Watkasing
Street in Quiapo, Manila, Philippines, was short in terms of distance, but it
had a long history. It barely measured eight hundred meters in length, more or
less, and was narrow, even by the standards of the colonial era. But in its
vicinity lived Manila’s rich (mostly traders) and famous (some were the butt of
jokes) during the early years of the Spanish rule in the Philippines.
In 1745, Octavio
Benedicto, a Spanish mestizo and son of a Catholic priest named Leo Benedicto,
leveraging his influence in the Church hierarchy, caused the change of the name
of the street from Bukabuka to Calle de Octavio. Filipino natives would have no
way of knowing why the street signs had changed, but, as always, they had a
good time keeping the gossip about Octavio and his personal life alive. Rumors
had it that Octavio’s Filipina mother was the eighth mistress of his
philandering father, which was how he got his name. As an adult, it turned out
that Octavio was the most enterprising among his siblings from the father’s
side (all illegitimate, of course, given the sociopolitical context at the
time). His father rewarded him with access to the growing real estate
properties of the Church, and the latter parlayed this resource into commercial
alliances that led to the accumulation of his wealth. Octavio’s prestige
further expanded when he married the daughter of a capitán
del
barrio in neighboring Pandacan
de Pequeña Venecia.
The motive behind
the officially sanctioned renaming of Bukabuka street, which was an impossible
process unless one had the money and political connection like Octavio had, was
to impress upon the community, especially among the natives, that he deserved
to be accorded with respect, given his asterisked legacy as an illegitimate
child. In some unquantifiable measure, this also established the brand for his
business interests.
In 1928, Ko Wang
Co, a Chinese businessman who migrated from mainland China to dodge unrest due
to uprisings mounted by communist guerillas, bribed the Commonwealth-era
government to officially change the name of the street from Calle de Octavio to
Cuanco Street. Even before he learned to talk a few English and Tagalog words,
he knew what worked when dealing with officialdom, along with other tricks of
the trade, as it were. Bribing people got things done for him. That was how he
changed his name from Ko Wang Co to Juan Dewee Donald Dee Cuanco (the
English-sounding names were presumably intended to please the Americans in the
Philippines). Despite his gold-plated business cards in which his new identity
was printed, he could not avoid getting in conflict with the law, and sometimes
with fellow wealthy businessmen. For example, when he bought a Chinese
restaurant in what would become known as Escolta, a competitor filed a
complaint with authorities charging him for breaking a Spanish-era law that
ordered the closure of non-Catholic establishments. From that point on, he
changed the name of his businesses to sound like either Spanish or English. He
even put-up altars inside the restaurants and stores he owned, and adorned them
with statues of saints, notably that of the Black Nazarene and Sto. Niño.
Emboldened by the
ironclad protection he got from the American-dictated government, Cuanco
gobbled up more investments, including wads of declaración
jurada.
By this time,
Octavio’s fortune at the hands of his heirs had practically dissipated, mostly
due to mismanagement of their businesses and sibling rivalries. The only
remaining memory of his once vibrant chain of family firms was a merchandise
store at Watkasing Street, which was operated by one of his
great-great-grandsons, who married a Chinese woman. Octavio’s clan resented
Cuanco’s expansion binge within Quiapo, as this practically dumped the latter’s
competitors out of business. They could not match his clout, however, and the
official renaming of the prestigious street from Calle de Octavio to Cuanco
Street went unchallenged.
In some measure of
revenge, the Octavio clan mobilized the public market vendors to dump their
garbage right in front of the Cuanco residence in the middle of the night when
police patrollers were either off-duty or sleeping. This filthy practice would
eventually become a tradition for vendors, one generation after the other.
When the Americans
granted the Philippines its independence, Filipinos elected their leaders
through supposedly democratic processes. In the 1940s, a young and dashing
mestizo from Manila named Adonis López de Romualdez rose to national
prominence. One Spanish-English broadsheet called him the new Cinderella of
Philippine politics. He eventually married Aurora Singh, a beauty queen and
daughter of an Indian businessman named Kawshat Singh who, like Cuanco,
officially changed his name to Benito Watkasing.
Part of the
marriage agreement called for Adonis to lobby the City Government of Manila for
the renaming of Cuanco Street to Watkasing Street, as well as for grooming
Benito’s future in politics. The latter did win as Manila councilor in the 1949
local elections, then as Vice Mayor in the 1953 elections.
However, Adonis
found the renaming of Cuanco Street to be a contentious lobby. Johnny Jr., one
of Cuanco’s multimillionaire children, was a major financial supporter of a
politician friend whose support he needed to keep his speakership at the House
of Representatives. Johnny Cuanco objected to his name-change lobby. As a
compromise, Adonis promised to help Benito win the 1957 Manila mayoralty
elections, so that Benito himself could oversee the process at the city
council. Benito did win the 1957 Manila mayoralty elections but did not press
his renaming agenda too soon out of delicadeza. But when he got reelected four
years later, Cuanco Street became Watkasing Street.
Benito’s wife,
Parhana, beamed with pride at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Her husband
fulfilled his promise to honor the Singh Family Clinic. Owned by Shawkat Singh,
Benito’s Harvard-trained physician cousin, the clinic established its
reputation at Cuanco Street. Shawkat followed Benito’s recommendation when
Shawkat sought a prestigious address for his clinic in the Philippines.
Parhana almost
died at the hospital when she gave birth to Aurora. On Shawkat’s frantic
pleading, Benito brought Parhana to Singh Family Clinic, where she delivered
the baby successfully. Indebted to his cousin, Benito offered to promote the
clinic as an elite medical facility in all of Manila, if not the Philippines.
It started with immortalizing the family name by renaming the street. The
rebranding of the clinic as Watkasing Family Clinic soon followed.
The rich and
famous residents of Watkasing Street who had ties to the ruling political
leadership grew richer in leaps and bounds. Happy days did not last long,
however. In the 1960s, protests hit the streets of Manila, calling for an end
to corruption in the government. The elites soon relocated elsewhere,
establishing their exclusive posh enclaves in New Manila, Makati, or Lanciano
City.
Watkasing Street
soon collapsed as a commercial hub, giving way to Escolta in nearby Sta. Cruz,
and to the markets for the masses in Divisoria and Baclaran. The remnants of
the Octavio clan left the surviving merchandise store to the care of distant
relatives. Shawkat Singh founded a specialty hospital in Singapore and sold the
Watkasing Family Clinic to a group of friends among local medical
practitioners.
The clinic, which was within hearing distance of Quiapo Church through its amplifiers, eventually catered to pregnant women who sought abortion services. Also, although not as often as abortion cases, the clinic earned much more when the prospective client agreed to hide and not to abort the baby. She would be incognito for about ten months (Octavio’s merchandise store was sometimes rented as lodging house for the expectant mother). While waiting for the time of her delivery, the clinic regularly checked her physical condition. She also received monthly stipends for up to ten months. In return, she would not be identified as mother of the child and would be expected to completely dissociate herself from anything related to the baby and the clinic. At the time, the clinic earned up to a million pesos for the top-secret operation from a Chinese syndicate that they could only vaguely call as Xing Dynasty.
AT
3:00 A.M., FATHER ANDOY WAS UP. In minutes he would be ready to leave his room
and descend from the third floor to the ground floor of the convent, where work
awaited him. For three years now this had been his routine: leading the first
mass of the day—at 4:00 a.m.—except on Fridays.
As was his wont,
he would, after a cup of coffee, wander for a few minutes toward Plaza Roma
just to smell morning air and greet one or two of the early risers. The first
time he did this, he wondered if people—especially the vendors—ever went to
sleep. He could see them milling about in that open space and farther onto the
adjoining narrow streets. Several times he had been tempted—his seminary
training urged him to talk happily to people—to ask, and the responses he got
were more or less the same: Yes, everybody seemed to have found a way to sleep.
Some, especially women, for two hours. Others for three hours. The men, women
told him in jest, drank alcohol so that nobody would have the courage to wake
them up while asleep.
Father Andoy,
twenty-nine, was relatively new among around eleven priests who were assigned
to the St. John the Baptist Parish in Quiapo, more popularly known as Quiapo
Church. The parish is home to a black statue, almost of real-life size, of what
has come to be known as the “Black Nazarene,” which recreates Jesus Christ
carrying a cross on his way to his crucifixion. Accounts have it that a
sculptor from Mexico—whose name historical accounts have unfortunately missed
out—carved the icon from a dark mesquite wood. In 1606, the black statue found
its way from Acapulco, Mexico, to the Philippines via the galleon trade, which
at that time linked the two former colonies of Spain commercially and
culturally.
In its early years
of being an object of devotion for Filipino Catholics, the image hopped from
one parish to another within Manila. Written accounts at Wikipedia further say
that “on January 9, 1787, the Augustinian Recollects donated a copy of the image
to the Church of the Camisa (one of Quiapo Church's original names). This
devotion was later on celebrated by the faithful every January 9 by means of a
procession (henceforth called the Traslación)
from Guadalupe (its original home, San Nicolás de Tolentino Church; later from
outside Rizal Park) back to Quiapo.” The original copy was believed to have
been destroyed when Manila was bombed in 1945 as World War II reached the peak
of its orgasmic madness.
Aside from the Traslación,
which in later years had drawn crowds in millions, the Black Nazarene attracted
throngs of devotees every Friday, prompting media to label that day as “Quiapo
Day,” with heavy connotation on the monstrous human and vehicular traffic this
devotion had generated in that part of Manila.
Devotees of the
Black Nazarene have attested to its miraculous healing powers. Aside from
physical healing, many believers have credited the Black Nazarene for helping
them pass licensure examinations, overcome all sorts of addictions, and even
save personal relationships. Athletes in two of the country’s most popular
sports, basketball and boxing, could be seen among the Friday crowd, especially
if they were involved in big games lined up for the weekend.
Plaza Roma was
iconic as a melting pot for public debates in the same way that Quiapo Church
was a haven for private devotion and piety. In the early 1960s, Plaza Roma was
the site of a political rally when a bomb explosion killed and maimed at least
104 local and national candidates, rally organizers, and spectators.
Today—marked in a
calendar hoisted at the door of a nearby store as Monday, 25 March 1985—had by
all naked signs appeared to Father Andoy as just another day in the office.
Mobile vending carts were getting into position. Customers haggled with
sellers, who seemed very good at hustling their way into closing a sale. Even
kids as young as four could be seen selling sampaguita flowers. Two policemen
(they almost always showed up in pairs), whose bunkhouse occupied a prominent
space at one of the corners of Plaza Roma, appeared roused—which was a normal
sight to anyone who had been in that area for a long time—as they slipped out
of their station.
But Father Andoy
spotted something odd at the far end of the adjoining Watkasing Street, a view
which was impossible during Fridays because of so many people blocking it from
where he stood. A group of people had converged rather animatedly in a corner which
he reckoned was close to the side of the street being appropriated as dump
area—to the endless rant by street cleaners—by vendors. He could not see horror
in their faces, convincing himself to dismiss the idea that crime had taken
place.
He glanced at his
watch. It was 3:25 a.m. He decided to go back to the convent. In forty-five minutes,
he would, in the performance of his duties and being true to his priestly
calling, facilitate the celebration of a mysterious miracle, or miraculous
mystery, that happens every day in all Catholic churches: the transformation of
bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
Right after he
finished presiding over the mass, he shed his cassock and took a quick
breakfast. Dawn was breaking, but some unlit portions of interior streets were
still dark. He traced his way back to where he saw some kind of commotion an
hour ago.
He saw a few
people huddled together: a slim fellow struggled to find his balance under the
weight of a TV camera but otherwise looked athletic enough as he overtook him,
and the two policemen he saw earlier were at the far end of the street, one of
them talking to a handheld radio. In his early Quiapo days, Father Andoy had
learned that media networks were a call away from the policemen in the area.
Media people scrambled among themselves for tips that would lead them to being
the first (and preferably the only ones) to cover and publish choice content,
and the Quiapo police topped the list of tipsters.
He was about ready
to mingle with one of the huddling bystanders, in kibitzer-like manner, when
the son of an Hijo
friend—one of the Hijos
who became a confidante—came rushing to him with news that somebody was seeking
his help. Following the path which the boy was pointing to, Father Andoy
spotted a middle-aged woman standing edgily in front of one of the rows of
stores along Watkasing Street, about three hundred meters south of Quiapo
Church. Her body language suggested urgency. He took quick steps in her
direction.
As soon as he got
close enough to hear what she had to say, she pleaded with him, in hushed
tones, “Father Sir, please, the Social Welfare Office will be taking this baby
away,” pointing to a cartoon box which both could barely see, parked somewhat
hurriedly in the corner of an adjoining room.
Seeing that the
priest was searching for his thoughts and seemingly unsure of what to say, the
woman continued, “Can you take him for a few hours so I can convince the Social
Welfare officer that his biological parents have retrieved him?”
Father Andoy shook
his head, smiling, looking surprised and laughed at, even defamed.
“It’s not what you
think it is, Father Sir,” she explained. “What will happen is that the Social
Welfare Office will take possession of this abandoned child unless the
biological parents come forward to claim him.” To convince him that she was an
authority on the subject, she told him that she knew of at least three similar
cases that happened in Quiapo and nearby Sta. Cruz areas.
Father Andoy
nodded in agreement. “And the parents will have to convince the government that
they are capable of taking care of the child,” he said, almost absentmindedly,
“… competently and properly.”
And dumping a
child, they both agreed, was almost always a certain ground for parents to
disqualify themselves as custodians of their own children.
“Yes, I think so.
But if I tell them that you are taking custody of the child, they will have no
further questions. Then I will take him back from you as soon as talk about him
is down from buzz to hiss, as it were,” she said, with one eye half winking.
She tried to draw
him closer, but failing to do that, she whispered, pointing her kisser toward
the still baby, “I saw something in him. I think he has powers.”
This time Father
Andoy could hardly hide his annoyance. But as he gestured to be excused, the
woman pressed her case. “Do you know how I found him over there?” she asked in
a tone that did not expect any reply, pointing to a pile of trash at the
opposite side of the road. For a moment this caught his attention.
She took advantage
of his wandering focus and went on to unload her tale. “You know, Father Sir,”
she continued, trying to level her tone, “these freshly dumped mixes of food
and merchandise waste are fodder for stray dogs and cats. But when I found them
here, these animals were not touching anything. Instead, they were just staring
at the box, as if performing a duty, like Rizal’s guards at the Santiago de
Compostela.”
She meant to
entertain, but Father Andoy turned serious at this point. Sensing this, the
woman apologized. But she continued to plead for his help. Unknown to her,
something shook him, tugging fragile chords at his memory bank. Father Revo! He
told him a week ago that something like this would happen.
Father Andoy
finally asked to be excused and left. With mixed feelings of hesitation and
boldness, he said to the woman, “OK, if it is allowed, please tell the Social
Welfare officer I can take custody of the child.”
Back at the
convent, he waited for Father Revo to show up at the mess hall. This was where,
at this hour, they usually traded feel-good banter, along with other priests
and church workers. This time, though, he wanted to talk to him in private.
Father Revo used
to be considered as the most radical-minded among Quiapo’s clergy. He joined
street protests. With cassocks on, he manned picket lines with laborers who
were on strike. Some four years ago, he rose to national prominence when photos
of him in the middle of a fracas graced a tabloid. He was in an urban poor
community, trying to pacify its leaders and members of a government demolition
team who found themselves at the edge of a violent confrontation.
But recently
Father Revo’s wings had been clipped. If the Quiapo Rector was a coach of a
team sports, it looked as if he had cut Father Revo’s playing minutes to the
minimum. Unlike fellow priests who were assigned to preside masses at specific
hours, Father Revo’s role was to substitute for someone who could not, for
whatever reason, officiate at a mass. Thus, he was, more often than not, at the
confessional rather than at the altar.
The official
explanation for his demotion was that he was having recurring bouts with
diabetes and other health issues. Nobody—not even Father Revo—questioned the
factual basis for that explanation. But fellow priests also knew that too often
he used the pulpit as a platform for his political views, and the hierarchy had
to have a way to limit his airtime.
This did not stop
him from being immersed in the community, however. He knew how many homeless
families spent their nights in the streets of Quiapo. He remembered the names
of babies born from these families and the women who got pregnant in their
teens. In that sense, he was the good shepherd, trying to smell just like how
his flock smelt.
He was
particularly proud of the credit union he helped organize among vendors at
Plaza Roma. The association did not only help its members cope with financial
problems, especially during emergency situations, but it also helped them
bargain with the police and collectors from City Hall to reduce their daily tax
from 5 pesos to 2 pesos.
When Father Revo
finally appeared at the mess hall, Father Andoy was almost done with his coffee
break. “Revo, can I join you at your table?” Father Andoy greeted Father Revo.
It was more like a command than a request, much less a question.
Father Revo moved
about with an uncharacteristically noticeable bounce, as if he reaped something
rejuvenating from his sleep. In contrast, Father Andoy looked winded this
early, which also was quite uncharacteristic for him.
Father Revo
noticed it and tried to shake him right away. “What is it?”
“That phony tale
you shared with me a week or two ago, can you give me more details about it?”
The pupils of
Father Revo’s eyes shrank as he moved his head to squarely face Father Andoy as
rays of the morning light, deflected from a signboard atop a nearby building,
bathed him. “Which one?” Father Revo sounded innocent.
Prompted by
snippets of what Father Andoy went through this morning, Father Revo narrated
once more his encounter with a panicky woman at the confessional. She told him
she had just given birth to a son and was asking for forgiveness, as she
planned to abandon him. He asked her about the baby’s father. She told him she
had lost communication with him.
Father Revo
advised her to see the social worker at the parish office or the Social Welfare
Office of the city government.
“You see, the seal
of the confessional does not apply here,” Father Revo ribbed Father Andoy,
“because she was contrite for an offense that she was merely planning to
commit.”
“I don’t know if
the child she was talking about is the same child for whom somebody out there,
just minutes ago, asked me to assume custody,” Father Andoy said, concern on
his face still evident.
“Woohoo!” Father
Revo could not contain his jubilation. “Cheer up, Father Andoy. What seems to
be the problem? You are twenty-nine now, are you not? About time somebody calls
you father, in addition to the multitude of souls that see you like one!”
Except for how he
said it, Father Andoy could not find sarcasm in Father Revo’s words.
“Where is he?
Let’s get him baptized ASAP. And let’s call him Anding!” Father Revo declared,
laughing. By “Anding”, Father Revo meant the child was a small copy of Andoy.
He then turned serious. “Father Andoy,” he said, “remember Mama Mary. She faced
risks of public derision for bearing a child out of wedlock, but she said yes
anyway.”