INHS60 in Ilokandia, Ilokoslovakia, and Ilokostan

Class ’60 of INHS—Ilocos Norte High School—are gearing up for their golden anniversary this 2010, and a few classmates have been revving up their spirit’s enthusiasm and gunning down their logistical engines to make this happen.

Almost half of a centuple gathered in Las Vegas in April to eyeball each other, some having last laid eyes on one another almost half a century ago. Smaller pockets gathered in northern and southern California, Laoag and Manila, with the latter occasioning this writer’s reflection on the land of Diego and Gabriella Silang, of Ferdinand Marcos and 34 commercial banks in the region that handle foreign exchange remittances of a people in diaspora across the globalis.

We take liberties in recreating in our minds the images of the land of our origin, and if and when we are faithful to facts and are true to ourselves, we would not hesitate to see the complexity of any given localis in comparison to our favored if not altogether parochial picture of the geography of our beginnings.

Fort Ilocandia, the five-star hotel that sits astride the sand dunes facing the waters of the South China Seas, encapsulates the aspirations of the Gregorio Aglipay-led secular clergy who were excommunicated from communion with Rome at the end of the 19th century for furthering the then ridiculous notion to Europeans that the Indio may actually be of equal political footing as the Filipino insulares and peninsulares. Baroque in architecture, the Fort reflects the ethos of gobierno civil and prefigured the republicanism of later years, the patina of zarzuela democracy that overlaid the centralized authoritarianism of the native centurion, Fernando Marcos y Edralin.

Geographically, Ilokandia as an image is used most by the Province of Ilocos Norte but a case can be made for the term to appropriately designate the northern Luzon promontory from the Gulf of Lingayen in the west to the foothills of the Sierra Madre in the east, the corridors of the Caraballo in the south and the Isles of the Ivatans in Batanes and the Babuyans up north. This regionalis encompasses not just the highland Austro-Polynesians (my Montañosa colleagues will have to forgive my inclusiveness) but also the Indo-Malayan boat barangayanic people in the coasts and the plains, the Samtoys that traded with the Fujians of the Middle Kingdom before the galleons plied the Pacific.

Ilokandia as romanticized democracy is also the mythical domain of the industrious but definitely non-spendthrift Ilocano. It is said that of a typical family of five, the eldest would inherit the meager patch of real estate in exchange for making sure that the rest of the younger siblings would get their higher education and be productive professionals elsewhere. Ilocanos constitute the bulk of migrating professionals and contracted labor out of Pea Eye! Thus, it has come to pass that the first translation of laws and ordinances in Hawaii to its Filipino constituency is first in Iloco before anything else.

The 34 banks servicing Laoag’s Ilocano overseas remittances, is also the source of dismay for its bank officers because the accounts are maintained as savings, and the local population’s fiscal conservatism refuses to rely on commercial loans, thus, Ilocano savings are used elsewhere in the nation. But Ilocanos will borrow from public lending institutions out of the habit of entitlement, and the possibility that one can get away with minimal or even nil repayment. An $18 million loan for gold mining drawn from PNB in the 70s never saw a penny of repayment. Other research and development loans were known to have been converted into grants, just so records are kept straight and clean! Would that we write only of exceptions but the rampant and rapacious abuse of the public till is a matter of public record, too true for comfort.

This socialized use of the public treasury is what I refer to as the balkanized States of Ilokoslovakia, its concomitant fractured loyalties among clannish and extended families that extend even beyond its boundaries to foreign land. Witness the splintering of the Ilocano mosaic into myriad of town and barrio associations in any concentration of Filipinos in the U.S.! In some cities, there are even more than one group of Laoagueños organized and functioning.

If it has not become obvious yet, my picture of Ilocandia is as much a microcosm of the whole Pinoy nationalis as it is particularly true of the geography under scrutiny. For not unlike the rest of the country, elections are the bane of its existence. With its people’s heightened sense of honor and prestige, albeit, often misguided, a losing group in any election tends to break off the organization, holds its own election and establishes a mirror image of the group they broke away from.

Then there is the overt dependence on armed personnel to maintain order. This week alone while traveling on land between Laoag to Tuguegarao and further south through the Cagayan valley down to Manila, I encountered more checkpoints than I care to remember. Having been on the end of pointed M-16s by a full squad during the Martial Law years, I have a natural aversion to the imposed and coercive power of the gun

Benign political dynasties are taken for granted. In Ilocos Norte, I can count in less than the total units of my fingers and toes the prominent families that peopled and continue to dominate the political landscape since WWII. Children act as if the offices of their parents are their rightful inheritance, and conversely, parents bequeath their offices as if they are the legitimate heirloom of their children. When this deteriorates to ferocious warlordism and combustive family rivalries, we have the feudal structures of an Ilocostan, comparable to the other -Stans in the world, particularly those that broke away from the tutelage of the former Soviet Union on the western side of the Urals, and also the emerging cousins of the Qins, the Zhous and the Hans in the Middle Kingdom.

Class INHS60 emerged into the heady days of JFK, Pope John XXIII, Macapagal and the US Immigration act of 1965, which saw a massive exodus of professionals to North America. Coming of age at such a fullness of time, one might ask the Class of itself, what has it wrought?

Naturally, intentionally, and synergistically, the Class looks forward to a 2010 Celebration of Presence, to name its journey in a way that it can humbly, equally and authentically uplift the being of its members whether they spent their time as dedicated kutseros and faithful housewives, or as a bemedalled Armed Forces officers or distinguished surgeons.

What has class ’60 wrought with its lives? As would be of any group self-consciously assessing its journey, its locale context and situation, in this particular case, Ilokandia, Ilokoslovakia and Ilocostan, awaits their answer.