*412. SPANISH HACIENDEROS IN PAMPANGA

LORD OF THE LANDS. Spaniard Jose Puig,  a successful owner of  a milling business and a 
 dealer of sugar milling machiinery, owned and operated the vast Hacienda Puig in Pampanga.

In the economic heyday of Pampanga brought about by its lucrative sugar industry, scoress of Kapampangan landowners raked in untold wealth from the fat of their lands. Prominent names like Mariano Pamintuan (Angeles), Jose L. De Leon, Roman Valdes (Bacolor) Augusto Gonzales, Manuel Escaler (Apalit), Jose Maria Panlilio (Mexico) , Vicente Lim-Ongco (Guagua) and Manuel Urquico were top on the list of the province’s richest and most influential hacienderos.

 Joining them were a small group of Spaniards who took residence in Pampanga in the 1800s, after the government lifted a ban against living in the provinces. They acquired lands, became agriculturists and founded viable extensive estates. (The Chinese showed no interest in land speculation, opting to engage in commerce, manufacturing and processing of products.)

 A list of landowning Spaniards from 1887-1888 included about 58 names—fewer than those in Negros, possibly because Pampanga landowners tended to hold fast to their lands, thus creating difficulties to outside investors. Many of these Spaniards also appeared to have leased their property than personally run the affairs of their land. At the turn of the 20th century and into the early years of American regime, the list of prominent Spanish sugarland owners include the following:

The Arrastias. The patriarch of the Arrastias of Lubao was,Valentin Roncal Arrastia, a Basque from Allo, Navarra, Spain, who went to the Philippines to seek his fortune. He, not only found wealth in the country, but also a Kapampangan wife—Francisca Serrano Salgado of Lubao. The couple’s consolidated properties included their vast hacienda planted with sugar and rice, as well as flourishing fish ponds that provided a luxurious life for their 9 children. Befitting their stature, the Arrastias built a magnificent residence sometime in the first two decades of the 1900s, fronting the Lubao municipio. 

The Gils.  In the 1850s, the colonial government allowed the selling of lands to Spaniards and one beneficiary was Spaniard Felino Gil. He turned his land parcel of over 530 hectares into the Hacienda Mamada de Pio. Gil was first of many generations of his family to settle in their Porac hacienda. While other Spaniards sold off their lands to natives who divided them into smaller portions. But Spanish settlers in towns like Lubao, Floridablanca and Porac retained their large estates, some as big as 1000 hectares. The Gils remained in Porac for a long time, including a nephew from Valencia, Spain-Rafael Gil.

The Puigs. Spaniard Jose Puig, who has been accumulating lands for over years, established a profitable sugar milling business and the selling of agricultural equipment back in the 1890s. He became a well-known dealer of steam mill machinery, which he also leased out to farmers. He is credited for the shift into steam milling by many Pampanga farmers. Puig remained a farmer in the province after the arrival of Americans. Other Puigs like Francisco Puig continued the landowning tradition by acquiring 51 hectares of rice and sugarlands. A daughter of Don Honorio Ventura married a Puig and settled in Barcelona.

The Toledos. By 1854, Roberto Toledo had amassed large tracts of agricultural lands in the Porac-Lubao-Floridablanca area, which he rented out. His son, Roberto Jr. managed to increase the landholdings to over 3,000 hectares. He become one of the most progressive sugar planters in Pampanga. The Toledo estate was not spared from the violence in the late 1930s that rocked Pampanga’s sugar areas, which caused landlowners to form an association to protect their interests. The Toledos and their casamacs settled for a 50 centavo increase –raising their pay to 2 pesos per ton, for every cane delivery to Pasumil.

 The Valdeses. Hacienda del Carmen was founded in Floridablanca by Capt. Basilio Valdes of the Spanish Navy, who married a Manileña mestiza, Francisca Salvador. The agricultural lands were later managed by his children, led by Benito Salvador Valdes, a doctor, who was a classmate of Jose Rizal at the Universidad Central de Madrid in 1885. During the Revolution, Valdes was imprisoned in Fort Santiago for charges of complicity. Later, Benito Salvador became the director of San Juan de Dios Hospital in 1900. With first wife, Filomena Pica, he had a son, Dr. Basilio J. Pica Valdes who became the president of Hacienda del Carmen, aside from being Quezon’s Chief of Staff and defense secretary. The place where their tenants lived and work was named Barangay Valdes.

 Other known Spanish landlords included Don Ricardo Herreros (who owned an 81 hectare sugarland), Vicente Borrero, Julian Blanco, Manuel Fernandez, Juan Landaluce, Dolores Lombera and Emilio Borrero.

 The days of those grand Spanish-owned haciendas are now long gone—the properties sold by the original owners’ descendants, subjected to land reform, or redeveloped as residential subdivisions.

Vestiges of Spanish colonial power and presence could still be seen in some parts of Pampanga—the Pio Chapel and the manor of the Gils remain in Porac looked after by caretakers, and barangay Valdes continues to thrive in Floridablanca. The fabulous Arrastia mansion has been sold and relocated to Bataan as part of the Las Casas de Acuzar heritage resort. Finally, Kapampangans could re-claim and live on their lands again.

Sources: 
John Larkin, The Pampangans / Sugar and the Origins of Modern Philippine Society
Sugar News 1925 ed.

*237. ATBU, ATBP.

SACCHARINE SMILE. A country girl shows of her healthy sugarcane crop that's ready for harvesting in this posed picture. Pampanga's sugar industry powered the provincial economy and made it a force to reckon with during the American regime. Ca.1912.

Give a child a fresh stick of atbu (sugarcane), and he will keep quiet for the rest of the day. For some reason, munching on a piece of sugarcane-- ‘mamangus atbu’—has a calming effect on us kids. Maybe because it took much skill, so we had to focus on the laborious task at hand, using just our teeth to strip off the bark, chewing on the tough cane fiber to extract the sweet juice, and spewing out the sapal (husk) later. Biting the hard, tasteless node off, we then move on to the next juicy part, until we finish the whole footlong sugar cane stick.

Mamangus atbu was a true test for teeth and gums, but the mouthsores I occasionally got were worth my sugarcane taste experience. I’ve always preferred the purple sugarcane variety, cooled in the icebox for an hour before munching. These, I would find readily available in the makeshift stalls lining the way to my elementary school. Another way to get ‘atbu’ free is to run after hauler trucks or bagun (cargo trains) en route to the mills and try to pull a stalk from its harvested sugar cane load.

As my lolo was a modest hacendero with some rice and sugarcane fields, we grew up with the sight and smell of sugarcane. It was a staple product around the house, and I remember using arnibal (thin muscovado syrup) to sweeten our coffee, prepared by my ever so frugal mother. But I guess this was the same familiar scene in many Kapampangan households where, for a time, sugar held such prominence in the province’s economy.

In its heyday, especially from 1925-1927, Pampanga led Luzon in sugar production, with the Del Carmen Sugar Mills leading the way with an output of 45,000 tons annually, followed by Calamba with 16,000 and San Fernando, just slightly behind. Pampanga Sugar Development Company (PASUDECO), controlled by the Philippine National Banks, would later be expanded, becoming the fastest growing Central among all bank Centrals and further improving its output.

Interestingly, of the four varieties of cane originally cultivated in the Philippines, once came from Pampanga—the Pampanga Red or Encarnada de la Pampanga, which produced canes smaller than the other varieties: Cebu Purple (Morada de Cebu), Luzon White (Blanca de Luzon) and Negros Purple (Morada de Negros). Nevertheless, this hardy cane plant had excellent purity and yield, topped only by Cebu Purple, and cementing the province’s reputation as a major sugar producer for the country and the world.

The pleasures of sugar from our “dulce caña”, of course, we enjoyed at every opportunity. Parents could easily fix a quick treat for their kids by boiling extracted sugarcane juice in a vat until it turned into molten molasses. A dollop is ladled into a basin of cold water, turning the molasses into a brown, gooey, malleable mixture called “inuyat” which we ate with our hands. With rice drowned in carabao’s milk, “inuyat” becomes an instant ulam (viand)!

A fancy Makati restaurant once offered sugarcane juice coolers in its menu, matched with a fancy price. But we’ve been drinking ice cold sugarcane juice ever since I can remember--and it certainly didn’t cost that much! Maybe bartenders can take a tip from Kapampangan farmers who squeezed cane juice into their alcoholic drinks for a perfect happy hour treat after a day’s hard work.

Goodies made with cane sugar can be had cheap at every corner sari-sari store. We developed cavities eating five centavo ‘balikutsa’, a kind of sugar taffy so sticky delicious. Another favorite is the panutsa, which technically speaking is solid brown sugar sold in ‘baos’, but it has come to mean a kind of peanut brittle mixed with coarse brown sugar and sold with brown paper linings. The same unrefined sugar also found its way into our fiesta desserts like “yemas”—milk pudding balls encased in caramelized brown sugar. In Arayat, a centerpiece in every feast or banquet is the ‘samani’—in which white peanuts dipped in caramelized brown sugar are used to construct an edible sweet basket, a virtual eye candy to foodies of yore.

Of course, it’s not just us that benefitted from the amazing ‘atbu’. Leftover ‘sapal’ was fed to pigs and hogs. To make an instant feeder and a perch for pet insects like ‘uwang’ (rhinoceros beetle), a length of fresh sugar cane was tied on both ends and hung on the porch.

It used to be so common to see cut sugarcane for sale-- piled high like pyramids on fruit stands and sidewalk stalls, especially during the summer months. Nowadays, apples and grapes, it would seem, are even easier to find. Maybe so, but those fruits—so way beyond our reach-- never impressed me the way a stalk of ‘atbu’ could—it’s always ready to eat and ready to please—the sweet stuff that many a childhood pleasures are made of.