Cebu makes history, literally and figuratively. Yesterday 55 volumes comprising the history Cebu were finally launched at the Capitol Social Hall.
What was expected to take only about two years during the second term of Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia took far longer than expected. But as last night’s event has shown, the books finally saw the light of day.
To recall, in 2008 Governor Garcia asked the Provincial Board to commission the University of San Carlos to gather 55 writers to draft history books, one for each town and city of Cebu and one for the province and another about the Capitol building. A Provincial History Committee, headed by Vice Gov. Agnes Magpale, then a PB member, was organized to oversee the project.
The agreement with USC was for the university to recruit a person who would write the history of his or her own town or city. At the helm of the project, USC placed Prof. Rene Alburo of the Department of History to be assisted by a six-member Editorial Board that included his better half, Dr. Erlinda K. Alburo, who was the director of the USC Cebuano Studies Center (CSC). CSC was designated as the sole repository of all research materials gathered for the project from archival sources. It also provided, in turn, free access to all 55 authors to mine the huge collection of Cebuaniana that had been gathered since CSC’s founding in 1975 by Dr. Resil Mojares and Fr. Joseph Goertz, SVD. (Mojares, incidentally, was given the honor of writing the history of the entire province of Cebu—a feat that resulted in nearly a thousand pages in a single volume, also launched last night).
The six-member editorial board functioned as a body of supervisors while at the same time carrying out what one would expect from an editor-—which was to edit substance and content, not just grammar—at least for most of them anyway. Each editor was assigned nine writers representing nine contiguous towns and cities. I was one of those selected to supervise and edit the work of writers from Carcar to Samboan (i.e., Jerry Noel Alfafara for Carcar; Dr. Noel Ponce for Sibonga; Todd Lucero-Sales for Argao (later joined by Paul Gerschwiler); Jesus ‘Tata’ Osorio for Dalaguete; Ruel Rigor for Boljoon; Virgilio Damayo for Alcoy; Joel Benitez for Oslob; Dr. Zona Amper for Santander; and Antonieta Zablan for Samboan).
I am proud to say that all my nine writers finished on time. I cannot say the same for the other clusters, which had problems mainly with the commitment of their writers. One cluster editor had to look for one writer who had become incognito and eventually decided to replace him. Another writer passed away and had to be replaced also. One cluster editor had to carry out the task of writing a large section of the draft because it was not passable.
Personally, and I am sure a few of the writers under my cluster will attest, I had to harangue most of them from time to time in order to finish the work. In the end, given the huge number of writers to look for, the project management had to make do with what was available. I understand from our meetings with other editors that there were many who could actually write and write well but that there were some who just needed some kind of inspiration and more time. Thus the long delay, not for want of research material (there was so much to go around) and definitely not for want of funds (the authors were paid well.)
Will another province be able to follow Cebu’s lead in this regard? Of course, any province can pursue a project as noble as this one. But I would personally caution any provincial government willing to undertake such a gargantuan task to learn from the experience of Cebu and take these to heart. It helped that in Cebu, USC had a resource and research center that had gathered so much printed as well as unpublished material about virtually anything and everything in this island province. If not for this, the whole project would have been delayed even further.
With this as a given, the difficult task for any province would be to find disciplined and committed writers who would dive into the work and not dilly-dally. No matter how much money and resources are poured into a project such as this, if the human resources are not available—especially in the skill not just of writing but of writing well—nothing will come of it. Which brings me to the conclusion that Cebu may have led the way, but I sincerely doubt if any other province will be able to match this singular feat.
Indeed Cebu has just made history.