Parian is one of the oldest and most historic places in the country. It started as a small community of Chinese traders in the sixteenth century, grew into the residential headquarters of the most dynamic entrepreneurs of Cebu and became the genteel district where resided the wealthiest families of the city.
Parian evolved into a distinct settlement around 1590 when Chinese traders and artisans came to reside on the north side of the Spanish settlement of Cebu which Miguel Lopez de Legazpi had founded in 1565. The Spanish settlement was the section of the port area them called ciudad. An estuary (later called Parian estero) flowed on the north side of this settlement and on its opposite bank the Chinese built a community that came to be know as Parian (a word somewhat perplexing etymology but most probably derived from a Mexican word for market place).
Chinese traders participated in the lucrative galleon trade and somehow had to settle down in Cebu. In time, Parian evolved into a market and trading center. Our first first reference to it comes from Pedro Chirino, the famous chronicler who was Superior of the Jesuit residence in Cebu. Chirino recorded that the newly-arrived Jesuits preached in the “Chinese quarter of the city” which had “more than two hundred souls and only one Christian”
The Jesuits opened a free primary school ( the forerunner of the Colegio de San Ildefonso, later Colegio de San Carlos). Here also, the Chinese Christians built a church that was to become one of the most magnificent in the province.
Parian formally existed as a parish from 1614 to 1828. It was also a separate pueblo or municipal unti from 1755 to 1849. These facts indicate that the district had a corporate character vis-à-vis the other districts of the Cebu port area, like the ciudad, San Nicolas and arrabales (suburbs) as the Ermita-Lutao area.
Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Parian changed its identity into a district of mestizo-sangleyes (Chinese mestizos). Then during the nineteenth century, the Chinese mestizos of Parian were the most active entrepreneurs of Agriculture and agents of commerce.
The rise to prosperity of the Chinese mestizos was displayed in their lifestyle. The large canteria y teja (stone and tile) residences in Parian served as headquarters in the management of their agricultural estates. Their children were trained in business and the social graces, went to San Carlos or Santo Tomas for their studies.
At the turn of the present century, Parian was the residential area of the city’s wealthiest families. The district had a large concentration of stone and wood housed and was a center of the social life of the Buena sociedad cebuana.
The physical boundaries of Parian have fluctuated in its know history. There was a time when its parochial limits stretched as far as north Talamban. And there were times when it was merely a barrio of several blocks. Through all this time, Pairan gravitated around a center constituted of the small, triangular Parian Plaza and adjoining it was the Parian church. In the succeeding years, this area remained a public place for it was variously the site of a schoolhouses, a firehouse and a local library.
The Parian of Cebu is one of several parian in the Philippines. And, in sense, parian itself is merely a touchstone for those old places out of which our collective life was shaped.
The Abolition of the Parian Parish
One hundred fifty-one years ago this January, the town and parish of Parian were finally abolished by order of the governor-general, culminating a controversy that lasted 30 years. The parish’s troubles began in 1828 when the bishop of Cebu first ordered its abolition. That same year, the political administration in Cebu entered the fray by questioning the town’s jurisdiction over the barrio of Zamboanguillo. Numerous representations with Manila’s ecclesiastical and political authorities ensued between 1832 and 1850 to no avail.
The real reason behind the town’s troubles may have been the growing commercial and agricultural success and clout of the town’s Chinese mestizos that threatened the economic position of the Spaniards and the Augustinian friars, whose Hacienda de Banilad was within the parish’s jurisdiction.
Parian began on October 22, 1614, as a parish for Christian Chinese and native Filipinos, separated from the formal city or Ciudad that was reserved for the Spanish. Its population of 100 in 1744 had grown to 2,500 by the 1840s, owing to the economic prominence of its residents.
A church that rivaled the decaying Cebu Cathedral indicated this success. Unfortunately, it too became a casualty to the controversy, having been ignominiously torn block by block in 1878-1879. Today, only an old sign beside a wooden chapel marks the spot where the church, testament to the town’s prosperity, used to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment