The Spy in the Sandwich

Monday, January 20, 2025

11:44 AM | How to Make Baye-Baye

If you hail from Bayawan, down at the southern bend of Negros Oriental, chances are you have grown up eating the city’s foremost delicacy—the baye-baye. Ian has maternal roots in Bayawan, and spent a significant part of his childhood there before the family moved for good to Dumaguete in 1980. He grew up eating the baye-baye, will trust only the ones made by the family of Manang Julia Occena of Barangay Villareal [formerly Balabag]—and until today, he has very specific tastes that determine for him which baye-baye is the real deal.

“Don’t eat the popular and commercial ones you find readily available in stores,” he says with a passion. “They’re rubbish.”

My mother Fennie with Manang Julia in Bayawan in 2017

Manang Julia's baye-baye

The baye-baye is made from roasted glutinous rice, coconut, and sugar that are pounded or ground together, and is often mistaken to be the local equivalent of the espasol. It is not. It is its own unique thing. It is also actually not native to Bayawan, but has roots in Pavia, Iloilo. There was a significant migration of Ilonggos to Bayawan at the turn of the 20th century, owing to agricultural opportunities, which is why many Bayawanons speak Kiniray-a, and baye-baye became a local delicacy. The Bayawan variety though is more starchy, while the Iloilo original is more sticky. [They’re also finished differently, with the Iloilo baye-baye shaped into a roll, while the Bayawan baye-baye is made into a sandwich-shaped cake.]

Ian insists on eating it fresh—because the delicacy quickly turns bad after a day of storage. “Fresh baye-baye is soft and pillowy,” Ian says. He also insists that its stickiness should be well-balanced with the pinipig powder that coats the entire thing.

A few years ago, in 2018, Ian’s family found themselves back in Bayawan for a visit—and somehow also found themselves making a trek to old Balabag, to search out Manang Julia where she still lived in her advanced years in her hut, already blind from old age—but still directing her family to make the delicacy that has been their tradition for generations. The baye-baye they bought that day in 2018 still retained the same sticky goodness from memory. Last year, one member of Manang Julia’s family came over to Dumaguete to demonstrate the making of baye-baye at Adorno Galeria y Café at the Locsin Heritage House, masterminded by proprietor Jansen Tan, with the whole event made possible by the Bayawan City Tourism Office, and through the efforts of Pristine Martinez-Raymond, the first lady of the city.

For one day last August, Manang Mercy Barroca let us into her world of baye-baye making. We watched her hands mix glutinous rice and coconut into something more than food: a story, a memory, a taste of heritage. Manang Mercy’s reputation preceded her: she carried not just the skill but the heart of her in-laws’ legacy, a lineage intertwined with the rhythms of mortar and pestle, with the scent of toasted rice hanging in the air.

The stage for this demonstration was set with care. In the center stood the tools of her trade: the “lusokan,” a mortar and pestle made from casay wood. Casay, Manang Mercy explained, is not just a traditional implement; it was necessity. Other woods, though abundant, cannot promise the food-safe quality that casay does. And like any artist, Manang Mercy’s tools carried their own history—her mortar was twenty years old; the pestle was sixty. It was a lineage of objects meeting a lineage of hands.

To understand baye-baye is to begin with the grain. Glutinous rice, whole and unassuming, will find its place in the “kalaha,” the wok. Over steady flame, Manang Mercy stirred the ingredients, her movements deliberate, patient. Soon the grains turned golden, releasing a nutty fragrance that danced through the air and signaled their transformation. These toasted grains, tinged with fire, were milled into a fine powder, soft as talcum.

But baye-baye does not rest on rice alone. There is the coconut, grated and cooked down in its milk with brown sugar until it becomes caramelized perfection. The mixture, dark as molasses and glistening with unctuous richness, held the promise of flavor. “It shouldn’t be dry,” Manang Mercy said. “It should still shine.”

The marriage of these ingredients is where the craft truly begins. The glutinous rice flour and the caramelized coconut are mixed in the lusokan, where they are pounded and rotated in a ritualistic rhythm. No white streaks of flour should remain; no hint of separation should betray the harmony of the ingredients.

Manang Mercy demonstrating how to make baye-baye

Mixing baye-baye ingredients in a demonstration at Adorno Cafe

Manang Mercy worked with quiet confidence. Her hands guided the pestle, her movements precise yet unhurried. She knew when to stop, when to let the mixture rest, and when to press forward. In her hands, the lusokan seemed alive, an extension of her will. When the texture was just right—smooth and pliable—Manang Mercy reached for a rectangular plastic container, its surface dusted with flour. She pressed the mass into it, shaping it with a sandok until it took the form of a rectangle. With a practiced flip, she plopped it onto a plate, where it laid like a gift. The final act was a careful slicing the delicacy into squares, each piece a testament to the culinary craft that birthed it.

In a world rushing toward convenience, where food often loses its soul in the quest for speed, Manang Mercy, with her carrying on the traditional way of making baye-baye, stood as beacon of patience, of reverence for tradition. Her baye-baye was more than a snack; it was a connection to the past, a bridge to the future. The lusokan, the casay wood, the golden rice—each element held a fragment of memory, each strike of the pestle an affirmation that some things are worth preserving. Bayawan’s cultural stewards understood this, which is why they facilitated that demonstration. Baye-baye, humble as it may seem, is a symbol of resilience, of community, of the enduring power of tradition.

As we left Adorno Café, the scent of toasted rice and caramelized coconut still clung to the air, a reminder that sometimes the most profound stories are told not in words but in the simple, deliberate act of making something with love, and from tradition.

Labels: food, heritage, negros

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Monday, January 13, 2025

8:01 PM | In Café Maria, A Restoration of Exquisite Flavors

From last Sunday’s “Culinary Cuts” column I share with Renz Torres for the Dumaguete MetroPost.

There is a particular alchemy to restoration, and Casa Paquita in Fatima Village in Dumaguete embodies this magic to the hilt. Once a stately home built in the 1920s along Acias Pinili Street, then slowly abandoned in the ensuing decades, and finally relocated and restored to its old glory in this part of Bantayan, the heritage house’s hallowed walls now reverberate with fresh culinary ambitions as it also plays host to Cafe Maria.

This marriage of heritage and gastronomy is more than mere coincidence—it’s a conversation, a song, an invitation to sit and savor. But what does it mean to dine within restored elegance? Let us begin.

Stepping into Cafe Maria feels like entering a sepia photograph splashed with modern color. The dark wooden beams overhead and the artful interplay of antique tiles and contemporary decor are not merely aesthetic choices but an homage to time. The air carries faint whispers of the past, and yet, it’s also unmistakably alive with the murmurs of current diners and the rhythmic clatter of plates. This is a setting built for storytelling—and no better storyteller exists than food.

We started with a dish that dares to walk the tightrope of excess: the Bangus na Tambok. Its name, with a chuckle of self-awareness, declares its fatty splendor outright. Here is a whole milkfish fried to an audacious crisp, glistening under a drizzle of atsuete oil. And yet, the dish is anything but overwhelming. The crackling skin yields to flesh cooked with an assured tenderness, and the supporting cast elevates it to a star’s performance. The kalamansi aioli delivers a citrusy zing, while the atchara slaw provides crunch and acidity. It’s a platter that asks, “How far can we push indulgence before it topples?” The answer: just far enough. One of us wished for crisper skin, but we’ll let that pass—to each their textural preference.

From bold flavors, we segue to opulence with the Negros Wagyu Kaldereta, a dish that seems to whisper, “Trust me.” And trust, indeed, is warranted. This is not your grandmother’s kaldereta—it is richer, deeper, and more unapologetically decadent. Sourced from Montenegro Farms, the wagyu beef collapses under the gentlest nudge, as if surrendering itself willingly to your spoon. The sauce, bolstered by liver paté, vodka, and a lively interplay of olives and fresh tomatoes, brims with a complexity that defies its humble origins. There is a symphony of flavors here—a crescendo of salt, acid, and umami—but alas, the potatoes falter. They lack the golden crispness that might have crowned this dish triumphant. Yet even in imperfection, the kaldereta’s stars shine brightly.

The prelude to our feast arrived in the form of the Dukot Salad. Its title, a nod to scorched rice, suggests playfulness—and what a play it is. Whole lettuce leaves cradle a mélange of textures: crispy dukot, slender strips of singkamas, bursts of tomato, and the smoky umami of thin bulad. It’s a salad that leans into its contradictions: rustic yet elegant, familiar yet novel. If the rice had achieved a sharper crunch or the vinaigrette more assertive acidity, it might have sung louder. But even as is, this dish feels like an echo of home cooked with a touch of finesse.

And what’s a meal without a little indulgence of the liquid sort? Cafe Maria’s signature cocktail, Pangpa-Igat, flirts unapologetically with its name. The drink arrives like a spell in a glass—swirls of green apple and elderflower dancing in soda water, buoyed by gin’s subtle sting. It is, by all accounts, a pretty drink—gentle, sweet, and deceptively harmless. But therein lies the rub: where one might expect the bold flirtation of tartness or the audacious burn of spirits, it instead plays coy. It’s a pleasant sip, no doubt, but for a drink named after mischief, I’d hoped for a wilder night.

Perhaps the truest triumph of Cafe Maria lies not in any single dish but in its vision. To dine here is to partake in a dialogue between past and present. The restored Casa Paquita lends gravitas to the dining experience; the creak of its wooden floors, the glint of its antique windows, the shadows cast by its ornate beams—all these whisper tales of Dumaguete’s storied past. Yet the menu is firmly rooted in today, with a sly wink toward innovation and an embrace of locality. The use of Negros-sourced wagyu, for instance, is not just a statement of quality but a celebration of place.

There is an audacity in Cafe Maria’s promise to comfort and challenge in equal measure. Its menu teeters on the edge of the familiar and the experimental, sometimes stumbling but never losing its balance entirely. Here, you are invited to reconsider the bangus of your childhood, to reimagine the kaldereta of your lola’s kitchen, to find new possibilities in the humble scorched rice. It is an act of culinary storytelling, woven through the threads of an old house that has seen countless meals and conversations.

As we lingered over the last sips of our drinks, we found ourselves thinking of restoration not just as an act of revival but as an invitation to rethink what was and what could be. Cafe Maria, with its heritage setting and bold kitchen, has accepted this invitation with aplomb. It is not perfect—but then, perfection is not the point. The point is the journey, the effort, the joy of discovering something old made new, something familiar made surprising. And for that, Cafe Maria is well worth the visit.

Labels: dumaguete, food, heritage

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Sunday, December 15, 2024

9:00 AM | The Beauty of Old Houses

The old house along Acias Pinili Street in Tinago was easy to overlook, even if you’ve lived in Dumaguete for so long. We tend to avert our gaze from what looks like the apotheosis of the decrepit—the fading brownness of old wood making what is otherwise an imposing structure blend into what background there is: often that’s wild vegetation; sometimes it’s the other buildings around it. Old houses always melt into nothingness. Structures of this kind—the heritage houses of the community’s landed families of long ago—are easy to miss, indeed, except when one trains their eyes to see beauty in the old and often abandoned.

So many of these still abound in Dumaguete—some still being used in myriad ways by their owners, some seemingly abandoned. Here’s an incomplete rundown: There’s the imposing one between the local branch of Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and the building that houses a Mercury Drug in Daro, right near the crossing of the National Highway and E.J. Blanco Drive. There’s the one just along Perdices Street, near Ever Mall, right in the center of town, which was converted into a now defunct budget hotel. There’s the one owned by the family of the late Teresa Basa—her of the infamous murder case in Chicago solved by her ghost—right near the corner of Lorenzo Teves Street and Calle Sta. Catalina, which has seen better days.

My two favorites are contrasts: the small white house at the corner of Pinili Street and Calle Sta. Catalina, which is still beautiful to behold after all these years; and the Flores house at the corner of E.J. Blanco Drive and Hibbard Avenue, which is still largely intact—but has lost its beautiful front lawn and garden [which had a beautiful willowy tree at the corner] to an ill-conceived structure that has housed an ever-revolving array of businesses, from an eatery to a barber shop.

Some are lost forever, like that splendid small white house with Greek columns beside the Dumaguete Rural Bank, which was later demolished to make way for an ugly grill house, which soon closed shop anyway. But I’m just happy to note that this fate has escaped the historic Locsin house at the corner of Dr. V. Locsin Street and Calle Sta. Catalina—important for being the house that hosted the final meeting that divided Negros Oriental and Negros Occidental early in 1901. Today, it has been largely preserved.

These structures are repositories of family histories—the people who helped make Dumaguete become a vibrant community—and in turn, they have helped create the makeup of local history as well. So when we lose them, we lose a small but significant part of that history as well. We lose our stories with their loss.

The conundrum, of course, lies in the fact that these are privately-owned structures whose fates lie in the hands of owners. Some are neglectful, or ignorant of family history. Some only see these as pieces of real estate—and valuable in that sense only. But some owners see value in the old structures—because they are truly beautiful once restored—and have made good cases for adaptive reuse, because restoring the original architectural splendor actually do add value to the property. Adaptive reuse refers to the process of reusing an existing building for a purpose other than which it was originally built or designed for, and has been specifically used as a term to salvage heritage buildings. Wikipedia notes that “with adaptive reuse becoming an effective strategy for optimizing the operational and commercial performance of built assets, “ it has “prevented thousands of buildings’ demolition and has allowed them to become critical components of urban regeneration”—with stakeholders such as architects, developers, builders, and entrepreneurs making sure “that the finished product will still serve the need of the market, that it will be completely useful for its new purpose, and that it will be competitively priced” once rejuvenated and restored. For me, adaptive reuse of an old structure is still better than demolishing it and then replacing it with a new one that has no character, whose aesthetics are so bland they actually are eye sores. [Don’t get me started on the tendency of current Dumaguete builders to drop another “box building” on us.]

Many of the old sugar mansions along Rizal Avenue, like the Serafin Teves mansion [which now houses Starbucks Dakong Balay] and the Manuel Teves mansion [which now houses Sans Rival], are great cases of adaptive reuse. So is The Spanish Heritage at the corner of Calle San Juan and Calle Sta. Catalina, built from an old warehouse. [I’m also glad it is back to being used as an events place, after being used as a church for so long—a strange kind of sequestration which felt like a loss to the cultural heritage of the community.] Another good case for adaptive reuse is Buglas Isla Café, which used to be the Rotea heritage house in Bais City, transferred brick by brick and wood panel by wood panel to Dumaguete by the Lhuillers. [The Lhuillers also restored the old Wuthrich mansion along Rizal Avenue.] I was also happy to see the Blas Elnar building—a splendid Art Deco building at the corner of Dr. V. Locsin Street and Calle Maria Christina, whose beauty was lost to the ravages of time—restored, although it has yet to show any sign of being in use.

The best recent example remains the Dumaguete Presidencia—which used to house many of the offices of City Hall, and whose architectural integrity, as designed by the great architect Juan M. Arellano, was lost to ill-conceived renovations and expansions over the decades, which reduced the 1936 building to an ugly shadow of its former self. Restoration started in 2017, and now it houses the Dumaguete branch of the National Museum of the Philippines.

But the upkeep of old houses is expensive, and proper restoration needs expertise—and a considerably deep pocket. I don’t blame owners for hedging on their properties on economic reasons alone. I don’t blame them for abandonment, especially if all other recourse beyond selling seems impossible to undertake.

Casa Arrieta, built in the 1920s, is a house that I have loved for many years, and I have always been concerned that the owners were “neglecting” it and was not seeing its full potential. But we must also consider the Arrieta family who owned the heritage house, and how it must have been prohibitive for them to do the upkeep of an old house, even though they might not have wanted to part with it. Anna May Cruz would later tell me: “My aunt’s family didn’t want to part with it but no one could afford its upkeep. The neglect was not intentional.”

One day, a few months ago, passing by its old location, it was just ... gone.

That really made me despondent, and I thought again about how many heritage houses in Dumaguete were disappearing.

And then I was told that this old house, about to be demolished, was actually bought wholesale by Leon Gallery’s Jaime Ponce de Leon, and transferred from Pinili Street to a lot located in Fatima Village in Bantayan.

It has been restored to its full glory, and now called Casa Paquita, named after Doña Francisca “Paquita” Somoza Arnaiz-Ponce de Leon, Popong’s lola. [Doña Paquita was the wife of Dr. Ramon Ponce de Leon, the first Filipino resident director of the Mission Hospital—the precursor of the Silliman University Medical Center—and its medical director during the Japanese occupation of Dumaguete.]

Last December 12, it finally opened via the small restaurant in the premises called Café Maria, named after another lola, Doña Maria Arnaiz-Diaz, and managed by Mikel and Nadia Teves of Si, Señor. [The legendary Inday Iyay Diaz was once provincial board member, and was active in civic work all over Negros Oriental—including involvements with the Red Cross, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and the Philippine Mental Health Association. She also founded East Negros Institute in Tanjay to accommodate secondary school aspirants in the then town, and built chapels, basketball courts, reading centers, health centers and the like, even after her terms in the provincial board, when she retired from politics.]

Save for the restaurant, there are no set plans for the rest of Casa Paquita for the moment—but I am told that Popong intends to make it a showcase for how a 1920s residence in Dumaguete looked like, and has currently furnished it with things appropriate to the period. A museum of 1920s Dumaguete residential elegance, so to speak. Dumaguete, bereft of heritage projects like this for so long, needs this capsule of history as a token to its past. At this juncture of our story as a community when the city seems to be bursting in the seams in the name of progress, Casa Paquita is a necessary corrective.

Labels: architecture, dumaguete, heritage, negros, old houses

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Wednesday, December 11, 2024

7:00 PM | Casa Paquita

I’ve been wanting to share the photos below for a few months now, but Jaime Ponce de Leon asked me to wait. You see, I’ve loved this old, old house along Pinili Street for many years, and I have always been concerned that the owners were neglecting it and was not seeing its full potential. Then one day, passing by its old location, it was just ... gone. That really made me despondent, and I thought about how many heritage houses in Dumaguete were disappearing, because some owners consider them useless, or their possible restoration would take so much work [and finances]. For the Arrieta family who owned the heritage house, it must have been prohibitive to do the upkeep of an old house, even though they might not have wanted to part with it. Anna May Cruz would later tell me: “My aunt’s family didn’t want to part with it but no one could afford its upkeep. The neglect was not intentional.”

And then I was told that this old house, about to be demolished, was actually bought wholesale, and transferred to somewhere in Fatima Village, restored to its full glory. Tomorrow, December 12, it finally opens as Cafe Maria in Casa Paquita, a restaurant and a gallery. Congratulations, Mikel Teves and Nadia Teves!

[Cafe Maria is named after Maria Arnaiz-Diaz and Casa Paquita is named after Paquita Arnaiz-Ponce de Leon.]

Labels: cafes, dumaguete, gallries, heritage, negros, old houses, restaurants

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Friday, August 30, 2024

1:05 PM | I Remember the Ugliness of the Old Dumaguete Presidencia

Sometimes I cannot believe the Dumaguete Presidencia used to look like this, and just only a few years ago, before it was finally restored beginning in 2018. The original 1937 design by the great architect Juan Arellano totally disappeared over the ensuing decades with ugly additions and renovations. And what is the plaza now used to be a parking lot, often with dump trucks right in the middle of everything. Growing up in Dumaguete, I used to bewail how ugly our City Hall was, and I had no idea that beneath all that ugliness was an old gem waiting to be restored. Today, it is the National Museum of the Philippines Dumaguete. [Photo from DumagueteInfo Net Service]

Labels: architecture, dumaguete, heritage, history, memories

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Thursday, May 02, 2024

1:16 PM | National Heritage Month 2024 in Dumaguete, at a Glance

If you only know how many writers, visual artists, musicians, dancers, filmmakers, cultural workers, and various creatives from all over the Philippines has been and will be in Dumaguete in the next few weeks, your jaw will drop. The Dumaguete Literary Festival just ended, but AYO is about to begin! And then in a few days, the NCC Film Summit! And then in a few weeks, the Philippine Culture and Music Summit with no less than two National Artists in attendance!

Magbaha og culture sa Dumaguete this May.

Labels: art and culture, dumaguete, heritage

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Thursday, October 22, 2020

6:06 AM | Good Breakfast

My breakfast. Puto maya, tapol, and tsokolate from the vendor at the corner of Hibbard Avenue and EJ Blanco Drive. Which do you prefer? Puto maya or tapol?

Labels: culture, dumaguete, food, heritage

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Sunday, April 07, 2019

6:49 PM | Myopia as a Challenge in Heritage

Part 11 of the Dumaguete Heritage Series

The problems in heritage and cultural work can be myriad. Each one is complex. Each one demands to be understood in very specific terms. Each one is very much a challenge, some of them not for the faint-hearted.

One such problem is myopia—the inability to see things properly because of sheer nearsightedness, hence the inability to see a totality of vision. This is an understandable problem if we talk about the regular Juan, because not every one of us has enough information about everything else to make justifiable stands on most things.

But when myopia comes from a politician, it becomes something else. It becomes a warning.

In the March 24 issue of the Dumaguete MetroPost, where this column will soon land, I read with astonished incredulity the following words from William Ablong, who penned an article titled “Dumaguete’s Presidencia, A Legacy?” in his column Eye Opener, where he wrote: “I am just wondering why the city is into this ‘museum thing’ and spending millions when in fact, they know that there are so many Dumaguetnons right now who are hungry, who are jobless, and who are homeless. There are roads that until this time have not been rebuilt or fixed. Will this museum provide the solutions we need?”

He continued: “Can this museum bring food to our table? Can the homeless stay inside that building to have a roof over their heads? So that when it rains, they can take cover? Can the out-of-school children get inside there to obtain a semblance of education? Can our street children have a family they can finally call their own? Can our jobless be finally employed? Can it lower our unemployment rate? Can it improve the skills and knowledge of our underemployed so that they can finally secure better, higher-paying jobs?”

Still more: “Just to be very clear—I am not against working for something that will bring us pride as a people. And I am not against having museums here in the city. I believe, to become a city of refinement, a museum or anything that represents the arts is very much a necessity. BUT, we need to have proper timing. Who can appreciate a museum if more than half of the population do not have food on their tables or are struggling to make both ends meet? For sure, only the rich and the noble can give value to what this museum stands for.”

Usually, in this space, I steer clear of politics, it is not my cup of tea—but since this one touches on a topic closest to things I fight for in Dumaguete City, let me offer a rebuttal.

Ablong happens to be running for mayor of Dumaguete—and this article is clearly a pot shot. But it made me think: IF THIS IS THE TYPE OF PERSON ASPIRING TO BE A LEADER OF THE CITY, WHO NEEDS BARBARIANS AT THE GATE?

Because a city leader who cannot see heritage and culture as part of the very soul of the city he wants to lead clearly does not have that city’s best interests at heart. Ablong calls it a mere “museum thing,” denigrating this worthwhile project to something that sounds like whimsy. He decries the “millions” being spent on the project, when he should know that the City is not spending a single centavo on this. The funds for the restoration of the Presidencia comes from the coffers of the National Museum, which had allocated a budget for preserving an important architectural heritage designed by the great Filipino architect Juan Arellano. [Truth to tell, we almost lost this budget because the City was a little slow in accepting the invitation of the National Museum. Good thing then that things started changing in 2017, especially with the creation of the City Heritage Council, which is how we are finally getting this much-needed restoration, a fitting project that respects the history of Dumaguete City.]

That restoration budget was allocated precisely for that very purpose, and it would be foolhardy to think that Ablong can ask the National Museum to spend it instead on the problems he highlighted—joblessness, homelessness, education, etc., when those things are not the mandate of the National Museum.

What are the mandates of the National Museum for the country? One of these is to identify heritage buildings, and to set aside money for their preservation, because they are part of our cultural patrimony, and the Constitution provides for that very purpose. In fact, the National Museum is now proposing another round of national funding for a planned restoration of the bell tower or the campanario, which is now slowly deteriorating because of various causes, including plants taking root in its structure.

What Ablong wants is akin to asking the one government department to set aside part of its budget for another department’s projects. Didn’t he know the intricacies of government project management when he was City Administrator?

It is like scolding the fish for not running the marathon.

It is like begrudging the sun for not rising in the west.

It is like asking a trapo to be truthful during campaign season.

It is a foolish proposition—and only fools will believe this.

His second paragraph is composed of nothing more than a spewing off of motherhood statements all politicians love to trumpet when they are seeking public office. They are designed to make people shake their heads in commiseration, because they sound beguiling in their portrait of political neglect. Ablong was City Vice Mayor for six years (2001-2007), City Agriculture Officer for ten years (2008-2018), and City Administrator for six years (2010-2016). Not including the Agriculture job, that’s twelve years. Those are positions of such high power in City Hall, and such roles of great responsibility. He had inroads to power that could have helped solve many of the problems he is now complaining about. He couldn’t even install proper street signs, for twelve years. What did he do about the homeless and the street children in his twelve years combined as City Vice Mayor and City Administrator? What did he do about the garbage problem in his twelve years combined as City Vice Mayor and City Administrator? What did he do about education in his twelve years combined as City Vice Mayor and City Administrator? What did he do about culture and heritage in his twelve years combined as City Vice Mayor and City Administrator?

He talks big about “proper timing.” To quote the popular version of the rabbinic sage Hillel the Elder’s famous aphorism, “If not now, when? If not us, who?” There is no such thing as proper timing when the proper timing is now and is congruent with proper vision. What is proper timing for him? In 20 years, when the Presidencia’s original designs would have been totally erased because of ignorance and neglect?

To be continued...

Labels: dumaguete, heritage, politics

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Friday, March 29, 2019

9:03 PM | The Built Heritage Around Dumaguete

Part 10 of the Dumaguete Heritage Series

Last January 18, President Rodrigo Duterte signed a law that mandated the conservation of the Gabaldon school buildings found nationwide, which sought to preserve “the architectural, historical and social significance” of these heritage school houses. The Gabaldon buildings were built around the Philippines from 1907 to 1946. In Dumaguete, the most famous example is the main building of the Negros Oriental High School, which was established in Dumaguete in 1902 [in the spot where the City Hall and the East City Central School buildings are now], but was later transferred to its current location along Kagawasan Avenue at the Capitol Area, where its Gabaldon building stands proud as beacon for local education.

These school buildings were designed by the American architect William Parsons, and are so named because their funding was made possible through Act. No. 1801, authored by Isauro Gabaldon. Including the one in Dumaguete, there are about 1,446 Gabaldon buildings all over the country—and under the new law, they are recognized as “built heritage,” and thus are included as part of cultural properties determined by the National Cultural Heritage Act of 2009.

The new law requires local government units that have Gabaldon school buildings under their jurisdiction to “adopt measures for the protection and conservation of these structures,” with the aid of several government institutions, including the Department of Education and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts. From the ABS-CBN news report on the passage of the law, Sen. Loren Legarda, the bill’s author, is quoted as saying that “these structures symbolize the first foundation of the Philippine public school system during the American period, in which each Filipino child, even from the most remote areas of the country, had access to formal education.”

It is that symbolic nature of these buildings that make them important—although most people do not readily see that about architectural structures, which leads to an ironic point: they are often the most visible kind of heritage in any town or city, and yet their importance as “heritage” are often unseen by people in the locality. They are often just perceived as “old buildings,” often dilapidated, and often fall victim to razing or demolition, always in the name of “progress.” Just a few weeks ago, the beautiful—although sadly neglected—Luis Rotea heritage house in Bais, which occupied a prime location in the city, is now gone, apparently to make way for a McDonald’s.

Built heritage, needless to say, is a most important cultural asset because it embodies the historical layers of our built environs made of materials such as cement, brick, wood, stone, and metal, even plaster—which make up the physical evidence of our cultural development. Built heritage thus includes houses and hotels, museums and markets, cathedrals and cemeteries, factories and fences, as well as plazas and streetscapes. It includes a wide range of historical and familiar landmarks that are vital in forming—and sustaining—a robust sense of belonging and affection to our community.

So quickly now, what are some of the other built heritage we can find around Dumaguete City besides the campanario and the Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria?

The Locsin heritage house at the corner of Locsin Street and Sta. Catalina Street is one of the most important heritage houses in Dumaguete City. Legend has it that Jose Rizal once visited the house. But its true historical importance is that this was the venue for the election of officers for the Provisional Revolutionary Government on 25 November 1898. It had belonged to the Teniente Cornelia Yapsutco, and later became the property of the Locsin family in Dumaguete. It still stands intact.

The ancestral house of Ramon Teves Pastor at the crossing of Real Street [now named after him] and Dr. V. Locsin Street, popular known as the White House, is a testament to one of the most important figures in Dumaguete life and politics. Ramon Teves Pastor was mayor of Dumaguete from October 1912 until October 1916, and under his watch, M.L. Quezon Park was inaugurated a hundred years ago, on 20 September 1916, which paved the way for free nightly shows at the new Dumaguete landmark. The plot was donated by the Pastor family and the Patero family. The construction of the Rizal Boulevard breakwater was also done during his term, which makes him one of the major shapers of the Dumaguete environs we know and love today. The house still stands intact.

The row of beautiful, sometimes ornately designed, houses along the Paseo de Rizal or the Boulevard—stretching from the fringes of Tinago down to the corner of Silliman Avenue—are called by locals as the Sugar Houses, so named because these were the city residences of sugar plantation owners whose haciendas were mostly concentrated in Bais, Tanjay, and Manjuyod towns. For most of the life of the boulevard, these houses became the beautiful windows to the genteel air of Dumaguete, each one competing with each other with their disparate architectural details, and their singular grandness. Most of these houses over the years have been transformed into the various hotels and bars and restaurants that now dot the stretch. The grandest among them that still remain largely untouched is the magnificent, formerly green-tinged Serafin Lajato Teves Mansion at the corner of Rizal Boulevard and Burgos Street.

Of the school buildings aside from the Gabaldon structure of NOHS, we have Silliman Hall, named after Horace Brinsmade Silliman, the philanthropist who gave the initial donation to start the school that would become the university that it is now, is located right at the bend that leads to the sea-side Rizal Boulevard. Its sight is quite distinctive in the Dumaguete landscape, and it is perhaps the structure most iconic of the City besides the campanario. The three-story structure—held together by wooden arches stemming from cast-iron columns, its design complete with gables and intricate carpentry—is the first and the oldest building in campus. Dr. David Sutherland Hibbard, the school founder, was responsible for sketching out how Silliman Hall was supposed to look: his design represented American architecture of the stick-style, which dominated colonial buildings in the early days of the 20th century. The blocks used to build Silliman Hall were made from corals, and the components of the iron ceiling were shipped all the way from New York, from an old theater. Silliman Hall has served as classroom, dormitory (the future Philippine President Carlos P. Garcia stayed there when he was a student at Sillliman), library, faculty hall, and function hall—and in the early days of Silliman, it served as venue for recitals, plays, and convocations. Much of the building fell into disrepair and its first floor was converted to office spaces—until the late 1990s when Architect Manuel Almagro spearheaded efforts funded by USAid that restored the building to its original glory. The structure stands restored and intact.

Guy Hall in Silliman campus was built as a dormitory for boys. Construction began in 1918, with donations from Mr. William E. Guy of St. Louis, dedicated and named after his wife Kathryn Lemoine-Guy. Mr. Guy had met Silliman Institute benefactor Dr. Horace Silliman and pledged $15,000 to make two dormitories for boys. Instead of having two separate buildings, plans were made to change it to one with two wings—a more economical approach. Construction continued until 1927. It was made the general headquarters of the Japanese Imperial Forces during the duration of the war in Dumaguete. It still stands intact, and recently restored.

Among the government buildings, the City Hall—now referred to as the Presidencia—has the happy turn of being restored to its old glory. The Presidencia was built in 1937, and was designed by the great Filipino architect Juan M. Arellano who also designed some of the greatest pre-war buildings in the Philippines, including the Manila Post Office and the old Senate building, which currently houses the National Museum of the Philippines.

The Negros Oriental Provincial Capitol, located along Kagawasan Avenue around the city’s Freedom Park, was built in 1924 from designs made by architect and urban designer Daniel Hudson Burnham, which was based on the U.S. Capitol. (Burnham also designed the Flatiron Building in New York City and Union Station in Washington, D.C.) The design for the Negros Oriental Capitol, borrowing heavily from Greek architecture, symbolizes courage and strength, and the white paint symbolizes purity. It still stands intact—but needs restoration.

Public art and utilities, too, are part of the built heritage. The sculpture and fountain in M.L. Quezon Park was designed by Italian sculptor Francesco Riccardo Monti, who made it right around the time architect Juan M. Arellano was building the Presidencia in 1937. Monti stayed in the Philippines from 1930 until his death in 1958. During his stay, he worked with local architects and sculptors on major projects commissioned by the government and private individuals. Several of Monti’s sculptures are part of Metro Manila’s landmarks. His statues can be seen in front of public buildings or plazas, while his relief work decorate many exterior and interior walls in heritage buildings. It stands intact.

Built heritage is not just about beautiful or significant historic buildings. It also includes small and modest buildings of the commercial sort, including ones that reflect the social conditions of working families and local business titans. Of the heritage commercial buildings around downtown Dumaguete, my favorites are the few remaining Art Deco buildings mostly around Perdices Street, as well as Surban Street. Most of them are in various state of disrepair or use—and these include Park Building and the Uymatiao Building, as well as the Uypitching Building along Colon that blends Art Deco with Chinese motifs. Art Deco, also called style moderne, was a movement in the decorative arts and architecture that originated in the 1920s and developed into a major style in western Europe and the United States during the 1930s—formed with the “intention to create a sleek and anti-traditional elegance that symbolized wealth and sophistication,” according to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, its “distinguishing features [being] simple, clean shapes, often with a ‘streamlined’ look, ornament that is geometric or stylized from representational forms; and unusually varied, often expensive materials.” Most of these buildings remain intact, but their style have been “diminished” by outer structures, or bad paint jobs.

Cathedrals and churches are some of the most beautiful—and preserved—examples of built heritage, but so are cemeteries. The Dumaguete Memorial Park is the most recently conceived, and utilized—but the smaller ones are more of interest to me. The Bogo public cemetery is within the embrace of the Memorial Park, and provides an interesting study of contrast. I used to love the Bagacay public cemetery for its chaos—but it has since undergone a facelift of sorts. The Daro Chinese cemetery is interesting for how it commands a lonely stretch of road within that barangay—but a small and separate cemetery within it is of utmost significance. The American Cemetery is one of the least well-known spots in Dumaguete, owing perhaps to the kind of grim reminder it brings about mortality, but also perhaps because of its secluded location inside the Chinese cemetery. It no longer has internment space, but the place still “charms” the occasional visitor with its wrought-iron gate beautifully covered by pink cadena de amor, and grounds shaded by full-grown mahogany trees and indian trees. Among the Americans buried here include a host of missionary teachers from Silliman University, such as Henry and Margaret Mack, T. S. Dodd, W. M. Baugh, Ila Smith-Munn, Cal Reed Cole Sr., Elena A. Cole, Cal Reed Cole Jr., Charlie Bell Cole Sr., Rev. Lapsley Armstrong McAfee, Robert Sherry Matheson, and Elliot Thomas Bell.

Are there any built heritage within Dumaguete City that gives us a reminder of World War II and the Japanese occupation of the town between 1942 and 1945? Nothing much remains in Dumaguete indicative of the occupation during that war, except one. The “pill box,” or defensive position, in Tugas is a remarkable piece of that historical time—easily seen by pedestrians as this strange “pyramid” while traversing Hibbard Avenue. It mostly puzzles people though. How many times have I gotten this question: “What is that?” And admittedly, for the longest time, I did not have a clear answer to give. The pill box is located about four blocks in-land from Lo-oc, near the North City Elementary School in Piapi, on the right hand side of Hibbard Avenue going north. It is located on private property, and it is not a preserved historical site.

Built heritage is a key to the understanding of our shared history in the community. It defines our origins. It enlightens us about who we are today. It gives us a sense of place, which in turn helps establish identity for the community—because they contribute to a sense of our connectedness to each other, which inspires community pride and a confidence of Dumaguete as “unique.” Most of all, when our local built heritage is properly preserved and promoted, it can stimulate interest about Dumaguete’s past, which can enrich the daily lives of Dumaguetnons.

To be continued...

[A significant source for information about built heritage for this article is the Office of Environment and Heritage website of New South Wales, Australia]

Labels: dumaguete, heritage, history, negros

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Tuesday, March 19, 2019

1:07 AM | The Campanario and the Paseo

Part 9 of the Dumaguete Heritage Series

The Campanario de Dumaguete as it stands today was built during the time of Fray Juan Felix de la Encarnacion who took charge of the Dumaguete parish between 1867 and 1879. More famously called the Bell Tower, it is set on the remains of the original southeastern watchtower originally built by Don Jose Manuel Fernandez de Septien, parish priest of Dumaguete, between 1755 and 1760.

There were originally four of them.

Each of these four watchtowers was made from stone and mortar, and each was mounted with cannons. The first watchtower would have been at the corner of Bishop Epifanio Surban St. and Perdices St., where the Bank of Philippine Islands is currently located. The second would have been at the corner of Surban St. and Katada St., the rear corner of COSCA. The third would have been at the corner of Katada St. and Colon St., at the corner of the fish terminal. And the fourth, and the only surviving watchtower, would be the current campanario—standing tall and proud after all these years, the very beacon of Dumaguete City.

The "ghost" towers in these photos are not fully representative of the original structures. They might have been two-storey structures, with no belfry. The "ghost tower" used here is taken from a photo of the Panglao watchtower.

They were the four corners of an ancient Spanish colonial fortress that surrounded the massive stone church and the convento built by Fr. Septien, which kept Dumaguete safe from the pirate raids from the south.

From church historian Fr. Roman Sagun Jr., we learn that “the convento was built from choice strong materials, which covered even the rear portion. This edifice, in which remnants of warfare can still be found in its original doorway, was constructed like a strong fort and ensured safety from any attack by pirates. It was also fortified by a wall over two meters in height from the outside, forming a large square in the center where the church and the convento were situated; there was also a large plaza where the inhabitants could take refuge in times of necessity.”

We also learn that “aside from constructing the church, the convento, the fortress, the watchtowers, and the contravalla, Fr. Septien also built bulwarks which were located at strategic positions on the beachfront of Dumaguete. All these were made of stone and were well secured, and they were utilized to keep watch on the coast and prevent any surprise pirate attack.”

From some strange unfurling fate, the campanario has withstood the test of time, even though the original watchtower it is set on is largely gone, its ruins becoming the foundation of Fr. Encarnacion’s project. It illustrates very well the caprices of history, the brutal march of time, and the attendant ravages of the elements.

History is easily vanished; I believe the campanario has only truly survived because it has come to transcend history—it has become an icon. As an example of built heritage, its fate—at least for now—is secure. But the fight for heritage preservation is always a generational story, and the battle will always be fought every time another generation comes of age.

Perhaps definitive of built heritage that has come to transform significantly Dumaguete is the Paseo de Rizal, or the Rizal Boulevard, and the pier. The boulevard was named after Jose Rizal, the national hero, who is said to have spent a few hours along the stretch to stroll before departing for Dapitan for his exile. It currently extends at a length of 967 meters, from the Press Club to the pier, including the extended promenade. The promenade follows the city’s shoreline, and is lined with the beautiful [formerly] private houses—the so-called sugar houses—of local hacenderos and the buildings of Silliman University.

When the latter was still Silliman Institute in the early years of the 20th century, it had become a popular school for many students from other places to matriculate in, and people from other parts of the country started arriving in droves in Dumaguete, which had no pier. To land in Dumaguete then, according to historian Caridad Aldecoa-Rodriguez, passengers had to be “carried over the shoulders of some husky cargadores from the boat to the shore to avoid becoming wet. This was a common sight at the beach in those times.”

By June 1919, Vicente Flagrante, the local district engineer, had finished the plans for a pier in Dumaguete, and an appropriation for P50,000 was approved, with succeeding appropriations coming until 1935.

It was the greatest improvement Dumaguete had ever undertaken at that time. Before the building of the pier, however, the construction of a boulevard running parallel to the seashore of Dumaguete was a stroke of genius for the town planners. It was designed to connect the provincial road with the port, and four principal streets of Dumaguete—now declared first-class roads—were joined with the boulevard by 1916.

The boulevard came at the height of infrastructure construction under the leadership of town mayor Señor Ramon Teves Pastor [who served from October 1912 to October 1916], which also saw the construction of Quezon Park in September 1916. Señor Pastor as town mayor should be credited for having largely shaped the Dumaguete that we know and love today.

His ancestral home—another heritage building which has seen various phases of extensions and repair over the decades but remains a heritage structure at heart—is at the corner of Real Street and Locsin Street, a magnificent white house clearly of vintage mold.

Every time I see this house, I wish Dumaguete remembered more fervently the memory of this patriarch: Señor Pastor, after all, was instrumental in shaping Dumaguete. Without him, the Dumaguete we know and love—paseo, pier, and park—would not have become that city at all.

To be continued…

Labels: dumaguete, heritage, history

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Friday, March 15, 2019

2:15 PM | Built Heritage as Repository of History

Part 8 of the Dumaguete Heritage Series

I never know what to make of Tanjay whenever I come to visit this city north of Dumaguete, an hour away by car. It’s a prosperous small city and I find it fascinating enough to have written two short stories set in it. It is also clear that its people take civic pride in the city as bastion of mavens, given the moniker it has come to embrace: “City of Professionals,” which sounds positively lofty, educated, sophisticated.

Local history gives us an even richer regard of the place. Tanjay is the oldest parish in Negros Oriental [the mission was established in 1580, and the parish became full-fledged in 1587].

When we take archaeology into consideration, we also learn that Tanjay was the site of an ancient maritime chiefdom of some importance in the Visayas in the period before the Spaniards came.

“Tanjay appears to have been the center of a series of economically and politically expanding regional polities, whose chiefs simultaneously controlled luxury good trade coming into the coastal port, and the river-based economy of lowland-upland exchange,” writes Laura L. Junker in Raiding, Trading, and Feasting: The Political Economy of Philippine Chiefdoms (1999), and suggests that its growth as a pre-colonial settlement is linked with the Tanjay chief’s increasing political power, themselves engaged thoroughly in production activities and trade, sponsoring crafts by skilled local artisans and becoming their patron.

[In the book, Junker also maps out the phases of pre-colonial civilization in Negros Oriental, from artifacts collected from archeological sites in Tanjay and nearby Bais, as well as Bacong and nearby Dumaguete: the Edjek Phase (1500-2000 BC), the Solamillo Phase (0-500 AD), the Aguilar Phase (500-1000 AD), the Santiago Phase (1100-1400 AD), the Osmena Phase (1400-1600 AD), and the Historic Phase (post-1600, in the early years of the Spanish colonial period)—all of them named after the properties the archaeological diggings were conducted. This gives the astounding insight that 2,000 years before the modern era, there was already a civilized culture in the island of Negros, then called Buglas.]

In Eufemio Patanñe’s The Philippines in the 6th to 16th Centuries (1996), we also learn that the Tanjay archaeological data suggests that the chiefdom founded at the mouth of the Tanjay River—the largest and only navigable river in Negros Oriental—was actually “strategically located,” the settlement small at first, but in time grew, “attracting migrants from upriver or from other less geographically favored islands,” with the “one major impetus for growth [being] trade, specifically, foreign trade…substantiated by excavations of Chinese porcelain represented by Sung, Yuan and early Ming trade pottery.” Patanñe admits there was scant evidence there was direct trade between China and Tanjay, “but certainly, by 1100 A.D. Chinese porcelain was present in Tanjay.”

And yet you don’t see any of that history—both the pre-colonial or Spanish colonial—manifested or preserved in Tanjay. No museums exist to exhibit the evidences of that pre-colonial chiefdom. No old houses preserved to give light of its rich sugar past, and no remains of the Spanish stronghold that made this one of the earliest Spanish settlements. In other towns—especially Bacong, Dauin, and Amlan—we still have standing churches that attest to that Spanish colonial history. Tanjay, oldest parish in Negros, has none of that.

What gives?

I asked a particular friend from Tanjay who comes from the Calumpang family [specific identity withheld upon request], thinking he would have answers since he is pursuing projects invested in the city’s local heritage efforts. Of the church, he says: “From what I was told, it was renovated in the 1960s when they tried to ‘upgrade and update’ everything to concrete. The old church, based on pictures and accounts of people who saw it, was made of adobe. The floors inside the church, instead of lapidas, had names of the faithful who helped the church through donations. I’ve always wanted to know why it has been redesigned this way, but no one seems to have concrete answers to give me. I once saw photos of the old church and it was beautiful. It had two belfries and [the design] was typical of its generation. The most recent wave of ‘damage’ was brought on by a parish priest who gave the main altar a garish facelift and had all the pillars of the interiors removed.”

Of heritage conservation, he commented: “Tanjay has had a hard time preserving its heritage. I don’t think it even does this now. [And] I have yet to find a direct answer to why this has been so.”

I can very well imagine a Tanjay with its heritage intact. I can imagine walking down its Rizal Street and strolling across heritage houses that tell the tale of its storied past. I can imagine going to its parish church and see reflected back to me 318 years of Spanish colonial history. I can imagine going to archaeological sites within the city, or to a local museum, and see documentation in shards of ancient pottery and china indicating the richness of pre-colonial Tanjay. None of those exist.

[Note: Tanjay parish priest Msgr. Glenn Corsiga is currently constructing a museum. He hopes to finish it before he will be transferred for another assignment next year. Information from Fr. Roman Sagun]

In Dumaguete, despite the enormous heritage work still left undone, we have at least a few scattered efforts, for the most part existing because a visionary a long time saw a need for conservation.

We remain grateful, for example, to visionaries like Hubert Reynolds, who was founder of the Silliman University Anthropological Museum—an institution he established partly to house local ethnological and archaeological artifacts dating as far back as 200 B.C. Reynolds was a fraternal worker of the Disciples of Christ who, due partly to the nature of his calling, was a wide traveler who took a deep interest in different cultures. When he came to Dumaguete, he contributed greatly to the local understanding of the various native cultures of the Philippines. Dr. Reynolds came to Silliman in 1964 with his wife Harriett, after finishing their doctorate degrees at Hartford Seminary Foundation in Connecticut. They arrived with a vast portfolio of research materials and scholarly writings that focused on the cultures of the Negritos, the Isnegs, and the Tausugs. What might be considered the highlight of all the Reynolds’ involvements in and contributions to Dumaguete is the establishment of the anthropology museum in 1970, which stands today as a treasure trove of memorabilia from the early years of Silliman, as well as the aforementioned archaeological finds.

We remain grateful to the Dumaguete parish for finding an icon in the campanario, still standing and giving us a slice of the distant past when Dumaguete was a constant place of pillage by pirates in the 19th century—and from this, we learn of Fr. Jose Manuel Fernandez de Septien built a fort with four watchtowers to stand guard against future raids, and of Fr. Juan Felix de la Encarnacion who built the now famous bell tower upon the ruins of one of those Septien watchtowers. [But what is up with that orange photo-bomber of a building behind it?]

We remain grateful to the families who own the sugar houses along the Rizal Boulevard, for endeavoring to preserve their beautiful architectural integrity, which speaks volumes of the Golden Age of Sugarlandia in Negros Oriental, even as they are being repurposed to fit more modern needs—a restaurant, a hotel, a café.

These things are what we call in heritage work as “built heritage.” Built heritage is easily the most recognizable and most visible of the lot: it includes, after all, man-made historic environments including houses, factories and commercial buildings, churches and mosques and other traditional places of worship, cemeteries, school buildings, government buildings, the local marketplaces, monuments and plazas and parks, bridges, even streets, roads, railways, and bridges. It also includes physically created places such as gardens, mining sites, and stock routes, as well as archaeological sites.

These things—particularly buildings—are a city’s most obvious historians, but also ironically also most mute. When they are able to tell their stories, though, we get a slice of the Dumaguete story in such rich historical details.

Take a look at the Du An Sim Building, for example, which takes up most of the eastern part of the block straddling Calle Ma. Cristina, Surban Street, and Locsin Street. It is one of my favorite old buildings in Dumaguete. It currently houses several shops, which have been around for quite some time, including Good Luck Store, which used to have the best collection of movies on VHS for rent in the city. [Good Luck Store was veritably my film school when I was of college age, and was devouring movies to fill in a cineaste education.] The shops in this building are always busy, but I’ve often wondered, whenever I find myself in this area of Dumaguete, what’s upstairs, or better yet, how the building began.

I love the building’s rounded corners, and its wooden windows, and its generous corner balconies [there are two]—something you don’t see a lot in old buildings here. I can imagine the family that constructed this building, assembling in the balconies to watch parades or just the people of the town hustling by on ordinary days. [One balcony overlooks the wet market.] For a long time, I didn’t know when it was built, and I thought perhaps that it was probably in the 1940s.

When I posted a photo of the building on Facebook, captioning it with my rumination regarding its architecture and history, City Sports Coordinator Ike Xavier Villaflores contacted me, and over coffee told me a bit of family lore.

Mr. Villaflores belongs to the Alo clan, an old Dumaguete family known for its expertise in carpentry and whose patriarch in the 1930s and 1940s was one Generoso Alo Villaflores, or Popo, as he was fondly called by friends and family. [Popo was one of the local artisans responsible for building many iconic structures in Dumaguete, including the Silliman Church and the Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria.] The Alo family owned the property fronting the Du An Sim building, where the Uypitching Building now stands, and Popo used to set out to do regular carpentry work at the Cathedral grounds before it was burned down in the Great Dumaguete Fire that consumed the area—including the public market—in 1953, which started at a store under the proprietorship of Nirmela Nanikram, in what is now MetroBank.

During the war, what is now the Du An Sim building was just a haphazard collection of wooden shops. The head of the Du An Sim family, who was very close to Popo, asked for his help: the Japanese had been occupying Dumaguete for some time now, and the later years of the war proved hard, especially for people of Chinese ancestry, and he was planning to evacuate the town for the mountains with the rest of the family—but he didn’t know where to entrust his accumulated wealth in bills and coins. Popo suggested burying the money in a nearby field—what is now the EROS Building, which currently houses Pag-IBIG Fund. In the darkness of one quiet night, the two proceeded to bury the entire lot, and the Du An Sim family evacuated the next day. Mr. Du An Sim unfortunately died during the war, and when his widow and the rest of the family later came back to the city, they arrived almost penniless, and their plight aggravated soon after by their property being engulfed in the Big Fire of 1953. Popo, according to Mr. Villaflores, guided the widow to the hiding place where her husband’s money was buried—and out of that, Mr. Villaflores told me, came the funds that built the Du An Sim building we see today. Popo was foreman in the building of that project, completed in 1954.

The Du An Sim Building tells a story significant to the historical development of Dumaguete. So do many of the old buildings here—although most of us have learned to become deaf to what stories they have to tell. Preserving them, and then digging up their history, is one way to appreciate them, and one way to chart Dumaguete history. I look at the Du An Sim Building now: it occupies a choice spot in the oldest section of Dumaguete. I can see its potential, if it’s spruced up and restored even just a bit; as an architectural piece, as a historical marker, as a vibrant commercial center, it would be a jewel.

To be continued…

Labels: dumaguete, heritage, history, negros

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Monday, February 25, 2019

10:40 PM | Mapping Out Culture and Heritage

Part 7 of the Dumaguete Heritage Series

What makes Dumaguete unique? When you are asked by a visitor this question, your answer—usually haphazardly arrive at—will be a compendium of things you believe are the features that make this city inimitably itself.

“Dumaguete is the Rizal Boulevard,” you would say. Or: “The campanario.” Or: “Jo’s Chicken Inato.” Or: “Silliman University.” Or: “One big tuyok.” Or: “The Tiempos.”

It can also be about identity. “What makes it a university town?” you will be asked. Or: “Why is it the ‘city of gentle people’?” Or: “What makes it the cultural center of the south?” We do love to fling about us these tags, often using them to market ourselves and this place—but these tags actually come with history and tradition, and they were coined because they meant something. But would we know, in fact, those hidden histories and the complexities of their suggestions?

When we come to confront ourselves with these things, we are essentially doing a kind of “cultural mapping.”

There’s a reason why it’s called a map. A map is an emblem, a representation of selected characteristics of a place; the geographic kind is usually drawn on a flat surface, a cartography, presenting information about a particular place in a simple, usually visual, way—and in the process teaching us about the world it represents.

A map educates us very quickly, and in convenient shorthand, about a specific place in assorted schemes of things, and it also provides, very quickly, a sense of direction, a sense of “where to go.”

When we talk of “cultural mapping,” we are invoking exactly the same things. First, it is a process where we come to identify various heritage resources of a specific locality, usually for purposes of conservation and development. And second, it is a process where we enable ourselves to understand and share that culture, which can lead to a re-thinking of local history, and which can finally be used to promote creativity and development. And both are possible only because the “cultural map” that has been assembled eventually provides the data, the information, and the numbers—identifying resources that can be used as indicators for social development.

The objectives of a cultural map is to identify the distinct heritage resources of a community, especially in comparison to another community, to thoroughly understand and properly record heritage resources for future reference, and to generate interest on heritage resources among users [and even non-users] of heritage. Thus a cultural map aims to name and list, which leads to a helpful inventory, and which can eventually be utilized to engender appreciation, and hopefully preservation.

In other words, you simply cannot appreciate something you have not identified.

The Dumaguete Presidencia is the best example of this. For years, the city had lost track of its architectural history, and the building itself—simply because it was seen as a mere government building—withstood slapdash “renovations” that altered most of its original beauty, and through the years, it shrank into the shadows of irrelevance, even considered by so many Dumaguetnons as an ugly building surrounded by an ugly parking lot with no redeeming features.

Then somebody identified it as a building designed in 1936 by no less than Juan M. Arellano, arguably the greatest of all Filipino architects. This made it distinct from all other presidencia from around the region, and even the country. It suddenly had historical, and aesthetic, importance.

That importance has since been properly recorded and mapped, and on March 6, it will be publicly declared by no less than the National Museum of the Philippines as an “important cultural property.”

And so now we see the Presidencia with a new eye, with keener interest, seeing it finally as veritably an icon of Dumaguete City.

What a fantastic change of perception it has undergone! And such an arc we see of its changing fortunes—essentially a story of riches to rags, and back to riches again. If the Presidencia were a teleserye, we would be rooting for it as the underdog that has won.

Cultural heritage is a fascinating thing to map. What is it exactly? A short way of explaining it could be this: it is anything of value from the past that provides identity to the present and inspires the future generation—which makes its importance “timeless.” The cultural heritage of a place is significant to it in terms of not only the historical, but also the architectural, the aesthetic, and the spiritual—it defines a social value encompassing all of these things. Traditionally, cultural heritage is classified into five distinct categories: intangible heritage, built heritage, natural heritage, movable heritage, and creative industries and occupations.

Intangible heritage can include a locality’s festivals, songs and music, dances, locally developed technologies, local sports and games, rituals, literature, culinary arts, language, healing arts, folk beliefs, even jokes of local vintage. Part of this is also what we call “secret knowledge,” a set of information springing from a locality’s specificity, which has helped its people deal with the way they function in their lives. We call this “mga tinuohan.”

Built heritage can include churches and mosques and other traditional places of worship, school buildings, government buildings, the local marketplaces, plazas and parks, bridges, heritage houses, even streets and roads.

Natural heritage can include plants and animals endemic to the locality, mountains and volcanoes, valleys and hills, forests and woods, rocks and minerals, caves, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, beaches, and the underwater world, even rice fields.

Movable heritage can include the paintings and other artworks of local artists, the documents and books of its notable citizens, photos and other forms of memorabilia, local costumes, local weaponry, local furniture, local equipment and machinery, local crafts, musical instruments, and work implements that are unique to the place, or at least unique in a vital way. This type of heritage also includes personalities, the notable people who call a locality home, or at least the place of their roots. This also includes religious groups that are peculiar of the locality—and in Dumaguete’s case, that could be Father Eleuterio Tropa’s sect called the Lamplighters, also infamously called Spaceship 2000, which reached a peak of popularity in the 1990s, before Tropa died in 1993.

Creative industries and occupations as heritage can be considered the practical side to cultural production, and it includes local firms and companies involved in publishing, advertising, architecture, crafts making, furniture design, fashion design, software design, film and video production, live and recorded music production, TV and radio and Internet broadcasting, performing arts and related entertainment, and avenues that sell and display visual arts and antiques, such as galleries and museums and antique shops.

Just a mere consideration of all these types of heritage will make you see that these are the things that actually make a place’s singular identity, connecting culture very significantly to the local economy.

But a cultural map also identifies the condition of each specific heritage—whether it is existing, whether it is in good condition or deteriorating, or whether it is in fact dead. Cultural mapping then is a valuable tool for identifying a community’s cultural strengths. Identifying a heritage that is “deteriorating,” for example, can only happen if people come together to do a cultural map—and properly diagnose its condition, hopefully initiating a recovery. A cultural map, in the words of journalist Glynda Descuatan, is “our own investment on our identity.” We do this, and we set a foundation for future generations to reference.

To quote Dessa Quesada-Palm, “This process poses challenges that can further the discussion about our local heritage, which can create more research about it, and which can mobilize more people to share information, as well as more people to eventually promote it.” But it is a challenge, indeed—and there’s so much work to be done, and we can only hope that local stakeholders will not get tired whenever they are presented with an opportunity to deepen the work of local heritage.

I remember Ms. Descuatan telling us once that in creating a map of local culture and heritage, we bring in “our experiences, our resources, our knowledge, and our journey as residents of Dumaguete, and how this city has influenced us in how we do things.” She said that any effort at cultural mapping is “a huge first step to integrate [heritage] into a development plan for Dumaguete,” and it can only succeed through collaboration. “The task is daunting,” she continued, “but it is an exciting task, and it can fuel our enthusiasm—but we need to realize that it requires the absolute seriousness of research, an incredible task to do so as to come up with the most credible plans.”

Today, in Dumaguete, there is a significant number of cultural workers willing to be champions of local heritage. It took a long time—“Perhaps collectively we thought, like many others, that heritage was useless amidst rapid development and a consumerist lifestyle,” City Councilor Manny Arbon has reasoned—but there is now a significant push. These cultural workers are passionate, even if they are not paid for it. [Hopefully though that can change.] But like what Ms. Descuatan has said, there is indeed a fount of enthusiasm now. People have answered the call, because they feel this has to be done today.

Mr. Arbon, in forging the resolution to create a Heritage Council in 2017, says, “Heritage is what defines the people—past and present. A growing city like ours cannot afford to forget its heritage. Hence, the need for a Heritage Council to serve as the conscience of the community. Ambitious perhaps, but necessary in these times.”

He continues: “Knowing who or what your community will make it even more cohesive in pursuing development programs. We become more collectively aware, hence we become more deliberate in our ways yet also tolerant of differences. I also believe preserving heritage makes a community proud of its beginnings and its potentials, and at the same time makes their kind of living meaningful and worth passing on.”

To be continued…

Labels: dumaguete, heritage

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Wednesday, February 13, 2019

3:31 PM | A Hopeful Start for Heritage

Part 6 of the Dumaguete Heritage Series

The truth of the matter is—and this has been the very heart of my argument since this series of articles on local heritage started last month—Dumaguete is a city rich of history, of heritage, and of culture. It is in fact a city that has largely been shaped in that regard.

Imagine the Dumaguete that you love right now—and I can bet that none of you will think of it without any regard of any of the following: the beautiful Rizal Boulevard, the historic campanario, the stately Silliman Hall, the bountiful nature of the adjacent Bohol Sea as well as the neighboring towns, the vibrant art and culture that has produced two national artists: Edith Tiempo as National Artist for literature and Eddie Romero as National Artist for cinema. And if we are to go even further, two National Scientists as well: Clara Y. Lim-Sylianco for biochemistry and Angel C. Alcala for marine biology. How magnificent for one small city to produce such giants!

These are all instances of local history, heritage, and culture. Without all or any of these, Dumaguete would not have been a draw, would have just been a regular Philippine town devoid of magic and heart.

And yet in any consideration of development for the city, these are the things that are easily scrapped and forgotten.

Consider the many historical and ancestral houses we have in the city that are slowly being torn down and redeveloped, to become nondescript office buildings without character. Consider that we have not done a full cultural mapping of the place, which is always the first step to any attempt at heritage conservation. Consider that most of these things are not appreciated by so many locals, simply because there is no reminder nor incentive to do just that.

But there is a hopeful start. It is as of this moment quite inchoate, but nonetheless it is a start. One of the first things that Mayor Ipe Remollo did in his recent term as head of the LGU was to constitute, after a resolution passed by City Councilor Manuel Arbon, a City Heritage Council—the first of its kind in the city in an official capacity in all of its history, the lack of which had been such a puzzle to consider, given our vaunted love for Dumaguete as a city of culture.

Executive Order No. 2 of 2018, signed by Mayor Remollo that year, acknowledges that “there are a number of valuable and existing sites, properties, buildings, institutions, books, and cultural practices and traditions in the City of Dumaguete that are worth preserving, rehabilitating, or protecting for posterity’s sake,” and that “there is a need to preserve such heritage in order to secure the identity of Dumaguete City for generations yet unborn, especially in the present age of rapid socio-economic development and cultural diversity as these define the unique image of the city.”

This is consistent with Republic Act 7160, in relation to the State policy to foster the preservation and enrichment of a Filipino national culture, under Article XIV of the 1987 Constitution, and with this Dumaguete has proclaimed a very real need for the City Government to have a “Cultural Heritage Council.”

The founding members of that council include Dr. Earl Jude Cleope as Director and yours truly as Deputy, together with Dr. Angel C. Alcala, Dr. T. Valentino Sitoy Jr., the late Justice Venancio D. Aldecoa Jr., Rev. Fr. Roman Sagun Jr., Ms. Jacqueline V. Antonio, Hon. Manuel R. Arbon, Mr. Justin A. Bulado, Engr. Leonides P. Caro, Mr. Nick Ian Cornelia, Architect Zorich D. Guia, Prof. Regan P. Jomao-as, Mr. Peter Macabinguil, Prof. Carlos M. Magtolis Jr., Mr. Leo Mamicpic, Ms. Dessa Quesada Palm, Mr. Camilo E. Pangan, and Engr. Edwin C. Quirit.

We have so much work to do [and in the next articles in this series, we will try to delineate how much work is cut out for us]. I’ve also quickly learned however that in government most things do take their own sweet time to come to fruition, often because there’s bureaucracy and accountability to face. Patience is a virtue in, but when you work hard at it long enough, the rewards can be gratifying.

One of the first projects that Jacqueline Antonio took on when she put on the mantle of City Tourism Officer in 2016 was to make sure that all Dumaguete streets were properly labeled with street signs. “Because how can you expect guests and tourists to go around when they can’t even tell where they are, even with a map?” she told me once. She and her office proceeded to map out all street corners—even including the ones deeper into the western side of the city—and inventoried what remained of the old street signs, taking note what needed a new structure and what needed only a few repairs. It took time, but finally, at the tail-end of 2018, the new street signs are out in its first phase of installations, in a project worth P600,000. The second phase will consider the inner streets of Dumaguete.

A project of the Heritage Council, under the auspices of the Tourism Office, is the Hugkat Journal, its official publication, which seeks to document all manner of articles and research on local history, heritage, culture, and the arts. [“Hugkat” is the Binisaya word for “to unearth” or “to trace,” and is related to kabilin or “heritage”.] Its current editor is Dr. Cleope, with yours truly as associate editor. This, too, is taking some time to take shape—but the first volume is already out, containing particular histories of Dumaguete City by Fr. Sagun [on Padre Mariano Bernad’s history of Dumaguete in 1895], Prof. Magtolis [on the early Protestant endeavors in Negros Oriental, focusing on the Malahay Brothers and Angel Sotto], Prof. Caridad Aldecoa-Rodriguez [on Dumaguete during World War II], Dr. Cleope [with a list of presidentes, municipal and city mayors of Dumaguete from 1901 to 2001], and Prof. Victor Emmanuel H. Enario [on the political career of Mayor Jose Pro Teves, 1948-1978]. At least two more volumes are forthcoming in 2019.

Dr. Cleope, meanwhile, is also soon spearheading a city-wide cultural mapping project, which he has already began in a smaller scale with his senior high students at Silliman University, where he is a history professor as well as the Vice President for Academic Affairs. A cultural map is a vital necessity, a tool that helps identify what constitutes a place’s heritage in terms of five markers: movable heritage, natural heritage, built heritage, intangible heritage, as well as local creative industries and occupations. Once verified and properly documented, it serves as a blueprint for specific pursuits for conservation.

A precursor to this effort has also already happened—although in lightning mode. Heritage Council member Dessa Quesada Palm and YATTA have undertaken a project for the National Commission for Culture and the Arts [NCCA] titled Mugna. In 2017, they invited several prominent cultural stakeholders in the city to do a one-day cultural mapping project.

“A couple of years ago, the NCCA set a very brave question,” she told the participants then. “How can you really say that art and culture has helped economic goals, has helped in poverty alleviation, has helped in disaster risk management, and others? What has the arts and culture done so far for social development?” The bottom-line, she said, is that whatever relevance had been identified, it needed indicators.

Mugna as a project sprang from that need—this one specific to what was then the Negros Island Region [now defunct], with the Oriental side focusing on the cultural heritage of Dumaguete, Bais, Amlan, and Bayawan. (The Occidental side focused on Calatrava, Kabankalan, Murcia, Bago, and Talisay.) The focus for Mugna in 2017 was to identify and assess what is in local communities that we needed to celebrate, culturally-speaking, and how they could be used as indicators for social development.

That meant, for Dumaguete at least, identifying the “rhythm” of the city, identifying what exactly is the inspiration of being [or becoming] a Dumaguete artist, and identifying what has been created locally that is authentically inspired by Dumaguete.

That last point, for example, is a vital consideration. An example: go to a local souvenir shop, and chances are that part of its inventory would include products extolling Boracay or Bohol—and often very rarely Dumaguete. “How can we create what is really from Dumaguete?” Ms. Quesada-Palm asked.

Observation was also made that in preparing for local festivals, many organizers and performers would hire trainers from other places like Cebu, infusing into the local festivities rhythms that are distinctly of another place—which ultimately affects local culture. How many local festivals have absorbed the familiar sounds and beats of Cebu’s Sinulog, for example, and have inculcated that into the making of their “own” [but ultimately inauthentic] sounds and beats of their respective town’s cultural revelries?

The antidote was this, at least for the Dumaguete participants of Mugna: first, to find what exactly is the rhythm of Dumaguete, and second, once that rhythm has been identified, to find out how best to infuse it to make an authentic sound for the Sandurot. The brainstorming that occurred during that Mugna session, which later on spilled into ensuing workshops with local trainers and performers—moderated by experts sent in by the NCCA—resulted to moving the Sandurot from its former November perch to September, and with the festival taking on a specific motif, both in terms of the visual and the aural, which considered more fully Dumaguete’s history, and finally centering on the local natural heritage of pulang lapuk.

Ultimately, the goal is to find a vital link between heritage preservation and risk reduction management, and environmental concerns, and socio-economic responsibilities and concerns. What is the role of local artists in terms of any of these so-called “more pressing” concerns? That is the question we have only begun to answer. And we have only started just now—but better now than never.

To be continued…

Labels: art and culture, dumaguete, heritage

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Monday, February 04, 2019

10:54 PM | The Ways Into Heritage

Part 5 of the Dumaguete Heritage Series

In 2004, when that fateful December tsunami bore down on Indonesia and many other countries around the Indian Ocean and proceeded to exact a death toll so high that the tragedy has come to be listed as the tenth largest natural disaster in history, something of heritage proved to be an uncanny savior for many people in Simeulue, an island in Indonesia near West Aceh.

Stanley Widianto, writing for Foreign Policy, writes of it: “The cries of ‘Smong! Smong!,’ the local word for a tidal wave, rang from the coastline to the hills as soon as the shaking that preceded the disaster had finished. As they heard it, the islanders, mostly from the Nias people, began heading to the mountains, crying out ‘Smong!’ in turn as news spread.” The result: “The disaster cost more than 150,000 lives in Indonesia,” Widianto continues, “[but] only seven were lost on Simeulue—about a seventh, proportional to population, of the losses in other Indonesian areas.”

What saved them?

Widianto quotes a Simeulue local who explained the significance: “The islanders had heard a song about smong ever since they were small, passed down by parents and grandparents after the island was hit by a tsunami in 1907. The song’s message was, ‘When there’s a strong earthquake, followed by a low tide, don’t go near the coast to collect the fish on the shore, because there will be a [tsunami]. When that happens, run to the mountains to save yourselves. Take your kids, parents, and women to run away from the beach. Yell out, smong, smong.”

In other words, what saved the people of Simeulue was localized knowledge that sprung from their heritage and culture—a song they have been singing for close to a hundred years which gave them the instinctive edge, and which eventually led to their survival.

Localized knowledge like this is part of an intangible heritage we call “secret knowledge,” essentially these parcels of wisdom we’ve come to inherit from the generations that came before us. Some of them we have derisively called “old wives’ tales,” because they seem to always fly against knowledge we’ve learned from the present, and usually of Western import, and always coming to us packaged as “modern thinking.”

That old tale from your grandmother, for example, about eating chicken soup to help fight colds? This was something laughed at by the medical establishment as nothing more than fanciful thinking—until medical journals began suggesting that chicken soup might actually have anti-inflammatory effects that can actually help alleviate symptoms of upper respiratory tract infections.

What am I saying? That heritage is part of the story we’ve threaded as a culture and as a people, and this tapestry has sustained us for ages—and we should not be surprised that, out of the blue, it is the one thing that can save us from some impending disaster, like the people of Simeulue and their traditional tsunami song. And yet much of heritage—seen as “old” and often misunderstood because it is “intangible”—remains at risk for many communities all over the world, and Dumaguete is not immune from this lack of foresight. Sometimes the effort at conservation confounds most people. I understand this. Because how does one exactly begin, and what are the benefits?

We don’t have to look far to see some successful stories.

There is the example of Silay City, which at the height of Negros Island’s sugar bounty, had reasons to call itself “the Paris of Negros.” Before the Second World War, many of Negros Occidental’s richest landholding families—the Ledesmas, the Hofilenas, the Locsins, among many others—built lofty mansions along the narrow streets of this enclave near Bacolod. Many of these houses were built in the 1920s and 1930s, some at the turn of the last century, and all of them saw the local high society of that time enjoying the heights of their gilded age. After the war and in the aftermath of its horrors, there was considerable decline from the glittering glory that Silay once enjoyed, and many of these old houses were soon abandoned by the descendants of these families who perhaps saw better opportunities living in Manila, or better yet, abroad.

But some locals saw relevance in pursuing heritage preservation for the old homes, which were fast becoming victims to the ravages of nature, termites, and time. One of the first to recognize this was Ramon ‘Monching’ Hofileña, dubbed the “father of heritage conservation” in Silay, and who started opening his family’s ancestral house—now the Manuel Severino Hofileña Heritage House, built in 1934—in 1962, marking it as the first heritage house in the small city to be opened to the public. After a stint in New York in the 1970s, Hofileña returned home and took it upon himself to restore and protect what he deemed were the distinct cultural heritage of Negros. Soon he was organizing an annual, and long-running, cultural tour of the province, with Silay as the crown jewel of that tour. Today, Silay is officially a heritage zone as declared by the National Historical Commission of the Philippines.

PHOTO CREDIT: ELMER NEV VALENZUELA

The efforts at heritage preservation in Silay was very much a grassroots movement, initiated by some of the sons and daughters of these landed families who must have thought that tearing down these grand, though decaying, structures was not exactly the right way to go—and proceeded to convince others of their class that, in fact, owning up to this legacy was perhaps the key to unlocking a treasure they still couldn’t see yet.

Today, these heritage houses, numbering about thirty, have become the engines fueling the local economy of Silay, much like Vigan. Some have become museums, others have become charming boutique hotels as well as bed-and-breakfasts, all of them embracing the past and reusing it for contemporary purposes. Only belatedly did the local government really get into the act. In 2015, the Silay mayor announced a landmark ordinance that more or less guaranteed the continuance of heritage efforts, giving the owners of heritage structures, “who properly maintain and adaptively reuse their properties,” 100-percent tax exemption.

In Cebu, on the other hand, deep in the heart of Colon, one can find the so-called “Jesuit House,” built by 18th century Jesuits stationed in Cebu, which has become a marvelously restored structure and is presently a museum, itself a well-curated and managed affair.

But the most extraordinary thing about the Jesuit House is that it is located inside a warehouse, a bodega that is still very much in use, the bustle of business coinciding perfectly with the serenity of preserving artifact!

PHOTO CREDIT: ASHFAQ AHMED FOR GULF NEWS

The story goes that the old priestly enclave built in 1730 was soon abandoned when the Jesuits were being suppressed in Europe in the 17th century and soon their number was expelled from Spanish territories, which included the Philippines. The house in Cebu was sold off, and changed hands so many times, each time losing much of its distinctive structures. Soon it was lost in the bowels of the warehouse constructed around it—until the father of the present owner was approached by historians, who floated the idea that what was inside his bodega was in fact structure with important architectural significance. Reportedly, the old businessman did not at all care—but his son, now the present owner, did; after the passing away of the patriarch, the son saw in it a perfect opportunity to combine business interest as well as his growing interest in heritage.

And so, the bodega still hums with activity, with workers coming in and out managing what goods were being stockpiled for the family business. And within that humming is a perfectly functioning museum, which offers scheduled tours through the fascinating labyrinth of 17th century Spanish colonial architecture in the Philippines. It also has an extensive souvenir shop that mimics how an alleyway in old Cebu might have looked like. The Jesuit House in Cebu demonstrates that heritage preservation and commerce do not necessarily cancel each other out.

But to cite an example of heritage preservation done on a mass scale in the name of urban development—and quite successfully at that—Iloilo City has become the very byword for the local heritage movement. The city is one of the oldest in the country, becoming a major trading port in the Visayas in the 19th century, and contributing much to the culture of the country. With that of course sprang architecture scattered everywhere in the metropolis that reflected the riches and conditions of the times, and today collectively they stand as heritage structures much of which Iloilo is repurposing in pursuit of a goal that “[their] past is [their] present.”

PHOTO CREDIT: BLUPRINT

The local government has moved in decisive ways to complement the historical—even recently moving the old grandstand used for its Dinagyang Festival to a new location facing the Iloilo River to revive the old Sunburst Park, a thing of beauty. There is a concerted effort to revive the Calle Real, which collects along its stretch the best period architecture from the 1920s to the 1940s, making it a rival to Manila’s Escolta. But while Escolta seems bent on getting rid of one heritage building after another, subjecting each one to the force of the wrecking ball, Iloilo’s various conservation groups are determined to uphold what they consider as their city’s roots and birthright.

The project of rejuvenating Calle Réal hatched in 2017 included restoring 26 vintage building façades, covering the sidewalks with pavers and installing old-style street lamps, relocating sidewalk vendors to viable locations, and ‘bundling’ or relocating electric and telephone cables. Today, much of the project is a success story, prompting the National Historical Commission of the Philippines in 2018 to consider this highly urbanized city as a “model heritage zone” for the country. There are three distinct stakeholders in these three stories: the local government, the local conservationists among the citizens, and the business people and families who own much of these heritage buildings. What Silay, Cebu, and Iloilo have demonstrated is that the forging of a common interest among the three is possible, and can only be good for the city in the long run.

Isn’t it high time for Dumaguete to consider this very forging?

To be continued...

Labels: dumaguete, heritage, history

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Monday, January 20, 2025

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Sunday, April 07, 2019

6:49 PM | Myopia as a Challenge in Heritage

Friday, March 29, 2019

9:03 PM | The Built Heritage Around Dumaguete

Tuesday, March 19, 2019

1:07 AM | The Campanario and the Paseo

Friday, March 15, 2019

2:15 PM | Built Heritage as Repository of History

Monday, February 25, 2019

10:40 PM | Mapping Out Culture and Heritage

Wednesday, February 13, 2019

3:31 PM | A Hopeful Start for Heritage

Monday, February 04, 2019

10:54 PM | The Ways Into Heritage