As a key researcher for the Pamagduman project, which is a collaboration between two government agencies and a foundation, I am obligated to respond to queries pertinent to our research in order to provide clarifications that will aid in a deeper understanding of the topic. Through the combined efforts of the Nanay Foundation, led by the former mayor of Sta. Rita, Yolly Miranda Pineda, the Arts, Culture, and Tourism Office of Pampanga, led by Chief Randy Del Rosario, and the Department of Tourism, I began the Pamagduman project in the 1st quarter of 2022, which has lasted for more than a year and is still ongoing. 

The initiative is an effort to propose Sta.Rita’s intangible cultural heritage for inscription in the 2003 UNESCO Convention under the “Urgent Safeguarding List” in the “Knowledge and Practices Concerning Nature and the Universe” domain. To put it simply, the ICH for inscription is the Magduman’s ethnological practice, which consists of their skills that have been handed down from generation to generation and are still practiced by the few surviving members of the community in Sta. Monica and San Agustin. This is the scope and limitations of my research, which conforms specifically to the UNESCO requirements, which focus on intergenerational familiar practices and require the discovery of strategies to establish safeguarding measures in order to preserve the tradition. 

On June 5, I was invited to join the Pampanga Provincial Government’s Culinary Council. The council’s goal is to raise awareness of our culinary heritage, develop plans for its safeguarding, and develop sustainability initiatives. Because the Pamagduman project is of interest to the Provincial Government, ACTOP, and the province’s tourism departments, I prepared a PowerPoint presentation on Pamagduman to discuss the UNESCO plans.

During my demonstration in front of the guests, Mr. Ian Ocampo Flora, who works in the office of Board Member Mylyn Pineda Cayabyab, began to criticize my presentation of Pamagduman. On the wall of the plenary hall was a projection of the website’s homepage, which was entitled Pamagduman.

“Unlike the regular rice variety, which can be planted and harvested three times a year, duman can only be harvested in the cool air of November and December.

For every hectare, a farmer can produce only a maximum of 4.5 cavans of duman, while a maximum of 300 cavans can be harvested from the regular rice variety.”

Flora. (2022, November 19). Duman festival set. Sunstar Pampanga. Retrieved October 6, 2023, from https://www.sunstar.com.ph/article/1946413/pampanga/local-news/duman-festival-set

“(In paraphrase) Nanung pamagduman naman, pamanduman ya. Balamu dukit, pamandukit!” he said in a very commanding voice. We were all stunned, since I haven’t started my presentation yet and he’s been shredding opinions that I never asked. “When I responded that the operative word was not from me but the word being used by the community, he shouted, “Panwalan mo retang (menagkas) mangalaram a reta!”

Despite the fact that I did not know how to react at the time, I continued my presentation and resumed displaying the documentary I filmed for the project, as the audience was expecting me to discuss it. But it did not end there. He claimed that my presentation and investigation were based on a fossilized half-truth, despite not having seen the 200-page dossier or the website’s media files and literature.

The entire meeting consisted of his grandstanding tirades about “people” fabricating fossilized half-truths about the duman, and he even cautioned me that if I continue to post the video, people will see and be fed these fossilized truths. At that moment, acquaintances in the room began messaging me on Facebook to leave the room, as the topic felt like and appeared to be about a person whose previously concealed anger against either the community of magduman or the project itself had been suddenly revealed. 

A week later, during the second meeting, Mr. Ian Ocampo Flora, who again presided over the meeting but with me only attending the session among the supposed members, brought duman grains, which he claimed were just freshly harvested and pounded. The move was perhaps to strengthen his claims about the duman and stand by them. I never reacted. 

Fast forward, more than a month later, Mr. Ian Ocampo Flora, for the first time in our friendship on Facebook, suddenly tagged me about his claim to the truth about the real story of duman, cascading information in an imperative manner, but without any evidential support of citation. I was looking for references. But what I found out are images that were downloaded on the internet, which, I believe he doesn’t even own. Considering that these strong claims required confirmation from scientists, biochemical engineers, and archaeologists in particular, it left me scratching my head. 

This article is a response to these statements, which I would answer the best I could below.

The Truth About Duman (Ian Ocampo Flora)

Published on July 18, 2023, on Facebook

To start a response to his first attempt to cancel the Pamagduman research, I would answer the correction he made about the word “Pamagduman”. Based on the 1732 Kapampangan-Spanish Dictionary made by Fray Diego Bergano, there were no entry terms for “manduman” , which he initially commented. In the dictionary, in order to describe the active verb of the practice, here is the entry below:

DUMAN. (pp.) N. S. El grano del arroz

tierno cerca de madurar. V. N. I,

Magduman,

ilegar a ese estado el arroz. Y tambien cojerlo para hacer Duman. P. 3. pret. Dimanan, lo asi cojido. Marumanduman, ya esta cerca de ser Duman.

Translation:

DUMAN. (pp.) N. S. The grain of rice tender close to ripe. V.N.I, Magduman,get the rice to that state. And also take it to make Duman. Q. 3. pret. Dimanan, I took it like that. Marumanduman (adjective), is already close to being Duman.
 

I also asked the community bearing the cultural tradition, especially the Galang, Libut, and Cuenco families, about the operative word they use in describing the name of the action when executing the harvest.

Here are the entries. 

" Pamagduman ya! Ikwa na nang metwa i Tata ku, makanyan ing awus mi. Taga nukarin ya ing sasabing yan, te ya munta keni ba nang abalu nanung awus mi?"

Translation: "It is called pamagduman. My father has reached elderly age, and he still uses this term. Who is he and where does he hail from? Why don't you invite him over to see what we call the practice?"


-Kevin Cuenco, magduman, Sta. Monica, Santa Rita.
September 12, 2023

Ian Ocampo Flora: There has been so much written about duman, a delicacy made in my hometown of Santa Rita. Sadly, many of the supposed facts out there about duman contain fossilized half-truths and facts that advance a certain commercial agenda.

The community and duman’s viability may both gain from a commercial agenda, so perhaps everyone can agree that there is no harm in seeking it. After all, from a marketing perspective, strategies are required to increase the duman’s sales, and dramatic campaigning techniques may be one way to achieve this.

Even if Mr. Flora is from Santa Rita, he should be more precise about what he refers to as “fossilized half-truths,” because this is the first time he has made such a claim in a lengthy piece. There aren’t any academic essays or even national-level articles about duman by Mr. Flora as of this writing, and his abrupt posting regarding duman appears to be a just refutation of the presentation I gave in June. Eku balu ot manggiligit ya kanaku. Eku ne man nananan.

Ian Ocampo Flora: Most of those who have written about duman are not from Santa Rita, which deprives them of some of the knowledge of the cultural intricacies surrounding it and even trade secrets that duman makers would not even dare tell. So, to get some facts straight and correct fossilized errors out there, here are some facts surrounding duman.

As a trained journalist, Ian should know that stories that we write don’t need to be stories of communities of which we are members. Journalists are deployed to any place to cover pressing news and write features culled from the information they get from areas and communities where they are sometimes complete strangers. It’s the intention and manner of telling the narrative that can shed light on a situation or subject that needs to be told. This is self-explanatory.

The Ifugao Rice Terraces may be Igorot property. However, it was the discovery of the culture and place by American anthropologist Otley Beyer in the early 1900s and later by a Bicolono archeologist from UCLA, Stephen Acabado, who recently made a discovery concerning their true time of creation. Major pedimental structures, as well as the frieze of the Parthenon, that are now called Elgin Marbles, could have been totally destroyed by war in Ottoman Greece if they were not taken by the British in 18011. 
 

If we strictly comply with UNESCO’s methodology in inventory where consent of the community is needed, not even one of the community members, starting from the magduman, the community concerned, farmers and their family networks, ever met with Mr. Ian Ocampo Flora, much more to have deep-seated knowledge about a familial practice that needs total immersion to understand. 

In doing a grounding for a UNESCO inscription, the “element” for the inscription should have been agreed upon with the members of what it calls a “community.” This community consists of the following:

Culture Bearers       Community Concerned        Institutional Networks

Mr. Flora does not belong in any of these. 

Proximity-wise, Mr. Ian Ocampo Flora is more than 5 kilometers away from the community of magduman and not even connected in terms of bloodline to the two remaining families of magduman, the Cuenco and the Galang Families.

A map indicating the distance Mr. Ian Ocampo Flora, who is from Dila-Dila, Santa Rita, and Sta. Monica, Santa Rita. (5kms)

Looking further into the extent of knowledge Mr. Ian Ocampo Flora has about the pamagduman where he claims he has known the “truth”, I investigated his articles starting from the year 2015 up until 2022, and it appeared that a portion of each of these articles is plagiarized from a Claude Tayag story from 2003.  Below is the article by Claude Tayag, and following this are a successive series of stories he wrote about duman from 2015 to 2022. You will notice that there is a consistent copy and paste of the same information that Mr. Flora , ironically has been trying to cancel recently. 

“Unlike the regular rice variety, which can be planted and harvested three times a year, duman can only be harvested in the cool air of November otherwise it will not be a bountiful one. For every hectare, a farmer can produce only a maximum of 30 cavans of duman while he can produce a maximum of 300 cavans for regular rice. It is no wonder duman is sold at a whopping price of P800-P1,000 a kilo.”

Source: Tayag. (2003, December 7). Pasko!, Pasko! Pasko na naman! https://www.philstar.com/. Retrieved October 6, 2023, from https://www.philstar.com/lifestyle/sunday-life/2003/12/07/230708/pasko-pasko-pasko-na-naman

Previous articles of Mr. Ian Ocampo Flora where he plagiarized Claude Tayag’s 2003 article on Philippine Star.

“Unlike the regular rice variety, which can be planted and harvested three times a year, duman can only be harvested in the cool air of November and December.

For every hectare, a farmer can produce only a maximum of 4.5 cavans of duman, while a maximum of 300 cavans can be harvested from the regular rice variety.”

Source: Flora. (2022, November 19). Duman festival set. Sunstar Pampanga. Retrieved October 6, 2023, from https://www.sunstar.com.ph/article/1946413/pampanga/local-news/duman-festival-set

____________________________

Duman is relatively expensive. Unlike the regular rice variety, which can be planted and harvested three times a year, it can only be harvested in the cool air of November and December. Otherwise, it will not be a bountiful one. For every hectare, a farmer can produce only a maximum of 4.5 cavans of duman, while a maximum of 300 cavans can be harvested from the regular rice variety.

Source: Flora. (2019, December 6). https://www.sunstar.com.ph/article/1835234/pampanga/local-news/duman-festival-set-today. Sunstar Pampanga. Retrieved October 6, 2023, from https://www.sunstar.com.ph/article/1835234/pampanga/local-news/duman-festival-set-today

______________________________

“Unlike the regular rice variety, which can be planted and harvested three times a year, it can only be harvested in the cool air of November and December. Otherwise, it will not be a bountiful one. For every hectare, a farmer can produce only a maximum of 4.5 cavans of duman, while a maximum of 300 cavans can be harvested from the regular rice variety.”

Source: Flora. (2019, October 5). Duman Festival all set on December https://www.sunstar.com.ph/article/1826303/pampanga/local-news/duman-festival-all-set-on-december. Sunstar Pampanga. Retrieved October 6, 2023, from https://www.sunstar.com.ph/article/1826303/pampanga/local-news/duman-festival-all-set-on-december

______________________________

“Duman is relatively expensive: unlike the regular rice variety, which can be planted and harvested three times a year, duman can only be harvested in the cool air of November and December, otherwise it will not be a bountiful one.

For every hectare, a farmer can produce only a maximum of 4.5 cavans of duman, while a maximum of 300 cavans can be harvested from the regular rice variety.”

Source: Sunstar Editorial Board. (2017, November 21). Duman festival set on December 2. Sunstar Pampanga. Retrieved October 6, 2023, from https://www.sunstar.com.ph/article/406104/duman-festival-set-on-december-2

______________________________

“Duman is relatively expensive: unlike the regular rice variety, which can be planted and harvested three times a year, duman can only be harvested in the cool air of November and December, otherwise it will not be a bountiful one.

For every hectare, a farmer can produce only a maximum of 4.5 cavans of duman, while a maximum of 300 cavans can be harvested from the regular rice variety.”

Source: Flora. (2016, February 27). Foodies, art enthusiasts troop to 2015 Duman fest. https://lonelyexplorersite.wordpress.com/. Retrieved October 6, 2023, from https://lonelyexplorersite.wordpress.com/2016/02/27/foodies-art-enthusiasts-troop-to-2015-duman-fest/

________________________________

“unlike the regular rice variety, which can be planted and harvested three times a year, duman can only be harvested in the cool air of November and December, otherwise it will not be a bountiful one.

For every hectare, a farmer can produce only a maximum of 4.5 cavans of duman, while a maximum of 300 cavans can be harvested from the regular rice variety.”

Source:
Flora. (2015, November 26). Duman Festival set December 5. Sunstar Pampanga. Retrieved October 6, 2023, from https://www.sunstar.com.ph/ampArticle/44679

Even while Mr. Ian Ocampo Flora discusses fossilized half-truths, these recurrent instances of plagiarized material are not just seen as artifacts but also as egregious distortions of facts and information about the community, where actual planting and harvesting occasionally fluctuate. The fact that he is using data from two decades ago to discuss crop quantity defies community dynamics and nature, demonstrating his lack of devotion to the truth of what he claims to know. 

This could cause experts to misinterpret his article and discourage possible aid to the community, as the figures of their harvest appear to be constant and permanent, and this information has spread without an actual interview, validation, or confirmation from the community themselves. The writing methodology of Mr. Ian Ocampo Flora, who teaches higher education courses at a state university in Pampanga, is not a good example of journalism with invites question about integrity. 

Ian Ocampo Flora: Is it true that the rice variety used in making duman only blooms in December? There is no truth or scientific basis for this statement. It is merely a ploy to strengthen the already popular belief that duman is only made in December. In fact, you can make duman any time of the year as long as grains are available. You can also plant red-pigmented rice any time of the year as long as climatic conditions are met.

Looking at the recurrent articles, it seems that Mr. Flora is self-contradictory. During my presentation, he even accused the magduman community of framing the practices that are exclusive to seasonal harvest as liars, even using the word “romanticizing” to define the idea. But based on a recent article he wrote about duman, which was his latest in 2022, he just stated the following:

“Unlike the regular rice variety, which can be planted and harvested three times a year, duman can only be harvested in the cool air of November and December.

(Flora. (2022, November 19). Duman festival set. Sunstar Pampanga. Retrieved October 6, 2023, from https://www.sunstar.com.ph/article/1946413/pampanga/local-news/duman-festival-set).

The sudden metamorphosis of Mr. Ian Ocampo Flora is more sudden than climate change, which made us confused about his original stand on the practice. Eku balu sanu ing panwalan ku keng sasabyan na. Kaybat naku pemulyo keng plenary hall, contradictory ya ining article na ring ini.

Ian Ocampo Flora: There is no truth or scientific basis for this statement.

There is no scientific basis because he never went to scientific research by going to institutions that can answer this inquiry, or he never went into total immersion to study these ethnoecological skills in determining the natural environmental occurrences, which Dr. Ana Cope of International Rice Research Institute calls landraces.

In my Gmail correspondence to Dr. Ana Cope dated August 10, 2022, during the preliminary stage of research, she based her assessment of the profile of duman grain on existing information she searched and believes that the glutinous rice is the same as with the landraces she covered, which are called the Heirloom Rices of the Cordillera. According to her, they are special rices with various pigmentation (purple, red, brown, specks of red or violet), aromatic, good tasting, highly nutritious, low productivity, and resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses. They are usually grown once a year (and are photosensitive) by smallholder farmers in the highlands of the Cordillera using indigenous practices. These types of rice are also expensive, but not as much as duman (P800 per kilo). 
Source: (Cope AE, RA Reaño, JS Luis, AP Santelices, JJ Padilla, and CS Acuin, editors, 2020. Philippine Cordillera Heirloom Rice Los Baños (Philippines) International Rice Research Institute. First published in 2020 Ordering information: please contact internalcomm@irri.org.)

To support this scientific analysis, Philippine Rice Research Institute scientist Dr. Jonathan Niones, in his visit to the community, recently made preliminary observations. He said that duman is a type of glutinous rice that is viviparous. This means that it can germinate by itself in a specific climate condition. ( Interview, Dr. Jonathan Niones. Santa Monica. October 02,2023 )

According to him, this is a smallholders tradition. The humidity of the cold wind, which is drawn to and penetrates the grain and acts as a course of water for the germination embryo, is what affects the ripeness of the kernel most, not simply the cold breeze itself. To germinate and avoid dormancy, the embryo needs water , and a cold breeze gives it the oxygen necessary and it needs. When the green duman is collected during the intervention stage, this water content, at an optimal level, is the fluid that causes the green duman to become soft. Yet, as intervention stage involves a familiarity of the paddy’s biodiversity, the magduman possess this ethno-ecological skill. (Niones, 2023)

The duman typically don’t sprout simultaneously or in synch after germination. It all depends on where the cold win blows first. The duman plant stands out as being taller than the typical inbred variety of rice. The struggle to draw moisture form the northeats monsoon is to account for this. 

In light of this, Dr. Niones’ fellow scientist who was also present during the visit, Phil Rice, and Gene Bank Manager Marilyn Ferrer said that traditional rice varieties, which can be found in landraces of elevated areas, are photoperiod-sensitive rice varieties. This means that they can only yield once a year, and duman is under the category of these rice varieties. (Interview, PhilRice Gene Bank Manager, Marilyn Ferrer. Santa Monica. October 02, 2023)

To confirm this, I asked Mang Galang, real name Renell Bucud, the remaining expert in the pamagduman harvest, and farmer Aming Dizon about this matter. Both people have been practicing the pamagduman practice for more than 40 years.

Video of Mang Galang: In the video, Mang Galang provides an analysis of the impact of monsoon winds on the germination process of duman kernels. The piece elucidates that the germination of the lakatan malutu, even if planted in April, will occur during the arrival of the monsoon wind in November.

Video of Aming Dizon: Ramil “Aming” Dizon provides an account of his cultivation of the lakatan malutu crop, which was sown in May but only shown signs of germination in November. The individual claimed to have knowledge of this natural phenomenon dating back to their childhood.

Ian Ocampo Flora: Even today, there are still farmers who make duman or with knowledge of duman-making traditions in the towns of Floridablanca, Mexico, Porac, and San Luis. There are similar duman-making traditions in the Ilocos provinces, Bulacan, and the Cordilleras. Kapampangan duman shares a similar process with these traditions. Duman making involves the use of pigmented rice (in the duman of Santa Rita it is red glutinous rice), and a process of roasting and pounding. These three aspects are also the same as with the other traditions from other provinces although, there is a considerable difference in the cooking technique and method.

While this statement may be true, it is too vague. It is so vague that it can be considered mysticism. It’s like saying, “Sisig is a shared heritage, and it can be seen in Floridablanca, Mexico, Porac, nearby provinces like Bulacan, the Ilocos region, etc. In his statement, there are no citations or proofs that show similar practices. And since this has no solid proof, it can be considered a result of a vivid imagination.

Mr. Ian Ocampo Flora may have some idea of the duman, but the focus of our research is not specifically on the duman but on the diachronic and ethnological skills that became a landrace practice of the community, designed and conforming to the local ecosystem of the area where this is planted.

With the support of the Provincial Tourism Office under the direction of Tourism Chief Officer Randy Del Rosario, my team mapped out and conducted inventories in areas where it was believed that pamagduman practices were similar in those months of August to September. In Santa Clemente, Ramos, Camiling, and the province of Tarlac, we were able to talk to the elders about the tradition, which appears to have vanished in the previous decades.

The inventory was guided by tourism officers with the support of the provincial government.

Called inuruban when pounded and dudumen when it becomes a rice cake, the diachronic practice of harvesting the glutinous rice during November is no longer done, and only modern ways of cooking are executed by commercial enterprises.

The same thing happens in Aguilar, Mangatarem, in the Province of Pangasinan, where deremen is a common traditional product produced through firing using bamboo as fuel. But this traditional practice has been replaced by a sophisticated cooking method, and the indigenous method that defines the heritage is no longer seen.

In the first few paragraphs of this article, I mentioned that in one of our sessions at plenary hall, Mr. Ian Ocampo Flora brought us a duman that he contends was harvested during the summer to support his claim that duman can be harvested at any time of year.

Perhaps a photograph of harvesting and pounding may be an effective method to provide evidence, particularly in the case of an outlandish claim about the “romanticized marketing ploy” of duman production, which contradicts the commonly held belief that duman can only sprout during the monsoon season. Dinan mu kaming litratu na atin tatatap keng palbibewan anyang summer.

Because if there is no evidence to support this, I can say that this is a complete disrespect to the Provincial Capitol Building’s plenary hall, the people it represents, and those invited to contribute to the community’s welfare. (end)

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