"From picture pretty to pretty ugly"
"From picture pretty to pretty ugly"
This article is inspired by a very recent news item where children from Baguio wrote the Office of the President to “spare the trees” after learning that the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) is considering selling or leasing a one-hectare property it owns to yet another commercial developer. The property is bounded by UP Baguio, the Supreme Court, and other government properties.
I have always loved going up to Baguio.
When I was a primary grade-schooler, my mom and I would often go up to Baguio weekends, passing the old MacArthur Highway before the North Luzon Expressway was built. The family then had a dry goods business headquartered in Juan Luna in Divisoria, with a sewing facory in the boundary of Navotas and Tondo. It was run by a grand-uncle, and my mom would collect periodically from buyers, whether department stores like Tiong San or retailers at the dry goods section of the public market.
We would stay a night or two in a hotel, and I loved the comforters which shielded me from the cold. We didn’t call these blankets comforters then, but the sheer softness and bounce of the white padded cotton is a memory permanently etched in my mind.
Baguio was then basically just Session Road topped by the grand Pines Hotel on Luneta Hill, down to the beautiful (then) Burnham Park, and the market where we would fill our car with strawberries and highland vegetables to bring home as “pasalubong,” especially for my teacher.
Toward Naguilian was the shrine of the Lady of Lourdes with its two hundred or so steps. One of my grand-uncle’s “suki” had a house in the area, on what was then a middle-class subdivision before one scaled the heights of Mirador and Dominican hills. The lady suki, a Batanguena, would always treat my mom and me to a hearty breakfast of Baguio longanisa and eggs sarciado with Baguio tomatoes, sometimes slightly salted beef tapa, and I guess that is the reason why to this day, garlicky longanisa and tapa are my comfort food.
Sometimes, when there were holidays beyond the two-day weekend, we would have time to visit the then strictly-enclosed Camp John Hay, courtesy of friends who could secure passes to the American enclave, and be treated to juicy hamburgers on soft buns.
But beyond the culinary treats, it was always the scent of Benguet pines and the highland chill that enthralled Baguio. Going up Kennon, you already get a whiff of the indescribably redolent smell of huge pine trees that jutted out of the landscape, enveloping the mountains and the valleys with a permanent evergreen.
Lovely is an understated description of Baguio’s beauty (then).
Years after, in high school, Baguio was a year-end destination. We had Catholic “leadership-training sessions” from December 26 to 30 at St. Louis University beside the cathedral, and we stayed at what was then the Patria de Baguio, an inn at the corner of Session and Cathedral Road beside the American-styled post office.
A short walk would bring us to the stately Pines Hotel, still surrounded by giant pine trees, before government sold it to SM, which created that monstrosity atop Luneta Hill.
Beyond Pines Hotel to the east was UP Baguio and the Supreme Court cottages, again surrounded by magnificent evergreens.
It became a habit for me to be in Baguio or the Montanosa (Sagada before tourists discovered it) and Mount Data, even Bontoc, long before mountaineering became fashionable) every year-end.
I would bring my family there even when my kids were toddlers, often spending New Year’s Eve there to escape the smoke and acrid stench of Manila’s firecracker-crazy culture, amid towering pines and highland chill. But not, never on Holy Week, when Tagaytay is more pleasant than Baguio’s over-crowdedness.
It was such that when I had some savings, I bought a small property in Dominican Hill, thinking of a retirement lodge where on clear days one could get a glimpse of the western sun setting in the horizon off La Union peering from pine needles. Building that dream cottage is no longer a passion.
That’s because I have seen Baguio deteriorate from picture pretty to pretty ugly.
Overpopulation has brought the scourge of traffic and smoke-belching jeepneys, choking almost every thoroughfare. Session Road has lost its lovely pedestrian charm. The once-lovely mountains covered with pine have become a pastiche of houses and hovels. In an effort to make it look less dreadful, someone thought of the bright idea of painting the houses
with bright colours similar to Rio’s favelas, or Buenos Aires’ La Boca.
A congressman built a concrete pine tree to define the lost Baguio where Luneta Hill merges with Session Road. It has become an apt monument to Baguio’s lost glory, a grim reminder of how man despoils Nature.
Where bringing kids to Burnham Park was an annual thrill, now one shuns it and confines oneself to the expensive enclaves of Country Club and John Hay.
Is redemption yet possible? Can we yet bring back the old glory? Can urban renewal still be accomplished in Baguio?
Sen. Dick Gordon has authored a bill creating a national authority comprising Baguio and La Trinidad, along with Tuba, Naguilian and some other municipalities of Benguet precisely to oversee a “saner” summer capital and hopefully begin its resurrection from helter-skelter over-use to coordinated re-development. It is called BLISTT, something similar to the Subic Bay Management Authority that he likewise championed and which has spared the forests of that former American naval base and maintained its balanced development despite industrial usage.
We wish the good senator whose pride of place and sense of heritage one finds few parallels among peers, to pursue these efforts to restore our summer capital, and bring it back to the status of a national treasure.
But for now, let’s spare the remaining pine trees of the summer capital.
President Clint (Aranas) and Chairman Rolly (Macasaet) of GSIS—please spare the trees. You have more pricey assets and a steady cash flow to keep your actuarians happy. And I know you guys to have likewise an eye for true beauty and a sense of heritage.”‹
