The Ilocos Times

[ First of a series ] By Noralyn Dudt Wedged between the Cordillera Mountains and the South China Sea is a long strip of   land called the Ilocos. It's   a very narrow coastal plain where the mountains drop right down to the sea.   A rugged but beautiful terrain that shaped a people who are known for diligence, frugality, determination, simplicity, resourcefulness, and resilience.   "Beware of the Ilocanos for in the face of adversity they are hardy and resilient. They live simply... they are loyal... they have an elaborate network of beliefs and practices which they apply when dealing with people around them,"   was surely an apt   observation by an Augustinian friar back in the 1700s. Such Ilocano characteristics were probably unknown to the young conquistador Captain Juan de Salcedo who was sent to explore the northern part of Luzon in 1565. The grandson of an earlier Conquistador Miguel Lopez de Legazpi,   Juan was charged to lead Spain's investment of so

By Noralyn O. Dudt GLOBALIZATION is not what one would associate with the 16 th and 17 th centuries   when ships with sails were the only means of transportation in crossing the great oceans and only horses and carriages in traversing the continents.   Jetting the globe on an airplane was still three centuries away. Globalization is what one may ascribe only to our modern era but the history of the   Galleon Trade between Manila and Acapulco tells otherwise. The Manila Galleons were the FEDEX of their time.   The Galleon Trade was the birth of what we now know as globalization. It was in 1565 when the Galleon Trade was first launched. Manila galleons as they were called were the Spanish Trading ships that linked the Spanish General of the Philippines with New Spain   (now Mexico) for 250 years. It made one or two round-trip voyages per year: one from Acapulco to Manila that took 120 days with some 500,000 pesos worth of goods—mostly silver from Spain's South American colonies

It was 1904 and the World's Fair in St Louis, Missouri buzzed with excitement. The World's Fair was to be the Centennial celebration of the 1804 Louisiana Purchase from France.   It was going to be the event of the century. In the words of David Francis who was the chief executive of the Louisiana Purchase,   it was to "demonstrate to visitors that human history has reached its "apotheosis" in Forest Park,"   the venue for the World's Fair.   The $15 million that was spent to create such an extravaganza showed   that no expense was spared. The Fairgrounds covered 1,000 acres ( 405 hectares). It was a pivotal and contentious moment in American history, when in the midst of a new industrial era,   the United States of America celebrated itself as a growing imperial force. The World's Fair of 1904 was designed to showcase American glory, American democracy,   American economy.   On display were the greatest technological innovations of the time: outd

By Noralyn Onto Dudt If my grandfather were still alive today, he would be 121 years old. He was born in the poblacion of Batac   in 1900 just as the Americans were setting fire on the town and burning   it to the ground. His parents, my great-grandparents, named him   Anselmo. It's not really an Ilocano name so I looked up its origins. The English and German "Anselm" means "God- protected", while the Spanish origin "Anselmo" means "God-helmet."   However, as his daughter (my mother) told me many times, the "selmo" in his name sounded like "silmut" which is the Ilocano word for "ignite." The town was being ignited, a historical fact   that never   made it into the mainstream history textbooks. It's a story that had to be told by the elders, by word of mouth and by a few history preservationists. I wonder if my great-parents recognized early on what this "burning" was all about. Surely their newbor

By  Noralyn Onto Dudt "I SHALL RETURN," which was General Douglas MacArthur's personal quest became almost synonymous with the war in the Pacific. And returned he did on Oct. 20, 1944. The whole world watched as he triumphantly waded ashore with his men in the province of Leyte, and in the following months liberated the rest of the Philippines. General Douglas McArthur, a larger-than-life figure was the American general who presided over the Japanese surrender on board the USS Missouri, bringing an end to World War ll.   It had not been an easy ride. The   US Pacific Fleet in the Philippines had been caught unprepared   on Dec. 8, 1941, just 10 hours after the Pearl Harbor attack and was almost obliterated. It was such a desperate situation that MacArthur and his men had to retreat to the Island of Corregidor, at the entrance of   Manila Bay. The US Army's   Pacific Fleet in the Philippines, lacking air cover as its airplanes were all destroyed in a blitzkrieg by

  By Noralyn Onto Dudt "To educate the Filipinos and to uplift and Christianize them,” was what Pres. William McKinley announced in an interview by James Rusling of "The Christian Advocate" for annexing the Philippines in 1898. Quite ironic indeed as the people of the Philippines had been Christian for about three centuries before McKinley and his supporters got the idea. Free access to modern public education was made possible through the Spanish enactment of the Spanish Education Decree of Dec 20, 1863 by Queen Isabella II. And although public education—the kind that we are familiar with—was not yet in place, the Jesuits and the Dominican Orders had built parochial schools all over the archipelago. The University of Santo Tomas in Manila, a pontifical university was founded in 1611, about a decade before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts. For all its bad and harsh beginnings, American tutelage had its good points.   The "sentimental impe

By Noralyn O. Dudt The "what ifs" have been visiting me lately, especially this past year when we were "forever" home, in lockdown with the Corona. It is a lingering mental preoccupation, making me pause, thinking what could have been, what would have been had an event happened or not. "What if...." In 2004, Phil and I received an invitation from the Embassy of Japan to a reception commemorating the 150 th anniversary of Japan ending her seclusion from the world. Japan had been in lockdown for 200 years when the American Commodore Matthew Perry, his staff and troops sailed into Tokyo Bay and asked to be presented to the emperor. It was an audacious move, especially at the time when there were no back-ups and no airpower support for the "just in case" moments.   Barging in on Japan in 1854 with so many unknowns, crossing the vast Pacific would have been quite an adventure (read: dangerous). But somehow, the commodore must have felt very conf