The Birds by Arnold P. Alamon

The Birds

by Arnold P. Alamon

This morning, the birds are unusually noisy in this property just a few kilometers from the Laguindingan airport which is on its first day of operations. The pied fantails, robin magpies, and the yellow-vented bulbuls are agog over something.

An interspecies buzz is taking place and I can almost translate their extended and frantic chirps: “Did you see that humongous silver bird in the skyline? Even the takirol (white-collared king fisher) is no match for her deep rumble and screeching whine! I wonder what they eat to be able to grow so big. Do they also prefer the chico, sineguelas, and balite fruits? Because if that is the case, then boy, are we in trouble!”

And so it has come to pass that after 80 years of serving the flying public, Lumbia airport in Cagayan de Oro City has closed and a new airport, “The Laguindingan International Standard Airport,” as the banners along the road belaboredly declare, has now replaced it.

Like the first impression of the birds of this place to the arrival and departure of giant human-laden flying machines, a strange transformation is taking place in the tri-municipalities of Alubijid, Gitagum, and Laguindingan, now codenamed by government planners as AGILA.

What used to be third-class municipalities along the sleepy coastline South of Misamis Oriental are gently being awakened by the roar of jet engines and constant heavy traffic. Roads are being expanded and gasoline stations have sprouted like mushrooms overnight. Technocrats have a name for this – they call this development. But Sociologists need to ask – “Development for whom?”

The story of AGILA has yet to be written as we still have to see the changes that the airport transfer will bring to these largely agriculture-based communities . But the trajectory is already apparent in the beginning.

If the rumors are indeed true, the story begins with a giant real estate company acquiring vast tracts of land in the hundreds of hectares beginning in the 1980s for a song. For decades, they allowed the land to sleep,the birds to happily frolick on the rolling hills, while waiting patiently for their sponsored government bureaucrats to begin the process of the airport transfer to the area. Out of their supposed benevolence, they donated 180 hectares as the site of the new airport to expedite the process. With tax payer loans secured and construction done of the new airport a few years later, they now are in possession of prime real estate with the new public facility providing economic impetus and value for their investment.

There are heady plans that make the middle and upper classes drool in excitement over the prospects of a planned city just like the Bonifacio Global City in Taguig in this place. It is a promising modern suburbia almost equi-distant to both Cagayan de Oro and Iligan Cities where those who have the purchasing power from these cities can frolick and spend their money in the planned restaurants and malls that are sure to rise from the limestone ground. Among the afficionados of imported goods, the opening of a popular px goods outlet store make the 30 kilometer distance from Cagayan de Oro seem like nothing.

There is now a mad dash for remaining real estate with buyers purchasing property in the tens of hectares for planned subdivisions in the area. On the unspoiled and deep coastline are future marinas for the speedboats and yachts of the rich that are sure to disallow the late afternoon ritual of shellfish gathering  among the residents.

Meanwhile, the long-term farmer-residents of the tri-municipalities are tempted by lucrative offers from real estate agents also cashing in on the increase in value of the land. Sometimes it is a painful choice between letting go of the family’s sentimental ties to their ancestral land in exchange for the much-needed cash.

Farming in these places has been a losing bet because of the unpredictable seasons and low farmgate prices for their tobacco, corn, and sineguelas. Better that their children enter as contractual workers in the enterprises that will be established in the new city by the airport instead of becoming land-tillers like them. Beggars can’t be choosers they say.

If the residents of the tri-municipalities do not watch out, they will find themselves at the fringes of all these private capital-led development that has descended upon their homes and communities. There is no sentimentality to this kind of development, and capital determines who leave and who stay. 

Just like the birds who are scandalized by the arrival of flying machines, it is good for us to realize as early as now that with the descent of this kind of development aggression, boy, the people here are in trouble too.

published in June 18 issue of sunstar cdo