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Doreen B. Tampus

Professor Charlie Samuya Veric

ELL 301

20 November 2016

Memories of a Cradle: Demystification of Regional Identity through Nostalgia,

Diaspora and Culture in the Poems of Generoso M. Opulencia

Introduction

All my life, I have been confused with my cultural identity. I was born in a small town

in the province of Sultan Kudarat, Region 12 in Mindanao. Growing up with the oral

folklores of my grandmother, a Karay-a who was born and raised in Pandan, Antique and

migrated to Mlang, North Cotabato who later on transferred to Sultan Kudarat, I enjoyed

many of these oral traditions and appreciated everything about them. I grew up with the

famous lullabies, Dandansoy and Ili-ili Tulog Anay, the different versions of the story of Juan

Pusong, various komposo, and a lot more. These are definitely part of the Hiligaynon and

Kinaray-a culture and tradition. But this question bothers me for so long. Am I an Ilonggo

because my mother’s parents are from Iloilo or Karay-a because my father was born in

Antique and his parents are pure blooded Karay-a? What is my cultural identity

considering I was born and raised in Sultan Kudarat? Anybody can immediately assume

that an Ilonggo or Karay-a is someone who speaks Hiligaynon or Kinaray-a and from Iloilo

or from Antique or generally from Panay Island. The most critical feature that I noticed is

the language. Everyone in the family speaks Hiligaynon or Karay-a. Considering this critical

feature, I am definitely confident that I am either Ilonggo or Karay-a. I claim myself to be

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Ilonggo and Karay-a though I was born and raised in Mindanao which by location I am not

and to borrow Luisa Igloria’s title of the book, ‘I am not home, but here’ (2003).

All this time, I am looking for answers about my questions on cultural identity. I

believe the answer lies on what Stuart Hall calls the two positions of cultural identity which

I will discuss further later. Similarly, this personal inquiry of cultural identity makes me

think of Generoso Opulencia, a poet from Koronadal City, South Cotabato who is the

primary text of this paper along with his poems which were published in various

accredited Philippine literary publications. Just like me, Opulencia has his roots from

Western Visayas, the roots that cannot be ignored in order to elucidate his cultural identity.

In the study of Frederick L. Wernstedt and Paul D. Simkins, Migrations and the

Settlement of Mindanao which was published in the Journal of Asian Studies, Cambridge

University Press in 1965 (83-103), they historicize the migration of people from Western

Visayas and their settlement in Mindanao. According to their research, the western

Visayan provinces of Negros Occidental, Aklan, Antique, Capiz and Iloilo also supplied large

numbers of migrants to Mindanao, especially to the frontier provinces. Pelzer as cited by

Wernstedt and Simskins, found a similar pattern of origin among the Koronadal settlers in

I939. The prevalence of commercial agriculture in the western Visayas has created a large

landless farm population, and the region, both before and after the war, has been a prime

area of out-migration. The various governmental colonization projects in Cotabato found

willing applicants in the western Visayas. The flow of information from these earlier

settlers has undoubtedly maintained this migration stream. The interisland shipping

service is more frequent from Panay to Cotabato than to any other Mindanao port (p.97).
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At present, Region 12, famously dubbed as SOCCSKSARGEN is a culturally diverse

region. The name is an acronym that stands for the region’s four provinces such as South

Cotabato, Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani and one of its cities, General Santos City.

Formerly, the region used to be called Central Mindanao. The regional center is Koronadal

City which is located in the province of South Cotabato while the center of commerce,

industry, transportation and the most populous city is General Santos which is part of

Sarangani province. South Cotabato is located in the southern part of the island of

Mindanao. It is bounded by the province of Sultan Kudarat in the north and west, in the east

and south by the city of General Santos and province of Sarangani. Its main access to the

sea is through the Sarangani Bay where the modern port of General Santos City is located.

As of the 2010 Census of Population by ethnicity of the National Statistics Office, the total

population of South Cotabato is 825,816 among which 409, 287 are Hiligaynon/Ilonggo,

the highest among the identified ethnicity in South Cotabato, 8,015 are Karay-a people,

7,556 are Akeanon and 462 are Capizeno (68-70). That is to say, South Cotabato is

dominantly inhabited by more than 50% of migrants from West Visayas.

Likewise, based on the data given by the Municipal Statistics Office and the Planning

& Development Office, in Marbel now Koronadal City in 1913, the American colonial

government provided resources for the establishment of agricultural colonies in Mindanao.

By the time the Philippine Commonwealth was established, Mindanao had become a

veritable frontier. Wave upon wave of migrants poured into the region, chief among them

the Hiligaynons, Cebuanos, Ilocanos, Tagalogs, Warays, Kapampangans, Pangasinenses,

Aklanons and Bicolanos. These people did much to clear the virgin areas of Mindanao and

open them to extensive agriculture and industry. Using this relevant information about
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Koronadal City, it is important to note that as early as American colonialism, the city turned

into a diasporic community. It is therefore a city with diverse culture not to mention the

indigenous people such as T’boli, B’laan, Manobo, Teruray and among others.

In view of the concept of ethnicity to decipher the regional identity of South Cotabato,

Jesus Peralta in his book Glimpses: Peoples of the Philippines, presents the various problems

in the identification of ethnicity in the Philippines. For him, in understanding the peoples

of the Philippines, it is an obligation of the ethnographer that the status and dispersal of the

various groups have to be considered. Time as when an ethnic group is concentrated in a

home territory with strictly defined and defended ethnic boundaries (ix). He added that the

ecological diversity and the differential cultural adjustments of particular populations to

their effective environment both physical and natural, have led to the evolution of at least

77 major ethnolinguisticgroups in the Philippine archipelago. These groups are

compounded by their own respective subgroups numbering about 244 with their own

variations of the central cultures (p.1).

Because of the existing problem on ethnicity, Peralta came up with a manual he calls

Ethnography Field Manual which was published by the National Museum of the Philippines

in 1996. For him, in the study of peoples, however, only distances expressed in sociological

terms exist to designated specific areas of integration. The disadvantage of social distances

is that they do not have the visibility of fences and, therefore, require more mechanics to be

able to be discerned (1). As far as land is concerned the Philippines is more or less sharply

partitioned, tagged and labeled. Unfortunately, there is no direct correspondence between

areas thus tagged and the people living in them because politically defined areas are not

necessarily ethnic areas too (1). There is no guarantee that a political area like a province
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would also be a specific ethnic locality, hence, he suggests that the ethnographer should

begin to isolate one ethnic group from the others through a process of description (2).

However, this may be initiated from different points of reference or entry point which may

include cultural practices, rituals, lineage, language, literature, and so on.

Literature is part of ethnicity whether it is spoken, written or performed. Philippine

folklore is a group-oriented and tradition-based creation of Filipino groups or individuals

controlled by the expectations and practices of their community as an expression of its

cultural and social identity. It is transmitted orally, by imitation, by performance or a

combination of two or three processes taking place simultaneously. The traditional

expectations and practices of the members of the community serve as the controlling

factors of folklore (Lopez 1). In the bibliography written by E. Arsenio Manuel, the

branches of folklore comprise of the following: customs and beliefs, myths and legends,

folktales, proverbs, riddles, folk dance and music, folksongs, musical instruments, games

and amusements, dolls and toys, feast and festivals, folk drama, costumes and ornaments,

food and drinks, utensils and armor, folk arts, and works dealing on the general culture of

any group (i).

Nevertheless, even if these traditions or culture clearly make up a cultural identity,

does this also means that Generoso Opulencia’s cultural identity can be demystified

considering his different context? He belongs to a place which Peralta calls ‘politically

divided region’ (1). In his poem, Ang Sulat ni Dandansoy (Dandansoy’s Letter), Opulencia

uses the most famous character or persona of both Hiligaynon and Kinaray-a literature. In

that case, he recognizes that the character Dandansoy is precisely part of his cultural
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identity. But what is his cultural identity? Is he a Karay-a, an Ilonggo or a South

Cotabateňo?

Objectives of the Paper

Given the premises above, this paper endeavors to present how do the poems of

Generoso Opulencia embody the Kinaray-a and Hiligaynon cultures and traditions by

analyzing his poems – Ang Sulat ni Dandansoy (Dandansoy’s Letter), Ang Kuon Ni Kabo Isko

(Says Foreman Isko), To a Son Learning the Art of Cooking, Sa Yahong ni Lola ko Tiyang (In

my Lola Tiyang’s Bowl), and Sa Hunasan-Kay Nene (At Ebbing Time-For Nene).

To propose the central argument on the definition of regional identity, it is also

important to present relevant information about Opulencia’s family, educational

background, work experiences and the history of his migration from Negros Occidental to

South Cotabato that will answer some assumptions about regional identity, one that is not

place-bound but, rather, is founded on the fluid dynamics of movement and memory. It is

also important to note how he presents nostalgia, diaspora and culture in order to

demystify the notion of regional identity in his poems, hence, the theory of Svetlana Boym

on nostalgia (41-49), Dufoix’s theory on diaspora (x, xii & 1-5; Delanty 27, 28, 31; hooks

148 & Bammer 8), model of diaspora (Dufoix 62-65) will be utilized and cultural identity

will be explained by employing the following theories on identity(Stuart Hall 1-16 & 223-

225; De Vos, et al, 5, 15; De Vos & Ross, 388-89; Bammer xiii; Derrida 8-10; Krzyzanowski,

et al 86-87 & Santiago 25). It will also look into the concrete sociological definitions of

Hiligaynon and Kinaray-a in terms of material and non-material culture which are

grounded on the works of Amorita Rabuco, Lucila Hosillos, Landa Jocano, Alex delos Santos

and Leoncio Derriada.

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Generoso Opulencia was born at Sitio Alegria, Isabela, Negros Occidental on July 1,

1939. His father, Jose Salinas Opulencia, an Ilonggo was from Sta. Rita, Oton, Iloilo, a town

divided by Hiligaynon and Karay-a speaking people. He was a mailman and an amateur

boxer but died when Generoso was three years old. His mother, Matilde Gerolani was from

Guimbal, Iloilo who speaks Kinaray-a. His mother married again after his father’s death and

he has four half-bothers and two half-sisters. He was raised by his step grandfather, the

second husband of his grandmother, who according to Generoso is a great and religious

man whom he looked up and admired so much. His grandmother and step grandfather

brought him to Marbel now Koronadal City in South Cotabato in 1951 when he was 12

years old because of extreme poverty. Their house was burnt seven times; they were

landless and became tenants. It was also the time when Mindanao began to open many

agricultural and industrial opportunities. Tracing his family background and origin,

Generoso Opulencia is a complex and a diasporic subject himself.

Despite poverty, Generoso managed to go to school. He went to Isabela West

Elementary School, Isabela in Negros Occidental from 1945 to1950. When they migrated

to South Cotabato, he continued high school at Notre Dame High School Boys’ Department in

Marbel in 1953 and finished in 1957 with the help of some priests and Mr. Ermitanio, an

Ilocano kindhearted neighbor. His good scholastic records and his inclination to religious,

simple and peaceful life impressed Marist brothers and eventually brought him to Japan

where he spent four years from 1957 to1961 in the Trappist Monastery, Oshima-Tobetsu,

Hakodate and Hokkaido, Japan. For some personal reason, in 1962 to1964 he transferred

to Vina, California still in the Trappist Monastery to continue his vocation. Trappist

brothers urged him to study Russian language, because they were planning to put up a
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monastery in Russia. Hence, in 1965 until 1970, he studied Bachelor of Arts in Russian and

Japanese Languages at San Francisco State College now a state university. He then took

Master of Arts in Teaching English as a Foreign Language in the same university from 1970

to1972. He became a teaching apprentice of the American Language Institute in San

Francisco California from 1971 to 1972. It was there where he has written his first short

story in Russian language which he submitted to the Russian Honor Society after which, he

was tasked to write an epilogue of a particular issue of the newsletter of the same literary

society through a Haiku. These were the moments where he realized his passion in writing

particularly in literature. After nine years in San Franciso, Generoso Opulencia decided to

go home and served as a college instructor at the University of Negros Occidental-Recoletos

in Bacolod City from 1972 to 1975 where he learned Hiligaynon. When he was in Bacolod,

he was a writing fellow at Silliman University in Dumaguete City and met Jaime An Lim

who later asked Opulencia to substitute his teaching position as literature professor at

Mindanao State University in Marawi City while he was pursuing his doctorate degree in

Indiana University, Bloomington. In MSU-Marawi City, Opulencia was appointed as

Assistant Professor from 1976 to 1980. When Jaime An Lim returned to MSU, he also went

back to his hometown in Koronadal City, South Cotabato in 1980 and became a lecturer at

the Notre Dame of Marbel College until 1981. It was then when he met Victoria Jorda who

was also an English instructor. They got married and transferred to Mindanao State

University-Iligan Institute of Technology where he became an Assistant Professor from

1981-1991. While he was in MSU-IIT, in 1985 to 1986, he took Doctor of Philosophy in

Teaching Literature at Silliman University where he earned 21 units. Because of the ailing

mother-in-law, his family went back to Koronadal City and became an Associate Professor
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of Notre Dame of Marbel University from 1991 until he retired from service in 2002. From

then on up to the present, he teaches foreign languages such as Japanese and French and

humanities in several tertiary and technical institutions throughout Region 12 and

Pagadian City in Zamboanga del Sur and he acts as mentor and consultant of Cotabato

Literary Journal of SOCSKSARGEN.

Opulencia received several awards and published in several accredited publications

for his poetry. In 1999, he won 2nd prize in the Home Life Magazine of St. Paul’s University

for his poem, Regarding Flowers from La Trinidad which on the following year, he garnered

1st prize in the same literary magazine for his poem To a Son Learning the Art of Cooking

with Leoncio Derriada as the editor. He first received his award for his poem Epiphany,

which was published in Sands and Coral, the official campus literary publication of Silliman

University.

In 1995, the National Commission for Culture and Arts published Patubas, an

anthology of West Visayan poetry from 1986 to 1994 which were written in Hiligaynon,

Kinaray-a, Aklanon, Filipino and English having Leoncio Derriada as the editor. Generoso

Opulencia’s poems such as Magic of the Evening and To a Chrysalis Hanging from a Rice Leaf

were included in the said anthology. He also published Ang Sulat Ni Dandansoy (Dandansoy’s

Letter) and Ang Kuon ni Kabo Isko (Says Foreman Isko) in Mantala: A Quarterly Literary

Journal of Philippine Literature. In December 1995, the Coordinating Center for Literature

of the Cultural Center of the Philippines published Ani, the first ever anthology of Kinaray-a

Literature edited by Christine F. Godinez-Ortega, Ralph Semino Galan and Anthony L. Tan

as the members of the editorial board and Jaime L. An Lim as the Art Director. Here, he

published his poem A Datu’s Wife at a Ceremonial Washing of the Datu’s Bones. Likewise,
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Bienvenido Lumbera has written a book Filipinos Writing: Philippine Literature from the

Regions and featured Generoso Opulencia’s poem Ang Pito Ka Pahingapos Nga Pulong ni

Bong Fulong-A B’laan Chieftain (The Seven Last Words of Bong Fulong-A B’laan Chieftain).

He also wrote Hinakop nga Haiku and Oras sang Panira which he first published in Sands and

Coral of the Silliman University. His Kinaray-a poems were also published in Cotabato

Literary Journal such as Dyang Kuti nga Itom (This Black Kitty), its first publication was in

the campus literary publication of Notre Dame of Marbel University and Sa Hunasan-Kay

Nene (At Ebbing Time-For Nene). Just last year, Merlie Alunan published her book Sa Atong

Dila: Introduction to Visayan Literature which includes Opulencia’s three Kinaray-a poems:

Ang Sulat ni Dandansoy, Pakpakan riang Tawag nga Gugma and Sa Yahong ni Lola ko

Tiyang.

When asked about his first poetic and creative moment, it was not really clear for

him but he confessed that it was Edilberto Tiempo who discovered him and endorsed him

to be one of the writing fellows of Silliman University. There, he learned the craft of writing

from Dr. Edilberto and Edith Tiempo. He accepted the doctorate fellowship although it was

for short story writing but it was also in the same year when he was invited to join the

Cornelio Faigao Writing Workshop in Cebu City where he wrote his first Hiligaynon poem,

Ang Koronasyon (The Coronation).

Charlie Samuya Veric writes in the introduction of his poetry collection Histories

that his experience of aesthetic sublimation began when as a boy, he had nightmares in

which he saw the funeral of his own mother. Because he was frightened by this scenario, in

order to calm himself, he would think of the speech he would give before the men of his

family will lower the dearest woman in his life into the underworld (31). He wrote his
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poems bringing the memory of a boy haunted by the imagined loss, a boy who ‘loved and

cried in the night’.

On the other hand, Marjorie Evasco as featured by Ricardo de Ungria in his book A

Passionate Patience: Ten Filipino Poets on the Writing of their Poems confesses that she

began to learn the language of flight, dream and memory which she calls poetry, when, as a

child she associated beauty with motion while looking at the flying heron one day, during

her family’s vacation in Tagbilaran City, Bohol to visit her grandparents. This is her

language, her memory, her dream in her poem Heron-Woman (101). For de Ungria, a poet’s

past life is an entire preparation for the creative moment thus, Ricaredo Demetillo can find

his “Oseisan” in his fascination with that figure since he played the part of Rizal in play

when he was in the seventh grade (xix).

Looking at the different confessions of the poets on the genesis of their creative and

poetic moment, it is clearly understood that a poet’s work can be a fragment of their own

memory, hence, it is on this context that this paper will decipher the signification of

nostalgia in the poem’s of Generoso Opulencia which equally will also present the nature of

diaspora in the community where he belongs as well as the culture he embodies in order to

define his identity.

The Kinaray-a and Hiligaynon Culture, Language and Literature

Material and Non-Material Culture

Opulencia by blood is both Hiligaynon and Karay-a. It is on this context that it is

important to present the sociological definition of both Hiligaynon and Karay-a culture in

order to support my argument on cultural identity.

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The Ilonggos, as the Hiligaynons are popularly known today, are a blend of indigene,

the Negrito, the Indonesian, and the Malay, the blend later infused with the Indian,

Chinese, Arab, Spanish, American, and other races (Hosillos, 3). The name Hiligaynon was

derived from the root word ilig, to flow, and its derivative, manogpailig, one who flows or

causes something to flow. Hosillos added that the inhabitants of Panay and Negros who cut

down bamboo canes for a living floated their bamboos and wares down the rivers, selling

them along the way toward the coastal areas and trading posts (4). Alicia Magos generally

and collectively calls the Filipinos in central Philippines as Visayans or Bisayans. Hence, the

people in Panay, Guimaras and Negros Occidental are referred to as “Visayans” or

“Bisayans”. The tradition that they follow can be referred to as “Kinabisaya” (literally, “of

the Bisaya”).

Lucila Hosillos, considers in general, the people of western Visayas as generous,

kind-hearted, friendly, hospitable, indulgent, and liberal to a fault. Blessed with fertile

plains, teeming sees, and forests abundant in crops and rich with game and other products,

and a benign climate, they are not as hard working as the Filipinos in the other regions of

the country (4).

Landa Jocano has written a book The Hiligaynon: An Ethnography of Family and

Community Life in Western Bisayas Region. According to research, in Negros, fishing is done

throughout the year. It is one of the important income generating industries in the

province. Correspondingly, Antique is a primary source of tuna, slip mouths, moonfish,

anchovy and other source of salt-water fish (7). Equally, for Hosillos, fishing in Panay was

in seas and rivers and where coastal, estuarine, and riverine mollusks and small

crustaceans were also collected (4). The standard traditional house-type in most villages in
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the rural areas of Western Bisayas is a square, four-walled…made of nipa (Nipa fructicans,

Wurmb), cogon (imperata, spp.) and coconut leaves. Most dwellings are raised about three

or four meters from the ground by timber or bamboo posts…enclosed with neatly woven

bamboo slats and surrounded with bamboo tops and twigs (Jocano, 13). Jocano further

describes that the Hiligaynons adhere to similar principles of social action, whether they

are living in upland, lowland, coastal, and urban areas. The reason for this similarity in

behavior pattern appears to come from the prevailing emphasis the people place on the

role of family and kinship in community affairs. In any case, the family is considered by

both rural and urban residents as an important component of community organization that

provides group life with a common reservoir of social, economic, and psychological

support. It functions as the link to many other types of relational arrangements in the

community. The family is composed of the father, the mother, and their unmarried child or

children who are either biological offspring of the spouses or adopted by them and who are

either living with them or not (139-40).

As a rule, the husband is considered the head of the family. The wife is expected to

follow what her husband thinks is right for the family (Jocano 143). At home, however, the

woman dominates the activities. She handles and has the authority over the financial

management of the family income. Generally, the husband helps in all household chores

but leaves all the decisions to the wife. He attends to the farm, staying in the field most of

his time while the wife attends to housekeeping, including cooking of meals and laundering.

Older children, particularly the daughters, assist in carrying out these domestic activities.

On the whole, the relationship between Hiligaynon husband and wife is one of equal

sharing of family responsibility (Jocano 145). The relationship between parents and
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children is characterized by intimacy, responsibility and respect. Children are always

wanted and they function as the major source of social and psychological gratification to

adult members of the family. He is the object of early discipline and training. The father is

expected to train the boys for a man’s work. Even at an early age of seven, the boy is

required to participate in farm activities like tending the carabaos, watching the seedlings,

and running errands (Jocano 146). The relationship between parents-in-law and children-

in-law is similar to those between parents and children (Jocano 151-52). Before marriage,

the prospective couple is told respectively by their parents to respect and obey their in-

laws as though they are real parents (Jocano 152).

Language

Two languages were spoken in Panay at the time of the Spanish conquest, Haraya

and Bisaya. Haraya is Hinaraya or Kinaray-a which is still spoken in Antique and the

interior while Bisaya is in use through all the islands of the Pintados (Hosillos 7). Kinaray-a

is one of the minor languages classified under the Austronesian/malayo-polynesian

lineage. It is the language spoken in most of West Visayas. It is spoken in all of Antique,

parts of Aklan, and Capiz, most of Iloilo, and even in Negros Occidental where the biggest

number of sakadas, seasonal workers in the haciendas, is Karay-a from Antique. The actual

number of Kinaray-a speakers is hard to determine as the language has long suffered

classification with Hiligaynon. But judging by its geographical coverage, Kinaray-a is more

widely spoken in West Visayas (Delos Santos 1). As a matter of fact, Deriada in his

introduction to Ani 19, shares that Kinaray-a is the mother of the mellifluous West Visayan lingua

france Hiligaynon. Accordingly, most anthropologists and linguists believe that Hiligaynon is the

major language of West Visayas (Delos Santos 2). The difference between Kinaray-a and Hiligaynon
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can hardly be discerned only by applying phonetic and orthographic changes like “r” to “l” (delos

Santos 3). In summary, Kinaray-a is the original language and Hiligaynon the “corrupt” language, as

the result of the speech deficiencies of the Chinese merchants and the Spanish priests, and the loan

words from Spanish, Cebuano, Bikol and Waray introduced by the friars (Deriada i).

Literature

Amorita Rabuco has written in the introduction of her book Hiligaynon Mythological

Stories and Folktales: Analysis and Translation, that her childhood would have been

incomplete without the Hiligaynon stories. Her childhood imagination found nourishment

from the stories narrated by her mother, usually after lunch, in preparation for the

afternoon nap or before bedtime. Images emanated of the crabs “walking” home upon the

instruction of Juan Pusong, of the guava fruit “dangling” in front of the mouth of Juan (vii).

Since these natives are not acquainted with the art of writing, they preserve their ancient

lore through songs which they sing in a very pleasant manner (Hosillos 7). The early

Hiligaynons were lovers of music, song, poetry, and dance. These arts were integrated, not

differentiated into specific forms, although there were already indications of specialization.

They were expressive of feelings and thoughts of the mythopoeic stage of human

development, arising of man’s wonderment at existence, his interaction with nature and

natural phenomena, and his struggle for survival. They were spontaneous, lyrical, and

instinctive oral forms as folk verbalization. The common forms were the lyrics, dance, folk

tales, and epics (Hosillos 10). As life became more complex and differentiated, the arts also

became expressions of different aspects of social life, customs, and traditions, observed and

preserved with these institutions and processes through oral tradition. The folksongs tell

of the hard times in the settlements in the past, hopes and dreams, love, everyday activities,
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and other aspects of life in a primitive communal life and its environment. Originally,

poems set to music, the songs were sang according to occasion and for certain purposes,

such as for a battle, rowing, farewell at parting, love, drinking, feasts, burial, planting,

harvest, and other activities (Hosillos 10). The dandansoy is a drinking song sung during

festive occasions celebrated with wine, dance, and music.

Alex Delos Santos concludes in his book The Rise of Kinaray-a, Kinaray-a writers are

basically socially-conscious. The socio-economic and political conditions of the late 80’s

have influenced their consciousness. For them land is very important and attached to it is

the discourse on other issues confronting the Antiqueños: poverty, the plight of peasants,

displacement because of the need to seek other means of living in other lands, injustice

suffered because of the scarcity of resources, and the resolve of simple people to leave their

fates to God. Romanticism manifests in the sense of adventure, the beauty of nature, and

the overflow of intense emotions (66). The tradition of Kinaray-a literature is formidable.

The siday, the banggianay(debate), luwa (verses recited in games during the bilasyon or

wake for the dead), the hurobaton (proverbs), paktatun (riddles), amba (songs) and the

sugidanon (stories) are literary forms found in oral lore (12-13). A poem in Kinaray-a is

called binalaybay, which comes from the root word balay meaning “to construct,” as in a

house. Most of the poems of Kinaray-a writers are in free verse (delos Santos 13).

Nostalgia

Opulencia’s poems show nostalgia. He uses imagery which are part of his childhood,

his past space and time. Svetlana Boym looks at nostalgia in two different kinds. These

kinds of nostalgia characterize one’s relationship to the past, to the imagined community,

to home, to one’s own self-perception. These are the restorative and reflective nostalgia.
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Restorative nostalgia puts emphasis on nostos and proposes to rebuild the lost home and

patch up the memory gaps. While reflective nostalgia dwells in algia, in longing, in loss, the

imperfect process of remembrance. Restorative nostalgia manifests itself in total

reconstructions of monuments of the past while reflective nostalgia lingers on ruins, the

patina of time and history, in the dreams of another place and another time (41). She

further discusses restorative nostalgia by taking into account the restoration of the Sistine

Chapel because of its crack in the fresco, right above Adam’s fingers. The work of

restoration done by Charlton Heston was not a self-conscious act of interpretation, but

rather a transhistoric return to origins with the help of computer technology. The

restoration provoked controversy, in which in all sides accused the other of distorting

Michelangelo and engaging either in nostalgia or in commercialism (46). Restoration

signifies a return to the original stasis, to the prelapsarian moment. The past for the

restorative nostalgic is a value for the present; the past is not a duration but a perfect

snapshot. Reflective nostalgia is more concerned with historical and individual time, with

the irrevocability of the past and human finitude. Re-flection suggests new flexibility, not

the reestablishment of stasis. The focus here is not on recovery of what is perceived to be

an absolute truth but on the meditation on history and passage of time (49).

Marjorie Evasco in her poem Heron-Woman is also nostalgic of her childhood. She

recalls how she associated beauty with motion when she saw a flying heron, which in her

heart she carries the ‘memory of wings’ (de Ungria 103). In weaving the said poem, the

threads that she used stretched back to her own childhood, there, on that magical hill at

noon when her father cued her eye and ear to the momentary shimmer of wings (de Ungria

105). She further says, ultimately, making a poem is an act of faith: that the conjured as
 Tampus 18

well as the living thing will someday work its magic in another person’s body of memories

and dreams (115).

Scarbrough in the prose poem "Several Scenes from Act One, imbues the landscape

of Tellico hills with a stabilizing sense of placefulness, celebrating his earliest memories of

his family home place. He provides us with a picture of nostalgic homesickness, invoking a

Romantic sensibility to describe the pangs of having had to part from his comforting cabin

home (Turner 186). Conversely, Lea Goldberg does not only strive to remember her home

town in its misery. This is where her formulation of nostalgia as a form of memory with a

certain amnesiac dimension comes into play: nostalgia can assist in making the past

illuminated (Gordinsky 7-8).

Alice Yaeger Kaplan confesses in her essay “On Language Memoir” in the collection

edited by Angelika Bammer, Displacements: Cultural Identities in Question. She says she has

been working on a memoir which she calls “language memoir”, a memoir about learning

French. It has challenged her to think about language and identity; to say what it has meant

to her to take on the attributes of French culture, as a student, then as a professor; to

imagine what her second identity has to do with herself and her family-how newselves,

new families emerge in a second language both as reactions and as mirrors of the first one

(59). Literature aids in the construction of a self who can travel, and it finally heals the past

and present. Only the lonely, fearful self would think of this travel as an escape. There is no

language change without emotional consequences. Principally: loss. That language equals

home, that language is a home, as surely as a roof over one’s head is a home, and that to be

without a language, or to be between languages, is as miserable in its way as to be without

bread (63).
 Tampus 19

According to Luisa Igloria, even those who may not have strayed too far away

physically also know that nostalgia is a way of marking what used to be and what can no

longer be recovered except perhaps in memory (x).

Diaspora

Diaspora is a term that refers to any phenomenon of dispersion from a place; the

organization of an ethnic, national or religious community in one or more countries; a

population spread over more than one territory; the places of dispersion; any

nonterritorial space where exchanges take place, and so on. For some people, this flexibility

is a sign of migration’s diversity. For others, it is a betrayal of the word’s meaning. In the

first case, “diaspora” means nothing more than the idea of displacement and the

maintenance of a connection with a real or imagined homeland (Dufoix 2).

Igloria explicates that one can imagine the diaspora as something that has always

been part of life in an archipelagic culture such as the Philippines and the Filipinos all over

the world. The scattering of seeds, of spores, their detachment from an original body that

once housed them and that now has, from some exigency or desire delivered them to the

wind and become both a cipher and a memory of that former home (xii).

For Freud as cited by Marianne Hirsch, displacement, or Verschiebung, is the

transfer of psychic energy from idea to another, one which originally had little intensity but

which, in the process, gains centrality and importance. A strategy of defense and survival, it

offers a way to appease the censor. As an aesthetic it favors metonymy over metaphor

(Bammer 88). On the contrary, “diaspora” for Dufoix is just a word. Like all words, it

serves only to denote part of reality, one that isn’t always the same each time it is used. It is

never that which it denotes, to the point where the word alone is enough to describe what
 Tampus 20

it expresses (2). He added that dispersion implies distance, so maintaining or creating

connections becomes a major goal in reducing or at least dealing with that distance. Today,

diaspora builds and gives meaning to links between people by weaving guiding threads

that stretch across tens of thousands of miles and shine like a familiar light in the labyrinth

of others (Dufoix 3).

Dufoix proposes four modes of diaspora: centroperipheral, enclave, atopic and

antagonistic. In the case of the diaspora in South Cotabato, the enclave mode is the most

appropriate description. Enclave mode involves the local organization of a community

within a host country, usually in a city. When community neighborhoods are involved, this

mode eventually becomes part of the urban fabric, but it also can exist as a network of

associations that gather like with like. The enclave operates locally and helps its

participants get to know and stay in touch with one another. Unlike the centroperipheral

mode, the enclave is based not on a formal link of nationality but on a shared identity

(Dufoix 62-63) which is relatively similar to the link between West Visayas and South

Cotabato.

In the book of Gerard Delanty entitled Identity, Belonging and Migration, he shares

Mariangela Veikou’s analysis of a Greek dilemma which suggests that diasporized

communities face a series of sometimes insurmountable obstacles in their attempts to lay

claim to a homeland (Veikou 2003). In her analysis of Greek-Albanian migrants to the

Greek motherland, Veikou describes the manner in which neither government decree nor

cultural constructions have been able to overcome the overpowering cartographical visions

of belonging. Her study exposes the limitations of strategies employed by immigrants from

Albania’s Greek enclaves to establish their “Greek” identity in Greece. Despite the fact that
 Tampus 21

their enclaves are recognized as part of historical Greece, these Greek-Albanians remain

outsiders (27). Based on the reflections of her informants, Veikou argues that the

construction of homeland should not be tethered to ‘assumptions about the past’;

homeland is not a landscape of historic memory, but rather an ambiguous framework in a

state of constant reinvention (28). She further explains that, when applied to our

multicultural urban environments today homeland connotes nostalgia and diasporic

longings for a remote distance and a remote past (31).

In another way, place-identity is also a crucial factor on the concept of diaspora. If

someone belongs in a diasporic place, can he call that place a home? For bell hooks, the

very meaning of “home” changes with experience of decolonization and radicalization. At

times, home is nowhere. At times, one knows only extreme estrangement and alienation.

Then home is no longer just one place. It is locations. Home is that place which enables

and promotes varied and ever changing perspectives, a place where one discovers new

ways of seeing reality, frontiers of difference (148). Hence, in a diasporic community, one

also confronts and accepts dispersal and fragmentation as part of the construction of a new

world order that reveals more fully where we are, who we can become, an order that does

not demand forgetting (148). The new world will become home. Eventually, for Opulencia,

South Cotabato is a new home.

Cultural Identity

A sense of common origin, common beliefs and values, a common sense of survival-

in brief, a “common cause”-has been of great importance in uniting men into self-defining

in-groups (De Vos, et al 5). Ethnicity is therefore, in its narrowest sense of feeling of

continuity with the past, a feeling that is maintained as an essential part of one’s self
 Tampus 22

definition. Ethnicity is also intimately related to the individual senses to some degree a

threat to his own survival if his group r lineage is threatened with extinction. Ethnicity,

therefore, includes a sense of personal survival in the historical continuity of the group.

Ethnicity in its deepest psychological level is a sense of survival (7). He further explains

that an ethnic identity gives savor, the taste of one’s past (De Vos & Ross 388-89). But does

failure to remain in the group through dispersion, exile, migration and so on make any

member excluded in the said group? Bammer refers to Freud and Derrida in the

deconstructive labor of desedimenting layers of meaning. For them, what is displaced-

dispersed, deferred, repressed, pushed aside-is significantly, still there: displaced but not

replaced which for Bammer it remains a source of trouble, the shifting ground of

signification that makes meanings of tremble (xiii).

On a different perspective, Derrida takes “reunion” as the official word for cultural

identity (8), a concept of double writing. For him, there is no culture or cultural identity

without this difference with itself (9-10). A strange and slightly violent syntax: “with itself”

also means “at home (with itself)”. In this case, self-difference, difference to itself, that

which differs and diverges from itself, of itself, would also be difference (from) with itself, a

difference at once internal and irreducible to the “at home (with itself”. It would gather and

divide just as irreducibly the center or hearth (foyer) of the “at home (with itself). ” In

truth, it would gather this center, relating it to itself, only to the extent that it would open it

up to this divergence. This can be said, inversely or reciprocally, of all identity or all

identification: there is no self-relation, no relation to oneself, no identification with oneself,

without culture, but a culture of oneself as a culture of the other, a culture of the double
 Tampus 23

genitive and of the difference to oneself. The grammar of the double genitive also signals

that a culture never has a single origin (10).

In studying the cultural identity of an individual who claims to belong in a certain

ethnicity, language is often cited as a major component in the maintenance of a separate

ethnic identity. It is indoubtedly true that language constitutes the single most

characteristic feature of a separate ethnic identity. But ethnicity is frequently related more

to the symbol of separate language than to its actual use by all members of a group (De Vos,

et al 15). He further added that group identity can even be maintained by minor differences

in linguistic patterns and by styles of gesture. Ethnic features such as language or clothing

or food can be considered emblems, for they show others who one is and to what group

one belongs (16). In this sense, Opulencia can obviously claim his cultural identity because

he speaks both languages, Hiligaynon and Kinaray-a. However, these languages have

variations compared with the speakers from West Visayas. Looking at the positive side of

the problem on language variations or shall we call hybridity, this can be considered an

opportunity for further research, studies on the variations of Hiligaynon and Karay-a

languages.

For Stuart Hall, identification is constructed on the back of a recognition of some

common origin or shared characteristics with another person or group, or with an ideal,

and with the natural closure of solidarity and allegiance established on this foundation (2).

He uses 'identity' to refer to the meeting point-the-point of suture, between on the one

hand the discourses and the practices which attempt to 'interpellate', speak to us or hail us

into place as the social subjects of particular discourses, and on the other hand, the

processes which produce subjectivities, which construct us as subjects which can be

 Tampus 24

'spoken'. Identities are thus points of temporary attachment to the subject positions which

discursive practices construct for us (5-6).

Ewa Rewers as cited by Paul Jones and Michal Krzyzanowski in the book Identity,

Belonging and Migration, distinguishes between the two basic conceptions of identification.

(1) Identification takes place only on the basis of identifying oneself with

someone/something else; to identify with the new, “other” identity; the return to the

previous state, to the original ‘self-identity’, is impossible. (2) To identify oneself means ‘to

answer the question: with whom/what one can identify in order to emphasize one’s own

identity’ (Delanty, Krzyzanowski 86-87).

In search of identity, Myrel Santiago concludes in her paper that Renato B. Alzadon, a

Kapampangan Poet of Tarlac on Writing from the Margin of Margins, is also in quest of his

identity as a writer and finally found his space in the internet – where no one claims a

territory in it. Thus, he was able to establish his identity as a Kapampangan poet of Tarlac

and of the globe (25).

In his essay Cultural Identity and Diaspora published in the book of Jonathan

Rutherford, Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, Hall sees a different view of cultural

identity and proposed two positions. He challenges each notion of identity from African and

European places and how Caribbean cinema has chosen to refute the influence of Europe as

well as embrace it. The first position defines ‘cultural identity’ in terms of one, shared

culture, a sort of collective ‘one true self’, hiding inside the many other, more superficial or

artificially imposed ‘selves’, which people with a shared history and ancestry hold in

common. Within the terms of this definition, our cultural identities reflect the common

historical experiences and shared cultural codes which provide us, as ‘one people’, with
 Tampus 25

stable, unchanging and continuous frames of reference and meaning, beneath the shifting

divisions and vicissitudes of our actual history. This ‘oneness’, underlying all the other,

more superficial differences, is the truth, the essence, of ‘Caribbeanness’, of the black

experience. It is this identity which a Caribbean or black diaspora must discover, excavate,

bring to light and express through cinematic representation (223).

The second position recognizes that, as well as the many points of similarity, there are

also critical points of deep and significant difference which constitute ‘what we really are’

or rather- since history has intervened – ‘what we have become’. We cannot speak for very

long, with any exactness, about ‘one experience, one identity’, without acknowledging its

other side – the ruptures and discontinuities which constitute, precisely, the Caribbean’s

‘uniqueness.’ Cultural identity, in this second sense, is a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as of

‘being.’ It belongs to the future as much as to the past (225).

Generoso Opulencia is a great poet, though he has not published any collection of his

poems. Some of his works tackle religion, knowledge and practices concerning nature and

the universe, social practices, rituals, festivities and love. In the poem Ang Sulat ni

Dandansoy (Dandansoy’s Letter), Opulencia uses the most famous character or persona of

both Hiligaynon and Kinaray-a literature. It is not the accustomed usage of Dandansoy as a

character who was left by his beloved but it is about the letter of Dandansoy to his wife

begging her to come home. Dandansoy is known to be a folk song of Western Visayas which

is also sung as a lullaby. For Opulencia, Dandansoy became part of his childhood. This is

about a woman leaving Dandansoy and goes back to her hometown. Also, Genevieve Asenjo

has published her collection of contemporary stories in Hiligaynon entitled “Komposo ni

Dandansoy: Mga Kwento sa Hiligaynon at Filipino” (Folk Ballad of Dandansoy: Stories in

 Tampus 26

Hiligaynon and Filipino) which she presents the influence of oral tradition of stories of

Panay. The characters of this collection show the great longing for their rural way of life.

They go back to their homeland bringing their new vision and sensibility which they gained

when they are away.

On the other hand, Opulencia’s poem about Dandansoy presents the material and

non-material culture of both Hiligaynon and Karay-a group of people. In the first, second

and third stanzas, he presents a picture of a traditional Hiligaynon or Karay-a house as an

object and as a setting:

Sa gakudogkudog kong kaugatan

Ang karamig kang salog tang kawayan
Daw wara gid pag-iban.1
Gabaragtik sa banggirahan
Ang mumho sa gatarangkas nga dulang.2

Here, Opulencia describes the house of Dandansoy which is made of kawayan

(bamboo), a traditional Visayan house. A bamboo is the most preferred construction

materials in the Hiligaynon and Kinaray-a material culture. Bamboo furniture making as

well as mat weaving are also some of the sources of livelihood of the ethnic groups aside

from fishing and hunting.

On the other hand, either in a Hiligaynon or Karay-a family, the wife dominates the

household. The husband is basically the breadwinner of the family and the wife takes over

the activities inside the family’s home. However, there is an equal responsibility between

1
The chill from the bamboo floor
Doesn’t seem to ebb at all
From my rattling bones.

2 Leftover rice has dried up

On clay plates piled high on the washboard.
 Tampus 27

the husband and wife. In the following lines, it can be implied that without Inday in the

house of Dandansoy, everything is a mess:

Ang kaluoy, Inday, sa aton ugsadan

Nga katong una marimasa
Kag masurusapdingan
Kang buta mo nga lata
Kada kaw mamahid
Kang imo kahig sa ugsadan
Ay, karon daw manunggal ron
Garulubid sa kauhaw.3

Moreover, the following stanzas manifest a marriage which is rocky. For Hiligaynon

and Karay-a, marriage is an integral part of the ethnicity. In the following lines, the persona

is making up to his beloved. He is pleading that she will come back to their home and will

forget the past and enough of the sulking. He is making promises for her to come back so

they can start all over again. This clearly shows that Opulencia undeniably considers happy

marriage as a part of the culture.

Palangga, tama ron ra nga pagsunggod.4

Ang tanan nga bubon

Nga ginkutkot mo sa dalanon
Akon palapilapion
Kang luha kong asinon5

3
The mint, my sweet, by our doorsteps,
Once robust,
Which your can
Brimming with water
Touched every time you wiped
Your feet
Is now shriveling from the thirst
Like wormwood vine.

4
Darling, enough of that sulking.
5
All the well
You’ve dug along the way
I’ll fill to the brim
With my bitter tears
 Tampus 28

Agud lang sa imo

Kauhaw kag kaluya
Indi ron kaw kaisrot
Rugto magpadayon
Sa Payaw kang mga payaon.6

Pamaypay lang kanakon

Hay alay-ayon ta dayon
Kag rugya dar-on.7

He also mentions about Payaw (Rugto magpadayon/Sa Payaw kang mga payaon.). In his

poem, Payaw is a place. Opulencia remembers Payaw (also spelled Payao) as one of the

territorial enclaves called Sitio that forms part of a barangay which is typically rural, a sitio's

location is usually far from the center of the barangay itself. This Sitio Payao is located south-

west of Alegria, Isabela, Negros Occidental where Opulencia was born and lived before his

family migrated to South Cotabato.

He also presents the dynamics of socialization and community. In the eighth stanza, it is

clearly shown that Dandansoy enjoys the company of his neighbors. Here, the tradition of

involving oneself in the community whether for enjoyment or for noble purposes is

manifested.

Untaton ron nakon ang pagdayandayan

Kanday Goryo, Istring, kag Imang
Kag baklan ko it bag-o nga banig
Ang aton baratangan.

6
So that
Consumed with thirst
You’ll have no more strength
To crawl back
To Payaw of childish days.

7 Just wave at me,

I’ll carry you back here
Tenderly.
 Tampus 29

In the ninth stanza, (Palangga, bisan sapsap ron lan agwantaha), Opulencia uses the fish

sapsap (slipmouth fish) which is the cheapest fish in his town. It also manifests that fishing

is one of the sources of living of the people of their community. Patience and contentment

are also emphasized in the following lines, Hay sa pira ka adlaw mangita ko’t obra/ Kag

patasukan ko ikaw it imo nga bomba/Dya sa tambi sa tupad markopa./ He continues by

pleading Inday (his beloved) to come back. Inday, balik ron. /Hugasi dulang ta kag koron./

Hiligaynon and Karay-a people are generally romantic, simple and indulgent.

In a like manner, Opulencia presents the dynamics of family in his poem, To A Son

Learning the Art of Cooking. This poem won the first prize in the 2000 Home Life Poetry

Contest. He wrote this poem when his only son was in 6th grade. He tries to present family

dynamics particularly on the strong father and son relationship as well as the mother’s role

and the supportive in-laws. In Hiligaynon and Karay-a culture, it is the responsibility of the

father to teach his son all the things he needs to learn as a growing child who is part of his

family and the community.

Every herb, red, yellow or green

has its proper cooking time—
You are beginning to know
as we pour
okra bits into the pan
of carrots, onions, shrimps
and sliced white gourd:
a goodly smell from fatherly bond this noon
that seems to know no bounds.

Opulencia in this poem uses the role of a wife in the household as he does similarly in his poem

Ang Sulat ni Dandansoy (Dandansoy’s Letter). He also presents the role of the in-laws in the family.

It is a tradition that in-laws are equally treated as important as the real parents as well as the

parents-in-law act as real parents to the child-in-law. This poem presents a peaceful and loving
 Tampus 30

setting of a home. Finally, although this poem is written in English languages, it does not

discount the family tradition of Hiligaynon and Kinaray-a people.

Your mother’s finishing

her laundry
at the steps of the kitchen
door
in the shadow
of shroudlike sheets
shielding her
from the sun.
as you carry the pan
away from the fire
I recall
your grandfather
one week now in his grave:
how he’d pour pail after pail
of clear well water
into the tub
where your mother
was rinsing our clothes.

The third poem is what the author calls his protest poetry. Ang Kuon ni Kabo Isko

(Says Foreman Isko) was written in 1990. Here, Opulencia remembers how his mother

works in the hacienda including him, a young boy as he was. Indeed, memory is a chain

that connects the past and the present. Here, the setting is in a sugarcane hacienda. He

remembers several characters such as Kabo Isko (Foreman Isko), the engkargado or the

administrator and Insiong the sakada or a seasonal worker of the hacienda. It can be

implied that the setting of the poem is in a sugar cane hacienda considering the use of

patdan, the small cuttings of sugarcane and the topmost part of the sugarcane, just before

the leaves. It is used to regrow the sugarcane (Sa imo patdan nga nagatarap-uk.). He also

uses ispading (somewhat similar to machete), is a tool specially used for cutting sugarcane.

In this poem, Opulencia is nostalgic of the hacienda as a past space of his childhood.

According to him, he recalls in this poem how his mother experienced maltreatment from
 Tampus 31

the hacienda administrators, how a poor sakada submits herself to the engkargado.

Moreover, looking back at the history of Negros Occidental, hacienda system became a part

of it and will forever be attached to it which is considered by some as painful fragment of

the past or a fruitful opportunity to some. But for Opulencia, here, he recalls a painful

memory.

Ang kuon ni Kabo Isko

Nga nagapaninghawak pa:8

Ay, Insiong,
Ang kaaburido mo indi dyan ipaupok
Sa imo patdan nga nagatarap-uk.
Pus-angi kang imo ispading
Ang bagol kang imo engkargado
Asta mag-aragsik ana utok
Sa mga bata mong gapurunsok.9

Ugaring lang—
Dyan man angod kanimo
Ang risgo magralagapok
Hay wara kaw’t mahimu
Sa anang kagarok.
Gani utda ron lang
Ang imo turuslok.10

8
Says Foreman Isko
With arms akimbo:

9
Ay, Insiong,
Don’t aim your anger
At the sugarcane tops
Unload it with your machete tip
On the administrator’s pate
Till all his brain scatters
Over your crowd of children.
10
On second thought
The risky things you do
Will all come down on you
As nothing else can help
To set aright his crooked ways.
And so, to make things simpler
Chop off your pecker.
 Tampus 32

Another poem that clearly manifests Opulencia’s nostalgia is the poem Sa Yahong ni

Lola Tiyang. He uses the ingredients of Hiligaynon or Kinaray-a recipe such as tagabang

(saluyot or Nalta jute), tambo (bamboo shoot), urang (shrimp), and coconut milk. This

recipe is one of the favourite recipes of Karay-a and Hiligaynon people. He also mentions

suba sang Gintubhan (Gintubhan River), a river rich with various kinds of fish, shrimps and

the like. Gintubhan is one of the barangays of the municipality of Isabela, where Opulencia

was born and raised. In this poem, the poet is nostalgic of the rural life which was once

part of his childhood. He recalls a space of his childhood, a place abundant with natural

resources, with a river, and a spring.

Sa yahong ni Lola ko Tiyang

Raku and tagabang
Nga ana pinangutan.
May tambo ni Lolo Indo
Nga kana gintugro
Ni Amo Tibo.11

May urang nga sinalugan

Ni Nay Pasing
Sa suba kang Gintubhan.12

May kang lubi

Nga sinaka kag kinagud
Ni Nong Oka.13

Dya man sa yahong galapilapi

Ang sabaw nga sinag-ub ko
Sa tuburan rugto sa lati.14

11
In my Lola Tiyang’s bowl
Is a lot of tagabang
That she herself gathered
The bamboo shoots from Lolo Indo
Given to him
By master Tibo
12 Nay Pasing caught the shrimps

In the torrents
Of the Gintubhan river
13
The coconut milk came from Nong Oca
Who climbed the tree himself
And grated the nut
14 And this bowl is overflowing

With soup from the water

I fetched from the spring in the meadow.
 Tampus 33

The fifth poem is Sa Hunasan (Kay Nene) (At Ebbing Time) is about true and great

love. In this poem, Opulencia uses love as the prevalent theme of Hiligaynon and Kinaray-a

literature. It is about the love of a man to a woman which he compares to the ocean at

ebbing time, it is eternal, and it is infinite. Pamangkuta ako: (Ask me:)/“Daw ano ang

gugma (“What kind is your love)/mo?” (for me?”)/Kon ang aton kabuhi (If our life) tulad

kang kalalautan (is this shore)/Ang gugma ko, Nene, (My love, Nene,)/imaw dyang hunasan.

(is the ocean at ebbing time.).

Alex Delos Santos in his book The Rise of Kinaray-a: History and Anthology of

Contemporary Literature in Antique (2003) shows that the prevalent themes in Kinaray-a

poems are marriage, love, family, livelihood, community and religion which are also clearly

manifested in the poems of a Karay-a and Hiligaynon writer of South Cotabato.

Conclusion

The main objective of this paper is to define regional identity and it centers on the

answers on cultural identity as the central argument. With the given theories on cultural

identity which correlates on diaspora and nostalgia, Opulencia, I believe is in both

positions. He belongs to a people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common which

Stuart Hall calls ‘one true self’ hiding inside the many other and equally holds the second

position, his ‘becoming’ as well his ‘being.’

On a final note, Opulencia’s childhood memory whether reflective or restorative and

culture personify his own identity as both Hiligaynon and a Karay-a although he does not

geographically belong to Western Visayas. This uncertainty in cultural identity serves as an

entry point of determining who he is today, a Hiligaynon and Karay-a writer who lives in

South Cotabato, in other words he is a Hiligaynon Karay-a South Cotabateňo. He is a

 Tampus 34

concrete example of a migrant from Western Visayas who continues to embody his

identified culture by recalling the past, reliving the present and envisioning the future

bringing his own unique cultural identity.

 Tampus 35

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83-103

The Poems of Generoso Opulencia
Ang Sulat ni Dandansoy
Sa gakudogkudog kong kaugatan
Ang karamig kang salog tang kawayan
Daw wara gid pag-iban.
Gabaragtik sa banggirahan
Ang mumho sa gatarangkas nga dulang.
Ang kaluoy, Inday, sa aton ugsadan
Nga katong una marimasa
Kag masurusapdingan
Kang buta mo nga lata
Kada kaw mamahid
Kang imo kahig sa ugsadan
Ay, karon daw manunggal ron
Garulubid sa kauhaw.
Palangga, tama ron ra nga pagsunggod.
Ang tanan nga bubon
Nga ginkutkot mo sa dalanon
Akon palapilapion
Kang luha kong asinon
Agud lang sa imo
Kauhaw kag kaluya
Indi ron kaw kaisrot
Rugto magpadayon
Sa Payaw kang mga payaon.
Pamaypay lang kanakon
Hay alay-ayon ta dayon
Kag rugya dar-on.
Untaton ron nakon ang pagdayandayan
Kanday Goryo, Istring, kag Imang
Kag baklan ko it bag-o nga banig
Ang aton baratangan.
Palangga, bisan sapsap ron lan agwantaha
Hay sa pira ka adlaw mangita ko’t obra
Kag patasukan ko ikaw it imo nga bomba
Dya sa tambi sa tupad markopa.
Inday, balik ron.
Hugasi dulang ta kag koron
Tampus 38
Dandansoy’s Letter
The chill from the bamboo floor
Doesn’t seem to ebb at all
From my rattling bones.
Leftover rice has dried up
On clay plates piled high on the washboard.
The mint, my sweet, by our doorsteps,
Once robust,
Which your can
Brimming with water
Touched every time you wiped
Your feet
Is now shriveling from the thirst
Like wormwood vine.
Darling, enough of that sulking.
All the well
You’ve dug along the way
I’ll fill to the brim
With my bitter tears
So that
Consumed with thirst
You’ll have no more strength
To crawl back
To Payaw of childish days.
Just wave at me,
I’ll carry you back here
Tenderly.
I’ll stop loafing around
At Goryo’s, Istring’s, and Imang’s
And I’ll buy a new mat
For our sleeping room.
Beloved, be satisfied with sapsap
As one of these days I’ll get a job
And save enough to drill you a water pump
At the back porch near the markopa.
Inday, come back now.
Wash our plates and pot.
 Tampus 39

To a Son Learning the Art of Cooking

Every herb, red, yellow or green
has its proper cooking time—
You are beginning to know
as we pour
okra bits into the pan
of carrots, onions, shrimps
and sliced white gourd:
a goodly smell from fatherly bond this noon
that seems to know no bounds.
Your mother’s finishing
her laundry
at the steps of the kitchen
door
in the shadow
of shroud-like sheets
shielding her
from the sun.
as you carry the pan
away from the fire
I recall
your grandfather
one week now in his grave:
how he’d pour pail after pail
of clear well water
into the tub
where your mother
was rinsing our clothes.

Ang Kuon ni Kabo Isko
Ang kuon ni Kabo Isko
Nga nagapaninghawak pa:
Ay, Insiong,
Ang kaaburido mo indi dyan
ipaupok
Sa imo patdan nga nagatarap-uk.
Pus-angi kang imo ispading
Ang bagol kang imo engkargado
Asta mag-aragsik ana utok
Sa mga bata mong gapurunsok.
Ugaring lang—
Dyan man angod kanimo
Ang risgo magralagapok
Hay wara kaw’t mahimu
Sa anang kagarok.
Gani utda ron lang
Ang imo turuslok.
Tampus 40
Says Foreman Isko
Says Foreman Isko
With arms akimbo:
Ay, Insiong,
Don’t aim your anger
At the sugarcane tops
Unload it with your machete tip
On the administrator’s pate
Till all his brain scatters
Over your crowd of children.
On second thought
The risky things you do
Will all come down on you
As nothing else can help
To set aright his crooked ways.
And so, to make things simpler
Chop off your pecker.

Sa Yahong ni Lola Tiyang
Sa yahong ni Lola ko Tiyang
Raku and tagabang
Nga ana pinangutan.
May tambo ni Lolo Indo
Nga kana gintugro
Ni Amo Tibo.
May urang nga sinalugan
Ni Nay Pasing
Sa suba kang Gintubhan.
May kang lubi
Nga sinaka kag kinagud
Ni Nong Oka.
Dya man sa yahong galapilapi
Ang sabaw nga sinag-ub ko
Sa tuburan rugto sa lati.
Sa Hunasan
(Kay Nene)
Pamangkuta ako:
“Daw ano ang gugma
mo?”
Kon ang aton kabuhi
tulad kang kalalautan
Ang gugma ko, Nene,
imaw dyang hunasan.
Tampus 41
In my Lola Tiyang’s bowl
In my Lola Tiyang’s bowl
Is a lot of tagabang
That she herself gathered
The bamboo shoots from Lolo
Indo
Given to him
By master Tibo
Nay Pasing caught the shrimps
In the torrents
Of the Gintubhan river
The coconut milk came from
Nong Oca
Who climbed the tree himself
And grated the nut
And this bowl is overflowing
With soup from the water
I fetched from the spring in the
meadow.
At Ebbing Time
(For Nene)
Ask me:
“What kind is your love
for me?”
If our life
is this shore
My love, Nene,
is the ocean at ebbing time.
Tampus 42