EDITORIAL - It’s about time

According to a report in this paper, the Cebu City Council recently approved an ordinance protecting and conserving the local historical landmarks, monuments, shrines, museums, and cultural heritage of the city, as well as its intangible heritage.

The ordinance entitled the “Cultural Heritage and Heritage Site Declaration, Protection, and Preservation Ordinance of Cebu City,” will protect sites including the Waterfront area and its surroundings, as well as Plaza Independencia, Compania Maritima, Basilica Minore del Sto. Niño, and the Plaza Sugbu, as well as their respective surroundings, among others.

It will also seek to protect and promote folklore, customs, beliefs, traditions, knowledge, and language.

It’s about time we take this active move to protect our heritage, those that we can readily see as well as those we can’t.

The problem with many Filipinos is that we don’t appreciate history, especially our own history, or at least give it the attention it deserves.

Many old buildings or structures that played a part in our past, or at least would have added to the character of our city by their mere appearance alone, have been torn down to make way for modern structures. In the downtown area alone there are at least two historical landmarks that have fallen into such disrepair that people just pass them by without knowing something significant had happened there.

There is also a lot we take for granted --or just plain do not know-- about our intangible heritage. Knowledge about our own music and literature is often buried because we are more familiar with the contributions by artists from the capital or from abroad.

With any luck, all that will change with this active move to protect our past.

Such a move also goes hand-in-hand with our efforts to promote our city as a center of culture to local and foreign tourists. With the planned religious celebrations set here for next year, this move also becomes very timely.

Let’s just hope we aren’t too late to save some of our tangible and intangible culture and heritage. It’s about time, yes, but time isn’t on our side.