By Phil M. Lustre Jr.
ITS façade shows a typical public school. But P. Guevarra Elementary School in the Manila district of San Nicolas is unique because it houses a museum that shows a part of the Filipino heritage.
The present-day school stands on what used to be the “Alcaiceria,” the building complex the Spanish colonial rulers created at the mouth of the Pasig River to serve as a market place for ethnic Chinese merchants, who sold silk and clothes and fresh and dry goods to the local people.
Incidentally, the P. Guevarra Elementary School, formerly San Nicolas Primary School, is the first educational facility the newly arrived American colonial masters established in 1999. They put up the elementary school on a dumpsite, a big part of which was the Alcaceria.
The school was named after Pedro Guevarra, a soldier, writer, lawmakers and Philippine resident commissioner to the U.S. during the American colonial rule. He also served as one of the delegates that crafted the 1935 Constitution.
School officials gave a go-signal to the establishment of the museum a decade ago. “We discovered it quite accidentally,” museum curator Wilven Infante told a group of culture enthusiasts, who visited the museum as part of the Binondo-San Nicolas Walk, which Ma. Cecilia Sunico, a culture buff, had initiated. Then Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim gave his support to the museum project.
Because the school used to be a dumpsite, construction workers discovered many relics and pieces of art, when the school underwent massive expansion and renovation to accommodate the rising number of pupils. Unscrupulous workers spirited away some relics during night time, but the timely intervention of school authorities stop the pilferage, Infante said.
The museum is housed in one of the school’s bigger rooms, according to Infante, who also teaches there.
The Alcaeceria was part of the parian system, which the Spanish colonial rulers set up to allow ethnic Chinese to have their own enclaves where they observed their customs and traditions without imposing burden to the local population, which practiced Roman Catholicism.
Recognizing the contributions the ethnic Chinese to the vibrancy of the local economy during those days, the Spanish rulers set up economic enclaves like the Alcaceira to facilitate trade and commerce, although the Spanish government looked at them with distrust.
The Spanish monarch issued a royal decree in 1752 asking then Governor General Pedro Manuel de Arandia y Santisteban to built Chinese traders could stay and sell their goods. They built what was later known as Alcaceira along San Fernando street in San Nicolas, which was opposite Intramuros.
Alcaiceria means silk market, but it was like a customs house, where Chinese merchants paid tax payments in silk cloths. Transient Chinese merchants were allowed to stay there, enabling Spanish authorities to control and monitor their movements.
The old Alcaceria had a two-story octagonal building, where the lower floors were shop spaces, while the upper floors served as lodgings. It lost its prominence when another customs house was built inside Intramuros in the 1800s.
The museum houses relics and artifacts from both the Spanish and American colonial rules. It enables visitors to catch a glimpse of the historical past.
