Kabalikat Civicom Global

Malacañang of the North "Malacanang ti Amianan" is the other term used by Ilocanos to describe Malacañang of the North. This is the official residence of the former President Ferdinand Marcos in Ilocos Norte, built on a high point of land projecting into the sea right beyond the coastline of the legendary Paoay Lake, this enduring structure is now a museum.

If there is a construction of the Ilokano as a framed subject of power reified geopolitically, it is the mythic kingdom of Ilocandia by the self-proclaimed epic hero President Ferdinand Marcos. The reference to Ilocandia as an all-encompassing kingdom in the north with the imposing Malacanang ti Amianan as royal icon purports to a regional hegemon at a time when power was vested in the hands of the mighty Ilokano dictator. The myth-making process of a great epic hero in the late President Marcos contributed to the belief and later reality of the existence of a greater Ilocandia. Collapsed into this singular reference, all writings and activities about the north were considered Ilokano.

Used as a shibboleth by the great Apo Marcos, Ilokano had become synonymous to a powerful race (as in the Aryan and the Third Reich) and was used as passport to enter the gates of Malacanang. Thus, to non-Ilokano and those uninitiated, the northern cultures converged into one cult gravitating around the charismatic leadership of the Apo. Cordilleran literature, Itneg literature and even Pangasinan literature were perceived as cultural products of this Greater Ilocandia. So when non-Iluko professional artist Malou Jacob wrote about the struggles of Macliing Dulag against the state, her drama was naturally considered Ilokano writing.

But today, to still cling on to this construction of Ilokano by the then deposed President Marcos makes one anachronistic and historically insensitive. The Kingdom of Greater Ilocandia had seen its glorious days. Passé and disputatious, the Ilokano construction by the authoritarian state will always be a reminder of a hegemonic past: divisive and discursive.

Amianan Studies therefore, derives its constitution of all literatures and thoughts from the different northern cultures not in the sense of the Ilocandia hegemony. Amianan studies, while constitutive of all the northern literatures and cultures reaffirms the differences and distinctiveness of each ethnoculture. The foci of Amianan studies draw from these cultures the confluences and pollinating influences given the assumed differences and contradictions. This assumption rests on the specificities of culture and practice rather than on an essentializing category as the Greater Ilocandia. Amianan studies valuate Pangasinan, Cordilleran, Itneg, Cagayan, Isabela, Nueva Vizcayan histories and literatures in terms of their specificities and particularities.