Reminiscing Maning
By Antonio J. Montalvan II

IT is at death that the tributes come pouring in. Someone once said that should not be so. Dead men are like bridges, he said. When they are around, we hardly advert to their existence. It is in their absence, when faced with the need to cross the river that we realize how special they had been.

Emmanuel N. Pelaez need not have that belated tribute. He was a tower in Philippine contemporary history, and was the most important Mindanaoan at one point of our past. He topped the bar in 1938, was first introduced into the Philippine political firmament in 1949 as a young congressman of Misamis Oriental and became a senator in 1953. In 1961, he was elected Vice President of the Philippines, the first Mindanaoan to hold the position. Then President Diosdado Macapagal designated him as the secretary of foreign affairs in a concurrent capacity.

In 1965, he returned to the House of Representatives, then to the Senate in 1967. Under Cory Aquino, for whom he campaigned in the snap elections of 1986, he was appointed Philippine ambassador to Washington, D.C.

Pelaez was all that, but what lingers most in our memory of him is his being the survivor of an assassin's bullet during the Marcos regime. The attempt on his life was made during his valiant fight against the controversial coco levy. Being a survivor of the harsh Marcos years made him larger than life. It was, in a way, his moment of heroism.

With a second lease on life, Pelaez became a renewed Catholic. I wish to believe that it was during this episode of his life when we saw the best of Pelaez. Under his newly found apostolate, he was chosen honorary president of the Philippine Bible Society. He became an advisory council member of the Summer Institute of Linguistics. His humanitarian involvement reached the NGO sector. He was chairman emeritus of Tulay sa Pag-unlad and was the founding chairman of Share Foundation Inc.

In his winter years, he continued to have that rare sense of affability and sharpness of mind. There was also one thing about him, a natural sense of humility. Not the kind that comes after going down a hill, but one seemingly borne out of realizing his mission in the world. Was he aware of his place in history? In a television interview, Pelaez exhorted his fellow Mindanaoans to remember their heritage and to strive to preserve it. And he was not just talking about the intangibles. His family ventured into a business that now includes a coral conservation program.

In a conversation I had with him last year, he recounted how the family home in Medina, Misamis Oriental was built by artisans under the supervision of a Japanese maestro carpentero. "I remember it was built by my father at about 1920-1922, because I was born in 1915. The wood materials were cut and chiseled by way of a turno right there." The Gregorio Pelaez house stands today as a local showcase of "historic preservation." It is a stately house, typical of the Hispanic-inspired stone and wood houses of the era. That conversation was probably the best recollection I had of the man.

Alas, irony comes after death. The city government of Cagayan de Oro now wants to name the controversial bridge and diversion road at the Huluga Heritage site in memory of Pelaez. What insensitive timing that the city mayor's alter ego should announce the plan during the necrological services last Thursday in Cagayan de Oro. Just the day before, the National Museum's research archaeologist, Sheldon Clyde Jago-on, announced that the city government's project had indeed damaged the prehistoric Huluga Open Site when it failed to comply with the Environmental Compliance Certificate requirements. Naming the project after him is certainly the wrong way to honor a man who was genuinely concerned with preserving heritage and historical legacy.

For Pelaez was more than that. He was after all, the Father of the City Charter of Cagayan de Oro which he legislated as Republic Act 521 on June 15, 1950. To use him now as a deodorizer for what is blatantly a project transgressive of a precious cultural heritage that belongs not only to Cagayan de Oro but also to the Filipino people is a sacrilege.

Oh yes, one more thing. Naming streets and bridges requires the participation of the National Historical Institute in the process. Pelaez would not have missed that. He stood for the rule of law. And the rule of law does not trivialize nor denigrate our heritage.

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