Fr. Brugués’ General Description of the Cagayan Valley (1897) -1st part

All this great work had been carried out, moreover, in the midst of great shortages, sometimes relying only on his hands and his intellectual capacity, and sometimes paying for his efforts with his own life.The profile of Father Jos Mara Brugus Descamps, OP, forgotten today even in the regions where he carried out his work, fits perfectly with the profile of a father who is above all an all-purpose social agent. 2 He was born in the village of Vilasacra, province of Gerona (Spain), on April 4, 1850 and took the habit at the age of fifteen, as was common at the time among Spanish Dominicans, in the conventcollege of Santo Domingo de Ocaa.Having made solemn profession in 1869, he arrived in the Philippines in the mission of 1872.He received the presbyterate in Manila in May 1873 and was immediately sent to the missions of central and northern Luzon: Bayombong, Bagabag, Carig, Solano -all of them missions well known to Father Villaverde, with whom he must have coincided more than once and shared knowledge and experiences. 3 Later he was assigned to the missions of Tuguegarao and Tumauini.After a brief rest in the convent of Santo Domingo in Manila, he was entrusted with the missions in the north of the province of Cagayan: in Iguig (1889-1890), in Aparri (1890-1893) and in Abulug (1894-1898).On December 24, 1894, he wrote a letter in which he studies some of the customs of the Mandayas, and narrates a brief excursion to Pudtol and Capinatan.Brugus also talks about the fauna, flora, and resources of the territory to generate wealth. 4 His objective had been to help Father Alfredo Colinas, OP, to build a church in Capinatan.The church, with a galvanized iron roof, was completed with the help of Father Malumbres in 1898. 5 A second letter, dated August 1896 and written from Pamplona, recounts the attempted murder of Father Isidro Fernndez, OP, for having tried to mediate a sale of carabaos in which the local seller had not delivered to the buyer, a Spaniard, what had been agreed upon.He also narrates a river trip to Capinatan from Abulug: after aborting a first attempt to navigate the river because of a strong baguio, he reached the town on his second attempt.His purpose was to see the progress of the construction work of the mission church, to which he had sent several carpenters 2 We extract biographical data from