Reading 2: Protecting the forest: Learning from the Agawa women of Besao,

Mt. Province. Alangui, W.V. & Caguioa, C.C. , in de Chavez, R. (2013). Indigenous peoples, forests & REDD Plus,
sustaining and enhancing forests through traditional resource management. Volume 2. Baguio City: Tebtebba Foundation.
https://www.academia.edu/29454044/Protecting_the_Forest_Learning_from_the_Agawa_Women_of_Besao

Agawa Women’s History of Resistance

The history of the Cordillera people fighting against programs and projects resulting
to environmental degradation would always include the militant participation of women. The
Agawa women have their own stories to tell on how they were able to oppose projects that
threatened their forests and the environment. The first involved an attempt to put up a
sawmill operation in the 1940s, and the other, around 30 years later, revolved around an
illegal resin-tapping activity. The stories below were gathered from the FGDs as well as from
the key informants.
The Sawmill Operation and the Agawa Women: Employing a Time-Honored
Form of Protest. Around the 1940s, an American miner named Odon started a sawmill
operation in the forest. The people believed that the operation was just in preparation for a
bigger activity, which they believed was mining. The Agawa people back then did not want
any mining operation in the area, and so they opposed the sawmill operation. The elderly
women drove Odon and his team away by burning his house, and destroying tools and
equipment. Another method of resistance employed by the elderly women saw them
exposing their breasts while chasing Odon and his team with spears and bolos (a long,
single-edge machete). Disrobing is not an uncommon sign of protest among Cordillera
women, especially by the elderly. According to the women respondents, this form of protest
is employed to shame those on the other side who are mostly men (in this case, Odon and
his sawmill workers) with the belief that these men should not dishonor their mothers, wives,
sisters and grandmothers. In fact, the women deserve full respect from their sons and
grandsons, and must not go against their will. The respondents also said that the active
involvement of the women in protesting against the sawmill operation also possibly avoided
violence and bloodshed that could have ensued had the Agawa men been involved.
According to an official from the local government unit (LGU), this story of women
protesting against the sawmill operation by employing the time-honored form of disrobing is
embedded in the memory not of only of the Agawa adults, but also among many adults in
the whole municipality.
Resin-Tapping in Agawa: Women Employ Guerilla Tactics. In the 1970s, the
women noticed that clusters of pine trees in the forest were drying up. The firewood too that
they gathered from the forest were very brittle and had lost the pine scent. They decided to
investigate and found something sinister was being done to the pine trees without the
community’s knowledge: they found plastic bags that were tied around the pine trees. The
trees had incisions in the barks spiraling downward, allowing the sap to pass through to the
plastic bags which collected them—whoever was doing it was harvesting the resin from the
pine trees. Further investigation revealed who were doing the tapping: to their dismay, it
involved some local people from Agawa as well as people from nearby villages. The
collected resins were then sold at PhP50.00 per bag to a middle man from Manila.
Secretly the women formed a team who went into the forest in the dead of night to
remove the plastic bags, which they buried away from the site where the resin-tapping
operations were being done. Because the site was usually unmanned at night, the women
continually did their clandestine operation until all resin-tapping activities stopped. They were
never caught, and they never saw who the tappers were. What was important to them at that
time was to stop the activity since they believed that it was destroying their forest. Later, the
Agawa people heard about the activities of Cellophil Resources Corporation (CRC), a
logging concessionaire, in the nearby municipality of Tubo in Abra province.
The CRC and its sister company, the Cellulose Processing Corporation (CPC), were
awarded a Timber and Pulpwood License Agreement (TPLA) by then Philippine President
Ferdinand Marcos. The TPLA covered some 99,565 hectares of pine forests in Abra and
Kalinga-Apayao. In addition, Cellophil (both CRC and CPC) had quietly acquired almost
200,000 ha of mostly pine forests in Abra, Kalinga-Apayao, Mountain Province, Ilocos Norte,
and Ilocos Sur. The project affected an estimated 145,000 inhabitants of the area (mostly
indigenous peoples). The mill was to produce the basic material for cellophane to be
exported to Japan and Europe. Both companies were owned by Henry Disini, a known
Marcos crony (Verzola 2008). The Agawa people speculated that the resin-tapping activities in
their forest must have been part of the CRC multi-million project.
Continuing Campaign Against Logging and Mining Operations. Aside from
timber and other forest products, the mountain range where the Agawa village is situated is
also rich in minerals, one of which is a most precious mineral, gold. This is the reason why
the area has always been a target of mining companies for exploration and other mining
activities.
The women respondents said that they continue to oppose the entry of big logging
and mining activities in their community. They express their opposition by actively
participating in community meetings, signing petitions against logging and mining operations.
Some of them have joined protest rallies and other mass actions at the regional and national
levels against destructive projects such as logging and mining.
Not surprisingly, the women respondents are aware of the continuing threat of mining
in their community. They said they are watchful of the activities of the Malibato Mining
Company, which started checking their area since June 2011. And while they lament the
seeming indifference of the youth toward their traditional practices, our women respondents
continue to believe that the future generation will not allow the destruction of their
environment. Speaking in Ilocano, one elderly key informant had this say about the threat of
mining to her community:
Haan mi ipalubos ti minas wenno uray ania nga proyekto ditoy Besao nga
mangdadael ti daga ken pagpag. Nataengannak ngem ammok nga aniaman nga
proyekto nga makadunor ti aglawlaw lalo ti pagpag ket supiaten ti uubing, lallalo dagiti
babbae ti Agawa. (We will never allow any mining operation or any project in Besao
that will destroy our land and our forest. I am old but I am confident that any project
that will destroy the environment and the forest will surely be opposed by the next
generation, especially by the women of Agawa.

Herstory. One of the key informants of this research was Endena Cogasi, a
womanleader who has once been tagged by the military as “Mother Cordillera” and
“Commander.” At a time when Agawa women were pursuing a guerilla-style operation
against the resin-tapping activities in their forests, Philippine society was a social volcano
waiting to explode under the dictatorial rule of former President Ferdinand Marcos. In the
remote village of Agawa, Endena blossomed into a human rights activist during the Martial
Law years, and her house in the village became a ‘halfway place’ for people with different
political leanings. Both the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the communist New
Peoples’ Army (NPA) benefitted from her hospitality. But those were dangerous times. Her
hospitality was later misconstrued by the military and she was put under the watchful eyes of
the soldiers by setting up a military checkpoint at the foot of the hill where her house was
located. She was eventually detained by the military for suspicions of being an NPA
commander, but released the following day, not by the good graces of the unit commander,
but because of her endless chatter that continued until sunrise, scolding the soldiers, and
irritating them to no end. Her detention gave her more resolve in actively campaigning for the
pull out of the military troops from Besao during the worst years of military operations in the
province (from the 1980s through to the 1990s). She joined rallies in front of military barracks
in Bontoc, the capital of Mt. Province, denouncing human rights violations and demanding a
stop to militarization.
On 9 December 2010, Endena was awarded the Gawad Tanggol Karapatan (or
award for human rights defenders) by the Cordillera Human Rights Alliance in observance of
the International Human Rights Day in recognition for her “intense passion and unwavering
commitment” in protecting the land, life, and resources of the Igorot since the Martial Law
period (Caguioa, 2010). The award was a fitting tribute to a woman who led the resistance
against the resin-tapping activities in Agawa in the 1970s. This initial involvement in
protecting the environment and the forests of her community eventually grew into an
awareness that went beyond the confines of her village. She was then in her forties. Endena,
now 86 years old, continues to fight for the rights of indigenous peoples.
Women at the Forefront of Forest Protection and Restoration. Recent events in
Agawa saw community women continuing the tradition started by their women elders by
actively participating and contributing in efforts to protect one of their important resources:
the forest. During forest fires, women do not sit idly by. On the contrary, they can be seen
actively clearing areas and perimeters to help stop the spread of fire. This was again evident
in 2009 when the village experienced widespread forest fires. While the men took charge of
putting out the fire, the women were not far behind as they joined the various community fire
brigades that were organized. Recently, the community women were again called upon to
help in a reforestation drive of the municipality, an idea proposed by the Vice Mayor. The
men got seeds and seedlings of native trees and medicinal plants from the pine and mossy
forests, and the women were the ones who planted them around the vicinity of the village.
While this project had them cooperating with the local government unit, another project saw
them at odds with the elected officials who supported a road construction project that would
have passed through their rice paddies and necessitated the diversion of the flow of the
river. The women said they were suspicious of the true intent of the project since the
proposed road would lead directly to the foot of the pine forest. Again, the Agawa women
voiced their opposition to this road construction project, which as of this writing, has not
progressed.