Start:	Sep 23, '07 4:00p
Location:	Channel 12 Sky Cable

To reawaken a sense of history, a sense of pride and a sense of community in the people of Baguio – PORTRAITS: Tales From A Hill Station is an audio-visual portrayal of the different aspects of life in the City of Baguio – all its fascinating facets as seen from different perspectives.

This production shall explore various artistic approaches to video production in presenting the best of Baguio – its renowned personalities, events and destinations.

PORTRAITS goes on air in key cities in Northern Luzon – Baguio, La Trinidad, Pangasinan, and Laoag – with a pilot episode coming out on September 23, 2007 via SkyCable as part of the city's 98th Charter Day Celebration.

Its first four episodes shall depict the history of Baguio – beginning with its genesis as a Hill Station in the early 1900’s to its evolution into a bustling cosmopolitan city today.

Created by Open Space Projects, a local multimedia production group, and to be hosted by Kelly Erin McGurk under the direction of Karlo Marko Altomonte, PORTRAITS is being produced with an entirely local cast and crew.

A group of Ibaloi (elders, hehe) in the US have just recently embarked on an ambitious project to draft the first Ibaloi dictionary.

 

I think this was initiated or inspired by indigenous historian Mor Pungayan, columnist of the Baguio Midland Courier.

 

For those who don't know, the Ibaloi or Nabaloi is an indigenous ethnic group found in the northern Philippines. The Ibaloi are one of the indigenous peoples collectively known as Igorot, who live in the mountains of the Cordillera Central on the island of Luzon. 

 

Today there are approximately 55,000 Ibaloi; most of them can be found in the southern part of the province of Benguet.

 

The Ibaloi language belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian languages family. The Ibaloi language is closely related to the Pangasinan language, spoken primarily in the province of Pangasinan, located southwest of Benguet.

The Ibaloi are a mostly agricultural people cultivating rice in terraced fields. Many contemporary Ibaloi have integrated into the mainstream Filipino culture and some are employed as miners in the gold and silver mines of Benguet.

The Ibaloi traditionally practiced mummification. The process they used involved smoking the corpse for months to completely dehydrate the dead body, which preserved every part of the body including tattoos and internal organs. They would then encase the preserved body within a hollowed out log and placed in caves that are thought to be spiritual by the Ibaloi.

By the way, paragraph 2 - 5 comes straight from Wikipedia, so anyone who has much more to add to that stump should!

 

 

Until today, in elementary and high school text books, there is no mention of the key role the 66th Infantry Battalion played in capturing Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita.

For sure, the general surrendered to the Americans. But who do you think captured him? Here's a humble tribute to an accidental hero.

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By posting this in my blog, I hope I am not misunderstood as being anti-Japanese.

The Japanese-Igorot community contributed so much to the growth of Baguio and Benguet, and many members of that community continue to contribute to the region's struggle for self determination.

On a more personal note, my daughter loves Japanese anime and, frankly, looks like a Japanese anime character come to life! My younger brother, too, was really into Japanese Zen culture for the longest time.

Snow Falling Among Cedars is also one of the most beautiful movies I have watched.

 

 

 

 

 

 

To put to rest all doubts about this matter, my next post will be on how racism thrived during World War II-- and how the Japanese bore the brunt of this.

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Remembering the late Dennis Molintas Sr.

(Major of the 66th Infantry Battalion, United States Forces in the Philippines-Northern Luzon, first governor of the old Mt. Province and of the newly-created Benguet Province in 1966, Filipino hero)

– By his grandson, Daniel R. Molintas.

IF OUR family has a measure of insanity, his “flavor” would be labeled these days as manic-obsessive.

MY GRANDFATHER, Dennis Molintas Sr., was obsessed with the abrupt, full scale, instantaneous north-to-south disruption of the Mountain Trail. His files on the movement of the 66 th Infanty Battalion, USFIL-NL movements in World War II (which eventually burned along with his house in 2003) indicate that he monitored enemy deployments and maneuvers on a weekly basis, even years before the actual days of reckoning. The same held true for enemy deployments in Lepanto and Mankayan, Benguet.

Yet, like all heroes, he made mistakes. My Lola says that Igorot troops defending the homeland had missed out the double-layered nature of the Lepanto pillboxes. And this cost them heavily. But he made up for such shortcomings with personal valor, and honor, and loyalty to his men. They felt this and reciprocated with personal loyalty to him.

Later in his retired years, he transferred this obsessiveness to cleanliness and orderliness. His house and garden in Betag, La Trinidad was the epitome of spic and span. Being at heart an agriculturist, a teacher and really just a reluctant hero—one of the first Ibalois sent by the American colonizers to the University of the Philippines in Los Baños to study—his garden was always in perfect order.

In fact, he was very much a conservationist and ecologist, way ahead of his time. He practiced organic farming in the 1960s, before it became the fad. When he spoke of the environment and ecology, he spoke with reverence. His contemporary ex-Baguio Mayor Virginia de Guia still voices the same sentiments.

Lolo Tatang was also a staunch guard of the old school, in terms of honor and integrity. When questioned by Daddy, the ever-rebellious son, as to why he did not bend the rules even a little, when in contrast, even army sergeants were amassing wealth, he replied: “I want you to be able to look at anyone STRAIGHT IN THE EYE.”

The old man Governor Alfredo G. Lamen (yes, the famous Lamen who walked up to Congress in g-string in response to Carlos P. Romulo’s declaration that Igorots were not Filipinos) who was his partner-in-office as Governor and Vice for the old Mountain Province acknowledged to me, when I met him, that honesty was lolo’s flaw. This is why he died a poor man.

SOME people today take Lolo to task for fighting against the Japanese, and for being harsh against enemy collaborators. They say he allowed the Igorots to fight a war that was not their own. World War II, they point out, was a colonizers’ scramble for power and resources.

But what these people do not take into consideration is that Lolo lived at a time where there was no instantaneous communication, there were few newspapers, and only a lot of whispered news of the Rape of Nanking (where some 300,000 Chinese people were raped and killed by Japanese soldiers, an event that remains a thorn in relations between China and Japan today), and of rapes and killings of fellow Filipinos in the lowlands. What they forget is that Japanese troops landed first on the shores of Lingayen Gulf—too close to Igorotlandia—and that the Filipinos were left by their Americans masters to fight off the Japanese invaders by themselves. And that the final battles against Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita were fought deep in the heart of Igorot lands.

Truly, he was more than just the product of his times. And he was not just an “American boy” that the today’s leftists would view him as. For sure, he was more broadminded than a mere American puppet.

Lolo fought the Japanese, but he tried to understand their culture. He had a book on Japanese culture. This attempt to see things in a broader view is, indeed, heroic, when seen in the context of what he personally had to go through during World War II: He was hunted by the Japanese, his father was tortured by Japanese soldiers, his aunt went insane because of psy-war (she was tied to a burning hut, but let free), and he had to see the two captured American Colonels who had appointed him—Arthur Noble and Martin Moses—executed by beheading in full public view at the Baguio Plaza.

He tried to understand the war, even while it was still going on. Among his files I found scholarly British texts on the diplomatic origins of World War I, a book by Lord John Maynard Keynes explaining the economic causes of World War II, novels by a Jewish-Austrian exile, and others. Clearly, something not to be expected from a man of “action”. In these too, we see that Lolo was truly a great man.

THROUGH the years and across the states of conciousness, Lolo’s hand reaches out to bless me. As the eldest male of our family, I have not inherited any sort of material wealth from him. But my Lolo did hand down to me a great legacy: the value of education, of books and of pure learning. And the understanding—that in the midst of the outrageousness of life and of the cynicism of modern times—some things, like honesty and valor, have to be absolute and untransactionable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre

http://cpcabrisbane.org/Kasama/1997/V11n3/Henson.htm

Church, NGO leaders move to prevent mining bloodshed

I  am certain there are Ibalois here, possibly some even related by blood to us.

BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya—Leaders of the Catholic Church and non-government organizations have stepped into a broiling mining controversy in upland Kasibu town here involving tribal folk who have been blocking the entry of a foreign mining firm into the village.

They have raised concerns over a possible face-off between 1,000 villagers and 50 policemen involving the implementation of a court order that allows the entry of equipment to be used by Oxiana Philippines Inc., an Australian firm.

On Friday, provincial sheriff Voltaire Garcia and Senior Supt. Segundo Duran, provincial police director, travelled to the site to implement the injunction order, which prohibits villagers from further barricading the road leading to the exploration site in Pao Village.

In a statement, Bishop Ramon Villena assailed Oxiana for refusing to listen to the sentiments of the oppositors who have been barricading the road since July 12.

“Yes, Oxiana claims they have in their possession legal instruments that would legitimize their entry to Pao. But what about the voice of the people? Will we close our ears to their cry and continue with the mining activities in utter disregard of their voice?” Villena said in a statement.

From 300 in the last few days, the number of protesters has grown to about 1,000, mostly tribal villagers from Pao, Paquet, Kakidugen, Biyoy, Cataraoan, Camamasi and Dine who continued to guard the barricade after learning of the court’s issuance of an injunction order.

Their leaders, who asked not to be named for fear of being cited in contempt of the court, said they would continue to block the road because it traverses a private land, the owner of which was opposed to mining.

“If it becomes necessary that we will go back to our headhunting practices, then so be it,” a Bugkalot chieftain said in the dialect.

The villagers, composed of Bugkalot, Kalanguya and Ifugao, have been opposing the entry of Oxiana, citing possible hazards that its operations would bring to their environment. (Dani's comment: May Ibaloi dito)

They have also been questioning Oxiana’s exploration permit issued in 2000, the period of which was extended without consultation with the affected local communities.

read the rest of the story
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/regions/view_article.php?article_id=84596

for background with a video
http://www.pcij.org/blog/?p=1865

your donations, in cash and kind, are welcome. contact philippine human rights information center. (+63 2) 433 1714, prights@tri-isys.com

 

 

 

 

Philippine Science High

Thou stands above with thy thoughts that lift

And fit all thy sons with wings

To lend us flight in the sowing of our gifts

O, Philippine Science High

Thy wisdom arms our youth

As we reach for our dreams, as we strive for our goals,

As we search for the untarnished truth.

 

Philippines Science High

The PSHS in us will grow

And go as we wander o'er

The crests and troughs of the sea of life that flows

O, Philippine Science High

Thy light our beacon be,

As we reach for our dreams, as we strive for our goals

In pursuit of the glorious thee.

 

 

Of icons, feminism and a few good men

(Remembering Chadli Molintas)

 

In my life, I have known a few good people that I have put up as my icons, deconstructed as I grew and matured, de-mythified, and yet remain always in my mind’s eye as models, as reminders to live my life to the fullest and hold on to my own set of principles.

 

Three of them are women. 

 

In fact, in times of crisis and difficulty, I turn to my memories of these icons,  remembering that my life has been basically transformed by three good women and, well, a baby.

 

The three women are writers—but not only.  They are writers par excellance, passionate journalists, crusaders, hopeful humans (quite a feat in this cynical world). They are spirited and strong, they are nurturing mothers, daughters and wives.

 

One of these women I know, not only in her professional capacity. She is, until today, my confidant, patiently listening to my woes—and now with the distance brought by my work here in Baguio—reading and responding to my long letters written as sputtering attempts to keep that literary engine somewhat oiled despite the load of work and mommy-ing, or written to unload  in my favorite confessional style. 

 

This woman nurtured me through many heartaches and disappointments, mothered me, cheered me on,  healed my broken wings, and witnessed me take flight.

 

Apart from these three women, there are countless other women that I see around me who are icons-in-the making.  I suppose it is the difficulty of life as a woman that forces many of them to transcend, and then shine. 

 

BUT in my life there too, have been a few good men. 

 

Some of them I got to meet, up close and personal.  The others, I have only met once or twice,  but their lives were with lived with such brilliance, even their memories are so bright, like a moth I am caught hovering close by.

 

It is said that the light that shines brighter, shines shorter, too.  Of the men I admire, two of them lived lives so brilliant, that they were snuffed out so early.  One of them is Lean Alejandro, one of them was my uncle.

 

Arguably the brightest in a family of intelligent people, Tombol was once a hopeful engineer who entered the College of Engineering of country’s premier state university in the late 70s—no mean feat considering the difficulty of entering UP Diliman, being accepted into a quota course, and on a scholarship at that. 

 

Like many UP students, he was soon caught up in the swirl of activism. But unlike many of them who soon graduated into more sedate but easy (and lucrative) paths (a few of them now in high places in government, eating their words), this young man put his money where his mouth was. Or, more aptly, having no money, he put his talents—and eventually his very life—where his mouth was:  he acted on his beliefs.  Truly, he lived a life like a true Iskolar ng Bayan.

 

I never really got to know him when he was alive, being years younger than him.  But in my years in the NGO circle and in media (into where a lot of activists graduate) I have met many of his kindred spirits (a few classmates here, a few who worked with him at various stages of his life) who told me little stories. Some of these stories make him out to be larger than life, others show his essential humanity.  He was not, after all, just an activist, a propagandist and red fighter caught up in his ideals.  He was also a young man, awkward, funny at times, often with a carefree streak, and a few quirks--like an aversion to water in contrast to his wife who reportedly took hours bathing, even in the “field.”

 

Slowly, the stories about Chadli come to me,  like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.  Perhaps one day I will be able to piece them together and write the story that will do justice to his life.

 

FIFTEEN years ago, this young man was brutally shot down along the tri-boundaries of Abra, Ilocos Sur and Benguet. Reports had it that he was part of a rebel team that conduced an operation against the military.  But the truth is, he was not even armed enough to be part of an operation.  (*its twenty years ago, today)

 

His death made him larger than life: one of the many martyrs the Cordillera region sacrificed to the fire of the historical struggle to defend ancestral lands and ways of life.  In time, an entire rebel brigade was named after him: The Chadli Molintas brigade.

 

Chadli was not only intelligent.  He was a deep thinker, and he loved discourse.  Thus, I often wonder, what he would have thought about many developments in the region, in the country, in the world—from profound to trivial?   What would he have thought about the San Roque Dam, for instance?  About new developments in the UN on human rights?  The events after the 1992 Environmental Summit?  The Indigenous People’s Rights Act? Internet? Texting? PA Diaz?

 

Sadly, we will never know.  Such a brilliant intellect, snuffed out so early.  But then again it was his life—and death—that contributed, in no small measure, to the many hopeful changes in this country and region. And contributed to the lives of the people who were touched by his life.

 

* * *

 

Last Friday was the birthday of one of my icon-uncles, and yes, this is a shameless plug. 

 

Admirable for his keen intellect, energetic pursuit of a thousand and one projects, and his crusading stance in his chosen field (law), card-playing skills, charisma and influence and well, looks, he is even more touchingly admirable for being the family man that he is.  He is also one of the most fair and just persons I know, a diplomat that knows how to play hard ball with the people who deserve it—truly quite a combination.

 

 

I do wish uncle joe will run for congress again next elections. Hopefully, senate so that indigenous issues will get mainstreamed. What about it, Uncle Joe?

 

http://www.law.arizona.edu/journals/ajicl/AJICL2004/Vol211/Molintas.pdf

 

(the original text was written in July 2002)

 

 

 

 

 

AFTER squandering 13 years of my youth, I returned earlier this year to my ancestral home in Benguet, faintly hoping that rediscovering my Igorot roots would heal my soul and put a stop to my restless wanderings: But only time will tell if touching ground with my forgotten culture will achieve these things.

 

Months have passed since my return, and I have no desire to leave this rich and vari-colored life that unfolds daily before my eyes. 

 

Is it the scent of pine? Or the way the heavens suddenly unleash their fury, the cold winds whistling though the trees, the rain beating on the clay earth, and the storm finally leaving a place so fresh and so clean? A storm in Manila only means heavier traffic and tramping though trash-clogged streets—never this awesome display of power.  It was the natural beauty of these parts, persistently tugging at my heart on some of my earlier trips to various parts of the Cordilleras, that finally called me home.

 

In the city, I used to wake up to the sound of the neighbor’s radio blaring out the news.  Now I awaken to the chirping of birds announcing the break of dawn—a new one each day, sometimes overcast and rainy, sometimes chilly, sometimes crisp and clear and fine, but never the lighter shade of gray that dawn from our Manila apartment always looked like.  At night, I am lulled to sleep by a deep silence, broken only by the light orchestra of frogs and crickets.  On a clear night, I am lured out of bed by the sweep of the galaxies revealed by the dark sky.  It was on one such night, gazing in awe at the star-filled sky, that I first felt the stirrings of love for this land. 

 

For who could not love this land—all 18,294 square kilometers of it, two-thirds still cloaked with forests, forest that nurture the headwaters of the entire Luzon and protect its precarious ecological balance? The feeling was to return again on my trips to Sagada, Bontoc and to more remote parts of Benguet.

 

When I was still a city rat, the environment was for me a mere construct, an idea to study.  Now surrounded and embraced by this living, throbbing net of interlinked lives, I see the environment as something of which I am an essential part.

 

Perhaps I am impressionable.  But I fancy that it must have been ancestral voices calling me.  For though I was not reared in the rich traditions of my Ibaloi and Kankanaey forebears, I’ve come to know that for the Igorot peoples of the Cordilleras (and for most of the world’s 230 million indigenous peoples), land is the source of life, the wellspring of culture, the thing that lends meaning to existence.  Perhaps these stirring of love for the land around me are implanted in my genes.  For how else can in explain the fierceness with which my heart embraced the Cordilleras and its people?

 

In the journey on my way to work each day, I am drawn to the faces around me: the cheekbones high and sharply slanted, the lips thick, the masses of dark hair straight and heavy, the cheeks flush from the cold mountain air.  Ah, this is beauty in its natural form, not the kind made out of bottles of cream, and rough and powder.

 

Strange that I should like the jostling inside the jeepney since I hated the press of crowds in the city, the faceless horde of shoppers in a mall on a Sunday.  I’ve always believed that people are more that just mindless consumers, “target audience,” “constituents” or laborers.  People are meant for better things.  Perhaps this is why I see compelling beauty in the Igorots, for in these parts I glimpse the vast potentials of being human, of being free and dignified—closer to the beings that are said to have been created in God’s image.  Here, I see people in touch with their essential selves, helped by their cultures.

 

Culture, too, has gained a depth of meaning for me—beyond being a thing the rich buy, or watch, or amuse themselves with.  Here culture is a way of life, a set of rules by which people govern themselves, the very kernel of their lives’ meaning.

 

Maybe I see the world through the rose-colored glasses of a young romantic. The Cordilleras have their dark faces: that of drug trafficking which claims lives among the unemployed youth and dirt-poor, that of vegetable-growing villagers who are slaves to vegetable dealers, middlemen and dealers of fertilizers and pesticides; that of alcoholism among a people who, like the defeat tribes of North America, have a propensity to drink till they drop; that of poverty, ill health and illiteracy, so familiar in this province which among the country’s 19 poorest and which boasts of a single highway as its only link to hundreds of vegetable-growing villages in Northern Benguet, Mountain Province, Ifugao and Kalinga Apayao; that of the reckless destruction of a land by conquerors lusting after its wealth.

 

Traveling through Benguet, I see a land almost fully stripped of its forests by mining companies bent on gouging out every single ounce of gold (for decades, 74 percent of the country’s gold came from the Cordilleras, nine-tenths of which came from Benguet).

 

But though I see both the madness and beauty of the Cordilleras, I am still moved.  Perhaps such is the nature of love.  Or perhaps I see much hope in the Igorot people’s history of resistance against conquerors in defense of their ancestral homes.

 

I can only hope that by touching the rich ground of my Igorots forebears, I will finally take root, and grow in the struggles of my people.

 

Return to the Cordilleras, (Youngblood, Phil. Daily Inquirer, October 1995)