Camotes Islands

Demographics

Languages

Cebuano is the primary language, then English and Filipino. Schoolchildren are taught all three languages.

Porohanon or Camotes Visayan is spoken chiefly in the town of Poro, and is one of the most endangered languages in the Visayas. The language is classified as distinct from Cebuano (Bisaya) by the Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino, and is essential to the culture and arts of the local Porohanon people. Porohanon is mutually intelligible with other varieties of Bisaya spoken elsewhere in the Camotes Islands and Cebu, the Visayas, and northern Mindanao. The language is noted for substituting the /y/ sound for /z/ and the /h/ sound becoming /r/.

Example: Maayong buntag (Cebuano, "Good morning") is Maazong buntag in Porohanon; Na-a diha (Cebuano, "It is there") is Ara dira (Porohanon).

Climate

Tropical monsoon climate (Köppen climate classification category "Am"), with rainfall more or less evenly distributed throughout the year – Coronas climate type IV.

Biota

By Presidential Proclamation 2152 of 1981, the islands of Ponson, Poro and Pacihan are protected mangrove swamp forest reserves.^[10]

Exemplars of the rare, critically endangered Cebu Cinnamon (Cinnamomum cebuense) or kaningag tree have also been discovered on the Camotes Islands.^[11][12] Palm trees are the dominant plant on the islands, as are native varieties of fruit-bearing plants including banana, mango, and pineapple.

Protohistory

Little is known of the islands' early history. The twentieth century saw a number of archaeological studies, but nothing of major significance emerged.

An early visitor was Carl Guthe, who led an expedition from the University of Michigan which spent three years (1923–1925) investigating and exploring many sites across the archipelago.^[13] He conducted an archaeological dig at a on Tulang on the southeastern coast of the island, with the cave measures about 3.7 by 2.7 metres (12 by 9 feet). Guthe reported it to contain bone fragments and teeth of about 60 individuals. Associated grave goods included earthenware pottery, shell bracelets, bronze and iron artefacts (iron tang, bronze chisel, iron blade), glass and stone beads, hammerstone and pestle. Filed teeth were also recovered from this site.^[b]

Otley Beyer, dubbed the Philippines "Father of Anthropology", never visited, although he is reported to have described Camotes as a "basket of interesting archaeological finds."

In the early 1970s, residents unearthed a variety of artefacts dating back to the 16th century. An excavation at Mactang, a purok of Barangay Esperanza, Poro, revealed spears, daggers, swords, crosses, iron pendants and a skull pierced with an arrowhead. This heavily disturbed and looted site along the shoreline of Mactang was excavated in the 1990s by Bailen and Cabanilla of the University of the Philippines Diliman in the early 1990s and explored by Bersales and the University of San Carlos in 2001. Porcelain and earthenware sherds are strewn on the surface of what would otherwise have been a 13th- or 14th-century CE burial site.

In one barangay, Bailen and Cabanilla found a complex of caves which they believed had been inhabited by primitive people. Cabanilla asked municipal officials to preserve the site and wait while their project proposal would be approved. They planned to conduct a digging and leave whatever artefacts would be found in the caves, transforming the place into an onsite museum to attract students and archaeologists, among others. A few months later, Cabanilla returned to Camotes, after having secured project funding from a foreign institution to find the caves already mined of stone sold to a sinter plant in Leyte by the mayor, despite earlier assurances of its safekeeping. Only one cave remained, but Cabanilla lost the drive and returned to Manila, while the town's plan to erect a museum for recovered artefacts from the survey was abandoned.

Spanish conquistadores

The islands were first mentioned by Antonio Pigafetta, one of the survivors from Ferdinand Magellan's expedition, as they waited off the islands for several days before going on to Cebu in the first week of April 1521:

De mazaua agatighan sonno vinti leghe partendone de gatighan al ponente il re de mazaua no ne puote seguir por che lo espectassemo circa tres ysolle cioe polo ticobon et pozon.^[15] There is a distance of twenty leguas from Mazaua to Gatighan.^[d] We set out westward from Gatighan, but the king could not follow us [closely] and consequently we awaited him near three islands, namely Polo, Ticobon and Pozon.^[16]

Writing in 1582, Miguel de Loarca stated:^[17]

ysla de camotes. Por la p^te del leste de la ysla de çubu esten dos ysletas pequeñas qe ternan de box cada vna çinco leguas que llaman ysletas de camotes ternan entrambas como treçientos yndios son proprios de la çiudad de çubu es gte pobre aunqe tienen alguna çera, y muçho Pescado son las poblaçones pequeñas de siete y a ocho casas estan apartadas de la ysla de çubu como tres leguas y siete de la çiudad— Island of Camotes. East of the island of Çubu are two small islets, each about five leagues in circumference.^[d] They are called the islets of Camotes. The two are inhabited by about three hundred Indians, and are under the jurisdiction of the city of Çubu. The people are poor, although they possess some wax and a great quantity of fish. The villages are small, consisting of only seven or eight houses each. These islets are about three leagues from the island of Çubu, and seven from the city of that name.

He also wrote:^[18]

"todos son de vna manera tienen tambien gallinas y puercos y algunas cabras frisoles y vnas Rayçes como batatas de sancto domingo qe llaman camotes

All are provided with fowls, swine, a few goats, beans, and a kind of root resembling the potatoes of Sancto Domingo, called by the natives camotes." This remark is itself remarkable in that "camote" is the Hispanicized form of the Nahuatl (indigenous Mexican) word for "sweet potato", indicating a prior visit by a Spanish ship from Mexico.

Administratively, the Camotes Islands were previously part of Leyte Province before being transferred to Cebu during the American period.

Modern history

In 1942, Imperial Japanese forces invaded the Camotes Islands as part of their their occupation of the Philippines in World War II. In 1945, Japanese soldiers massacred almost all the inhabitants of Pilar, which were counted among the war crimes in a later trial.^{[citation needed]} Liberation of the islands happened soon after the massacre, when combined Philippine and American soldiers landed and fought remaining Japanese troops in the Battle of Camotes Islands.