BEAT THE HOLIDAY! CONDEMN THE SEPTEMBER 13, 1986 SIPAT! STRUGGLE FOR GENUINE REGIONAL AUTONOMY!
September 13, 2025
As reiterated in previous position statements of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance:
“Hindi karapat-dapat na maideklarang holiday ang September 13.
CPA reiterates that the so-called Sipat or Peace Pact in Mt. Data in 1986 was a romanticized ritual of the sipat indigenous bodong system to symbolize unity or “embrace” of Cory Aquino and Conrado Balweg on Cordillera affairs.
Many of the Cordillera people may not even know and understand the 1986 Mt Data Sipat between Cory Aquino and the CPLA. It did not create the regionalization of the Cordillera.
The regionalization was merely formalized by Cory Aquino through Executive Order 220 in 1987, but the movement for “Regionalization” of the Cordillera was already a broad popular work in progress led by the Cordillera Peoples Alliance. When CPLA emerged in 1986, it co-opted this political initiative with government support, then changed its tune of “Cordillera nation” to ride on the popular clamor for Regionalization and Regional Autonomy.
There is no basis to declare September 13 as holiday because the 1986 Mt Data Sipat does not deserve to be commemorated. In fact, it must be condemned.
The so-called Mount Data Sipat has long been exposed as a sham and totally unacceptable, as only binodngan tribes engage in sipat. It emboldened and somehow justified the CPLA in its terrorism against the progressive people’s movement.
The 1986 Mount Data Sipat led to the bloody human rights record and terrorism of the CPLA. CPLA terrorism on the people’s movement in the Cordillera is marked by the murder of Cordillera Peoples Alliance officers Ama Daniel Ngayaan and Romy Gardo in 1987; Robert Estimada and Ferdinand Bragas in 1988; and Ayangwa Claver, son of Atty. William “Billy” Claver who was the founding Chairperson of the CPA, in 1990. There were many other victims in interior villages.
CPLA terrorism targeted progressive Cordillera leaders and activists as well as organizations that criticized narrow indigenist CPLA politics and the opportunism of its leaders.
In 1987, a Movement to Disband and Disarm the CPLA and other Vigilante Groups in the Cordillera called for the disbanding and disarming of the CPLA. The Movement was formed by various peoples’ organizations, including the CPA.
In 1988, the annual Cordillera Day led by the Cordillera Peoples Alliance conducted a Peoples Tribunal on the CPLA, which declared the CPLA guilty of crimes and atrocities of the CPLA against the people. The call to disband the CPLA continued for decades.
Despite these, there was only silence and inaction from the government on the CPLA murders of CPA leaders, the terrorism it unleashed on the progressive Cordillera people’s movement, and peoples’ cry for the disbandment of the CPLA.
For the people’s movement, no amount of revisionism can alter the history of CPLA with its notorious human rights record and terrorism.”
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Marcos Jr. has been continuing Duterte’s legacy of declaring the 1986 Sipat as a holiday. This is not a harmless declaration, but an outright distortion of history and disregard for the terrorism sowed by CPLA. The 1986 Sipat is even used as a historical landmark for Cordillera’s clamor for autonomy, while the Cordillera peoples’ mass movement for regionalization as an act of self-determination is a mere footnote, if not totally erased.
The re-elected Baguio Congressman Mauricio Domogan already expressed his commitment to once again push for regional autonomy, but if it will only revive iterations of failed House and Senate Bills, then it is high time that we recall our demands for a genuine regional autonomy- a true exercise of self-determination from the grassroots, a full-recognition of the right to our ancestral domain. We urge lawmakers to first address the rampant corruption of government funds and repeal all laws and agreements that sell-out our lands to bureaucrat capitalists, landlords, and foreign corporations!