“We do not remember our past; we do not treasure our history; we have no pride of place.”
Each time I pass by Quirino Avenue going north from my residence in Manila, I get to see the façade of the old Paco train station. In my grade school days, we took the slow but then comfortable train to our hometown San Pablo City.
There was even a dining coach where we could order a very good arroz caldo, much better in fact than what PAL now serves in its airport business class lounge. Aside from a light yellow broth flavored by turmeric, the old PNR pospas had strands of red-orange kasubha, another food ingredient which my lola used with home-made lechon sauce.
The young do not know kasubha, which Filipino chefs hardly use these days, and US FDA prohibited Mang Tomas never used to flavor its bottled sarsa.
But back to the Paco Station, with its imposing neo-colonial façade now a relic from a forgotten past, having been demolished decades back when the station was abandoned by the PNR, whose trains have become obsolete, even as we all hope for a revival when the Tutuban to Calamba stretch finally gets operational after Duterte and Tugade ordered its rehabilitation.
That façade, mercifully un-demolished when historians protested during the Cory-FVR administrations as Quirino Avenue was widened, is now half-covered by a ficus tree whose roots and branches have eaten up its glorious front.
For a population that has never treasured its historic past, Paco Station is a grim reminder of what we have become as a people. We do not remember our past; we do not treasure our history; we have no pride of place.
Take Intramuros, which mercifully Imelda Romualdez Marcos rebuilt from decrepit piles of rubble left by the carpet bombing of the American “liberators” in 1945 when that pompous General Douglas MacArthur “returned,” even as the Japanese invaders respected Pres. Manuel Luis Quezon’s declaration of Manila as an “open city” to preserve its pre-war beauty as the “Pearl of the Orient.”
Thanks to Imelda, the walls have been restored, and FVR’s golf course which the Philippine Tourism Authority developed from the old Manila City-owned Muni Links and Sunken Garden has at least protected the walls from graffiti and decay.
Yet, even as we have to credit the Imelda-created Intramuros Administration for slow preservation efforts through the past four decades, the walled city sorely needs a massive rehabilitation and adaptive re-use project to restore old glory, not only for foreigners who visit as tourists, but more for locals to somehow regain a sense of history.
So much has to be done, starting at how informal settlers, many on abandoned privately-owned land, could be relocated in-city, hopefully with Sec. Jerry Acuzar and Manila officialdom joining hands, just as former Mayor Isko Moreno built his Tondominiums and Binondominium to house slum dwellers. In-city, though not inside Intramuros.
Perhaps if Manila could get Congress to recover its lost Port Area properties which martial law gave to the Philippine Ports Authority. Through the years, this has allowed that whole section beside the Port of Manila to deteriorate.
I just came back from a short trip to Taipei, my fourth since I resigned as MECO chairman and resident representative in July 2021 due to engagement in the failed presidential bid of Mayor Isko Moreno.
It was also the first time I visited my former office in the Neihu district, now with a new chairperson, former press secretary Cheloy Velicaria-Garafil, who graciously received me and my friends, and where I was able to greet the staff, reliving memories of a wonderful five-year posting.
Taiwan, even if very poor after Chiang Kai-shek retreated to the island in 1949, has preserved most of its relics from the past. One of my favorite haunts is Huashan Creative Park along Zhongzhiao street, which is nothing more than a string of old warehouses re-purposed into nice cafés and bistros, antique and souvenir shops, where no less than a Paul Smith exposition of memorabilia was once held, and old movies, whether Chinese or Hollywood legends, are shown in a small cinema.
Huashan has become a multi-purpose go-to for both European, Japanese and Chinese tourists, aside from locals, although very few Filipino visitors bother to go, preferring to capture a Taipei visit through photos of the imposing Chiang Kai-shek memorial and the gaudy Taipei 101, then flocking to outlet shopping malls.
Yet all over the island, history is recalled with fondness by the preservation and adaptive re-use of its relics from a well-remembered past, just like Xintiandi was re-purposed in Shanghai.
How I wish we could do the same in Intramuros, the Port Area, the Escolta, Binondo and San Nicolas areas, even in the once toney Ermita as in plebeian Paco.
