By Marianito Luspo
(Editor’s Note: On Nov. 4, 2021, key personalities held the groundbreaking for the Central Visayas (CV) Cultural Hub. The Bohol Tribune is reprinting the social media post of an artist and Bohol’s cultural icon Marianito Luspo to give the public an idea of his purview about the cultural hub that will soon rise at Mt. Banat-i.)
Since earliest time hills and mountains have been the source of inspiration for our Boholano ancestors. In both times of peace and of danger high places have beckoned to our people, recalling what the psalm says, ” I will lift up my eyes towards the hills from where does help come to me.”(Psalm 121,1).
Indeed, high places have always been special, mystical spaces for people all over the world, for which reason shrines, temples and memorials have been raised on top of hills and mountains by people in search of contact with the Trancendent.
Up here in the hills of Bohol our ancestors buried their dead; here Dagohoy and his followers found refuge and freedom; here Tamblot, Goyo Caseñas and many World War II guerillas and other freedom- fighters held their ground and sanctified the soil with their blood; here, weary souls refreshed themselves in the bosom of Mother Nature.
If there be structures to be raised here fittingly, it would and should be those aimed at cultivating the human spirit so as to commune with the divine, celebrating the Boholano soul, nurturing our creativity and inspiring people to look into themselves, enabling us to reconnect with our past and empowering us to hammer out our future as dignified and free people.
This is the intent of the Central Visayas (CV) Regional Cultural Hub the site of which was inaugurated a couple of days ago (Nov. 4, 2021) right on top of Mt. Banat-i, a facility to service not just the creative sectors of Bohol but of Cebu, Negros Oriental and Siquijor. This is a project of the national government through the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) with support by the Regional Development Council (RDC) and the Provincial Government of Bohol (PGBh), one of many other similar facilities to be raised in other regions of the country, as well.
Strangely, some criticize the project for being planned to stand on a hill. But did you hear them protest when private hotels, communication towers, cell sites and private homes and facilities have been built in many high places in the province, all dedicated to private enterprise and the pursuit of profit? Did you hear them complain when private entrepreneurs have titled and appropriated many of Bohol’s upland areas, some even planning to exploit them for mining purposes?
Some of these objectors did raise valid concerns: environmental degradation, drainage spillover, sustainability issues, etc., But do you think the project took that long to reach this stage from 2018 when the offer was first made by the NCCA if rigid studies and careful planning had not been made?
There are voices that question the artistic merits of the design, as if beauty is not a matter of personal taste (and lest we forget the now iconic Eiffel Tower was once derided by art critics of France as a national disgrace and “Monseur Eiffel’s suppository!”).
And then there are those who sincerely fear the loss of their old haunting ground, their childhood bike trails, their countryside hikes. That will happen if the project intends to appropriate the entire hill complex (in fact, it will only occupy a small portion of one of its many summits and its southeast slope) or if you’d rather believe that Pernicious Poke who wants us to believe an entire hill is being demolished and that a private “fantasy resort” is in the making in that hills.
The fact is, the Central Visayas (CV) Regional Cultural Hub is a national government project, a public facility for use by people who want to know, absorb, explore and gain skills at artistic expression of the Visayan spirit – our Mt Sinai, our Mt. Makiling School for the Arts, our Parthenon, our Mont St. Michel, our Mt Zion (if you know what these are) dedicated to Culture and the Arts – of our people, for our people and by our people.