Picture the conventional modern city: skyscrapers tainting the cityscape with smog and smoke screening the streets, the creeping vehicular traffic outlined by glaring yellow and red lights, and the incessant humming, honking, and hissing of the humdrum rush of daily life. While there is generally less of these in Iloilo City, this ‘less-is-more’ becomes the hallmark of its character: there is the rush of city life but there are also the most beautiful and profound pauses in between.
We can generally claim that every city has a rich backstory that helped bring it to its feet, yet Iloilo City seems to have something else that makes the past function operationally with the present. One needs but course through the streets of the City Proper and one witnesses, nay, experiences the vestiges of the old days when Iloilo as port city was an economic nerve-center and a cultural hub.
That the old establishments – still operational and bustling with trade – have their names and foundational years inscribed proudly on their façades speak of a local zeitgeist that indulges in the sophisticated modern yet proudly flaunts its deep-seated roots in a past rich in culture and heritage: the old Hoskyn’s shopping mall buried deep by the contemporary colors of phone cases and plastic purses sold at the sidewalks; the defunct Regent cinema house, still adorned by Apollo and his muses; the picturesque bookstores still brimming with textbooks and manuals while wizened rubber stamp makers quietly ply their trade in weathered stalls outside; venerable Roberto’s, selling the same savory siopao and other Chinese delicacies since its fledgling days, and the curious little hole at the street corner where pan de sal and other pastries are mysteriously purchased from.
As if to stand in contrast yet equal to these quaint structures of the past would be the new Iloilo City, pushed deep into the heartland across the river: aspiring to contemporary neo-classical architecture are the towering facades of the malls and offices that stand where the old airport runway used to span; along the spacious avenues devoid of spaghetti wires are special bike lanes and wide sidewalks that invite the pedestrian and the runner to stretch his legs rather than rely on automobiles, and along the entire boulevard are the cooling shrubbery that match the arboreal shade of the trees that line the walkways.
To enumerate what is modern and what is timeworn in the city would constitute an encyclopedic compendium – and we would not have even scratched the surface if we merely discussed the architectural styles that define the cityscape: there is still more than what meets the eye.
How to Entertain an Ilonggo 101
Modern Ilonggos are picky with entertainment – and like their forebears, they do so with a modicum of cerebral panache. Nary a radio drama or even just a radio program would be aired without earning unsolicited commentaries from listeners. Stage a comedy and you will get all the laughter and the applause at the right parts and pauses. Put together an orchestral concert and there will be an expectant group demanding a full evening of serious classical music. Open a gallery and there will be a full house teeming with veteran painters conversing with young zine artists.
Perhaps it comes from the fact that Iloilo City keeps itself as a microcosm of art and artifacts, a public repository that insists on making and displaying art to be part of the public’s consciousness and artistic taste: one might consider the city as a shared space where art thrives. Walk (yes, you read that correctly) through the streets and one would be surprised by the sheer number of museums, galleries, public murals, reliefs, and statues one would encounter, to match the stately neo-classical colonial period buildings that have become silent metaphors of the city’s development.
Take a jeepney and ride through the main streets, and you are greeted with artworks by the likes of Ed Defensor, Rock Drilon, PG Zoluaga, Marz Capanang, Kristoffer Brasileño, and the other up-and-coming contemporary Ilonggo artists whose names have made a mark in the artistic sensibility of the locals. Look closely into the depicted images and one comes face to face with scenes from history and culture – and if these are not meant to remind the casual contemporary onlooker of glorious yesterdays, then these would have become mere adornments to please the eye and nothing more.
Public statuary adds to the aesthetics and that sense of history as well: there are the demure (but once half-naked) caryatids of the Arroyo fountain, proudly bearing piscine figures spouting water even as they stand on bases carved with crabs. Ed Defensor’s monumental statue of an Ilongga lin-ay bearing a sickle and a sheaf of rice towers above the dome of the City Hall. Francesco Monti’s gargantuan Law and Order guard the narrow doors of the old hall, now the University of the Philippines’ Museum of Art and Cultural Heritage. And as if to echo this Ilonggo romance with allegorical classicism, pass by Plaza Libertad and one would be greeted with the stony, sneering visages of Bacchus, in all his smirking glory, scattered around with grapevine and broken horns.
Relishing religiosity
Binding this artistic sophistication to custom and tradition would be the religiosity of the Ilonggo: local sensibility will insist that the religious is the artistic.
The city’s many churches are manifestations of that worldview. Molo, for one, was built to Gothic-Romanesque dimensions and while its spires are permanent landmarks still used in navigating the waterways, it also houses antique statues of female saints; outside at the plaza, in a gazebo cut to classical dimensions are relatively modern statues of the Greek goddesses bearing the symbols of their divinity – a curious juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane in a structure that doubles as both museum and place of worship.
Contrasting this feminist place of worship is the Jaro Cathedral, the city’s episcopal see. Fraught with antique statuary of male saints, it stolidly stands as a monument to the ages. Together with the venerable belfry (recently renovated and restored) across the street and the Evangelical Church – one of the firsts among the islands – they remain as silent witnesses to the centuries spent in war and peace, trade and revolution, and the enduring faith that outlasts these.
To relegate religiosity to mere artistic imagery is rather shallow and Iloilo City’s dalliance with the past transcends this. Most palpable are these sensibilities with the passing of the carrozas pushed by the stately processions that crisscross each other during Holy Week, or in the ostentatious display of Castilian verve and cheer in the parish fiestas, or in the simple act of devotion of lighting a candle to La Candelaria for a special intention or in heartfelt thanksgiving. The past comes to life in the candlelight and incense smoke.
While the city has gone far with urban development and cultural appreciation, it does not hesitate to look back and bring with it the treasures of what has been. An invitation would be a fitting coda to this overflow of urban description: try out Iloilo City, experience culture and heritage, and experience what it means to live where the past is always present.
[The author is part of the faculty of Ateneo de Iloilo – Santa Maria Catholic school and a member of the Iloilo Critics Circle.
