They are different, the rich, the very rich
THE GREATEST gift on his 66th birthday. Not only to him but moreso, to all Fernandinos.
Thus City of San Fernando Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez hailed the donation of a two-hectare lot for a permanent campus of the City College which currently squats at the Pampanga High School.
It was not just any two-hectare lot but a highly-valued one, being part and parcel of prime landholdings of the Escaler, Lazatin and Panlilio families abutting the North Luzon Expressway, and adjacent to the Home Depot.
In his profuse thanks to Pampanga’s buenas familias for their charity, Rodriguez turned teary-eyed in reminiscence of the hard times of his youth when, accompanied by his father, he literally knocked on the doors of rich men in search – in vain – of a benefactor to put him through school.
The City College, Rodriguez said, is one surety that poor but deserving young Fernandinos will not have to go through that same arduous pass in the struggle for knowledge, in the quest to be productive members, if not leaders, of society.
Hence the significance, aye, the magnanimity of the donation of the Escaler, Lazatin, and Panlilio families to securing the future of the people of the City of San Fernando.
“A sense of duty long inhered in our families.” So remarked City Councilor Jimmy Lazatin, a scion of the donors and chair of the sangguniang panlungsod’s committee on education.
“With a permanent site comes now the impetus for the infrastructure and the facilities of the college to the fullest possible extent as a center of learning, as a font of professionalism,” Lazatin enthused, committing himself to that task.
The current school-year lists some 600 enrollees at the City College taking up baccalaureate degrees in Information Technology, Education and Business Administration.
Yet another beneficence coming from the Escaler, Lazatin and Panlilio families cited by Rodriguez at his birthday banquet was the donation of 50 streetlights to the city by the San Fernando Electric Light and Power Company Inc.
Part of Sfelapco’s corporate social responsibility program, the sodium-type, combination 250-150 watts lights were meant to contribute to the city government’s efforts to make San Fernando brighter, even shinier, if only in keeping with its image as a beacon of good governance.
“Bright streetlights help deter street crimes, and contribute greatly to road safety for both motorists and pedestrians,” remarked Lazatin, getting to the pragmatic side of the donation.
A two-hectare prime lot for a birthday cake. With 50 streetlights for icing. Indeed what greater gift can a public servant still ask for?
In living, albeit fading, memory, I can’t think of anyone – corporate, family or individual – ever donating at this scale to the City of San Fernando. No matter the enormity of their wealth. Which leads me to dredge my mindset about the rich.
Los ricos son diferentes. Contemporaneous with my pre-school caton lessons from mi tia abuela Senora Carmen was that take from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “…the very rich. They are different from you and me.”
Not only from you and me, but the rich are even different from each other. This realization a-dawning with my conscientization during the days of disquiet and nights of rage of the Marcos regime.
So, of the predatory, exploitative rich we sang: “Tamad na burgis na ayaw gumawa, sa pawis ng masa ay nagpapasasa.” Their hapless victims then: the underpaid, un-unionized, overworked laborers, now morphing to contractualized labor, and the promise of liberation stands still.
The idle rich, we sneered at as the sick symptoms of a decadent society, in the mold of the grande soirees of Marie Antoinette, of hedonistic pursuits, of the sheer satiation of the senses.
Even as any consideration of the rich outside their exploitative and idle nature was denounced as “reactionary” or antithetical, I had by then already recognized the working and the committed among the rich. The conscionable rich, we called them as they – dictated by their conscience, if not out of some inherent goodness – shared labor and profits with their workers, upheld dignity in the factories, took on social responsibilities not only for their workers’ families but also for their communities.
Then, on yet another plane of stratification among the rich: the old and the nouveau.
Of the old rich, some endearment for their Old World charm and sense of class, if not some royal touch, for their bearing and gravitas.
Of the nouveau riche, only disparagement for their sense of crass, for their affectation and ostentation, bloviated ego and shameless pride.
The old rich’s “social” utterly demeaned in the nouveau riche’s sosyal.
Aye, where the old rich are steeped in urbanidad, of the nouveau riche mi tia abuela could have only exclaimed: Que barbaridad!
Indeed, the rich are different even from each other. This the Escaler, Lazatin and Panlilio families proved with their altruism. This the other rich – self-proclaimed leaders of local business, self-aggrandizing traders – displayed with their pretensions and posturing.
So, for all their high-profile presence in the tri-media, have you ever heard of these honor-seeking aggrupations donating even just a single desk in a public school?
Thus City of San Fernando Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez hailed the donation of a two-hectare lot for a permanent campus of the City College which currently squats at the Pampanga High School.
It was not just any two-hectare lot but a highly-valued one, being part and parcel of prime landholdings of the Escaler, Lazatin and Panlilio families abutting the North Luzon Expressway, and adjacent to the Home Depot.
In his profuse thanks to Pampanga’s buenas familias for their charity, Rodriguez turned teary-eyed in reminiscence of the hard times of his youth when, accompanied by his father, he literally knocked on the doors of rich men in search – in vain – of a benefactor to put him through school.
The City College, Rodriguez said, is one surety that poor but deserving young Fernandinos will not have to go through that same arduous pass in the struggle for knowledge, in the quest to be productive members, if not leaders, of society.
Hence the significance, aye, the magnanimity of the donation of the Escaler, Lazatin, and Panlilio families to securing the future of the people of the City of San Fernando.
“A sense of duty long inhered in our families.” So remarked City Councilor Jimmy Lazatin, a scion of the donors and chair of the sangguniang panlungsod’s committee on education.
“With a permanent site comes now the impetus for the infrastructure and the facilities of the college to the fullest possible extent as a center of learning, as a font of professionalism,” Lazatin enthused, committing himself to that task.
The current school-year lists some 600 enrollees at the City College taking up baccalaureate degrees in Information Technology, Education and Business Administration.
Yet another beneficence coming from the Escaler, Lazatin and Panlilio families cited by Rodriguez at his birthday banquet was the donation of 50 streetlights to the city by the San Fernando Electric Light and Power Company Inc.
Part of Sfelapco’s corporate social responsibility program, the sodium-type, combination 250-150 watts lights were meant to contribute to the city government’s efforts to make San Fernando brighter, even shinier, if only in keeping with its image as a beacon of good governance.
“Bright streetlights help deter street crimes, and contribute greatly to road safety for both motorists and pedestrians,” remarked Lazatin, getting to the pragmatic side of the donation.
A two-hectare prime lot for a birthday cake. With 50 streetlights for icing. Indeed what greater gift can a public servant still ask for?
In living, albeit fading, memory, I can’t think of anyone – corporate, family or individual – ever donating at this scale to the City of San Fernando. No matter the enormity of their wealth. Which leads me to dredge my mindset about the rich.
Los ricos son diferentes. Contemporaneous with my pre-school caton lessons from mi tia abuela Senora Carmen was that take from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “…the very rich. They are different from you and me.”
Not only from you and me, but the rich are even different from each other. This realization a-dawning with my conscientization during the days of disquiet and nights of rage of the Marcos regime.
So, of the predatory, exploitative rich we sang: “Tamad na burgis na ayaw gumawa, sa pawis ng masa ay nagpapasasa.” Their hapless victims then: the underpaid, un-unionized, overworked laborers, now morphing to contractualized labor, and the promise of liberation stands still.
The idle rich, we sneered at as the sick symptoms of a decadent society, in the mold of the grande soirees of Marie Antoinette, of hedonistic pursuits, of the sheer satiation of the senses.
Even as any consideration of the rich outside their exploitative and idle nature was denounced as “reactionary” or antithetical, I had by then already recognized the working and the committed among the rich. The conscionable rich, we called them as they – dictated by their conscience, if not out of some inherent goodness – shared labor and profits with their workers, upheld dignity in the factories, took on social responsibilities not only for their workers’ families but also for their communities.
Then, on yet another plane of stratification among the rich: the old and the nouveau.
Of the old rich, some endearment for their Old World charm and sense of class, if not some royal touch, for their bearing and gravitas.
Of the nouveau riche, only disparagement for their sense of crass, for their affectation and ostentation, bloviated ego and shameless pride.
The old rich’s “social” utterly demeaned in the nouveau riche’s sosyal.
Aye, where the old rich are steeped in urbanidad, of the nouveau riche mi tia abuela could have only exclaimed: Que barbaridad!
Indeed, the rich are different even from each other. This the Escaler, Lazatin and Panlilio families proved with their altruism. This the other rich – self-proclaimed leaders of local business, self-aggrandizing traders – displayed with their pretensions and posturing.
So, for all their high-profile presence in the tri-media, have you ever heard of these honor-seeking aggrupations donating even just a single desk in a public school?
posted by A.Caesar Z. Lacson at 10:17 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home