Gemma Cruz Araneta | LANDSCAPE Pandemics like Covid 19 are nothing new. Through the centuries, humankind had gone through a number of episodic plagues and virulent pestilences that only the fittest survived. European archeologists have found evidence that the first pandemic sprang after the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, in the 405 B.C.E. The Roman legions contracted a kind … Read more
I know it is none of my damned business to comment on what is going on in the United States of America, I have kept my thoughts to myself and have been careful not to share them with former classmates who have made their lives there and contributed to the progress of the most powerful … Read more
With pent up rage, angry clusters of young people have defaced, decapitated, smashed to bits, dumped in rivers the imposing monuments and effigies that glorify colonial masters like King Leopold II of Belgium and Cecil Rhodes, diamond merchant and prime minister of the Cape Colony (1890 -1896), The latter’s head was chopped off while the … Read more
Have you heard of the plans to put Lapulapu in a cage? I may be imagining things after being under “house arrest” for more than a hundred days, but that is how it looks to me. The proposed Lapulapu memorial which will be inaugurated next year, during the Quincentennial is a pretentious edifice that looks … Read more
In his White House memoir, titled The Room Where It Happened, Mr. John Bolton, former national security adviser of President Donald Trump, tells all, somewhat maliciously. Almost daily, he would go to that room , the Oval Office, to give his boss a briefing about what was happening in the world and what the President should … Read more
There are amusing stories about the first batch of Spanish lady immigrants who went to the colonies in the Caribbean and the South American continent. Some of them came with the entourage of wives of important government officials, while others were relatives of the ex-conquistadores and soldiers who had already settled in the Americas. Apparently, … Read more
When Ferdinand Magellan came to our shores in 1521 and Miguel Lopez de Legazpi followed in 1565, the native indios were baffled that they did not come with their women. Although both showed how determined they were to stake territory in name of the King of Spain, our forebears believed that they did not come … Read more
The Visayans are not going to like this, someone said that the last capital sin—sloth—is their first, and being slothful (lazy) is a matter of choice, it stems from the “disposition of the body” coupled with climatic conditions and the influence of the stars. It is a vice of nature. That was how Visayans were … Read more
Who was Padre Damaso? He was the biological father of Maria Clara, the sweetheart of Crisostomo Ibarra, but she was the last to know. You can imagine how tormented she must have felt when she found out; she fell ill with anguish and was compelled to betray her beloved Ibarra by turning over his letters … Read more
The past has consequences for the present, so as I gape at what the United States of America (USA) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are doing to each other, I can only hope that the Philippines will not be caught in the crossfire. Take a look at a globe, not a flat map, … Read more