In Reminiscense you can read a very interesting and well-researched survey of Baler and its history.
Unless I’m mistaken, the writer, Olag, is a relative, we’ve been in touch from time to time but keep losing each other’s email addresses.
Baler is a town practically begging for its history to be written in an epic manner. One cousin has been toying with the idea for years now, and he knows the place quite well. I keep telling him our family’s history as it’s intertwined with that of Baler would make for a fantastic historical novel (you have to pass it off as fiction because so many threads in the story are fantastic, improbable, incredible, or downright shocking).
Basically I think it’s a matter of geography. Mt. Banahaw, Sierra Madre mountains, etc. Area is conducive to guerrilla activities.
The province your grndfather was named after is one of the worst hotbeds of communist insurgents. HOw did this happen? isn’t that somewhat dishonorable to the memory of Pers. Quezon? Why does the idea of communism persists in our country in this post-post-Communist world? Where have we gone wrong? Are the answers (poverty, miseducation) obvious? An article on this pls
My dad was one of the 1st founding Carmelites in Baler. He is Brother Vincent as noted in Olag’s stories (rescued some people at sea and was then lost at sea for 5 days when he traveled out to rescue some fishermen). Please drop me a note if you ever want to write something up. I have several writings about Baler from my dad and my uncle Father Dominic Scheerer (also one of the founding Carmelites) who lived in Maria Aurora until 1979.
You have a great site.