Pampanga
Pampanga, officially the Province of Pampanga, is a province in Central Luzon, Philippines. Lying on the northern shore of Manila Bay, Pampanga is bordered by Tarlac to the north, Nueva Ecija to the northeast, Bulacan to the east, Manila Bay to the south, Bataan to the southwest, and Zambales to the west. Its capital is San Fernando, the regional center of Central Luzon. Angeles City is the largest city in Pampanga but is administratively independent. It has been self-governing since receiving its charter in 1964.
The name La Pampanga was given by the Spaniards, who found natives living along the banks of the Pampanga River. It was created in 1571 as the first Spanish province on Luzon. The town of Villa de Bacolor briefly served as the Spanish colonial capital when Great Britain occupied Manila during the Seven Years' War. On the eve of the Philippine Revolution in 1896, Pampanga was one of eight provinces placed under martial law for rebelling against the Spanish Empire. It is represented on the Flag of the Philippines by one of the eight rays of the sun.
Pampanga is served by Clark International Airport, which is in Clark Freeport Zone, some north of the provincial capital. The province is home to two Philippine Air Force airbases: Basa Air Base in Floridablanca and the former United States Clark Air Base in Angeles. Due to its growing population and developments, the Clark Global City is now being developed and is located in Clark Freeport Zone. In 2015, the province had 2,198,110 inhabitants, while it had 1,079,532 registered voters.
History
Spanish colonial era
The territorial area of old Pampanga included portions of the modern provinces of Tarlac, Bataan, Zambales, Nueva Ecija, Bulacan and Aurora; i.e. covered almost the entire Central Luzon. When the Spanish arrived at Luzon, they found Pampanga to be thickly populated with several towns and that there were 3 castles or forts protecting Pampanga. Pampanga was re-organized as a province by the Spaniards on December 11, 1571. La Provincia de La Pampanga included areas mentioned above except Tondo, along with modern provinces of Aurora and parts of Quezon and Rizal. For better administration and taxation purposes, the Spanish authorities subdivided Pampanga into pueblos, which were further subdivided into districts and in some cases into royal and private estates.Due to excessive abuses committed by some encomenderos, King Philip II of Spain in 1574 prohibited the further awarding of private estates, but this decree was not fully enforced until 1620. In a report of Philippine encomiendas on June 20, 1591, Governor-General Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas reported to the Crown that La Pampanga's encomiendas were Bataan, Betis y Lubao, Macabebe, Candaba, Apalit, Calumpit, Malolos, Binto, Guiguinto, Caluya, Bulacan and Mecabayan. The encomiendas of La Pampanga at that time had eighteen thousand six hundred and eighty whole tributes.
Pampanga, which is about in area and inhabited by more than 1.5 million people, had its present borders drawn in 1873. During the Spanish regime, it was one of the richest Philippine provinces. Manila and its surrounding region were then primarily dependent on Kapampangan agricultural, fishery and forestry products as well as on the supply of skilled workers. As other Luzon provinces were created due to increases in population, some well-established Pampanga towns were lost to new emerging provinces in Central Luzon.
During the 17th century, The Dutch recruited men from Pampanga as mercenaries who served the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army, known as Papangers part of the larger Mardijkers community. Their legacy can be found in North Jakarta, however, there are few traces of their descendants, except for a small community in Kampung Tugu.
The historic province of Bataan which was founded in 1754 under the administration of Spanish Governor-General Pedro Manuel Arandia, absorbed from the province of Pampanga the municipalities of Abucay, Balanga, Dinalupihan, Llana Hermosa, Orani, Orion, Pilar, and Samal. During the British occupation of Manila, Bacolor became the provisional Spanish colonial capital and military base. By the end of the 1700s, Pampanga had 16,604 native families and 2,641 Spanish Filipino families, and 870 Chinese Filipino families.
The old Pampanga towns of Aliaga, Cabiao, Gapan, San Antonio and San Isidro were ceded to the province of Nueva Ecija in 1848 during the term of Spanish Governor-General Narciso Claveria y Zaldua. The municipality of San Miguel de Mayumo of Pampanga was yielded to the province of Bulacan in the same provincial boundary configuration in 1848.
In 1860, the northern towns of Bamban, Capas, Concepcion, Victoria, Tarlac, Mabalacat, Magalang, Porac and Floridablanca were separated from Pampanga and were placed under the jurisdiction of a military command called Comandancia Militar de Tarlac. However, in 1873, the four latter towns were returned to Pampanga and the other five became municipalities of the newly created Province of Tarlac.
Japanese invasion
Attack on Clark Field
On December 8, 1941, Japanese planes bombed Clark Field in what has come to be known as the Attack on Clark Field, marking the beginning of the invasion of Pampanga.In keeping with War Plan Orange-3, Douglas McArthur ordered the evacuation of Fort Stotsenburg on December 24, 1941 and what could not be evacuated of the fort's stocks of high octane fuel, food, and clothing were destroyed.
Between 1941 and 1942, occupying Japanese forces began entering Pampanga.
The Japanese occupation
The establishment of the military general headquarters and military camp bases of the Philippine Commonwealth Army was active from 1935 to 1946. The Philippine Constabulary was active from 1935 to 1942 and 1944 to 1946 in the province of Pampanga. During the military engagements of the anti-Japanese Imperial military operations in central Luzon from 1942 to 1945 in the province of Bataan, Bulacan, Northern Tayabas, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga, Tarlac, and Zambales, the local guerrilla resistance fighters and Hukbalahap Communist guerrillas, helped the U.S. military forces fight the Imperial Japanese armed forces.The Liberation of Pampanga
In the 1945 liberation of Pampanga, Kapampangan guerrilla fighters and the Hukbalahap Communist guerrillas supported combat forces from Filipino and American ground troops in attacking Japanese Imperial forces during the Battle of Pampanga until the end of the Second World War. Local military operations soldiers and officers of the Philippine Commonwealth Army 2nd, 26th, 3rd, 32nd, 33rd, 35th, 36th and 37th Infantry Division and the Philippine Constabulary 3rd Constabulary Regiment recaptured and liberated the province of Pampanga and fought against the Japanese Imperial forces during the Battle of Pampanga.Postwar Era
After the Second World War, operations in the main province of Pampanga was downfall insurgencies and conflicts between the Philippine Government forces and the Hukbalahap Communist rebels on 1946 to 1954 during the Hukbalahap Rebellion.Under a 1947 Military Bases Agreement, the Philippines granted the United States a 99-year lease on several U.S. bases, including Clark Air Base. A later amendment in 1966 reduced the original 99-year term of the agreement to 25 years. A renewal of the agreement in 1979 allowed the U.S. to continue operating Clark Air Base until November 1991, when the Philippine Senate rejected a bill for the renewal of U.S. bases in the Philippines.
During the Marcos dictatorship
Clark Air Base Controversies
Due to its proximity to the capital and the presence of Clark Air Base, Pampanga was became one of the flashpoint of social upheavals of the early 1970s, and the ensuing dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. Even during the first demonstrations of the First Quarter Storm in 1970, Clark and the other US Bases in the Philippines were a major issue for protesters, who saw them as a continuation of the US' colonial hegemony, and a way of dragging the Philippines into the cold war, since Clark had become a staging point for the increasingly unpopular Vietnam War.1970 saw a major diplomatic incident at Clark Air Base in what US Presidential Assistant for National Security Affairs Henry Kissinger eventually called "the Williams Case." In June 1970, Angeles City Court of First Instance Ceferino Gaddi ordered the arrest of Base Commander Colonel Averill Holman and Base Chief of International Law Lt. Col. Raymond Hodges, citing in contempt for allowing the transfer of US Air Force Staff Sergeant Bernard Willams to the US in November 1969 despite the fact that he had been arraigned in the Angeles Court in August 1969 on criminal charges of abduction and attempted rape. Williams was eventually returned to the Philippines,
although the Marcos administration refused to enforce the court ordered arrests against Holman and Hodges. The incident helped the push for the renegotiation of the US-Philippines Bases Treaty in 1979, in an effort to clarify the issue of Philippine sovereignty and jurisdiction over the bases.
In 1971, unfair labor practices led the civilian workers at the base to stage a three-day strke which began on March 3, followed by a half-month strike which began on July 25. The Federation of Filipino Civilian Employees Associations would organize further major strikes in 1979, 1983, and in March 1986.
Implementation of Martial Law
Upon the declaration of Martial Law in September 1972, Camp Olivas in the City of San Fernando was designated as one of the four provincial camps to become a Regional Command for Detainees. It was designated RECAD I and it housed detainees from Northern and Central Luzon. Prominent detainees imprisoned there include Edicio de la Torre, Judy Taguiwalo, Tina Pargas, Marie Hilao-Enriquez, and Bernard-Adan Ebuen. Prisoners who were documented to have been tortured include the sisters Joanna and Josefina Cariño, the brothers Romulo and Armando Palabay, and Mariano Giner Jr of Abra. About 50 Kalinga and Bontoc leaders, including Butbut tribe leader Macli-ing Dulag, were also brought to Camp Olivas from their detainment center in Tabuk, Kalinga, arrested for their opposition to the Chico River Dam Project. Seminarian Teresito Sison had campaigned for the rights of teachers, farmers, and of laborers in Clark Air Base, but torture during two stints in Marcos' detention centers caused a decline in his health which led to his death in 1980.Others were killed without being arrested, such as close friends Pepito Deheran, Rolando Castro and Lito Cabrera were sleeping in Cabrera's property in Sapang Bato, Angeles when they were attacked, captured, and tortured by Marcos' Civilian Home Defense Force militia forces after they participated in the protest movement that grew out of the assassination of opposition leader Ninoy Aquino. Deheran managed to escape the ordeal alive and was taken to the hospital, but was stabbed by unknown assailants in his own hospital bed.
Jennifer Cariño, the Palabay brothers, Macli-ing Dulag, Castro, Cabrera, and Deheran would later be honored by having their names inscribed on the wall of remembrance of the Philippines' Bantayog ng mga Bayani, which honors the martyrs and heroes who dared to resist the dictatorship.