Baguio Insider

Last Sunday’s front page headline at the Philippine Daily Inquirer ‘Meralco cuts rates by 43c‘ and above it, taking about a third of the whole page was a large photo of Baguio that said:

‘CITY ON ROLLING HILLS: Baguio on a moonless night is picturesque, its twists and turns defined by lights swarming through its inhabitated spaces. And in the darkness, one doesn’t see that the pine trees are gone.’

The photo must have been taken from a high point on Session Road, most likely Luneta Hill. It shows the whole of densely populated Quirino Hill and the buildings below it. Of course the caption bothers me greatly, not so much because it is not related to the headline but because, instead of just talking about the picturesque part and letting things lie, it had to take a negative slant about the pine trees being gone.

I remember other photos in the past, again unrelated to the newspaper’s headline showing a view from Baguio of the Cordillera Mountain Range, again talking about the disappearing pine trees. Do they have nothing more to say?

First, INHABITATED?!!! See for yourselves! I had to take a photo of the front page because there wouldn’t be one on their website. In this day and age of advanced word processing, one cannot attribute this to a typographical error — and bad grammar is unforgivable and should be given no place in the country’s leading daily.

Next, this photo had dark patches where I know there to be pine trees. What they refer to as ‘twists and turns’ are not the roads, for the roads cannot be visible that angle but instead really large dark unlit areas where the trees are clustered. It is the photo of city lights, a testament to the city’s rapid rise in population, the evidence of all the squatting and homesteading but PDI could have stopped at the word ’spaces.’

Third, they should have written ‘And in the darkness, one does not see rusty, decrepit-looking patched-up rooftops’ instead. Hahaha! Yes, yes, and please believe when I say that blogging is a huge exercise in restraint for me but sometimes, my ‘Hero’ second personality, the Bi_ch , manages to escape, and takes over my typing fingers and prevents my real self, the Saint, from removing her snide comments.

‘No News is Good News’ really means ‘News is Bad News’

I did publish a short commentary in the Go Baguio News & Weather Page with the same title as this post, explaining why, for such a small place where nothing much happens, there is always news about Baguio all the time. Basically it attributes all the bad news to the existence of news desks that send news about the whole Cordillera Region datelined Baguio.

Of course simply the lack of anything happening coupled with mediocre journalism really causes the most trivial or insignificant events to be called ‘news.’ Wouldn’t it be great to see a headline that says NOTHING HAPPENED IN BAGUIO TODAY? But if that were the case, then reporters would label the one domestic squabble or the one minor vehicular accident as the top story anyway. Without disasters or issues, reporters would have nothing to sell. Without bad news there is no news. Current reporters will have to convert to feature writing, which of course is hard, because it will actually require writing skills on their part.

So now we know that news from the Cordilleras is sent from here or that if everything is normal, reporters would manage to scream about the littlest concerns. But why would the national dailies believe that the whole country would be interested in what’s happening here? Does this attest to the city’s popularity — or its vulnerability? I believe it’s both.

Many will understand why Baguio is popular — it is a place of natural beauty, the Summer Capital of the Philippines, a provider of childhood memories, a historical place, an American military nostalgia destination, the Philippines airconditioned city — as it is the one place that has many names and is many things to everybody. It is the tourist destination that sees constant REPEAT visitors, unlike those that require air travel from Manila so that any changes to the city’s landscape would be instantly noticed.

But vulnerable? Because in the 17 years after the earthquake the rebuilding and growth of Baguio has gone awry. A large influx of migrants, all seeking their fortune in a place designed for 30,000 inhabitants (we now number more than 300,000), with past leadership that not only coddled but also encouraged unabated squatting and homesteading, the total absence of urban planning allowing the establishment of businesses and building that are ugly, cheap and fail to complement Baguio’s natural and unique beauty.

There was President Fidel Ramos who insisted on physically erasing a huge chunk of our history by privatizing Camp John Hay and focusing on a golf course for a few rich families and confining the general public to a tiny area. Then there were the government agencies that allowed the developer to tear down all the money-making structures and substitute it with their own — and then just stopped paying rent and are doing everything legally possible to escape their obligations.

There were the post-earthquake mayors who had no plans for Baguio except to cement everything they could and who agreed to whatever the urban poor wanted (Eh payagan na natin sila magtinda sa sidewalk kaysa magnakaw daw sila), local officials who coveted the Panagbenga, its early prestige and potential income, so that they undertook to run it themselves and managed to turn it into an ugly, ill-organized, badly-controlled, palengke-like monster for a while and then failed or refused for several years in a row to account for the funds. Then there are the migrant current residents who have an ‘isolationist’ attitude — but only against Manilans — and love to encourage their relatives and townmates to live here, too, and pack them into their already crowded homes to study in our superior free public elemetary and high schools because, really, Baguio is the cheapest and most wonderful place to live in for these people.

Remember that meninggococcemia fiasco? That is a very strong case in point about Baguio being vulnerable. In fact I believe I am being very kind when I use that word resisting the urge is to substitute it with the phrase ‘prone to self-destruction.’ Here is another summary of what happened.

Baguio is small. The smallest events or mere speculation cause people to panic (small town, small minds). One family checked in with advanced case of the disease. More than one person was affected by something that is contagious if subjected to closed and prolonged contact (e.g. a family) so folks call it an outbreak. Baguio desk reports it. National papers pick it up make it bigger than it is. Local reporters scream, for every one checking into our hospitals ‘another suspected case’ (hey, if it is not confirmed, that’s not news, it’s merely published rumour). People panic. @#$%^&* mayor goes on national tv telling people not to come up. The whole country believes its an epidemic. People use that word quite loosely. People buy overpriced surgical masks and wear them instead of researching the disease. Newspapers love those photos and publish a whole lot of them.No one comes up for a year. Baguio tourism dies, businesses lose millions. A local drug company features the Kennon Road Lion’s Head in its advertisements for the antidote pill, scaring the sh_t out of the next year’s visitors. Baguio raises a hue and cry demanding an apology that I believe never came. Potential visitors still ask a few years later, “Wala na bang meninggo?”

What scares me more is that I am surrounded by the stupidest people on earth, and that stupidity more than meniggococcemia WAS the epidemic.

Baguio is vulnerable because although financially strong, it remains environmentally and attitudinally weak and the downhill slide to destruction must be stopped. Or we will have PDI making snide comments on the front page and be powerless to defend ourselves.

Yes, PDI, in the darkness the pine trees are gone, in its place are houses of the poor (that’s the shot you featured), there has been failure on all sides to keep Baguio pristine and safe and beautiful. The business atmosphere here and consumer spending attitudes have killed all the good restaurants and coming up strong on Session Road that Andok’s dine-in, everyone living here is zigzagging those twists and turns without any direction with the excuse of merely trying to make a living, we attract only excursionists and not the spending tourists anymore because the tourism infrastructure is shot, we only have landmarks as tourist attractions left and very few activities, but a majority of the folks here like it this way, for Baguio to go nowhere, for it to belong to us exclusively, for us to abuse it all we please in aid of global warming — so that all traces of America in the Philippines will disappear, so that Lisa will have something to complain write about in this blog, so she can rename it Baguio Complainer instead.

Or we can wake up and do something about it. Peter Rey, are you the ‘Man with a Plan?’ Can you reconcile your family’s business interests with what Baguio’s environmental concerns? Have you considered catering to the tourists realizing they have more money to spend than the residents? And then the jobs for the residents will come, and your graduates will have jobs, because to be viable as a tourist destination we will have to be the most beautiful non-seaside spot in the Philippines again. And then PDI will have nothing but positive things photos to publish on their front page.

You see, the whole Filipino nation is watching Bagui0, not wishing it would fail, but worried that it will.