LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta I am the happy owner of two pre-loved Camilo Osias books both titled, “The Philippine Readers;” I do not know if these were also used in private schools, specially the sectarian ones, during that period called “peacetime.” The revised edition of Book...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta In 1901, General Arthur MacArthur (Douglas’s father) announced: “A rapid extension of educational facilities is an exclusively military measure…” What a clever strategy, that was the essence of “benevolent assimilation” and “pacification.” Immediately,...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta As Women’s Month comes to an end, I am rereading essays written by my mother (Carmen Guerrero Nakpil, CGN) about the Filipino woman. She was not a feminist, yet she defended women’s rights to education, freedom of speech and assembly, the pursuit of happiness and...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta How I wish I had asked my grandmothers more about themselves. Both lived in historical times; both survived a yesterday of revolutions and wars of invasion; their today overlapped with mine and they unobtrusively prepared me for a tomorrow of uncertainties. My...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta (Part I) To celebrate Women’s Day (March 8), I resurrected the first ever article I wrote about my mother, Carmen Guerrero Nakpil, published in a widely-circulated daily in 1964, a month after I had won the Miss International Beauty title in Long Beach, California....
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta I n September 2013, with Syria in mind, President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation said that the founders of the United Nations Organization must have understood that decisions affecting war and peace should be made only by consensus. And with the USA’s...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta My zoom mates and I were arguing about People Power 1. What happened to all that enthusiasm that toppled a dictator? When the dust settled, the old order crept back into place. The pyramid of possibilities for structural changes crumbled steadily. Then someone asked if...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta Let us get a handle on Biac-na-Bato, that tangled network of caves and rivers in San Miguel de Mayumo, Bulacan, 42 kilometers away from the Barasoain Church of Malolos. President Manuel Quezon declared it a national park in 1937 because of historic events that unfolded...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta If you are among those who still have not heard of the First Republic of the Philippines, this column was humbly written with you in mind, so kindly read on. While members of the Malolos Congress gathered in Barasoain church in 1898, to debate on the 101 articles of the...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta Last Jan. 23, we should have celebrated the 123rd anniversary of the First Philippine Republic with fireworks, parades, platitudes and flowered wreaths. You may have noticed that we have never done that, not even in Manila, the seat of government. Bulakeños call their...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta Mariano Ponce always kept a low profile probably because he was the tallest among the Filipino expats in Europe. In that iconic Gomburza-like “triumvirate” studio photo with Jose Rizal and Marcelo del Pilar, Mariano Ponce had to sit down sideways on a stool with...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta With Secretary Fortunato de la Peña at the helm, the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) commemorated the 125th anniversary of Jose Rizal’s execution in a profound and meaningful manner. It all began in 2019, during the Rizal Day breakfast at the National...
