Busuanga, Palawan

Oral tradition has it, that the entire island of Busuanga was once the realm of a Cuyonon datu named Datu Macanas. The island was once part of the four jurisdictions of Cuyonon datus with the other three being Datu Magbanua who reigned over the Cuyo archipelago; Datu Cabaylo, who had Taytay; and surrounding islands and Datu Cabangon, who reigned over the south of Taytay. The town of Busuanga was created from the barrios of Concepcion, Salvacion, Busuanga, New Busuanga, Buluang, Quezon, Calawit, and Cheey of the town of Coron in 1950. Quezon was reinstated as a barangay in 2000. The history of Busuanga may be traced back as early as 3,000 B.C., when groups of nomadic peoples are believed to have migrated via land bridges from mainland Asia, some of whom settled and dispersed throughout the Philippine archipelago. In later periods, waves of migrants from Malay and Indonesian groups followed. Over thousands of years, these early populations explored, inhabited, and developed various parts of the islands, including what is now Busuanga. Accordingly, as early as the 9th century A.D., Chinese traders were known to transact business with the natives of the coastal regions of Calamianes, and referred to some places as "Pa-laoyu", "Kia-ma-yan", and "Pa-ki-nung", meaning Palawan, Calamian, and Busuanga, respectively, as mentioned in their (Chinese) narratives. In 1380, nearly a century and half before Christianity reached the Philippines, an Arab missionary from Mallaca, named Mahdu introduced Islam in Sulu. Through the next centuries the Islamic faith must have spread and secured a profound influence in the lives of the early Filipinos. Thus, our ancestors possessed dominantly an Islamic-pagan life and culture, long before the Spaniards came to the islands. Origin More than 300 years before the conversion of Busuanga into a municipality in 1951, the name BUSUANGA was already attributed to the island. The name is ascribed to that of a big river, the largest in the municipality (an average width of 100 meters; length is unknown), christened by the natives after the great calamitous upheaval in nature, handed down then by word of mouth to be a legend. The legend According to the age-old legend, *a small limpid river with a narrow picturesque bank no bigger than a brook flow and runs southwards inland in a beautiful valley where people had their livelihood and seems to have always enough. Every day, the inhabitants made good spoils of the bounties of nature around, and lived a contented life. Until on that one fateful day, a violent, strong storm raged and made a rampage of the whole island; and on five or fourteen consecutive days, dilute the place with heaviest rains and strongest winds to sweep the island. • It is believed that the legend is real account of a natural calamitous event, which could have actually occurred thus causing the sporadically located small rivers and creeks in the island to branch out and unite their flow one great stream, which is the now-evolved Busuanga River. In the clear and cold dawn that followed the storm, the inhabitants were astonished to witness a dramatic transformation of their surroundings. Emerging from the devastation was a wide new channel cutting through the western portion of the mainland toward the sea. This natural event gave rise to a major river, which had evolved from what was once a small brook and remains a prominent and distinctive natural landmark to this day. Busuanga, from the vernacular word meaning "burst" in English, is the popular rendition of this event. Formation Busuanga during the Spanish Regime : 1600-1898 In 1622, the colonization of Palawan under Count San Augustine reached the island of Busuanga. A number of Augustinian-Recollect missionaries landed in the eastern coast of the mainland, converted the inhabitants to Christianity and built church for them together with the establishment of the Spanish local government in the barrio, known then as Busuanga*, the oldest barrio in the municipality. Later, 1636, the Spaniards began constructing fortification with small muzzle-loading artilleries to defend the barrio from an almost perennial raids and onslaught of Muslim rebels. With the establishment of a strong naval station at Puerto Princepe Alfonso, now Balabac, together with the forts of Cuyo, Taytay, Labao, etc. combined with the powerful Spanish fleets led by Lilu Marie Capiral, cruising the seas, the Muslim attacks was eventually put to an end. In 1898, the Treaty of Peace between the United States and Spain brought the more democratic Americans to the island, thus ending the despotic Spanish rule. The American regime: 1901-1914 In 1904, with American Military Government ruling the province under Governor Wright, the island of Culion was made into a government reservation, providing a colony for lepers and a vast government farm, its jurisdiction and control eventually served from the municipality of Coron. On June 2 of the same year, some former inhabitants of Culion was resettled to a place southeastern of the mainland and founded Concepcion, known then as "Kinamotean", from the word camote, a root crop growing abundantly in the place. • Busuanga, now Old Busuanga, the mother barrio. Present study and research as of 1977; set the year 1600 the earliest probable founding of Busuangan. Sometime, between 1906 and 1911, with the Governor Edmund Miller in office a number of school buildings were erected in some of the barrios, (Salvacion, Concepcion, Calauit, etc.) The founding of New Busuanga, formerly called "Kanyepet", is significant. If only its most controversial creation, a part of which she would still play in the last phase of Busuanga history. Given official recognition by Mayor Restituto Bacnan in 1937, mainly for religious commitments to the members of the Evangelical Church, the barrio was directed another official order in that time for its dissolution. Dissolution followed. About the year 1938, four or five years before the Second World War, manganese mine deposits were uncovered in the island. In the mining boom that followed a national road was expedite from Coron to the northern barrios passing through Bintuan to Concepcion. World War II through the liberation: (1941-1949) In 1942, still a nondescript barrio under the municipality of Coron, Busuanga entered the era of war. The Japanese occupation of Coron and Busuanga was primarily due to the manganese mines-good source of precious metals for ammunitions. Provoked and with no alternatives, the Busuangenos formed the Resistance Movement, foremost of which was the daring Bolo Battalion under Ignacio Libarra. Late of the same year, members of the Resistance Movement burned down the semi-permanent school buildings in Busuanga, Salvacion, Cheey and Calauit, which they fear would be a good headquarters for the Japanese. Spreading havoc and massacre, the enemies were already enjoying their plunder. On September 24, 1944, however, US bomber planes raided, and several Japanese ships, among them big tankers, were bombed and sunk off Concepcion coast. The sea became so thick laden with oil from the tankers that it burned furiously and spread out the nearby mangroves creating a bright sea-inferno for several days and nights. This was followed, in April 1945, by an ambush kill of two Japanese Officers coming from the manganese mines. Within the same month three more enemy soldiers died in the hands of the gallant Bolo Battalion. This foreshadowed the doom of Japanese invaders and the end of war. Immediately after the war, the US Government built and caused the establishment of Long Range (LORAN) Transmitting Station on the western coast of Panlaitan. The station was staffed and maintained by US Coast Guards until 1970. With peace fully reigning in the island, schools were re-opened; and the people vanishing their painful experience of war happily sent their children to school. Accordingly, the US government gave aids and full support for rehabilitation of the people from their low economic state. Thus Busuanga came out of the ashes of war still recouping and, one year after, still wavering from the moral and economic depression which it suffered in war, was forced to emerge into a full-pledged independent municipality. Foundation: the ABORDO Bill) The year 1950 came to be the dawn of the birth of Busuanga as a full pledged municipality. With 13 daughter barrios already settled and populated, it only waited for some process of law turned for its promulgation into an independent municipality. It was Governor Gaudencio Abordo, then Congressman of Palawan, and foremost of the earliest Palaweno Statesman, who trigged the session of Congress in 1950 into his bill for the realization of the municipality. The bill number 381, sought for the creation of Busuanga, including all the barrios in its realm, into a municipality. Both houses of Congress approved the bill without much restraint, and its final approval by the President of the Philippines was eventually contained and sealed in the Republic of Act No. 560. New Busuanga, the controverter, once-dissolved barrio founded by the members of the Evangelical Church, became politically the favored site for the municipality. On December 30, 1951, with a temporary "wood and nipa" structure for a municipal building, the first town mayor, by virtue of appointment, served his term, Mayor Adriano Custodio. He ruled the first few months of its founding years up to December 1952. The municipal site controversy It was Tiburcio Barracoso, a southern, of a prominent clan from Salvacion, who ascended the mayorship by rights and virtue of popular election. His first bold act of moving the municipal site to Salvacion created the first wave of "locality conflict" between the southerners and the northerners. Accordingly, when a northerner, Antonio Capague, 1956 to a 1959, won the next election in 1955, the municipal site was moved again from Salvacion back to New Busuanga. The succeeding mayors however did not cause further migration of the municipal site since the political tide and atmosphere in the higher level favored New Busuanga; and there the municipality remained until 1974. Relocation of the municipal site: The MITRA Bill About the tenure of the late Mayor Antero Hachero between 1968 and 1971, the then representative of Palawan, Ramon V. Mitra Jr. was fighting another bill in the session of Congress; this time it provided for the proper relocation and immediate transfer of the municipal site, from New Busuanga to Salvacion. The bill was approved for various justifiable and sound reasons, among them, Salvacion possessed a relatively more suitable and strategic location geographically and more economically developed community, making in the most suited political center for public service and the strategic seat of the municipal government. For some nebulous reasons, however, the bill had a hard and jolty time getting its way into the local government. Due to an admixture of conflicting personal and political interest and motives waged from all directions at once, the bill remained unexecuted in the local administration concerned. Consequently, the barrio council of Salvacion in collaboration filed a case of "Mandamus" with some municipal councilors against the involved municipal officials. But while serving in the middle of his tenure, the incumbent mayor, Antero Hachero, died, and the mandamus case hung like the word of Damocles upon the would-be successor. Eventually when laureano Custodio won in the 1972 local election, the same fell hair to the mandamus. This time it was the municipal council who sought the power of the court (CFI) to issue an order for the execution of the municipality's transfer to Salvacion against the indifference of the officials concerned. A little "cold war" almost sprung to the surface between the people of Salvacion and New Busuanga. The final seat of the municipal government On September 2, 1974, with some constabulary men acting as peacekeepers and mediators between the people of New Busuanga and Salvacion, the municipality was finally transferred and laid to its ultimate site. This historic transfer of the municipal site was characterized by clashing sentiments and convictions by the people and their leaders, both from personal and political motives and interest that made no little significance to the history of Busuanga. Thus ended the conflict between the two locality-after almost two decades. These are the barrios found, in chronological order: ==Geography==