BEYOND THE WALLS

More Ramblings in the City of Manila (28)

Once there was Extramuros. Composed of six suburbs, it disappeared from existence during the British Invasion (1762–64) and the subsequent reconstruction of the capital. Namely, these were the arrabales of Bagumbayan, Santiago, San Fernando de Dilao, San Miguel, San Juan, and Parian. On the former sites of these neighborhoods are portions of the Rizal Park, the Central Post Office, and the National Museum - all part of the Ermita District.

Lost shoreline. In 1762 when the British occupied Manila, the tides reached up to where the current Anda Circle is located, all the way down to what is now the corner of T.M. Kalaw Avenue and Roxas Boulevard. When the Americans arrived in 1898, the spot where the Manila Hotel, Quirino Grandstand and the remains of the Army and Navy Club are now standing was still water. So too was the entire stretch of the Baywalk and Roxas Boulevard and all of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) Complex.

Weekend picnics

Ice cream vendors pushing the trademark colorfully painted carts of delightful dirty ice cream, or a bunch of toys and balloons are my best memories of Rizal Park. Imitation plastic figures and paper masks of superheros were competing for my attention. I was also amused with traditional toys that included wriggling snakes with vertebrae made from cut slender bamboo nodes hinged together with wires. Poor maya birds painted with the loudest of pinks, yellows, and greens meanwhile chirp from their small bamboo cages. Most Manileños I know have visited Rizal Park more than once in their lives and have enjoyed its attractions, building memories and narratives from their experience at the historic urban park.

In the 1970s, our family occasionally went on Sunday picnics somewhere along the concrete promenade near the Quirino Grandstand or along Roxas Boulevard and enjoyed the early morning sea breeze. We also strolled around the expansive green of Rizal Park and played among the painted concrete dinosaurs at the Children’s Playground. We learned to roller skate at the Agrifina Circle. A large fountain in the shape of a globe glittered and flowed in the middle of the rink. We joked that we could skate around the world in minutes many times over, and to the disco hits of Donna Summer! And we followed the park rules and threw our trash into the trademark painted concrete bins made to look like bamboo nodes.

Historic as a park can be

I always knew it why it was called Rizal Park or the Luneta, but I wondered why Rizal’s execution place is called Bagumbayan. The name means “new town” in Filipino, but there was no town there, only an expansive park. After 1571 when the Spanish had defeated the rajahs on what would become Intramuros, the vanquished local population moved to just south of the embryonic settlement of invaders. Complete with a church, Bagumbayan remained standing until some 240 years later when the British under General William Draper invaded Manila. A destructive subplot under the Seven Year War between England and France, of which Spain is an ally, the British Occupation of Manila was a game changer. It showed that the Spanish were not invincible. Along with five other suburbs, Bagumbayan was finally leveled down after the British left to prevent enemies from using the settlements near the walls as cover in future conflicts.

Forever lost, Bagumbayan remained in name but it has become part of the national consciousness as the place of executions of the colonial government’s enemies. Among them those executed are three Filipino clergy, Fathers Mariano Gomez, José Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora or collectively known as the Gomburza. They were executed by garrote on charges of complicity with the 1872 mutiny at the naval stockyard in Fort San Pedro, now in Cavite City (382). Twenty-four years later, Dr. Jose P. Rizal was executed by firing squad on Dec. 30, 1896 on charges of rebellion. The following year in January, just six days after, the 13 Martyrs of Bagumbayan and 11 of the 15 Bicolano Martyrs were executed by musketry for actual or alleged association with the revolutionary organization Katipunan. Among the Bicol martyrs were another trio of priests, all secular, Fathers Innocencio Herrera, Severino Diaz, and Gabriel Prieto.

The 1913 Rizal Monument, the markers for the Gomburza execution (inscribed in 1953), and those for Rizal (inscribed in 1988), are some of the many important historical attractions at the park. The park is for their memory and all those executed by the Spanish authorities. In 1955, Pres. Ramon Magsaysay delineated areas in Ermita that would become the Luneta National Park. The Luneta became officially known as Rizal Park as decreed by Marcos in 1967. From a former place of execution, it became an enduring and endearing park haven for people from all walks of life, ages, beliefs, and persuasions. I can still recall that in the 1970s and 1980s we could still walk and stand near the stone fences of the monument, designed by Swiss sculptor Richard Kissling who originally named it Motto Stella or “guiding star” in Latin. Standing just a few away from the guards, I always marveled how they never ever moved, except at the changing of the guard.

Sixty years later, the sprawling skyline of the Rizal Monument is marred by the controversial 40-story Torre de Manila, also located at the Ermita District. In 2015, the residential project remains at the hotbed of court proceedings, with further construction halted. During my recent visit to the Rizal Monument last January, I creatively crouched at one particular spot to take a photograph of the 103-year old Rizal Monument, hiding the condominium from view. Without resorting to Photoshop. No Torre de Manila. Just like in 1975, 1995 or 2005. But I had to crouch.

The Rizal Park figured in my personal narratives as the place where my career in professional tour guiding began. I attended a month-long seminar in 1995 at the Department of Tourism along Agrifina Circle on the basics of guiding and I procured my license as a national guide weeks later. However, under the FIT and group tour packages, the only thing guests had of the historic park is the brief photo stop that we made in front of the Rizal Monument. All the other – the Quirino Grandstand and Kilometer Zero to the relief map near Taft Avenue – were not visited at all and just seen from the vehicle.

Park of cultures, constants and changes

Iconic as it is historic, the Rizal Park is a living testament to the nation’s triumphs and struggles. It is a place of constants and changes. On the spot where the globe fountain and skating rink used to be is a gigantic monument to Mactan leader Lapu-Lapu, the fierce slayer in 1521 of Portuguese explorer Fernão de Magalhães or Fernando de Magallanes to the Spanish. Called the Statue of Sentinel of Freedom and a gift of the people of South Korea, it memorializes Filipinos who assisted in the Korean War. The Agrifina Circle was renamed after Teodoro F. Valencia, who died in 1987. A veteran journalist, he was the former head of the parks development committee and a staunch supporter of Ferdinand Marcos.

In March 2014, I showed Manila to an Austrian kite surfer who I met in Cuyo (468), Palawan. I have not really noticed that a walkway has been built across the PH Relief Map Lagoon. After pointing out to him where Cuyo was, he jumped over the side of the walkway to briefly stand on the metal and concrete representation of the island. Commissioned by Valencia in the 1970s, the three-dimensional map was built by Jose Mendoza. Back then, the only way to see the individual islands was through the observation points. Interestingly, the map featured a portion of Sabah, Malaysia. At that time, the Marcos government laid claim to the former British colony, being historically part of the Sultanate of Sulu.

While attempting to look for the same flower bed where my mom took a photo of my siblings in 1970, I saw people of different ages taking naps under the shade of trees. Young people and uniformed students huddled in groups, having a little picnic or practicing a chorale presentation. The green spaces in the park remains a haven for young and old people, lovers, families. Even after the proliferation of gigantic malls throughout Metro Manila, the Rizal Park and the Baywalk continue to provide spaces where people could experience abundant foliage, fountains of water, proper means of recreation in its parks, and get easy access to government structures, as planned by the US under architect Daniel Burnham. I failed exactly determine the spot of the 1970s flower bed.

Clear blue skies, curved metal fences, and flowerbeds of portulacas and jungle flame or santan plants are among my first memories of Rizal Park. I have added a new chapter in my visits to Rizal Park when I stepped into the Chinese Garden for the first time in January 2016. More than two hundred years after the British Invasion of Manila heralded its destruction, this part of Bagumbayan was transformed into an ornate garden complete with a pagoda. The garden was built in 1967 to commemorate Filipino-Chinese relations, particularly between Manila and Taipei. In 1975, Manila opened formal relations with Beijing and this prompted corresponding changes in the markers. One of the pillars on the Long Corridor, a replica of the one in the Summer Palace in Beijing, gave me words of wisdom on my visit more than 40 years later: “Study the past to define the future.”

Politics and structures

The story for the struggle for freedom and the national political experience is embedded in the different plazas and structures in Metro Manila. Most PH Presidents, since 1949 have been inaugurated into office at the Quirino Grandstand. In June 1992, even if our chosen presidential candidate lost, my friends and I trooped to the Quirino Grandstand to witness the inauguration of 12th PH President Fidel Ramos and VP Joseph “Erap” Estrada. It was my first time to vote in a presidential election and participate in the democracy that many people have fought and died for.

A hundred years earlier, Andres Bonifacio founded the Katipunan and continued the centuries old struggle for freedom from the Spanish. In 1963, the old Plaza Lawton was renamed Liwasang Bonifacio. An imposing and handsomely detailed statue of the revolutionary hero, made by National Artist Guillermo Tolentino, has since gazed southwards towards the City Hall of Manila. Bus and jeepney placards and commuters however still use the plaza’s American name.

Once named after Henry Ware Lawton, the only US General Army killed in the war between Filipinos and Americans in 1898, the plaza has often been the staging ground of rallies by a pantheon of anti-US and leftist organizations. Out of curiosity, I stepped into one of the rallies organized by the militant student groups denouncing the 1988 Manglapus-Schultz Agreement that amended the Military Bases Agreement of 1947. The scene of students raising “Bases Out” placards, and fluttering the reddest of flags and gushing invective against the US government was all too uncomfortably red for my taste.

A couple of years later, I was on my way home at the Liwasang Bonifacio after a joyride with friends when ashes from the explosion of the previously thought dormant volcano Mt. Pinatubo had reached Metro Manila. Under the unusually dark sky, I stood there that late afternoon, waiting for a ride and wondering what the strange dust falling from the sky was. It was the closest I ever got to the cataclysmic event that snuffed hundreds of lives and seriously damaged the US Airbase in Angeles City (115) in Pampanga, and the Subic Naval Base in Olongapo City (284) in Zambales.

Americanization and Filipinization

During a visit to Union Square in San Francisco in July 2011, I read on one side of the 1903 Dewey Memorial, Navy Secretary John Long’s April 24 1898 message to the Commodore: to proceed at once to the Philippine Islands and capture or destroy the Spanish fleet. On another side of the monument’s base, bold letters commemorate how the Dewey’s squadron destroyed on May 1st the enemy fleet of ten warships, reduced the forts, and held the city in subjection until more reinforcement arrived from the US. Reading those words, I imagined imperial-design wire cables running across the Pacific from the Dewey Memorial in Union Square to and all the structures left behind by the Americans in Manila, and to even the statue of Rizal in Luneta.

If the remains of centuries of Spanish rule can still be seen in Intramuros, many of the attractions in Rizal Park are the legacies of the 50-year US rule. These include the Rizal Monument, the Old Legislative Building, and the two neoclassical buildings flanking the Teodoro Circle which used to house the Department of Finance and the Department of Tourism, respectively.

Perhaps the most striking architectural legacy of the US chapter in PH history is the Legislative Building. Originally intended as the National Library, the Legislative Building, and now the National Museum — the imposing structure took several years to build, starting in 1918 during the term of Governor General Francis B. Harrison. It was completed to become the Legislative Building in 1926 following the design of Juan Arellano. Isabelo Tampinco and his sons decorated the Old Senate Hall with Western and neoclassical elements and motifs and yet giving the hall a distinctly Filipino soul.

From 1934 to 1935, 202 delegates representing Manila and the then-45 or so provinces met at the Legislative Building for the Constitutional Convention. Destroyed in World War II, it was rebuilt by the US Philippine War Damage Commission. In 1949, the Senate and the House of Representatives reconvened in the reconstructed building, with Eugenio Perez as the Speaker of the First Congress (1949 to 1953). One of my maternal great-granduncles, Benjamin Ligot, served for three full terms as the Representative of the 2nd District of Cagayan from the Fourth to Sixth Congress (1957 to 1969). My father, David, encouraged by Ligot’s predecessor Paulino Alonzo who served for full three terms under the First to Third Congress, ran and succeeded Ligot in the Seventh Congress. His term was cut short when Marcos declared Martial Law in 1972 and abolished Congress.

In the same hall where legislators including my great-granduncle and father deliberated about laws, now stands one of the National Treasures of the PH: Juan Luna’s Spoliarium which won First Gold Medal at the 1884 Exposition in Madrid. There is no need to deliberate why this oil-on-canvas is perhaps the greatest and most valuable painting by a Filipino. However the interpretation, the haunting scene of dead gladiators being dragged by Roman soldiers speaks to everyone entering the Old Session Hall of the House of Representatives, under the watchful eyes of the neatly uniformed but courteous staff of the museum.

Directly across the Spoliarium is an interpretation by Felix Resurrecion Hidalgo of the 1719 assassination of Governor General Fernando Manuel de Bustillo Bustamante y Rueda. In 2012, an archivist from the University of Sto. Tomas has sought to correct Hidalgo’s mural depicting the involvement of Dominican friars in the assassination of Bustamante. On another end of the room is another painting by Hidalgo depicting the boat of Charon, on loan from the Central Bank of the Philippines. With this allegorical painting, Luna’s Spoliarium, and Hidalgo’s Assassination of Governor General Bustamante, I thought about the war time history of the Old Session Hall of House of Representatives. Two words came to mind: Death and Passage.

From nocturnal seawall escapes to fancy family dinners

In the early 1990s, I often sneaked out with friends to go to the Baywalk and enjoy the night breeze along the seawall lining Roxas Boulevard, or Dewey Boulevard as it is still referred by older folk. We often chose to stay near the police outpost near the US Embassy complex. Food vendors and peddlers of boiled duck egg or balut provided us security. The vagrants came to beg for some food, but they were kind and not really bothersome. We did not venture far from our usual spot because parts of the Baywalk towards Malate were not lighted and very risky. During the times when the wind came in from the bay, it wafted in that peculiar rotting stench and sticky sea air, making our stays very short. But when the winds blew from the east, sitting by the concrete promenade proved to be very pleasing.

When the coffee shops, al fresco restaurants and bars sprung up along the Baywalk from the early to mid-2000s during the time of Mayor Lito Atienza, I avoided the place like a plague. It had become very crowded and even noisier on weekends. The aggressive party atmosphere, with the blaring music from competing establishments, ruined my idea of the quiet two-kilometer stretch Baywalk that I always remembered and enjoyed. In 2007, within days after the return of Alfredo Lim as City Mayor, the establishments along the Baywalk disappeared like they never existed.

During my latest trip down Baywalk, I saw a thicker and sturdier concrete seawall, replacing the original ones the sides of which always had been painted green. In late September 2011, powerful storm surges brought by Typhoon Nesat (Pedring) destroyed portions of the promenade. While walking with friends down the Baywalk which was being repaired months after Nesat, I saw that the place was a mess. It was as if a gigantic hand came out from water, scooped all out the concrete and trees, and pulled them back to the bay only to hurl them back with such ferocity.

Eight years after Lim cleared the Bayside, only a few makeshift food stalls doubling as open-air foot massage parlors stand around the same spot where the background of the infamously viral Department of Public Works and Highways 2011 Photoshop fail had been taken. But life has not changed along Roxas Boulevard. Children are still being scolded by parents for walking on top of the seawall, where the city’s homeless still seek shelter and sleep. Old and young men still throw their lines to the sea, which is teeming with a species that I have never really seen before in the bay. “Want to buy some tilapia?” offered one of the men who had just placed on a plastic mat, a fresh catch of the peculiar fish, gills still gasping. He lives in one of the makeshift huts made from old tarpaulins near the perimeter wall of the exclusive Manila Yacht Club.

The Manila skyline keeps on changing. The very few remaining old creepy villas of prominent families are under the shadows of the tallest and newest of concrete, glass, and iron giants. The southbound lane of Roxas Boulevard is still crowned by the seemingly impenetrable US Embassy complex lined by ancient banyan trees. In the mornings, be it rain or shine, I used to see a long line of people applying for a visa. My family had its share of the pila sa US Embassy experience. After waiting for hours one afternoon in 1982, I remember my mom’s radiant smile when she came out of its highly secure gates. Highly coveted US tourist visas had been stamped on our passports. In 2010, I came out smiling too when I was given a 10-year B1-B2 visa.

Premier condominiums of the period, classy restaurants, and prominent hotels meanwhile still line the northbound lane. Each hotel had their signature fine dining restaurants, to where my father brought us for after Sunday Mass. Aside from the Japanese and Chinese restaurants, I remember Hyatt’s Le Rotisserie, where I had my first taste of French onion soup and authentic beef stroganoff; the Manila Hotel’s Cowrie Grill, where I enjoyed the best of US steaks; and the Philippine Plaza’s Pier 7, where I enjoyed pasta dinners. My favorite was however the Aristocrat, with its chicken barbecue, trademark sauce, pickled papaya and java rice. While restaurants, hotels and attractions have either changed or remained over the decades, sunsets remain spectacularly stunning at Manila Bay, where the marginalized continue to live in the fringes of the wealthy.

From reclaimed to brutal

Children like myself were taught the ideals of the New Society or Bagong Lipunan and that Martial Law Marcos-style was beneficial to the country. As the showcase of the government’s programs to preserve and promote Philippine culture and the arts, the multi-million dollar facilities and structures in the CCP Complex were built. An international event always seemed to be the reason for the construction of the complex’s structures, which were designed by Leandro Locsin. The 1974 Miss Universe opened the Folk Arts Theater or FAT, now the Tangalang Francisco Balagtas, while the IMF-World Bank Meeting in 1976 was held at the Philippine International Convention Center or PICC.

The complex featured the best of Philippine brutalist concrete architecture, designed to inspire and awe people for the sheer massiveness of structures. Built on land reclaimed from the Manila Bay, the CCP stood at the core of Imelda’s City of Man, one that she envisioned to be a bustling and vibrant environment where people can live with dignity.

As school children, we were herded in and out of the buildings at the complex, starting with the Theater of Performing Arts, inaugurated in 1969. With gigantic chandeliers of capiz shell hanging above from above the ceiling over the main lobby, the place was awash with artworks of the best of Filipino painters and sculptors. One particular abstract painting always haunted me: Metamorphosis III, done by Jaime de Guzman in 1970, a year after I was born.

The CCP formed part of my journey as I became interested in different kinds of music and performing arts. I watched my first play in 1982 at the Theater of Performing Arts: Ang Halaga ng Pagiging Masigasig, the masterful Filipino translation by Rolando Tinio of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest”. I also watched my first opera, Mirandolina, the Filipino translation of “The Mistress of the Inn,” which was directed by theater titan Tony Espeja. It starred the eldest of the Marcos sibling, Imee. In 1986, I joined a national writers competition for high school students held at the CCP, but never made it to any category.

I have since, but infrequently, watched plays and performances and visited art exhibits at the theater, renamed the Tanghalang Pambansa or National Theater. In 1989, I watched Cyndi Lauper’s concert at the FAT as part of her “A Night to Remember” World Tour. In 1995, with no money at all to purchase even the cheapest of tickets, my friends and I just sat outside the FAT to listen to Pearl Jam, while having some Tanduay rhum mixed with Coca-Cola. We ran for safety after tear-gas was used to break the riotous crowd.

At the CCP, I saw the Tanghalang Pilipino bring to life literature in the form of dance-musicals, ranging from the 2002 graphic comic “Zsa Zsa Zaturnah” about a superheroine that had an effeminately gay alter-ego, to the powerful epic of Bicol “Ibalong” that had its heroes fighting and slaying frightening ancient monsters. Despite the monumental costs and the criticism by opponents of Marcos against the CCP, it has become one of the nation’s premiere venues to cultivate excellence and to witness the journeys of artists in their chosen craft, whether in the performing arts, painting or sculpture.

The CCP also formed part of my journey with dearest of friends. In November 2009, I watched for the first time, a performance of the Philippine Philarmonic Orchestra — the treat of a dear friend who was suffering from cancer. It was one of the last times I saw him before he died in 2011 after having been completely paralyzed for months. In March 2010, one of my friends, then a struggling artist unveiled her mixed media feminist sculpture along with other young female artists as part of the women’s month celebrations. She later migrated to the United States, had a little family of her own, and moved to Canada recently.

When talking about the CCP Complex, one cannot escape the topic of the Manila Film Center, which opened in 1982 and not without infamy. During its construction, scaffolding gave way and the bodies of the workers who fell to their death were allegedly left to be entombed in the quick dry cement. The incident further fanned the discontent against Imelda, her grandiose projects and lavish lifestyle at a time when the nation’s economy was plummeting. The MFC became the source of urban legends and often the venue of ghost hunters.

I watched the initial screening in 1983 of the Star Wars installment “Return of the Jedi” in the Manila Film Center or MFC, which had already gained the reputation of being allegedly haunted by the angry and restless spirits of the workers who died there. The 1990 Earthquake damaged the Film Center, which is under the territory of neighboring Pasay City (20). It was mostly abandoned and the areas around it became a popular but very risky cruising area for gay men, earning it the brutal nickname bakahan or cattle ranch. In 2001, the MFC was repaired. It became the venue of an all transgender Vegas-type show until 2013 when fire gutted parts of the building and added another chapter in the building’s brutal structural history.

Up next! Narratives and Renamed Streets — The Old Pueblos of the City of Manila (28)

Salamat muli! — Marco de PH

Previously: Within the Walls — Ramblings in the City of Manila (28)

Writing from: Iloilo City (797).