Philippine E-Journals

Friendship and the Fear of Poison:A Particular History of 'Blood Compact' Rites (Sandugo) in Eastern Mindanao

Jose S. Buenconsejo

 

Abstract:

A number of 16th century sources describe the sandugo pacts that sealed the friendship between the coastal inhabitants of the Visayan and Caraga region and the Iberian sailors (matelotes) who were searching for alternative trade routes to the Spice Islands in Southeast Asia. This was symbolized by the mixing of personal/sacrificial blood and liquor which pact holders ceremoniously imbibed.

 

During my field research in 1997. I documented a type of spirit possession ritual where a mixing of the said substances also occurred. While the goals of such ritual genre differed from the sandugo type. the act, nonetheless, seems to draw a parallel with one of the ritual actions performed in the possession rite that I had witnessed.

 

This paper aims to interpret the meaning of such mixing by particularly exploring the local history that had provided the context for the performance of the specific ritual I witnessed in 1997. In such type of Agusan Manobo ritual, the officiating medium (1) incarnates both her/his coastal (read: Visayan) and inland (read: mountain) spirits and, hence, the ritual language is bilingual; (2) dances to the rhythms played on the guitar (simulating the music of the paired drum and gong music) while in trance dancing; and (3) eats cooked ritual food, with spices, placed on the table. While these characteristics indicate alterations in ritual form attendant to inland-coastal cultural contacts, they gain more sense when examined from the particularity of the history of the Manobo- Visayan encounters in the middle Agusan valley. I found out in my field research that such cultural contacts did not simply produce total compadrazgo solidarity between Manobos and Visayan settlers, but also unstable contradictory relations of friendship that were simultaneously inhabited by the fear of being killed through food poisoning.