LIVING ASIA CHANNEL - Coexistence (Santiago City)

This mini-docu aired on the Living Asia Channel from August 24-31, 2008. Trailer appears below, followed by excerpts from the narrative.



EAT, TRADE, PRAY: The Path to Coexistence in Santiago City
by Stephanie Dychiu

With more than 17 ethnolinguistic tribes in a population of less than 150,000, Santiago City can teach the world a thing or two about getting along. In this junction of the Cagayan Valley, commerce, cuisine, and creed are the keys to living in harmony.

In a small municipality eight hours north of Metro Manila, a simple canvas sign with the word “COEXIST” stands like the Statue of Liberty at the entrance of the town hall.

A closer look reveals the symbolism behind the spelling of the word. The “C” is the Islamic crescent moon, the “O” is the pagan pentacle, the “E” is Einstein’s formula E = MC squared, the “X” is the Jewish Star of David, the dot on the “I” is the Buddhist dharma wheel, the “S” is the yin yang symbol of Taoism, and the “T” is the cross of Christianity.

This is the Municipality of Santiago, for whom the presence of at least seventeen ethno-linguistic groups gives the word “coexist” a special significance.


Though part of the Cagayan Valley region—an area rich with some of the most fascinating caves, waterfalls, and islands in the country—Santiago takes singular pride in being an independent component city, one of only four in the Philippines. This means Santiago is not subject to the supervision of a provincial governor, and townsfolk enjoy the thrill of scribbling “Santiago City, Philippines”, no province needed, whenever they write down their addresses.

In recent years, the government of Santiago has organized an annual festival to celebrate the city’s remarkable ethnic diversity. Baptized “Pattaradday”, the Ibanag word for “unity”, the festival takes place every first week of May, when the city commemorates the time in 1743 when the Municipality of Santiago was first created by royal Spanish decree.

Hundreds of the best street dancers in the Philippines, from the Ibon-Ebun performers of Pampanga to the Pintaflores dancers of San Carlos City, Negros Occidental, gather in Santiago during Pattaradday to represent the various ethnic groups that have made the city home.

Santiago’s determination to carve out a unified identity from the many bloodlines that run through its veins is influenced by the role it plays in the entire Cagayan Valley Region.

Between the rambling peaks of the Sierra Madre, Cordillera, and Caraballo mountains flows the longest and largest river in the Philippines—the Cagayan River. Long before Spanish conquistador Don Juan de Salcedo landed in the area in 1572, the waters of the river already sustained many tribal settlements, one of which was the Ibanag, who named themselves after “Banag”, the native word for “river”.

Today, the Cagayan River is the geographic link that binds the provinces of Cagayan, Isabela, Nueva Vizcaya, and Quirino into one political unit, the Cagayan Valley Region. Of the four main cities of the region, Santiago is the closest by land to Metro Manila. It is also the meeting point of the main roads of the four provinces of the Cagayan Valley .

With travel and trade in the region dependent on land transport, Santiago’s location has turned out to be its biggest advantage, enabling it to become the gateway to the farming, caving, hiking, and gamefishing treasures of the Cagayan Valley.

Santiago’s economic future is practically assured, but it needs to protect the many distinct cultures that have thrived in the city, which can be diluted by the intoxicating march of progress. By celebrating the Pattaradday Festival every year, Santiago’s people are able to remember their multicultural roots and keep their traditions alive.

* * *
Commerce has a way of putting people of different backgrounds on common ground. Even at the public market, the unifying magic of Pattaradday can be seen. An inspection of the goods for sale shows bounty from the sea caught in Pangasinan, gleaming white rice grown in Cagayan province, and, of course, Santiago’s very own panutsa, or stiff cakes of hardened sugarcane syrup.

The odd mix of food popular in the city also shows the multifacted origins of Santiago’s people. The Ilonggo import chicken inasal, or roast chicken, is a staple. Indeed, this area far away from the original home of chicken inasal in Western Visayas has developed its own brand of the roast chicken, called “Mang Pandoy’s Chicken Inasal”, with outlets not just in Santiago but also in other parts of Northern Luzon, such as Cauayan and Tuguegarao.

Challenging the domination of chicken inasal, roasted chicken, in the palates of Santiaguenos is goat meat or kambing. Many kambingan, or restaurants specializing in goat meat, have come and gone in Santiago, but none have been able to rival the success of the very first kambingan on #48 City Road. Lest anyone forgets, the sign out front bears a reminder that it is “The Original Place”. This kambingan is said to be the best kambingan between Santiago and Bicol, the acknowledged mecca of chevon connoisseurs. There are only three dishes on the menu, all made from goat meat, of course. Kaldereta is a golden yellow stew of tomato sauce, cheese, garlic, onions, pepper, and peas. Kilawin has strips of meat cooked, not over fire, but in a mixture of vinegar, chili, onions, and ginger. And Papaitan is a bowl of entrails floating in a murky green soup of bile.

* * *
. . . the church with the largest congregation is the parish of St. James. In this church, the broad-minded tenets of Pattaradday are carried on even to matters of faith. Mass is delivered in three different languages—Tagalog, Ilokano, and English. As the language used by the priest to deliver the homily changes, so the language used by the choir to sing also shifts.

The St. James Parish also distributes the Holy Bible written in Ibanag. True to their native word Pattaradday, which means “unity”, the Ibanag are said to be the most adaptable and most open to assimilation among all indigenous Filipino tribes. They were instrumental to the spread of Christianity in the Cagayan Valley region, because it was their language that the early Spanish missionaries were able to learn and propagate even to other tribes.

The innate adaptability of their Ibanag ancestors may explain why the mostly Catholic Santiaguenos are able to maintain an uncommon openness toward people of other cultures and religious beliefs. For a small city that is not even on the route map of local airlines, the number of well-established non-Christian religious communities in Santiago is significant.

The Omar Ben Abdul Azez Mosque has a good-sized congregation. During Martial Law in the Seventies, many Muslims came to Santiago to escape persecution in Mindanao.

Alibsar Adoma, also known as Alex, came from Marawi and has integrated very well with the community. He has even been elected president of his neighborhood in Santiago.

"Ako po si Alibsar Alex Adoma, pumunta ako dito nung year 1976. Ako po ay purok
president dito sa Malvar . . . Pumunta kami dito sa Santiago para
maghanapbuhay. Tsaka maganda rin dito sa Santiago dahil ang mga Muslim
dito ay hindi naman inaapi. Lahat naman ng napuntang Muslim dito sa Santiago ay,
maganda talaga."

Even as they participate in the everyday life of the city, the Muslims of Santiago are ever conscious of preserving the heritage of the land they left behind. They continue to pray five times a day, and send their Santiago-born children to the madrasa of the mosque to learn Arabic.

Ahmad Elias is a second-generation Muslim living in Santiago.

"Ako si Ahmad Elias, Jr. Bale, pinanganak na ako dito sa Santiago. Ngayon
employed ako sa North Eastern College, nagtratrabaho ako diyan as secretary ng
College of Law and at the same time part-time instructor ng mga ibang colleges
dito sa Santiago."

Living in Santiago and working in the schools, Ahmad is surrounded by Christians most of the time, but he does not feel different from them.

"Hindi naman kasi wala naman akong dapat isipin na iba ako except we differ in
faith at siyempre sa culture . . . wala ring pagkakaiba except of course na
napunta kami sa ibang bayan na may kanya-kanyang kultura din . . . yung
pamumuhay dito ng mga Muslim ay maganda naman kasi nagkakaisa kami, walang
masyadong di pagkakaunawaan lalo na sa ibang mga kultura dito kasi kami mga
Muslim nagpunta dito sa Santiago para humanap ng magandang kabuhayan."

The Chinese community of Santiago also have their own place of worship, in a Taoist temple. On the ceiling of the temple, the yin yang symbol reminds visitors of the Taoist belief in unity of opposites as the path to achieving order in the universe. The philosophy of Taoism was shaped during a time of heavy feudal warfare in China, and as such, many of its teachings are about the goal of ending conflict.

The Taoist principle of peaceful balance and unity, similar to Pattaradday and the teachings of Islam, is further echoed by a group of Indians who gather regularly at the Sikh temple in the city. Santiago seems a rather random place for a Sikh temple to thrive, so it is surprising to hear that the temple has been around for 25 years. What is even more surprising is to hear the Indians speaking in Ilokano and Tagalog. A number of them are actually more comfortable speaking these dialects than English.

Most of the Indians in Santiago are from Punjab, and they came to the Philippines for business. Every Sunday, they gather for a meal and religious service at the Gurudwara Jagat Sudhar temple. “Gurudwara” literally means “doorway to God”, and the Sikhs believe that every gurudwara they have, no matter where it is in the world, should be open to all, regardless of race or religion. They do not believe in the caste system. Here in Santiago, they welcome anyone who wishes to know more about their faith.

"Our religion is also a religion like other religions in the world. Our Sikh
religion give the message to the humanity, we are all equal, we are all the son
of god. And give the message to us that unity, and should be proud-less, and
should be not greedy, because god send us in the earth to do good. Cooperate to
each other, help each other, is not only for the Sikhs, but to every human
being, even though he belongs to the other religion, our Sikh religion is stable
on truth, and give the message of truth to the human being. And that’s why
whenever we are going to the church, and our temple, our Sikh temple, ladies are on the one side and gents are on the one side. And we are sitting on the floor.
It mean that we are all equal. No rich, no poor, no high, no low. Everybody is
equal. That’s why equality is the most proper and right way in our Sikh
religion. That’s why every religion, every person, can join and come here
in our Sikh temple."

In this gurudwara in Santiago, in the season of Pattaradday, where Punjabis open their doors to strangers and speak in Tagalog and Ilokano, the meaning of unity, tolerance, and coexistence has never seemed clearer.