The Society of Honor by Joe America

By Karl M. Garcia

Mulanay is not an abstract place to me.

It is the hometown of my paternal great-grandparents, my grandparents, and my father.

I remember Mulanay as a place regarded as impoverished and underserved in the 1990s. At that time, the distance of Southern Quezon from the country’s major economic centers was felt in very practical ways: in transportation, public services, livelihoods, healthcare and access to opportunity.

Then, in 1996, Philippine cinema put the name Mulanay on the screen.

• Mulanay: Sa Pusod ng Paraiso*, directed by Gil Portes and written by Clodualdo del Mundo Jr., portrayed a young doctor serving a rural community in Mulanay. The film was a work of drama rather than a statistical account of the municipality, but it became a cultural snapshot of how a remote Philippine community could be imagined at the time.

That was nearly three decades ago.

Mulanay has changed since then.

And to understand that change, it helps to understand what Bondoc actually means.

What is the Bondoc Peninsula?

The Bondoc Peninsula, often called BonPen, is a geographic subregion of southern Quezon Province.

It is not another province, nor is it a single municipality. It refers to a cluster of municipalities occupying the peninsula and its surrounding area in southern Quezon.

In 1992, the national government formally established the Bondoc Development Program and described the peninsula as comprising 12 municipalities. The program was specifically created because of the need to accelerate development and improve the socioeconomic conditions of the people living there.

Those municipalities are Agdangan, Buenavista, Catanauan, General Luna, Macalelon, Mulanay, Padre Burgos, Pitogo, San Andres, San Francisco, San Narciso and Unisan.

Mulanay is therefore not synonymous with Bondoc.

It is one municipality within a much larger geographic and socioeconomic region.

That distinction matters to this essay.

Mulanay is my family’s point of entry into the story.

Bondoc is the larger story.

Today, Mulanay’s own planning documents describe the municipality as part of the Bondoc Peninsula and identify agriculture, fisheries, tourism, connectivity and potential logistics development among its important economic opportunities. Its 2025–2035 Comprehensive Land Use Plan explicitly adopts a multi-centered development approach rather than concentrating growth in a single town center.

So the question is no longer simply whether Bondoc is remote.

The better question is:

What happens when a region that was once defined by distance becomes increasingly connected but has not yet fully converted that connectivity into economic strength?

That is the more interesting Bondoc story.

From poverty and remoteness to possibility

The usual description of Bondoc begins with what it lacks.

It is distant from the major industrial corridors of CALABARZON. Its settlements are dispersed. Its terrain can be difficult. Its infrastructure historically lagged behind more developed parts of Southern Luzon.

All of that matters.

But geography can become an explanation for too many things.

Bondoc is not empty.

It has agricultural land, coconut farms, fisheries, coastlines, forests, beaches, caves, heritage resources, communities, workers, entrepreneurs, schools and local institutions.

Mulanay itself is a large municipality with 28 barangays, including coastal and upland communities. Its geography gives it access both to land routes and Tayabas Bay.

The problem, therefore, is not simply a shortage of assets.

It is the distance between those assets and the systems that turn them into greater value.

That is a different problem.

And potentially a more solvable one.

A road is not yet an economy

Infrastructure matters enormously.

Roads reduce travel time.

Bridges connect communities.

Ports move goods.

Electricity allows businesses to operate.

Telecommunications reduce informational distance.

But infrastructure becomes economically powerful when the things it connects reinforce one another.

A road from a farm to a town is useful.

A road connecting farms to aggregation, storage, financing, processing, transport and larger markets is much more powerful.

A fishing port is useful.

A fisheries system connecting landing facilities to ice, cold storage, transport, markets, processing and sustainable fisheries management can become an economic engine.

This is the difference between physical connectivity and economic connectivity.

Physical connectivity gets people and goods somewhere.

Economic connectivity allows them to participate in value creation.

Bondoc needs both.

The coconut question

Take coconut.

The question should not simply be:

How can Bondoc produce more coconut?

The better question is:

How much more value can Bondoc capture from the coconut it already produces?

There is a significant difference between selling an agricultural commodity and participating in the value chain that follows it.

Aggregation, quality control, processing, packaging, food ingredients, consumer products, logistics and market development can create additional value and employment.

The same principle applies to other crops.

Development does not necessarily mean replacing agriculture with industry.

It can mean making agriculture itself more productive, more commercial, more resilient and more connected to processing and markets.

Mulanay’s current land-use plan recognizes this logic by identifying agri-industrial linkages and value-added processing among its development directions.

The sea is not Bondoc’s edge

The same thinking applies to fisheries.

Bondoc’s coastline should not be viewed merely as the edge of the land.

The sea is one of its economic corridors.

Fisherfolk need safe landing facilities, ice, cold storage, transportation, financing, equipment and market information.

They also need sustainable fisheries management.

The objective should not simply be to catch more fish.

It should be to create more value from every responsibly harvested catch while protecting the resource that makes the livelihood possible.

Mulanay’s geography reinforces this opportunity. The municipality faces Tayabas Bay, has extensive coastal communities and identifies fisheries, aquaculture and marine resources as important components of its economic base.

Mulanay does not have to become Manila

There is a temptation in Philippine development to measure every place against Metro Manila or the industrial centers of Luzon.

That is the wrong benchmark.

Mulanay does not need to become another Metro Manila.

Bondoc does not need to become another Batangas or Laguna.

Its advantage may lie precisely in developing an economy appropriate to its geography.

That could mean stronger agriculture, better fisheries, agri-processing, coastal enterprises, eco-cultural tourism, small manufacturing, logistics, digital work and professional services.

The objective is not to make every municipality do everything.

It is to create a network of productive towns.

One municipality may become stronger in agricultural trading.

Another may specialize in fisheries.

Another may become a tourism gateway.

Another may provide education, healthcare and commercial services.

Another may develop processing or logistics.

The towns become more valuable because they are connected—not because each tries to become a miniature version of the other.

Interestingly, Mulanay’s own current planning framework points in this direction, describing a multi-centered and multi-nodal development strategy with interconnected growth areas.

Tourism should preserve the reason people come

Bondoc also possesses something that industrial parks cannot manufacture:

landscape.

Its coastlines, forests, caves, waterfalls, agricultural areas and cultural and archaeological resources can support tourism.

But tourism should not simply mean putting resorts everywhere.

The stronger model is a landscape economy—one that connects tourism with local food, culture, communities, agriculture, environmental protection and heritage.

Mt. Kamhantik is an example of the kind of asset that requires this approach. It combines archaeological significance, forest ecosystems and watershed functions. Current planning for the site emphasizes conservation alongside tourism and community development.

The principle should be simple:

Tourism must not destroy the very landscape that makes tourism possible.

Peace creates space; development makes peace durable

Bondoc also carries a history of insurgency and insecurity.

But it would be too easy to explain the region’s economic condition through conflict alone.

Security, poverty, weak institutions, limited opportunity, land issues and historical grievances can reinforce one another.

Improved security creates space for development.

But lasting peace requires more than the absence of armed conflict.

People also need to see legitimate institutions, education, employment and enterprise as credible alternatives for building a future.

Economic opportunity is therefore part of the architecture of peace.

The people who left can still be part of Bondoc

This is where the story becomes personal for me.

My uncle, **Domingo Garcia Jr.—Jun Gar, or simply Domeng to the family—**built his professional career in the construction and development world.

I mention him not to turn this essay into a family biography.

I mention him because his story represents a larger possibility.

Someone whose family roots are in a rural community can enter a much larger professional world.

A person can leave home, acquire experience, build relationships and succeed elsewhere.

But success does not have to end the connection to where one came from.

It can become a bridge back.

That is the meaning I attach to paying it forward.

I would rather not manufacture a list of supposed donations or projects in Mulanay that cannot be independently documented. The more meaningful idea is broader.

A person who has succeeded can return something through knowledge, mentoring, investment, employment, professional connections, community support or opportunities for the next generation.

The most valuable contribution is not always a building bearing a donor’s name.

Sometimes it is capacity.

A young person encouraged to study.

A local worker given a professional opportunity.

A small business connected to a larger market.

A future engineer given a reason to believe that his rural hometown does not limit his ambition.

A returning entrepreneur who brings knowledge and capital home.

That is how individual success can become part of community development.

From brain drain to circulation

For decades, the development story of rural Philippines has often been:

Leave home to find opportunity.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that.

People should be free to pursue opportunity wherever it exists.

But the stronger development cycle is:

Leave, learn, succeed—and eventually bring something back.

Capital can circulate.

Knowledge can circulate.

Professional networks can circulate.

Technology can circulate.

Investment can circulate.

People can return.

This is how a community’s human capital can grow even when some of its people build their careers elsewhere.

For Mulanay, that matters enormously.

The town does not have to keep everyone at home to benefit from its people.

It has to remain connected enough that success elsewhere can eventually become an asset at home.

Government must stop seeing separate projects

There is another important lesson.

Government agencies tend to divide development into programs.

Agriculture is one program.

Fisheries another.

Roads another.

Tourism another.

Education another.

Health another.

Environment another.

Local government another.

But people experience none of these as separate.

A farmer experiences a road, electricity, financing, storage, buyers and market access as one economic system.

A fisherman experiences the port, ice, boats, safety, transport, markets and fisheries rules as one system.

A tourism operator experiences roads, telecommunications, sanitation, environmental protection, workers and visitors as one system.

A young person experiences education, internet access, employment and opportunity as one future.

Government therefore needs to ask a different question:

What system are all these investments building together?

That question is particularly relevant because Bondoc has confronted the problem of coordinated development before.

The national government established the Bondoc Development Program in 1992 precisely because the peninsula needed a coordinated mechanism for development projects involving national agencies, local governments, civil society and communities.

More than three decades later, the lesson remains relevant.

The challenge is not simply to produce another list of projects.

It is to make projects reinforce one another.

Build the Bondoc economy around what is already there

The Bondoc Peninsula does not need to apologize for being rural.

Its rural character can become an economic advantage if it is connected intelligently.

Its agricultural base can support value-added industries.

Its coastline can support fisheries and carefully managed tourism.

Its landscapes can support sustainable tourism.

Its towns can become complementary economic nodes.

Its young people can become skilled workers, entrepreneurs and professionals.

Its diaspora can become a source of capital, knowledge and connections.

Its infrastructure can connect productive systems rather than simply connect places.

And people who came from Bondoc can become part of building Bondoc’s next chapter.

That is a much more useful development model than simply trying to make the peninsula “catch up.”

From a movie about poverty to a region of possibility

This is perhaps why I keep returning to that 1996 film.

Mulanay: Sa Pusod ng Paraiso belongs to a particular moment in the country’s history.

Its Mulanay was portrayed as a place where distance was deeply felt.

Nearly three decades later, the more important story is not whether every detail in that movie describes Mulanay then or now.

It is that the old image does not have to be the ending.

A place once associated with remoteness and deprivation can now be discussed in terms of agriculture, fisheries, tourism, logistics, connectivity, enterprise and human capital.

Mulanay’s own 2025–2035 planning vision is explicitly about becoming more progressive, resilient, inclusive and sustainable, with economic growth distributed through multiple connected areas rather than concentrated in one center.

That is progress.

But it is only the beginning.

Mulanay and Bondoc still have to convert assets into value, connectivity into opportunity, and individual success into broader community capacity.

For me, that story begins with family.

My great-grandparents were there.

My grandparents were there.

My father was there.

And people from that same community—including my uncle Domeng—eventually found their way into larger worlds of professional work, construction and development.

The next generation should have another choice.

They should be able to leave if they want to.

But they should also be able to return.

They should be able to build there, invest there, work there, start businesses there and raise families there.

Because the ultimate measure of development is not simply whether people can escape a place that once had few opportunities.

It is whether that place eventually has enough opportunity for people to choose to come home.

That is the Bondoc Peninsula I hope to see.

Not a copy of somewhere else.

Not a monument to its past.

But a stronger, connected and productive region—built around the people, resources and geography that were there all along.