Sin City, still

RECLAIMING, PRESERVING, and promoting Angeles City’s cultural heritage is one of the better – if not the best – initiatives of the Agyu Tamu administration, unarguably bettering Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan over all his predecessors, bar none.

As I once wrote here, so I write again.

Only Pamintuan – conscienticized in the lessons of history – could have conceived of and concretized the delineation of Old Angeles downtown as Heritage District, and in keeping with some belle epoque ambience, rid the area of the unsightly spaghetti wires of the telcos, and paved part of the main street with cobblestones.

That cultural revolution immediately fruiting in the city’s back-to-back triumphs for the Grand Prize in the Association of Tourism Officers of the Philippines-Department of Tourism Pearl Awards – for its entries “Revitalizing Heritage in Angeles City” in 2015, and “Safeguarding Angeles City Heritage: Success Stories and Beyond” in 2016.

Only Pamintuan could have visualized and realized pocket gardens out of the garbage-dumped, vermin-ridden, disused and dilapidated railway tracks crossing the city – catapulting him to prominence in both national and international fora on urban renewal and sustainability.  

Only Pamintuan could have effected the legislation of “the best pork dish in the world” as an “intangible cultural heritage” of Angeles City, that allowed – to quote him – “for us to finally claim, not only by word-of-mouth but on document that sizzling sisig originated from our city.”

Only Pamintuan could have ideated the Pupul ning Banua, literally “harvest of the year” or “harvest from heaven,” the annual recognition bestowed upon Angelenos who excelled nationally or internationally in the field of arts.

Indeed, it was only Pamintuan – of all the mayors Angeles City has had – that initiated, invested in, and so impacted a cultural renaissance in the city. Mayhaps, if only to return the city to the core of its character at birth, so to speak, as this side of the world’s haven of the heavenly hosts, sadly lost in its charter as the City of Lost Angels.      

Alas, it wasn’t so. Alack, it isn’t so. That rebirthing of the city to its pristine glory.

Angeles as Sin City is not only a recurring nightmare but a given reality, virtually as well as veritably. Go, Google it, and weep.    

Sex tourism

Only a week back, the British paper The Guardian screamed in its online edition:

Do you ever think about me?': the children sex tourists leave behind

Bulleted: Their fathers visited the Philippines to buy sex: now a generation of children want to track them down

Angeles City, 85km north-west of Manila, is hardly the only place in Asia with a sex tourism trade, but it is one of its centres. There are perky Facebook groups and dedicated websites that cater to the men who come here: Angeles City, they say, is a place where “you can’t help but get laid”.

The speciality of the town is the “girlfriend experience”, or GFE; you pay a woman to be your “girlfriend” for a day, a night, a week or a month. This can include going on holidays to one of the beautiful resorts out of sight of Filipino poverty, or just staying at a client’s hotel, meeting his every desire...

Followed the Manila Standard headlining a story bylined Jess Malabanan: “Fatherless’ kids numbers grow in Angeles City

The number of “fatherless” children have reached to an alarming level and might eventually be part of the social problem should the local government fail to address the situation.

“’Fatherless’ children is now occurring and most of these kids are offspring of different nationalities who have visited the entertainment district of Angeles City. This is the social cost we have to face and address with haste specially with the current development of the Clark International Airport,” said Barangay Balibago, Angeles City Chairman Rodelio “Tony” Mamac. 

At present, Mamac said there are more than 800 to 900 fatherless children in Angeles City and nearby areas of Pampanga who were born out of wedlock with foreigner fathers. “This is the social cost we failed to notice but it is being addressed now.” 

“Some of these “fatherless” children have been loitering the entertainment district obviously neglected by guardians. Some have been involved in criminal activities as young as ten years old, they are now children at risk or child-in-conflict-of-the-law” said Mamac...

And those two stories are but the morsels in what could become some media feeding frenzy, both nationally and internationally. Three days ago, I was tipped off a Thailand TV crew filming around the city – principally its blighted areas and red-light districts. I was told they had a field day with the sight of used condoms and empty bottles of feminine wash trashing the squalid alleyways of the “Area.”

That is a clear giveaway of the slant their story will take. To one more strong reaffirmation of Angeles’ international charter as Sin City.