Epilogue | CAP TIKUS 1978

Out of the blue, a text came in from James: “Now being sold at the airport for 80,000 rupiah” (So jual di bandara 80ribu), followed by a smiley face. It was December 28, 2018, and two years had passed since I had last seen him or any of my other friends in Manado. His text captioned a photo displaying several bottles of a new product: Cap Tikus 1978. Another photo showed a banner advertising this “Legendary Product of Manado.” Both were taken at Sam Ratulangi International Airport. My reply was instant: “OH WOW!”

A series of back-and-forth messages followed, wherein James explained that the company that owned Cap Tikus 1978 sourced their Cap Tikus from farmers and then, according to “their standard” and using “modern tools,” distilled the Cap Tikus again. “It has a taste almost similar to vodka,” he texted. "There’s less of a bamboo smell (Bau bulu so kurang).”

The bulk of my fieldwork was completed, and I was back in Amsterdam, so I took my research online. There were plenty of newspaper headlines: “Finally, Legal Cap Tikus! Can Be Oleh-Oleh” (Vian 2018) and “On January 7, 2019, Legal Cap Tikus Will Be Launched by Christiany Eugenia Paruntu in Amurang South Minahasa” (Lompoliuw and Warouw 2018). News mostly centered on the outlet stand outside the airport’s departures area, as well as the official launch that was to take place the following week. Alongside others, the inauguration would be led by the government official in charge of the South Minahasa Regency, Bupati Christiany Eugenia Paruntu. She had advertised the upcoming event via Instagram, describing the new product as “a typical South Minahasa drink that is labeled and legal.”

But the vision behind Cap Tikus 1978 was to export this local “Legendary Product of Manado” across national borders and into the global market (SM 2019). Which explained why its unofficial launch had taken place right outside the airport’s departures area.

Marketing for Cap Tikus 1978, both online and off, clearly positioned the drink as part of a cherished local tradition of Cap Tikus production. It seemed to indicate that part of the value of the drink (an emblem of tradition and community that CapTikus Squad celebrated in their lyrics) lay in these origins and cultural history. Yet Cap Tikus 1978 was sold at the international airport, positioning it to serve a very different (export) market than the drinkers of North Sulawesi.

A late-night conversation with my Amsterdam housemates Weronika and Stevie, both creative designers and artists, turned to an analysis of the Cap Tikus 1978 brand. “It draws upon a universal idea of ‘vintage,’” said Weronika, “Even if this might have little to do with an Indonesian vintage.

This strong fixation on the past can lead to the hyperbolic treasuring of a historical period based on a real or invented memory, which sometimes loses any sense of authenticity. Cap Tikus 1978 packaged an “origin story,” drawing upon Cap Tikus’s roots and hoping that these could be transported to new places.

The most obvious attempt to claim partial ownership of Cap Tikus tradition and history and turn it into financial gain was the name itself: Cap Tikus 1978.

According to the managing director of PT Cawan Mas, 1978 was actually the year the company was founded (Tribun Manado 2019). But this didn’t appear to be widely understood, making its inclusion in the name highly misleading. It positioned what in reality was a new product as having a much longer history, simultaneously camouflaging and erasing the actual, much longer history of Cap Tikus, which includes no clearly identified year of birth. Instead, the company was packaging history and trying to transmute tradition into market value.

The birth of this new product, Cap Tikus 1978, promised to reduce the “illegal” and unsupervised Cap Tikus trade and, in turn, minimize criminality (Rompis 2019). However, more than two years after its official launch, my ongoing fieldwork in the digital sphere informs me that little has changed. The Cap Tikus that I encountered during my fieldwork on the ground in Manado is still available at many of the kiosk and warung in the city today. Local anthropologist and personal friend Nono Sumampouw assured me of this during a long-overdue video call in September 2021. “Local people don’t like the taste. It’s flat, more expensive, and there’s less volume and less strength,” he explained.

The text on this page is extracted from the PhD thesis: “Inside the Drinking Circle: Cap Tikus, Contested Modernities, and Youth Resistance in Manado, North Sulawesi.” This thesis was submitted by Nastasja Ilonka Roels as part of the Doctoral Regulations of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). All text references should be made to the original thesis manuscript, once published via the UvA Digital Academic Repository, and not to this website. Permission is required to copy, display or reuse images, songs, and videos.