Mateo Cariño

Background The present-day Baguio Central School was the site of Cariño's house.

Cariño owned vast tracts of land which covered the area which would later be known as Baguio as early as the Spanish colonial period. Titles over the land were given to him by the Spanish colonial government in exchange for his conversion to Christianity. His surname was adopted after his conversion.

In 1901, Cariño was selected as representative of Baguio to chief executive of the US Insular Government over the Philippines. —would later be known as the "Mateo Cariño Doctrine" ("Cariño Doctrine", or "Native Title") which forms the legal basis of the protection of indigenous rights over ancestral lands, The case is also the legal basis of the Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act of 1997 (IPRA).

Personal life Mateo Cariño was married to Bayosa Ortega with whom he had nine children.