Cebu’s Colon Street, Courtesy of USC Cebuano Studies Center | CDN File Photo
CEBU CITY, Philippines — A marketing fad that went unchecked for decades?
Cebu City’s famous Colon Street had held the name as the ‘oldest street in the Philippines.’
However, that distinction is being scrutinized once again as experts – and even netizens – renewed calls for the government to reevaluate it.
In this explainer, we will delve into insights from local historians that could disprove Colon’s long-held reputation.
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Background: Colon Street
Colon Street, or Calle Colon, was named after the explorer Cristobal Colon, who is more popularly known through his Anglicized name Christopher Columbus.
Spanning approximately 1.2 kilometers, it is the heart of downtown Cebu City.
Despite widespread development beyond the downtown area, it remains, to this day, the city’s busiest street.
A National Historical Marker, in the shape of an obelisk, stands at one of end of the road in Brgy. Pari-an, declaring and ultimately immortalizing its status as the oldest thoroughfare in the city.
It was constructed by the National Historical Institute, the predecessor of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP), in 1961.
No records
However, historians Dr. Jose Eleazar Bersales and National Artist for Literature Resil Mojares had been challenging this title for several years.
Bersales, in a feature he wrote for a real estate magazine, even described Colon’s reputation as the oldest street as ‘the oldest fake news.’
Among the reasons they raised, one stood out – no evidence.
There are no substantial proof and surviving records suggesting that Spaniards constructed this road when they colonized the archipelago.
This would run contrary to the information written on the street’s Historical Marker, stating that Colon Street, previously named as Calle de Parian, was constructed by Spanish colonizers in 1565 – the same year Conquistador Miguel Lopez de Legazpi invaded the island.
But so far, the earliest extant map indicating the presence of Colon Street was made in 1873, Bersales wrote in a column for CDN in 2014.
It was made by Architect Domingo de Escondrillas, and it was only created more than 300 years after Legazpi’s troops arrived.
Marketing fad?
But Bersales and Mojares managed to trace the origins of Colon’s rather questionable status as the oldest street to the early 1900s.
Their argument: what started out as a marketing stunt had spiraled out of control.
It started in 1910, according to Mojares in his book titled Integracion/Internacion: The Urbanization of Cebu in Archival Records of the Spanish Colonial Period.
A shop called American Bazar started selling postcards as souvenirs for members of the U.S. Army deployed to Cebu, using an image shot by American soldier Dean Curran Tatom.
The photo showed Colon Street but the sellers got a little bit creative, and labelled it as the ‘oldest street in Cebu.’
The postcards became a big hit, Mojares wrote, and other savvy business owners copied the idea.
One of them was a local photo studio L.G. Joseph which even went further to claim that Colon is not just the oldest street in Cebu – but the entire Philippines as well.
Soon, word spread far and wide about Colon’s new reputation.
It even reached to a point where tourists would intentionally go to visit and witness the so-called ‘oldest street in the Philippines’, said Mojares.
It also did not help that Colon’s title landed in a guidebook of an American travel agency, the American Express Company, in 1933.
Magallanes Street: Better candidate
But if Colon is not the oldest street, then what would be a better candidate suited for such distinction?
Bersales’ answer: Magallanes Street.
His basis was the oldest known map of Cebu City, which dated way back in 1699.
It held several key points as to why Magallanes Street is a more fitting winner for the title ‘oldest street in the Philippines.’
First, according to Bersales, Legazpi had to establish a city that followed the Laws of the Indies, the body of laws created by the Spanish Empire to govern territories in Asian and American continents.
In the Laws of the Indies, Spanish colonizers had to construct streets in a grid-like pattern, with a large square at the center for the town plaza.
The town plaza would comprise the church on one side, and the Cabildo or Casa Tribunal, the civilian seat of authority, on the other.
This design still exists today, said Bersales, and that the town plaza Spaniards carved on their map is no other than today’s Plaza Sugbu.
“The same public square that Humabon had offered to Magellan when the latter asked where the historic first baptism (on April 14, 1521) would be held, the same spot marked today by the Magellan’s Kiosk, which was once traversed by Calle Magallanes,” he explained.
Secondly, the same map showed that the western borders of Legazpi’s ciudad ran along Estero de Parian, located between present-day Colon and Manalili Streets.
This illustration indicated that when the Spanish Colonizers founded their ciudad, Colon Street was already outside their jurisdiction, Bersales wrote.
“If there is a veritable candidate as the oldest street in the Philippines, therefore, it is without doubt Calle Magallanes, so aptly named by the Spaniards for their fallen explorer, and not one named after another who never even set foot in the Philippines,” he added.
