SAN CARLOS CITY – An old, dilapidated ox cart with tambobong (thatched roof) lies in a corner of Mario Banaag’s yard in San Carlos City. Only a faded curtain covers the one foot by one foot window on its rear. Its wheels have been sold to art collectors. The bull that patiently pulled the cart for years from the village of Turac in San Carlos to Metro Manila and back has also been sold.

“The cart is more than 30 years old,” says Ricardo Cayabyab Solar, 64, the cart’s first owner.

Solar belonged to a family of viajeros (cattle caravan traders) from Turac.

The dilapidated cart – one of the original carts whose simple design belie its strength and usefulness – was brought home for good in July this year.

It served its owners well during those days when viajeros peddling bamboo and rattan crafts were a part of highway scenes and of Metro Manila’s neighborhoods.

“We brought it home because business had been bad,” says Banaag, to whom the cart was handed down by Solar.

The crumbling tambobong-roofed ox cart is a reminder of a long-gone era when cattle caravans combined culture and commerce.

Caboloan is the old name of the interior plains of Pangasinan – Binalatongan, now San Carlos City, and the towns of Basista, Malasiqui, Bayambang and some parts of Mangatarem.

Banaag has given up the life of a traveling merchant. He has sold the cart’s wheels and the aging bull that limped from Marikina City to Turac on its last journey home.

For years, the cart was a part of a cattle caravan of 10 to 12 covered carts loaded with bamboo and rattan products like bigao (winnowing tray), anduyan (baby crib or hammock), paypay (fans), bangkito (stool) and hampers manufactured by residents themselves to augment their income from farming.

Viajeros’ home

The carts also served as home to the viajeros, a shelter from the sun and rain on the road and wherever they are stationed in Metro Manila, and as retail outlets for their goods.

The viajeros lived like the gypsies of old, selling at daytime and congregating at night both for company and for protection.

They did their everyday chores right where they were stationed, usually in grassy areas in different cities of Metro Manila, which also served as their trading posts.

Ma. Crisanta “Marot” Nelmida-Flores, author of the book, “The Cattle Caravans of Ancient Caboloan: Connecting History, Culture and Commerce by Cartwheel,” says the cattle caravan started in the 1950s and reached its peak from the 1970s to the early 1990s.

In 2004, she chronicled the last journey of a lone cart, manned by Banaag and his son, Michael, for the book and a video documentary through a grant from the National Historical Institute.

Banaag built a cart and a tambobong following inherited designs and procedures for the journey.

For a week, the cart traveled from Turac to Quezon City, “retracing the time-honored steps of the caravans of yore,” says Nelmida-Flores.

It was drawn by a Brahma bull that the documentation team christened “Junior.”

Banaag says policemen stopped them when they reached Quezon City. The policemen took them to a police station where they spent the night, despite the policemen’s failure to cite what law they violated, he says.

That experience manifested the unfriendliness of the city to the “exotic” cart caravan trading.

In her book, Nelmida-Flores cites the decreasing demand for bamboo-based products. “Local folk who used to patronize the bamboo bangkito now prefer the attractive, colorful plastic chairs sold practically everywhere,” she says.

She says contemporary tastes have caused the caravan traders to cease being viajeros and to become mere vendors in the big city.