Free insurgency

“THE REMNANTS of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army in the region is in decline as of now. Central Luzon now is being moved to be declared insurgency-free if all of the provinces will follow suit. It was noted that Pampanga and Bataan were already declared free from leftist infiltration.”

So read a news report coming out of last week’s Regional Peace and Order Council 3 meeting, the first since last year’s elections.

“All of the provinces in Central Luzon are peaceful and ready for further development, a step before being declared insurgency-free.”

So pronounced 7^th Infantry Division of the Philippine Army led by Major General Angelito De Leon, as quoted in the same news story.

“…(R)eady for further development.” Some sense of déjà vu suddenly screaming at that phrase.

Instant replay to January 2014, at The Promenade of King’s Royale Hotel: Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief of Staff Gen. Emmanuel T. Bautista declaring Pampanga “peaceful, insurgency-free and ready for further development” in a memorandum of agreement he signed with Gov. Lilia G. Pineda.

Further, data presented by the AFP showed that of 11 Luzon provinces previously declared insurgency-free, three are from Central Luzon: Aurora, Nueva Ecija, and Tarlac. Which with Pampanga in 2014, and Bataan in the latest AFP statement, leaves but Zambales and Bulacan in the AFP’s red list as of the moment.

An insurgency-free Central Luzon “ready for further development,” indeed.

But not quite. Au contraire, as a matter of view from the other side of the ideological divide reading “ready for development” as tantamount to “inviting foreign companies and their local partners to grab land, exploit, take advantage and oppress the working class and peasantry.” They said then. Most certainly they would say again now.

“The workers and peasant masses…continue to suffer from intolerably oppressive and exploitative conditions in the big haciendas, sugar centrals…in the so-called special economic zones,” to requote stock-in-trade statements of the CPP-NPA, albeit with little abridgement. “Tens of thousands of peasant masses are being displaced as a result of widespread land grabbing by big landlords and so-called developers who are in league with the ruling regime.”

Development on one hand. Oppression, exploitation, displacement on the other. Whatever good of the former cancelled by the evils of the latter.

While the alert level has been raised by the AFP in connection with the 48^th anniversary of the NPA founding on March 29 – warning of possibly lethal celebratory fireworks, an equally high alert level is required for propaganda – and counter-propaganda – rising out of the coming of the same red-letter event.

Such as these insurgency-free pronouncements?

Let me just advance this caveat: Take things like these with the proverbial pinch of salt.

Believe though in the universal given: That insurgency feeds on oppression.

An elemental revolutionary tenet: So long as poverty, inequity, injustice exist, so does insurgency.  The cause is what matters most.   

Here’s an excerpt from an old short essay touching on the primacy of causes over personalities in revolutionary movements.

History shows that successful movements, even revolutionary ones, are solidly grounded on causes. It is the cause that solely makes the rallying point. The personalities serve as the coordinate points.
Not even so charismatic a revolutionary as Che Guevara succeeded in fomenting the Bolivian revolution with him as the rallying point. Che failed in rousing the Bolivians not so much for their lack of faith in him as for the absence of a cause to rally them.
Everyone in Bolivia in1967 was poor. There were no oligarchs from whose stranglehold the people should be emancipated. There were no large landowners whose lands needed to be distributed to the people. Even the military government was not as repressive, as corrupt nor as unpopular as its civilian predecessor. So assessed an American political think tank at the time.
Now, think why and how the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army managed to survive through all these years, despite the government’s mailed fist approach to the insurgency, its all-out war against the “communist terrorists;” despite all those land reform programs to “emancipate” the peasants, thus dissuading them from joining the insurgents; despite the capture and subsequent “rehabilitation” of the CPP-NPA leaders, from Dante Buscayno to Rudy Salas to Romy Kintanar to Popoy Lagman; despite the extrajudicial killings of militants.
The answer: the primacy of the cause. Personalities subsume themselves to the cause. Never the other way around. The fate and fortune, especially the misfortune, of the personalities feed, nay, nurture the cause. Here, we are reminded of Che: “Wherever death may surprise us, it is most welcome. Our funeral dirge will be the staccato sound of machine guns and the cries of battle and victory.”
Of all the movements in the country today, only the insurgency can lay claim to that age-old truism that “nobody is indispensable.”
Again Che: “What do the danger and sacrifices of a man or a nation matter, when the destiny of humanity is at stake.”

Yes, insurgency-free assumes a meaning radically different from that by which it is defined by the military, no matter the commander-in-chief, whether a Marcos or an Aquino, or even a Duterte.  

That matter of filling

PASSED BY San Simon again Wednesday – to Manila and back – and rued anew the continuing devastation of its vast wetlands, the steel frames of warehouses and factories multiplying above raw earth, hazy in the dust stirred up by bulldozers and dump trucks.

What comes to mind at this sight? Asked travel buddy Deng Pangilinan, he of the keenest of eyes. 

Desertification. The price of progress. Greed. 

No, who comes to mind at this sight? Mabalacat City’s double visionary rephrasing.

The Tambakan King.

Maybe, but how soon have you forgotten the Punsalan Doctrine.

Yikes, how could I when I have devoted so much column inches about it. Most serendipitously – with the issue at hand – in this piece here on April 2, 2008 titled Asenso Model. Thus:

FOR THE high price of panambak -- that’s earth used as filling material, to you non-Kapampangans – a million-dollar investment project was pulled out of San Simon.
Thus rued Mayor Digos Canlas of the great opportunity lost forever to his town. And that is just one woe wrought about by the Capitol’s cluelessness on the nature, if not the dynamics, of panambak.
Digos claims the P1,500-per-truck filling material at the time of the Lapid son at the Capitol has ballooned to over P3,000 per truck under the watch of the Reverend Governor.
Endangered too of being mothballed is the Libreng Pabahay para sa Mahirap on a 9.7-hectare site acquired through a donation from the ambassador of China and with a counterpart national government commitment of P35 million. Again, it is a problem of panambak, says Digos.
Then there is the apparent collateral damage wrought by the new P120-million bridge to the farmlands in its vicinity. Farmers have to resort to double pumping to make irrigation water flow to the farmlands. Thus, doubling too the cost of irrigation. And a large hectarage of farmlands is still covered with the debris Mount Pinatubo vomited almost 17 years ago.
So what has got to do with panambak?
“Everything,” says Digos. The farmers want to desilt the irrigation canals to increase the reservoir of water they hold. They wish their lahar-covered lands be scraped of the debris and made productive again. The end-product of desilting and scraping? Panambak.
Now, if only the Capitol can free panambak from a purely commercial categorization, then, Canlas says, all will be good for San Simon.
Perhaps Canlas can go seek some advice from the once reigning barako of Mexico. Yes, the sometimes lamented former Mayor Ernesto Punsalan himself.
For all his perceived brusko posturing, Senor Don Ernesto wielded the wisdom of the rural folk. Or have we forgotten how the Great Asensado Solomonically dichotomized the quarry-panambak predicament thus: “There is no quarrying in Mexico. There is only the scraping of private agricultural lands, in the pursuit of our noble objective to make these highly productive again. For the prosperity of our people.”
And the Lapid Capitol left Don Ernesto largely to himself in the pursuit of his Asenso Mexico. Unmindful and un-intervening even when loose talks circulated around the province that SM City Pampanga, Robinsons Starmills, uppity Lakeshore, and the rehabilitated North Luzon Expressway were all built upon the panambak of Mexico.

So there…

MY, MY, so fast the Simonians have learned and how! 

San Simon’s Quezon Road area has more, much, much more tambak than all of Mexico.  

That can only mean you-read-who is now way more asensado than Senor Don Ernesto.

So, comes 2019 this campaign blurb: Dig us more earth for San Simon’s progress.

Yeah, the environment be damned. 

 

What? Only 14?

INCREDULITY BECOMES Gov. Lilia G. Pineda after hearing from ace police charact…, er, reporter, Jess Malabanan on Monday that of the 155 Central Luzon erring cops tagged to undertake a three-month retraining course, 14 are from the Pampanga Provincial Police Office.

Unbelievably low, the numbers are, by any account, actual and estimates alike.

“Kulang yan…maghanap pa sila ng mga pulis na mga abusado, tamad,” said Pineda. “Nandiyan pa yung pulis na nakapatay, ang sabi sa akin ay nagdu-duty pa.” 

The governor had previously enjoined Senior Supt. Joel Consulta, the province’s top cop, to expedite the investigation of policemen who have committed serious offenses. Precisely to prevent the “infection” of other cops with the scalawag virus finding manifestation in maladies ranging from the slightest kikil to serious extortion and kidnapping, to deadly drug-dealing and murder.

If only for the Angeles City cops involved in the case of detention-for-extortion of a group of South Korean golfing tourists that followed the wake of the tokhang-for-ransom and subsequent murder of their countryman Jee Ick-Joo, if only for Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan’s wish that the city police force be relieved wholesale soon after his personally chosen chief of police was unceremoniously booted out consequent to the aforecited cases, then, indeed, 14 is way, way off the number of misfits in uniform in utter need of rehabilitative overhaul, not simple stop-gap retraining.

Yeah, the latter similarly absurd as charging the battery to improve the performance of your battered decades old car already suffering engine blow-by. Kinatuk ya barbula, bibiyayan me ing baterya!

But then again, who knows?

Miracles are still believed in. Since Saul’s own at Damascus’ Gate, epiphanies are intrinsic to the Christian experience. God’s grace permeates every man, no matter. Look no further: the self-confessed mass murderer SPO4 Arthur Lascanas is a living testament to this renewal, aye, conversion.

Forget the pugilist one's self-acclamation though. It can well be what Paul warned us against: the clanging cymbal, if not the resounding gung-gong. And yes, the Devil can quote Scripture as easily, as instanced in Luke 4:9-11 and Matthew 4:5-6.

The initiative of Aaron

So, we defer to the Central Luzon police director Chief Supt. Aaron Aquino, whose initiative it is to subject the region’s undesirables to this retraining scheme for their change of heart.  

Ay, is it this time of Lent or just me? Suddenly finding something biblical here – Camp Olivas’ chief’s namesake, along with his brother Moses, in some game-changing engagement with Ramses II to let God’s chosen go. Long shot from Exodus, no?  Delete, delete.  

Scoffing at the tried-and-tested-yet-unproved-as-beneficial practice of banishment, Aquino said: “We are sending ‘bad eggs’ in the organization to southern Mindanao but we forgot to reform them…There’s the missing link…We immediately decide on giving them punishment without initiating reform… The retraining is like giving them a second chance to rectify their misdeeds.”

Stressing that: “Kung tutuusin, itong 155 na pulis ay magiging fourth batch sana na ipatatapon ko sa Mindanao, kaya lang pina-hold ko muna para bigyan ng chance na magbago. Sabi ko nga this is not a form of punishment but to develop them and be committed again to the ideals of the PNP.”

Hence: “The training program is a sort of disciplining them and at the same time to hone their policing skills. While we gave second chance to civilian drug addicts, we also have to give chance to members of the PNP to reform.”

The retraining program, Aquino said, covers “spiritual counselling, attitude and behavioural training…It’s like they are undergoing basic police training.”

Officially unsanctioned as yet by higher police headquarters, Aquino affirms his training intervention hews closely with the program to “weed out the bad cops in the PNP organization.”

What if recidivism still came after the “retraining for reformation”?

The Mindanao option has never been taken out of the equation, Aquino reminds everyone.

On record – utterly shameful at that – PNP-Central Luzon contributed the largest chunk of “scalawag” policemen re-assigned to Mindanao since the cleansing of the force in the wake of the war on drugs.   

Aquino hopes this batch of 155 will be the last ever to be Mindanao-bound, and the first to be re-assimilated – after their full rehabilitation – to their mother units.

Hope springs eternal, yes.

But as Nanay Gov disbelievingly deemed: “Kulang yan…” In Pampanga, in Central Luzon as well.

Go forth, Aaron, find more. Find all of them. Yahweh commandeth thou. Eww!

Living the Word

AT 77 last Sunday, March 9, the Most Rev. Paciano B. Aniceto is two years past the age of retirement for Church prelates.

That he remains the shepherd of the Kapampangan faithful can only be divinely ordained.

Apu Ceto makes that classic definition of the priest that impacted me on my very first day at the Mater Boni Consilii Seminary eons ago – “the best gift of God to men, the best gift of men to God.”

He simply lives the Word. So that hearing him is ever a renewal in faith. Like that time in 2003 when I accompanied him in his pastoral visit to California.

“The two priceless treasures of our people, coveted by other peoples… undiminished in value even through our worst economic dislocation,” Apu Ceto says of faith and family as the defining character of the Filipino.

Live the faith. Love the family. That was the message he brought to the hundreds of Filipinos who came to his Masses. A message that reached out to, and touched Americans and Latinos too.

“Modernism and materialism, especially in wealthy America, besiege increasingly the very foundation of the Filipino-American family. Against this onslaught, we need to return to our core values and be steadfast in our Christian faith to prevail.”

Apu Ceto refreshed the congregations with the Filipino core values grounded on Christian virtues – of respect for human life, love for the elders, the bayanihan culture of sharing and malasakit, and family prayer, especially to those already born in America.

And anathematized abortion and euthanasia as “pillars of the culture of death…high crimes against the family and against God.” “The baby and the elderly are integral elements in the nucleus of the Filipino family."

"Take them out, fission ensues, and the nucleus suffers a total breakdown.” In a clear jab at the pro-choice lobby in the US: “The baby in the womb is not a simple choice. It is a human being created in God’s own image and likeness and therefore should come into the world to fulfil God’s plan for him."

"Man has no business playing God, usurping His power over life and death.” Of love and respect of the elderly: “Filipino culture puts premium in the wisdom of age. Thus, we take good care of our elders, never treating them like overused rags fi t only to be shut in some retirement home, left to die alone, and as fast forgotten.”

And recalled the attendant promise of a blessed long life for those who subscribe to the Fourth Commandment – “Honor thy father and thy mother – so that all may go well with you, and you may live a long time in the land.”

So the Apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians. So it was written in Exodus 20:12. So it has become Apu Ceto’s apostolate too.

Prayer

And then there was his birthday celebration six years ago – also a Sunday – distinguished – graced, I cannot force myself to write – by the presence of Her Excellency, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the Reverend Governor Eddie T. Panlilio, Congressman Dong Gonzales, City of San Fernando Mayor Oscar Rodriguez, and a host of other politicians and local leaders.

“If we really pray together, (we would discern that) one cannot monopolize truth. Truth begins in the heart, the sanctuary of our conscience.” Apu Ceto’s sermon searing the very soul of the congregation. “We need to purify and change. If we follow that process, we will have a peaceful and just society with integrity."

"You should watch and pray that you don’t fall into temptation.” He did not have to say it. Apu Ceto could only mean the temptation of corruptive power – for those in government, that which denies the people of their right to live with human dignity.

Warning: “Our country is at a crossroad. We are a divided people, eternally quarreling, bickering. Some media contribute to this. We are falling into the pit.” Ouch! And pointing the way: “We are asking the Lord to permeate every strata of society."

"Families and leaders should work so there is a holistic approach in the search for a real, authentic, common good, for the progress and development of our people.” Ora et labora. Pray and work.

Christian life at its most essential: “Let us pray together, discern together so that we could know the will of God for the Filipino people.”

He lives the Word. He is a sermon we see, we feel, and – prayerfully – we live. Apu Ceto – blessed are we. (Punto, March 11, 2014)

Death brigades

THE DAVAO Death Squad was for real.

President Duterte admitted on Tuesday, even as he denied having created the vigilante group: “I did not do that. I do not need that…I will not create a DDS…”

The President claimed the DDS was created to fight the Special Partisan Unit (Sparu), a hit squad of Guerilla Front 55 of the New People’s Army Southern Mindanao Regional Committee that operated in the hinterlands of Bukidnon and Davao del Norte provinces.

Notwithstanding my aversion to extrajudicial killings, I find reason to believe the President. Having had our similar experiences with right-wing death squads unleashed against urban partisan units of the NPA euphemized as “sparrows.”  

Yes, death squads were never exclusive to Davao. They were, as a matter of course, integral elements of the anti-insurgency campaign.

Here’s one article on our version of the DDS which I wrote for People’s Journal Tonight and the Associated Press as a case in point:   

A ‘tooth and nail’ drive against insurgency

SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga (Feb. 17, 1988) – The balance of terror in the insurgency campaign in Pampanga has assumed an “expanded dimension” with the formation Saturday of the Angelino Simbulan Brigade (ASB) here.

The anti-communist group named after the San Fernando deputy police station commander killed by suspected New People’s Army hitmen has vowed to fight insurgents “tooth and nail.”

The ASB vowed to hunt down communist rebels in retaliation for the “heavy burden of taxation” the rebels imposed on residents here and for the spate of killings last week attributed to the NPA.

With the entry of the ASB into the insurgency campaign, a war of attrition rivalling in scope of terror that of the pre-martial law “Beatles” and “Monkees” now looms in the province.

Pampanga residents still vividly remember the vise grip of terror in the mid-60s amid the war between the Huk death squads euphemistically called “Beatles” (after the Fab 4 from England) and the paramilitary right-wing liquidation group called “Monkees” (the American band formed to compete with the Beatles).

An intensified conflict in Pampanga is expected with the formation of the ASB which came in the wake of the reactivation of the Hukbong Magpapalaya ng Bayan (HMB) to contest the “primacy of the NPA” in the countryside.

The presence of the Mariano Garcia Brigade, local counterpart of the Alex Boncayao Brigade, is another factor seen to escalate armed conflict in the province.

“The resultant situation in the province may be paralleled with that of Lebanon’s rather than Nicaragua’s,” said a political science professor who requested anonymity. “The Lebanese Army, the Christian phalangists, the Shi’ite fundamentalists and the Abu Nidal group have their counterparts in the government forces, the Huks, the NPA and its sparrows, and now the ASB.”

These developments have also dissolved the “fixed spheres of influence” among the “non-legal contending forces.”

While NPA influence is pervasive throughout the province, the eastern towns of Candaba, San Luis and Arayat are known lairs of the HMB.

“Pampanga is now fair game to all these forces,” said a former military man who, however, expressed the opinion that government troops remain on top of the situation.

And the orgiastic killings quickly followed – of urban poor and cause-oriented group leaders, a human rights lawyer, a doctor, the city engineer, no less than six   policemen, informers, culminating in May-June 1988 with some 40 fatalities in that period alone.

Our record of the times – in news clippings – I turned into an attempt at “journalistic novel” writing in a slim volume titled Brigada .45 summarized in the blurb:

Hagkis ng kaliwa, Bigwas ng kanan. Low Intensity Conflict. Mula Fields Avenue, ang pamosong kalsada ng kamunduhan, hanggang Nepo Mart, ang sentro ng kalakal; mula Area, ang palengke ng laman, hanggang sa mismong simbahan, walang piniling larangan ang digmaan sa kalunsuran, nanalasa pa’t nandamay sa mga karatig-bayan. Ito ang Lungsod ng Angeles sa huling tatlong taon ng dekada ‘80. Dito inukit ang maiksi nguni’t madugong kasaysayan ng Brigada Mariano Garcia.

Low Intensity Conflict. The then-novel approach to insurgency applied as much in Angeles City as in Davao City.

The ASB and the DDS, straight out of a purported LIC Manual at that time: “…para-military or vigilante groups are formed, indoctrinated and armed to fight the insurgents. This is to ‘civilianize’ actual military operations, such as in instances of assassinations, breaking of anti-government demonstrations, infiltration of unions and militant organizations. We have greater leeway in the use of vigilantes as they are neither bound by any chain of command other than their handlers nor governed by any rules of engagement. No courts martial for them.

“Civilianizing the conflict likewise involves tapping private groups for moral support and even resource-sharing, as well as manpower…Practical shooters’ clubs and other weekend warriors, properly indoctrinated, make ready and willing vigilante forces.”  

Yeah, anyone with gunpowder for brains can cry havoc, and it does not take a Duterte to unleash the dogs of war. 

Call it progress

IT’S BEEN awhile since this promdi went to the Big City but while traversing NLEx this Saturday past, the feeling was that the city has already come to me. To my utter dismay.

Aghast was I upon the approach to San Simon town to see encroaching brown to where once was expansive green: dusty earth dumped by massive trucks, pushed by bulldozers to fill once virtual lagoons teeming with water hyacinths sheltering the fish and other aquatic life that lie beneath the waters – paradise gained and regained year after year by migratory birds. Paradise beginning to be irretrievably lost to industrialization.

It’s been ages since I last passed Quezon Road in San Simon, but on Sunday I drove through it, being the fastest route from the son’s newly acquired mango farm in Sta. Ana to the old folks’ home in Sto. Tomas, bypassing the gridlocked Mexico-San Fernando stretch of the GSO Road.

Named such because it made the usual, aye, the only, way the tubercular president of the Philippine Commonwealth had taken for his prescribed salubrious splash at the cold spring waters of Mount Arayat, Quezon Road was widened and concreted at the time of the now dearly lamented Gov. Bren Z. Guiao to spur socio-economic development in then-insurgency-ridden eastern Pampanga.

Indeed, as Guiao foresaw it, development did come. But how!  

Don Manolo would have surely spewed a torrent of his patented “Puñeta!” had he lived to be chauffeured through his eponymous road today.

The vast wetlands and verdant rice fields the road once traversed have vanished untraceably under the weight and breadth of factories and warehouses identically humongous, uniformly hideous.

The once less travelled road – where the carabao cart and then the tricycle were kings – now a busy dusty street narrowed by the bulk of trucks and lorries of all tonnage; the hulk of heavy equipment in all shapes, sizes and states of dilapidation by the wayside, haphazardly stockpiled for the smelting plants.

The sweet smell of fruiting palay, the quaint but pleasant aroma of water plants of the remembered past totally obliterated by the noxious, billowing smoke of industrial chimneys and dust.

Nauseated yet at this narrative this far?

Not by any means, were you the local government of San Simon.

Where any other human sees environmental degradation, the LGU only sees economic progress.

Why, even the suffocating dust from all that earth dumped on wetlands to provide stable ground for factories, smells all-too-sweetly of money, oodles and oodles of it.

Or haven’t you heard as yet the voices howling in the quarry wastelands proclaiming a Simonian – as the municipality identifies its citizens – as the crowned Tambac King of all Pampanga, exercising exclusive, if not proprietary, rights over all filling materials in the province. Gratuitous permits either unenforced, or simply recycled. Ay, absolutely no relation to childish Simple Simon Says in this high-stakes game.

Why, it is even bruited about – sans hard facts though – that the plunder of the provincial quarry coffers – pre-Panlilio governorship – amounts but to loose change if ranged against the pantambac windfall.

A matter of fact:  It is acknowledged that the significant growth in San Simon was brought about by the Comprehensive Municipal Development and Land Use Plan enacted by the Municipal Council. The zoning ordinance reclassified the entire stretch of Quezon Road as Industrial and Commercial Zone, but limited only to light and medium size industries and those that are environmental friendly. Copy-pasted from sansimonpampanga.gov.ph. but underscoring mine.

More a factoid there, to say the least. Given the scope and scale of the industrial locators in the area and their not-so-subtly deleterious impact to the local environment.  

Why, ask Gina Lopez’s agency in Pampanga where complaints of pollution mostly emanate from. And find the answer in the ridiculous riddle in our child play: “I passed the sun, the sea and finally the moon, where am I?”

I can only cry with the Cree: “Only when the last tree has been cut down, only after the last river has been poisoned, only after the last fish has been caught, only then will we realise we cannot eat money.”

Meanwhile, last week Bureau of Customs agents seized P2 billion worth of fake cigarettes in five warehouses at the San Simon Industrial Park along Quezon Road. The cigarettes also had fake stamps and were all identical, the news report said.

Yeah, progress all spelled there.

Puñeta! The Castila would have surely spat out.  

          

Paskuhan sale

FROM OUT of the blue comes the news Wednesday of the Paskuhan Village sale to SM Development Corp. under full investigation by a congressional committee.

This came as a surprise, if a most pleasant one to the Capampangan culturati, given the general resignation hereabouts that the cultural icon has been lost forever to commercialization. 

A new champion of mekeni culture, it now appears, has risen in the person of Pampanga 3^rd District Rep. Aurelio “Dong” Gonzales who initiated the investigation.

To us, this investigation is a vindication of sorts: Punto! breaking the story of the sale in its issue of Jan. 15, 2015 with the banner headline: SM buys Paskuhan, and this column that came out four days after our scoop.

No deed, indeed!

OUT OF the goodness of the heart of Tatang Jess Lazatin for Kapampangan culture and the arts, in fact for anything and everything Kapampangan, the Paskuhan Village was birthed.

The patriarch of San Fernando’s, if not Pampanga’s, foremost Buena familia donated a large chunk of the primest of his clan’s prime real estate to site the Christmas theme park. For the singular purpose of showcasing his town’s signature craft, lantern making, and affirm its claim as “Christmas Capital of the Philippines.”

So it was that on December 11, 1990, as a most fitting celebration of Pampanga Day, President Cory Aquino inaugurated Paskuhan Village, dubbed as the first and only one in Asia and the third in the world, purportedly after those in Germany and the United States. At least that was the briefing we received from then Gov. Bren Z. Guiao and then Tourism Undersecretary Mina Gabor.

Its centerpiece building was designed by Pampanga’s top architect Nestor Mangio in the shape of the iconic San Fernando lantern when viewed from the air. For which he was bestowed, in 1995, the Design Achievement Award by the United Architects of the Philippines which he subsequently headed.

Public enthusiasm over the project waxed in the first two years but waned soon thereafter. In the words of then San Fernando Mayor Pat Guevarra: “What is there to look forward to, especially for our children, if we have Christmas everyday?”

From Paskuhan, the village earned the derisive moniker “Pastulan” – a grazing ground for carabaos. With but the regional office of the Department of Tourism showing some non-rustic life there.

In 1998, the site was “re-developed” as the Philippine Christmas Village and reopened by then First Lady Amelita Ramos with Florikultura ’98, “the first national horticulture exhibition in Southeast Asia.”

The end of the so-called Gardens of the World exhibitions also marked the demise of the reinvented village, falling again into virtual neglect, finding but little vibrancy in the establishment of the regional consular office of the Department of Foreign Affairs, which after a few years transferred to the Clark Freeport, and much, much later, to the malls.

Aghast at such a waste of prime property, the sangguniang panlalawigan of Pampanga, with then Vice Gov. Mikey Macapagal-Arroyo endeavoured in 2002 to entice a branch of the Casino Filipino to locate at the Paskuhan. The proposal was immediately shot down by the religious sector, parents and educators for the (im)moral cost it would entail, and by the local culturati for its deviancy from what was publicly held as the Paskuhan’s exclusive use – as showcase of Kapampangan culture, notably the lantern craftsmanship.   

Wow, Hilaga

In 2003, Paskuhan Village was rebranded as “WOW North Philippines Hilaga” under the auspices of then Tourism Secretary Richard J. Gordon.

As Hilaga, it was supposed to be some cultural and trade showcase not only of Pampanga and Central Luzon but all the regions north of Metro Manila, as its name conveyed.     

Still, it failed to sail.

Throughout its short history, two things remained constant in the public mind regarding this Christmas-themed park: its name, Paskuhan; and its sole purpose – cultural showcase purportedly mandated in a “deed of donation” executed by the Lazatin family.

Hence, the general disbelief to Punto’s breaking news that SM had already acquired Paskuhan Village in a bidding conducted by the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (TIEZA) last December 17.

It cannot be. The deed of donation explicitly forbids it. Until now, that is still being said of SM’s latest acquisition in Pampanga.

To his dying day, says the Inquirer’s intrepid Tonette Orejas,Tatang Jess regarded his family’s donation of the Paskuhan site as one “lasting legacy.”

“In the many conversations I had with him when he was already ailing, Paskuhan Village never failed to crop up,” Tonette remembered.

Reported our banner story though: There was no “deed of donation” that explicitly expressed exclusivity for the use of the Paskuhan Village for Christmas-themed purposes.

There was a “deed of sale” executed with the then Philippine Tourism Authority by one “Robert David, in his capacity as the attorney-in-fact of the Lazatin-Singian patriarch Jesus Lazatin.”

These, according to the source privy to the SM-TIEZA transaction but requested anonymity for absence of authority to speak on the matter.

Don Robert

Robert David definitely makes the best authority to talk on the matter.

Absent any contact though with Pampanga’s once premier real estate broker – he negotiated the SM City Pampanga mall and Robinsons Starmills deals – we were resigned to pure speculations. Given too that no documents anent the transaction have been made public by either SM or TIEZA.         

Less enterprise than serendipity though did Punto get hold of what passes off as transcript of the Jan. 7, 2002 en banc committee hearing at the sangguniang panlalawigan on the junked casino proposal for the Paskuhan.

Here are some excerpts, unedited, relevant to the issue at hand:

Mr. Frank M: Ang hindi po malinaw sa amin ay kung sino ang nagmamay-ari ng Paskuhan.

VG Arroyo: Sasagutin po yon ni Board Member Robert David.

BM David: Maganda pong katanungan yan. Unang-una po ang may-ari po ng Paskuhan Village ay ang Philippine Tourism Authority. It is a government corporation under the Department of Tourism. Bukod duon gusto ko pong ipaalam sa ating lahat ang kuwento kung paano nagkaroon or tungkol sa Paskuhan Village kung ano ang kanyang concept. Tama po yung sinabi nyo na to showcase the kapampangan culture the products yung ating gawa. Yung ating pinagmamalaki sa pag-showcase ng mga kapampangan products. Nung panahon pong yon ang ating president Cory Aquino kung saan tayo ang pangatlong Christmas village sa buong mundo. Una ang Michigan at Germany. Ang kapampangan po may katunggali sa Christmas capital of the Philippines ang Imus Cavite. Sa legal issue po, meron pang kondisyon ang pagbenta ng lote diyan. Na yun lamang nakapaloob sa sinasabi nila yun po ang condition that it is only for the showcase of our products, culture etc. No. 2 po, yun po ay pinirmahan kasama si Mr. Jesus Lazatin at ako po kasama ko siya sa pagpirma ng Memorandum of Understanding. Nagkaroon po ng Deed of Sale, nakapaloob po yung condition na yon at hindi maaaring mabali. Pangatlo po, at that moment, yun pong paggawa ng Memorandum of Agreement, 1991 po binigay po ngayon sa isang Foundation, Paskuhan Village Foundation. Ang Chairman po duon si Mr. Jose Capistrano na Chairman ng Philippine Tourism Authority, member po duon ang ating Gobernador Bren Z. Guiao. Nung panahon ni Erap anong ginawa? Pinasara ang Paskuhan, sasang-ayunan po ng DTI yan. Pagkatapos po pinatuloy ng national government ang operasyon ng Paskuhan Village. So kung itutuloy po yung pag-showcase ng Paskuhan Village mas marami tayong  matutulungan na mga kababayan nating nagpapawis. Salamat po.

Mr. Frank M: Mr. Chairman, with that statement of Board Member Robert David, puwede po bang angkinin ulit natin ang Paskuhan Village? Na ang Kapitolyo na ang magma-manage nito… 

BM David: Mahirap po yan kase hindi natin makukuha basta na lang yan dahil ito po ay pag-aari ng Philippine Tourism Authority. Makukuha lang natin yan kung babayaran natin. I think it will cost us about P500 million.

What can we make of this?

No deed of donation whatsoever spoken there.

There was a deed of sale with the condition “only for the showcase of (Kapampangan) products.”

There was a memorandum of understanding signed by David and Tatang Jess Lazatin with the aforesaid condition.

There was a memorandum of agreement authorizing a “Paskuhan Village Foundation” for the management of the village.

The paper trail gets too complicated for this simple writer. This is better handled by seasoned lawyers.

Would anyone dare?

SM buys Paskuhan. Fait accompli all written there.