MA. VIVIAN Sanchez, an agricultural technician at the municipal agriculture office, cites yet another reason for Paete’s economic slowdown. She says her family’s factory shut down “because although big orders came in, we couldn’t cope because we had no wood or if there was, it was too expensive.”

	ONE of carver Luis Ac-ac's unique pieces, depicting Malakas and Maganda. [photo by Jaileen Jimeno]

Ac-ac says there was a time Paete was literally littered with wood for the carvers. But it seems that when environmental laws became more stringent in the early 1990s, the carvers had to rely solely on outside sources for their timber requirement. It also has not helped that workers who had swamped the town in the past decades settled in its upland areas, cutting down trees there so that they could put up their homes.

The supply was further constricted four years ago when Paete was hit by a flashflood caused by rainwater that collected and was dammed by debris. In response, the municipal council enacted a resolution imposing fines on the unauthorized cutting of trees, including fruit trees and softwood, which are used by the woodcarvers. Paete’s artisans thus became reliant on woodcutters from other towns and nearby provinces.

“Some (raw wood) are smuggled into town from Mauban and Infanta in Quezon and even Mindoro,” admits Elpidio Agbada, Paete’s municipal planning and development coordinator. He says that even then, the supply comes few and far between, as charcoal makers get first crack at these. Apparently, woodcutters see selling to the charcoal makers as a less tedious option than making the long trip to Paete.

Ac-ac complains that the cost of raw material has more than doubled in the last 10 years or so, owing to its scarcity. “Softwood used to cost P15 to P18 per board foot,” he says. “Now it’s P37, and it’s not always of good quality.” He adds that carvers scramble to find money for their raw material once it arrives; otherwise, it will be offered to others. “You should always be ready with money (for it),” says Ac-ac.

“It would have been nice if we had our own logging area,” comments Cagayat. Indeed, a tree farm of their own could have been a buffer for Paete’s woodcarvers, and the need for one should have been even more obvious during the town’s boom years. But Planning Officer Agbada says local officials have just recently identified 54 hectares for this purpose; the plan is to use commercial tree cloning, for faster propagation and more superior yield.

WHEN THE town enacted a log ban in 2003, its real property and business tax collection declined to P1.44 million from the previous year’s total of P1.67 million. It went up a little in 2004 to P1.58 million and to P2.02 million in 2005, when storm-felled logs in Quezon province were sold to Paete’s carvers. As of 2006, the town’s tax collection stood at P2.35 million.

These days, the likes of Cagayat and Ac-ac, who have spent decades sharpening their skill at handling the paet, are able to stay afloat only through orders they receive from sukis (long-time clients) here and abroad, although sometimes new ones come their way because these had somehow heard of their craftsmanship.

Many of those who had ventured into papier-mâché, meanwhile, have also fallen victim to unprincipled business practices, this time by entrepreneurs from nearby towns and even from overseas. Agbada says the town’s papier-mâché molds, carved to perfection by Paete’s artists, have turned up in places as far as China.

“They have imported even our carvers,” he says, although it is with more than a hint of pride that he notes that Paete’s papier-mache products are preferred by investors in various countries in Europe and the Middle East. After all, Agbada says, these are painstakingly handmade, giving them character that is lacking in their mass-produced, machine-made counterparts.

In the olden days, Paete’s hardworking people had been able to rely on other lucrative (albeit seasonal) means of income aside from woodcarving. For instance, once they were already done harvesting rice, farmers would turn to fishing at the nearby lake or tending to their lanzones trees. But even Paete’s famous lanzones are no longer as bountiful as they once were.

	CARVERS begin their trade with as little as six of these tools, expanding to over 60 as their skill expands. [photo by Jaileen Jimeno]

“The woodcarving and lanzones industries seemed to have weakened at the same time,” says Sanchez of the municipal agriculture office. She says that the workers who settled upland cleared the area planted with lanzones trees.

“Halos maiyak ako kasi namumulaklak na ang mga pinutol nila (I wanted to cry because they cut down trees that were flowering),” says an elderly woman who remembers seeking refuge in Paete’s upland area during World War II.

But Sanchez allows that soil erosion is also to blame. This in turn can be traced to past logging activities and powerful storms that have hit the region. In 2006, among those toppled over by Typhoon Milenyo in the town were lanzones trees that were half a century old.

Sanchez says that from the remaining 192 hectares of land they have planted with lanzones trees, the town harvests 200 to 400 tons of the fruit each year. “The harvest is good only every other year and we used to harvest a lot more than that,” she says. The town cannot expand its lanzones area, since this means going higher upland. Based on their past experience, Sanchez says, this will only yield sour fruits.

The town’s solution is to plant new trees and apply fertilizer to those already bearing fruit, to coax higher production. But as its bad luck would have it, even the town’s lanzones industry has been plagued by unethical business practices. Locals complain that strangers pitch stalls along the highway and sell lanzones, making it appear that their produce comes from Paete.