The Cordillera

7/28/2019 The Cordillera

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ITS LAND AND PEOPLE


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As a physical region, the Cordillera

Gran Cordillera Central, to be complete

is a row of great mountain rangesoccupying half of Northern Luzon in the

Philippines. Its rugged mountainous

backbone contains many peaks

exceeding 2,000 meters in height, with

rolling hills and stretches of river valleys

along its flanks.


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Around 230 km long and 120 km

wide, with an irregular shape, themountainous region's estimated

total area is about 17,500 square

km.Thus, the Cordillera is both the

highest and the single largest

mass of mountains in the entire

Philippine archipelago.


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As a recently-defined administrativeregion, the Cordillera is composed of

the six provinces of Apayao, Kalinga,

Abra, Mountain Province, Ifugao, and

Benguet, plus the chartered city of

Baguio. These provinces have a totalland area of almost 18,300 square

km.


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The bulk of the Cordillera

mountain range, as a physicalregion, is covered by this

Cordillera administrative region(CAR). The Cordillera's

foothills extend into a few other

adjacent provinces in the

nearby Ilocos and Cagayan

Valley regions.


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The Cordillera region is very rich

in natural resources. It is

especially famed for its huge golddeposits, pure stands of pine

forest, and rich soils and water

sources that have enabled its

people to sustain agriculture on

mountainside rice terraces.


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Mineral resources; forest

resources; rivers and water

resources; soils and

agriculture
http://www.cpaphils.org/cordillera/forestresources.htmhttp://www.cpaphils.org/cordillera/forestresources.htmhttp://www.cpaphils.org/cordillera/watersources.htmhttp://www.cpaphils.org/cordillera/watersources.htmhttp://www.cpaphils.org/cordillera/watersources.htmhttp://www.cpaphils.org/cordillera/watersources.htmhttp://www.cpaphils.org/cordillera/forestresources.htmhttp://www.cpaphils.org/cordillera/forestresources.htmhttp://www.cpaphils.org/cordillera/cordimap_res.htmhttp://www.cpaphils.org/cordillera/cordimap_res.htmhttp://www.cpaphils.org/cordillera/cordimap_res.htmhttp://www.cpaphils.org/cordillera/cordimap_res.htm


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The Cordillera is more heavily

populated compared to the other

mountainous areas of thePhilippines. Based on the year

2000 census, its six provinces and

one city has a total population of

more than 1,365,000 people.


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As in the rest of the country,

the great majority of theregion's population are

peasants engaged in farming

and other small-scale

production and side

occupations. The next biggestsector is composed of formal

wage workers and informal


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odd-job workers in non-farmoccupations. There is also a

sizeable number of students,

salaried employees, andprofessionals in the few urban

and town centers.


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A big bulk of the Cordillera populationis composed of closely-relatedindigenous peoples. Collectively, our

peoples are popularly known asIgorot. Often we are also grouped intoa number of ethnic or ethno-linguisticidentities, such as Apayao or Isneg,Tinggian, Kalinga, Bontoc,Kankanaey, Ibaloy, Ifugao, and Bago.


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These groupings, while

convenient, do not fully reflect thereal particularities and the extent

of diversity among the region's

peoples. In fact, most of usindigenous peoples identify

ourselves primarily with specific

communties called ili (literally,

home village, hometown, or home

territory).


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Each ili is a self-identifying

community with a specificterritory, which is its ancestral

land. While there are diverse

types, an ili usually consists of

a closely-knit cluster of

villages, or a core village andits outlying hamlets, within a

more or less defined territory.


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Bigger and more diverse

populations are found in

Cordillera's melting pot areas,such as those in urban (or

rapidly urbanizing) Baguio-Benguet and in the foothills


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and valleys adjoining the great

lowlands of Luzon. In theseareas, the original indigenous

communities have given way

to hybrid communities

composed of varied mixtures

of indigenous and migrantpeoples.

Documents

The Cordillera