Cebuanos want their Cebu without borders

It's fruitless to persuade the sponsors hankering to split Cebu to abort their selfish whims. After all, their monomania is beyond healing, as their inflexible whim is to break up Cebu for personal and political avarice and for perpetuation of their political dynasty.

You see, once power is tasted, and wielded, it's hard to relinquish. Just as wine or drug addicts get used to the euphoric state that soars them to cloud nine, the three Cebuano last-termer solons are hard put to leave the corridors of power. It's also useless to dissuade their families and fanatics from abetting such political adventurism, for they are passionately bent to see Cebu ending in splitsville. To them, hail their masters!

One may tolerate certain "cosmopolitan" Sugbuanons by choice or by circumstance, such as, employment or work, pursuit of education, marriage, business or profession, or whatever. For them to be passive, or even apathetic, to the slicing of Cebu is understandable. Most of them are concentrated in Cebu's urban centers and outlying suburban areas where the population, culture and ethos are a blending of true-blue Cebuanos and those who come from other provinces and regions, including interracial and non-ethnic Pinoys.

Likewise, one isn't swayed by those who oppose simply for political reasons. There's just a shade of difference between the pro and the anti, if both are taking their opposite stands mainly motivated by politics. Of course, politics being now a way of Filipino life, politics is a factor. But, one likes to believe that those who oppose the splitting of Cebu are also being fired up and motivated beyond and above politics.

More than any other Cebuano groups who count with authority and sincerity are the true-blue Cebuanos - the bonafide Sugbuanons - by blood or family lineage, typically a jealous and proud lot of Lapu-Lapu's bloodline. To these "origs", there is but one undivided Sugbo in language, culture, heritage or history, and in geographical identity and integrity.

Lapu-Lapu didn't fight Magellan just for the Oponganons, but for all the Cebuanos. Leon Kilat did the same. Gov. Hilario "Dodong" Abellana, and then Cebu City Mayor Jose Leyson martyred themselves by refusing to serve the Japanese invaders, also for the Sugbuanons, and never dreaming that Cebu would be trifled with by a future break-up.

Similarly, the oneness of Cebu has been forged indivisibly by Cebuano guerrilla heroism, such as, in the two-day battle in Guilaguila, Compostela led by then Capt. Fabian (Ingko Biyan) Sanchez; by the Panalipan bridge skirmish in Catmon by Lt. Buenaflor's "Rough Riders"; and, the heroism of Col. Espiritu's boys in Babag and Baksan hills bloody battles against bunkered Japs; and such other skirmishes that made Col. James Cushing's Cebu guerilla forces the most famous in the Philippine military annals.

All these, and more, form parts of Cebu's heritage and history that Cebuanos are proud of. Which Cebu then, if broken up, could lay claim to such rich patrimony?

When the split-Cebu first reared its ugly heads, the Cebuano spirit emerged strongly in surveys province-wide by the Catholic Church. In Bogo as bailiwick of Rep. Martinez, in Rep. Yapha's Pinamungajan, and in Rep. Kintanar's Argao, the parishioners voted down their own legislators. These parishioners are the core and cross-section of the poblacion, fishing and farming villages, the men of the street, and community leaders.

To preserve the oneness of Cebu is also prevalent among "orig" Cebuanos now living throughout Mindanao except the Muslim provinces, and the bonafide Cebuanos who are homesick abroad. The same is true with regard to Cebuano-speaking brethren in Bohol, Leyte, and Negros Oriental and with Cebuano roots. They want their Cebu which they often come to visit and regard as their home, to be a Cebu without borders.