The secret is out. We almost did not have a National Artist in Resil Mojares. Yesterday’s conferment honoring a first from Cebu, which made all Cebuanos mighty proud, would have been for naught.
You see, for over two decades, any talk of nominating him for the country’s highest accolade would be immediately dismissed by Resil with a simple wave of the hand accompanied by “Ay’ gani mo pagbinuang (Stop kidding)” or something to that effect.
And so in all those years that Cebu waited for its first National Artist, no one dared convince him to accept the nomination, much less, sign the official papers.
That is, until Dr. Hope Sabanpan-Yu single-handedly prepared all the necessary documents and finally convinced him to accept the fact that the accolade was now long overdue. Thus did it come as a surprise to me when Hope, the current director of the very office that Resil steered so successfully as founding director, the USC Cebuano Studies Center (CSC), told me sometime in August or September last year that Resil had accepted the nomination for the Order of National Artist.
It is also but fitting that an accomplished woman, a scholar who one day in the not-so-distant future will also need to be nominated to the same award, had finally put her foot down and convinced her own mentor that it was time to let go of any personal reservations about aiming for such a presidential accolade. Simply put, Cebuanos could no longer wait. (Although Resil was born in Dipolog, he has virtually lived out his adult life in Cebu, the home province of his mother, who was born and raised in Ginatilan. Hence, his being a Cebuano.)
With the nomination papers signed by USC President Fr. Dionisio M. Miranda, SVD and endorsed by the USC Board of Trustees, the die was cast.
Fast forward to June this year, and rumors started quietly circulating among a tight circle that Resil had clinched the award, following two rounds of voting, the last involving all living National Artists voting together with the Trustees of the Cultural Center of the Philippines and the commissioners of the National Commission for Cultural and the Arts — the two bodies tasked with forwarding a final list to be approved by the President of the Philippines.
When I congratulated him at the time, Resil was quick to retort with a laugh: “Nothing is final until the President signs it, oi!”
And so we kept quiet. In between, we launched another of his groundbreaking works, a critical introduction to and analysis of Vicente Gullas’ 1930s novel on Lapu-Lapu, with a translation from the Cebuano by another Hope Yu’s immediate predecessor at the CSC, Dr. Erlinda Alburo.
From time to time, Resil would drop by my office and over a cup of coffee, we would talk about one of his own (non-commissioned) writing projects, a social and cultural history of museums in the Philippines, or our upcoming pet project: a book on the maritime history of Cebu.
I know it has been a privilege to know Resil up close for over three decades now than most people who would want to or will ever be. And so I am doubly, no, triply, proud that he has finally come to accept being a National Artist. It will now be hard to get back to those weekly chats over coffee but knowing Resil, I doubt if he will not get back to his routine: chatting with friends and writing down thoughts on pen and paper at some favored café before finally typing them down on a computer for final printing. This is the Resil I have come to know, now a National Artist many can very well claim as their own.
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