THE ILOKANO DIASPORA

By PETER LA. JULIAN
All rights reserved  

 In one of his books, the late historian Teodoro Agoncillo explained the peripatetic trait of the Ilocanos thus: their land was too small and unproductive so thay have to look for greener pastures elsewhere.
     The Ilocos narrow territory was bound as it did to produce and industrious, frugal people, Agoncillo added.  Originally called Ylocos, it consisted of what is now known as Ilocos Norte and and Ilocos Sur.
     La Union, one of the Ilocos provinces, was organized in 1840 out of several towns of Ilocos Sur, Mt. Province and Pangasinan.
     But before they set forth on the cold regions of Alaska and Canada, the sugar plantations of Hawaii, the burning desert of the Middle East, Ilokanos first "colonized" non-Ilokano areas where ther were then big tracts of uncultivated lands: Cagayan, Isabela and Nueva Vizcaya
and even Nueva Ecija including Apayao (when it was still part of the old Mt. Province), Pangasinan, Zambales and Tarlac.
     That was in the 1900s when waves after waves of Ilokanos left their homeland by foot, then via the kareton (carabao or cow-drawn wagons) or biray (small wooden boats) to the virgin lands east. Later in the 1950s, they would go further south--to Mindoro, Palawan and Mindanao, and even Sulu and Basilan.
    ( It was said that the Ilokanos,  along with the Ilongos and Cebuanos, opened the frontiers of Mindanao through their pioneers with the surnames Barbers, Pimentel, Floirendo, Datoc, Baga, Cerilles, Pichay.)
     The Ilokano migration was economically-motivated--people looked for jobs and bigger tracts of land to cultivate, said Dr. Antonio Tamayao of the Cagayan State University in a study. He listed 13 Cagayan towns, which are predominantly Ilokano--Alcala, Lasam, St. Nino, Baggao, Sta. Ana, Allacapan, Ballesteros, Buguey, Claveria, Gattaran, Gonzaga, Sta. Teresita, and Sanchez Mira.
     No other linguistic group sought land and spread across the country as relentlessly as the Ilokanos, according to Dr. Jaime Raras of the University of Northern Philippines.
     And no other linguistic group in great numbers sought their fortune outside the country as the Ilokanos.40 As early as 1840, substantial numbers of Ilokano speakers have been employed in private homes, in the military and even in the White House, said Ana Marcelo, a fourth generation Ilokana of Sacramento, California.
     Marcelo, whose ancestors came from Batac, Ilocos Norte, presented a study in a gathering of scholars in Batac City tracing the odyssey of an extended Ilokano family in California spanning eight decades. The pioneers may have departed but their personal legacy, Ilokano identity, and ties to their own tow survive today among their children and grandchildren in California, she said.
     Marcelo, in he book, Agpamakanda: 150 years of Ilokanos in America's Restaurants, focused upon the US Mainland, where most of the Ilokano diaspora's story took place.
     But a Hawaii-based Filipino author said that the most notable aspect of the history of the Ilokano diaspora is their settlement in Hawaii, where the first arrival in the early 1900s were hired sugarcane plantation workers. Ilokano migration continues until now as relatives these people petition those left behind in the Ilocos.

The blogger with house guest, an Ilokano in the diaspora, Elmer Palacio Agcaoili
of the University of the Visayas in Cebu

     Today, there is an Ilokano subculture in the Aloha State, where 15 percent of the state's more than a million population
are Filipinos, 80 percent of whom are of Ilokano blood. In 2006, Hawaii honored the 15 hired hands by holding the Filipino Centennial Celebration.
     Raras, a mannurat of Bannawag, the Ilokano weekly magazine, also made a study in Victoria, Oriental Mindoro,  where there is a heavy concentration of Ilokanos posited the question: Did they bring with them their cultural practices?
     Yes, they did, Raras said, and their "Ilokanoness" in their new-found land is still intact, taking into account such variables as kinship gathering, culinary arts, beliefs in the supernatural, recreation and other Ilokano values.
     Raras' findings are similar in other areas where Ilokanos settled, whether in New Jersey or New York or even in Singapore or Paris or Rome although the dominant cultures therein continue to challenge and erode their cherished values and practices and norms.
     In a paper, Dr. Noemi Rosal of the University of the Philippines, discussed the phenomenon of separation and return, a basic pattern of human behavior and as applied to Ilokanos. She averred that those who left home (the Ilocos) and never returned remain in their minds as exiles "in the place where they now live."
     They may be exiles in their respective adopted countries, but the Ilokanos always come back to their roots, said a Tokyo-based Ilokana mentor, originally from Gabu, Laoag City in Ilocos Norte, teaching the Ilokano culture to young Japanese. And they, like other Filipinos always leave something behind, some money or in kind to help the old hometown, she said.