DIPOLOG City has been called the orchid capital of Southern Philippines. This is attributed to its continuing reputation as one of the country’s richest sources of wild orchids, including the famous waling-waling variety.

Curiously, I visited Dipolog City on a project to document its latest claim to fame, being the sardines capital of the Philippines. The main product of local sardines-makers is bottled Spanish-style herring sardines which apparently are attracting serious attention in the US and European markets.

As usual with provincial sorties, I left home in Quezon City at two in the morning to be at the Centennial Airport in Pasay City an hour before the scheduled flight at 5:30 am. With all the diggings along EDSA, you don’t take chances with Manila’s horrendous traffic, even at ungodly hours.

Fortunately, the Centennial Airport never sleeps and the hum of other busybodies is enough to keep sleepyheads on the go. Our plane left Manila on time and arrived in Dipolog at 6:30 on a clear Thursday morning. Prior to touch down, I thought I saw mist rising from the farmlands beside the tarmac, but given the increasing use of motor tricycles and ageing vehicles in rural areas, I could be wrong.

Siesta, churchbells
and bottled sardines
Dipolog domestic ariport appeared newly-refurbished in time, perhaps, for summer’s touris season. Dipolog City is the provincial capital of Zamboanga del Norte and the walls to the airport exit featured a map of the province highlighting its tourist attractions such as Dakak, Dapitan, seaweeds farms and the bottled sardines industry.

Our documenation team was whisked from the airport to the hotel by the regional staff of the Department of Trade and Industry. On the way to the hotel, I got my first impression of Dipolog as an easygoing place with narrow streets, big old houses standing prominently in a neighborhood of modest, unpainted homes, and at least one sari-sari store in every corner. It’s the kind of city whose residents still take siesta in the afternoon and the church bells ring for the angelus. The center of most activities would likely be the market place and the plaza.

Over buffet breakfast at the hotel restaurant, the lead trade and industry officer provided a brief on the city’s bottled sardines industry. Past developments were impressive. From mere home-based production units in the late ‘80s, there are now about 15 firms operating as formal ventures whose products can be found in selected supermarkets in Manila. Four of these businesses export regularly to the US; most of the sardines enterprises are seeking HACCP certification, a rigorous preventive program against food hazards demanded by foreign importers. The product line has grown to include bangus sardines, salted shrimp fries, gourmet tuyo and anchovies. Both big and small enterprises belong to the In-Glass Sardines of Dipolog Association or ISDA, one of the more successful indusry clusters, or groupings of similar businesses, in Mindanao.

On our first day in Dipolog, our team first met Mike Cases, owner of Tito Mike’s Food Company and president of ISDA. A former project engineer in Brunei’s Jerudong Park, Engr. Cases grew tired of being on call 24/7 by the Sultan’s technical people and returned to his hometown to settle down and start his own business.

Recipes from Rizal’s ‘guardia civil’
In 2002, he and his wife Aliw, assisted by four workers. opened a small backyard facility that produced 120 eight-ounce jars (or five cartons) of sardines a day. They started right with an HACCP-oriented plant that attracted technical as well as financial assistance from government agencies particularly DTI and the Department of Science and Technology. The business has progressed today into a 75-carton a day processing plant employing 12 regular workers. Last year, Mike’s firm was cited as one of 14 model small businesses in the country.

Tito Mike’s company is however hampered by an industry-wide problem—the specific herring material for sardines migrate and spawn in nearby seas only four months of the year. A long-term solution currently under negotiation with a government agency is to put up an ice plant to service common requirements of ISDA members. The more immediate response has been continuing research on new products. During the visit, our team acted as blind tasters to Mike’s latest line of smoked Spanish-style sardines in salted and spicy variant.

Even old industry players like Montaño Foods Corporation are affected by limited availability of raw materals. However, the Montaños have steady markets in Manila and Spain that consistently absorb their products. A full production run for six months offsets the factory overhead during the idle months of the year.

The Montaños also own farmlands which employ most of their factory workers during off season for sardines-making. As one of the earliest sardines makers in Dipolog, the Montaño family inherited their recipe from a grandmother who married one of the Spanish guardia civils who guarded Jose Rizal during his exile in Dapitan. Their Spaniard lolo taught their lola how to prepare Spanish-style sardines using local fishes. Their lola would put out the dish on special occasions and word got around the community about the new delicacy. It is said that most Dipolog women know how to make Spanish-style sardines from recipes handed down from past generations.

Rizal, taller in death than in life
On our second day in Dipolog City, our team planned to go to Dakak but our early afternoon flight back to Manila allowed only a visit to Dapitan City, where our national hero Jose Rizal stayed in exile before his execution at Bagumbayan in December 1896.

Dapitan is about 30 minutes drive from Dipolog. From the outskirts of Dapitan City, a long bridge connects the Rizal Shrine, the island estate where our National Hero stayed while in exile, to the rest of Dapitan. The Shrine is located near the mouth of a gently flowing river and a concrete embankment has been constructed with sidewalk for strolling and watching sunset across the open sea.

Inside the estate, a statue of Rizal stands as if contemplating the surroundings. A subject of instant discussion was the apparent exaggerated height of Rizal’s monument. The resident historian of our team remembered from history books that Rizal stood no more than 5 foot tall as a young man. The statue is at least 5’ 5” in height.

The statue was erected beside Rizal’s residence-in-exile which is now a two-story museum. The collection of memorabilia includes a genealogy chart of the Rizal clan which places Chinese descent in his lineage and photos of women romantically linked to the national hero. Naturally, chismis about whether only Josephine Bracken bore him a child, who died at birth, came up.

Outside the museum are other testaments to Rizal’s genius. He built a mini-dam for use in small farming communities and a prototype nipa hut designed to remain cool even in summer, or withstand strong winds during a storm. The germ of cooperativism, which he must have learned while studying in Germany, was first introduced in the Philippines by Rizal while in exile. There was even a huge jetropa near the riverbank, a tree whose fruit, when processed in large quantities, is now known to be an alternative source of energy.

The ride back to the airport was a lazy and quiet one. Hopefully, we would again meet Dipolog’s sardines-makers in Manila when our team cites them in proper ceremonies as a model industry cluster whose achievements are worth replicating in other industries across the country.