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THE
CABECERA OF TARLAC
(An Offertory of Historical Notes)
Lino L.
Dizon
Director, Center for Tarlaqueño Studies,
Tarlac State University
Consultant, Center for Kapampangan Studies, Holy Angel University
The
onslaught and take-over of modernization on
every available tract of land
that was once a lush,
verdant hinterland upholds the surreal strokes of the Tarlac cabecera,
now the Tarlac City, with
a backdrop
of irregular mountains completing the picture. Yet, the realism of the
capital as having always been akin to the gushing waters of the portent Tarlac
River (metung yang cakewan a babaltangan (a) kng kecaban ning metung a ilog,
- a woodland being crisscrossed by a lengthy river- as a late Tarlaqueño-Kapampangan
historian, Marcos Tañedo described it decades ago) is still there; in fact, if
not for the otherwise pernicious environmental
effects of technology,
it could
have been
a different geographical
setting altogether. It was said that the gargantuan riverscape of the
city of
Tarlac started out as a
trickle, having vital statistics of only 20 meters in width and 3 meters in
depth. With the descent of floodwaters from Pinatubo and other mountain systems
from the south that had at certain times changed their courses, the Tarlac River
would be entertaining the swishing and swashing liquid
in such
manner that it had bloated
itself tremendously. It was only through the timely intervention of a provincial
governor (Don Manuel de Leon), during the first decade of the American regime,
that the catastrophe was somehow enervated. He had a dike built to regulate the
waters descending from the highlands and onwards to the nearest sea, still a
hundred miles away.
The
passage of time has offered many possibilities on the etymology of the Tarlac
place-name. During its early peopling, it was said that four distinct groups
started to clear the area (kaingin), namely: the Ilocanos, the
Pangasinense, the Kapampangans, and the Zambaling Balugas. In-between the kaingins
of two pioneering settlers ( Agustin Arevalo and Esteban Tabaquero), a big, tall
tree was left uncut. The reason for such was not known, but it could have meant
as a reference point for the settlement that emerged. The Ilocanos called it bacayao,
the Pangasinenses and the Kapampangans referred to it as betis while the
Zambaling Balugas named it maratarlac. Since the last group was still
then the majority, it was the consensus that their term would be adopted; and
which, for the convenience of the other tongues, was simplified to tarlac.
Others
claimed that it was actually derived from another Zambal term tal-lac, or
a system of bamboo and wooden poles or stakes stuck along the river banks to
diminish the strong current and that was used to facilitate fishing.
Interestingly, a lot of the native Tarlaqueños, irrespective of the
ethnolinguistic group where they belong, are
still pronouncing
the place in this lisping manner.
But
the most popular of these probabilities was that Tarlac was derived from a
sturdy and medicinal grass known in Zambal as tanglar, a variety of the
cogon. Some even called it malatarlac (thanks to the insistence of the
members of the Tarlac Historical
Society in the 1960s who popularized this etymology which, unfortunately,
remained). Accordingly, the Spaniards, to simplify the toponym, had placed it as
Tarlac in their records, a term that has remained until now.
Crosschecking
some Spanish - Tagalog dictionaries (e.g., that of Pedro Serrano-Laktaw),
however, Tarlak is simply a caña (a cane or a reed) resembling a
sugar cane, synonymous to balahô and tanlak, without the
distortions that legends and storytellings loved to add. And considering that
the prevalent vegetative classification of Tarlac province was that of a
grassland most conducive to sugar cane, the account will not be far-fetched.
The
earliest reference that could be traced about a place called Tarlac was
circa 1593, a score after the arrival of the Spaniards in the island of Luzon;
it was then a praesidio (fort), as attested by a document on the needed
troops for the maintenance of the various forts at this early period. Popular
traditions had it that the area was a favorite sanctuary from those who were
fleeing from the law (castle-rustlers
and other tulisanes), aside from the
aboriginal Negritos who lorded it over.
Other accounts trace its origin as a sitio of Porac in a region
that was previously known as Alta Pampanga(Upper Pampanga). Porac became
eventually the center of a commandancia
of the said region which thus confirmed its previous state as a refugium
peccatorum. Augustinians(members of the
missionary order that evangelized the
area) placed the pueblo’s foundation at
1686, the same year that
Camiling and Paniqui were recognized as visitas by the Dominicans
in the northern part of what would eventually become the province of Tarlac in
1873.
The
Tarlac Church, site of the 1899 Philippine Revolutionary Congress
In terms of
spiritual administration, the vicinity used to be a visita under the
jurisdiction of the Augustinian misionero of
Macapsa (the first site of the town of Magalang-Concepcion), founded in
1605 but which became a despoblado (ghost-town) due to the Malong revolt
in the 1660s. When the settlement was resuscitated as San Bartolome de Magalang
(now only a barrio of Concepcion ) in the early 1700s, the new
town continued its spiritual administration over the pueblo
of Tarlac for certain decades more.
The actual
foundation of Tarlac church as an independent parish is being placed in 1721,
with the establishment of a mission-visita dedicated to Saint Sebastian.
Another view being offered by some historians was that Tarlac City has a
Recollect (Order of the Augustinian Recollects) provenance, the religious
congregation that was responsible for the evangelization of Southern Tarlac (Bamban,
Capas, O’Donnell and Moriones) since 1712. Their contention deals mainly on
the patron of the township, San Sebastian (the Roman soldier-martyr), who is a
popular saint in the latter’s establishments in the country (San Sebastian
College and Cathedral, both in Manila).
However, cronistas
(historians) of the Augustinian Order, specifically Fr. Pedro Galende, OSA, have
pointed out some documents to vouch their contention that Tarlac City and the
Cathedral of Saint Sebastian were products of their indefatigable missionary
zeal that was very visible since the first decade of their arrival in this
country, the time when the Cross came in the islands of Luzon and the province
of Pampanga, where Tarlac once belong.
By 1725, the Augustinian chapter at that time requested the
Father Provincial, with the abundance of missionaries, to appoint a minister
specifically for Tarlac and its adjacent visitas on the condition that the laity
who would benefit from his appointment would be providing “chicken and eggs”
for his sustenance. To supplement the income of the said priest, with the
provincial aware of the poverty of the place, requested the richer towns and
parishes of Pampanga to help sustain this new mission-center of Tarlac.
The
existence of conflicting accounts would mean, however, the irregular or the
on-and-off status of Tarlac as a township (pueblo), especially during the
first two centuries of Spanish rule. A Real Orden of 1788 from
Governor-General Felix Berenguer de Marquina was also about the creation, or
recreation, of the town of Tarlac. By this time, it was again made independent
from the town of Porac, its former matriz (mother town). The
reorganization of the commandancia
in 1858 made the pueblo of Tarlac
as the center, no longer Porac, and thus
reflecting on its rapid development as a bustling community. The elevation of
the said commandancia into the regular alcaldia (province)
of Tarlac in 1874 would
also make
its hijo (junior) the capital, a distinction it has enjoyed
hitherto.
The Altar-Mayor of the Tarlac Cathedral with the prominent statue of Apung Basti
(San Sebastian). 1930s. (L.Dizon Collections)
During
the early existence of Tarlac as an independent town of Pampanga (ca.
1789), the legend of Apung Bastian (San
Sebastian, the pintakasi or
patron saint) was started. Accordingly, a band
of thieves
was about to maraud the town of
Tarlac. In reaching
a portion of the Tarlac river, they met a a little boy playing. The
leader asked him for the spot in the river where they could get across. The
child answered that he doesn’t
know it; all he knew was the route where he came from. Disregarding the
latter’s queer reply, the tulisan commanded his members that since he
was on horseback, he would be leading the pack. While he was already in the
middle of the river, a quicksand (luanac) devoured his horse. Scampering
for safety along the banks, the tulisan was about to confront the boy but
who was nowhere to be seen. A member of the band told his companions that he
could have been Apung Bastian, the miraculous saint of the town of Tarlac.
Cowered with fear, the tulisanes decided not to proceed with their
evil plan.
A
facet not well-known in the misty history of the Tarlac town was its being a fruta
de la revolucion. The revolt of
Juan de la Cruz Palaris (alsamiente ng Palaris) in
1762 that
rocked the
whole province
of Pangasinan and its environs
brought about the migrations of people to other places, particularly in Tarlac.
To these belong Carlos Miguel, who brought along his household from Binalatongan
(San Carlos), then the seat of the Palaris revolt. Settling on a vast tract of cogonales,
the area was immediately transformed into a booming agricultural community that
attracted many ethnolinguistic groups from
various parts
of Luzon.
In 1788, only 26 years after, a calutasan (resolucion) ,
which called for the foundation of a new township and through the initiative of Don Carlos
himself, was forwarded to the civil authorities of Pampanga in the cabecera
of Bacolor. It was approved thereafter; with Don Carlos Miguel becoming also the
first gobernadorcillo of the town of Tarlac. His descendants would be following
his path.
A
century later, his great grandson, Francisco Tañedo (a son of Don Damaso Tañedo
- nee Miguel, who was the gobernadorcillo of the Tarlac cabecera
when the province of Tarlac was created in 1873) had,
like the uncertain course of
the waters descending from the mountains of Tarlac, deviated from the course of
his forefathers. Together with his town-mates, Ciriaco Santos, Procopio Hilario,
Candido Ancheta, among others, he led the town of Tarlac on the path of the
Philippine Revolution that had been
brewed in the whole province as early as 1896. And the young province of Tarlac
was to be remembered for its pioneering role and contributions in the
shaping of
the Filipino nation.
The author could be reached at
lino_diz@hotmail.com
We would like to
remind those who will be using the information above, especially for
publication, to properly cite the author and the Kapampangan Homepage.
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