CORDILLERA DIARY (1987)

     "If rich, it is easy enough to conceal our wealth but, if poor, it is not quite so easy to conceal our poverty. We shall find it less difficult to hide a thousand guineas, than one hole in our coat."--Charles Caleb Colton

     They were in our young years mysterious and far away and unreachable. They were like Timbuktus, never-never lands populated by strange peoples with strange tongues. We did not dream of actually seeing them and exploring their worlds as we saw them in the recesses of our young mind,

     We were still in short pants in Laoag when we heard Tabuk tumble from from the lips of a traveler, who had stayed overnight in a neighbor's house, Tabuk? It's the name of a place, volunteered a burly classmate who seemed to possess a storehouse of useful and useless information. In our imagination, Tabuk was a distant country tucked away in a forested area somewhere beyond the blue mountains that could be seen from the old bridge across the Padsan River. Kalinga and Apayao were then separate entities in the old Mt. Province.

     Tabuk loomed larger than our physical world, which was them limited to a few surrounding streets with the dying river in the south as boundary. Yet it was never in the list of places we had wanted to visit.

     But recently, after more than thirty years, we set foot on the rich brown soil of Tabuk. to fulfill a speaking engagement. And we found that most of what we had thought about the town was downright outrageous and wrong,

     Tabuk is not built atop a high mountain but on a wide plain. Nor is it in the uplands of the Cordillera as we had imagined it to be located. Actually, it is geographically situated in the Cagayan Valley  composed of the provinces of Cagayan, Isabela, Nueva Vizcaya and Quirino. Tabuk lies in corner on the western extremity of this vast expanse of flat lands.

     We stayed two days in Tabuk, but never did we see the childhood product of our imagination:
savage barbarians in G-strings, each holding a menacing spear in one hand and a sharp aliwa in the other. They don't wear those things anymore, our hosts informed us even as he disclosed that most of the residents were immigrants from nearby provinces.

     The only ethnic faces we saw to a couple sitting by the roadside--they were chewing betel nut like most of the natives of Carasi, Ilocos Norte--who probably were waiting for their ride home to one of the interior of the province.

     It was too brief a sojourn for us to see more of Tabuk and know more about the place, its people, and the socio-cultural and the economic orientation. And our schedule was too tight we did not even have the opprtunity to walk what used to be billed as the widest street in the country. But there was one unforgettable memory the we brought from Tabuk. It was our last night and we requested our host to accompany us to purchase some souvenir items in the poblacion.

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GOD'S WAY OF TEACHING WHAT?

THEY are dirt poor. His wife has stage 4 cancer. She stayed in the hospital for several days then the husband took her home-- there was nothing more the doctors could do to cure her illness. Meaning, she is going to wait for her last moments under the care of her unemployed husband. What is left of her monthly pension is barely enough for their needs. He cooked for her, bathed her, changed her clothes. She could not see anymore because of her diabetes. A nephew--the son of her sister- has been with them since he was born. He works as a utility man in one of the city's mall. Last Thursday, he died of a stroke. The nephew will have to take care of the wife he considers as her mother. Can he cope with his duties as care taker and worker at the same time? God will provide? He took away the husband.

They live in a city where the city mayor has an P80-M mansion, and where some of the residents, also poor, use the Padsan river as latrine and garbage dump.

Of course, the  dead man will not be in a position to hire this carro to take his body to the camposanto.

                        

'ARAMID TI PAKAKITAAN'

That's Chavit Singson's slogan when he ran and won the governorship of Ilocos Sur.

THE WITNESSES OF THEIR PERFIDIES

The evidence of their corruption is seen in their newly-built houses, business establishments, their cars. Who are they? The Isabela town executive, the municipal engineer, the MAO, the 15-30 municipal employees that

that include an illiterate village chieftain. And their cohorts are increasing!

A TOWN OF ROBBERS, GREEDY, IDIOTIC OFFICIALS

Death is patient as a dead cat.--from a poem of Jim Morrison, the author who was originally a girl.

Never in the blogger's life as a Philippine journalist has he known of a PH situation like this: the town executive feeding himself and his family--wife, son, daughter-in-law, some relatives-- off the town's coffers. According to the town government payroll, their combined salaries total more than P100,000 a month. He has at least five expensive houses constructed out of the people's money including the use of the town's employees and trucks for deliveries of sand and gravel used in the houses.

               

WINDFALL FOR ISABELA MAYOR AND HIS FAMILY

Brandishing documents including the municipal government's plantilla or payroll, the candidate  has accused his rival for the mayoralty post of enriching himself and his family by getting the lion's share of the town's P142-million annual budget. According to the plantilla, the incumbent mayor receives a monthly salary of P53,000 while his wife whom he appointed as his executive assistant, gets P26,000 monthly compensation. A son and daughter-in-law, whom he appointed as executive assistants, receive P16,000 each as monthly salaries.

An irrigation canal of the Magat River Hydro-electric Power Plant in Aguinaldo Village operated by SN Aboitiz Power Plant, which pays millions of pesos in taxes to the town where it is located.

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      It was learned that the mayor defended himself by saying that the appointments of his relatives to their respective posts was legal.
     A scion of a distinguished political pedigree--his father Renato was town mayor for many years while his grandfather Angelino was Ramon's  founding mayor in the 1960s-- Vizcarra, 32, also accused the incumbent mayor of owning several expensive houses in the villages of Aguinaldo and Oscariz and in the poblacion. He also said that the mayor had several service cars including an Innova and a Lenux.
     Vizcarra, a dentist, also criticized the mayor for appointing 238 people to posts, some of which are high-paying. that do not benefit the town but serve only for his political advantage. Through job orders, 15 people were appointed as the mayor's personal bodyguards with daily salaries of P300 each. He claimed that the high-paying posts were given to outsiders.
     Vizcarra, who was overwhelmingly voted into office in the last local election, made the charges during a Liberal Party political rally in the village of Nagbacalan last Thursday.       

REYNALDO DUQUE WRITES 30

The most prolific Ilokano mannurat since the 1970s crossed the Great Divide two or three days ago. Last time we saw him was during a convention of Ilokano writers at a seminary in Quezon City. He was 68. It was a time to die? Fellow mannurat Greg Laconsay and Arturo M. Padua , much older than him, died three or four years earlier. He (Rey) died in the same month Crispina-Balderas Bragado, another mannurat, breathed her last, according to fellow Ilokano writer Prescy N. Bermudez, who took part in the necrological services of Rey in Paranaque last Saturday.
    

We had a brief talk with Rey then. He said he had just been released from a hospital where he had been confined for sometime. The blogger observed that his color had assumed a reddish hue. That was four years ago.
    

Here's the blogger's write-up about Rey at the defunct Philippine Gazette published by my Igorot friend Alan who also died several years ago because of dental problems:  

MANNURAT IN PALANCA HALL OF FAME

     Reynaldo Duque is a native of Bagani Ubbog in Candon City, Ilocos Sur. He is the quintessential "man of letters"-- poet, essayist, novelist, short story writer, playwright, critic, radio scriptwriter and komiks writer.  Also a translator, he writes in three languages: Ilocano, Tagalog and English.

     The editor of the biggest (in circulation) magazine in the country, Rey has beaten the best Tagalog writers in the annual Don Carlos Palanca Awards for Literature. In fact, he has been installed in the illustrious Palanca Hall of fame. This, after his Apong Simon, a story based on the life of Serapio Gambito, one of the three Katipuneros who buried Gregorio del Pilar in Tirad Pass, bagged the gold medal, his sixth first prize, in the 53rd editon of the Award. No other mannurat, not even the late Manuel E. Arguilla or Francisco Arcellana, has achieved such fame. It will take a long time for another Ilocano writer to be cited and included in the exclusive club.
     And no other Ilocano writer has gained financially from his or her writing skills than Rey. In the 1998 Centennial Literary Awards, his epic, "Candon", won the P1-million top prize, the biggest money he has won since joining literary contests. Writing practically everyday, except Sunday, Ray, to date has won 88 awards, 39 of them first prizes and 19 Palanca awards. No mean feat for this prompdi who once enrolled in a pre-law course at the University of Santo Tomas and later at the Manuel L. Quezon University. 
 


Nota Bene: Rey was cremated after lunch on a Saturday, according to fellow Ilokano writer Prescy N. Bermudez who attended Rey's necrological services at a Paranaque Funeral House.

WINDFALL FROM STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE and the God of Rudy

The Laoag City Mayor who owns an P80-million mansion (by deduction Gov. Imee Marcos who has been accused of having a trust fund abroad supports the chief executive for constructing this house) has allegedly defended his abode by saying that the money came also from the projects--Pure Gold Mall, SM Supermarket, Home Depot, Camella Homes, to name a few-- which have been put up in the city. We speak here of standard operation procedure whereby, he approves projects and then gets money for his signature. How much did Henry Sy give him, and Manny Villar and other businessmen operating in the city? The amount is mind-boggling, says a critic. Apart from the monthly jueteng payola. And he keeps it all? His bank account must be flushed with money, much more, more, more than P15-million that an Isabela city engineer has been maintaining since he was appointed to the post two years ago.  
     Naggasatkan, Lakay. Remember you are there in your perch, because the people voted for you. Did I hear, why should I give back?

Their votes have been bought. So why give benefits to them, dammit?


And what says the Bureau of Internal Revenue ? Or the chain-smoking President Noynoy Aquino? Ayanna dayta ibagbagam a nalinteg a dalan? Ania met ti masaom, Apo Padi Mayugba? The poor will always be with us? And the rich will always be there amidst the squalor and the social inequality? And Imee and Bongbong and Imelda, who will always beat the hell out of Mariano sho sho billit ?

Who will cry for the people, some of whom use the Padsan river as latrine, for this kind of perfidy committed by the powers-that-be? Where is the god of Representative Rudy Farinas, the one he worshiped last Good Friday when he was wearing shorts in a long long libut of images including the dead Christ? Was that you, Imee, with that stem cell face talking to Apo Padi?
Make you conclusions, ladies and gentlemen. And you, Imee? Who gave you the trust fund? Whence did it come from? From the hidden wealth that is no longer "alleged"?