"Una pequeña encomienda"-- was how
a 2.5 square kilometer estate
was described when it was
awarded, on February 15, 1590,
by Governor-General Santiago de Vera,
to Friar Pedro Bautista
y Blazquez-- Custos Superior
of all Franciscans friars in
Las Islas Filipinas.
Situated on the delta of two rivers--
now known as the San Juan River
and the San Francisco River, the estate
has a hilly topography with lush
vegetation. It had eight water springs;
a creek ran through it; and,
already a thriving Indios settlement--
with its own culture, economy and religion,
when Friar Bautista came and imposed
the encomienda system upon its inhabitants
and founded it as a pueblo (brown-skinned
natives were called Indios; Filipino is
a term reserved for Spaniards born in the
Philippines-- the Peninsulares.)
An encomienda (from the Spanish word
encomendar, to entrust), as legally defined
in 1503, was a grant to a conquistador,
a soldier, an official, or a cleric of a specified
number of conquered non-christian
natives or Indios living in a particular area.
The grantee, the encomendero, could
then exact tribute from the Indios in gold,
in kind, or in labor. The encomienda did
not include a grant of land, but in practice
the encomendero gained control of lands
inhabited by the Indios-- usually using
religion as a tool of subjugation.
And that is exactly what Friar Bautista
did; he extracted tribute on the hapless
Filipinos by way of forced labor and
construction materials to build his chapel
and monastery for the sole benefit of
the Franciscan Order and select
high ranking government officials.
Friar Bautista thereafter dedicated
the chapel to Our Lady of Montecelli
but which, from the very beginning,
was already popularly known as the
San Francisco del Monte church.
San Francisco in reference to
Saint Francis, founder of the Franciscan Order
and Del Monte, Spanish for on the mountain,
to distinguish the place from the
San Francisco de Manila Church in Intramuros,
Manila and also because the area was hilly
(the church was later on dedicated
to its founder and named the
Basilica Menor de Santuario de San Pedro Bautista).
The encomienda took on the name of the church and
thus became known as San Francisco del Monte
or simply Frisco to the Indios.
San Francisco del Monte as a town was
not so much founded as christened,
Christianized and its inhabitants enslaved.
Hand in hand with religion,
the monastic orders assiduously
mastered the native dialects
rather than teach the Indios to speak
Spanish language effectively denying
them the linguistic key to Western
civilizations. Thus, the Philippines,
unlike other Hispanised
countries of Central and South America,
stood out as an anomaly because the Spanish
language never became the
archipelago's lingua franca.
Seven hundred meters downhill from
Friar Bautista's church was where
my maternal grandparents:
Thomas and Antonia-- arbitrarily
re-christened Dada by my baby-talk babbling
elder sister, the first grandchild of the clan,
a name by which Dada will be known by all her
grandchildren, chose to settle in
the 1920s (--more than three hundred
thirty years after Friar Bautista
founded Frisco).
Frisco was just an outlying town
when Thomas and Dada settled there
(Today, San Francisco de Monte
is now a district of Quezon city,
bisected by two major thoroughfares,
Roosevelt Avenue and Del Monte
Avenue and bounded by West Avenue
on the east, EDSA on the north,
Quezon Avenue on the south,
and Araneta Avenue on the west.)
Dada was not a Frisco native,
she was a Bisaya-- probably from Cebu,
more likely Siquijor; Thomas, a Tagalog from
Rizal-- probably from a place now
known as Tanay.
Dada was born at the turn of the century,
four years after the Americans decimated
the out-of-date Spanish ships in the
two-hour Battle of Manila Bay-- ending
Spain's hold on the Philippines and
paving the way for the Americans to occupy
Manila.
When the Americans first saw Manila,
they saw a shit-hole. And as they explored
the countryside and the back of beyond,
what they saw was an even bigger shit-hole
-- populated by illiterate bedraggled derelicts.
The Spanish colonizers had not bothered to
educate the Indios, had not developed
agriculture, and had built structures
only for the sole benefit of their soldiers
and civilians. What the Philippines had
were a lot of magnificent and imposing
churches, even in the remotest of the
barrios-- built by forced labor using
construction materials, gold and cash
extracted from Indios as tax tributes.
The Indios were in a far worse situation than
they were three centuries ago-- but hey, they
got churches that looked good; the sad
thing is that, even today, most Filipinos
actually believed that those damned Kastila
improved our race by giving us their religion
and their culture-- and erasing the religion
and culture we already had.
It took a decade of American colonization
before Filipinos were able to shed the
shackles of their Spanish colonial past.
White drill suits became de riguer.
Suddenly, young Filipinos were strutting
around in white americana and
straw boater hats-- still segregated,
still unwelcome in exclusive American
establishments-- not unlike the blacks
in white America, but were, technically,
American citizens-- uneducated
Filipinos pretending to be Americans--
second-class brown American citizens.
Dada's hometown was far removed from the
goings on in Manila. Dada's hometown,
like most Visayan island towns,
was predominantly hilly, with little flat
arable coastal land so that even slopes
of 40 to 45 degree angles were cultivated.
Most islands were overpopulated, its
inhabitants mostly exploited tenant farmers
trapped in farms still operating under the
Spanish encomienda system-- or variations
of it.
With the change from the stagnant
Spanish rule to a dynamic
American rule. There was restlessness
among Filipinos-- especially among the
Bisaya, men left their barrios in search
of better opportunities. Some found
employment in the rubber, copra, and
hemp plantations in the nearby island
of Mindanao; Some ended
up in cities; some made it
only as far as the docks where they
hanged around the quayside
waiting for a chance to go further.
It was at this time that a gringo who
went by the name of Oswald Steven
was sent by the Hawaiian Sugar Planterss
Association to set up a recruitment office
in Cebu City. Steven was an auctioneer
and real estate salesman in Honolulu
and had fought in the Philippine-
American War, a savvy veteran who knew
his way around the Philippines and was
familiar with the ways of the Filipinos--
who, because of the Spanish colonizers, were
largely uneducated, unable to read
and write and could barely understand the
American English language. Steven, per
newspaper reports, also ... had the
reputation of luring many a hard,
round dollar from a reluctant fist through
his persuasive eloquence on the auction
block in Honolulu. A wolf dropped amongst
lambs.
Steven hired three Filipino assistants,
a married couple from Cebu and a man from
Siquijor island, and coached them on
how they have made out in Hawaii,-- though
never having been there. The three told how
they wore rags when they left the Philippines
but were now well dressed, sporting clothes
of the latest cut, American shoes, pocket
watch and chain. Adapting to the many dialects
spoken in various islands, Steven and his
cohorts described how laborers could
earn in Hawaii four to six times their
customary annual earnings. Steven visited
the islands of Bohol, Panay, Leyte and
Siquijor and, using a steamer he
bought in Hongkong, transported his
recruits to Cebu for eventual shipment
to Hawaii. Recruitment went on high gear
from 1910 onward and as an added
incentive even offered bonuses
for men who immigrated with their
families.
The typical contract was for three years.
Workers were promised $20 per month for
10-12 hour days for 26 days every month,
free housing, fuel, heat and medical
coverage.
To a Bisaya, Steven was a godsend.
Most signed up relying on the hype
and the promises made by a
glib-tongued hustler. Unknown
to the Filipinos, Steven recruited
them to intimidate the Japanese workers
who were agitating against cheap wages,
legal restrictions and racism.
The Filipinos were mostly hoodwinked as
unwitting scabs, relegated to the worst
jobs, terrible living conditions,
and the lowest pay. To keep the status quo,
Steven purposely recruited the most
illiterate of the peasants in the
Philippines. The Filipinos were called
Sakadas-- a term probably derived from the
Ilocano phrase 'sakasakada amin', meaning,
barefoot workers struggling to earn a living.
(It came to be applied to all agricultural
workers recruited from the Philippines.
The term may also be from the Spanish
los sacadas, roughly imported ones.
A term for migrant workers in and from
the Philippines, doing manual agricultural
labor. Within the Philippines, Sakadas
work in provinces other than their own.)
The Brigham Young University's Filipino
Laborers Collection, culled from the
records of the Hawaii Sugar Planters
Association-- which include approximately
100,000 labor records, passenger lists
for vessels transporting Sakadas between
Honolulu and Manila between 1906 and 19490
show that by 1910, there were 2361
Filipinos in Hawaii (An estimated 120,000
arrived between 1906 to 1934.)
The Brigham Young University collection
listed quite a few Sakadas with the
surname Castro-- Dada's maiden surname,
but I never felt the need to fact check.
I don't have to, never doubted it;
but the real reason is respect.
Respect for a woman who never
spoke about it for reasons of her own.
A family lore it will remain-- and,
it will only be for those who believe.
There is another reason I do not doubt
it-- a profound one, which will become
apparent at the penultimate of this
wee narrative.
Dada's family would have been in Hawaii
sometime in 1910-- when Dada was eight
years old. Dada would have stayed in
Hawaii for at least three years, maybe
more, maybe her father signed up for
another stint and returned as an
exHaw for another three years. Maybe
three years more after that.
Dada, the Hawaiiana (as returned Sakadas
came to be called by barrio folk),
returned to the Philippines, met Thomas,
fell in love, got married
and eventually settled in Frisco.
They had five children (-- of which
my mother, Auring, was the fourth child.)
And then World War II happened.
Dada was thirty-nine years old.
By Christmas of 1941 Japanese troops had
advanced across central Luzon towards Manila;
by New Years day of 1942, the Japanese
had occupied Manila. The Americans fled.
Neither prayers taught by Spanish friars
nor American arrogance could halt the
advance of the pestilence that would
engulf the Pearl of the Orient.
More than three years of starvation,
torture and death followed.
When the war situation became critical
for Japan in October 1944,
General Tomoyuki Yamashita
assumed the command of the
Fourteenth Area Army to defend the
occupied Philippines against the Americans.
Yamashita ordered his men to destroy all
bridges and other vital installations and
then evacuate Manila. However,
Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi, commander
of the Imperial Japanese Navys 31st Naval
Special Base Force ignored the order, and
along with his 16,000 men, barricaded
intersections, converted buildings into
fortresses, and booby-trapped stores.
Manila's tumultuous history could not have
prepared Manileños for what was about to
happen when the first American troops crossed
into Manila at 6:35 p.m. on February 3, 1945.
What followed was twenty-nine days
of intense urban warfare that
resulted in the catastrophic destruction of
Manila-- only Warsaw suffered more,
architectural heritage were reduced to rubble,
80% of the southern residential district were
torched, and during lulls from American
bombardment, the Kempei Tai and
Iwabuchis troops rampaged throughout
the city-- a rampage
that brutalized the civilian
population. Thousands were tortured
and killed, countless women were raped,
their husbands and children murdered.
Just hours after the American forces rolled
into Manila-- Japanese troops rounded up
more than a hundred suspected guerrillas
and their families and herded them into
the Dy Pac Lumber Yard then proceeded to
behead the men one after the other
in an assembly line of horror.
Women and children, including infants
were bayoneted.
More than three hundred sixty civilians
were rounded up and herded into the
dining hall of Saint Paul's College
where the chandeliers, rigged with
explosives, were dropped to the floor
and detonated.
In the same afternoon, Japanese
marines stormed the Red Cross headquarters
and murdered fifty civilians, including two
infants. Five hundred civilians were set
on fire in the nearby German Club. A house
at 1195 in Singalong was converted to a
house of horrors-- troops cut a hole in an
upstairs floor then marched blindfolded
teenagers, grandfathers and forced them
to kneel. A marine would then cut each mans
head off with their shin gunto and kick
the body into the hole.
The surrounding towns of Manila were not
spared. Marauding Japanese troops attacked
families in homes, butchering them in
the streets.
Thomas was among those rounded up.
He was never seen again after that.
Several days before the last of his
men were annihilated, Iwabuchi was said
to have committed suicide,
but his remains was never found.
Yamashita surrendered several weeks later.
He was tried, convicted of war crimes
and executed on February 23, 1946.
In a classic dick move Japan had honored
and enshrined Yamashita and Iwabuchi
as war heroes at the Yasukuni Shrine.
The battle left 1,010 U.S. soldiers dead and
5,565 wounded. An estimated 100,000 Filipinos
civilians were killed, both deliberately by
the Japanese and from artillery
bombardment by the U.S. military force.
16,665 Japanese bodies were counted within
the walls of Intramuros alone.
Dada and her children: Ramon, Estella,
Ernie, my mother, Auring, and "Baby" survived.
Twelve years later, I was born.
Dada was fifty-five.
I like to think that I am a Batang Frisco--
an indigenous specie, technically though,
I was born in the Sampaloc District of
Manila, specifically at the
Mary Chiles General Hospital in Gastambede
street (now F. Dalupan street,
named after the founder of the
University of the East; Alonso de Gastambide,
on the other hand, was a captain
of the Spanish Navy.
Sampaloc, Manila was a Franciscan
Mission later on developed as the Barrio Obrero
during the American Period. Modern Sampaloc
grew out of the old town of Sampaloc,
the Legarda Estate, the Sulucan Estate,
Barrio Balic Balic and the Old Santa
Clara Estate that was bid out during
the American Period.)
Mary Chiles General Hospital started out as
a small clinic with a capacity of four beds
in the old Mission House of the Disciples on
Azcarraga Street (now C. M. Recto avenue).
It was established in 1911, a few years
after the Spanish-American War, by
Dr. W.N. Lemmon, an American missionary,
at the height of the bubonic plague in
Manila mainly for American missionaries
stricken with the disease. Later,
Dr. Lemmon, through a substantial donation
by Mary Jane Chiles-- a devoted disciple
of Independence, Missouri, U.S.A, was able
to buy the building on F. Dalupan
street -- a historic building where
Jose Pepe Rizal used to chill with his
homies (Felice Prudente Santa Maria,
in his book 'In Excelsis', tells
us how Rizal got the nickname Pepe.
Saint Joseph or San Jose was the putative
father of Jesus Christ. In Latin,
San Joses name is always followed
by the letters P.P. for
pater putativus. In Spanish, the letter P
is pronounced as peh giving rise to the
nickname Pepe for Jose.)
A short walk from the Mary Chiles Hospital
is the University of the East, where
my mother, Auring, was then an employee,
probably a student, too.
I imagined Auring, when it was time,
walking to the Mary Chiles General
Hospital, walking into the delivery room--
all by herself, and giving birth.
At least seven of us, me and six of
my siblings, were born in that same hospital.
But I did spent the first seven years
of my life in Frisco and thereafter
intermittently: during most
school breaks and a forced
sabbatical when I was fourteen.
The Frisco of my childhood offered
enough open spaces to appear to be
Eden still. Frisco was Dada's rickety
termite-infested stilt-legged old
house that creaked with every gust of
wind or rain; Frisco was waking up
with morning sunlight streaming
through the cracks of the capiz windows
weaving a loom of shadows across my bed,
dusts dancing within a streak of sunlight,
tuyo, dilis frying, the sound of the
siyansi doing battle with the kawali as
bahaw is magically transformed to sinangag.
Frisco was the diabetes inducing
preserved sweet Kamias,
the sweet-sour pickled mangoes; it was
pancit palabok bought at Blumentritt
market. Frisco was drawing a glass
of cool water from the bangga.
Frisco was juvenile incursions
to the mysterious paminggalan (where
left-over food were stored in plates balanced
on upside down drinking glasses standing on bowls
half-filled with water-- to keep out ants)
to break off a piece of panutsa,
it was raiding Dada's stash of
lemon drops hard candies. Frisco
was cooking rice with pandan in a palayok on
on a kalan at Dada's 'dirty kitchen'. Frisco
was the blaze of red orange light at dusk
as the sun buried itself beneath the horizon,
the melancholic 'tookoh' of the
resident tuko to mark the end of the
day; Frisco was meditating on
Johnny de Leon's 'The Deck of Cards',
having fun with Slyvia la Torre and
Oscar Obligacion in 'Oras ng Ligaya',
laughing with Bentot in 'Tang-Ta-Rang-Tang'
while Dada cooks dinner; it was listening to
'24 Oras' and 'Gabi ng Lagim' before I
sleep. Frisco was reading through
stacks of Graphic Magazines--
some dating as far back as the 1930s,
and counting the stacks of 'Mickey Mouse'
money in a baul. Frisco was being lulled
to sleep by the croaking
of a million frogs on rainy nights,
of cicadas chirping. Frisco was Dada's garden,
the 'bahay kubo' at the front of the house,
the Duhat tree, the Santol tree, the
Kaimito tree, the papaya tree,
the Kamias tree, the Pakiling tree.
the huge Sampaloc tree. Frisco was
shooting mayas with a borrowed escopeta
in the snake infested 'gubat'.
Frisco was standing at the edge
of the 'bangin' as the sun set on the west.
Frisco was the joy of hitting tin cans with
a 'tirador' and standing in the rain without a
care in the world. Frisco was
Dada's 'silong' with its tenants:-- the
chickens, pigeons, and pigs,
a cat named 'Ming-ming', a dog named
'Boogie', and another named 'Prince'. Frisco was
the myth of the 'ahas tulog'-- a black rat
snake, that lives on the attic and keeps the
house rodent free. Frisco was watching
triple-features at the Del Monte Theater--
using Dada's name for free admission,
the sights and smell of the palengke,
the magical train rides to Albay.
It was the calming tune Dada hummed
as she sat before her Singer sewing machine,
the hourly chime of Dada's wall clock,
the cavo-rilievo image of the Christ with
carved in eyes that follow your
every move, the flower Dada puts behind her
left ear-- always on her left ear.
Frisco gave me a sense of permanence,
that it will always be there for me,
a place I could come back to
no matter where I go, even if I get lost.
It gave me a sense of belonging.
It was the only Frisco that mattered, a
microcosm contained in Dada's yard.
This was my Frisco.
This was where I was from.
I was in second grade when things
changed. Suddenly, I was the
only one in Frisco-- which I didn't mind;
then I was told to leave as well.
Frisco was the only home I knew and
being told to leave felt weird.
It was at this point that my other
childhood began to unravel-- my
not in Frisco childhood.
I rejoined my family in a dingy
rented 2-bedroom apartment that had
a comical Dickensian vibe to it.
It was just around a corner from school.
...no more school bus rides to school,
I remember thinking; then I was told
that I had to stop going to school.
I remember glancing at my new school
bag that Dada had bought for me.
I remember a sudden constriction in
my throat and an empty feeling on my
stomach. It felt like I was choking
and, for a second, thought it was
my asthma acting up again.
Everything went blurry after that.
Unhappiness was yet unfamiliar,
I know now but did not know then,
but I knew then that it was not a
good thing. Things happen or don't
when you are poor; things that do
happen happened because things
that should have happened don't.
I don't think the world starts to come
into focus until you're fifteen;
up until then you just take what you've
got and roll with it.
Twenty-fifth of August,
it was a hot, muggy evening.
It was a Friday, a school day,
but I wasn't in school-- Ive been
PMAed and dropped at Dada's in Frisco.
Turned out it was also my fifteenth birthday.
Chit's husband, Ney-- an Ilongo, bought
four bottles of San Miguel Pale Pilsen
and two packets of sweet spicy dilis
to celebrate (Chit first appeared,
already in her late teens, in Dada's
household when I was maybe ten years old,
from whence she came from I never inquired.)
We sat in the sala on Dada's Narra set
with the distinctive rattan weave pattern
of octagons on the seating and backrests,
me on the sofa, Ney on one of two
matching chairs, Ney watching TV,
me scowling sightlessly
into the middle distance.
Dada's house, a bigger, wooden version
of a bahay kubo on stilts, was perched up a
steep rise on the northwestern corner
of the 800 sqm estate, and
from where I sat I could
see-- beyond the opened front doors,
across the caida con azotea,
a swarm of insects swirling
around the light on a MERALCO pole
that curiously stood in the middle
of the compound. The mosquitoes too
were on a frenzy that evening
and the pyrethrum laced fumes
filtering through the solihiya
seemed only to encourage them
(and my asthma as well.)
There was another small detail
that have passed unnoticed:
I havent had alcohol before.
Nobody asked. I dummied up.
No sense ruining the party with
such a small detail, and, besides,
the buzz felt good. One last small
detail: it was the first time I
was treated like a grownup-- an
adolescent, at least. It was the
end of childhood. That, I suppose,
was worth celebrating. I squinted
and looked at the streetlight again.
Somehow things were beginning to
come into focus.
I was back in school the folowing
year, Dada saw to that. Dada also
found casual work for me at the
university, for pocket money,
she said. All was well;
then I was told to leave
Dada's house-- again.
Twenty-fifth of August-- again.
My twenty-first.
I woke up early to wash all my
clothes, slept while I
waited for them to dry, stuffed
them all in used plastic grocery bags--
all my worldly possessions in two bags.
I said good-bye to Auring.
I left to go home to my Frisco.
A Frisco not of Friar Bautista's
making, but my own.
Thus, ended my other childhood-- my
not in Frisco childhood.
This was where I was from.
When you're twenty-one, you think
you hold the roadmap to your life.
Its only when you get to be twenty-five
or so that you begin to suspect you've
been looking at the map upside down.
A lot of things went south after that
mainly due to bad choices, bad
judgment and simply
because I was just plain stupid.
But, I got better at life and later
on made a few right choices and even hit the
mark a few times.
My story ends here;
but then...
Dada died.
Grief is a tricky thing.
It dislodges things deep within us
setting free memories and feelings that
we had thought gone to ground long ago.
In that indeterminate period they call
mourning, we are buffeted with recollections.
Things we never really thought through,
things we took for granted. Sometimes it
makes me think that maybe tears fill up our
eyes to make us see a blurry world, maybe
to mask the ugly, or maybe to teach us
to look beyond the blurriness, to see
beyond, for there lie our collective
unconscious-- our deep-seated beliefs,
our spirituality, our instincts, graciously
bequeathed by those who came before us.
There was one overpowering image that
engulfed me-- a vivid mental image of
the wedding picture of Thomas and Dada,
interspersed with memories of Dada with a
white flower behind her left ear
-- always in her left ear.
They came in waves. Maybe Dada
was speaking a language that
is heard not just with ears. A
coded missive from a reticent woman
who had persevered against
life's worst onslaughts, a woman who
had lost her beloved in a war not of her
own, a woman who had risen above the
uncommonly cruel cards life had dealt
her. Maybe words were not enough to
express her thoughts, maybe there was an
inability to summon the right word,
the apt thought, the connection that
enables the words to make sense,
the rhythm, the tone. Maybe spoken words
would be to loud or too much,
maybe a dance, a gesture, maybe
something else is more fitting.
Then it all clicked into a new
understanding in my mind. It was
only then that I understood
what the flower behind Dada's left
ear meant. Dada was conveying a message,
a lamentation-- perhaps the only way a
Hawaiiana could: that she is taken
and she awaits the return of her
beloved.
Indeed, there is no tombstone that
bears Thomas's name even as Thomas
is-- undoubtedly dead; but, not for Dada.
For Dada, it was an ambiguous loss.
And so she waited.
You hold on to hope... draw strength
from it.
I went to see Frisco after that.
It was not the same.
It looked the same.
It was the same Frisco that
Friar Bautista founded,
the same Frisco the damned
Kempetai butchered, but it felt
different; it was no longer
the place I grew up in.
It seemed it never was.
Frisco was not a place--
it was Dada;
and when Dada died,
the Frisco I knew died with her.
... you just take what you’ve
got and roll with it.
