Asian Journal- The Filipino-American Community Newspaper

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Feb 09th
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Got Milkfish?

(2 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
Got Milkfish?

Come for the bangus, stay for the nostalgia and ‘Dagupeña’

I’ve really never loved bangus, despite the fact that I learned how to cook it—sinigang, daing, sinigang, uhm, what else is there to do with bangus? Daing again? For some reason, I find it too rancid for my taste, and yes, of course, too bony too. I just don’t have the patience, I guess. I suspect that I got this while learning how to de-bone fresh bangus from my Lolo who owned a fish stall in Olongapo. De-boning was traumatic. The smell just stays in the hands for so long. That was before I met a Dagupeña.

I was mistaken, of course. Pangasinan’s pride, the bangus is no ordinary bangus. It is Bunoan bangus, the milky one when you eat it, as they say, with that belly short and arching, and with fine and shiny body scales. It may have a short tail and a small head, but every bite of the tender Bunoan is juicy since its fat is well spread in its body, and not just on its belly. Bred in Dagupan’s Bunoan district, this authentic bangus has gone far and wide, reaching our very own supermarket freezers in the familiar airtight packaging.

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Viajeng Cusinang Matua: traveling through the old kitchens of Pampanga

(7 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
Viajeng Cusinang Matua: traveling through the old kitchens of Pampanga

So here I am, racing the sunrise through the South Luzon Expressway straight from an all-nighter at work, rushing to make it to the 5:45 am Makati pick-up. I haven’t really seen the sunrise since God knows when and my body is just about ready to melt into anything that remotely resembles a bed. But I stifle a yawn, put on my sunglasses, and energize myself with one powerful thought: a breakfast of tasty, juicy, sweet tocino. I am, after all, headed for Pampanga. On a culinary tour, at that.

The email invitation Tracey Santiago of Alquimista Trails sent the day before was straightforward enough. It detailed the itinerary for her Viajeng Cusinang Matua, but it also read like a menu. I scanned the page; read Mexico, Sta. Rita and San Fernando jumbled with words like tocino, sisig and halo-halo; made a mental note to skip dinner; and signed up at the last minute.

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PANGASINAN: The Salt of The Earth

(5 votes, average: 4.20 out of 5)
PANGASINAN: The Salt of The EarthCaravan cultures throughout the world depict stories of real journeys, discoveries and exploits. They also account for the construction of local histories, territories and market societies. At best, caravan routes map the geoeconomic and the ethnohistoric trail of peoples on the road towards venture capitalism in the earlier centuries.

But in the 21st century, the history of caravan cultures remain only in the people’s memory as artifact (or artifice?) and which has been romanticized into bioepics or heroic adventures of legendary men caught in the age of material adventurism from the 13th to 16th centuries. In this day of global network and cyber transactions, it is fascinating and at the same time remarkable how the caravan culture still persists in the Philippines.

Its persistence as a vestige of feudal past in an era of intensified commercialization and industrialization is indeed indicative of uneven modes of development, as it is symbolic of intersecting diverse cultures where the rural locale ventures into the national and into the global with far reaching implications on issues of ethnicity and cultural import.

The cattle caravans of ancient Caboloan continue to peddle their bamboo-based products from the province of Pangasinan to the highways of Metro Manila. These are the ubiquitous cattle-drawn carriages selling hammocks, bamboo chairs and bookshelves we see around Metro Manila.

More than just a cultural icon for tourists, the cattle caravans trace its origins to the ancient Caboloan, an interior ethnic state in the province of Pangasinan. Caboloan refers to a place where bolo (a specie of bamboo) is abundant—which explains why the cattle caravans up to this day peddle goods made from bamboo and rattan. These bamboo-based products are traded in prehispanic times with the coastal villages, especially in "Panag-asinan," where salt was produced. This interior (alog)-coast (baybay) dichotomy and its accompanying trading relations were obscured by the colonial mapping of Spanish Augustinian missionaries, who coming from the coastal town of Bolinao named the entire region as Pangasinan. This prehispanic cultural relations between the interior-coast dichotomy of Caboloan-Pangasinan noted by Scott and Keesing to be vital in the paper of ethnohistories, continue to exist through the living artefact which is the cattle caravan trade.

Locating the cattle caravans of ancient Caboloan is also an attempt at reconstructing local history. Journeying through the caravan routes from the heart of Caboloan to Metro Manila, the cartwheel connects culture and commerce from the village to the metropolis. The cattle caravans’ anachronism in today’s world market economy becomes an assertion of locality and ethnicity in the face of the hegemonic ethnonational and the reifying global system. While the province of Pangasinan is valuated in political terms because of its significant voting population, its ethnocultural history and reality is perceived to be merely part of the mythic kingdom of the Greater Ilocandia. Thus, the cattle caravans serve both as a romantic symbol of an ancient Caboloan culture and as an ethnocultural text amidst the flux of emerging societies and economies.

The Philippines is said to be a "bamboo country" because of its swampy coasts and rivers. Historian Isagani Medina lists several place-names which pay tribute to the bamboo such as Meycauayan in Bulacan, Pasong Kawayan in General Trias, Cavite, Cauayan in Negros Occidental and Caoayan in Ilocos Sur. To add to this list is Caboloan of the interior plains of Pangasinan. While the bamboo industry is spread out in different parts of the archipelago, it is only in Caboloan where the tradition of transporting bamboo-based products through the cattle caravan persists up to this day and age.

Tourism takes delight in this seemingly quaint, exotic, museum piece of cattle caravans parading at the outskirts of Manila, which are occasionally used to attract foreign tourists. The Tourism office however fails to look at the caravan beyond its cultural significance.

In summary, this ethnocultural mapping is deemed important because it privileges the articulation and the life ways of the folk and how their stories, narratives and thought patterns intersect in the elite construction of Pangasinan history. With this presentation, I hope that it deepened somehow your understanding of the popular cultural archetypes such as Princess Urduja and the Virgin of Manaoag. It provides a sense of pride in terms of our roots and origins through the anachronistic cattle caravan and the earlier historical and trading relations between the coastal Panag-asinan and the interior Caboloan.

The Filipino exile abroad will only become alone if he has been totally uprooted from his native soil. But if his soul brings him to his roots even in a foreign land, he will forever remain Filipino or Pangasinan wherever he may be.

( www.asianjournal.com )

SUBIC DAY

(7 votes, average: 3.71 out of 5)
SUBIC DAY

This is the Subic in my mind: rolling green mountains, misty rainforests, and the shimmering sea.  The Subic of my childhood is a gate to an unknown, mystifying territory. In our old Ford, I always tried hard to peer through what was beyond the gates, at Cubi, even at the Main Entrance in Magsaysay Avenue in Olongapo City.  The personnel then looked like busy ant workers from afar.  The grey ships were properly docked at the bay and the American flag, its blues and reds bright in the sky, flew like a valiant pilot facing the gusty winds.

It was not too long ago that the Subic Naval Base was transformed into a freeport where all could roam freely. Like my mother, I grew up in this place where the servicemen prepared for military missions, and entertained after a hard day’s work and training. Today, the Subic Freeport is a bustling metropolis, a large-scale rest and recreational complex, and a growing economic and international trading zone.

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SUBICMAN: It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Mang Kasoy!

(2 votes, average: 3.50 out of 5)
SUBICMAN: It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Mang Kasoy!

We need not ask whose woods these are, these woods at Pamulaklakin Trail at the Forest Hills area of the Subic Bay Freeport. The Subic Man, Dominador Liwanag, 59, an Aeta from one of the Freeport’s indigenous communities, is the well-known guide of many Subic visitors who come to learn life on the trail. When we came to see him that misty morning, the Pamulaklakin river streams sing, gushing forth unseen behind the tall trees. He came up the hut where guests are briefed, all smiles, and ready to go.

Clad in an old olive green shirt and a tattered khaki shorts, he holds his bolo very confidently, as if it’s part of his body. He greets us giddily, with two aeta teens in g-strings, in tow. He introduces himself, makes fun of himself and us, his guests at times, and picks up cut bamboo wood placed at the entrance of the hut. Pamulaklakin is his woods, and certainly the very woods of his tribe since the birth of time.

Last Updated ( Tuesday, 23 March 2010 17:41 )

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