying a cemented highway, the fruits of labor and love of the great road
builder, Padre Juan Fernandez Villaverde.
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