LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta “Elites and Economic Development in Underdeveloped Countries” was the complete title of Antonio S. Araneta, Jr.’s (my husband) thesis for a Bachelor of Arts degree at the Notre Dame University (Indiana, USA) in 1959. Since then, terminologies have changed even as...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta Historians, chroniclers, social scientists, political analysts and the general public continue debating about the Revolution. Whether finished or unfinished, the mere mention of the R word provokes staggering controversies, especially during heightened moments of...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta Two eminent lawyers, Saul and Daniel Hofileña, father and son, authored an elucidating monograph, “Turmoil at the South China Sea” which to me is a veritable dictionary of basic yet misapplied terms. Let us review a few: Archipelago. A group of islands...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta Does the Republic of the Philippines have any State secrets? If we do have classified, restricted, confidential and top secret files, where are they kept? Are these in a vault of the Department of National Defense (DND), under lock and key in the President’s study in...
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 No, this is not about the intrepid Gringo Honasan who was at National Defense Minister J. Ponce Enrile’s side when the Marcos government was toppled by People Power in February 1986. Gringo also led a few coups d’etat against President Corazon Aquino which she...
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...
