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Created on Wednesday, 23 March 2011 13:15
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Published on Wednesday, 23 March 2011 13:15
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The name of the province is derived from Hamtic, the first village founded as a parish by the Augustinians on this part of the island in 1581. The old Hispanized spelling was Hantique. Pronounced with the Spanish h mute and the que stressed, it became Antique. It is bounded on the north and northeast by Aklan, on the central part by Capiz, and on the southeast by Iloilo. It lies on the eastern shore of the Cuyo East Pass, actually an arm of the South China Sea.
Antique became a province in 1796. Before that time, all the regions on the south from Anini-y to Barbaza belonged to Capiz. In 1796 by Royal order all this terrain became a separate province with its capital in Hamtic, until 1802 when by another Real disposition the capital was transferred to San Jose de Buenavista and has stayed thus to the present.
Father Juan J. Delgado of the Compania de Jesus, describing Panay in the early 1700’s in his Historia General Sacro-Profano Natural de las Islas del Poniente Llamadas Filipinas, writes:
“The form is triangular, corresponding in the vertex of its angles to the 3 points of Potol, Naso and Bolocaui; that of Naso at the south is 10 degrees north latitude; that Potol, to the northwest is exactly 120 N, and in the same parallel to the northeast is Bolocaui. It is 130 leagues (390 miles) across from Naso to Bolocaui.
“It is divided into two provinces: the upper part is Panay (later Capiz); and the lower half is Oton (later Iloilo). It is governed by two ‘alcaldes mayores’ – one has his residence in the capital town of Capiz in the province of Panay; and the other resides in Iloilo in the province of Oton.”
On the map of the Philippines Islands drawn by Fr. Pedro Murillo Velarde in 1774 only three towns were indicated on the western coast of Panay on what is now Antique. They were Nalupa, Bugasong, the encomienda of the King, and Hantique.
Antique was first inhabited by Negritos. Then, according to the oral tradition of the province, collected by Fr. Tomas Santaren, OSA and included in the Augustinian Apuntes Historicos de la Isla de Panay, the province was settled by ten Malayan datus who had fled from Datu Makatunaw of Bornay.
In 1569 Miguel Lopez de Legazpi left Cebu and put up a settlement on Panay. He took the island in the name of the King of Spanish and made his grandson Juan de Salcedo its governor. Legazpi granted the village of Hamtic or Antique as encomienda to one, Diego de Jimenez in 1572.
The Augustinian Fathers made stops at Hamtic during their mission tours. There were Christians here by 1576. In the Augustinian provincial chapter in Manila on April 15, 1581, Hantique was made a mission. By 1590, however, the Augustinians had abandoned Panay and had moved to the Ilocos region. With no strong influence to hold them together, the settlers in Hamtic began to dwindle.
There were other factors which led to their dispersal. In “Panay Idyll” I wrote, “Farming was the slash burn type, a clearing in the jungle done by slashing down trees and shrubs and burning them, on which after the first rains of the season grains were planted. Very often, even before the grains had ripened there was a visitation of locusts which depleted the harvest. Aside from this, there were the ravages of typhoons and flood and frequent Moro raids on a very vulnerable coast. With nature so bountiful, the settlers stopped being cultivators and became gatherers.
“The other dwellers scattered on the western seaboard meeting with the same contingencies of weather and raiders turned nomads also. They travelled in hordes of several families, from Hantique across the mountains to the edge of the villages on the wider and more luxuriant plains of Oton province in the south, and of Pan-ay to the north.
They were called Mundos. The spiritual care and efforts to make them live in permanent settlements like Suaragan and Bongol became a bone of contention between the Augustinians who had come back and the Jesuits who had taken over. The lawsuits lasted almost a hundred years, from 1617 to 1704.
In the “Monografias de la Isla de Panay”, Fr. Juan Fernandez, OSA, wrote “Up to the Middle of the XVIIIth Century, this part of the island was without towns, properly speaking, and in the second half of the century, it had only Bugason, Sibalom and Hantik”.
In February, 1699, Fr. Hipolito Casiano, Augustinian, wrote to the Provincial of the Order: “This Ministry, is going well, thank God, have improved in every way and the people are obedient and jovial.” In 3 February, 1701, the same priest wrote: “The runaways of the past years have come down, are coming down from the mountains . . .” In 1705 the Father Provincial wrote to the King of Spain: “This province (Augustinian) has another mission in the province of Oton, in the mountains of Hantique where Father Hipolito Casiano has served for 15 years . . . He found in the town of Hantique 128 tributarios, now there are about 400, all having come down from the mountains; formerly apostates to our Holy Faith, called mundos.”
“Some historians have placed the date of the complete conversion of this province under the government of General Manuel de Leon. The people of Bugasong, Bacong (later Culasi) and Bugan (later Pandan) were prevailed upon to live in the towns through the long effort of one named Nicolas Paralinog of Batan.”
With moro raids becoming less frequent and rumors of foreign (Dutch and English) invasion dying down, many of the more civilized Mundos tired of their vagabond life, went back to live in the villages and took to farming and trading in earnest.
In addition to Hantique founded in 1581, to Nalupa (later Barbaza) founded in 1596 and to Bugasong made encomienda of the King in 1596, other towns were founded: 1 – Cagayancillo (later separated from Hantique in 1867) – 1625; 2 – Tubigon (later moved to the present site and named San Jose de Buenavista) - 1733; 3 – Sibalom - 1737; 4 – San Pedro (now an arrabal of San Jose) - 1744; 5 – Pandan (formerly Bugan) - 1752; 6 – Patnongon (formerly San Simon) - 1761; 7 – Laua-an - 1766; 8 – Dao - 1771; 9 – Culasi (formerly Bacong) - 1773.
In 1796, when it was made a separate province, Antique had the population of 39,525. More towns were founded after 1796. They were Tibiao – 1849; Anini-y – 1862; San Remigio – 1863; Valderama – 1865 and Sebaste in 1897. The population in 1898 was 119,677. Two new towns were founded recently – Belison and Caluya in 1961. In the census count of 1975, the population of Antique was 307,500.
