DON ANGEL Pantaleon de Miranda, in his storied goodness, had only supremely sublime ends in founding Kuliat.
Conversely – more aptly, perversely – Angeles, the city that rose out of Kuliat, was conceived and birthed from the loins of an occupying army. How the Don must have convulsed in his grave! The epithetical “Sodom of the Pacific” summed up the city’s not so distant American past, and impacted in its present as well (Or as badly?).
Sin City has been so etched in the national psyche as an Angeles legacy that it simply cannot be buried in oblivion, not even by the thousand tons of Mt. Pinatubo ash and lahar that devastated the city.
Or, if one may, phoenix-like it formed, flew and flourished from that very volcanic ash. Whichever, Sin City is there as ever in all its shameful – or should it be shameless? – ignominy. An unwanted but indefeasible heritage…
…Fields Avenue as a city heritage site. It meets the qualifications of time, having been there for as long as anyone can remember; of historical significance – of world proportions at that, playing a pivotal, albeit leisurely, role in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, care-giving to battlefatigued American GIs; of cultural impact, being the melting pot of Waray, Cebuano, Bicolano, Ilongo and Capampangan culture, pulchritude, even idiosyncrasies, if not perversities; of ethnic identity, Fields Avenue is uniquely Angeles City’s.
…Fields Avenue has an international reputation, being the point of convergence of foreigners, no, make that a miniature United Nations in the city, with its share of just about every nationality: American, Australian, British, Belgian, Swiss, German, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Chinese, Malaysian, Singaporean, Thai, whatever.
To some others though, Fields Avenue could make the Interpol’s rogues’ gallery on the profiles of some of its habitués… Even more qualified than Fields as a city heritage site is the Area, also uniquely Angeles City’s.
Pre-war pa, it even holds some anthropological significance being the long-preferred locus of the rite of passage of Capampangan males. The Area easily coasted through the American Period, the Japanese Occupation, and the American Re-Occupation, and survived a number of conflagrations sparked by righteous religious vigilantism.
The Area – it is privately acknowledged – even serves as a zone of peace: the combatants – policemen, army troopers, insurgents of all persuasions – laying down their arms there to lie down in the arms of its denizens. Sin City forever.
A fitting heritage for Angeles. Pronounce that the American way – “ein-jeh-less.” Meaning, without angels, as in where there is sin there are no angels. Haven’t we read something to this effect somewhere? Yes, The Sinners of Angeles, magnum opus of the Capampangan writer I revere most, Tatang Katoks Tayag.
Now, that’s one literary heritage Angelenos should be most proud of. (From Free Zone/Pampanga News, Feb. 2-8, 2006).
