BAMBAN is a town in southern Tarlac with more commercial and cultural ties to the twin Pampanga cities of Mabalacat and Angeles than Tarlac City, the Tarlac capital. Bamban is also one of the three Tarlac towns — the others are Concepcion and Capas — that is expected to hold on to the Kapampangan dialect once it is gone and done in Pampanga. A few years back, while the nation was celebrating Lingo ng Wika, I wrote a column on that topic, that the towns in the southern part of Tarlac would preserve the Kapampangan language after the native speakers in Pampanga have shifted to Tagalog, English or some other language.
Kapampangan is so deeply entrenched in the history and DNA of Bamban that you can only react with either shock or wonderment to the news that the mayor of Bamban has zero Kapampangan roots and ties. And her name is Alice Guo, who has a life history with neither Bamban roots nor Bamban provenance. Who is this Alice in lahar land? This is the question that is being asked right now in the halls of Congress and in many investigative branches of the executive branch. (Bamban's proximity to Pampanga made it the Tarlac town most savaged by lahar, hence the lahar land reference.)
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