Old Makati’s Bailes de los Arcos

 

 

Makati gets into the June picture because it celebrates its two fiestas on June 29, feast of Apostles Peter and Paul, and June 30 feast of the Nuestra Señora dela Rosa. These have been the patronal triumvirate of Makati since its foundation by the Jesuits in the 1600s.

 

 

On the first day the dance is to a Tagalog ballad in honor of Sta. Peter and Paul; on the second day it’s to a Tagalog madrigal in honor of the Virgin of the Rose, a Marian image from Acapulco that was brought in 1718 to the Sts. Peter and Paul Church by Jesuit Fr. Juan Delgado.

 

 

Panatang Sayaw

 

The Panatang Sayaw or the Bailes de los Arcos (Dance of the Arches) is an old and charming tradition in Barangay Poblacion, Makati that has been practiced since the 19^th century.  It is a ritual of praise and thanksgiving to the Sts. Peter and Paul and the Virgen dela Rosa.

 

 

As highlight of the fiesta, people gather in the acacia tree-shaded plaza facing the 17^th century Church of Sts. Peter and Paul after the morning High Mass and procession.

 

 

Nine young maidens sing and dance the two-hour Tagalog ballad in front of the carrozas bearing the images of their patronal triumvirate. 

 

 

Fiesta authority Dr. Alejandro Roces explained that the baile has three parts: the dicho, trono and awit. Both music and dance are ancient to Makati’s heritage and the charm of the pageant is in its very archaic formality.

 

 

The Dicho is the opening prayer consisting of simultaneous chants. The Trono is the singing of the prayer with musical accompaniment from a brass band.

 

 

The Awit is a combination of prayer, dance and song by the nine young ladies clad in pink and blue dresses.

 

 

Moreover, the Awit has two parts. The first is a song and dance of praise for the Virgen dela Rosa. The dancers hold pink and blue arcos or boughs. The second awit is a song and dance for Sts. Peter and Paul. This time the dancers use rhythmic castanets clicking to the beat.

 

 

According to Lourdes Policarpio, it is gratifying to note that such a precious piece of musical heritage has not been lost amidst the din of modern music composed for the present-day Mass.

 

 

The Nine Virgins 

 

 

 

According to Roces, not just any girl can be a zagala. In the olden days, only fair-skimmed girls of good reputation and virgins, were chosen.

 

 

Policarpio reveals that tradition has it that the nine maidens chosen by the community should be virgins. There is a belief that should any of the young maidens be a non-chaste lady or her family will meet a misfortune or the town will be stricken by a natural calamity. 

 

  

 

The rites of the Bailes de los Arcos have many elements of folk peity. Many parents and even the young participants of bailes had made a panata or vow to the Virgen de la Rosa and Saints Peter and Paul for various intentions.

 

  

For generation the Panatang Sayaw has been under the care of the Atilon family, with Linda Atilon Reyes as the current caretaker.

 

 Information sources:

Nuestra Senora del la Rosa and her Young Dancing Maidens by Lourdes Policarpio

Old Makati and the Bailes de los Arcos by Alejandro Roces

 

Click Part I – Church of Nuestra Señora de Gratia, Part II – Guadalupe’s San Nicholasi, Part III –Sampiro de Makati,  Part IV -Old Makati’s Bailes de los Arcos, Part VI – Nielson Tower, Part VII –The Manila American Cemetery, Part VIII - Reposo Street Makati

Nielson Tower

 

Before the Ninoy Aquino International Airport  there was Nielson Field, the first principal airport of Manila from 1937 to 1947. Standing still between what used to be the two runways is the former control tower and passenger station –the Nielson Tower. It was in this building where passengers showed their passport and gathered their luggages.

 

 

Since 1996, the tower is home to Filipinas Heritage Library (FHL). A tour to this historic air terminal can be arranged through FHL.

 

 

Nielson Tower

 

Not to many people know that the Philippines is one of the first countries to have an international airport in this part of the world.

 

Cecile Ingusan of FHL gave us an informative tour of Nielson Tower. According to Cecile, the art-deco inspired building was wittily designed like an airplane, but this is obvious only from the air. The entry way and ticketing offices were the body of the airplane, the waiting lounges for the passengers were the wings, and the tower itself was a cockpit.

 

 

We ascended a spiral staircase to reach the historic tower room where the news about the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 was first heard in the Philippines. The tower room now serves as a reading room and conference venue.

 

Prior to Filipinas Heritage Library, the Nielson Tower houses the Nielson Tower Club and Restaurant which was marked with the ambience of the Thirties. That era was described as a sung happy time which historian Nick Joaquin fondly called peace time. The restaurant tried to capture the “peace time” era through the décor, staff uniform, and cuisine.  

 

 

Nielson Field

 

The original Nielson Field is described as “located on a hard tract of land jutting from rice fields, magnificently visible from the air and allowing clear approaches from all sides.” It came to be known as Nielson Airport after its principal investor and builder, Laurie Reuben. Nielson, an American stockbroker.

 

Today, Nielson Field is simply Makati Central Business District. The old runways are Ayala Avenue and Paseo de Roxas.

 

 

Nielson Field itself took six months to build on an area of 42 hectares in San Pedro, Makati. One thousand men worked on the runways alone, onto which 80,000 gallons of asphalt were poured.

 

Philippine Herald correspondent Juan P. Lopez wrote in June 16, 1937: “the airdrome itself is on a Php. 100,000 strip of hard land, and it is one of the fastest drying-out tracts. The entire enterprise represents an investment of one million pesos, but many thousands more are coming, after the inauguration, to complete the construction of the powerful radio signaling system, customs and quarantine facilities, doctor’s sheds, and aerial detection finders capable of embracing a radio-communicating range of 7,000 miles, supplemented by radio beacons powerful enough to nullify all hazards due to poor atmospheric conditions.”  

 

 

The First Airline Companies

 

The two airlines companies operating in 1937 were the Iloilo-Negros Air Express Company (INAEC) and the Philippine Air Taxi Company (PATCO), which more or less followed the route of mining businessmen throughout the country.

 

 

PATCO, flying Bellanca monoplanes, began because of the Philippine’s gold boom in the ‘30s. It stopped operations in 1940, and one of its owners, Colonel Andres Soriano, acquired the franchise and formed Philippine Air Lines, whose first flights to Baguio and Paracale took place in 1941.

 

 

Filipinas Heritage Library

 

Today, Neilson Tower houses the Filipinas Heritage Library. The library has an extensive collection of Filipiniana materials. It is a treasure trove of over 2,000 volumes on rare Philippine publications printed before 1946, the oldest dating to 1609 and of over 13,000 volumes of contemporary books covering an extensive array of subjects relevant to the Philippines and the Filipino, with focus on history, culture, art, literature and the social sciences.

 

 

According to Cecile, the collection was housed at the Ayala Museum before it was moved to Nielson Tower in 1996. In 2001, UNESCO awarded Nielson Tower with the Asia-Pacific Cultural Heritage Award for it adaptive reuse and remarkable conversion of an airport to a library. Gota de Leche and the Far Eastern University also received this prestigious recognition in 2003 and 2005, respectively.

 

 

Near the entry way is Libros Filipinos, a specialty bookshop that houses an extensive selection of Philippine publication, multimedia products and merchandise.

 

 

 

Included in the non-book collection of FHL is the Himig Collection. This “library of music” has more than 1,000 phonograph records covering a variety of Philippine recordings dating from as early as the 1900s.

 

 

The Library also has an in-house photo gallery that exhibits black and white photography called the Alcove Perspective. With its elegant ambience, the library also serves as a convenient venue for conferences, meetings, and special events. 

 

Click Part I – Church of Nuestra Señora de Gratia, Part II – Guadalupe’s San Nicholasi, Part III –Sampiro de Makati,  Part IV -Old Makati’s Bailes de los Arcos, Part VI – Nielson Tower, Part VII –The Manila American Cemetery, Part VIII - Reposo Street Makati

When the Calesa Rule the Streets of Manila

 

A century ago, clip-clopping along the major arteries of Manila were wooden horse-drawn rigs called calesas. They belong to romantic times when governor-generals down to the commoners rode in them. Indeed, they were an indispensable form of transportation during that time. 

 

 

 

 

The Calesa

 

The affluent had their own personal carriages (carruajes) beautiful and lavish, the style influenced from their European counterparts, with the coachman (cochero) dressed in full livery.

 

 

The rest of the population devised their own version of this versatile form of transport –the carretela, the carromata, calesin or tartanilla and what is now known and is still very much part of Manila and provincial scene, the calesa.

 

 

The streets of Manila today are crowded and polluted with carbon dioxide. We can only image those days when Manila is pollution free. But according to historian Ambeth Ocampo, Old Manila had a different pollution from horses and carabaos –one either smell their dung or made a mistake of stepping on them.

 

 

Remarkably the calesa still manage to survive threats of motorization in the name of progress. Although drastic traffic control measures confine the calesa to the narrow streets of Downtown Manila, but they still abound in provincial roads.

 

Today, calesa are extensively used for sight-seeing or taxiing people for short distances, carrying small cargoes of fruits and vegetables, and privately, on ranches and small estates.

 

 

Cochero Terminologies

  

 

  

In olden days the cochero among other areas of domestic service like the portero, muchacho de cuarto, sota, and cocinero was honored.  Although without driving experience (or license), the cochero soon gains enough audacity to get on the pescante or driver seat. Pescante, which has its roots in pescar, meaning to fish, described the cochero as seeming to be fishing as he hold the reins.

 

 

My old folks would say mano to turn right or silla to turn left. Ocampo explains that these Spanish words literally mean “hand” and “chair.” One can never use these terms with a Spanish taxi driver who responds to izquierda (left) and derecho (right). As a matter of strange fact, derecho in Filipino means to go straight.

 

The origins of these terms exclusive to the Philippines goes back to colonial times when a proper cochero sitting on the pescante held the reins with his rught hand (mano) while his left hand rested either on his seat or its handle (silla). Thus, the old time passenger uttered mano if he wanted to turn right and silla if he wanted to turn left.

 

Thus, buena mano then did not mean a lucky first sale in a store as how it means today when the tindera urges a prospect to buy something at a discount “pang buena mano.” At that time, it meant that a cochero  literally had a “good hand” in handling both the horse and the carriage.

 

 

Cocheros fed their horses cheap grass bought from a zacatero which must have been the equivalent of diesel in those times. A good cochero supplied a horse with a diet of palay mixed with honey, an equivalent of premium gas these days. 

 

Professional cocheros kept in mind that vehicles stayed on the left side of the road, and they were able to make the horses move in unison to ensure a smooth ride. In the same way as a in today’s motorists learns the gear shifts primera, segunda, tercera, cuarta, quinta and atras, the cochero learned the three different speeds of the calesa as trotando (trotting), galope (full gallop), and escape (when one is a rush).

 

 

Reviving the Calesa

 

There is no doubt that once upon a time, the calesa earned the reputation as King of the Road. Not only as one of the few if not the only means to go from places to places, but also from their reckless “cocheros” openly flaunting parking laws (they can be flagged anywhere and asked to alight whenever one pleases).

 

 

But the deposed King may yet come again to claim his throne. With fuel prices soaring at unimaginable cost and the hankering for the romance of the bygone era, the calesa might have its come back to the roads again. 

  

Information source: Ambeth Ocampo in Bonifacio’s Bolo

 

The Day of Downtown

 

Today, downtown is not singular but plural. If one wants to go shopping, or see a movie, or eat out, one may go to Cubao,Ortigas, Greenhills, Makati or any where in the metro.  

 

 

But there was a time when the day of downtown refers only to single destination.  Depending on the period in our history, the title “downtown” shifted from Binondo to Sta. Cruz to Quiapo until Manila has outgrown its delta and moved further up river.

 

 

Extending Manila

 

The Insular Government was a briefer term for what was more formally known as “the Government of the United States in the Philippine Islands.”

 

In June 1901, the Americans drafted a new charter for Manila, making official what had long been unstated: that the City of Manila was not Intramuros alone but also all its arrabales.  

According to historian John Foreman, “Manila was formerly the capital of the Provincia de Manila, as well as of the Philippines. Since the American occupation, the city and suburbs form a kind of federal zone; what was once Manila Province is now Rizal Province, and with it is incorporated that territory formerly designated Morong District.”

 

The new city charter proclaimed that Manila was composed of eleven districts, or wards –presumably Tondo, Binondo, Santa Cruz, Sampaloc, San Miguel, Pandacan, Santa Ana, Paco, Malate, Ermita and Intramuros.

 

 

Plaza Calderon dela Barca

 

In the mid-19^th century, downtown Manila would be Plaza Calderon dela Barca and Calle Rosario. Binondo was our true commercial capital and the richest pueblo in the Philippines. It was a bustling metropolis with nine bridges, busy wharves and canals, large stone buildings and a magnificent church. 

 

 

At the foot of Calle Rosario (today is Quintin Paredes Street) just off the Puente de España (replaced by what is now Jones Bridge), were the Glory Days by the Muelles. Calle Rosario was where the emporia and banking establishments and from this street radiated the arteries of trade that fed Philippine production. 

 

  

The street opened up in the Plaza Calderon, where stood the hotels, fondas, theaters, offices as well as great cavern of a church with its gilt baroque altars.

 

From this plaza one crossed the Canal dela Reina through the San Fernando Bridge into the residential district of San Nicholas.

 

This was the “downtown” in the 1850s.

 

 

Sta. Cruz

 

Binondo and its moneyed Calle Rosario was yet the business hub of the city –and in fact of the nation –but during the American era the bustle of business would gradually shift to Sta. Cruz. From the 1900s on, money and power passed from Binondo to Sta. Cruz.

 

 

The biggest event in that arrabal’s modern history was the opening of Avenida Rizal, which was formed by merging two streets, Dulumbayan and Salcedo.

 

The building of Santa Cruz Bridge and the coming of the trolley cars definitely established the city’s center in the area bounded by Avenida Rizal, Plaza Goiti, the Escolta and Plaza Santa Cruz –an area that became known as “downtown.”

 

 

Plaza Goiti was the center of the city’s transportation network –the tranvias. The Escolta was carriage trade. Plaza Sta. Cruz was entertainment like bars and vaudeville. Avenida Rizal was Main Street where the bazaars, movies, hotels, offices, restaurants and banks thrived. 

 

 

 

In Sta. Cruz sprouted the first night clubs –Tom’s, Ronda, the Trocadero. The Americans met at Silver Dollar Saloon on Plaza Santa Cruz and Clake’s on Escolta. East and West regarded each other from separate tables at Plaza Lunch and Tom’s Dixie’s Kitchen on Plaza Goiti. 

 

 

The straitlaced gentry and businessmen gathered to gossip or share the latest news before it broke on the porticos of Monte de Piedad on Plaza Goiti.

 

 

 This was the “downtown” during the American era.

 

 

Viernes sa Quiapo

 

Since the immediate prewar days, “downtown” has meant Plaza Miranda and all the streets leading to it. Streets described by old folks to be so dreamy and quiet.

 

 

Calle Carriedo, for instance was once an all shady tree and bookshop. Dim and dusty librerias that was as old and as polite as their gentlemen keepers. The alleys off the church were equally tranquil domain of jewelers, sculptors, goldsmiths, and silversmiths, and the sellers of pianos and music sheets.

 

El Refugio, famous for its lengua and sorbete was an old landmark near the corner of Carriedo and Evangelista.

 

 

The transformation of Quiapo from gentle arrabal to rugged downtown began in the 1920s, when the Friday devotions to its Nazareno intensified to a city wide cult, especially among the masses. In the wake of the Friday crowds came multiple-businesses to jazz-up the city’s new hub.

 

 

 

Viernes sa Quiapo thus became the Day of Downtown, when its tills registered the biggest takes of the week and its traffic jams were the biggest. One result would be the construction of the Quezon Boulevard and Quezon Bridge (which replaced the old Puente Colgante). Another result was the rule that a movie must open on a Friday.  

 

 

Greatest result of all was Plaza Miranda as the crossroads of the nation, the forum of the land. A fact recognized by President Ramon Magsaysay in the famous question, “Can we defend this at Plaza Miranda?”  

 

This was the “downtown” until the 1960s. 

 

Information sources: Nick Joaquin’s Almanac for Manileños and Manila, My Manila

 

The Lost Villages of Extramuros

 

Once upon a time, there was an Intramuros (inside the wall) and an Extramuros (outside the wall). Before the British invasion, Extramuros was a series of settlements on the banks of the moat that surrounded the walls of Intramuros.

 

 

For Nick Joaquin, the swath of open country (and potential parkland) that appeared when Extramuros villages were cleared away is the best legacy of the British Occupation. On these grounds we now see Rizal Park, Burgos Drive, the Mehan Garden and Liwasang Bonifacio.

 

 

The Villages of Extramuros

 

There were at least six of these original suburbs. They were known as the Bagumbayan, Santiago, San Juan, San Fernando de Dilao, San Miguel and the Parian.

 

Bagumbayan and Santiago were on the bayside, approximately where the Old Luneta is. Bagumbayan or New Town was the first to be established. It was built after Legaspi occupied the island of Maynilad, burned and abandoned by Soliman’s folk, who fled across the river to Tondo. Those who later returned were mostly of the native nobility and , their old kingdom of Maynilad being now in the hands of the Spanish, they decided to settle on the bayside south of the old kingdom.  

 

Adjoining Bagumbayan on the seaside was the village of Santiago, which apparently began as a Spanish settlement, for those of the whites who didn’t care to live inside the walls. They had a church of their owned administered by a secular, with St. James the Apostle as patron.

 

 

San Juan was where the western part of Rizal Park is, up to the old Legislative Building. This village must have been a fine location say Nick Joaquin, for there in the 1600s, Governor Perdo de Acuna built himself a summer house, with gardens and ponds, only three hundred paces from the walls. When the governor died, the newly arrived Recollects bought the property and there established their first convent and school.

 

In the convent rest the three incorrupt bodies of the first founders, so well preserved in the country so damp and hot it is regarded as a miracle. Moreover, the college possessed a great treasure in the image of Our Lady of Health.

 

 

San Fernando de Dilao occupied the present site of the Manila City Hall and the Normal Colleges. This village was where some Japanese Christians lived, under the care of the Franciscan friars. It was in the Dilao where the friars ran a hospital for lepers, the original San Lazaro Hospital and a mission house under the advocacy of Our Lady of Candlemas.

  

The site assumed to have been called Dilao (yellow) because it was the Japanese ghetto but the name may actually refer to a plant there that yeilded yellow dye. The titular patron of the parish church was St. Ferdinand the King but popular devotion prompted pilgrimages to La Candelaria. 

 

 

San Miguel stood in the San Marcelino area, where Adamson University stands. According to Joaquin, the original parish of San Miguel was established in 1618, as another mission for the Japanese, but under the Jesuit auspices. Japanese refugees fleeing fromt he tyrant Taycosama were gravitating to Manila, to the Japanese enclave on the left bank of the Pasig.  

 

Since many of the refugees were samurai, or warriors, the Jesuits hit on the idea of proclaiming a soldier saint as the patron of the growing Japanese community, to attract the knight among the migrants. And what a heavenly soldier was more glorious the St. Michael the Archangel?

 

 

 

The Chinese Parian was on the banks of the Pasig where later would rise the Post Office, Liwasang Bonifacio, the Metropolitan Theater and Mehan Garden. It was the largest of the original suburbs, where the Sangleys had their silk market, porcelain factories, tool shops and other hardware stores, as well as eating houses where the Filipinos first developed a taste for comida China. The panciteria began in the Parian.

 

 

 

By the 18^th century, Manila extramuros had become teeming crescent confronting Intramuros with a jumble of roofs, towers, massive stone churches and crowded streets. 

An alarmed Spanish military complained that their guns on the city walls would be thwarted by this barricade of extramuros roof in case of an enemy invasion.

 

 

The Invasion that Cleared Away Extramuros

 

War broke out between Spain and England in 1762. A British fleet sped east to capture Manila. The invading squadron of 13 ships was under Admiral Samuel Cornish.

 

The British invasion proved how right the fears of the Spanish military were. When the British landed on the beach of Malate, they advanced towards the Walled City under the cover of the suburbs. They fortified the churches there and mounted cannons on them to bombard Intramuros. Intramuros was being shelled from Extramuros!

 

 

After the British invasion, the army’s demand that the extramuros suburbs be removed could never be denied, although the Church succeeded in preventing the demolition of Malate, Ermita and Binondo. They were cleared away not only because they had proved how dangerous they were but because for a long time after 1764 Manila continued to fear another British invasion. 

 

 

The parish of Dilao was moved south to the banks of Estero Paco. The parish of San Miguel was transferred across the river to the marshy island called Malacañang.

 

  

The rest of Manila extramuros –Bagumbayan, Santiago, San Juan and the Parian were completely exterminated.

 

That’s the lost Manila we never knew.

 

Information source: Manila , My Manila by Nick Joaquin