BENCHWARMER

Rex Botengan’s Legacy
RAMON DACAWI

Philean Weygan of the organizing committee called to say Rex Botengan Sr. will be honored posthumously at the 7th International Igorot Conference which will open next weekend in Banaue. The recognition is most fitting. Some of those who know Manong Rex say it’s long overdue.

I met Manong Rex only once, when he was here, when Baguio and Benguet were trying to pick up the pieces of lives shattered by the killer quake of 1990.

He said he was looking for a mechanism through which Cordillera expats like him could respond and reach out with dispatch when disasters and tragedies strike thehomeland. Thus, he founded the Igorot Global Organization.

His vision to reconnect, reunite and unify never dims, long after he took his leave in 2004. It’s nurtured by the clarity and quality of the life-time contribution he made sure worked and blossomed.

In a tribute, Marshall Wandag, an Igorot from Kalinga, cited some of Mr. Botengan’s contributions: organization of BIBAK chapters around the world and the North America Kalingas Network, establishment of the Center for Igorot Studies, Igorot Youth Exchange, the St. Benedict’s Episcopal Mission, BIBAK Seniors Club of Southern California, death assistance program, and the Igorot Quarterly Magazine.

“Manong Rex, we now have a whole generation of Igorots determined to pursue your dreams,” Mr. Wandag said. And we now have less Igorots ill-at-ease to be identified as such because of your body of work that reflects the strength, fortitude and substance of one who truly is from and of these mountains.
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Myla Molintas Dangatan is an Igorot who left early, at 39, last March 30, three weeks after her birthday. She’s a scion of the Ibaloi clan whose pastureland was Pacdal and what is now Gibraltar Barangay, and of the old family in Pacdal that traces its roots to Gonogon, Bontoc, Mt. Province.

Myla was high school batchmate of my nephew Joseph and served as dentist of the University of Baguio. Her father, Ramon, and her uncles on both sides were my boyhood buddies. That made me her privileged uncle and patient. I would have my teeth and dentures fixes by her, and then insist on paying, knowing fully well she wouldn’t have it that way.

I never really thanked her when I should have. It sure now lightens the load to note that many others feel the way I do now. (e-mail: rdacawi@yahoo.com for comments).