With their past hardly accounted for in history, the future of the once-hidden traditional Binukot women remains challenged in the face of resistance and progressivism in the Philippines

For the first two decades of her life, Teresita ‘Tarsing’ Caballero Castor was shrouded in her family’s home, hidden from the world and the light of the sun.
As the only daughter among eight children, from childhood onwards Castor never stepped foot outside. She was raised in a separate room that only her family and maids were allowed to enter, raised just like her mother and grandmother were before her.
«For women, to be kept as a Binukot since childhood is a privilege … because of the love and the privilege of being trained as society’s cultural transmitter,» Magos said.

But that cultural transmission has been insular, to some extent, and the confinement of these chosen few has also led to their narratives being largely silenced from history and from the world.
There, she sold vegetables in a wet market, just a few hours away from an entirely different life. She had moved her whole world and entered a new one for which her experiences were of little help. Having no one to lean on, Castor understood a bittersweet lesson of life: In struggle, there is freedom.