Negros
Negros is the fourth largest and third most populous island in the Philippines, with a total land area of. The coastal zone of the southern part of Negros is identified as a site of highest marine biodiversity importance in the Coral Triangle.
Negros is one of the many islands of the Visayas, in the central part of the country. The predominant inhabitants of the island region are mainly called Negrenses. As of 2024 census, the total population of Negros is 4,797,302
people.
From 2015 to 2017, the whole island was governed as an administrative region officially named the Negros Island Region, which comprised the highly urbanized city of Bacolod and the provinces of Negros Occidental and Negros Oriental, along with its corresponding outlying islands and islets within a total regional area of. It was created on May 29, 2015, by virtue of Executive Order No. 183 issued by President Benigno Aquino III. On August 9, 2017, the region was dissolved after President Rodrigo Duterte signed Executive Order No. 38, reverting its constituents to their previous regions.
On June 13, 2024, Negros island together with neighboring Siquijor were grouped together under a reconstituted Negros Island Region with Republic Act No. 12000 signed by President Bongbong Marcos.
History
Precolonial era
Negros was originally called Buglas, an old Hiligaynon word thought to mean "cut off", as the island was thought to have been separated from a larger landmass. It was also known as Mamaylan and Panilougon among Cebuano-speaking Visayans. Among its earliest inhabitants were the aboriginal Ata, one of several Negrito Indigenous Peoples dispersed throughout Southeast Asia that possesses a unique culture. The westernmost portions of the island soon fell under the nominal rule of the Kedatuan of Madja-as based on the neighboring islands of Panay and Guimaras, while the eastern coasts were influenced by the Rajahnate of Cebu from the adjacent island of Cebu.Spanish colonization
Upon arriving on the island in April 1565, the Spanish colonizers called the land Negros, after the dark-skinned natives they had observed. Two of the earliest native settlements, Binalbagan and Ilog, became towns in 1573 and 1584, respectively, while other settlements of the period included Hinigaran, Bago, Marayo, Mamalan, and Candaguit.After appointing encomenderos for the island, Miguel López de Legazpi placed Negros under the jurisdiction of the governor of Oton in Panay. In 1734, however, the island became a military district with Ilog as its first capital. The seat of government was later transferred to Himamaylan until Bacolod became the capital in 1849. In 1865, Negros and its outlying minor islands along with Siquijor was converted into a politico-military province. By the end of the 1700s, Negros Island had 5,741 native families.
In 1890, the island was officially partitioned into the present-day provinces of Negros Occidental and Negros Oriental. The Spanish Governor, D. Isidro Castro y Cinceros, surrendered to the Negros Revolutionaries, led by Aniceto Lacson and Juan Araneta, on November 6, 1898. General Miller appointed Aniceto as Governor of the Island in March 1899.
Negros Revolution and formation of Republic of Negros
From November 3 - 6, 1898, the Negrense peoples rose in revolt against the local Spanish colonial government headed by politico-military governor Colonel Isidro de Castro. The Spaniards decided to surrender upon seeing armed troops marching in a pincer movement towards Bacolod. The revolutionaries, led by General Juan Araneta from Bago and General Aniceto Lacson from Talisay, bore fake arms consisting of rifles carved out of palm fronds and cannons of rolled bamboo mats painted black. By the afternoon of November 6, Col. de Castro signed the Act of Capitulation, thus ending centuries of Spanish colonial rule in Negros Occidental.File:Jose de Luzuriaga, Filipino Teacher.jpg|thumb|338x338px|José de Luzuriaga, the 2nd Governor of Negros Occidental
In memory of this event, every November 5 is observed as a special non-working holiday in the province through Republic Act No. 6709, signed by President Corazon Aquino on February 10, 1989.
On November 27, 1898, the Cantonal Republic of Negros unilaterally proclaimed independence, but this was short-lived as the territory became a protectorate of the United States on April 30, 1899. The state was renamed the Republic of Negros on July 22, 1899, and eventually dissolved by the United States and annexed by the U.S. Military Government of the Philippine Islands on April 30, 1901.
The leaders of the short-lived republic were:
- Aniceto Lacson, November 5, 1898 – July 22, 1899
- Demetrio Larena, November 24, 1898 – November 27, 1898
- President of the Constituent Assembly José Luzuriaga, July 22, 1899 – November 6, 1899
- Secretary of War Juan Araneta
- Civil Governor Melecio Severino, November 6, 1899 – April 30, 1901
- Secretary of Justice Antonio Ledesma Jayme, November 5, 1898 – July 22, 1899
Commonwealth period
Post-Commonwealth era
were first formed on September 24, 1972 when the provinces of the Philippines were organized into different 11 regions by Presidential Decree No. 1 as part of the Integrated Reorganization Plan of President Ferdinand Marcos. Negros Occidental was assigned to Western Visayas and Negros Oriental was assigned to Central Visayas.Negros famine
By the time Ferdinand Marcos' second term began, sugar had become a critical Philippine export, responsible for 27% of the county's total foreign exchange earnings. With international sugar prices rising rapidly through the early 1970s, Marcos decided to put domestic and international sugar trading under government control, first through the Philippine Exchange Co., and later through the Philippine Sugar Commission and its trading arm, the National Sugar Trading Corporation, which were both controlled by Marcos crony Roberto Benedicto.However, the international price of sugar eventually crashed, dramatically hurting the livelihoods of poor farmers. The NASUTRA monopoly forced many sugar planters into bankruptcy or deep in debt. In 1984, over 190,000 sugar workers lost their livelihood, and about a million sacadas and their families in Negros suffered in what would later become known as the "Negros Famine."
Author John Silva, who was working with Oxfam at the time, visited Negros and later described the living conditions of thousands of starving and malnourished children:
I drove past the provincial hospital where I first saw hundreds of malnourished children on mats on the floors tended by their mothers, and later, we were in the country through cane fields and small towns remembering the skeletal children being weighed and assessed by our medical team.... There were over 100,000 children in various degree of malnutrition and we started a feeding program for 90,000 of them, hoping to save the worst cases.
The famine in Negros sparked a worldwide firestorm. International relief agencies flew in to conduct feeding programs, local NGOs mobilized relief drives, and members of the Catholic Church pitched in to help.
Locally, social tensions were so high that the Catholic Bishop of Bacolod, Antonio Fortich described the conditions on the island as a "social volcano" ready to explode. This was the situation on September 20, 1985, which marked the date of the Escalante massacre, in which paramilitary forces under the command of Marcos-allied Negros Occidental Governor Armando Gustilo gunned down farmers protesting social conditions on the 13th anniversary of the declaration of Martial Law. Between twenty and thirty farmers were estimated to be killed, and thirty more were wounded.
Another consequence of the famine was the dramatic rise of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist New People’s Army presence on Negros island, with Bishop Fortich stating in 1985 that "the NPA has doubled in strength the last year, principally because of the poverty and hunger here."
Negros Island Region
The movement for a single-island region started in the 1980s when officials of both provinces proposed a one-island, one-region unit. Negros Occidental and Negros Oriental are the only provinces in the Philippines situated in the same island but belonging to two different administrative regions with regional offices located in neighboring Panay and Cebu. The movement to unite the two provinces in Negros island was sustained in the 1990s and 2010s.The campaign for the creation of a region in Negros had gains when President Benigno Aquino III directed the Department of the Interior and Local Government to study the establishment of a new region. with the government agency later endorsing the move. NEDA affirmed by saying that its studies show that the proposed region is economically viable.
On May 29, 2015, President Aquino signed Executive Order 183, which created the Negros Island Region. It separated Negros Occidental and its capital Bacolod from Western Visayas and Negros Oriental from Central Visayas to form the island region, which made the total number of regions of the Philippines into 18.