The Agta of Frank Lynch

I am in the middle of my research, which is the revisiting of Frank Lynch's universe. His field site was in Canaman, a small town where he witnessed inequality that was part of the society. The sociologists of that period talked about structured inequality. It was, however, an inequality that has a sweet component to it: a seeming acceptance of the world in that unequal world.

Frank Lynch (or Fr. Frank Lynch) was into the gritty social aspects of Bikol society, talking about the "saradit na tawo" and "darakulang tawo" to describe the harmonious inequality in that town. This unequal relation played too in the nation as a whole. But it was in Canaman where Lynch saw those with wealth share their homes with those who did not, and those who did not own anything provide labor in the farm of those who owned lands. This framework worked in the functionalist analysis of society. In this framework, societies are composed of elements that worked harmoniously to form a totality.

For those whose idea of an anthropologist is that of Indiana Jones, they would not be disappointed because Lynch also went into the more exotic studies, like the Agta communities on Mt. Iriga.

The Agta, which we cluster with the Negritoes, is a problematic label among the so-called indigenous communities of the country.

One of the major contributions of Lynch to the literature of the Agta is his idea that the Agta are different from the other so-called Negroid (a name that is not anymore favored in anthropology) groups in the Philippines. Lynch notes of the significant intermarriages that occurred between the Remontados and escaping criminals who fled to the hills or the mountains. This explanation is not fully explored and should inspire students of culture to go in those communities and get to know them more.

Lynch offers this term: semi-negroid hill people. In fact, he produced a paper bearing the title "Some Notes on a Brief Field Survey of the Hill People of Mt. Iriga" in 1944.  His interpreter was a student from Ateneo de Naga, Jose Reyes. Is this the same Jose Calleja Reyes who wrote historical papers on Kabikolan?

Lynch described Reyes as "having graduated with highest honors from Ateneo de Naga high school" and "speaks and understands English perfectly, and is equally at home in Bikol, he was the perfect middle man for our countless questions with all their shades of meaning and stress."