AMONG the memorable experiences I had during the early days in my stint as a reporter of The Freeman was eating “balbacua” in an eatery in Colon. Veteran reporter Hermes Suaring asked me to join him and then news editor Glen Basubas and another veteran reporter Beverly Lomosad. That was my first time to eat in the place, which was big enough to accommodate a large number of diners.
Everything in that place was makeshift, including the tent roof and the gravel flooring. The tables and chairs stood close to each other and the kitchen, with those big utensils blackened by soot and the wash area with piles of uncleaned plates placed hastily atop one another, was visible to everybody. Cleanliness was not the place’s priority and chaos was the norm. When Hermes noted my hesitation as I surveyed the place, he told me, “That’s what makes this place click.”
That little nugget of “wisdom” has guided me ever since, especially when I look at the changes that government puts in place to supposedly improve a setup that the people themselves originated. First, you look internally and consider what makes the setup click. You do not look outside for guidance and automatically apply here what one sees in other provinces or even in the “States.”
I don’t know how much of the magic was lost when government changed the setup in the old “sutukil” (sugba, tuwa, kilaw) at the Mactan Shrine and the old Larsian near Fuente Osmeña but this I could say, the old Mactan sutukil area and Larsian had a different feel to them. But to be fair, those places still attracted a clientele though not the old ones, who must have found other places to frequent.
That is what I fear in the recent SM proposal to “modernize” Carbon market. Carbon market is Carbon market. It is not a mall, which is frequented by the moneyed, and which SM is an expert in setting up. It is a market, and by that I mean “market” in the old sense. And there’s a whole mindset that goes with the “market” word that mall planners can never grasp. And a whole lot of history, too.
Like the “balbacuahan” I mentioned earlier, Carbon market thrives in chaos. Why? Because the chaos symbolizes a level of economic growth we all pretend to not be immersed in. Chaos is the by-product of efforts to keep operating costs at a minimum and sell commodities cheap. And people don’t mind the chaos as long as they get the bargain they are looking for.
Carbon market is the people’s market. The moneyed go to malls, their helpers go to Carbon market. Carbon and Taboan markets are, sort of, among the last holdouts in this relentless effort by government to “modernize” (translation: to turn over to the private sector or the moneyed every available service). I dread to see the day when Carbon market also loses a big chunk of its magic and becomes just an ordinary mall frequented not by the cash-strapped but the moneyed.
Or are there other ways to develop Carbon market without it losing its reason for being?