Aurora (province)

Aurora, officially the Province of Aurora (; ; ), is a province in the Philippines located in the eastern part of Central Luzon region, facing the Philippine Sea. Its capital is Baler and borders, clockwise from the south, the provinces of Quezon, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Nueva Vizcaya, Quirino, and Isabela. Maria Aurora is the only landlocked town in the province and yet, the most populous. It is the only province in Central Luzon that has no chartered cities.

Before 1979, Aurora was part of the province of Quezon. The province was named after Aurora Aragon, the wife of Manuel L. Quezon, the president of the Philippine Commonwealth, after whom the mother province was named.

History

Spanish colonial era

In 1572, the Spanish explorer Juan de Salcedo became the first European to visit the region that would be known as Aurora while he was exploring the northern coast of Luzon. Salcedo reportedly visited the towns of Casiguran, Baler and Infanta. Baler & Casiguran were part of La Provincia de La Pampanga, which also included Pampanga, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, and Tarlac, and in 1591, the towns became part of Kalilayan, which included Nueva Ecija, until Kalilayan changed its name to Tayabas in 1749, taken from the town of the same name.

In the early days of the Spanish colonial period, Aurora was ecclesiastically linked to Infanta, which today rests further south, in northern Quezon. The earliest missionaries in the province were the Franciscans, who had established missions in Baler and Casiguran in 1609. In 1853, the new military district of Tayabas was separated from Nueva Ecija and included present-day Southern Quezon as well as present-day Aurora. In 1858, Binangonan de Lampon and the Polillo Islands were separated from Nueva Ecija to form part of Infanta. The provincial capital of Tayabas was already transferred from Tayabas to Lucena on March 12, 1901, a year before the transfer of El Príncipe. The northern area which is part of the modern Dilasag and area of modern Casiguran was part of Nueva Vizcaya and also transferred to Tayabas in 1905. In 1918, the area of modern Aurora north of Baler was transferred to the authority of Nueva Vizcaya, but returned to Tayabas in 1921 and in 1942, the entire present-day territory of Aurora was annexed from Tayabas to Nueva Ecija, and returned to Tayabas in 1945 until the time when Tayabas was renamed to Quezon in 1946. This was named in honor of Manuel L. Quezon, who was the second President of the Philippines and elected governor of Tayabas in 1906 and assemblyman of 1st district of Tayabas in 1907 born and raised in Baler, formerly one of the towns of the province.

World War II

In 1942, invading Japanese forces landed in the town of Casiguran. On February 19, 1945, to May 11, 1945, Allied troops as well as Philippine Commonwealth forces and recognized guerrilla units fought on the Battle of Casiguran during the return of American forces on Luzon on World War II.

Postwar era

During the postwar years, there were several attempts to make Aurora independent from the rest of Quezon Province. One obvious reason was the area's isolation from the rest of Quezon Province: there were no direct links to the rest of the province and much of the terrain was mountainous and heavily forested, which made the area relatively isolated, and its distance from Quezon's capital Lucena.

In 1978, the Lieutenant Governor of the Sub-Province Atty. Luis S. Etcubañez filed a Parliamentary Bill for the establishment of Aurora at the Interim Batasang Pambansa, leveraging his political ties with the various Assemblymen of Region IV. This led to a plebiscite in May 1979 to confirm the citizens of the Province's willingness to separate from Quezon Province, and the eventual establishment of the province through Batas Pambansa Blg. 7 on November 21, 1978.

1968 Casiguran earthquake

On , the 1968 Casiguran earthquake, with a moment magnitude of 7.6 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), took place with an epicenter was in Casiguran. The quake generated a small non-destructive tsunami, but the majority of the 207 people killed during the quake were the result of the collapse of a six-story building in Manila.

During the Marcos regime

The beginning months of the 1970s had marked a period of turmoil and change in the Philippines, as well as in Aurora. 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 a significant rise of social unrest.

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.

One significant impact on the residents of Aurora, especially its farmers, was the administration's practice of hamletting to achieve military control of the area.

Things took a more violent turn in the town of Dinalungan during the early 1980s, after farmers organized a rally against a landowner who attempted to claim their farms, seeking help and support from the nuns at the Carmelite mission that had been established there.

Birth of the surf tourism industry

One of the positive things that did happen to Aurora during the 1970s was the development of the surf tourism industry after the helicopter attack and surfing sequences of the film Apocalypse Now were filmed at Baler in 1976–77. The exposure of locals to the art of surfing during the production of the movie is credited with having sparked the surfing culture in Aurora and the Philippines.

Administrative assignment

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Being originally part of the province of Quezon, Aurora was part of the Southern Tagalog Region (Region IV). Upon the issuance of Executive Order No. 103, dated May 17, 2002, by then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the province of Aurora was moved to Central Luzon (Region III), the geographical location of the province. The provinces south of Aurora were reformed as Calabarzon and Mimaropa, and Southern Tagalog was limited to being a cultural-geographic region. The total separation of Aurora from Quezon, and the transfer of Aurora to Central Luzon were the fulfillment of the wishes and prayers of the residents of the original Municipalities of Baler and Casiguran to be truly independent from Quezon Province for the first time and to reform the original La Pampanga since the Spanish occupation.

Contemporary

On April 22, 2024, newly installed Governor Reynante A. Tolentino took his oath of office as governor before his brother, Dipaculao Mayor Danilo A. Tolentino. He replaced Atty. Christian Noveras, who was dismissed by the Office of the Ombudsman along with his father, Vice Governor Gerardo Noveras, in December, 2023.

Geography

Aurora is a coastal province covering an area of in east-central Luzon. To the north, it is bordered by the Northern Sierra Madre Natural Park of Isabela, to the west by the central range of the Sierra Madre which contains the Casecnan Protected Landscape and Aurora Memorial National Park, to the south by the Umiray River, and to the east by the Philippine Sea which opens to the Pacific Ocean. The San Ildefonso Peninsula lies in the province's northern portion between the Philippine Sea and the Casiguran Sound.

Topography

The province covers a portion of the Sierra Madre mountain range. As such, the elevation is generally steep to very steep and only about 14% of the province's total area is flat. It experiences significant rainfall throughout the year.

Administrative divisions

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Aurora is politically subdivided into 8 municipalities, all encompassed by a lone legislative district.

Dilasag and Casiguran form the northern part of the province, while Dinalungan, Dipaculao, Maria Aurora, and Baler (the capital) make up the central portion. The southern half of the province consists of San Luis and Dingalan.

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