Binalonan Vice Mayor Melicio Patague II on November 5-6 attended the “Emerging Voices in Filipino and Philippine Studies Conference” held at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Hawaii, USA.

Patague participated in the 2-day conference with Municipal History Researcher Veronica Sison, Binalonan Tourism Coordinator Angelica Peregrino, and Researcher and Technical Assisstant to the Office of the Mayor Jessica Tabilin.

Binalonan was the only Local Government Unit present in the conference.

With over 150 papers submitted from various academes all over the globe, Binalonan’s “Assessing Pangasinan Historiography: The Case of Ilocano Migrants in Pangasinan” was one of the only 58 papers chosen to be presented in the said conference.

Presented by Sison, the study claimed that majority of the Binalonians “hailed their heritage from the Ilocos region. In the nineteenth century, land pressures from inner Ilocandia and the waves of migration changed the linguistic profile not just of Pangasinan but also Cagayan, Zambales, Tarlac, Nueva Ecija and other provinces.”

The study is based on archival sources which provide a more in-depth understanding on the implication of Ilocano migration by looking at the foundation of the municipality of Binalonan in 1834, a former sitio of Manaoag.

It also discusses “political processes which reveal societal tensions that raised animosity between Pangasinan locals and Ilocano migrants; the intrusion of Ilocano settlers in Pangasinan territory did not always receive a friendly reception among native inhabitants of Pangasinan and the political elites.”

The paper also gives “a glimpse on the causality and implication of Ilocano migration during the 19^th century, the cultural bearing of Ilocano diaspora which would later play a significant role in the  political arena of Pangasinan and the scope of national politics in the case of the contested “Solid North” ideology.