WHEN the smoke was down, there were four standing at the trenches. All of them are from this region called Bikol, a place that has always been called one of the backwater economies of the country. All four are running for vice president.
As I write this column, one of the candidates, Leni Robredo, is problematizing the notion of being a Bikolano. She is saying on TV how one being born in Bikol does not necessarily make the person Bikolano. She talks of persons born in the region but growing up somewhere. But, that position is as naive as the title of my column.
For those who believe in the ideology of the post-national, where boundaries of ethnicities and nations are blurred, my title is naive. I post no singular Bikolano perspective because I ask the question, what is it to be a Bikolano? For that matter, what is it to be a Filipino?
Out there in the other parts of the world, there are communities of individuals who claim to be Bikolano—by birth and by language even. They are in a position to define what it is to be Bikolano. Authenticity loses its power in the face of deterritorialization, in which culture is not anymore determined by location. Within the frame of diaspora and migration, one can be, or claim to be, a Bikolano or a Filipino even if he or she lives somewhere else.
What the politics of the country has to contend with now is this claim regarding the four vice-presidential contenders and their link to one similar space.
Chiz Escudero, running mate of Grace Poe, was one of the first to declare his intention; Antonio Trillanes IV declared his candidacy this month; Leni Robredo, in one of the more awaited decisions in contemporary politics since Cory Aquino, accepted the responsibility to run side by side with her president, Mar Roxas, some days ago. At the backstage stands Gringo Honasan.
Escudero belongs to the political family in Sorsogon with connection to the Marcoses during the martial-law years. Honasan is also from Sorsogon.
Trillanes had a meteoric rise in his popularity with the common people. He became a figure in the infamous Oakwood Mutiny, survived the inquisition and doubts, and won a seat in the Senate. Trillanes is from Albay.
There are people who know Leni Gerona Robredo, widow of Jess Robredo, who still cannot believe she has accepted the offer of the Liberal Party. There are mixed feelings from Naga City, with many who believe she could make a significant difference if she stayed local and ran instead for the position of governor of Camarines Sur. That Robredo opted for the big picture of serving the entire nation also opened the gate for two formidable families to stake the claim to the province—the Fuentebellas and the Villafuertes.
That the Liberal Party has gained Robredo is ultimately the grand story of Camarines Sur. The province had always been Liberal and anti-Marcos. Even when the membership of the party had dwindled to a number that could fit a tricycle, as one wag put it, Naga City and the entire province of Camarines Sur held on to its loyalty to the party. In those years when it was difficult to wear on one’s sleeve his party affiliation, Salonga, Aquino and all the Liberal Party stalwarts were winning in Naga City and Camarines Sur. There is a claim that in the late 1970s the regional offices of the government that were in Naga City were transferred to Albay to spite the Nagueños who never liked the Marcoses. When Manila, itself a staunch anti-Marcos till the martial-law years, folded before the Marcos machinery, Naga and a significant portion of the province of Camarines Sur, were strategically brave during the dark years.
It is strange to announce with grandeur the regional identification of the four candidates because Bikol, through these years, is still one of the poorest regions in the country. What will these candidates offer by way of development plans if they themselves are linked to a site of poverty? One can say that being vice president does not mean one serves the place that one belongs to. Given that premise, then being Bikolano is an accident we can append to these individuals.
The region called Kabikolan has always puzzled human geographers and social scientists. The study of social stratification done by Frank Lynch, the Jesuit anthropologist, has painted a land where “big” people (dakulang tao) and “little” people (saradit na tao) interact with harmony, with the poor accepting their fate.
Bordered by the strong Tagalog cultures of Laguna and Quezon provinces, Bikol is struggling with its own languages that are slowly marginalized. In Naga and other cities of the region, Tagalog/Pilipino is preferred as the language of commerce. Young mothers speak Tagalog/Pilipino to their children and, in schools, visitors would notice how students do not use the Bikol language. Writers and cultural workers wage a war to maintain the languages of the land.
Given the fluid state of their regional identity, the Bikolano vice-presidential candidates posit the question of what Bikol can bring to the table of this political beast called the Philippines.
E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com
Image credits: Jimbo Albano