Lyn Besa Gamboa is the doyenne of culture in Western Negros, and if anyone dares to contest that, or aspire for the title, he or she should be prepared for the thankless job of nurturing the arts and culture of Negros, which is not a funding priority of the local government and other philistine people calloused by difficult economic times. (Gretchen Cojuangco, although a great supporter of the arts, has been heard to dismiss the archness of it all, saying, "Ano'ng culture-culture? I'm just a jardinera.")

Lyn likewise has little patience with the elitism connected with arts and culture. "I only want to keep the arts and culture of Negros alive for generations to come," she says. "People are more cohesive and richer for their traditions and history." In everything she's done, she has always involved the people, especially children. When she transformed the Gaston ancestral house in Silay into the Balay Negrense, she got schoolchildren to cut the grass in the yard and polish the floors in the house. Balay Negrense, a re-creation of the sugar-baron lifestyle of yesteryears, is today a landmark in Negros.

More recently, Lyn, now familiar with the enthusiasm of schoolchildren, put up the Museo Pambata in Sagay, north of Bacolod. "It's a beautiful little interactive museum for youngsters," she says. Her crowning glory, however, has got to be The Negros Museum, now relocated to the Old Agricultural Building along Gatuslao Street, which sports (upon her insistence) the six Roman columns that were the distinguishing features of its former site at the nearby Capitol building, as well as a museum shop, a coffee shop and bigger function rooms.

Lyn has always counted on the help of Cristina Montelibano, a true-blue Bacoleña, who's as low-key as Lyn is eternally keyed up. These days Lyn wants to revive the delicacies of the manuglibud, the itinerant vendor who carried on a bilao balanced on her head such delicious merienda fare as piaya, lumpia, suman, ibus mais, salab, puto lanzon and others, favored by the mahjongeras and panginggeras at the turn of the century. Lyn has no intention of reviving the afternoon mahjong and card games, only the native delicacies, now a dying industry in the barrios. She believes these delicacies can improve the earnings of the locals and attract to their communities guests and visitors who crave traditional fare.

She herself will be launching her own deli food named Savor de Silay, initially offering classy bottled jaleya de tomate, marmelada de cebolla, and salsa manga (her version of the salsa monja, the comfort food of the old Spanish nuns). "My children keep scolding me for giving away all my recipes," she says. Now she's branding them and expects to launch them on November 12 at the Dasmariñas Clubhouse, with the dishes of chef Ed Quimson especially using her products.

A stalwart among women in travel, Lyn will assume the chairmanship of the International Federation of Women Travel Organizations in January 2004. Her bragging rights: She will be the first from the Asia-Pacific region to hold this post in the 34-year history of the federation, which is based in Torremolinos, Spain.

So, why is Lyn, a Tarlaqueña married to the Gamboas of Silay, doing all this for Negros? "Because, whether they like it or not, I am a Negrense. And also because it's a burning need for me to put Negros on the map, and it is now." Lyn has a sharp tongue, which rankles some people in Bacolod, but they will admit that she gets things done.

Likewise working to put Negros on the tourism map, in her own dynamic way, is Ruth Minerva Cruz, vice president of the Bacolod Convention Plaza Hotel, the first hotel there to address the needs of the conventions market soon after the 1989 earthquake that struck down the big hotels in Baguio. Since then, Bacolod, eventually boosted by more rooms in new hotels of all sizes, has been strengthening its position as the "alternative" conventions destination, after Manila, Angeles, Cebu.

When she was called home by her family to take up the management of the hotel, Ruth was then living and studying in Europe, mastering the German and French languages in Gottingen, Frankfurt, in Freiburg in the Black Forest and in Nantes, northwest of Paris, with the dream of becoming an interpreter, hopefully at the United Nations, or at a multinational corporation. But family duties beckoned.

The manager's post is distributed on a round-robin scheme among the investors' families. It apparently has not worked: The hotel is now floated on the market, for the right price.
Knowledgeable people are saying that if Ruth had been allowed to run the hotel by herself, it would have been going great guns, considering that it's the only hotel in Bacolod with a capacious conference hall and space for small ground-level industrial exhibitions and garden shows.

Ruth has not let up in her efforts to make Bacolod a meetings destination. Through Attain (Alliance of Travel Trade Associations in Negros), organized by the managers of the five big hotels in Bacolod, events are continually being created to draw people from the region and beyond. She's also been active, through Attain, in training and professionalizing tour operators and tour guides in Bacolod -- "Tourists, especially Germans, are very specific in their questions about Bacolod's sugar industry, which tour guides are not knowledgeable about" -- and in raising greater awareness among people in the barangays on the tourist potential of their charming, rustic communities.

Realizing that the hotel has now become too small for the meetings market, the Cruz family built the 24-room Prominence Inn, a bed-and-breakfast type that fits the Philippine setting well. More recently, Ruth opened The Quiet Place in Bago City, a 20-minute drive from downtown Bacolod, situated in a ricefield bowl cleared for cottages and gardens accommodating 30 to 40 people for small, quiet seminars, and soon a spa offering herbal massage and healing (lutay). It is a pioneering agri-tourism project, now popular with student groups and locals, and let everyone know that Ruth is running it herself this time.

Millie Kilayko has been a leading light in the Association of Negros Producers (ANP) since it was born in a time of great distress in Negros Occidental, when world sugar prices plummeted and government took control of sugar trading. That awful time saw 84 percent of Negrenses living below the poverty line and 60 percent of their children languishing in malnutrition. "Many people left the province to seek greener pastures elsewhere," recalls Millie, "and many others ran to the hills to embrace ideologies which promised a better life after violent change."

A handful of Negrenses, mostly housewives, sought better alternatives. Coming from seminars in Manila on starting a kitchen or backyard business with certain crafts and skills, the women shared their knowledge with wives of farm workers. They had to be very inventive, as western Negros did not have a tradition of crafts they could call their own, like the Ifugaos and Maranaos have with their weaving and woodcarving. This gave rise to the ANP.

Millie gave ANP a larger vision and a more professional stance. Under her presidency, the ANP implemented the projects of then President Ramos's National Economic Enterprise Development. "In partnership with DTI, among others, we helped handicraft producers in the 20 poorest provinces," she says. "Many times I could not believe what I was doing-riding public buses with chickens and pigs through the mountains, going to remote areas where government troops and rebels were clashing."

Many of the entrepreneurs coming from these poor areas have gone on to participate in big trade shows. "My greatest joy is when they come to me and boast to me about their sales figures-and I find that their figures exceed my own!"

In 2000, the 12th anniversary of ANP, Millie worked for the creation of the Negros Island Inc. (NII), with the ANP holding majority ownership and the balance of shares of stock available to individual producers and other Negrenses invited as investors. "In an era of global competitiveness, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs like us will find it increasingly difficult to compete in the international market and join expensive trade shows if we continue to do things as individuals." The 2002 European show organized by NII on a collective basis proved her point: "Buyers were standing in line for their turn at our 54-square-meter booth. They liked the idea of having to deal with only one company to commit the quality, production and delivery of the goods."

Since ANP has other priorities to serve, Millie and two friends have offered to buy majority ownership of NII and run it like a business outfit, with ANP still holding some shares of stocks. Millie also announces that ANP will be opening its showroom in Manila -- "a dream for ANP members for the past 10 years" -- this month, at 2205 Zobel Street, San Miguel Village, Makati. "The showroom offers not only Negrense products but the best of the islands," Millie says.

These days, Millie, together with a partner, is into horticulture and the production of ceramic home accessories, called Poetry in Clay, for export. Their latest venture is the Garden Center, a restaurant amidst blooms and foliage in the heart of the city. Will she ever stop coming up with new projects or new ventures? "I guess not," she says. "As long as there's an opportunity to create one more job, to bring in one more tourist, and to earn one more peso or dollar to help our economy in a little way."

Joy S.Valdez is the incumbent mayor of Bacolod City, the first elected woman mayor in the city's history. She also happens to be an outsider (tapik, in the derogatory word of the Bacolodnons), the daughter of a cardiologist from Pangasinan, who's married into a family of schoolteachers from Pontevedra. Her husband is presently the DOTC undersecretary.

"You cannot imagine the odds against me when I first joined Bacolod politics," she says. "Bacolod is a very feudal society; I simply didn't belong." But like Lyn Gamboa, Joy Valdez had her heart in the best for Bacolod, although it didn't help at first that family and friends sternly warned her that "politics is a dirty game at puro lalake ang kasama mo (you'll be in the company of men).'' From being the first woman councilor in Bacolod during the term of Mayor Alfredo Montelibano to vice mayor and then mayor, she has became the icon of a growing feminist group in that city.

Joy, before she joined politics, had worked as voluntary worker and consultant of the World Health Organization (WHO) in its program to "demystify" rehabilitation, especially in its work for children with disabilities. "WHO realized that it worked better in the Philippine situation to deal with children with disabilities at home by teaching their parents to handle them than to commit the children to an institution," she explains. Her ability to work in different communities and deal with people from all walks of life was "probably my greatest strength when I joined politics," she says.

This, together with a woman's unfailing intuition for what people need and aspire for and coupled with the compassion and will to do something about it, is what Joy as a woman is bringing to Bacolod's feudal politics. And she's doing it very well indeed. The Asian Institute of Management has named Bacolod "The Most Livable City" in the country, and the Clean and Green Program has catapulted it to the Hall of Fame for winning the environmental contest three years in a row. Her administration has also been rated excellent by a local productivity performance test in the areas of economic and social services and environmental protection.

By Inquirer News Service