Events: The Video Documentary PUREZA: Preparation or Propaganda? (1)

Serious social observer former Councilor Wilson Gamboa, Jr. and wife Irene, NDB writer Gil Severino and wife Laarnie in a souvenir pose with PUREZA filmmaker J.Abello at SM City Cinema last Tuesdau.* (contributed photo)

It is an obra-maestra of J. Abello and I posted a piece of my mind in the PUREZA Facebook page/account to give justice to him while still alive by asking the vast social network, “Our mind was stimulated, is there anyone of us who will lead a course of action?” I am personally thankful to J. Abello for staying long after everyone was gone and offered the legendary Ilonggo cumplase to a new found friend. I am also thankful to the same cumplase given by my friend GMA TV’s Adrian Bobe for accommodating a social science insight.

I need to watch the film again during the regular screening to critique on the artistic flow, transitions and my own entertainment expectations. I assured J. Abello an A- because I do not give perfect score. For now, it is enough that our minds are one that the documentary film PUREZA cannot cause the century old Negrense longing for social transformation. “I am filmmaker,” he said and boldly shifted responsibility to all three million Negrense stakeholders to act on what is best.

Then I turned to Adrian Bobe’s microphone and spoke of thoughts long espoused my own two respondents. Recalling very clearly the ending of PUREZA, the sociological hypochondria of the Negrenses since the Spanish period, boldly exposing it as “laziness”, wrecked the province of perpetual bloody monocrop system so primitive that the industry cannot withstand the onslaught of no-tariff trade with the rest of the world come 2015.

Must it take an outsider Professor Solita Monsod to tell J. Abello’s haciendero major players that their century old sugar industry is “no good” and “too old for protection”. Zero tariffication mode could have been started in 1963 when then President Diosdado Macapagal laid the cornerstone of liberalization when he convened the MAPHILINDO. Now, the mode turned drama and PUREZA has poignant reasons to depict a provincial panorama devoid of a specific agenda related to the development of the Negros’ sugar comparative advantage. It was once an object of envy. Today, no song could ever uplift the plight of Negros even the best sugar planter refused to face the future.

Said in a local history conference with educators last September 25, 2011, one of my interviewees was Monsignor Gregorio Gaston who humored his listeners with funny tales of the legendary Negrense “tinikal” at the same time voice rebuked, “The Negrenses seem to be living on borrowed money, used borrowed money and kept borrowing some more.”

In the past, their Iloilo “Tagatabok” counterparts are mocked as “kuripot” and the Cebuano speaking populace is derogatorily called “Udong”. Monsgr. Gaston surmised that this could be the reason why Cebu forcibly transcended itself from such discrimination it became what it is now. Iloilo, with its Panay critical mass, is comparatively better off and no longer “kuripot” because their loan capacity is far bigger than Negros.
Must there be a 2015 to push the Negrense to the social precipice of death for it to rise? Perhaps, they are most comfortable in this condition anyway, so, who cares.*
(Next: Did Mr. J. Abello get the right respondents?)