Mt. Isarog Literature: A Showcase of Camarinense Cultural Diversity

Abstract

Despite technological advances in communication methods and information dissemination, it is vital to understand the impact of oral literature on a region’s cultural diversity. Transferring knowledge through oral literature in diverse details leads to complexities in determining cultures, traditions, languages, settlements, and histories, even though this literature is collected from the surroundings of the natives in Mt. Isarog. Oral literature pertaining to Mt. Isarog are accounts of the mountain residents, who mostly worked with children and relatives as farmers, tenants, and laborers on farms, whose culture and tradition are becoming disoriented and varied because of the modern cultures viewed through social media and the migration of the natives and ecotourism. The study revealed that the compiled and recorded oral literature are: beneficial reference paraphernalia in showcasing the lifestyle of the old natives in the mountains; valuable sources of old knowledge of the camarinense in cultural-based ecotourism; links between Bicolanos’ past and present cultures; and mitigation tools to more complexities in conveying meanings in educating people, sharing mythological knowledge, and conserving the region’s unique cultural heritage.