THE persistent insistence of President Rodrigo Duterte to “give back Boracay to farmers” is bad enough. Worse, he warned hoteliers, restaurateurs and other businessmen thereat, “I am not inclined to declare anything there as a commercial area. If you will lose your billions there, I’m sorry…”
Are we being conditioned into imagining that after the six-month clean-up of the island starting April 26, we would be seeing a place akin to the orchard where Adam and Eve romped around?
That one-man show is not funny. The “losers” that Duterte alluded to are the hard-working investors who, in a span of half a century, have patiently nurtured the island from a sleepy, unlighted Ati settlement into the biggest income-generating, internationally-famous tourism hub of the Philippines. Why kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?
We had hitherto thought he would rehabilitate Boracay because it had become a “cesspool” that would drive away tourists.
We had also been made to believe – no thanks to press releases from the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) – that the rehab would pave the way for the rise of Chinese-owned Galaxy Casino.
Unless Duterte was once again joking, how could he reconcile his words with those of the three Cabinet secretaries – Roy Cimatu of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Wanda Tulfo-Teo of the Department of Tourism (DOT) and Eduardo Año of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) – who had already discussed the rehab masterplan drafted by urban planner Architect Felino Palafox Jr.?
They must be scratching their head because “I have no masterplan” were the words that eventually spilled out of the President’s mouth.
We have yet to hear Tourism Secretary Wanda Teo howl a word of protest, however. She could have reminded the President that Boracay is no farming community; that growing coconuts on the island would not even compensate for income lost by thousands of to-be-displaced tourism-oriented workers.
Boracay was not a farming but a fishing community when Panay News founder Danny Fajardo and I first went there in 1982. Spaced far between were a score of nipa huts and carinderias. We rented a two-bedroom hut for twenty-five pesos only.
Our room boy provided us with a wood-fueled parilla on which to broil fish, a box of match and a kerosene lamp. While resting in the cottage, we saw a group of native fishermen pushing their small boat ashore. We strolled over and bought a plate of live galunggong for five pesos!
At night we combed the beach. The scene of scantily-clad foreign couples necking and petting under the moonlight unfolded before our naked eyes.
While I would personally love to re-experience such “nature-tripping,” that would be a step backward for the tourism industry.
To minimize losses, I am for regulating the influx of tourists and rehabilitating the island phase by phase. After all, were it not for the crystal-clear sea kissing the white-sand beach, the place could end up like any Philippine city where no one could escape air pollution belched by tricycles running on narrow roads that betray poor infrastructure planning.
Long before my first visit to Boracay, I had already seen the place on wide screen – as the location of the 1968 Hollywood war movie Too Late the Hero, starring Cliff Robertson, Michael Caine and Henry Fonda. It was a beach-encircled forest fictionally called “New Hebrides”.
Boracay became well-known as Boracay in the early 1970s when entrepreneurs raided its beaches to gather puka shells. Puka was then in demand in the international market as material for necklace beads. (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
