Keeping alive the Pangasinan language

(NOTE: Because it’s Buwan ng Wika this month, our maiden post for this blog is an article written by Marc Jayson Cayabyab on the state of the Pangasinan language, which, according to a local historian, is “under threat of extinction.”)

By Marc Jayson Cayabyab, VERA Files

In a kingdom of animals in Pangasinan, all were free to speak in their own sounds.  But when a cruel and evil dog named Bosangel (troublesome) conquered the land, he ordered all the animals to stop using their own sounds and do what dogs do — bark.

While the rest of the animals followed, a cat named Liwawa (light) refused. Bosangel had Liwawa imprisoned and ordered to bark. But the brave cat did what she was born to do. She meowed.

The rest of the animal kingdom heard Liwawa's meow and followed with their own sound. The cows mooed, the carabaos bleated, the roosters crowed. Stunned by the defiant sound, Bosangel and his followers ran away from the kingdom, their tails behind their backs.

Erwin Fernandez's children's story entitled "Si Liwawa, say pusan agto gabay so ondangol" (Liwawa, the cat who refused to bark), is not just about animals' struggle to assert their own identity.

It's  an allegory of the state of culture in his home province Pangasinan, where the vernacular language is under threat of extinction.

Flower salad, anyone?

An organic farm in Mangatarem, Pangasinan serves flower salad to its guests. Here's an article written in 2013. 

For the diet-conscious, there is now a healthy alternative to green salad: it is called flower salad, a mixture of common edible garden flowers.

Former Marikina City councilor Lea Astrud Santiago, who introduced this recipe during an organic farmers convention in Pangasinan province, says many people were surprised that some ornamental flowers can be eaten. 

Photo from Our Farm Republic FB page

“Since we are into integrated organic farming, this is one of our advocacies, eating flowers and even weeds, which we call weedibles,” Santiago says.

She serves her recipe in her five-hectare organic farm, Our Farm Republic, in Barangay Torre 2nd in Mangatarem town.

Santiago, 40, whose mother is from Pangasinan, came home in 2010 and went into organic farming after her stint as public official in Marikina City, where she served since she was 19 years old.

Where exactly did MacArthur land first on the shores of Lingayen Gulf in 1945

Where exactly US Gen. Douglas MacArthur first set his foot on the shores of the Lingayen Gulf in 1945 remains a subject of discussion in Pangasinan.

Some say he first landed on the shores of Dagupan. Others say the American general disembarked first in Lingayen. But an Australian journalist says that MacArthur landed first on the shores of San Fabian.

Following is a story published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on February 5, 2013.

‘What’s so important about MacArthur’s landing?’

By Gabriel Cardinoza 

Sixty-eight years after American Gen. Douglas MacArthur and the Allied Forces landed on Jan. 9, 1945, on the shores of the Lingayen Gulf in Pangasinan to liberate the Philippines from the Japanese, the exact spot where he first set foot is still the subject of discussions in the province.

And this time, it’s on Facebook.

The debate began when this correspondent posted an image of a page from the book, “Australia in the War of 1939–1945, Volume II – Royal Australian Navy, 1942–1945 (1st Edition, 1968),” that said MacArthur first went ashore on the beaches of San Fabian town, north of Dagupan City.

The book, the second of two Navy volumes in the Australian official history of the 1939–1945 war, was written by Australian naval historian and journalist George Hermon Gill.

4 national artists build monument, park honoring Spanish navigator in Urdaneta City

Did you know that the park in front of the Urdaneta City Hall in Barangay Tulong in Urdaneta City may be the only park in Pangasinan that was built by four National Artists? 

Read this story published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on April 27, 2009.

Monument, park honoring Spanish navigator opened

URDANETA CITY – The monument and park built to commemorate the 500th birth anniversary of Spanish navigator and Augustinian friar Fray Andres de Urdaneta, after whom this city was named, was finally inaugurated on Saturday after almost 10 years of construction.

The ceremony was attended by Mayor Jose Miguel Santamaria of Ordizia, Spain, Urdaneta’s birth place, National Artist for Architecture Ildefonso Santos and officials of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and local government.

“I feel very small standing before the spectacular monument that we are unveiling today. But I also feel grateful and satisfied,” Santamaria said.

How the Pangasinan capitol building was built

Here is an interesting account of the engineer who supervised the construction of the Pangasinan capitol in Lingayen, Pangasinan. His account was published on pp. 7-11 of the October 1, 1918 issue of the Quarterly Bulletin, a publication of the Bureau of Public Works at that time.  

By SOTERO BALUYUT

(Bureau of Public Works district engineer for the provinces of Isabela, Antique, Ilocos Norte, Bulacan and Pangasinan from 1912 to 1919.)

AIM. About the year 1886, during the Spanish régime a mixed building, of wood and adobe, with iron roofing was built to house the then provincial government. This building is located in the heart of Lingayen.

Since that time the Government has changed and this Spanish-designed building has become too small for adequately housing the new provincial government under American sovereignty. In 1911, a committee composed of the provincial board and the district engineer decided to plan for the erection of a new provincial center as soon as sufficient funds were available.

PLANS. The proposed center is probably the most elaborate yet planned, and calls for a capitol, court house, executive building, jail, garage, hospital, and residences for the provincial governor and the provincial treasurer. All the buildings are to be constructed of reinforced concrete, at a cost to the province of about a million pesos.