Before I proceed with the main part of this column, I’d like to thank the University of the Philippines Cebu Alumni Association headed by its president Rhia Lydia Espina, a fellow student activist in our younger years, for including me in this year’s Tatak UP Awards.
I wish to apologize here for not accepting the award when it was given to me way back in 2011.
I must acknowledge especially my dear friend and neighbor in this CDN page, Dr. Madrileña dela Cerna, for the constant but gentle prodding.
Congratulations are due to my co-awardees also which, given the space limitations here, I cannot mention anymore.
My years at UP Diliman remain close to my heart as always and an award like this prods me more to be of service in the field I have chosen to devote my energies into.
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I cannot help but wonder if our dearly beloved Archbishop of Cebu, Msgr. Jose S. Palma, has been misinformed — a feeling that fellow heritage advocates also share with me.
Saying that the Patria must be demolished because it is old and poses a danger because of its age is a very eyebrow-raising statement to say the least.
The entrance overhang/canopy or ‘porte cochere’ of that building did not even show any signs of stress after the 7.4 Magnitude earthquake struck Cebu and Bohol in 2013.
On the other hand, two older structures, the Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral and the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño, suffered tremendous damage.
Are we now to assume that these two old ones are too dangerous and should have been destroyed instead of retrofitting them?
I am no philosopher and I hate to debate on this but that is what the logic behind that statement purported to come from the Cebu Landmasters Inc. (CLI) and taken as, forgive the pun, gospel truth.
It appears that there seems to be a miscommunication between the heritage advocates and the Archdiocesan Administration Board tasked with this CLI-proposed project.
The heritage advocates are not asking to preserve the entire Patria de Cebu complex and build a new structure over it.
Far from it, all we are asking is to save the front, the main façade, of the building and retain its lobby and the wings as perhaps a visitor information center or a mini-museum about the history of the Patria.
It can even serve as a kind of welcome façade for the planned piazza behind it that is supposed to link all three buildings proposed by the CLI.
Archt. Melva Rodriguez-Java, who has been the leading fore behind preserving the Patria, has said it very clearly: this façade is quite groundbreaking because it is designed in ‘brise-soleil’ fashion.
The architect, Jose Mercado, tilted horizontal sections of the wings or sides of the façade as a kind of sun shield or sun breaker, thus reducing heat gain.
Even its second floor harbors another kind of ‘brise-soleil’ just above the entrance canopy.
This issue of the Patria de Cebu reminds me of the lonely fight of the Cebu Historical Society led by Prof. Julian Jumalon sometime in the late 1960s to stop the demolition of the Spanish-era structures behind the Cathedral Convent (now the Archdiocesan Museum of Cebu), which I wrote about in a previous column.
It was home to the Little Flower School and was once the girls high school of the University of San Carlos immediately after the war.
The same reasons were used to eventually destroy the buildings, which were made of coral stone and topped with clay roof tiles: old and dangerous.
Now all we have are parts of one ground floor wall serving as the perimeter fence of the museum’s rear gardens.
And we are the poorer for it, historically and morally.
Cebu City Mayor Serging Osmeña Jr. used the same reasoning—“the structure is old and dangerous”—to request Malacañang in 1956 to approve the demolition of Fort San Pedro so that a new city hall could rise on its grounds.
He even added a third reason: there are two other forts like it in the country anyway so destroying this one would still leave two more to ponder at.
It also took the lonely voice of Jumalon to successfully rally the public against it, pointing out that there were only 24 rare golden cowrie shells known to exist in the country and each was as valued as the other.
Given that we only want the front section of the Patria to be preserved, perhaps the archdiocese is open to reconsidering its position and is willing to take to heart the lessons of history?
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