The definition of a barangay
From Wikipedia.org:
"A barangay (Brgy. or Bgy.; Filipino: baranggay, [baɾaŋˈɡaj]), formerly called barrio, is the smallest administrative division in the Philippines and is the native Filipino term for a village, district or ward. In colloquial usage, the term often refers to an inner city neighbourhood, a suburb or a suburban neighborhood. The word barangay originated from balangay, a kind of boat used by a group of Austronesian peoples when they migrated to the Philippines.
Local government hierarchy. The dashed lines emanating from the
president means that the President only exercises general supervision on local government.
Municipalities and cities are composed of barangays, and they may be further subdivided into smaller areas called purok (English: zone), and sitio, which is a territorial enclave inside a barangay, especially in rural areas. As of September 30, 2012, there were a total of 42,028 barangays throughout the Philippines."
"The term "barangay" may also colloquially refer to a large group of people. An example is Barangay Ginebra, the name of supporters of the Ginebra San Miguel basketball team. In 1999, the team was renamed Barangay Ginebra Kings in homage to its fans."
In a speech delivered by Rep. Edcel C. Lagman for an oath-taking ceremony, he defined barangay as “the smallest yet greatest political unit”. He also gave a details on the state of becoming of the barangay that we have now.
“As barangay officials, it would be best to understand the history of this unique political unit so as to better recognize its indispensability to effective local and national governance.
In the ancient barangay, the datu was the head and under the datu was the vital Council of Elders which acted as an advisory body. It is important to underscore that the datu may either be male or female. This is a reflection of how democratic our pre-Hispanic ancestors were because gender did not matter so long as the datu had the trust and confidence of the people.The only requirement was that the datu must have distinguished himself or herself in some way – be it in battle or as a crisis manager. The position can be inherited but only if successors possess the same traits as the predecessor. Otherwise, a new and more deserving datu was selected by all free men and women of the barangay, regardless of social class. Datus were indeed genuine public servants who gave premium to the interest and welfare of the barangay.
It is interesting to note that then, as now, the head of the barangay exercised executive, judicial and legislative powers. But back then, the barangay was completely autonomous and datus were answerable only to their people. Barangays were also very fluid and territorial borders were unimportant. This meant that a whole barangay may resettle into another unoccupied territory so long as a consensus has been reached among the people.
When the Spanish conquistadores arrived, they immediately saw the significance of these political units. But to use the barangay for their own ends they had to make drastic changes.Territories became fixed in order to be able to better control the subjugated population. They ordered forced relocations so as to combine several barangays to form a pueblo. The autonomy of the barangay was effectively curtailed and it became a mere sub-component of the pueblo which was administered by the gobernadorcillo who was in turn accountable to the alcade mayor.
The datu class became the principalia or the local elite co-opted by the Spanish to help govern their subjects. To completely erase the vestiges of the past, even the nomenclature was changed – datus became cabezas de barangay whose main duty was to supply the local Spanish authorities with forced labor and taxes in exchange for a fraction of the powers and privileges they previously enjoyed. The Council of Elders was also abolished because it became irrelevant as the cabeza de barangay was relegated to the role of tax collector and forced labor recruiter.
Moreover, a cabeza de barangay had to be a man and was elected only by male members of the principalia in elections that were, more often than not, influenced by the parish priest of the pueblo.
After the downfall of the Spanish regime, the Americans made very little changes to the structure of the barangay. They encouraged the use of the word barrio to replace barangay and the local village chief regained his functions as a village headman, minus the responsibility of collecting taxes and providing forced labor. Cabeza de barangay came to be called barrio captain but this was a superficial change because like the Spaniards, the Americans ensured that the village chief belonged to the ruling elite and can only be elected by those belonging to a few privileged families. Thus, the Spanish tradition of limiting the pool of would be chiefs to the local elite continued.
The name game continued during the Commonwealth period and the term barrio captain evolved into the name tiniente del barrio.
During the incumbency of President Marcos, the word barrio was eschewed and the term barangay was again embraced. The name tiniente del barrio went into disuse and the term barangay captain was adopted.
With the enactment of the Local Government Code in 1991, the current term punong barangay was instituted. Although the position of punong barangay may have evolved through the centuries and have undergone several changes in nomenclature, it is still anchored on the concept that public trust should be repaid by genuine public service.”
