History skewed

ALL OF 118 glossy leaves between covers and totally absent any pagination!

Wow! On that score alone, Kasalesayan Ning San Fernando (History of San Fernando) may well deserve a niche all its own in the Guinness Book of World Records, or top spot in some Idiot’s Guide to Book Publishing.

A book with no page numbers, which “initial 300 copies will be distributed to private and public institutions which will serve as reference especially to teachers.” Duh, pity the poor Madam seeking the specific page to reference relative to the specific chapter, section or text for her lesson at hand. 

Duh, duh, woe unto the poor researcher excerpting passages from the book with no page to cite in his footnotes.

And that’s just for starters.

Mishmash

The lay-out is cluttered. A mishmash of collages, pa-effect framings and photos begging relevance to the accompanying texts defile the synergy of all elements that ideally make the page reach out to and catch the total attention of the reader.

Unhelped, aye, worsened by the low quality of many of the photographs – over, under, poorly composed, needs cropping, distorted, if I may borrow from the critiques of master lensmen Borj Meneses and Ruston Banal.

The very placement of some photos, to be succinctly brutal, is far from judicious. Like that of “Gen. Douglas MacArthur in Bamban, January 26, 1945…” appearing in the section featuring Barangay Bulaon with no reference whatsoever to the American liberator.

That one vintage photo of a car traveling on some road appearing twice in a single chapter, with the same caption: “Dalan Bayu. Highway near San Fernando in the early 1900s” and then again in another chapter with the caption: ‘Manila North Road, San Fernando” is absolute nonsense, mayhaps rising out of indolence of the lay-out artist compounded by myopia on the part of the editor.

Recurrence obtains too in the subsections “Kabangka Ding Barrio,” “Kabangka; Barangay beginnings,” and “Kabangka: Emergent barangays” appearing within four leaves of one another in Chapter 1. It gives the reader the impression that the writer has a rather limited lexicon.

No simple recurrence but gross misprint is the case of two paragraphs in Chapter 10 repeated in toto in successive pages. The proofreader or the editor caught soundly asleep there.

Conversely, a whole section, “Dungan: San Fernando. The Philippine-American War, and the Fall of the Republic (1899)” was cut halfway, giving space to an italicized unattributed account, severing continuity and shutting logic out of the article.     

Contributing to the clutter in the pages is the randomness of the typefaces used and the non-uniformity of the font sizes, especially in the section heads – some all caps, others upper and lower; some bold, others normal.

Neither rhyme nor reason too obtained in the italicization: Kapampangan or non-English words, names of newspapers, radio-TV stations, titles of books or art works come italicized at times, in normal type at other. It makes a wonder what stylebook the editor of the book used, or if the editor had any notion of a stylebook at all.

And that’s only for the form.

Good

The book has its good parts, great parts, to be fair rather than simply be kind.

Historical curiosity finds satiation in the chapters written by Joel P. Mallari on Geography and the Barrios, Lino L. Dizon on Propaganda and the Revolutions, Robby P. Tantingco on Peacetime to WW II, and Dom Martin H. Gomez, OSB, on Life and Faith.

Truly enlightening, entertaining, empowering read. The last, notwithstanding a glaring factual error in citing “…the incumbent bishop, the Most Rev. Emilio A. Cinense, DD…became its first archbishop. He was succeeded by Most Rev. Paciano B. Aniceto…on March 14, 1988.”

It was, in fact, the Most Rev. Oscar V. Cruz that succeeded Apu Cinense in 1978.

Worst

For its worst part, there’s Chapter 5: Postwar to Martial Law -- a blabber of motherhood statements, enumeration of the names of the mayors of that period, a hodgepodge of catchphrases of the times capped by the totally irrelevant pictures of NLEx and SCTEx and that billboard directory by the road leading to the government center in Maimpis. All of three leaves and a half make the chapter really deficient in form, hollow in substance.

All there is of martial law is a half-page photograph of Marcos. Yes, there is a picture of the marker “Assassination Site of Levi Panlilio (Calulut)” but not its story.

While I have no knowledge of the postwar reconstruction of the capital, having been born years later, I am a living witness to the period before, during and after martial law here. From memory now:  

Panlilio’s assassination followed by the killing of Sto. Tomas Mayor Joaquin Pineda inside a cabaret at the boundary of Del Pilar and San Nicolas;

Mayor Armando P. Biliwang figureheading the para-military Barrio Self-Defense Units against insurgents;

Sen. Benigno S. Aquino Jr. intervening in the 1971 gubernatorial race, raising the hand of unknown Brigido Valencia as his personal choice and the Liberal Party standard bearer at a rally in San Fernando, spelling doom for frontrunner Virgilio “Baby” Sanchez.

The occupation by Constabulary troopers of the churchyard and blockade of all roads around the Poblacion area upon the declaration of martial law.

The “Rape of Democracy” in the elections of 1980, when teachers were herded by armed goons at the municipal hall, “threatened and coerced into making spurious election returns without regard to the genuine ballots in the ballot boxes.”

The heroism of these teachers led by the intrepid Tess Tablante led to the nullification of the election results, deposed the proclaimed winner and set an unprecedented rule of succession with a Philippine Constabulary officer, Col. Amante Bueno, deputy commander for administration at Camp Olivas, seated as OIC-Mayor, succeeded by lawyer Vic Macalino, on the recommendation of the Estelito P. Mendoza, governor of Pampanga, secretary of justice, solicitor-general, among other titles. The political impasse ending with special election in 1983 won by Baby Sanchez.

Contemporaneous event was the assassination of Jose B. Lingad even as the 1980 count in the gubernatorial contest was ongoing with him leading.

The birth of MAYAP (Movement for the Advancement of Young Advocates of Pampanga) with Oscar S. Rodriguez, Attlee Viray, Jesse Caguiat and Roman Razon at the core in the fight for human rights.  

Incomplete, aye, cheated is the history of San Fernando without any accounting of these milestones.

Lost

Lost in transition from Chapter 5 to Chapter 6: Mt. Pinatubo Eruptions and the Making of a City is the period leading to EDSA 1 and its immediate aftermath.

The role San Fernando played leading to EDSA is by all means stellar: serving as fertile ground to dissent spurred by the Ninoy Aquino assassination, the countless yellow rallies – one at the cathedral with Dona Aurora Aquino leaving no eyes dry with her contemplation of her own sorrowful mysteries in the life and death of her son, the consolidation of the opposition in the 1984 Batasang Pambansa elections, the busloads of Fernandinos trooping to EDSA throughout the revolt.

The euphoria dampened by the refusal of Sanchez to vacate the municipal hall and cede the post to OIC-Mayor Paterno Guevarra, the once perennial loser finally winning in 1988.

Those too contributed to what San Fernando is today.

Unheroic

Alas, the book is no place for heroes.

Chapter 8 – Great Fernandinos: Expressions of Excellence with the bullets: Movers and shakers, Leaders and builders, Peerless pioneers, Visionaries and dreamers has a surfeit of artists and performers, writers and engineers, beauty titlists and even social celebrities, each with his/her own personality sketch.

That pantheon of greatness excluded the truly great Fernandinos, authentic heroes who consecrated their lives for country and people, notably Pedro Abad Santos, father of Philippine Socialism, whom it remembered through minute faded cameo; and Jose Abad Santos, greatest Filipino martyr in WWII, whom it honored with a postage stamp-size picture of his oath-taking. In effect, reducing them to mere footnotes of local history.

Utter disrespect, sheer contempt of the Abad Santos brothers made even more manifest vis-à-vis the full-page full-color photographs of Cong. Oscar Rodriguez for having chaired the El Circulo Fernandino 2012 ball, Cannes-winning director Brilliante Mendoza, and heritage advocate Ivan Henares.

Seriously, what history can one make of San Fernando absent Don Pepe and Don Perico?

Kasalesayan falls mighty short of being the history book it purports to be. 

And I haven’t even finished browsing through its leaves.