Nueva Vizcaya, officially the Province of Nueva Vizcaya, is a landlocked province in the Philippines located in the Cagayan Valley region in Luzon. Its capital and largest town is Bayombong. It is bordered by Benguet to the west, Ifugao to the north, Isabela to the northeast, Quirino to the east, Aurora to the southeast, Nueva Ecija to the south, and Pangasinan to the southwest. Quirino province was created from Nueva Vizcaya in 1966.
Etymology The name Nueva Vizcaya is derived from the name of the province of Biscay (called Vizcaya in Spanish and Bizkaia in Basque) during the Spanish colonial period. This can be seen in the right part of the seal, a representation of the heraldry of Vizcaya in Spain.
History Spanish colonial era
The areas of present-day Nueva Vizcaya used to be part of the vast Provincia de Cagayan. Organized religion in Nueva Vizcaya dates back to the year 1607, when the Dominican Order arrived in the province. It was not until 1609, however, that the first settlement of a religious order was established in the southern half of the province. In 1702, a convent was erected in Burubur at the foot of the Caraballo Mountains in Santa Clara, which is now a barangay in the town of Aritao. It was on this site that the first mass in Nueva Vizcaya was celebrated and the first baptism of a Christian convert was held.
Spanish conquest of Nueva Vizcaya was slow and difficult, and expeditions had to be sent recurrently due to the natives' refusal to accept Spanish sovereignty. In some of these expeditions, services of some local chieftains were used, the most famous of which was that commanded by Mariano Oscariz, in 1847–1848, which carried him clear through the province across to Palanan on the eastern coast of Luzon.
In 1818, Nueva Ecija annexed the towns of Palanan from Isabela, as well as Cagayan, Nueva Vizcaya, Quirino, Baler, Casiguran, Infanta (formerly called Binangonan de Lampon) and Polillo Islands from Tayabas, and part of Rizal. Bagabag when it was once part of Cagayan was also home to 10,808 native families and 25 Spanish-Filipino Mestizo families, before the province was transferred to the province of Nueva Vizcaya.
In 1839, upon the advice of the alcalde mayor of Cagayan, Luis Lardizabal, then-Governor General of the Philippines created the politico-military province of Nueva Vizcaya. The order was approved by a Royal Decree on April 10, 1841. The name Nueva Vizcaya was named after Biscay, Spain, the hometown of Lardizabal. The original province covered the areas of present-day Nueva Vizcaya, Quirino, Ifugao, Apayao, Kalinga, and Benguet, Batanes, a large portion of Isabela, as well as north Aurora. After Nueva Vizcaya was created, it included the present area occupied by the province plus present-day Mountain Province, much of Isabela, Quirino, & north Aurora.
Civil government was established in the province by the Philippine Commission in 1902 during the American Colonial Period of the Philippines.
The territories of Nueva Vizcaya were greatly reduced when Nueva Vizcaya ceded a big portion of its north-eastern territory, including Camarag, its first capital, now Echague, to form the province of Isabela in May 1856.
American colonial era In 1908, the northwestern territory of Nueva Vizcaya was annexed to the newly organized sub-province of Ifugao. The survey executed by the Bureau of Lands in 1914 further caused the diminution of its area and reduced again upon the enactment of the Administrative Code of 1917. Northern areas of present-day Aurora (composed of present towns of Dilasag & part of Casiguran) were annexed to Tayabas (now Quezon) in 1905. In 1918, the area of modern Aurora north of Baler (composed of Dinalungan, Dipaculao, & Maria Aurora, besides Casiguran & Dilasag) was transferred to the authority of Nueva Vizcaya but returned to Tayabas in 1946.
The province of Nueva Vizcaya was also included in the 12th district of the Philippine Senate during the American period. The district included Mountain Province (present-day Apayao, Kalinga, Mountain Province, and Benguet), Cotabato (undivided), Agusan (undivided), Davao (undivided), Zamboanga (undivided), and Sulu (undivided). The province was included in the district because of its ethnic compatibility with Mountain Province and other indigenous domains in the Cordilleras and Mindanao. Japanese occupation During the Pacific War of the Second World War, the Japanese captured Nueva Vizcaya and established a "comfort station" in the province, where Filipino "comfort women" were enslaved, routinely gang-raped, and murdered under Japanese control. The Dalton Pass was the scene of a major battle between the Empire of Japan, the Commonwealth of the Philippines and American forces, with the Allies winning on May 31, 1945.Smith, R.R., 2005, Triumph in the Philippines, Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific,
Postwar Era In 1971, with the passage of Republic Act No. 6394, Quirino, which was then a sub-province of Nueva Vizcaya, was separated from its mother province and made into a regular province.
Martial law era
The beginning months of the 1970s had marked a period of turmoil and change in the Philippines, as well as in Nueva Vizcaya. During his bid to be the first Philippine president to be re-elected for a second term, Ferdinand Marcos launched an unprecedented number of foreign debt-funded public works projects. This caused the Philippine economy to take a sudden downwards turn known as the 1969 Philippine balance of payments crisis, which led to a period of economic difficulty and social unrest throughout the country. Marcos responded by lumping all his critics togehter as "communists" regardless of their actual views and suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus through Proclamation No. 889 in August 1971. But this only had the effect of pushing moderate protesters towards the radical left. Marcos' actions thus allowed the Marxist–Leninist–Maoist New People's Army to build a presence in Cagayan Valley, including Nueva Vizcaya.Cariño, Joanna K., and Luchie B. Maranan, eds. 2023. Panaglagip: The North Remembers — Martial Law Stories of Struggle and Survival. Quezon City: Gantala Press. This would end only five and a half decades later in 2024, when the government declared Nueva Vizcaya an "insurgency-free" province.
In the northern part of Nueva Vizcaya, another significant event was the Ikalahan people's 1972 court victory in an effort to recover their ancestral lands from development aggression. In 1970, Ikalahan learned that the government planning to grab about 6,300 hectares of their ancestral lands, which would then be converted into a vacation center which would be called "Marcos City." The plan hinged on the use of fake titles by certain relatives of high government officials. After gathering the affected communities, the Ikalahan filed a case asking for the courts to recognize their ancestral land claims. With help from attorney Julian de Vera who was a retired attorney from the Commission on National Integration (now the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples), the Ikalahan fought an effort by the Marcos administration to have the case dismissed, and the court revoked the fake landtitles of the lowlanders in 1972, forcing the administration to abandon their plans.
Later that year, however, Marcos himself unleashed extreme social and political changes which would impact both the whole province and the whole nation. With only a year left in his last constitutionally allowed term as president, Ferdinand Marcos placed the Philippines under Martial Law in September 1972 and thus retained the position for fourteen more years. This period in Philippine history is remembered for the Marcos administration's record of human rights abuses, particularly targeting political opponents, student activists, journalists, religious workers, farmers, and others who fought against the Marcos dictatorship.
Geography
Surrounded by North Luzon's three large mountain ranges, Nueva Vizcaya is generally mountainous, varying from steep mountains to rolling hills, with some valleys and plains. It is bordered on the west by the Cordillera mountains, on the east by the Sierra Madre mountains, and on the south by the Caraballo Mountains. The province (and the entire Cagayan Valley) are separated from the Central Luzon plains by the Caraballo Mountains.
The province has a total land area of . The southernmost province in the Cagayan Valley region, Nueva Vizcaya lies approximately north of Metro Manila and can be reached by land via the Cagayan Valley Road (Maharlika Highway).
Administrative divisions Nueva Vizcaya comprises 15 municipalities, with Bayombong as the provincial capital and major educational center, Bambang (the agricultural hub) and Solano (the financial district) as the major commercial centers, and Kayapa as the summer capital and "vegetable bowl" of the province. All municipalities are encompassed by a lone legislative district, but are separated into two districts for purposes of representation in its provincial board. The 1st District comprises the municipalities of Ambaguio, Bagabag, Bayombong, Diadi, Quezon, Solano and Villaverde, while the 2nd District is composed of the municipalities of Alfonso Castañeda, Aritao, Bambang, Dupax del Norte, Dupax del Sur, Kayapa, Kasibu and Santa Fe.
Geographically, the western half of Nueva Vizcaya is part of the main Cordilleras, while its eastern half is part of the Caraballos, the meeting point of the Cordilleras and the Sierra Madre. There have been grassroot moves to reunify Nueva Vizcaya with the Cordillera Region due to cultural and geographical harmony, however, none have been introduced in Congress.
Municipality Population Area Density km2 /km2 Alfonso Castañeda 8,539 6 Ambaguio 15,472 8 Aritao 42,197 22 Bagabag 37,985 17 Bambang 55,789 25 Bayombong † 67,714 25 Diadi 19,236 19 Dupax del Norte 33,295 15 Dupax del Sur 21,224 19 Kasibu 41,776 30 Kayapa 26,469 30 Quezon 24,055 12 Santa Fe 18,276 16 Solano 65,287 22 Villaverde 20,118 9 Total 530,106 497,432 4,813.88 275 Provincial capital Municipality
Barangays
The 15 municipalities of the province comprise a total of 275 barangays, with Roxas in Solano, Nueva Vizcaya as the most populous in 2010, and Santa Rosa in Santa Fe, Nueva Vizcaya as the least.
Demographics
The population of Nueva Vizcaya in the 2024 census was 530,106 people, with a density of .
Nueva Vizcaya is home to about 18 indigenous peoples, which includes the major tribes of the Ifugao , Gaddang , Isinai , Dumagat , Kalanguya , and the Bugkalot . Indigenous peoples' groups have filed for ancestral domain titles covering parts of the province.
The Ilokano population in the province are not indigenous as they were part of the labor force initially needed by the Spanish administration to work on the tobacco plantations beginning in the 1700s, and later immigrants with skills construct churches and other structures needed for development. Indigenous tribes were not cooperative with the Spaniards. After several insurrections by the locals, Spanish officials chose to import trained labor from established settlements in the coastal regions of Pangasinan and Ilocos. So, it was deliberated in the Spanish Congress the need for in migration of labor. After it was voted by a majority and approved by the king, Ilocanos started to migrate and were given homestead. Thus, the start of the migration of Ilocanos in the province.
Every last week of May, these ethnolinguistic groups gather to celebrate the Ammungan festival (formerly Panagyaman festival), a week-long affair culminating on May 24, the province's foundation day.