Butuan (pronounced ), officially the City of Butuan (; Butuanon: Dakbayan hong Butuan; ), is a highly urbanized city and the regional center of Caraga, Philippines. It is the de facto capital of the province of Agusan del Norte where it is geographically situated but has an administratively independent government. According to the 2024 census, it has a population of 385,530 people making it the most populous city in Caraga Region.
It served as the former capital of the Rajahnate of Butuan before 1001 until about 1521. The city used to be known during that time as the best in gold and boat manufacturing in the entire Philippine archipelago, having traded with places as far as Champa, Ming, Srivijaya, Majapahit, and the Bengali coasts. It is located at the northeastern part of the Agusan Valley, Mindanao, sprawling across the Agusan River. It is bounded to the north, west and south by Agusan del Norte, to the east by Agusan del Sur and to the northwest by Butuan Bay.
Butuan was the capital of the province of Agusan del Norte until 2000, when Republic Act 8811 transferred the capital to Cabadbaran. For statistical and geographical purposes by the Philippine Statistics Authority, Butuan is grouped with Agusan del Norte but governed administratively independent from the province while legislatively administered by the province's 1st congressional district and also the most populous city in the province. However, the provincial government still holds office in Butuan, since the actual transfer of provincial offices to the new capital is still pending.
Etymology The name "Butuan" is believed to have originated from the sour fruit locally called batuan. Other etymological sources say that it comes from a certain Datu Buntuan, a chieftain who once ruled over areas of the present-day city.
According to Datu Makalipay, Butuan was named after the wife of Datu Balansag who was the tiniente de barangay of the area before.
History Old Butuan
Butuan, during the pre-colonial times, was a precolonial city-state ruled by a rajah, an Indianized kingdom known for its metallurgic industry and sophisticated naval technology. Butuan flourished at the 10th and 11th centuries CE, and had an extensive trade network with the Champa civilization and the Srivijaya Empire.
By 1001, Butuan had established contact with the Song dynasty of China. The History of Song recorded the appearance of a Butuan mission at the Chinese imperial court, and the rajahnate was described as a small Hindu country with a Buddhist monarchy, which had a regular trade connection with Champa. The mission, under a king named "Kiling", asked for equal status in court protocol with the Champa envoy, but ultimately was denied by the imperial court.Scott, William Prehispanic Source Materials: For the Study of Philippine History, p. 66 However, under the reign of Sri Bata Shaja, the diplomatic equality was eventually granted to the kingdom, and as a result the diplomatic relations of the two nations reached its peak in the Yuan dynasty.Song Shi Chapter 7 to 8
Evidence of these trading links is in the discovery of 11 balangay boats around Ambangan in Barangay Libertad, which was described as the only concentration of archaeological, ancient, ocean-going boats in Southeast Asia. More evidence of the post was the discovery of a village in Libertad that specialized in gold, as well as the discovery of deformed skulls similar to reports in Sulawesi. Other assorted artifacts have also found by locals and treasure hunters.
Colonial period On March 31, 1521, an Easter Sunday, Ferdinand Magellan ordered a mass to be celebrated. This was officiated by Friar Pedro Valderrama, the Andalusian chaplain of the fleet, the only priest then. Another priest, the French Bernard Calmette (Bernardo Calmeta) had been marooned at Patagonia with Juan de Cartagena for being implicated in the mutiny at Puerto San Julián. Conducted near the shores of the island, the Holy First Mass marked the birth of Christianity in the Philippines. Rajah Colambu and Siagu were said to be among the first natives of the soon-to-be Spanish colony to attend the mass among other Mazaua inhabitants, together with visitors from Butuan who came with the entourage of Siagu, king of Butuan.
Controversy has been generated regarding the holding of the first mass—whether it was held in Limasawa, Leyte or in Masao, Butuan, in the hidden isle made up of barangays Pinamanculan and Bancasi inside Butuan—in the latest discovered site in the small barangay of Barobo, situated near between Agusan del Sur and Surigao del Sur, or elsewhere. It is sure, however, that Ferdinand Magellan did not drop anchor by the mouth of Agusan River in 1521 and hold mass to commemorate the event which was held at Mazaua, an island separate from Butuan which, in the geographical conception of Europeans who wrote about it, was a larger entity than what it is now. Antonio Pigafetta who wrote an eyewitness account of Magellan's voyage described in text and in map a Butuan that stretched from today's Surigao up to the top edge of Zamboanga del Norte.
Upon contact, Butuan was then incorporated by the Spanish into the Caraga Region. In 1635, Caraga was fortified by 45 additional Spanish soldiers and household heads from Mexico, in 1670 a further 81 soldiers, and in 1672 still another 81.Convicts or Conquistadores? Spanish Soldiers in the Seventeenth-Century Pacific By Stephanie J. Mawson AGI, México, leg. 25, núm. 62; AGI, Filipinas, leg. 8, ramo 3, núm. 50; leg. 10, ramo 1, núm. 6; leg. 22, ramo 1, núm. 1, fos. 408 r −428 v; núm. 21; leg. 32, núm. 30; leg. 285, núm. 1, fos. 30 r −41 v . By the end of the 1700s, Caraga had 3,497 native families,ESTADISMO DE LAS ISLAS FILIPINAS TOMO PRIMERO By Joaquín Martínez de Zúñiga (Original Spanish)ESTADISMO DE LAS ISLAS FILIPINAS TOMO SEGUNDO By Joaquín Martínez de Zúñiga (Original Spanish) protected by a company of (100) Mexican soldiers. Afterwards the census of 1818 shows Butuan had 3,703 native families and 10 Spanish-Filipino families from Spain (Excluding the native identifying Mexicans who arrived earlier and had already assimilated)
The first municipal election in Butuan took place in March 1902 in accordance with Public Law No. 82 which coincided with the American occupation of the place.
During the Japanese occupation of the Philippines in World War II, the Japanese enslaved local girls, teenagers, and young adults into becoming "comfort women", who they routinely gang-raped and murdered in "comfort stations" that they established in the city in 1942. More than half of Butuan, if not all of it, was burned when local guerrilla forces attacked the enemy garrison on March 12, 1943, in the Battle of Butuan.Kent Holmes, Wendell Fertig and His Guerrilla Forces in the Philippines: Fighting the Japanese Occupation, 1942–1945 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2015), p. 112.Keats, J., 1963, They Fought Alone, New York:J.B. Lippincott CompanyChildress, C., 2003, Wendell Fertig's Fictional "Autobiography": A Critical Review of They Fought Alone, Bulletin of the American Historical Collection, Vol. 31, No. 1(23), January 2003 On January 17, 1945, guerrillas attacked Japanese troops on the road between Cabadbaran and Butuan to prevent the Japanese garrison at Butuan from being reinforced. When the guerrillas depleted their ammunition supply, they were forced to retreat.Holmes, pp. 116–7. Later in 1945, the Philippine Commonwealth troops in Butuan together with the recognized guerrillas attacked the Japanese forces during the Battle of Agusan. On October 20, 1948, still recovering from the war, the entire municipality was ruined by a fire.
Third Republic and Marcos dictatorship
By the late 1940s to the 1970s, Butuan's industry specialized in timber, earning it the nickname "Timber City of the South". The plentiful trees of the area invited many investors and migrants from Luzon and Visayas to the city, and inspired then Congressman Marcos M. Calo to file a bill elevating Butuan for cityhood. On August 2, 1950, this was passed, converting Butuan into a city.
However, by the early 1980s, the logging industry of the city began to decline, although the city was still an economic haven for many investors. The city's main income by that time frame and until this day depended on small and medium business, and large-scale projects by investors. On February 7, 1985, the city was reclassified from a chartered city to a highly urbanized city.
In the aftermath of the People Power Revolution in February 1986 that ousted President Ferdinand Marcos from power, Figurado Plaza's 14-year tenure as mayor ended upon being replaced by Guillermo Sanchez amidst a nationwide replacement of incumbent mayors with officers in charge. Plaza's removal was due to his membership under Marcos' Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL) party; his older brother Democrito Plaza was also a known ally of Marcos during the latter's dictatorship.
Fifth Republic In May 1987, Figurado Plaza's 29-year-old wife Charito B. Plaza ran for representative of Agusan del Norte's 1st district under the UNIDO coalition and won against 18 other candidates. She eventually served three consecutive terms in office from 1987 to 1998.
On the morning of March 10, 1988, the frustrated murder hearing of Pablo Macapas at the Capitol Building in Butuan had just adjourned when Macapas fatally shot his accuser, former Nasipit mayor Mariano Corvera Sr., multiple times in the courtroom. In the aftermath of the assassination, murder charges were filed against Macapas and his counsel, Carmen Mayor Tranquilino O. Calo Jr. (to whom Macapas was alleged to have been his bodyguard), driver Bellarmino Allocod, and two others. Although investigating fiscal Macario Balansag determined there was prima facie evidence of murder against the respondents on June 22, he was later assassinated as well on August 19, 1988 on his way to the office. While Macapas was never caught, Mayor Calo and Allocod were later found guilty of murder by an RTC in March 1990, but pending his appeal before the Supreme Court, Calo died of myocardial infarction in February 1993, while the court later reversed Allocod's conviction by 1996 due to the prosecution's failure to prove his guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
On the morning of October 4, 1990, Butuan and Cagayan de Oro became the sites of a separatist rebellion in Northern Mindanao led by dissident army officers Alexander Noble and Agapito Carbeno, the latter of whom led 200 army soldiers in taking over the 402nd Infantry Brigade headquarters in Bancasi, Butuan. Two days later, the rebellion ended upon Noble's surrender to former Cagayan de Oro mayor Aquilino Pimentel Jr.
On February 23, 1995 the region of Caraga was created by virtue of Republic Act 7901, with Butuan as its regional center, and the provincial capital of Agusan del Norte. In 2000, Republic Act 8811 formally transferred the capital of Agusan del Norte from Butuan to Cabadbaran; however most provincial offices are still located in the city.
In 2021, Timber City Academy, a school in Butuan, was ravaged by a fire.
In the summer of 2023, the Agusan Capitol was rocked by a bomb threat, which prevented the governor from entering the city due to threats of a rebel presence, according to some reports. Later on December of that year, the city was ravaged by a 7.6 magnitude earthquake, which damaged many parts of the city's buildings, such as SM City Butuan, as well as schools and major bridges.
Geography According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, the City of Butuan has a total land area of , which is roughly 4.1% of the total area of the Caraga region.