I Love Iloilo

Today, at our school cafeteria, inspite of the array of “saucy” lunch dishes to choose from like menudo, adobo, linaga, bakareta, and spareribs, I still ended up choosing the driest dish,the most common, the most popular viand of all — fried chicken. That’s why I’ve come to conclude:

We Ilonggos are voracious chicken eaters. (Geez, that sounds frightening!) Give us plenty of food choices and we’ll still have chicken any day. (more…)

If you’re coming from Iloilo to visit the UNESCO World Heritage church of Miagao, there’s a strange-looking stone structure on the left of the National Highway, near the bend at Bgy.Guibongan. It’s actually a bridge. Many folks tend to call it a Spanish bridge. Correction please. It’s a Filipino bridge, specifically an Ilonggo-made bridge. Art historically-correct terms for it can be: “a Spanish-colonial period bridge”/ a stone bridge from the Spanish (colonial) period/ a Spanish-era (stone) bridge/ a heritage bridge/ an old stone bridge.” (more…)

The Miagao cemetery located at Bgy. Baybay Norte (formerly Cota Baybay) houses an exceptional capilla or funerary chapel. In olden times, masses were held here on All Saint’s Day, Sundays and other important feast days.

Probably built around 1889-1895, the Miagao cemetery capilla can definitely boast of its original brick dome. (more…)

I just sank my teeth into the marshmallowy softness of Balgoa’s ube-flavored Manapla puto and followed it up with a sip from Venice coffee straight from a vendo.

Not all puto are created alike, not even if they all call themselves Manapla. (Manapla is actually a town in the neighboring isle of Negros that became famous for its puto on a banana leaf base.) (more…)

I just sank my teeth into the marshmallowy softness of Balgoa’s ube-flavored Manapla puto and followed it up with a sip from Venice coffee straight from a vendo.

Not all puto are created alike, not even if they all call themselves Manapla. (Manapla is actually a town in the neighboring isle of Negros that became famous for its puto on a banana leaf base.) (more…)

If the name doesn’t ring a bell, Juan Arellano is one of the Philippine’s best, having been proclaimed as a National Artist for Architecture. He is responsible for the Art Deco Metropolitan Theater in Manila (now being rehabilitated).

In Iloilo, he designed two buildings, the more famous of which is featured above. The other one is the Jaro Municipal Building (now used as a police station). (more…)

Not many people are aware that aside from Miagao Church (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), there is another gem of architecture in Iloilo. That’s right. The San Joaquin Church is one of 26 churches declared by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts as National Treasures. There are so, so many churches from Aparri to Jolo, and to be in the “magic 26” is indeed something to brag about. (more…)

The word heritage comes from two Latin words – heri (past) and tangere (to touch). Literally, it means “touching the past.”

Heritage is the sum total of all cultural goods we inherit from our ancestors. As inheritance, we have the obligation to take good care of it (preserve) and hand on. In our language, heritage can best be translated as paranubli-on. Its root word, the verb subli connotes not absolute ownership of something inherited from an elder; rather, it carries with it a duty to handle it with care (paranubli-on like duta, alahas, manggad…) so that it can be further passed on to future generations. (more…)

Panay is said to have come from “Hay pan!” (literally “There is bread!”)

Etiological legend says, to borrow the phrase of respected art historian Fr. Rene Galende, that when the Spaniards (Miguel Lopez de Legaspi and co.) scoured the nearby islands for food (they were near starvation in Cebu, their first official settlement), they discovered this island abundant in rice. In great relief and joy, they exclaimed “Hay pan.” (more…)

Found at the southernmost town of Iloilo is San Joaquin cemetery. Its a spectacular sight as these Ilonggo teens have proven when they scaled its steep stone steps to the capilla–the cemetery’s crowning glory.

San Joaquin cemetery is the last cemetery to be completed before the revolution erupted in the late 1890s. (more…)