|
LIBERTAD(left), Antique,
ANINI-Y Church(top left),
Antique, A REENACTMENT(top most right) of an enduring
legend, BUGANG River(2nd from top left), Pandan,
Antique, THE
woven wonders of Libertad(right), Antique, PHAIDON Beach
Resort(3rd form top left), A FLOTILLA(above left) of boats
and bancas, Pandan, Antique, VICE Gov. Rhodora
Cadiao(above right), National Youth Commissioner Raul
Badilla and Gov. Sally Zaldivar Perez.
--PHOTOS BY
HARTHWELL C. CAPISTRANO |
|
A
MILE-SCARRED traveler once defined for me what a
beautiful place is: it is one that you visit only once
and because you have no chance to visit it again, that
place becomes the loveliest place on this earth. v
Antique seems to be this kind of place, except that it
is a place of beauty because you want to visit it again
and again, either in the stories you tell about the
place or in your desire to understand the call of the
place. For five days, I was with two other journalists
savoring the essence of this place upon the invitation
of the Binirayan Foundation.
One, for
some reason, does not travel to Antique. One enters it.
Nature has provided entrances in grass-filled crevasses
and hairpin turns. There are the mountains slashing
across the land with the graceful violence of an ancient
sword, the ridges and cliffs forming eternal boundaries:
Aklan above north is defined, Capiz caught in between,
and Iloilo calm in the inner sea it shares with the
Negros Islands. Only
Antique, it seems, is left to face the expanse of the
Sulu Sea, and the stories waiting to be told as it had happened,
perhaps happened, or never happened at all.
We were
there because we are trying to catch the stories about
Antique, especially the legend of the 10 Bornean Datus.
You know the story. It was one of the main stories
outside of Lapu-Lapu killing Magellan that had made us
proud when we were in elementary school. There was no
question in the eyes of our teacher when the narrative
unfolded. In Antique you do not question the fact behind
the legend. It happened and because of the 10 intrepid
and brave idealists, we have Antique—and we have the
subsequent histories of many other islands.
In
Malandog Beach on the 25th of April, the late-morning
sun was cruel for any kind of skin. That was the day of
the reenactment of the landing of the 10 Bornean Datus.
It was our first time to witness this. At the beach,
with the flotilla of boats and bancas crowding the
seafront, we were confronting reality: Legends live on
because people believe in what they say.
A long
table laden with fruits and rice and some viands faced
the makeshift stage, actually several sheets of plywood
to allow actors to move on what could have been a floor
of soft sand. At the table were the local authorities:
Gov. Sally Zaldivar Perez, Vice Gov. Rhodora Cadiao,
commissioner Raul Badilla of the National Youth
Commission and the regional director of the Department
of Tourism Edwin Trompeta. They were witnessing with the
rest of the people the dramatization of the Barter of
Panay. The young Sumakwel with his wife from a local
theater group, the Teatro Ogtung, were conversing with
two Ati from an indigenous peoples’ group. The Ati
actors seemed not sure of themselves. You could not be
sure if they were acting or being themselves. The
emotions were rising at this point. Your heart went out
to these people whom we could call our brothers and
sisters, but who could never be us. Still, the festival
was pushing the energy higher and higher, the drama
evolving into the most engaging of community theaters.
The
province of Antique is not new to the workings of
theater. The province has the komedya not as fossilized
artifact but as a living tradition, as the provincial
governor describes it. They are found in several towns—Barbaza,
Laua-an, Hamtic, Valderrama and the capital town of San
Jose. Old men can recite the lines of an entire work,
and the themes are not anymore about the old battle
between the Christian and the Moors.
The
province and its town speak about themselves. In a spin
of the One-Town, One-Product strategy, each town has
developed products that are unique unto itself. The
seascape has provided some of the municipalities with
products that can identify them: marine products and the
use of the land for the resorts. The entire province is
almost an entrepreneurial laboratory for ecotourism, so
much so that local experts are proposing to create sites
and landmarks stretching from south to north of Antique.
The province becomes a living museum by itself.
The
poster for Antique always describes the land as where
the mountains meet the sea. It is an apt description.
Still, we can push those words and name Antique as where
the mountains and the sea and the sky are magically
forever telling the stories of a hardy people.
Magic is
not a foreign word to this province either. Up in the
mountains, shamans dwell ready to create for the people
a different story, an altogether different direction in
a people’s journey. From the highlands where waterfalls
of sublime proportion and charm remain inaccessible,
down to the Bugang River, as clean as clean can be,
Antique is destination meant to be tasted by the mind
and body. For the moment, the province appeals to the
senses: through the patadyong, in colors that imitate
the forests and the birds, and in patterns that simulate
the waves and the corrals and the flowers; in the mats
and baskets of sturdy brown colors; in the muscovado
sugar as bitter and as sweet as the social history of
the people; and in their bandi and other sweets that
melt easily in your mouth but never allow you to shake
them off from your memory. Persistent like the people
and the ancient legend they will tell and retell. |
