At the instance of an uncle and based on good accounts received about life in faraway Davao, the journey of the original Gutierrez brothers from Santander, Spain, is as interesting as any migrant story handed down from generation to generation.
Domingo Gutierrez after securing an authority to travel in 1917 at Tarranza, Spain, left his homeland and travelled to Cuba, the first stop for any Spanish migrant going east. The trip did not happen overnight, though, because he had to scrimp for cash to pay his ocean fare. Two years later, he found himself reporting at the Consulado de España in Havana.
After securing a consular clearance, Domingo took a vessel owned by U.S. Mail Steamship Company (founded in 1848) bound for New York, where he took up odd jobs and saved money for his travel to the Manila. He also worked at Bakersfield, California, then a mining town.
He did not stay long there. After earning the wherewithal to pay his way to the Philippines, then to Davao, his final destination, he set sail on a steamship. His first stop was at Hong Kong, where he was issued a certification as transient. He arrived in Manila in 1921.
Months after Domingo left New York, his elder brother, Manuel, also arrived in the US and stayed longer, working as a bootlegger with the infamous American mobster Al Capone. Years later, he joined his brothers at Darong, now a thriving community of Sta. Cruz, Davao del Sur.
Domingo’s uncle, who was the source of information about Davao, was married to the daughter of a Bagobo datu in 1909. The marriage produced ten children, all boys, three of them died in infancy. With the consent of his landed father-in-law, he opened a ranch in Darong. During the 1926 round-up (the process of collecting cattle), he died in an accident.
The elder Gutierrez’s demise encouraged the Bastida-Sarenas family to talk to Domingo to call Manuel, who was still in New York, to move to Davao to assist so the land left by the uncle would not disintegrate. At the time, Domingo’s wife was seven months on the family way; she was pregnant with the youngest child, Restituto. Manuel acceded; he arrived in 1927.
Mariano Marcos, father of President Ferdinand E. Marcos, according to the Gutierrez family tradition, used to stay overnight at Darong after hunting game animals. He was fluent in Spanish and was often teased behind his back as a look-alike of boxing great Pancho Villa, whose true name was Francisco Guilledo.
The Darong cattle ranch, the largest in the region before the war, had around 900 heads in 1927. When war broke out, it became the source of food and milk for the friendly Japanese soldiers under Fujimura, a Manchurian war veteran, who led the convoy that entered the ranch after the Japanese Imperial army had seized Davao City.
Domingo, an acquaintance of Tamura, the plantation manager of Furukawa plantation, though, did not allow the slaughter of animals only to be sold in the marketplace.
Unlike the Villa-Abrille ranch, which was forcibly taken over by the Japanese invaders, the Gutierrez ranch was not confiscated and survived the conflict. In 1959, it was sold because Andres, Domingo’s son, was already working for a company in Lanao and there was no one to personally oversee the operation of the hacienda.
Aside from the ranch, Domingo also had a sprawling 31-hectare property, an area stretching from Matina to Aplaya and included the sprawling GSIS Village. It used to be owned by former Davao mayor Constancio Guzman but was sold to the Spaniard in a bid.
Historically, the first Spanish migrant to permanently settle in Darong was Antonio Matute, whose family owned Agencia de Empeños in Manila. He arrived in Davao in 1890 and promptly set up his own trading firm. He married Sul-len, daughter of B’laan datu Cagnap of Saranggani, in Christian rites at Darong, later the country’s largest Spanish community, in 1895. It was solemnized by Fr. Saturnino Urios, S.J., the parish priest of Davao, with Don Damaso Palacios and Don Benito Saavedra serving as sponsors.
Matute’s success in operating a ranch and cultivation a sprawling farm at Sibulan inspired relatives back home in Spain to also try their luck in Davao. The Gutierrez brothers, in succession, migrated to the region with Restituto leading the pack in 1904, followed by Domingo in 1921, and Manuel in 1927. Collectively, they cultivated 1,400 hectares which they developed into coconut plantation and cattle ranch. The estate is now owned by three giant corporations.
The other Spanish migrants who made good in Darong and its peripheral areas were Damaso Palacios and nephew Marcos Saez, Luis Surrochi of Astorga, the Gomezes of Sibulan, Eugenio Aznar of Padada, and Maria Villa Abrille (married to Prudencio Chicote) who bought Patulangon from a Bagobo Datu in 1882.
Mariano Regino, recipient of Cedula de Cruz de Plata del Merito Naval from the Ministro de Marina of Madrid in 1891 and honored by Governor General Don Ramon Blanco y Erenas with Medalla del Merito Civil in 1896 for his role in the propagation of Catholicism in Samal Island. He is the great grandfather of the Tancontian and Regino clans of Sta. Cruz, Davao del Sur.
(Partly based on an interview held on May 23, 2015 with Andy Gutierrez, then 84 years old, the son of Domingo, and the Santa Cruz town profile.)
Muchas gracias por este espléndido artículo sobre los primeros clanes familiares de españoles que se asentaron en Davao a finales del S. XIX y que contribuyeron a su desarrollo. Entre ellas, la de uno de mis antepasados, Prudencio Chicote Beltrán, hermano de Angel, Aurelio y Alfredo.
Thank you for this splendid article on the first family clans of Spaniards who settled in Davao at the end of the 19th century and contributed to its development. Among them, one of my ancestors, Prudencio Chicote Beltrán, brother of Angel, Aurelio and Alfredo.