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Nabingkalan
NABINGKALAN: A STUDY ON
METAMORPHOSIS
BY ISAAC L. YAP
Even Fray Andres
Urdaneta, cruising along the mouth of Danao river in Negros in 1573, never must
have thought that fifty years later, some fifty kilometers south from where he
dropped anchor, the settlement of Nabingkalan would have been founded.
Nabingkalan was pioneered by a sporadic migration of people from the western coastal region of Cebu, across Tañon Strait. The Aetas and bukidnons, in exchanged for metallic tools from the new settlers, virtually forfeited their birthright, and retreating to the hinterlands, blazed new trails, toppling down virgin forests as they moved along, only to offer the clearings later to the tagabanwas. In so doing, the kinky haired forefathers had deliberately consigned themselves perenially to the proverbial pitchers of waters and hewers of woods. Half a century later, lepidoptherous Nabingkalan shed off her antique ways, organized herself into the municipality of San Carlos, and very much later, on July 1, 1960, converted herself into a city, unfolding her rainbow-tainted gauzy wings, unknowingly threatening in subdued defiance the glory of her contemporary sister cities of the South Philippines.
The brood of urchins wearing mask of mud-sputtered faces and shoot-saturated shirts, that loiter presently the streets of Dos Hermanos, Remedios and Araneta, will easily call their birthplace as the City of San Carlos; the older generation, still strung with sentimentalism, prefer the old name Nabingkalan. Nabingkalan! The word carries a lot of nostalgia in its sweep. Nabingkalan gave way to San Carlos without unfurling a flag of resistance or waging a battle of etymology, but she didn't feed to the gutter of cultural abyss the beautiful legendary tales of her namesake.
For, why Nabingkalan? wasn't the name born out of the tale of
Nabingka, the legendary abony princess, whose fame for ravishing beauty and
intellectual prowness constrained her people to perpetuate the memory by calling
the sunkissed region after he? Or, hadn't the name been born out of a farcical
poem narrating the collision of praus, probably against an ornate Maranaw vinta,
giving rise to the word nabingka? Or, hadn't it derived from lush growth of
bangkal, a bark producing tree, indigenous to the swampy region? Certainly, it
becomes obvious that to leave to posterity the conflicting versions of the
origin of Nabingkalan, without an attempt for a reconcillation or
interpretation, is to make the tales more legendary, beautiful and exotic, and
would be like gathering gems to enrich our folklore.
The changelessness
of change
The historicity of Nabingkalan has struck roots in the culture
patern of the people; it is traceable, definite and lasting. Its physical
aspects, however, had pliantly yielded to the ceaseless tide of change. Except
for the surviving coconut palms that still wave like lone sentinels along the
periphery of the city, the landmarks of the former arrabal oftentimes are no
longer discernible. New buildings had been mushrooming, blotting out the old and
dotting the skyline with streamline architectures. The two ports for
inter-island vessels and ocean liners had taken place of the former piers of
crudely piled boulders and limestone anchored by sailboats from Sipaway island.
The swamps had given way to vast sugarcane fields maintained by modern
mechanization and chemical technology. The rapid transition to the present state
is a tribute to the industry, indomitable spirit and optimism of the residents
of San Carlos.
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