Quirino is one of the smallest and least populated provinces in Luzon, tucked between the Sierra Madre and the Cagayan Valley lowlands. It has six municipalities, a single city (none), and a population of fewer than 200,000 people spread across forested mountains and river valleys. The Agta—nomadic hunter-gatherers who have lived in the Sierra Madre for thousands of years—maintain communities in Quirino's interior. The Cagayan River and its tributaries run through the province, providing the rapids that have made Maddela and Diffun known for white water activities.
CabarroguisCapital
3,057 km²Area
6Municipalities
LuzonIsland Group
Cagayan Valley (II)Region
The Quiet Province
Quirino was created in 1971 from parts of Nueva Vizcaya. It is one of the youngest provinces in the Philippines. Its low population density—among the lowest in Luzon—is the combined result of its mountainous terrain, limited agricultural land, and late formal organization. The Maddela Protected Landscape covers a significant portion of the province's Sierra Madre forests, which are among the most intact remaining lowland forest in the Philippines.
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Named for a PresidentQuirino province is named after Elpidio Quirino, the second President of the Philippine Republic (1948–1953), who was born in Vigan, Ilocos Sur. The province was created three years before Quirino's death and during the period when naming public institutions after living political figures was common practice.
The territory of Quirino was historically inhabited by Agta hunter-gatherers and later by Ilongot (Bugkalot) slash-and-burn farmers who moved through the Sierra Madre. Spanish missionaries made limited contact with interior communities but never substantially reduced or taxed these populations. The area was administered from Nueva Vizcaya until the creation of Quirino in 1971.
Pre-colonialAgta and Ilongot Presence
The Sierra Madre forests of present-day Quirino were home to Agta (Dumagat) nomadic hunter-gatherers and Ilongot (Bugkalot) shifting cultivators. These groups maintained distinct territories and social systems largely outside Spanish colonial reach.
1890sAmerican Surveys
American colonial surveys documented the Agta and Ilongot communities in the Sierra Madre. Michelle Rosaldo's anthropological work among the Ilongot in Quirino and Nueva Vizcaya in the 1960s–70s produced significant scholarship on highland Luzon culture.
1971Quirino Province Created
Executive Order No. 371 created Quirino as a separate province from Nueva Vizcaya, with Cabarroguis as the capital. The new province was named after former President Elpidio Quirino.
1996Maddela Protected Landscape Established
The Quirino Protected Landscape (encompassing areas around Maddela) was declared a protected area under the National Integrated Protected Areas System, recognizing the Sierra Madre forests as a critical biodiversity corridor.
Quirino's lowland population is predominantly Ilocano-speaking, the result of decades of migration from the Ilocos region and from neighboring Nueva Vizcaya. The Agta of the Sierra Madre live in small mobile communities and practice a way of life based on hunting, fishing, and gathering, augmented in recent decades by wage labor and market exchange. The Ilongot (Bugkalot), once feared as headhunters, now live in settled communities and have largely converted to Christianity.
The Ilongot Tradition
The Ilongot of the Sierra Madre were documented extensively by anthropologist Renato Rosaldo, whose work on grief and headhunting—particularly his essay 'Grief and the Headhunter's Rage'—brought attention to their culture beyond academic circles. Headhunting as a practice ended in the 1970s following Christian conversion and Philippine government pressure. Contemporary Ilongot communities are farmers and forest workers who maintain elements of their material culture in weaving and music.
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Agta Bow HuntingThe Agta of the Sierra Madre are among the last communities in the Philippines who hunt with bow and arrow in the forest. They hunt wild pigs, deer, and monkey using longbows made from local hardwood. The practice continues among some communities, though reduced by forest loss and wildlife depletion.
Quirino's food is Ilocano in character—simple, vegetable-forward, using preserved and fermented fish as flavoring. River fish from the Cagayan tributaries supplement the diet. The Agta and Ilongot communities in the interior have distinct food traditions based on forest products and game, but these are not commercially available.
Pinakbet sa Bagoong Isda
The Quirino version of pinakbet uses fermented freshwater fish (bagoong isda) rather than the shrimp paste version common elsewhere. Vegetables—bitter melon, eggplant, okra, squash, tomato—are cooked with pork and the fish paste until just tender. The broth is minimal and intensely flavored.
Inabraw na Galunggong
Dried or fresh galunggong (round scad) simmered with vegetables in a light bagoong-flavored broth. An Ilocano comfort dish common in Quirino households—inexpensive, nutritious, and made from fish that survive the irregular supply chains of a remote province.
15 minutesPrep
1.5 hoursCook
4–6Serves
Ingredients
- 1 kgpork ribs or backbone
- 3 medium, quarteredpotatoes
- 1/4 head, cut into wedgescabbage
- 1 bundlepechay (bok choy)
- 1 large, quarteredonion
- 1 tsp, wholeblack pepper
- 2 tbspfish sauce
- 8 cupswater
Method
- Bring pork and water to a boil. Skim foam thoroughly.
- Add onion and whole peppercorns. Reduce heat and simmer 1 hour.
- Add potatoes and cook 15 minutes until tender.
- Add cabbage and pechay. Cook 3–5 minutes until just wilted.
- Season with fish sauce. Serve hot with rice and a dipping sauce of fish sauce and calamansi.
Cook's noteNilaga is one of the cleanest Filipino soups—clear broth, minimal seasoning. The quality of the pork determines the quality of the broth. In Quirino, pork is often from backyard-raised pigs and the difference in flavor compared to commercial pork is noticeable.
Ilocano is the dominant language of Quirino's lowland and settled communities, reflecting the province's settler population. Ilongot (Bugkalot) is spoken by the highland communities in the Sierra Madre, and Agta (a Dumagat language) is spoken by the remaining nomadic and semi-nomadic communities in the forest interior. Filipino and English are used in schools and government.
IlocanoPrimary (lowland)
Ilongot (Bugkalot), Agta (Dumagat)Indigenous
Filipino, EnglishOfficial
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Agta LanguageThe Agta languages of the Sierra Madre are a cluster of related but distinct languages (Casiguran Dumagat, Umiray Dumagat, and others). Most Agta communities are now bilingual in Agta and Ilocano or Tagalog. Several Agta languages have fewer than 1,000 fluent speakers and are considered endangered.
The Forest People
The Agta of the Sierra Madre have been the subject of anthropological study since the early American colonial period. Researchers came to document what they believed was a disappearing way of life—nomadic bands moving through the forest, hunting with bows, trading forest products for rice at the forest edge. The Agta obliged by continuing to live in the forest, which the researchers found convenient and which the Agta found unremarkable.
What the researchers did not always appreciate was that the Agta were not unchanging. They adapted. They adopted iron tools when these became available. They traded with lowlanders. Some settled near missions. They learned Ilocano to deal with the settlers who came into their forest. They continued to hunt with bows because bows were effective for certain game and cost nothing to operate. The persistence of the bow was practical, not archaeological.
Quirino's forest today is smaller than it was. The Sierra Madre corridor holds, but the pressures are real—logging concessions, mining claims, and agricultural encroachment from the valley floor. The Agta communities that remain in the interior of Quirino navigate between the forest that is their resource base and the lowland economy that is increasingly their market. They are not a remnant of the past. They are a group of people solving the problem of how to live in a forest that the Philippine state keeps classifying as available for other purposes.