Camsur had imagination. What about Cebu?

A couple of months ago, during a Gawad Kalinga (GK) meeting with Tony Meloto, I was able to hear the talk of Camarines Sur (CamSur) Governor Luis Villafuerte who gave his audience all the negatives of his home Province and through their own creativity, he told us how he was able to turn things around for CamSur to the point that it has become one of the top tourist destinations in the country. Just to correct Congressman Tomas Osmeña, CamSur only beat Cebu in one quarter of last year, but Cebu still retained its leadership as the country’s number one tourist destination.

Call it unfortunate that Rep. Osmeña used this issue to take potshots at Governor Gwen F. Garcia, but the reality today is that we Cebuanos have become too complacent with our tourism boom that we really have nothing much to offer for tourists to come and see. Sure we have our Sinulog, which began a long time ago when Rep. Osmeña was in exile in the United States. But after the Sinulog, what else has the City of Cebu to offer our tourists? Did you see how bad the roads are in Mactan’s major tourism hotels?

When the Heritage Monument needed lights, the City of Cebu couldn’t even give funds for this project. The funds had to come from former Tourism Secretary Ace Durano. Rep. Osmeña can throw brickbats at the Governor’s Suroy-Suroy program because this is a free country, but whether he likes it or not, it has done more to enhance our tourism in Cebu, especially in the far-flung areas which have become tourism destinations on their own. Without the Suroy-Suroy, there would be nothing to see in the Province. Bantayan Island is a good example.

When I talked with Gov. Villafuerte, I congratulated him for his creativity for turning his far-flung province into a real tourist destination. After all, Disneyland and Universal Studios are mere figments of man’s imagination and obviously, there’s plenty of that in CamSur. But here in Cebu, we not only do not have any imagination, we are cursed by our quarreling politicians who ought to know that old saying, “United we stand, divided we fall”. If Cebu fails, we should blame our politicians who try to upstage one another. Let’s just hope that someday, our politicos would “bugsay” in one direction for the love of Cebu and not for the promotion of their own bloated egos!

Incidentally, I got good comments, some thanking me for the article we wrote about the exploits of Pantaleon “Leon Kilat” Villegas who came from Bacong, Negros Oriental, just a town away from Dumaguete City, who was authorized by no less than Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo to team up with Cebuano Katipuneros and rise up against Spanish rule.

But now that we’ve “exposed” the shortcomings in telling our own history, people wanted to know what we ought to do about this problem. For starters, it is not difficult for the Cebu City Cultural and Historical Commission to write a short story about those fateful albeit historic four days in April 1898 when Filipinos, fed up with Spanish colonial rule fought the Spaniards and won, at least for the few days that the Spanish troops holed out at the Fort San Pedro, until the Spanish Cruiser Don Juan Austria arrived.

The exploits of Leon Kilat was filled with high drama, bravery and treachery because after they all scampered to Carcar, his own men killed our hero, Leon Kilat, in a house in Carcar (which still stands today, behind the statue in his honor) in the hope that the Spanish authorities would spare Carcar from their revenge against those who revolted against their rule. But in the end, even the traitors were summarily executed. This is well-documented; hence it is easy enough to put this story as part of the fort’s history.

In addition to that, the Plaza Independencia was built during the American time in order to honor the Filipinos who fought for our freedom and eventual independence. Why can’t we put a statue of Leon Kilat on top of a horse as a tribute to him and the Cebuanos who died in out struggle for freedom? Incidentally, Leon Kilat is also glaringly missing in the Heritage Monument that Castrillo created in Barangay Parian.

Mind you, years ago, the only statue inside the Plaza Independencia was the statue of the late Pres. Ramon Magsaysay who was the country’s most loved President. But 24 years ago Magsaysay’s statue fell to the ground; no one knows why. But his good friend, the late Philippine Star Publisher Max Soliven was appalled that we Cebuanos didn’t care to fix the problem. Hence, with our now defunct group the Frequency Club, we gathered funds to get a new Magsaysay monument that Sculptor Pempe Floriano did in the garage of my mother’s house. We already have statues of Antonio Pigafetta, Miguel Lopez de Legazpi or the Augustinian missionaries around Fort San Pedro, but sadly none for the freedom fighter Leon Kilat who fought the Spaniards just like Lapu-Lapu did hundreds of years earlier!

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