HERE we go again renaming streets and plazas. As a people, we really do not see beyond the bridge of our nose which does not extend much from our face anyway. How parochial indeed to honor a local hero by dishonoring a Tagalog who went beyond ethno-tribal and struggled precisely to complete the nation-state concept of the Filipino that was first thought of by Rizal. No quarrel with the brothers Arejola, but why pick on Quezon?

        The Naga City council should study well that sanggunian resolution seeking to rename Plaza Quezon to Plaza Arejola, and probably look for other places to fiddle with. Not a locus please where someone, be he a Waray or a Kapampangan or a foreigner even, had already been honored with his name. Naga does not lack places that really need to be renamed, Calle Natong or Calle Supot (if they still exist) as examples. In doing so, let us not be too insular or allow misplaced local pride get the better of us. Rizal Park is not only in the Luneta; there are parks in his name and with his statue in Berlin, Heidelberg, China, Japan and where else. Do they have the right to rename them with their own homegrown paladins just because the man honored there died for a group of islands they couldn’t even place in the Pacific?

        How I wish someone in the city council could rename, and fast, Bagong Lipunan St. (that’s between Arana and Dimasalang Sts.), or is there a Marcos or Imelda St. somewhere in the city? Until then, their efforts at culture should be redirected at finding a place truly appropriate for the Arejola brothers (not that old sacred chosko of a Naga generation only Joeper, James and I could probably figure). May I respectfully suggest that we tear down that billboard sporting the faces of his honors the mayor and vice mayor on that spot where two great forces of revolution converge (the streets named after P. Burgos whose martyrdom defined Rizal and Gen. Antonio Luna of Asia’s first war against American imperialism) and which lead to a street named before as “Igualdad” (of the French cry Liberite! Fraternite! -- Hernandezite?) that made Naga then a bit cosmopolitan, having a quaint vestige of the French Revolution, and somehow romantically kindred (global they now say, as opposed to parochialism?) with European libertarian history, but oh well, that’s for another day (at least, they have not yet touched Fraternidad St. at Tabuco); and in its place, we put up a grandiose bronze statue of the Arejola brothers.

        In 1994, my AdNU H.S. Class ’72 wrote the mayor suggesting a statue on that same triangular spot, charged to our class, which would commemorate the Philippine Centennial; and that was even four years before 1998. We didn’t get any response. A commercial billboard indeed was more profitable (business-friendly gayod). Now that we’re belatedly finding our sense of culture and history, why not a statue there now for the Arejolas, and leave old Don Manolo at peace?

L.R. GENERAL
Old Naga