Whispers from the Hills
The Hidden Role of Women in Surigao’s Past
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Whispers from the Hills – The Hidden Role of Women in Surigao’s Past
Whispers from the Hills – The Hidden Role of Women in Surigao’s Past
24 August 2025 Feature | Surigao Historical Society | Local History
They didn’t march into battles or sit in council halls— but they carried the wounded, guarded the old stories, and raised the next rebels.
This is history through the eyes of Surigao’s silent strength—its women.
The First Healers and Keepers of Balance
Before conquest, before catechism, there were the babaylans. In the precolonial communities of Surigao, especially among the Mamanwa and early Austronesian settlers, women held powerful roles as spiritual mediators, herbalists, and custodians of health and harmony. They diagnosed not only physical illness, but emotional and environmental imbalance.
Their tools were leaves and chants, water and silence. Their knowledge—passed down through matrilineal lines—was not written in books but sung in lullabies, etched in forest trails, and folded into rituals of birth, healing, and mourning.
These women were never just caretakers—they were cultural architects.
Of Weaving, Words, and Memory
Surigaonon women wove banig mats, abaca fibers, and also narratives. They were the first historians of the home—passing on epics, riddles, and proverbs beside hearths and riverbanks. Oral history, in Surigao as in many indigenous societies, was largely a female domain, maintained through repetition, remembrance, and ritual.
In some villages, it was grandmothers who kept the names of those lost to typhoons, raids, or famine—names that never made it into Spanish records, but lived in lullabies and laments.
Quiet Resistance: Women in Times of War
When Moro raids swept through coastal Surigao in the 17th and 18th centuries, women often fled with infants on their backs, elderly in tow, and family relics clutched to their chests. Yet they were more than victims. In moments of crisis, many women became hidden agents of survival.
During the Colorum uprising of 1924, women ferried messages, concealed food for rebels, and refused to betray kin. Some hosted underground meetings or refused church orders when they clashed with ancestral beliefs. Their names rarely appear in colonial accounts—but they were there, shaping resistance through care and courage.
Building Minds: Education and Faith-Led Women’s Leadership
With the American period came new roles for women: as educators, catechists, and social organizers. Women in Surigao began forming faith-based cooperatives, sewing circles, and reading classes—quiet revolutions in spaces often overlooked by formal historians.
By the 1930s and 40s, local women were helping establish mission schools, teaching hygiene, and organizing community support during epidemics and wartime displacement. These initiatives often predated government services, filling gaps where the state faltered.
Their leadership was non-electoral but deeply transformative.
Women of the Soil and Sea
In the coconut fields of Hikdop, the rice paddies of Mainit, and the salt beds of Bayagnan, women labored side by side with men—but carried additional, invisible burdens: raising children, preserving rituals, feeding evacuees, healing the sick, and nurturing community even in ruin.
Their work was often unnamed, unpaid, and unrecorded. But without it, no revolution could last, no mission could succeed, and no town could recover.
Five Questions to Spark Your Curiosity
Five Questions to Spark Your Curiosity
Who were the babaylans of Surigao, and how did they survive colonial suppression?
What roles did women play during raids, revolts, and reconstructions in Surigao’s past?
How were traditions, songs, and beliefs preserved through the voices and memory of women?
Which Surigaonon women founded or led early schools, cooperatives, or parish programs?
How can Surigao’s historical narrative evolve to fully include the legacy of its women?
Explore Further, Engage Deeper
This story is just one of many hidden within the pages of Surigao Across the Years. To explore more: Interact with the book through Artificial Intelligence (AI):
Visit the customized GPT by Open AI HERE and the Book Section of the Surigao Historical Society HERE
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