BENCHWARMER

Ramon S. Dacawi
Dubious distinctions

It’s an unsettling story that refuses to go away: the Cordillera remains the major source of marijuana for the country’s users and pushers. That this dubious status holds means it’s safe to presume and assume that the quality of our produce up here remains high, competitive even in the international drug market.

We had long lost the title of being the biggest producer of gold in the world. In a sense, this is a misnomer, as science and technology are not that advanced to allow us to produce or manufacture gold. Mining is extractive and non-renewable, dependent on what nature deposited long before man put value on gold or blood diamond. Marijuana production is; you can even extract hashish from it.

Forgive the drift amidst the honest-to-goodness efforts of Mayor Alberto Canuto of Kapangan, Benguet to erase the wrong image of his town. For quite sometime, Kapangan was perceived the country’s marijuana capital.

By putting his foot down on the high-value cash crop, the mayor has earned the ire of many who had thrived on its production and trade. Not necessarily his own people, but those from the outside. Early into his campaign, he found that marijuana planted somewhere was, and still is, being passed off as Kapangan produce as guarantee of its potency and quality.

The mislabel has and continues to hurt Kapangan. Mayor Canuto’s relentless effort to restore the dignity of his town and his constituency, therefore, needs all the support it can get. Perhaps national government agencies can take the cue and channel some funds from the expensive drug eradication campaign for his development thrusts. So should non-government organizations conscious enough that the pursuit of “sustainable development” is truly profitable and fulfilling - not only for NGOs but more so for the poor communities they try to serve.

Poverty in a region whose natural wealth immensely contributed to national development has spawned tags far more positive than our region’s infamous “marijuana country” label. We tend overlook these distinctions, unless we look at the bright side of our misfortune.

For one, while our gold had been mined out and our dams are now silted and on their death throes, these projects should give us the quirky notion the B-O-T strategy for national development began up here. Companies built and operated the mines and dams up here and then transferred the gold and electric power –including the corporate taxes – down there in Makati, Metro-Manila and elsewhere.

We can’t compete in the current trend of establishing the longest lines, say, of “longganisa” or barbecue or “bangus”, although our own fish growers in the moribund Ambuclao and Binga dams do have a chance in the grilled tilapia category. We can establish and hold the record for the longest line of cabbage heads our farmers leave to rot whenever our roads are rendered impassable by landslides. If only we have the money needed for the procedure, Guinness can authenticate another record set by their plowing back as fertilizer their would-be harvest for the next cabbage planting season.

I guess we still can lay claim to having the longest unpaved road systems. Yet, despite or because of their state of neglect or elevation, our roads were the safest as it would be foolhardy to drive fast through them. As bonus, we have the most disciplined and courteous drivers, Without fail, they stop and back up so those on the opposite direction can pass our unique one-way lanes, then honk their gratitude and greeting. For quite sometime now, perhaps we’re the only ones who have to pass three other regions to reach another part of our region , i.e.the Baguio- Banaue route that covers Region 1, 3 and 2.

We can lay claim to the longest electric lines and should do research if we can vie for top honors as a former major power source with the least number of villages lighted up in the rural electrification program. Unlike the rest of the country, we don’t have industries to power and have no need for home air-conditioning.

The current feud between Ifugao and neighboring Isabela province over tax shares in the operation of the 345-megawatt Magat Dam may yet result in another wonder. Isabela claims the dam structure is within its town of Ramon. Ifugao claims it lies on Ifugao soil as lots surrounding the dam were long registered in Alfonso Lista, Ifugao. If both provinces turn out correct, the dam can acquire a rare political location status.

For years now, we have been laying claim to being the watershed cradle of Northern Luzon. Regions 1 and 2, and portions of Region 3, which, for generations, depend on our watersheds for their farm production, never contested that distinction. Previously, the only time we drew attention was when the mines and dams up here were blamed for the flooding and siltation of farms and fishponds down there.

No longer, as Region 1 recently served us notice about the dwindling water flow to its farms and ponds. The Ilocos Region’s serious call for a dialogue towards saving our watersheds for its benefit reminds me what I told Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes in a presscon here last year.

It’s about a plan of Ifugaos to set record of sorts by attempting to divert the flow of the Hapao, Ibulao and other river feeders of the Magat Dam, if only to draw attention to the lack of government support to them as keepers of the watersheds.

I meant it as a joke. Still, Secretary Reyes was startled by the revelation, probably because it can be done, in the same token that the ancient Ifugaos succeeded in carving extensive rice terraces out of whole mountainsides with the crudest of tools.

Ifugao Rep. Solomon Chungalao took a similar tack when he announced a plan to file a bill legalizing marijuana production on a strictly regulated, closely guarded scale – for experiment purposes on the curative powers of the “weed”. His actual drift was to draw national attention to the poverty in the Cordillera that drives small-scale miners and vegetable farmers to shift to MJ cultivation. He wanted to highlight the fact that about 90 percent of those languishing in jail for marijuana are natives of the Cordillera.

Sadly, his colleagues and media did not catch his drift. Perhaps thinking he was stoned, they pounced on the idea and imagined the world-famous and crumbling rice terraces teeming green with “five fingers”. . (e-mail:rdacawi@yahoo.com for comments).