When Cayat couldn’t hold his drink

(We yield to some former shot glassmates’ request for a retelling of one man’s woes with the spirit of the colonial law that once governed Native Americans and Igorots alike. This retelling is a tribute to the visionary Igorot lawyer Sinai Carino Hamada, the founder of the oldest existing Baguio weekly –the venerable Baguio Midland Courier.- RD.)

IT MUST have been terribly cold during Baguio’s formative years for Cayat to have tried to go for the old reliable: a shot of gin and, if warranted, another. For literally holding his drink, the fellow with one name was booked and brought before the justice of the peace. The court found him guilty and meted out a five-peso fine or imprisonment in case of inability to pay.

Court records didn’t reveal if the crime was driven by the need to insulate one’s self from the temperature dip. What was clear was that Cayat’s arrest was anchored on his identity as a “native”. Perhaps the singularity of his name that didn’t sound Spanish or colonized was what gave him away.

Aside, of course, from his tight grip on the damning evidence.

Cayat was an Igorot, although his specific tribal affiliation was not indicated in the Supreme Court decision. The ruling just identified him as “a native of Baguio, Benguet, Mountain Province”, in accordance with the political geography of the time.

Sinai Hamada, then a young Ibaloi lawyer who studied and was student paper editor at the University of the Philippines, took on Cayat’s defense until the highest tribunal. “My father told me he didn’t know Cayat until the fellow needed a lawyer to defend him,” recalled Hamada’s daughter, Brigitte Pawid, now the chair of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples.

Client and counsel pleaded before the Court of First Instance for dismissal of the case for lack of evidence. The CFI, however, upheld the verdict of the justice of the peace. It also upped the fine to P50, again with “subsidiary imprisonment in case of insolvency”.

Cayat was found guilty of an offense no longer deemed criminal today: possession of a bottle of commercially produced gin.

The information read: “That on or about 25th day of January, 1937, in the City of Baguio, Commonwealth of the Philippines, and within the jurisdiction of this court, the above-named accused, Cayat, being a member of the non-Christian tribes, did then and there willfully, unlawfully, and illegally receive, acquire, and have in his possession and under his control or custody,