Once you know where the name Caraga originated, it becomes more difficult to ignore its weight. The Visayan term “kalagan”—a compound of “kalag,” which means soul or spirit, and “an,” which means land—is where the word originates. When combined, they roughly translate to “land of the spirited people,” and early Spanish chroniclers, seemingly impressed by what they saw, referred to the area as “land of the brave and fierce people.” It’s not common to incorporate that into a place’s identity. The majority of regions are named after colonial administrators, rivers, or mountains. Caraga’s name was inspired by the people who live there.
The northeastern part of Mindanao is home to the Caraga Administrative Region, formally known as Region XIII. President Fidel Ramos signed Republic Act No. 7901 in 1995, officially establishing it. Butuan City serves as the regional center for the five provinces that comprise the region: Agusan del Norte, Agusan del Sur, Surigao del Norte, Surigao del Sur, and Dinagat Islands. Caraga is the newest region in the nation’s administrative chronology. However, the land itself is not brand-new.
The diary of Italian chronicler Antonio Pigafetta, who traveled with Magellan in 1521, contains the earliest known written account of the region. He mentioned the name “Calagan” as he described the Surigao coastline and its people, who were tattooed men decked out in gold and sailing massive boats known as balangay. These weren’t tiny boats used for trade. They were enormous, able to reach as far as what is now central Vietnam and cross the Sulu Sea. For generations, the Butuan polity had been trading with Chinese merchants, kingdoms in Indonesia, and the Visayan neighbors of the Philippines. Butuan may have once been one of the more significant maritime powers in this region of Southeast Asia, but centuries of colonization largely obscured that period of its history.
What was left was literally gold. A four-pound golden statue was extracted from the ground in 1917 by a Manobo woman who was excavating close to the Wawa River in Esperanza, Agusan del Sur. Archaeologists describe the figure, called the Golden Tara, as the most spectacular discovery in Philippine archaeology to date. Although it is currently housed in a museum, its discovery shows how advanced the pre-colonial culture was in this area—a goldsmithing tradition sophisticated enough to create work of that caliber in an area that most modern tourists are still unaware of.
The conflict between Caraga’s current economic situation and its rich historical heritage is difficult to ignore. The area is constantly ranked as one of the Philippines’ poorest. Even though the incidence of poverty has decreased in recent decades from rates that once surpassed 50%, it still presents a challenging picture. However, the abundance of natural resources in this area is truly astounding. Iron, gold, silver, nickel, chromite, and copper deposits are found in the area. More than 71% of its land is covered by forests. Approximately 14,000 hectares in size, the Agusan Marsh in Agusan del Sur is one of the nation’s most ecologically significant wetlands and is listed on the UNESCO Tentative List. Caraga seems to be waiting for the rest of the world to come to terms with what it has in store.
Siargao is another. The island in Surigao del Norte has gained true fame among surfers; its Cloud Nine break is regarded as one of the world’s best waves, ranking in the top five worldwide. Even if foreign surfers are unable to locate it on a map of the Philippines, they are familiar with the name. Nearby, the Hinatuan Enchanted River in Surigao del Sur attracts tourists for completely different reasons: its source is still unknown, but its water is an almost unbelievable shade of blue-green salt water that somehow flows through what appears to be a jungle river. It’s the kind of location that makes you wonder what else is hidden in this part of Mindanao that hasn’t yet been adequately documented.
In the end, Caraga is more than just a 1995 bureaucratic title. The name predates both the administrative maps that divided it into a region and the Spanish presence in the Philippines. The men who came into contact with the Kalagan people who gave it that name described them as courageous and fierce. Depending on which side of the interaction you were on, that description may have been intended as a warning or a compliment. However, the name endured, which is noteworthy.
