We are 16

 

SIMPLY SAVORING the sweetness that proverbially comes with this age, we dispense with all those self-aggrandizing celebrations of how Punto!, deemed doomed from birth – its very name perennially punned to the Tagalog term for sepulcher – not only proved its naysayers dead wrong, but left print media contemporaries deader than dead, as in utterly unremembered.

We choose to be grateful, giving due recognition to all those who grew the publication to what it is today and, assuredly, what it shall be in the morrow as well.

We are 16. Less happenstance than providential that our years correspond to the exact number of us comprising Punto! – from the general manager-publisher, the editor, five columnists, five correspondents, a lay-out artist, and an administrative-marketing-advertising-circulation staff of three, the newsboy included – the solid foundation as well as the stabilizing cornerstone of Punto! Central Luzon. With the grace of the Almighty. To Whom we offer all the glory.   

More, much more than 16 are our advertisers, corporate and in government, in and out of the region, that have steadfastly shared as much their good news as their resources with us through thick and thin, through all these years, even in the economic-crunch times wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Our sincerest gratitude for their confidence – more so, their trust – in Punto!

That very trust swelling among our thousands of readers and followers – never mind our share of hecklers and bashers cravenly cloaked in anonymity – grounded upon objectivity, fairness, and accuracy in our news, fearlessness in our opinions, strict adherence to facts, in the service of the malayang Pilipino as emblazoned in our masthead. Trust that we shall ever endeavor to keep unshaken and grow even stronger in the coming years.

Continually guided as we are by what Joseph Pulitzer long ago articulated, which at Punto! has come to be the very article of faith of a truly free and unfettered press:

…[F]ight for progress and reform,

never tolerate injustice or corruption,

always fight demagogues of all parties,

never belong to any party,

always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers,

never lack sympathy with the poor,

always remain devoted to the public welfare,

never be satisfied with merely printing news,

always be drastically independent,

never be afraid to attack wrong,

whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.

Pointed, yes. As only Punto! can.

We are 16. Not simply a cause for celebration but a tangible testament to how well we have lived up to our role in society.

 

 

Angeles City's Defining Festival

                

WITH THE Abacan River back to its placid state, Angeles City stirred to life anew. Edgardo Pamintuan, with an overwhelming mandate as elected mayor, electrified his constituents with the clarion call Agyu Tamu (We Can!) to inspire confidence that the city could rise, phoenix-like, from the volcanic ashes.

Pamintuan was inspired by a few intrepid city entrepreneurs who refused “to heed the voice of reason” and stayed put in the city to rehabilitate their factories and revive their productivity, foremost of whom was Ruperto Cruz who resumed his manufacture and export of high-end furniture within 45 days after the eruption.

To jumpstart the local economy, Pamintuan and his confidant, the activist Alexander Cauguiran, hit the buttons that sparked the city’s vibrancy – the entertainment industry.
Thus was birthed Tigtigan, Terakan Keng Dalan, street dancing and music in the Mardi Gras mold. 

The whole stretch of MacArthur Highway in Barangay Balibago was closed to traffic. The strip shone bright again in a kaleidoscope of lights. Bands on a makeshift stage on the highway itself played all types of music, from country to rock, rhythm and blues to OPM. Restaurants set their tables on the sidewalks. Food was aplenty. Beer flowed like – in the spirit of the times – lahar. Thousands rocked and rolled in a celebration of renewal, of rebirth.

The shroud of grief over the Pinatubo tragedy had been lifted – in Angeles City.

THAT WAS the capping piece sub-titled Happy Days of the chapter Lahar! in our book Pinatubo: Triumph of the Kapampangan Spirit published under the auspices of the San Fernando Heritage Foundation in 2008.

Tigtigan, Terakan Keng Dalan marked a defining moment in the deathly struggle and ultimate victory of the Angeleno over the devastations of the Mt. Pinatubo eruptions.
Much similar to Bacolod City’s Masskara Festival which signature smiles defined that city’s rise from the hardships that came in the wake of the collapse of the sugar industry in the ‘80s, if I have my chronology right.

That Tigtigan, Terakan Keng Dalan became the signature festival of Angeles City was a testament to its lasting impact on the psyche of the city residents, and a recognition of its prime value to their survival as a people.

So, at its staging in the last weekend of October since 1992, Tigtigan, Terakan Keng Dalan serves as a look-back to the nights of fear and anxieties, to the days of hope and struggles until the rebirthing of the city now soaring in the firmament of economic development. Truly a cause for celebration. Of the very soul of the Angeleño in triumph…

Thirty-one years! Has it been that long since Tigtigan, Terakan Keng Dalan came to being and stirred Angeles City’s re-borning from the volcanic ashes? Aye, from the city’s abandonment by the American occupying forces that served its very cause of being? 

Of late, rising anew from the Covid-19 pandemic?  

Angeles City did survive, and how! No, Angeles City even excelled, way above its purely Sin City past. 

Luid!

(Updated from the original piece published here 24 Oct. 2008)