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Saysay Bikol, Naga City (2025)

19/10/2025

𝗣𝗘𝗗𝗥𝗢 𝗦𝗔𝗕𝗜𝗗𝗢: 𝗦𝗖𝗛𝗢𝗟𝗔𝗥, 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗦𝗠𝗔𝗡, 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗣𝗨𝗕𝗟𝗜𝗖 𝗦𝗘𝗥𝗩𝗔𝗡𝗧

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Pedro Ribaya Sabido (19 October 1894 – 3 February 1980) was a Filipino lawyer, legislator, diplomat, and educator whose lifelong dedication to public service and national progress left an indelible mark on the Philippines. Born in Polangui, Albay, to Don Juan D. Sabido and Doña Maximina Ribaya, Sabido’s humble beginnings in the Bicol region shaped his enduring commitment to education, justice, and the welfare of his countrymen.

Sabido’s intellectual brilliance manifested early. He completed his elementary education in the public school of Polangui before pursuing secondary studies at the Colegio-Seminario de Nueva Cáceres, where he graduated with the highest distinction in 1912. He later attended the Royal and Pontifical University of Santo Tomas in Manila, where he earned degrees in Philosophy and Letters and Law in 1916. His academic record—consistently marked by “sobresaliente” or outstanding grades—reflected not only talent but also perseverance and moral discipline. That same year, he passed the bar examinations, joining the ranks of the country’s most promising young lawyers.

Sabido’s education in both law and philosophy gave him a unique perspective that blended analytical precision with humanistic insight. It was this balance that later defined his approach to governance—grounded in legal principle yet guided by an ethical sense of responsibility to the people. His deep appreciation for scholarship and the Spanish language also earned him recognition as a Corresponding Member of the Real Academia Española in 1927, one of the few Filipinos to receive such an honor.

His public service career began in 1922 when he was elected Representative of the Third District of Albay under the Nacionalista Party. He served in the Philippine Legislature for sixteen consecutive years—a testament to the enduring trust his constituents placed in him. As legislator, he chaired key committees, including Public Works, Revision of Laws, and Mines, and became a Floor Leader in the House of Representatives. His leadership was marked by clarity of vision and practical reform, qualities that made him a respected figure even among his political rivals.

One of his most celebrated legislative achievements was his authorship and sponsorship of the Women’s Suffrage Act, the first law in the Philippines to grant women the right to vote and be elected to public office. The passage of this act represented not only legal progress but also a cultural breakthrough, as it redefined the role of women in Filipino society. Sabido’s advocacy for gender equality demonstrated his forward-thinking perspective, aligning the nation’s democratic ideals with genuine inclusivity.

In addition to the Women’s Suffrage Act, Sabido authored the Mining Act, the NAFCO Act (creating the National Abaca and Other Fibers Corporation), and a bill mandating religious instruction in public and private schools. These measures reflected his vision of balanced national development—one that valued both material progress and moral education.

During the Commonwealth period, President Manuel L. Quezon recognized Sabido’s administrative acumen and appointed him Chairman and General Manager of NAFCO, where he advanced the abacá industry—vital to the economy of his home province of Albay. Later, during the Japanese occupation, President José P. Laurel appointed him Minister of Economic Affairs, where he continued to serve the country under difficult circumstances with prudence and integrity.

After World War II, Sabido’s political and diplomatic career reached new heights. In 1953, President Ramon Magsaysay appointed him Ambassador to Spain and the Vatican, where he worked to strengthen cultural and diplomatic ties between the Philippines and its former colonial power. His distinguished service in this role earned him one of Spain’s highest honors, the Gran Cruz de Isabel la Católica, awarded for exceptional contributions to fostering international goodwill.

In 1955, Sabido returned to Philippine politics when he was elected Senator under the Nacionalista Party. As senator, he chaired the Committees on Banks, Corporations, and Franchises, and the Committee on Health, while serving on numerous others, including Foreign Relations, Finance, and National Defense. His performance in the Senate earned him consistent recognition from the press as one of the Outstanding Senators of the Year for five consecutive years (1956–1961).

Beyond politics, Sabido was a man of letters and a devoted educator. He co-founded the Lyceum of the Philippines with José P. Laurel and later served as its Chairman of the Board of Trustees. He also taught law at the Lyceum, the Far Eastern University, and the University of Manila, where he influenced generations of Filipino lawyers and public servants.

Pedro Sabido’s contributions extended far beyond the halls of government. For the Bicol region, he was a champion of economic modernization, advocating for infrastructure such as ports in Tabaco and Legazpi to promote trade and prosperity. For Philippine society, he was a reformer who advanced women’s rights, education, and national industry. And for the nation, he embodied the ideals of enlightened leadership—integrity, intellect, and patriotism in equal measure.

He was married to Gloria Madrid, with whom he had two children, Roberto and Lourdes. Pedro Sabido passed away on 3 February 1980, but his legacy continues to resonate in the institutions he strengthened and the laws he authored. A scholar, statesman, and servant of the people, his life remains a testament to how one man’s wisdom and will can help shape a nation’s destiny.
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REFERENCES

Borja II, Gene Kervin S., and Javier Leonardo V. Rugeria. “Pedro R. Sabido: Bikolano Statesman and Diplomat.” Saysay Bikol Facebook, October 19, 2023. Accessed October 6, 2025. https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=633651105603082.

Hartmann, Christof, Graham Hassall, and Soliman M. Santos, Jr. Elections in Asia and the Pacific. Vol. II. Edited by Dieter Nohlen, Florian Grotz, and Christof Hartmann. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Nellist, George Ferguson Mitchell. Men of the Philippines: A Biographical Record of Men of Substantial Achievement in the Philippine Islands. Manila: P.I., 1931.

“Pedro Sabido.” Directorio Oficial de la Camara de Representantes, Septima Legislatura Filipina, Segundo Periodo de Sesiones. Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1926. SOAS Digital Archives. Accessed October 6, 2025. https://digital.soas.ac.uk/content/LO/A1/00/00/03/00001/LOA1000003_00001.pdf.

“Pedro Sabido.” Official Directory of the Senate of the Philippines, 1960–1961. Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1960. Via Google Books. Original from the University of Michigan. https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=Y98JAAAAIAAJ.

“Pedro Sabido.” Philippine Senate. Accessed October 6, 2025. https://legacy.senate.gov.ph/senators/former_senators/pedro_sabido.htm.

Villa, Nardo. “Pedro R. Sabido: The Idol of Bicolandia.” Bikolana, 1955.

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13/10/2025

𝗘𝗗 𝗟𝗔𝗚𝗨𝗘𝗥𝗧𝗔: 𝗚𝗨𝗔𝗥𝗗𝗜𝗔𝗡 𝗢𝗙 𝗕𝗜𝗞𝗢𝗟 𝗩𝗢𝗟𝗖𝗔𝗡𝗢𝗘𝗦

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Eduardo “Ed” Pantua Laguerta (13 October 1954 – 30 December 2023) was more than a volcanologist. To the people of Bicol, he was the watchful guardian of Bikol volcanoes—a man whose life embodied humility, discipline, and an unyielding devotion to public safety. Over four decades of service, Laguerta became one of the Philippines’ most trusted voices in disaster preparedness and a symbol of steadfast commitment to truth and science in the face of nature’s fury.

Born in Monbon, a remote barangay in Irosin, Sorsogon—the home of Mt. Bulusan, the country’s fourth most active volcano—Laguerta grew up surrounded by the rhythms of the land and the quiet majesty of mountains. His father, a farmer, often told him that Bulusan’s eruptions gave life to their fertile fields. From those slopes, young Eduardo learned both awe and respect for nature’s power. His early dreams were modest: to work abroad and lift his family out of poverty. He enrolled at Far Eastern University to study Mechanical Engineering but was forced to leave when pest infestation devastated his family’s crops.

Fate intervened in 1978 when Mt. Bulusan stirred after years of slumber. The Commission on Volcanology (COMVOL), forerunner of today’s PHIVOLCS, established a local observatory—and the out-of-school youth from Irosin applied for any available position. He was hired as a utility boy. It was a humble beginning that became a lifelong vocation.

At the Bulusan Observatory, Laguerta found his calling. He was fascinated by the seismographs, instruments, and the disciplined calm of scientists who “listened” to the earth. His curiosity and technical aptitude quickly caught attention. Within six years, he rose from utility man to radio operator, nurturing a growing interest in Electrical Engineering inspired by the observatory’s equipment. He requested a transfer to COMVOL’s main office in Manila so he could pursue his studies as a working student, eventually earning a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from FEU.

After graduation in 1991, he was sent to Taiwan for training in instrumentation—a skillset that proved vital when Mt. Pinatubo erupted that same year. As part of PHIVOLCS’ monitoring team, Laguerta helped interpret analog seismograms and maintain critical equipment amid chaos. His dedication and technical mastery earned him and his colleagues a Public Service Award from the U.S. Department of the Interior in December 1991 for their role in saving lives during the catastrophic eruption.

In 1992, he received a post-graduate scholarship at the University of Hawaii, where he studied volcano monitoring, geology, geophysics, geodesy, and geochemistry. This training solidified his transformation from engineer to earth scientist. The experience also confirmed his life’s mission—he never pursued an engineering license, choosing instead to dedicate his career to volcanology.

Returning home, Laguerta joined monitoring teams for Taal and Pinatubo before being assigned in 1993 to the Mayon Volcano Observatory in Albay. For the next twenty-six years, “Sir Ed” would be the resident volcanologist—the calm, steady presence behind every Mayon advisory. He monitored seven eruptions and countless minor activities, guiding communities through the 1993, 2001, 2006, and 2014 crises. His scientific precision and quiet authority earned him deep respect among government officials, media, and the public.

To the layman, Laguerta was a volcanologist; but he humbly described himself as “a man who monitors volcanoes.” His work, he explained, was not limited to active ones but included potentially active volcanoes—a task vital not only for disaster preparedness but also for responsible land development. In Bicol, he “watched” six volcanoes: four active and two potentially active. His mission was to ensure that every tremor and gas emission was reported promptly to authorities, the media, and the public. “Our decisions,” he often said, “are based on scientific findings without any political preference. Our core objective is the safety of the people.”

Laguerta’s relationship with Mayon was both scientific and poetic. “Mayon is a legend of a lady,” he once said, “beautiful and symmetrical. But deep inside, sometimes she gets angry and shows tantrums and erupts unknowingly.” For him, monitoring Mayon was like understanding a living being—one whose moods had to be read through instruments, patterns, and instinct born of sleepless nights on Ligñon Hill.

He saw the work of a volcanologist as “living with the unknown.” Often, he would wake in the middle of the night to check the seismographs, making sure nothing had changed. The weight of each decision—to raise or lower an alert level—could mean thousands of lives displaced or saved. Even when criticized, he stood by science and reason, his calm demeanor grounding both colleagues and the public during moments of fear.

His service extended beyond eruptions. Between crises, Laguerta became a mentor and educator. In 2010, he earned a Diploma in Disaster Risk Management from the Central Bicol State University of Agriculture, where he later lectured on disaster preparedness and earth sciences. Known for his wit and humor, he had a gift for making technical topics relatable—transforming complex seismographic data into stories that resonated with ordinary citizens. He later gave lectures across universities on earthquakes, risk management, and environmental protection.

Throughout his career, Laguerta represented PHIVOLCS in international scientific conferences—four in the United States, three each in Japan and Indonesia, and one in Italy—continually updating his expertise. His contributions, alongside then-director Dr. Raymundo Punongbayan, earned him the Civil Service Public Service Award for invaluable service to communities affected by Mayon’s eruptions.

After forty-one years of service, Laguerta retired in 2019 as Senior Supervisor for Volcano Monitoring in the Bicol Region. Yet retirement did not end his vigilance. He continued advising local officials and warning against illegal quarrying and environmental neglect on Mayon’s slopes—issues he believed could magnify future disasters.

In June 2023, Ateneo de Naga University honored him with the Bulawan na Bikolnon Service to Bikol Award, recognizing his lifelong dedication to science, safety, and the welfare of the Bicolano people.

Eduardo Laguerta passed away on 30 December 2023, in his hometown of Irosin at the age of 69. He left behind a legacy written not in textbooks but in the lives saved through early evacuations, accurate forecasts, and the public’s enduring trust in science.

From a poor farmer’s son on the slopes of Bulusan to the nation’s foremost volcano watcher, Eduardo “Ed” Laguerta embodied the finest qualities of the Filipino spirit—resilience, humility, and devotion to service. In life and in death, he remained the quiet guardian of Mayon, a man whose vigilance and love for his land helped shape a safer, wiser nation.

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REFERENCES

Barcia, Rhaydz B. “Spare Scientists from Politics: The Legacy of Late Veteran Volcanologist Ed Laguerta.” Rappler, December 31, 2023. Accessed October 6, 2025. https://www.rappler.com/philippines/luzon/legacy-late-veteran-volcanologist-eduardo-laguerta-2023/.

“Eduardo P. Laguerta: Bulawan na Bikolnon Service to Bikol Award.” Citation. Programme for the 72nd Commencement Exercises, Ateneo de Naga University, 2023.

Laguerta, Eduardo P. “Mayon Volcano Real-Time Data Monitoring, Data Processing, Analysis and Modelling.” Paper presented at Monitoring Active Volcanoes by Electromagnetic and Other Geophysical Methods: Application to Asian Volcanoes, 25–27 February 2010, PHIVOLCS Auditorium, C.P. Garcia Avenue, U.P. Campus, Diliman, Quezon City. Accessed October 6, 2025. https://www.emsev-iugg.org/emdoc/EMSEV-PHIVOLCS_WORKSHOP_Feb2010.pdf.

Mier-Manjares, Ma. April. “Retired Volcanologist Eduardo Laguerta, 69.” Philippine Daily Inquirer, December 30, 2023. Accessed October 6, 2025. https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1881535/retired-volcanologist-eduardo-laguerta-69.

Mier-Manhajes, Ma. April, and Rey Anthony Ostria. “Mayon Expert Eduardo Laguerta; 69.” Philippine Daily Inquirer, December 31, 2023. PressReader. Accessed October 6, 2025. https://www.pressreader.com/philippines/philippine-daily-inquirer-1109/20231231/281865828293332.

Ranada, Pia. “The Man Who Watches Mayon.” Rappler, October 5, 2014. Accessed October 6, 2025. https://www.rappler.com/science/earth-space/71048-ed-laguerta-mayon-volcanologist/.

Recuenco, Aaron. “Destiny Works Wonders for This Volcanologist.” Tempo Online, February 5, 2018. Accessed October 6, 2025. https://tempo.mb.com.ph/2018/02/05/destiny-works-wonders-for-this-volcanologist/.

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13/10/2025

𝗦𝗢𝗖𝗢𝗥𝗥𝗢 𝗙𝗘𝗗𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗦-𝗧𝗔𝗧𝗘: 𝗕𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗘𝗡𝗚𝗟𝗜𝗦𝗛 𝗟𝗔𝗡𝗚𝗨𝗔𝗚𝗘 𝗧𝗢 𝗧𝗘𝗟𝗟 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗕𝗜𝗞𝗢𝗟 𝗦𝗧𝗢𝗥𝗬

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In the history of Philippine literature in English, the figure of Socorro Federis-Tate occupies a complicated but important space. Writing mostly between the 1950s and the 1970s, she belonged to a generation shaped by colonial education, postwar dislocations, and the dominance of Manila-based magazines as the principal venues for fiction. Her works were published alongside those of nationally known writers like Nick Joaquin and Greg Brillantes, yet her voice remained deeply provincial, marked by her fidelity to Bikol settings, speech, and sensibilities. Neither a radical innovator nor a purely imitative author, Tate stands as an example of how a provincial woman writer negotiated the expectations of her milieu while inscribing into English the lived realities of her region. Strikingly, there is a lack of online sources on her life and works, a silence that perhaps reflects her underrated place in the history of Philippine fiction and literature.

Socorro Federis-Tate was born in Iriga City on 13 October 1916, the daughter of Esteban Federis and Eulalia Madara. Her father died when she was only five, and much of her early life was shaped by her grandparents, who raised her near the seashore in Legazpi City. They were protective guardians, intent on shielding her from the roughness of neighborhood children. She later reflected that this early insulation might have driven her to books: “When I was in the fourth grade, I was already reading novels for teenagers,” she recalled. She devoured American and European authors—Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Irving, Poe, Hawthorne—and came under the strict linguistic discipline of the German nuns at St. Agnes Academy. “Shakespeare oozed out of our ears; we had one tragedy every year, role playing too,” she remembered, a testimony to how deeply English was drilled into her. By Grade Five, she was writing error-free compositions, an unusual skill for a provincial student in the 1920s.

Her formal schooling was repeatedly interrupted by life’s circumstances. She married young, at nineteen, and gave birth to her first children in the late 1930s. Then came World War II, which uprooted her family and forced them into hiding. Her husband, Thomas Morris Tate, an American mestizo, was pursued by Japanese soldiers. They relocated to Mount Iriga, living by farming and by the protection of relatives. In this precarious wartime existence, she witnessed both hardship and resilience. These experiences would later resonate in her stories of displacement, guerrilla fighters, and ordinary Bikolanos surviving extraordinary pressures.

After the war, Tate returned to teaching and studied anew. She earned an Elementary Teacher’s Certificate in 1950 and eventually a BSE in 1967. Though she began a master’s degree in Comparative Literature in Manila, she never finished her thesis. Instead, she poured her energy into teaching in multiple schools—sometimes three in one day. She served as principal of Rinconada Anglo Chinese School for 22 years and later as Dean of Women at Ateneo de Naga. She also taught seminarians at Holy Rosary Minor Seminary, where she became known as “Mommy Tate” for her readiness to mentor and edit theses without payment. Her teaching career was not secondary to her writing but ran alongside it, the classroom shaping her as much as the page.

It was in the 1950s and 1960s, however, that her literary career flourished. She wrote forty-seven short stories, of which forty-six were published, primarily in the Philippine Free Press. She confessed that she began without training: “I did not know even the basic plot structure of the short story, rising action, climax, denouement, until I started teaching.” She tended to write in one sitting, relying on spontaneity. Editors like Nick Joaquin and Greg Brillantes encouraged her. Joaquin, her “favorite writer,” never sent her a rejection slip. Brillantes even joked about her prolific output: “Need is the mother of short stories.” These anecdotes locate her firmly within the Manila-centered magazine culture of the period, when weekly publications were the main market for fiction in English.

Her early stories reflect the conventions of that market: romances, boy-meets-girl narratives, tales of love and career. Yet even here, critics have found seeds of complexity. Bikolnon literary critic and anthologist Paz Verdades M. Santos noted that “in her later stories, marriage proves to be an unhappy affair.” The unfaithful or domineering husband recurs, as in “Yesterday, Today,” where a man turns out to be a wife-beater, or “Grandmother”, which drew on the pain she saw in her own grandmother’s marriage. Tate herself admitted, “I always wrote about reality. I saw how my grandfather’s infidelity deeply wounded my grandmother.” Her women characters often struggle between loyalty and betrayal, desire and survival. Sometimes they are strong—Sylvia in “Sylvia” (1957) rejects a philandering boss, and “The Honorable Miss Mayor” (1959) delays marriage for a career. But more often they are trapped, dependent on men, their resistance muted.

Asked later about feminism, Tate downplayed it: “We already have women’s liberation. We have more women in high offices than those in other Asian countries. As long as everything is in its proper perspective, women’s liberation for us is in.” To male chauvinism she responded dismissively: “That’s all baloney.” Yet her stories of betrayal, unhappy marriages, and women’s helplessness tell a different story, one of quiet protest and unarticulated anger. Santos observed this ambivalence: her fiction reveals patriarchy’s contours but rarely overturns them. It is a literature of documentation more than rebellion, but that documentation itself was significant in an era when women’s lives were often overlooked.

Beyond domestic plots, Tate ventured into social margins. In “Luis” (1964), she portrayed an Agta househelp, describing him carefully: “While others had skin of burnished mahogany, his was creamy brown.” In “Death of a Legend” (1970), she created Teban, a man who dies defending his land from capitalist intrusion. In “Midnight” (1980), she returned to Agta lives, writing of Bangoy, torn between assimilation into lowland culture and fidelity to her forest roots. Literary scholar Elsie C. Albis has argued that these works reveal Tate’s engagement with “Bikol postcolonial sensibility,” her effort to capture the racial, religious, and cultural hybridity of her region. Her characters, Albis notes, embody urágon, a Bikol term for resilient bravery, facing poverty, colonial violence, and social alienation with perseverance.

Her style contributed to this cultural inscription. She often inserted untranslated Bikol words—malagkit, ibos, suman, gulay—into English prose. “Tinang brewed lakad-bulan leaves, a time-tested blood purifier,” she wrote in “Mother and Child” (1956). By glossing or sometimes leaving words unglossed, she asserted the presence of Bikol language within English. This Bikolization of English, according to Albis, was “a political act of empowering local terms by giving them significant value and equality with the language of the center.” It was not simply ornament but a restructuring of English to carry Bikol cadence and worldview.

Geography, too, anchored her fiction. Bikol landscapes—Mayon Volcano, typhoons, forests, seaside towns—appear repeatedly. “The Face of Time” (1966) reads like a paean to a homeland remembered. Her early story “The Bicol Express” (1939) already foregrounded the region. Even when her plots conformed to Manila magazine tastes, her settings kept pulling them back to Bikol, infusing local color into national print culture. Santos remarked that “her settings and use of local color enshrine the Bikol region in literature.”

Recognition came in later decades. She received the Philippine University Association of Women Award for Exemplary Women Writers in 1981, Iriga City’s Sumagang Award for Literature in 1985, and Ateneo de Naga’s Sarong Pag-omao Award in 1988. The Ateneo de Naga Bikolista Prize followed in 1989. Yet her output slowed dramatically after martial law, when many magazines shut down. She managed a few stories in Focus Philippines—”Bamboo Floor, Bamboo Bed” (1975), “Primipara” (1976), “Midnight” (1980)—winning prizes in their contests. She published little in the 1980s, traveling instead to the U.S. and Europe, keeping diaries of pilgrimages. In the 1990s, she returned briefly to fiction with new stories in the Free Press. But the era of weekly magazine fiction was waning, and with it the kind of readership she had once enjoyed.

In the end, her legacy lies less in innovation than in persistence. She was a Bikolnon writer who never left Bikol, yet inscribed the region into English-language literature. She wrote about women caught in marriages, about Agtas facing discrimination, about peasants resisting dispossession. She did so within the limits of her time, often ambivalently, but consistently. Her stories may not dismantle patriarchy, but they map its effects. They may use English, but they bend it toward Bikol speech and memory.

Socorro Federis-Tate passed away on 18 June 2004 at the age of 87. She was remembered in different circles as Corring, Mrs. Tate, or Mommy Tate. Her students recalled her rigor, her seminarians her generosity, her readers her stories of love, betrayal, and survival. In the literary history of Bikol, she stands as one of the few women to enter national circulation in English, bridging a provincial world and a national print culture. Her fiction, as Santos wrote, “passes the standards of even the urban male formalist’s aesthetics,” while carving out “space for the Bikol woman writer in the history of Philippine literature in English.”

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REFERENCES

Albis, Elsie. “The Bikol in Socorro Federis-Tate’s English-language Usípons.” The International Journal of Communication and Linguistic Studies 17, no. 2 (2019): 35–44. https://doi.org/10.18848/2327-7882/CGP/v17i02/35-44.

de los Martires, Bert. “An makolor na buhay ni Corring.” Calle Maduros column, Bicol Mail, August 2, 2025. Accessed October 3, 2025. https://www.bicolmail.net/single-post/an-makolor-na-buhay-ni-corring.

Santos, Paz Verdades M. Hagkus: Twentieth-century Bikol Women Writers. Manila: De La Salle University Press, 2003.

Tate, Socorro Federis. Midnight and Other Stories. Naga City: Ateneo de Naga University Press, 2014.

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11/10/2025

𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗗!

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Jethro Calacday's article titled "Racializing Reform: Bishop Francisco Gaínza and the Creation of the Native Clergy in the Philippines, 1863-1879", published in 2021 issue of Saysáy: The Journal of Bikol History, is now available on Apollo, the digital repository of the University of Cambridge. Para sa urog kararom pang pagsaysay!

Download the article here: ⁦⁦https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/items/48c0b53c-5293-485c-a7a2-ae331d5c633c

10/10/2025

𝗣𝗔𝗕𝗟𝗢 𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗜𝗠𝗔𝗡: 𝗖𝗛𝗥𝗢𝗡𝗜𝗖𝗟𝗘𝗥 𝗢𝗙 𝗙𝗜𝗟𝗜𝗣𝗜𝗡𝗢 𝗔𝗥𝗧 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗦𝗢𝗨𝗟

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Pablo Arcilla Tariman, prolific journalist, poet, and cultural advocate whose work shaped generations of Filipino artists and readers, passed away on 9 October 2025, at age 76. He died around 1pm after a long illness, according to his wife, poet Merlita Lorena-Tariman. His passing was confirmed to the media by his close friend and fellow writer Elizabeth Lolarga.

Born on 30 December 1948, in Baras, Catanduanes, Tariman grew up in the Bikol region, a landscape that would deeply influence his imagination and identity. His roots in the province were central to his lifelong mission: to celebrate Filipino culture and to bring the arts to wider audiences across the archipelago.

Tariman studied journalism at the Manuel L. Quezon University in Manila, where he began writing poetry for The Quezonian, the college publication. His first published poem appeared in The Sunday Times Magazine in 1971. By then, his career as a journalist was taking shape, and his deep interest in the arts would soon define his professional path.

He often traced his literary beginnings to his youth in Catanduanes. There, he was introduced to the works of Edna St. Vincent Millay and Walt Whitman by an American Peace Corps volunteer, William Keating. That early exposure to poetry and literature instilled in him a lifelong fascination with artistic expression, one that would later merge with his journalistic pursuits.

From the 1970s onward, Tariman became a leading figure in Philippine arts journalism. He contributed to a wide range of publications, including Expressweek, Manila Bulletin, Times Journal, Celebrity Magazine, Philippines Free Press, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippine Star, Vera Files, Philippines Graphic, BusinessMirror, CoverStory.ph, and The Diarist.ph.

He was known for his cultural columns “Culture Beat” in the Manila Chronicle and “View from the Wing” in the Sunday Times Magazine. His articles chronicled the growth of the country’s performing arts scene—its music, theater, and cinema—and documented the careers of Filipino artists who would later achieve international recognition.

Beyond the written page, Tariman also became a concert producer and promoter. Through his firm Music News & Features, he organized performances across the Philippines, especially in provinces often overlooked by the metropolitan arts circuit. In Iloilo City, his concert series featuring world-class performers earned him the title of Honorary Citizen in 2022 from Mayor Jerry Treñas.

For his decades of advocacy, Tariman received numerous recognitions: the Aliw Awards for Media Advocacy in the Arts in 2018, the Philippine Leaf Awards in 2020, and citations as Outstanding Citizen of Manila, Pasig, Legazpi City, and Catanduanes. He was also honored by a private foundation in Cebu City for his sustained contributions to arts journalism.

In his later years, Tariman turned increasingly to poetry. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he resumed writing verse after nearly half a century. The result was Love, Life and Loss: Poems During the Pandemic, published in 2022 by Music News & Features. The collection explored themes of mortality, solitude, and resilience amid uncertainty.

His works reached readers beyond the Philippines. Two of his poems were featured in The Best Asian Poetry 2021–22, published in Singapore by Kitaab Publishing, and his piece “The Woman on a Motorcycle” appeared in the anthology 100 Pink Poems para kay Leni.

In December 2020, his poem “Ode to Frontliners” was engraved on a public marker in Pasig City and unveiled by Mayor Vico Sotto in a ceremony held on Tariman’s 72nd birthday. The poem honored healthcare workers and other Filipinos on the frontlines of the pandemic—a testament to Tariman’s belief in art as a form of public gratitude and empathy.

Tariman’s private life was marked by both artistic fulfillment and personal loss. In 2021, his daughter, poet and activist Kerima Lorena Tariman, was killed in an armed encounter in Negros Occidental. He publicly mourned her through essays, tributes, and memorial concerts that blended art with remembrance.

He is survived by his wife, Merlita Lorena-Tariman; their children; and six grandchildren.

Across five decades, Pablo Tariman built a career defined by dedication to Philippine culture—from the symphonic stage to the printed page, from Manila’s concert halls to the hills of Catanduanes. He gave voice to the arts as both chronicler and creator, documenting Filipino talent with clarity, passion, and grace.

As a Bikolnon, he remained deeply connected to his island roots. As a Filipino, he used language and music to bridge distances—between artist and audience, art and everyday life. His work endures as a record of a nation’s creativity and as proof that the arts, in his own words, “give meaning to our struggles and beauty to our survival.”

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REFERENCES

“Pablo Tariman, veteran arts and culture writer, dies at 76.” ABS-CBN News, October 9, 2025. https://www.abs-cbn.com/lifestyle/people-culture-events/2025/10/9/pablo-tariman-veteran-arts-and-culture-writer-dies-at-76-1801

“Pablo Tariman is now a honorary citizen of Iloilo City.” Catanduanes Tribune, October 28, 2022. https://catanduanestribune.net/2022/10/28/pablo-tariman-is-now-a-honorary-citizen-of-iloilo-city/

Tariman, Pablo. “Confessions of a Reluctant Book Author.” Manila Bulletin, November 6, 2021. https://mb.com.ph/2021/11/6/confessions-of-a-reluctant-book-author

_____. “Going home.” Philippine Daily Inquirer, August 23, 2012. https://opinion.inquirer.net/35356/going-home

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