On regular days, this part of the district of San Miguel in Manila stands in guarded silence, as human and steel sentinels have been assigned here to protect the district’s most important structure, as well as its most important occupant.
Thursdays here though are a different story, as these sentinels greet a somewhat greater crowd of people from all walks of life. They are Catholics and devotees who make their way every Thursday as a sign of their devotion to their patron, St. Jude Thaddeus.
A plaza has been generally defined as an open space, serving the “village center” where people converge to do business or be entertained. And in the olden days of the city, long before malls, television, and the Internet became part of our lives, the plaza was the place to be to “hang out” and relax.
Here in the metropolis though, many plazas here now mean a different thing, thanks in part to the influence of urbanization. Nowadays a number of plazas of the old have somewhat disappeared in the midst of bad traffic, parked vehicles, and urban landscaping gone wrong. (horribly wrong in some cases)
Situated along the banks of the rivers Pasig and San Juan, quite removed from the busy and traffic-laden streets of Manila’s Santa Mesa district is a community (more like a subdistrict or a sitio of sorts) known as Bacood. Bacood’s name comes from the Tagalog word “bakood” which would mean either an elevated area or a cane plantation. It has been said that the area back then served as a plantation for various crops. But in the early days, Bacood was known as Cordeleria, a Spanish term for a shop that sells ropes. This was because the place back then was the center of rope-making and selling activity in Manila and in surrounding suburbs. One of those people who owned such a business was a Katipunero named Sancho Valenzuela, who would soon lead a failed assault against the Spaniards at the outbreak of the Philippine Revolution in 1896 and became one of the first martyrs of the Revolution. His memory now since invoked in the naming of the street that leads to Bacood.
Right at the end of the service road of Ramon Magsaysay Blvd. (where most vehicles bound for Santol area pass through) stands one of the few skyscrapers that dominate the landscape of Santa Mesa district. Nowadays, this plain-looking building is home to some shipping and recruitment agencies and the preschool unit of STI Colleges. But who would have thought that this building has a colorful history of its own?
