Old timers call the place Trinidad. It was formerly a part of the municipality of Manila but created to a separate town on July 9, 1948 when Congress merged the districts of Batulaki and Caburan and created them into a town known as Trinidad, so named after the Holy Trinity.
(Contrary to claims, the original name of the town was not named after Doña Trinidad de Leon vda. de Roxas, the wife of the late President Manuel Roxas, who died in 1948.)
On August 1, 1948, President Elpidio Quirino, who succeeded Roxas, issued Executive Order No. 156 formally creating the municipality of Trinidad, and set the polls for its first set of officials in November 1952, coinciding with the regular elections.
This old settlement was actually founded by the Jesuit missionaries The community was a holding area for newly-baptized Manobos, the original residents of the place, who were encouraged to live peacefully in a reduction under the guidance of the parish priest.
Following the missionary tradition of naming places after the Church event that falls on the day the settlement was built, the old community was most founded by Fr. Saturnino Urios, SJ, on a June 7, 1896. In his August 4, 1896 letter to the Mission Superior, the cleric wrote about his team’s successful effort in baptizing a good number of new Christians in 10 reductions:
“With much work, much trouble and more finance expenses, with cajolery and gifts—the two complementing each other in attracting pagans—we have won for Christianity and for Spain about 600 Manobos living in Consolacion, Alegria, San Miguel, Santa Maria, Trinidad, Refugio, Victoria, San Juan, Marbella, and Iberia… among the 600 baptized are a few of the chiefs of each group which in due time and season will multiply.”
Santa Maria, Trinidad (now Jose Abad Santos), Refugio and Marbella were classified in the missionary chronicles as areas found in the ‘northern sector.’ In the American era, the village retained its old Spanish label—that is, Trinidad—even when old Iberian towns (pueblos) were renamed as municipal districts and the old gobernadorcillos (‘little governors,’ the equivalent of today’s mayor) rechristened as municipal presidents (presidente municipal). It’s uncertain whether Trinidad was officially created as an administrative territory.
On February 23, 1921, under the American Occupation, Governor General Francis Burton Harrison issued Executive Order No. 8 created the municipal districts of Batulaki (Sarangani) and Caburan, some parts of which now form part of Jose Abad Santos, Davao Occidental.
Batulaki, under the edict, was composed of ten villages, namely the “barrios of Buquid, (central), Batulaki, Sugal, Noing, Butulan, Kamalian, Balangonan, Marabinwang, Isla de Balut [and] Tumanao” while Caburan was composed of “Caburan (central), Mangili, Culaman, Marabatuan, Maybio, Karabayan, Tabayen, Kipoñga, Malalan, Tanoman, Kalbay [and] Magulibas.”
Affected by the reform was Malita whose villages were reduced to only eight barrios.
After the war, on April 20, 1955, under Republic Act 1206, Caburan was renamed Jose Abad Santos in honor of the late chief justice who died during the Japanese Occupation. As a result, a new territory was carved out. Twenty-five years later, on July 17, 1980, President Ferdinand E. Marcos issued Presidential Decree 1550 creating the town of Sarangani with six (6) barangays originally belonged to Abad Santos, the mother municipality.
The adoption of Jose Abad Santos as the town’s name is a gray area that needs further research. No one is sure who suggested the name, but the choice is doubtless a significant one, and it is the only municipality anywhere in the archipelago named after the war hero.
A native of San Fernando City, Pampanga, Jose Basco Abad Santos (1886–1942) was a government pensionado (scholar) who finished pre-law course at the Santa Clara College in California, USA; his Bachelor of Laws at the Northwestern University in Illinois, USA; and his Masters of Laws at George Washington University in 1909. He was admitted to the Philippine Bar in 1911 and served as assistant attorney at the Bureau of Justice for four years (1913-1917).
He was instrumental in drafting the By-Laws and Constitution of the Philippine Women’s University, Asia’s first private non-sectarian institution for higher learning for women, and was later appointed first Filipino corporate lawyer of the Philippine National Bank, Manila Railroad Company and other government corporations. On his return to the justice department, he was appointed attorney-general, justice undersecretary, and later justice secretary (1921-1923).
Resigning from the justice department in 1923, he joined Congress as chief legal counsel of the Senate President and the Speaker of the House. Three years later, he was sent to the US to head the Philippine Educational Mission. In 1928, he reassumed the post of justice secretary but four years later would be appointed associate justice of the Supreme Court.
He became its chief justice in 1941 after the war broke out, and assumed the also functions of the reorganized justice department. On December 30, 1941, in Corregidor, he administered the oath of office of President Manuel L. Quezon and Vice-President Sergio Osmeña Sr., who were elected to their second term weeks before the war erupted.
When the President and his vice left for the US, Quezon appointed him Acting President with full authority to act in the name of, and on behalf, of the President of the Philippines in areas unoccupied by the Japanese. On May 2, 1942, nearly two months after his capture in Carcar, Cebu, he was brought to Mindanao and executed by the Japanese in Malabang, Lanao.
