BUENAVISTA: History of the Place and the People

By Francisco C. Aspuria

Buenavista--an agricultural place transformed into a congested semi suburbanite setting because of progress. The book recalls the struggles of the poor but resilient early Kamarinians, mostly landless but hardworking peasants who toiled the land of the well-to-do landowners just to exist meagerly.

This is the story of the rural people, derogatorily referred to as "mga taga bundok" (the mountain people). They worked hard not to prove their worth but to survive. They survived because they were resilient; they endured because they were God-fearing people. They are the people of the barrio, and they have nothing to be ashamed of. They are proud of who they are and what they are.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886448672

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: Buenavista

Chapter 2: Buenavista of Early Years

Chapter 3: Rural Living

Chapter 4: The Philippine Commonwealth

Chapter 5: War in the Pacific

Chapter 6: Barrio Life during and after World War II

Chapter 7: The Postwar Era

Chapter 8: Rural Traditions

Chapter 9: Faith and Religion

Chapter 10: Childhood Games and Entertainment

Chapter 11: 1946: The Years of the Hukbalahaps (Huks)

Chapter 12: Schools and Early Education of the People

Chapter 13: Transformation from Rural to Semisuburban Setting

Chapter 14: Politics and the Barrio Life

Chapter 15: The Violent Years

Chapter 16: Alcoholism, Cigarette Addictions, and Minor Forms of Gambling

Chapter 17: Sports and Recreation

Chapter 18: The Veterans of Buenavista

Chapter 19: Other Health Care Professionals

Chapter 20: Overseas Migration of the People

Chapter 21: BUKANA

Chapter 22: The Millennium Buenavista

Epilogue: The New Chapter: Quo Vadis, Buenavista?

Notes

About the Author

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BUENAVISTA

History of the Place and the People

Francisco C. Aspuria

ISBN 979-8-88644-866-5 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88644-867-2 (Digital)

Copyright © 2023 Francisco C. Aspuria

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

This book is dedicated to my late parents, Raymundo Candare Aspuria and Natividad Cubcubin Aspuria—the poor and landless peasant couple whose main goal in life was to see that each of their children has at least a high school diploma.

Preface

There are more than seventy-five families of former Buenavista residents who are currently living in the state of California. Some are in Northern California, but the majority of them live in Southern California. In every gathering, the olden days of Buenavista never failed to surface. Whenever a mere mention of a minor incident or one particular individual came up, it would trigger a lively conversation among the group. Oftentimes, those conversations would lead to fond memories of the past, to which someone would always comment, It would have been nice if someone can write a book about them.

This book was conceived in that wishful line of thinking. Back in my mind, I thought it would be worthwhile to write about what I remembered most—about the place, the people, and the community life of mga taga bundok (mountain people). I received many encouragements to write the book, many even promising to buy copies once it was published. I started creating an outline for my story and then slowly followed the train of my thoughts. I did not set a specific time to do my writing. I wrote in the early morning, late at night, and middle of the day, mostly jotting down things that would come up into my mind, and then do editing, grammar, and punctuation corrections, deleting and adding, cutting and pasting.

There are no credible written documents about the place when I wrote the book. Perhaps there were documents that existed before about the cuartel and the convent and the two Roman-style stone bridges erected by the Spaniards. I assumed that those documents went aflame when the cuartel and the convent were burned down to the ground.

Just recently, a YouTube posting presented a brief historical account about the village. The post basically mentioned the physical layout of Buenavista. It left out the most important aspect of its history—the people and the way they were. When I wrote a comment about the posting, I was told that the article presented was based on careful research. Of course, I disagreed because some of the facts presented, in my opinion, were highly debatable.

The book is a compilation of oral stories heard from my parents, neighbors, and elderly people of Buenavista. Those stories were kept alive in their memories and have been retold many times. The events that occurred in my generation are not fiction, hearsay, or myth. They actually happened. I was there. I heard them and experienced them as well. The same stories and accounts I have heard more than once from multiple sources, I considered credible and worthwhile to include in the book. They were presented unaltered and unadulterated to maintain the authenticity of the history of my people.

Realistically, this book would never receive any award in poetry and literature. It is not intended for that reason at all. There are flaws in my writing, I must admit. I have never written or published any book. My expertise was writing government contracts and, also, writing weekly sermons for members of the churches I served. Perhaps I honed my limited writing skills by doing essays, biblical expositions, and term papers during my seminary days. Nevertheless, I was challenged to write the book, and I found myself actually enjoying what I was doing.

While writing the book, things and events that I did not pay much attention to in my younger years came back alive. The old familiar places, the meadows and rice fields, the rivers and the swimming holes, such as Kalubkub, Kawa-Kawa, Layong Haba, Layong Bilog, and Ngusong Buwaya, were now things of the past and existing only in my memories, but they appeared again and again as they were—as if I had just seen them yesterday. Some of my dreams took me back to the places I frequented as a young boy—climbing and falling down from fruit trees, riding on the back of a carabao, and even climbing on the school flagpole to reach the small roof opening and gather bats' manure used for fertilizer.

I was captivated by the fond memories, and they served as my inspiration to pursue the project. In my thinking, if I could just put in writing what I knew about the barrio, someone who would read the book will learn from it and would have a better appreciation of what rural living was like. Perhaps, the book could be beneficial to another writer who might one day think about adding more to what had been already written.

My writing project was going on smoothly until midpart of 2021 when an MRI of the part of my frontal lobe revealed I have a small tumor, but it was considered benign at first. I was not concerned because the tumor was small, and there was no evidence of growth. Within several months, however, I experienced small seizures followed by the weakening of my right leg. I saw a neurologist, and the MRI done in June further revealed that the tumor was actually growing.

Surgery was recommended.

Doubts, fear, and anxiety crept into my mind. Will I be able to finish my writing before the surgery? What if not? What if surgery was not successful and I became incapable of expressing or writing down my thoughts? Then I have to undergo three weeks of physical and occupational therapies. Undeterred, I continued gathering materials for my manuscript. Slowly, my coordination came back. I was able to use my laptop and put together the trend of my thoughts.

I reached out to fellow Kamarinians who I thought would be able to help in my research. They did not disappoint me. Without their valuable help, this book would have never been published.

It matters not if the book will be read only by the people of the generation to which I belonged—the baby boomers. Perhaps someone of the future generation will be inspired to write about Buenavista, a much different Buenavista from what has been illustrated here. I am just happy that I am able to share what I remembered most about the barrio and the old living ways of the people who lived there before and during my time.

Mabuhay ang mga taga Kamarin. (Long live the Kamarinians.)

Acknowledgments

The book would have not been published without the collaborative efforts of many who provided important information contained herein. It is through their contributions that I was able to compile together pertinent events that occurred during our early days in Buenavista. My endless thanks to Chito Bauzon and his wife Gina, who initially thought that writing a book about the barrio was a very good idea and worthwhile to pursue. Their encouragement truly inspired me to pursue the project I had in mind. I extend my gratitude to Dr. Cherry Luseco Aspuria, who took many pictures of the farm sceneries shown in this book. I thought it was worthwhile to include those pictures in the book because they bring back memories of how the farmland of Buenavista was like before the barrio was transformed into what it is today. Other old pictures printed in the book that depict the rural ways of life are from the photo collections of Chito and cousin Danny Nocon. I could not say enough words of thanks to my brother, Laling, who spent many hours compiling the list of different families residing in different sectors of the barrio, the veterans, the Overseas Foreign Workers (OFW), and other health care workers. I could have not identified all of them without his help. My gratitude also to all my siblings and brothers-in-law, who provided the names of all the basketball teams and players who participated in the Inter-Barrio Basketball League. My gratitude to my daughter, Sherri, who created the art used as the cover of the book. I also thank her and my wife Daisy for pre-editing my manuscript prior to its submission to the publishing company. Last but not least, my thanks to all Kamarinians, living or dead, for without them, the story would have not been written.

Introduction

This is a brief history of the place and its people. There is nothing spectacular about the village—no special tourist attractions and no natural or man-made sites worthwhile stopping by to see and explore. Nevertheless, we are proud to be born and raised here to experience the simple but unique ways of rural living.

This is the history of generations of poor, mostly landless, but hardworking peasants who toiled the land under the searing heat of the sun, those who braved the cold rain and strong winds working on the field from dawn to dusk just to exist meagerly. They worked hard not to prove their worth, but just to survive. They survived because they were resilient; they endured because they were God-fearing people.

I know their stories because they were mine too. The people who lived here were my ancestors, my immediate family and distant relatives, and my childhood friends and classmates I grew up with. I walked the grounds they walked and experienced the curse of poverty in our childhood days.

I knew Buenavista and the people who lived here. One thing we have in common was respect for elders. For the people slightly older than me, I called them kuya and ate. Those whose ages were closer to my parents' were my uncles and my aunties, my unte, tata, and nana. The elderlies, relatives or not, were my itang and inang (grandfather and grandmother, respectively). They were addressed in the plural third-person pronoun (kayo). When talking to elders, "ho and oho or po and opo" by later generations are generally used.

Up to midpart of 1970, I knew all the residents of Buenavista by name and the section of the barrio where they resided. I knew every farmland and the farmer who toiled the land. I even knew the owners of the large tract of land in Buenavista and the adjoining villages. I never saw them, but I heard their names—the Trias, the Leanos, Ferrers, the Arnaldos, the Asahans, and the Gaerlans. They all lived in big houses in the town and have katiwalas (overseers) who managed their lands for them.

Of course, I also knew the locals who owned several hectares of farmlands, like Jimmy Barker, the Lujeros, Lumanogs, Villano Porto family, the Nocons, the Bauzons, Emong Kuba, and Andres Fortuno. I had been to their lands, helped the farmers in removing weeds from their rice fields, and got paid two pesos per day. I also harvested rice from their field. As a young boy, I climbed fruit trees growing on their lands—even falling down from the trees twice. One fall caused me to lose consciousness for a minute or two. My younger brothers who were with me thought I was dead or was about to die.

Except for a few of them, I knew all those who were fatally gunned down, the reason they were killed, and who the alleged killers were. News travels fast in a rural community. Adults talked openly about tragic events that had happened, and children were not shielded from the reality of rural life, good or bad.

This is our history. Obviously lacking accurate historical data forever lost in the annals of its history, we believed in it, embraced it, and proudly shared it with the new generations of the Kamarinians. We are the people of the barrio, and we have nothing to be ashamed of. We are proud of who we are and what we are.

Chapter 1

Buenavista

Buenavista, also known as (a.k.a.) Kamarin/Kamaren/Camaren, came from Spanish word camarin, which means storage area/bin. Its other meaning is a place where jewels etc. belonging to an image are kept. It was originally a rural village less than thirty square kilometers in size, located ten kilometers north of the town of General Trias, to the south is the town of Amadeo.

On the east and the west are the cities of Dasmarinas and Trece Martires, respectively. Small rivers on the east and west side served as a demarcation line separating Buenavista from the territories of Dasmarinas and Trece Martires.

Buenavista is one of the barangays of the town of General Trias. General Trias, formerly known as San Francisco de Malabon Grande, was founded on December