Stealing the “inasal” market from Carcar

I used to read the thrillers of Robert Ludlum and Frederick Forsyth. The first two books of Ludlum that I read were “Scarlatti Inheritance” and “Matlock Paper” while that of Forsyth was “The Day of the Jackal.” It was in 1973 when I began browsing their works side-by-side Constitutional Rights and Duties authored by Fr. Joaquin Bernas and Dr. Arturo Tolentino’s magnum opus on the Civil Code of the Philippines. Each time my understanding of the scholarly commentary of Tolentino got muddled, the suspense provided by fiction re-energized me. Indeed, the plots revolving around such characters as Jason Bourne and Carlos Ilyitch Ramirez challenged my imagination then that the moment I opened the first page, I couldn’t put it down until the last page.

The influence of Ludlum and Forsyth on my mind must be profound that on many occasions I read newspapers, see television news programs, and hear radio broadcasts, my imagination goes beyond the constitutional paradigm of reported facts. There are even times that after I ruminate on the legal precepts of news reports, I tend to shade them with a certain distrust and an appreciable degree of suspicion, and begin to scrounge for validating reportage.

That is my mental frame as I approach a rather obscure news item. The news item began as an unverified scuttlebutt. Someone issued a damning caution against patronizing roasted pig from Carcar City. He apparently said a merchant there sold him foul-smelling and perceptively unsanitary lechon. With his sweeping description of the inedible kind of “inasal”, the claimant wanted us not to buy from all Carcar City lechon sellers. I’m told that this story came from a social media account.

This supposed revelation of dangerous Carcar inasal is characteristic departure from Ludlum and Forsyth. In their fiction, the suspense feeds on plausible plots. The story develops from believable events. In this Carcarenian lechon story, the claim of unsanitary inasal comes from a masked man (or woman, who knows!). His audacious allegation is as unbelievable as his cowardice is manifest. I don’t give weight to an assertion made by someone hiding behind anonymity. He who tells the truth is unafraid to show his face.

To pursue the expose of the masked man, let’s follow his claim that he bought lechon during six instances where the seller continued to serve him rotten inasal. His obvious purpose in stating there were six different occasions he bought lechon was to show it wasn’t an isolated case. He wanted to show that it isn’t safe to buy lechon in Carcar City. Did this claimant push his luck beyond the sphere of credibility? Why would one customer go back to the same seller if, in the very first incident, his lechon smelled foul?

When some broadcasters and opinion makers started harping on the issue of the supposed unhealthy state of Carcar lechon, it didn’t take long for my Ludlum- and Forsyth-influenced mind to imagine there is a cabal tinkering with the market. This group must be eyeing a huge activity where lechon is a major part of a food menu. Christmas time is near and Sinulog not far behind. It’s possible this clique wants to corner the supply of inasal in these seasons. Since Carcar City is the acknowledged home of tasty lechon, a kind of poison must be injected into the minds of probable customers that someone else can supply inasal.