ABUCAYAN

Abucayan is a barangay located in the west coast of Balamban. It has a total land area of 554 hectares. And it is bounded by Pondol, Cansomoroy, Cantibas, Buanoy and the Tañon Strait.

It is politically subdivided into ten (10) sitios, namely: Laray, Punta, Kinawtan, Bung-aw, Abucayan Proper, Sacsac, Lamak, Bungtod, Kabol-anonan, and Mangharap.

NAME-ORIGIN OF THE BARANGAY

According to oral tradition, Abucayan was named after a bountiful flock of the red-vented cockatoos which were abundant in the area.¹

In 1910, a scientist named McGregor reported that the red-vented cockatoo, Cacatua haematuropygia, is a species of cockatoo that is endemic to the Philippines; hence it is also known as the Philippine Cockatoo.² This bird which is locally known as “abukay” although it is also called by many names locally in other places of the country like “agay”, “kalangay”, “katala”, “pikoy”, “pinggay”, and etc. It is known to have occurred in Balabac, Bantayan, Basilan, Bohol, Bongao, Cebu, Culion, Guimaras, Jolo, Lapac, Leyte, Lubang, Luzon mainland, Marinduque, Masbate, Mindanao mainland, Mindoro, Negros, Panay, Nipa, Palawan mainland, Panaon, Samar, Siquijor, Tablas, Tawitawi, Polillo, Boracay, Catanduanes, Calicoan, Buad, Siargao, Dinagat, Calauit, Manuk Manka, Loran, Sarangani, Tumindao, and Gigantes Island. The species is now believed extinct in most of these areas.³

The bird has a snowy white plume with a combination of yellow and red tail. The red color is at the base of the tail and the yellow at the middle while the tip gradually changes into a whitish yellow. Its beak is grayish that slopes down and the male has a feather on top of its bill protruding upward. It has black to dark gray feet and spreads like a web.² It is also sometimes referred to as “white parrot”.⁴

The Philippine Cockatoo is a loving bird and, like any pigeon-like bird, makes romances by feeding its mate with the leaves of the trees. It is used to be found in wild abundance throughout the country's coastal mangrove and lowland forest areas; until the 1980's when its number started to conspicuously decline. Cage-bird trade and the wanton destruction of its natural habitat are the main culprits of the Philippine cockatoo's diminishing population which is now pegged as just about 1,000 individuals (from a 'high' of 4,000 in the 1990's) found mostly in Palawan, and a few in Masbate, Mindanao and Tawi-tawi.⁴ It is listed as a critically endangered species by the IUCN; and is protected by Philippine law under the Wildlife Conservation and Protection Act (Republic Act 9147).⁵

Thus, Abucayan literally means “a place of red-vented cockatoos”. It could probably referring to the abundance of these birds in the original place of that name in Bohol or it could also be very possible that these birds were really abundant in the barangay coastal area since it was a fact that the entire coastal area of Balamban was a dense mangrove and screw pine forest in the past. In fact, there are still few screw pines or pandan palms along the coast of the barangay.

BRIEF HISTORY

Historically, the first settlers of Abucayan and Pondol were migrants from Abucayan and Pondol in Bohol as evident in the accent of their dialect. Moreover, one of the sitios of Abucayan is also named as Kabul-anunan (literally, it means “village of Bohol migrants”). Hence there is no doubt that the first settlers of Abucayan originally migrated from Calape, Bohol which out of its 33 barangays there are two barangays named as Abucayan Norte and Abucayan Sur.⁶ Migration from Bohol to Cebu and vice-versa proliferated since pre-colonial period but progressed more during the colonization of Miguel Lopez de Legazpi.⁷

During the Spanish regime, the Spaniards installed a public school at sitio Kabul-anunan. A certain Marcelo Ledres was its first English-Spanish teacher. Probably he was related to a certain Andrea Ledres who became the first traditional midwife who attended the birth of the great man Dr. Hilario Camino Del Prado Moncado of Pondol, the founder of Equi Frili Brium, on November 4, 1898.

When Francisco Playda was installed as the first cabeza de barangay of Abucayan, probably around 1890’s, he organized the seventy inhabitants who were mostly migrants from Loon, Bohol to build the San Agustin Chapel at a donated site.¹

One memorable aspect of Abucayan’s history is the role it played in the resistance movement of Balamban against the occupation forces of the Japanese army. It was sometime in early 1942 when the Japanese had fully controlled the island province, and were starting to establish local governments in the towns. But with the fall of Bataan in April, Cebuano soldiers from Luzon and Mindanao had started to come home with bitterness in their hearts against the atrocities and violence perpetrated by the Japanese military on the Filipinos. Thus, as soon as some of the soldiers from Balamban arrived home, they lost no time in joining the guerrilla movement a-forming in the mountains.

When the guerrilla movement’s intelligence operatives learned that a company of Japanese occupation forces was assigned to establish a garrison in Balamban, a platoon of the guerrillas was also assigned to stage an ambush. The site of the ambush was the portion of Abucayan that overlooked the provincial road just across the San Agustin Chapel and the Abucayan Elementary School. The ambuscade was so successful that the four trucks loaded with men and equipment were almost wiped out. It rendered Balamban poblacion a ghost town. The Japanese cremated their dead. The wreckage of the Ybañez School Building which had suffered a direct hit from Japanese bombing runs made early in 1942, was used for the purpose. The building was in the middle of the campus, between two other buildings. It was the practice in earlier times to name school buildings after the government officials responsible for their construction. Thus the oldest school building of the town, built in 1916, was called the Gabaldon Building, named after the assembly man who had authored the law which sought to establish school buildings around the country.⁶

LIST OF POLITICAL LEADERS OF THE BARANGAY¹

A.   Cabeza de barangay

1.    Francisco Playda

2.    Agustin Ledres

3.    Santiago Batomalaque

4.    Jorge Piodos

5.    Isaac Catayas

6.    Olipio Laya

7.    Victorino Batomalaque (1918-1923)

8.    Bruno Ranola                 (1924-1927)

9.    Francisco Ledres          (1928-1933)

10. Gregorio Piodos           (1934-1936)

B.   Teniente del barrio

11. Leoncio Castilla            (1937-1938)

12. Ruperto Piodos             (1938-1940)

13. Roberto Langa              (1940-1942)

14. Laurencio Lunesa         (1943-1944)

15. Roberto Esdrelon          (1945-1946)

16. Andrez Cortez                (1947-1949)

17. Catalino Cordero           (1950-1951)

18. Marciano Saratubias     (1952-1953)

19. Hipolito Carmelotes       (1954-1956)

20. Fausto Dayte                  (1957-1958)

21. Hegino Completo           (1959-1961)

C.  Barangay Kapitan

22. Honorato Piodos           (1962-1967)

23. Galo Formoso                (1968-1982)

24. Eulalio B. Piliotas Sr.     (1983-1984)

25. Pelagio Q. Castilla         (1985-1988)

26. Virgilio P. Gimena          (1989-2002, 2008-present)

27. Jose A. Gako                  (2003-2007)