Planned road a lifeline — and worry — for isolated town
There is no road to Palanan. The town, 190 miles northeast of Manila on a stretch of rugged Pacific coastline, is separated from the crowds and chaos of the rest of the Philippines by a three-day trek through tropical jungle, a sevenhour ride on a wooden pump boat or a 25-minute flight on a three-seater Cessna.
Cloistered in the foothills of the Sierra Madre, Palanan’s farmers cross fields on the backs of loping water buffaloes. Children in plaid uniforms walk to school along beaches of white sand. A few motorcycles with sidecars, brought in on boats, rumble through the carless streets of the dusty town center. Carved canoes slide down broad rivers, and narrow outrigger boats bob along the shore.
But all that may change. The government is building a road that will cut a path of more than 50 miles through the Sierra Madre, from Ilagan City, the capital of Isabela province, to Divilacan, a neighboring town, with plans to continue it into Palanan and a scattering of nearby villages.
The road comes with many hopes. If stocks of rice run low during the rainy season, they can be replenished, and dry goods like sugar and packaged crackers will become cheaper. It will be easier to take sick people to the hospital in Ilagan.
And with new access to markets on the other side of the mountains, locals envision planting yams, cassava, watermelons or bananas, which they could transport by truck.
“Our lives could become less burdensome,” said Bulol Donato, a member of the Agta, an indigenous group in the Sierra Madre.
But others fear that even as the road brings economic benefits — including tourism — it will put pressure on traditional ways of life and bring in outside ills. Palanan’s population of about 17,000 consists of the Agta, an ethnic group descended from the Philippines’ earliest inhabitants, who came to the archipelago 30,000 to 60,000 years ago; the Paranan, a group that arrived 4,000 years ago; and more recent arrivals.
Many Agta continue to live in huts made of branches and dried leaves as semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers, diving for octopus and lobster, spearing reef fish, trapping wild boar and hunting deer. For thousands of years, they have maintained friendly trade relationships with the Paranan and other migrants, trading fish and meat for rice and, more recently, for instant coffee, beer, crystal earrings, T-shirts and cotton dresses.
Arnold Alvarez, 53, an evangelical pastor in Palanan, worries that excitement over the road is obscuring the harsh reality that with the good will come the bad, particularly for the Agta. Their way of life “won’t survive the road,” he said. “It’s hard now, and it will be harder once the road comes.”
About 1,800 Agta live in the Sierra Madre, and since at least the start of the 20th century, their population has grown slowly. That leaves some anthropologists concerned that Agta culture is facing possible extinction — particularly as hunter-gatherer societies, which depend on forest and ocean products, are vulnerable to changes in their environment.
The Sierra Madre is susceptible to illegal logging and wildlife poaching, both of which are expected to worsen as the road makes the virgin forests and shores more accessible. And the arrival of migrants from surrounding provinces, drawn by open spaces and new economic opportunities, might leave the Agta vying for limited natural resources as the forest is cleared for farmland.
As an indigenous group, the Agta can apply to claim vast tracts of the Sierra Madre as their ancestral land, which they first did in 1997. Previous applications have failed, however, and the group’s most recent effort to secure land rights has been tied up in government bureaucracy for more than a decade. Without legal rights to the land, the Agta risk having it claimed by others.
In Palanan, which the town’s mayor said was visited by nearly 300 Filipino tourists and a dozen foreign tourists last year, emerald jungles are laced with clear streams that empty into the dense slate blue of the Pacific. Wide beaches are crisscrossed by hermit crabs in extravagant shells, and vibrant coral reefs are visible through pristine waters.
The beauty of the coast has not escaped the notice of developers, hoping to attract more tourists. Last year in Dimasalansan, an area of white sand and rugged rocky outcroppings, the Agta who lived there were told that a resort would be built in anticipation of the road, and the government asked them to leave. Some were given cement houses in the town, though many continue to live on huts by the beach, closer to their foraging.
Dedi Malacasta, 60, an Agta pastor who has lived in Dimasalansan, said that when the mayor asked locals to leave, they did so without a fight. Nevertheless, he said, “We don’t want our own land grabbed away from us.”
Renée Hagen, a Dutch anthropologist with the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies Agta in the Sierra Madre, said the group had long acquiesced to the decisions of government officials.
“It’s very difficult for them to oppose anything,” she said. “They feel that they don’t have say in local issues, and in practice they don’t really.”