CARCAR

I had the privilege of visiting the hometown of my clan, a wonderful town named Carcar. I was surprised to find out that my great granduncle Don Mariano A. Mercado, was the first town Mayor.

It was 1899, a beautiful house painted with green and white, was constructed. It is now known as the Lucero-Mercado house. The house in itself depicts the much history.

 The Mercado Mansion, is one of the Four of the 19th-century houses in Carcar—the Balay na Tisa, Ang Dakong Balay, and the Silva House—received recognition and protection as national historical landmarks from the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP).

The houses were chosen for their significance in architecture and for the historicity of their owners, many of whom had lorded it over the town’s social, economic, political, cultural and religious life. They now go down in history as the first privately owned ancestral houses in southern Cebu recognized and protected by the NHCP, the former National Historical Institute.
The May 29 event appeared to be another triumph over a long-drawn battle against rampant modern development.
The preservation of Carcar’s historic houses (and of its grassroots livelihood, for that matter) can only be attributed to the tenacity of its citizens, especially its traditional elite.
Since becoming a city in July 2007 in a referendum marked by a low turnout of voters, Carcar’s heritage has been gravely threatened. The new city, however, seems to be fighting back in a subtle, elegant form.


Heritage town
Representatives of the traditional elite, which banded as a nongovernment organization in 2002 as the Carcar Heritage Conservation Society (CHCS), had earlier succeeded in fending off a road project that threatened to destroy the prewar rotunda and many old homes. Consequently, this led to the official declaration of Carcar as a heritage town.
As the forefront of this defense line that extends to culture, the CHCS, through its founding member and current president Val Sandiego, initiated the Kabkaban Festival, a civic celebration held for the first time during the fiesta celebration on Nov. 24, 2007.
The society has also turned its sights back to the wellspring of Filipino fiestas—religion. With the Festival of Lights, the patroness of Carcar, Catherine of Alexandria, is honored in a dance-procession of torches (best seen at nightfall).
The genteel homes that line Santa Catalina Street, the topnotch address, get the best view—with the wide windows overlooking the street. Not even last year’s stormy weather could ruin the affair.
Carcar’s old families must know a thing or two about historical conservation before it became a fad. While the old families of Cebu City have torn down their lawns and homes to make room for commercial buildings, Carcar’s “Old Money” has held on to the burnished hardwood floors.
They have seen not only the war that ruined the country, but also the failure of the agricultural economy that the place used to depend on. Still, they uphold the traditional lifestyle that has become rare today, relived with considerable success at fiesta time by their scions.
The Carcar elite is a blend of the native and the in-migrant, mostly from Cebu City’s Parian. The Aleonars, Alesnas, Alfafaras and Barcenillas are among the natives, while the Alcorcons, Avilas, Cuis, Cuicos, Floridos, Gantuangcos, Garceses, Mercados, Noels, Osmeñas, Regises, Rodises, Sarmientos and Velezes are from those of Parian.
The Chinese mestizos of the principalia began to fan out steadily from Parian after the official opening of Manila’s port to the world in 1834, an event that effected a demand for raw materials from the provincial centers to supply the national capital.
At first, the encounter of Carcar’s native elite with those of Parian was traumatic. In the 1880s, Don Pedro Cui of Parian foreclosed on the loan of Carcar’s Don Timoteo Barcenilla and seized the latter’s lands.
But all’s well that ends well.
Don Pedro’s collateral descendant, a Sanson, married a son of the founder of Cebu Southwestern University, Doña Anunciacion Barcenilla vda de Aznar, in a marriage blessed with great-grandchildren. These Aznars run a local bank along with their Marfori cousins on the Cui side.
Unions
A daughter of an Alesna-Barcenilla union, Filomena, married Mariano Jesus Cuenco, the prominent politician and newspaper publisher from Carmen town in Cebu and Cebu City. Her eldest sister, Placida, also had an aristocratic match with Carcar presidente (mayor) Don Mateo Noel, older brother of the longest-serving congressman in Philippine history to date, Don Maximino Noel.
The youngest brother of Don Mateo and Don Maximino, Don Vicente, would have an Alfafara as a son-in-law. The Alfafaras have produced a town mayor and two cabezas de barangay, and have married into the Cui family. The child of this Alfafara-Noel union is now the steward of the coral stone mansion built in the 1870s known as Ang Dakong Balay.
Farther down Santa Catalina, from the main Noel house, is the Balay na Tisa. This 1859 abode with a clay-tile roof (hence the name) is owned by the descendants of Doña Ana Canarias and Don Roman Sarmiento, whose daughter would marry Don Jose Osmeña of the Parian.
The house anticipated the economic boom of Cebu in 1860, formalized by the opening of its port to international trade that year.
The Sarmiento-Osmeña daughter would marry a Valencia from Bulacan, and the many offspring of this union would ally themselves in marriage with the other old families like the Noels.
In the end, the encounter of Parian and Carcar proved a blessing for both. Akin to a Hellenistic merger, Parian culture enjoyed a period of extension in Carcar long after it was swallowed by the homogenizing vortex of big Cebu City life.
Carcar’s golden age from the American colonial to the Commonwealth periods marked its rise as “cradle of Cebuano culture.” It was a period that fine-tuned the culture of Old Parian and manifested in the sturdy, elegant homes of the Mercados, Noels and Sarmientos, in the colorful linambay (moro-moro) productions of the Avilas, Gantuangcos and Regises.