More often than not, when we talk about Manila’s faith heritage, we talk about the city’s Catholic heritage. That should not be a surprise given that Catholicism is pretty much ingrained in our culture since the Spanish colonial period and that Manila, Intramuros in particular, was the epicenter not only of Catholicism in the country but in Asia as a whole, with its 7 churches located within the city walls. Overlooked in all this is the city’s religious heritage beyond Catholic Manila. Granted they are not as old as the Catholic churches, they have an interesting story to tell as well. One of them is the subject of today’s post,…
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The Two Houses of Jose P. Laurel
Jose P. Laurel has a somewhat mixed legacy for having served as President of the Japanese-sponsored Second Republic from 1943 to 1945. Whatever achievements his administration had were overshadowed by the specter of Japanese control over the country, especially with their “support” for an independent but pro-Japan Philippines, and the horrors of World War II at large, especially towards the end when fighting between the Japanese and the US-led forces brought about much death and destruction to the country. Despite this, he is regarded as a good president who had nothing but the Filipino interests at heart and did what he could in the situation prevailing that time in the face of…
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Manila 1945: Remembering A City’s Bloody Feburary
Originally posted on February 3, 2015, this post has been rewritten to add some new stuff and make the piece more “timeless” and less constrained from being a 70th anniversary post as it was originally written. February has been a traditionally known worldwide as the “love month,” as well as being as being historic month for the Philippines, especially in recent years due to the events of 1986 which culminated in what we now know as the first People Power Revolution. But not many people of another historic event that happened years back in 1945, one of the darkest and most devastating chapters in the history of Manila and of the…
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From Crystal Arcade to PNB Building to…Gone? The Saga of an Escolta Address
Escolta itself is a street has bore witness and reflected as well the ups and downs Manila’s history: from the glorious past, to the steep decline, to the present struggles and some triumphs of rebirth it is experiencing at the moment. While we have buildings such as Calvo, Regina, and First United to tell us the resilience of this old commercial and business district in the midst of these shifts in the city history, if you want to learn more about the more tragic side these shifts have caused, we have this particular address in Escolta we will be looking at today.