LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta Let us standardize the adobo, said the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). What an impossible task, chimed my Rizal lady cousins last Monday, Aug. 29, as we celebrated National Heroes’ Day at the chalet of Gen. Paciano Rizal. We reminisced about a couple of adobo...
Gemma Cruz Araneta Most Filipinos like me believe that the United States of America is the unbreachable, gleaming bastion of democracy. Despite the rise of China and Russia, the USA remains to be the most powerful, mightiest and wealthiest country on Planet Earth. Many of my contemporaries migrated...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta I came across this declaration: “We have created our myth. This myth is a faith, a passion. It is not necessary for it to be a reality…Our myth is the nation, our myth is the greatness of the nation! And to this myth, this greatness, which we want to translate into...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta Suddenly, there were no more coups d’etat. Although President Fidel V. Ramos (FVR) won 23.58 percent of electoral votes in the 1992 elections, the country seemed to have breathed a sigh of relief. How reassuring that perennial destabilizers, mutineers and plotters,...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta Much too often, snippets of “legal wife versus mistress” pop up while I am scrolling for breaking news about the J6 Select Committee hearings in the USA, or the billion dollars awarded to the heirs of the Sultan of Sulu by a foreign arbitral court. I am always...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta If I were teaching the Rizal course as mandated by RA 1425, I would begin with how Rizal reacted to the most devastating crisis he had to face. Isn’t crisis management what we need most these days? In 1891, the Dominican Order of friars were the richest landowners...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta To this day, the Philippines is described as an agricultural country which is probably why the 17th president, Ferdinand Marcos, Jr, (PBBM) appointed himself Secretary of Agriculture. It happens to be an utterly sensitive sector of the national economy, the most...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta On June 30, the world around me unveiled an astounding mural of light and brilliant pigments splashed across the horizon. Gone was the subdued landscape of impressionist paintings with indeterminate brushstrokes in pastel shades. If the colors and myriad hues I now see...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta Like many of us today, Jose Rizal must have wondered whether the first batch of natives who were baptized knew what was going on. Language was a barrier; Spanish missionaries had not yet learned our native tongues, nor compiled those monumental glossaries and grammar...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta On June 12, there will be a “Heritage Cannon” on the dolomite beach and it will most probably fire a deafening shot (sans projectile) to celebrate the 124th anniversary of our Independence. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) aims “to...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta Elvis Presley, then the indisputable “King of Rock” was the icon of all my female contemporaries, to the chagrin of the Maryknoll nuns (our teachers) who denounced him as an “occasion of sin.” Until Elvis came into the picture, no one sang with such a sexually...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta At this writing, 22:16 hours, May 9, I am seized by dread as election results from various sources appear online. From Regions 1 and 2, the solid North, the BBM-Duterte tandem has emerged the winner, as expected. But, there are 15 more regions in the Republic of the...
