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Layers of Ilonggo Reality
The book, “Iloilo, a rich and Noble Land,” launched last week by the Lopez Group Foundation, uncovers the province’s agricultural, civic and social history that interweave to form the multi-layered Ilonggo reality that gives the province and its people such a strong identity.Ask any Filipino and he will tell you that Iloilo is unlike any other place in the country. She is one of the few places in the Philippines with an identity and image distinct from that of any other province.
Filipinos know Iloilo as the gentle, genteel land of smiles, imagining Iloilo days as unfolding graciously and moving in measured choreography of the rigodón, the outdated, stylized dance ritual highlighting each glittering baile (ball) in moneyed mansions.
Fiesta mode is what Filipinos imagine Iloilo life to be most of the time: laid-back, peaceful, refined and always celebratory.
Another layer of Ilonggo reality overlaps the celebratory layer. Hard-working Ilonggos are vigorously entrepreneurial.
In Iloilo, the moneyed and working classes join in business activities that uphold the province as a vital national economic force, a position first attained with the surge of the sugar industry during the later years of the Spanish colonial era.
The Manila Daily Bulletin reported in September 1907 that the City of Iloilo was “the metropolis of the Visayan Islands, [the] second city of importance in the archipelago and the greatest market for sugar in this part of the world.”
Sugar put Iloilo on the map. In the 1850s, Nicholas Loney, a British merchant, settled there and “fostered the opening up of the sugar lands of Panay and Negros.” Loney introduced new technology, improved yield, and improved the quality of Iloilo sugar to world-market standards.
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Unrivaled
Mobility, dignity
Romantic view
Heritage surprises
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