Negrito (Pinatubo Aeta Group)

PRONUNCIATION: nuh-GREE-toh (pee-nah-TOO-boh EYE-tah)
LOCATION: Philippines (Luzon); Malay Peninsula
POPULATION: Over 7,600 (2000)
LANGUAGE: Dialect of Sambal
RELIGION: Traditional animism
RELATED ARTICLES: Vol. 3: Filipinos

INTRODUCTION

Before the advent of the Austronesians, small hunter-gathering bands of Australo-Melanesians inhabited islands in Southeast Asia and the Malay Peninsula. The modern Negritos (Spanish for "little blacks") represent a remnant and physical specialization of this stock. "Pure" Negritos differ from the dominant Southern Mongoloid populations of the region in being shorter of stature (less than 1.5 m or 5 ft tall), darker in complexion, and having kinky rather than straight hair. They can be found in the Sierra Madre (Dumagat), in the Ilocos Mountains, and in the greatest numbers in the Zambales Mountains, all on Luzon. Outside the Philippines, they are found on the Malay Peninsula (Semang) and, formerly, in the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal. Possible mixed groups characterized by wavy hair can be found in Panay, Negros, Palawan (Batak), and Mindanao (Mamanua). Of all these, only the Andaman Islanders spoke in historical times a language unrelated to a neighboring Austronesian language (as in the Philippines) or an Austro-Asiatic one (on the Malay peninsula). In the Philippines, lowlanders generally refer to Negritos as "Aeta" or some variation thereof (the word seems to be a garbled form of the Malay word for "black," hitam). Upon the Spanish arrival, Negritos appeared to inhabit the edges of highlands throughout the archipelago (for instance, the Visayan island of Negros received its name because its mountains were particularly, but not uniquely, full of them); legends such as those of Panay [seeHiligaynon ]. honored Aeta as the original possessors of the land.

This article will focus on the Zambales Negritos in general and the Poon Pinatubo Aeta ("the people of the thigh of Mount Pinatubo") in particular; henceforth, all uses of the word "Aeta" will refer only to this group.

In their reliance on swidden (shifting-cultivation) agriculture, among other characteristics, the Pinatubo Aeta show more prolonged contact and intermarriage with lowlanders than do other Negrito groups. They may have originally lived in the lowlands themselves, as the plants they know are lower-altitude species (most Aeta know 450 types of plants, 75 types of birds, and most types of mammals, snakes, fish, and insects, including 20 kinds of ants). The Aeta have been in particularly intimate contact with the lowland Sambals, adopting the Sambal language, agricultural techniques, spirit beliefs, curing rites, and burial customs, but adapting them to their own culture.

Although older Spanish documents record Aeta working as woodcutters for Sambal and as companions of Sambal chiefs, the relation has overall not been a peaceful one. Sambals regularly made raids into Aeta territory in order to capture slaves (some to be sold as far away as Batangas until fairly recent times); the indemnity for murder could be paid with an Aeta slave. Moreover, as each Sambal man had to prove his worth by killing someone, Aeta often fell prey to their headhunting. To be sure, Aeta also abducted other Aeta in order to sell them to lowlanders, and parents even sold their children (after lowlanders had plied them with liquor).

Lowlanders often dispossessed Aeta of land, buying it with blankets, rice, or machetes. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Pampangans drove Aeta from the lands under Mt. Pinatubo in order to open fields for rice and sugarcane; a Don Angel Pantaleon acquired the forest that would later become Clark Air Force Base in this way.

Some Aeta did submit to Spanish administration, but the unsubjugated majority fled deeper into the mountains, particularly after raiding lowland villages that would in turn send revenge expeditions after them. The Spaniards attempted to mediate these conflicts, granting the title of capitán to cooperative Aeta leaders but on the whole failing to get the Aeta to settle in the lowlands.

In 1917, the American regime established a 4,720-hectare (11,660-acre) reservation for the Pinatubo Aeta; this, however, in practice remained accessible to lumber companies and sugarcane planters. World War II is a well-remembered time of chaos among the Aeta. Japanese ambushed Aeta, while the Aeta protected shot-down American pilots. In gratitude, General MacArthur himself granted Aeta the right to free movement through the base boundaries so they could scavenge; he also had food distributed to them from time to time. During the Vietnam War, Aeta taught American pilots how to survive in the jungle (e.g., camping in the forest, making fires, cooking without smoke, getting water from vines and trees, hiding from enemies, etc.).

The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo during the Aquino presidency disrupted Aeta life, perhaps irrevocably. A great number of Aeta perished under the falling ash and lava. Many of the survivors drifted to Manila, earning money by selling souvenirs, such as stones from Pinatubo. The conversion of the former U.S. military base at Subic Bay (between Zambales and Bataan provinces) into a resort area, as well as an export-processing zone, has opened up some new opportunities for Aeta, for instance, as guides for eco-tourists exploring the nature reserves on former base lands, or at least giving them the chance to sell souvenirs to tourists in front of hotels, shopping centers, and bus stations much closer to home than Manila.

LOCATION AND HOMELAND

According to 1975 figures, 23,000 Negritos lived in the Philippines. Of these, 15,000 inhabited the Zambales mountains along the west coast of central Luzon, concentrated especially on the lower slopes of the 1,610-m-high (5,280-ft-high) volcano, Pinatubo. Except for the inaccessible places, the mountain was deforested and covered with cogon grass. Its recent eruption has catastrophically changed these Aeta's homeland. According to the 2000 census, 7647 inhabitants of Zambales province identified themselves as "Aeta."

In contrast to other Negrito groups whose numbers are declining due to disease, malnutrition, and assimilation, the Zambales Aeta population is actually growing rapidly. The surrounding lowlands have nonetheless come to be occupied by Sambal, Pampangan, Ilocano, and Tagalog settlers. In Zam-bales province in 2000, 27% of the population was Sambal, 27.5% Ilocano, 37.8% Tagalog; Cebuano immigrants were already half as numerous as Aeta.

LANGUAGE

The Zambales Aeta speak a dialect of the Sambal, the language of the surrounding Christian lowlanders that is most closely related to Kapampangan.

FOLKLORE

Other than the anito and kamana (good and bad spirits, respectively) Aeta recognize a variety of other supernatural entities and phenomena. When traveling beyond his or her local area, a person must pray to the laman nin lota, the spirit of the earth; otherwise, he or she might end up walking around the same place forever. A balanding is a spirit that, if it catches a person in the forest, immediately kills him or her. A binagoonan, another evil spirit, appears as a big man (described as resembling an American) who sits on the bough of a tree and has a body that glimmers like fire.

A benign spirit is the patianak, a dwarf resembling a child. The balandang is a powerful spirit, leader of the wild pigs and deer, who greatly influences the outcome of hunting. Timbi are thunder (kilat) attacks whose effects can be averted through medicines; kilat strikes when it is angered by people teasing earthworms or laughing at mating animals. Aeta carry talis-mans, such as stone tools left behind by ancient people.

RELIGION

Aeta distinguish generally well-disposed spirits (anito) from inherently malicious ones (kamana). Anito dwell in forests, bamboo thickets, streams, rocks, huge tree trunks, etc., and only harm people when provoked. Kamana, on the other hand, have no fixed place and roam around, either victimizing the dead or actually being the dead themselves.

Those violating the property rights of spirits (e.g., by cutting down a tree belonging to one) suffer misfortune and illness; they must compensate the spirits with gifts (langgad) of tobacco, wine, and red cloth (procured from lowland traders). Burning certain plants creates smoke that drives off evil spirits (today kerosene lamps are favored for this).

Some Aeta believe that each person has a single soul (kaelwa or kalola) that can leave the body: if the soul leaves temporarily, it causes sickness; if it leaves permanently, it causes death. Others say that a person has multiple souls: if one leaves, sickness results; if all go, death occurs. The Aeta avoid the spirits of the dead, making offerings to them only at patay harvest festivals. The spirits of the dead ascend to Mt. Pinatubo and there lose their individual identity, merging into "all the dead" (minaci).

Manganito are male or female spirit mediums who can procure the rights from spirits to use land and can cure illnesses through anituwan rites. The better-known healers are greatly respected and feared by lowland Filipinos in neighboring areas. Actually, only groups that have adopted much lowland culture have such spirit mediums; in more isolated groups, a person with an ailment simply consults another who is more knowledgeable about medicinal plants.

In order to diagnose a patient's condition, the manganito blows on the sick person's body to send his or her guardian anito to the body to find out what is causing the trouble. Later, the anito tells what it has learned to the manganito, either in a dream or through a sudden visitation while the manganito is doing something else; it is at this point that the spirit orders that the anituwan séance be held.

During the séance, someone plays the gitara nin lae (hand-made lowland guitar) in a quick rhythm (magteteg); this stirs another person to dance the talipe (jumping and making swift hand movements) until he or she tires out, and another dancer replaces him or her. Eventually, the manganito joins the dancing and soon dominates it. When the spirits possess the medium, the medium's body stops trembling, and he or she enters a trance and assumes a somewhat arrogant tone when questioned by those present as to what the spirit causing the disease wants. The séance also provides participants the opportunity to mention sources of group tension that might be causing the disease, which they normally would not be able to express.

MAJOR HOLIDAYS

In December or January when food stocks are plentiful, large numbers of Aeta gather together in iwi or "fiestas of the spirits."

RITES OF PASSAGE

The ideal pattern for marriage entails a gradual transition between single and married life in three stages: hogo, the formal marriage proposal; the suson, the negotiation of the bride-price; and banhal, the wedding feast. The hogo is made by a man's father or guardian. It is now more common for two people to get to know and like each other before marrying than it is for parents to arrange marriages. However, a man may on his travels meet a woman he likes without declaring his feelings; he will then ask his father to make the hogo to her family. In delivering the proposal, the father brings rice and a pig (or at least a chicken or can of sardines) to the woman's house after sunset.

Members of both kin-groups attend the suson, for all the man's kin contribute to the bride-price (bandi), and all the woman's kin partake in it. The negotiators use pebbles and twigs to represent the number and height of animals (pigs, chickens, and recently water buffaloes) to be given (delivered one by one as acquired). Formerly, bandi consisted of tobacco, maize, rattan, knives, cloth, forest products, paltik guns, and even cash. Today, bandi includes radios, portable phonographs, and rice, as well as machetes and money. The terms of the bandi agreement are generally set by oral agreement and remembered, but now Aeta might ask an Ilocano merchant to write them out in Ilocano.

After the suson, the man performs labor for his fiancée's family (bride-service, manoyo or mangampo) as a voluntary expression of his good will and to show his ability to take care of a family. During this time, the man must appear indifferent to the woman, avoid her, and behave properly. The wedding is sealed at a banhal, an expensive feast that is rarely held because of the burden of paying bandi.

Disagreements over the bride-price are a major source of conflict between kin-groups. It used to be common for Aeta men to capture women for their brides. Today, if the families do not agree to the union, the couple can elope (mipowayo); they hide in a remote hut for a while or go to the man's parents or relatives.

Formerly, Aeta abandoned a house where a person had just died. The corpse was wrapped and buried either horizontally or vertically beneath the house or at a distance. After a death, men would go on a headhunting raid (mangayau, perhaps a Sambal influence).

Today when a person dies, relatives, especially the women, gather around the deceased to wail. The family sends messengers to distant relatives and waits to bury the deceased until the relatives arrive or until the body begins to smell, whichever comes first. At least one night of mourning is observed for which the deceased is dressed in its best clothes or wrapped, with a glass of water and a plate placed next to the head. Close relatives sit around the body, while children and young people sit outside in a circle singing Tagalog or Ilocano love songs to drive away spirits (they pass around a firebrand, the one holding it having the turn to sing). Those Aeta under greater lowland influence observe nine days of mourning, ending with a final banquet (pamisa).

More-settled Aeta now use cemeteries, although the paths to them are overgrown because Aeta avoid them. Each mourner throws a clod of earth on the coffin before the grave is covered over, saying to the deceased, " Agkayna mag-orong," "Please don't come back." Some stamp their feet on the ground to drop their sorrow. The mourners may wash their face, hands, and feet in a river and step over a fire in front of the house to cleanse themselves of death.

INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS

An encampment consists of 3 to 10 related families headed by the eldest male, who is assisted by other closely related males. Among more traditional groups, the encampment is an extended family that farms, hunts, and fishes together and sometimes cooks and eats together, using common utensils. Less traditional groups consist of families that function separately but remain in close association. The encampment is an exogamous unit, i.e., its members marry partners from outside the community, all of whose members contribute to and partake in bride-prices.

Aeta values stress harmony and downplay competition within the local community. Individuals in conflict with others tend to move away from the community before tensions become unmanageable. An informal council of older men resolves disputes through appeal and persuasion. The pressure of public opinion and the fear of supernatural punishment (e.g., for violating spirits' property rights without making a subsequent acknowledgment and offering compensatory gifts) also exert control on individual behavior. An offended party may publicly threaten the offender or his family; the threat pushes the community as a whole to put pressure on the parties to resolve their differences.

Aeta keep dogs for hunting and the occasional wild pig as a pet.

LIVING CONDITIONS

Aeta live in scattered settlements or encampments of rarely more than three to four households (20–40 individuals). Th ey move between a relatively fixed village and shifting swidden sites. The villages relocate every year or so after exhausting local resources or in case of epidemics or bad omens; they do relocate within a defined territory, however. The arrangement of dwellings follows no set pattern, although some anthropologists have noted that some villages take the form of a circle of huts around a central dancing place.

Houses are semipermanent structures of bamboo, banana stalks, and leaves. They are tent-shaped with one walled side where a low sleeping platform stands, with a hearth on the ground at the other end beneath a low sloping roof. Some more-settled Negritos have built houses of lowland style (seeFilipinos ). While traveling or hunting, Aeta use crude, floorless lean-tos for temporary shelter.

Zambales province is the poorest of the provinces of Central Luzon, which itself ranked third out of 17 regions in average annual family income). According to the 2000 census, 78.9% of houses are lit with electricity, compared to 90.4% in Pampanga. 4.4% of households obtain water from springs, lakes, or rivers, compared to 0.5% in Pampanga. The proportions for those possessing their own household faucet were 20.8% and 27.2% respectively.

FAMILY LIFE

Among the Pinatubo Aeta, the mitata-anak or nuclear family is less important than the grouping of related families living in the same encampment; this grouping is known by the name of its dominant male individual, e.g., "Hilay Pan Hokli" or "Mitata-Pan Hokli," which can be extended to include his children-in-law and grandchildren.

Parents traditionally contract marriage for the children while the latter are still young. Marriages are more often between people of different villages than those of the same village. First-cousin marriage is permissible after the performance of cleansing rituals. A man is permitted to take more than one wife, but this is rare. Divorce also seldom occurs because the relatives of the couple prevent it; if the woman is at fault, her family must return the bride-price (bandi).

CLOTHING

Traditional Aeta clothing was made of bark-cloth, but now people generally wear clothes bought from lowlanders, such as (for adult men) tee-shirts to accompany loincloths. Necklaces made of Job's tears (hard white seeds) are worn. Men used to wear tight boar's-hair arm and leg bands as a sign of bravery and as magical protection against injury. Formerly, Aeta beautified themselves with teeth-chipping, -pointing, and -blackening, as well as by cicatrization (making decorative scars, also a protection against disease).

FOOD

About 85% of the Aeta diet comes from agricultural products: sweet potatoes, cassava, maize, dry-rice, taro, yams, and bananas. Following lowlanders, Aeta have developed a taste for rice, but, because dry-field varieties are not as productive, they still rely on root crops for the major part of their sustenance. Gathering supplies 7% of the diet: wild bananas and banana flowers, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, poisonous yams (kalot, requiring a long soak or several boils before they are safe to eat), fruits, nuts, berries, roots, honey, larvae, small frogs (egik), and insects (especially a certain kind of beetle). Hunting and fishing provide the remaining 8% of the diet: wild pigs, deer, birds, fish, and now pigs and chickens.

EDUCATION

More-settled Aeta send their children to modern schools [seeFilipinos ].

CULTURAL HERITAGE

Aeta dances include those imitating the actions of animals. They are also fond of telling stories (istorya) about their history or personal experiences, as well as those recounting folk legends.

WORK

Aeta practice a highly inefficient form of swidden agriculture, intercropping root crops, maize, and rice (traditionally only root crops). They also gather a wide variety of wild plants.

Aeta traditionally hunt wild pigs and deer with dogs, fire, and bows and arrows. Crude homemade shotguns (paltik) were coming more and more into use (and nearly exterminating game animals in the process) until the government confiscated all firearms under martial law (declared in 1972). A wide variety of traps are used to catch smaller game and birds. Aeta now keep domestic pigs and chickens.

Fishing techniques include damming off streams, poisoning, trapping, and shooting with bows and arrows. Today, underwater fishing with spear guns has become popular; the swimmers use goggles made of wood and scavenged glass.

Traditional trade consisted of forest products, beeswax, and tobacco exchanged for lowlanders' salt, rice, metal, ceramics, and cloth. Scavenging from the dumpsites of American bases also provides Aeta with useful materials, such as scrap metal.

SPORTS

See the article entitled Filipinos .

ENTERTAINMENT AND RECREATION

More-settled Aeta may have access to modern entertainments; many now have radios and phonographs and enjoy Filipino pop music [ seeFilipinos ].

FOLK ART, CRAFTS, AND HOBBIES

Smithing is a major specialty, producing arrows, machetes, and even crude shotguns (paltik); arrowheads made in the Pinatubo area are traded all over the Zambales range. Aeta smiths follow taboos and rituals no longer observed by lowland Sambal smiths.

The skills to make bark-cloth are widely known but currently little used.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

See the article entitled Filipinos .

GENDER ISSUES

There is a strict sexual division of labor. Women occupy themselves with agriculture, gathering, and small-scale fishing, men with occasional hunting, and young men with underwater spear fishing. In planting a field, a line of men does make seed holes with dibble sticks, followed by a row of women inserting the seeds. Men spend most of their time away from home, trading, paying visits to relatives and friends, and participating in marriage negotiations. Although spirit mediums can be either men or women, the informal council that arbitrates disputes is composed only of older men, and the encampments to which Aeta families belong are identified by the name of the most dominant man.

According to the 2000 census, among the Aeta, men and women were about equal in number (50.9% vs. 49.1%). In the Zambales population as a whole, there were more females (50.9%) than males in elementary education, even though females were only 49.5% of the population over the age of 5 years—female predominance also characterizes all higher levels except high school.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

LeBar, Frank M., ed. Ethnic Groups of Insular Southeast Asia, Vol. 2, The Philippines and Formosa. New Haven, CT: Human Relations Area Files Press, 1972.

Scott, William Henry. Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society. Quezon City, Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1994.

Shimizu, Hiromu. Pinatubo Aytas: Continuity and Change. Quezon City, Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1989.

—revised by A. Abalahin