Fats, Vitamins and Minerals

It was good to finally visit Vigan again. The last I was there was over twenty years ago, with my mother, sister and cousin.

(Photo: My grandfather’s old house in Vigan)

Much has changed since then, I suppose, but not really for the better. The pollution coming from tricycles and motorcycles is just so bad and speaking to the people from the “lower class”, they all say that life has not gotten any better - even after being labelled a Unesco Heritage Site. In fact, the label has done more harm than good. Because if the label comes with enormous funding, then “progress” has certainly changed Vigan - segregating the true living culture of the Biguenos into a touristic “Heritage Village” for a tourist market, cementing the natural landscape of the plaza and the places surrounding the cathedral into a preserved petrified monument of a “great city”, and destroying local livelihood by surrounding the place with mall-like environments and fast food chains such as McDonalds. All the banderitas of the fiesta read Smart Mobile Phones and San Miguel Beer, a sponsorship-advertising that has done away with the old social activity of people making the banderitas themselves.

There is indeed money in culture - and the Unesco and the local government in Vigan has killed and “preserved” local living culture in order to sell it.

EMail This Post This entry was posted by Fats on Sunday, May 7th, 2006 at 5:48 pm and is filed under Fats, Vitamins & Minerals > Wika at Hirap > Takaw at Sursur!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.