Historic Makahambus Cave

Raul Ilogon .

IN Cagayan de Oro, history repeats itself not once but several times with negative and irreversible consequences. Many times in the past, we committed crimes against our own heritage. We let our political leaders trample, desecrate and even erase from the face of the earth landscape and tangible evidence of our prehistoric past. Big mistake!

If we are not vigilant, it will happen again in the near future. This time, the would-be victim will be our historic Makahambus Cave. It will be destroyed by a road widening project of the Department of Public Works and Highways.

But before I elaborate on this, allow me to make a point by enumerating the mistakes that we kept on repeating time and again.

Let me start with Mistake No. 1: the renaming of the MacArthur Park to De Lara.

MacArthur Park was built by a grateful generation. Our parents and grandparents dedicated the park to a general who kept his promise to return and liberate the Filipinos from cruelty of the Japanese regime.

General MacArthur, called the American Caesar, was replaced by a politician from Gingoog.

Mistake No. 2: replacing the Obelisk for the Unknown Soldiers of World War II with the Heritage Monument.

The Obelisk was a monument at the center of MacArthur Park. Every April 9, Bataan Day, my father and his fellow veterans, flocked to the site to honor and remember the fallen.

The only monument in Cagayan de Oro dedicated to World War II soldiers was demolished. It’s gone! On the very same site, the governor built the Heritage Monument with several bronze statues, costing millions of pesos. As if to add salt, not one of the expensive bronze statues represent a World War II veteran.

The monument built for those who died fighting for our freedom and way of life was demolished for the sake of beautification. Big Mistake No. 2!

Mistake No. 3: desecration of the Huluga open site.

Huluga is located in Taguanao. Based on archeological evidence and recorded historical documents, Huluga was a settlement of pre-historic Kagay-anons. At the coming of the Spaniards, the settlement was headed by Datu Salangsang. The site is by the river and stood 80 feet high. It has two burial caves with skeletal remains of pre-historic Kagay-anons. The two Spanish priests who landed here for the first time in 1622 reached the site by paddling eight kilometers upstream from the mouth of Cagayan River.

A little above the river, not far from the caves, is another archeological site. It is called the Huluga open site. The ground holds evidence of ancient times: fossils and other artifacts ranging from the pre-historic to Spanish eras.

A skull specimen from Huluga was sent by the late Dr. Linda Burton to Scripps Institute of Oceanography at La Jolla, California for dating. It was dated via Acid Racemization. The skull was found to be from 412 AD.

To date, the 1,600-year-old Huluga bone holds the official record of being the oldest in Mindanao. Now you can imagine how old is the Kagay-anon civilization.

But again, our politicians had better ideas. The mayor at that time bulldozed the lower Huluga open site to give way to a road project. The evidence, yet-to-be found, in the soil may hold stories of our pre-historic past but were lost forever in the name of progress.

There are other mistakes but I’ll write about them in another article.

Now back to the Makahambus Cave.

Make no mistake, it is not just like any other cave. This cave was instrumental in giving the Filipino forces the first ever one-sided victory against the American forces during the Fil-Am war in 1899-1902.

Before the Balingaga Massacre in Samar, the American forces suffered devastating defeat here in the Battle of Makahambus Cave in June 4, 1900. The cave was turned into a fortress by Kagay-anon patriots who decided, through popular votes, to fight for home and freedom.

The American never conquered nor break through the cave defenses until the Kagay-anons retreated to safer grounds. The Americans lost 19 lives, many were wounded, and one was captured. The defenders of the cave-fortress was led by Lt. Cruz Taal under the leadership of Col. Apolinar Velez. They lost only one soldiers, and three others were wounded.

The Makahambus Cave is hallowed ground to both Filipinos and American forces. At the mouth of the cave is a historical marker placed by the National Historical Commission.

But Makahambus Cave is now under seige, not by foreign powers but by our own government. If plan pushes through, the cave will be destroyed by the road widening project of DPWH.

I am happy to know that Councilor Jay Roa Pascual, chairman of the local legislature’s tourism committee, is making representation to DPWH for a possible solution.

Go, go, Councilor Jay, the people are behind you.  This time, Kagay-anons will not let history repeat itself again!