Busuanga, Palawan
Busuanga, officially the Municipality of Busuanga, is a 3rd class municipality in the province of Palawan, Philippines. According to the, it has a population of people.
History
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 could well be said to date back as early as 3,000 B.C. at the time group of nomadic people were known to make such waves of immigration by way of land-bridges from the Asia mainland, some of which lagged and drifted along the Philippines Archipelago. Much later, the Malayans and Indonesians followed. For some thousands of years, they explored, discovered, utilized, and finally spread and populated the Philippines Island, presumably including the island of 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 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, 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.In the clear, cold dawn that settled after the storm, the inhabitants were amazed to find-in a mixed awe and terror-a massive phenomenal transformation in their place. Out of the darkness of the storm, a wide new channel through the western portion of the mainland into the sea. Thus, nature gave birth to this great river, evolved out of a small brook which up to this day serves an unmistakable beautiful natural landmark.
Busuanga, from the vernacular word meaning "burst" in English, is the popular rendition of this event.
Formation
Busuanga during the Spanish Regime : 1600-1898In 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 epidotic 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.
Sometime, between 1906 and 1911, with the Governor Edmund Miller in office a number of school buildings were erected in some of the barrios,
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 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.