WALA LANG
MAP OF THE PAST A map entitled Provincia de Manila shows a strange place. It was 1885, five or six generations ago, and maybe with 200,000 rather than 20 million people
Metropolitan Manila or officially National Capital Region (NCR), was established in 1978. It consists of 17 local government units with what you might call a super coordinator in the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA).
Before NCR, the component cities each had a charter and municipalities were part of a province. Long before 1978, however, more or less the whole NCR was a province alongside Bulacan, Morong (now Rizal), La Laguna, and Cavite. Manila was of course the capital of the country, but it was also capital of Manila the province in the same way that Cebu the town was the capital of Cebu Province, Batangas of Batangas Province, Zamboanga of Zamboanga Province, etc.
A map entitled Provincia de Manila shows a strange place. It was 1885, five or six generations ago, and maybe with 200,000 rather than 20 million people, NCR was practically all rice fields and bamboo groves. Today everywhere are rooftops with greenery only in Manila’s Rizal Park, in parts of East and South Triangles, Quezon Memorial Circle, and U.P. Diliman in Quezon City, and in gated villages here and there.
We were a Spanish colony then and the big boss was Governor-General Joaquin Jovellar. José Rizal was in Europe and had just finished medical studies at the Universidad Central de Madrid. The port of Manila was bustling with sailing ships filled with exports of sugar, abaca, and coffee (Batangas was for several years the world’s only source of the bean). Government had lightened the onerous polo y servicio (forced labor) and instituted a tax reform. International communication was better, with the recently inaugurated cable service between Madrid and Luzon. Unrest was simmering over friar abuse, however, and the Katipunan was formed soon after.
The province of Manila was bounded on the north by Rio de Tuliahan ó Tansá that exited to Manila Bay in San José de Navotas. The boundary turned north near Novaliches and then followed the Marilao River going east to San Mateo apparently through today’s La Mesa Dam lake. It then traced the tops of Antipolo hills and went downhill to Cainta and along Laguna de Bay to Muntinglupa, where the boundary made a wide U-turn and followed the Zapote River to Manila Bay south of Las Piñas.
The map identifies settlements of various sizes, namely: cabecera—the area inside the walls (Intramuros); pueblo—a sizeable settlement with or without a parochial church; visita—a place that has a chapel or small church but without a resident priest; and caserio—one that has so few residents as not to warrant even a chapel.
The map shows place names in different sizes depending on their ranking by size. The largest pueblos north of the Pasig were Tondo, Binondo, Santa Cruz, Quiapo, Sampaloc, Tambobong, San Jose de Navotas, San Francisco del Monte, San Juan del Monte, San Felipe Neri, Mariquina, and San Mateo. South of the Pasig was less populated with the pueblos of Ermita, Malate, Pineda/Pasay, Malibay, Pandacan, Santa Ana, San Pedro de Macati, Pasig, Pateros, and Taguig.
Among the identified visitas is Peñafrancia that survives as a street in Paco and whose much renovated chapel stands in a thickly populated neighborhood.
Former Jesuit haciendas are large blank areas in the map with branches of the San Juan River and senderos between barrios and caserios. They were confiscated and auctioned by government when the Jesuit order was expelled in 1768. Large areas ended up with the Tuason and Roxas-Zobel families and are now parts of Quezon City, Makati, and Taguig. Other friar lands were sold during the American regime, including those owned by the Franciscans in Sampaloc and Augustinians in Mandaluyong.
Roads or caminos are indicated in the map as carretero, herradura, and sendero, meaning roads passable respectively by wheeled vehicles, on horseback, or on foot. My eyes and magnifying glass are not strong enough to decipher everything, but the only carreteros outside Intramuros and suburbs appear to be those leading from Intramuros to Parañaque and to Tambobong. All others were herraduras and senderos. Pueblos were located along rivers because travel was easier by boat.
Prominent in the landscape are the Pasig River and its tributaries, San Juan River, Mariquina River, and along Manila Bay, Rio Bitucang Manoc o de Pasong Cauayan that began from the Pasig River in San Fernando de Dilao and ended up on Manila Bay in Las Piñas.
Landmarks along the Pasig River noticed by Rizal’s hero in El Filibusterismo are in the map: Guadalupe, the visita of San Nicolás, and Malapad na Bató that I had thought was a big riverside rock but is probably the high ground of BGC where stand U.P-BGC, International School, and British School.
There is no place called Diliman, but the thickly populated part of the UP Campus known as Cruz na Ligás is indicated as a barrio along a tributary of the San Juan River. Pasong Dilao could be the center of the U.P. Diliman campus now traversed by a tiny stream and shallow lagoon in the low ground surrounded by the principal university buildings.
The map identifies cerros (hills) and montes (mountains). There are a few montes, including Monte Mani near the settlement of Sucat, and numerous cerros, including a group near Monte Pámitinán and Monte Dugo in Montalbán. I can’t quite make out the names but they seem like cerros Tamlúg, Hubláng, Limatic, and Macalag.
Montes Pámitinán and Dugo look like a monte cleaved down the middle. Filipino mythology relates that an evil sorcerer lured the giant Bernardo Carpio to be crushed between the mountains that he caused to slam against each other. The giant escaped and presumably gave the sorcerer a cleaving after holding the mountains apart with his outstretched arms.
Andres Bonifacio and the founders of the Katipunan hid in the caves of Pámitinán, where new members were initiated in elaborate rituals. The Katipunan was discovered and in August 1896 came out in the open with the Cry of Balintawak a.k.a. Cry of Pugad Lawin. There is no Pugad Lawin in the province of Manila but there is a less nobly named Sitio Pugad Babuy near the pueblo of Balintaoaq.
In 1885, Manila Bay was a smooth “J” from San José de Navotas and Tuliahan River to Cavite. The North and South Harbors as well as the Port Area were not yet in existence. The Tondo shoreline was at the end of Plaza Moriones. Roxas Boulevard, as well as the Philippine Navy headquarters and the entire reclaimed area from the Cultural Center to MOA to Okada Hotel, was water. It could be back to that in a few more decades with global warming and rising ocean levels.
Note: This article is based on Provincia de Manila por Enrique d’Almonte y Muriel 1885. Courtesy of Gallery of Prints.
Comments are cordially invited, addressed to [email protected].
MAP OF THE PAST A map entitled Provincia de Manila shows a strange place. It was 1885, five or six generations ago, and maybe with 200,000 rather than 20 million people
Metropolitan Manila or officially National Capital Region (NCR), was established in 1978. It consists of 17 local government units with what you might call a super coordinator in the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA).
Before NCR, the component cities each had a charter and municipalities were part of a province. Long before 1978, however, more or less the whole NCR was a province alongside Bulacan, Morong (now Rizal), La Laguna, and Cavite. Manila was of course the capital of the country, but it was also capital of Manila the province in the same way that Cebu the town was the capital of Cebu Province, Batangas of Batangas Province, Zamboanga of Zamboanga Province, etc.
A map entitled Provincia de Manila shows a strange place. It was 1885, five or six generations ago, and maybe with 200,000 rather than 20 million people, NCR was practically all rice fields and bamboo groves. Today everywhere are rooftops with greenery only in Manila’s Rizal Park, in parts of East and South Triangles, Quezon Memorial Circle, and U.P. Diliman in Quezon City, and in gated villages here and there.
We were a Spanish colony then and the big boss was Governor-General Joaquin Jovellar. José Rizal was in Europe and had just finished medical studies at the Universidad Central de Madrid. The port of Manila was bustling with sailing ships filled with exports of sugar, abaca, and coffee (Batangas was for several years the world’s only source of the bean). Government had lightened the onerous polo y servicio (forced labor) and instituted a tax reform. International communication was better, with the recently inaugurated cable service between Madrid and Luzon. Unrest was simmering over friar abuse, however, and the Katipunan was formed soon after.
The province of Manila was bounded on the north by Rio de Tuliahan ó Tansá that exited to Manila Bay in San José de Navotas. The boundary turned north near Novaliches and then followed the Marilao River going east to San Mateo apparently through today’s La Mesa Dam lake. It then traced the tops of Antipolo hills and went downhill to Cainta and along Laguna de Bay to Muntinglupa, where the boundary made a wide U-turn and followed the Zapote River to Manila Bay south of Las Piñas.
The map identifies settlements of various sizes, namely: cabecera—the area inside the walls (Intramuros); pueblo—a sizeable settlement with or without a parochial church; visita—a place that has a chapel or small church but without a resident priest; and caserio—one that has so few residents as not to warrant even a chapel.
The map shows place names in different sizes depending on their ranking by size. The largest pueblos north of the Pasig were Tondo, Binondo, Santa Cruz, Quiapo, Sampaloc, Tambobong, San Jose de Navotas, San Francisco del Monte, San Juan del Monte, San Felipe Neri, Mariquina, and San Mateo. South of the Pasig was less populated with the pueblos of Ermita, Malate, Pineda/Pasay, Malibay, Pandacan, Santa Ana, San Pedro de Macati, Pasig, Pateros, and Taguig.
Among the identified visitas is Peñafrancia that survives as a street in Paco and whose much renovated chapel stands in a thickly populated neighborhood.
Former Jesuit haciendas are large blank areas in the map with branches of the San Juan River and senderos between barrios and caserios. They were confiscated and auctioned by government when the Jesuit order was expelled in 1768. Large areas ended up with the Tuason and Roxas-Zobel families and are now parts of Quezon City, Makati, and Taguig. Other friar lands were sold during the American regime, including those owned by the Franciscans in Sampaloc and Augustinians in Mandaluyong.
Roads or caminos are indicated in the map as carretero, herradura, and sendero, meaning roads passable respectively by wheeled vehicles, on horseback, or on foot. My eyes and magnifying glass are not strong enough to decipher everything, but the only carreteros outside Intramuros and suburbs appear to be those leading from Intramuros to Parañaque and to Tambobong. All others were herraduras and senderos. Pueblos were located along rivers because travel was easier by boat.
Prominent in the landscape are the Pasig River and its tributaries, San Juan River, Mariquina River, and along Manila Bay, Rio Bitucang Manoc o de Pasong Cauayan that began from the Pasig River in San Fernando de Dilao and ended up on Manila Bay in Las Piñas.
Landmarks along the Pasig River noticed by Rizal’s hero in El Filibusterismo are in the map: Guadalupe, the visita of San Nicolás, and Malapad na Bató that I had thought was a big riverside rock but is probably the high ground of BGC where stand U.P-BGC, International School, and British School.
There is no place called Diliman, but the thickly populated part of the UP Campus known as Cruz na Ligás is indicated as a barrio along a tributary of the San Juan River. Pasong Dilao could be the center of the U.P. Diliman campus now traversed by a tiny stream and shallow lagoon in the low ground surrounded by the principal university buildings.
The map identifies cerros (hills) and montes (mountains). There are a few montes, including Monte Mani near the settlement of Sucat, and numerous cerros, including a group near Monte Pámitinán and Monte Dugo in Montalbán. I can’t quite make out the names but they seem like cerros Tamlúg, Hubláng, Limatic, and Macalag.
Montes Pámitinán and Dugo look like a monte cleaved down the middle. Filipino mythology relates that an evil sorcerer lured the giant Bernardo Carpio to be crushed between the mountains that he caused to slam against each other. The giant escaped and presumably gave the sorcerer a cleaving after holding the mountains apart with his outstretched arms.
Andres Bonifacio and the founders of the Katipunan hid in the caves of Pámitinán, where new members were initiated in elaborate rituals. The Katipunan was discovered and in August 1896 came out in the open with the Cry of Balintawak a.k.a. Cry of Pugad Lawin. There is no Pugad Lawin in the province of Manila but there is a less nobly named Sitio Pugad Babuy near the pueblo of Balintaoaq.
In 1885, Manila Bay was a smooth “J” from San José de Navotas and Tuliahan River to Cavite. The North and South Harbors as well as the Port Area were not yet in existence. The Tondo shoreline was at the end of Plaza Moriones. Roxas Boulevard, as well as the Philippine Navy headquarters and the entire reclaimed area from the Cultural Center to MOA to Okada Hotel, was water. It could be back to that in a few more decades with global warming and rising ocean levels.
Note: This article is based on Provincia de Manila por Enrique d’Almonte y Muriel 1885. Courtesy of Gallery of Prints.
Comments are cordially invited, addressed to [email protected].