Mindanaotoday.com | Cagayan de Oro is a progressive metro with a dying history
RAI Bollozos Sanchez | Historyahe!
HI there!
Cagayan de Oro City is a bustling metropolis with a population of 786,000 and an annual growth rate of 2.08% in 2022.
It is projected that in 2030 its population will go as many as 1 million, according to macrotrends.net.
Indeed, since its inception as a city in 1950 and declared as highly urbanized in 1983.
Cagayan de Oro has progressed beyond leaps and bounds, far beyond what our ancestors could imagine.
Cagayan de Oro’s population growth and economic progress will have dire consequences in the next ten years.
As the city pushes towards a more robust economic development, an influx of migrants pushes the decline of the city’s history due to the lack of historical education and critical awareness.
Three problems I see contribute to the possible downfall, the lack of teaching local history in the educational system, the lack of scholarship in the evolving historical evolution of the city, and the government’s lack of competent personnel to drive new historical local research.
The current educational system contributes to the downfall of Cagayan de Oro’s local history. Since introducing the K12 in 2014, the top bureaucrats in our educational system have abolished Philippine history in Junior and Senior High Schools.
With the abolition of Philippine history in high school, our youth is growing up with no sense of history, and if they do, they learn trivially and further the demise of local history.
Second, Cagayan de Oro City has a rich history; pre-Hispanic, Spanish colonial, American colonial, and World War II, and her modern history is admirably remarkable.
Nonetheless, no updated scholarly literature or academic historical research on the city’s history exists.
Educational, historical literature is sourced from local Kagay-anon historians whose publications are considered old.
Concerning local historians who write historical columns or blogs, which I highly respect, the new breed of Kagay-anons needs updated, academically published historical materials readily available to a public repository.
With the exemption of some local politicians who value local history by creating their own heritage committee or passing legislation promoting local history and heritage, local historical commissions are crucial in historical research.
Historical and cultural commissions facilitate the preservation of the historical, cultural, political, and economic history of Cagayan de Oro.
The absence of an updated scholarly historical article explains the passivity of historical commissions involved in historical research.
The lack or ignorance of historical research will lead to the demise of the city’s historical cause.
In the end, the unassertiveness of these members would eventually lead to future Kagay-anons, “local historical ignorance.”
Appreciation and a deep understanding of local history are crucial to nationhood.
If institutions established by the government never actively involve and commit themselves to pure historical research, local history will be recycled or left inside the dustbins, forgotten to rot.
Well, I still not falling into a hopeless case that if promoting local history is beyond politics but geared directly not to relive the past, what has it contributed to the present that could lead us to a promising future.
From the start of this column, by 2030, Cagayan de Oro’s population will expectedly reach one million inhabitants, primarily in-migrants.
If local history does not flourish in the next five years, Cagayan de Oro will become a progressive metro with a dead local history.
Remember, we are our own history. (MT)
(Ryan Albert Ignacius “RAI” Bollozos Sanchez, 40, is a native of Cagayan de Oro City. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in History and currently finishing his Master of Arts in History at Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan. He is currently a full-time faculty in the Department of General Education and Interdisciplinary Studies in Xavier Ateneo – teaching Readings in Philippine History, The Life, Works and Writings of Jose Rizal, and Interdisciplinary Studies subjects. He taught part-time at the Liceo de Cagayan University teaching Southeast Asian History and Government, and U.S. Government and Foreign Policy. You may reach him at rsanchez@xu.edu.ph)
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