THE National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) technical and funding assistance are being tapped for the conduct of research, documentation, printing and publication on the history and cultural heritage of La Trinidad, Benguet.
Councilor Teddy Walang, Apolinario Bagano Jr., Indigenous Peoples Mandatory Representative Pendon Thompson and Vice Mayor Roderick Awingan requested NCCA chair Virgilio Almario to conduct necessary activities to revisit the past and for the present generation to appreciate the cultural and historical richness of the municipality.
“There had been no published official document to provide a concrete and detailed history of La Trinidad including its rich cultural heritage both tangible and intangible,” reads the resolution passed by legislators.
Notable scholars, writers and researchers started writing about the cultural heritage of the municipality as early 1616, when the procurator general of Manila, Hernando de los Rios Coronel became interested in the mountain gold and proposed to the Spanish King to expedite its research.
He wrote both Alfonso Fajardo, the Governor of Manila and the Archbishop of Manila on December 1618 that it was the solution to both the abandoned missions as well as the depleted colonial treasury.
Several personalities also came to the town including Captain Garcia Aldana y Cabrera, Governor of Pangasinan in 1620, Sergeant Major Antonio Carreno de Valdes on 1623, Captain Alonso Martin Quirante in 1624, Guillermo Galvey in 1829, Commandant Manuel Scheidnagel in 1874, Filipino revolutionary forces under Pedro Paterno on July 1899 among others.
The municipal council added La Trinidad was considered the cabesera of the Cordillera, long before the different provinces of were politically organized and before it was transformed into a full pledged municipality by virtue of RA 531.