Nazarenos de Tondo

Amirasolo and Other Essays

Part 1. Tondo on my Mind                                         

Essay 5. NAZARENOS DE TONDO 

We rented rooms for the next two years. We stayed in a house on Pavia Street after leaving our Kagitingan house. The house which is  near the Pavia Market still exists, though very much renovated. I think my mother planned to stay there for a long time, because she applied for and was given a stall for selling groceries inside the market.

But things didn't go well. I don't know exactly what happened. Mama Ninay just hinted that Lolo Elpid had a quarrel with the market master. A serious one I supposed, because I saw him preparing his gun. To avoid trouble, Mama decided to leave the place, taking with us the dozens of cartons of canned goods and other grocery items which she intended to sell in the market.

It's a pity that we were forced to leave Pavia $treet. I liked it there. Being a marketplace, there were always treats that can be bought just outside the house, like banana cues, turons, and ice cream. There was a small ice cream factory nearby, at the corner of Pavia and Franco Streets, which was owned, I learned just recently, by the family of an elementary schoolmate. I was in grade one when we lived in Pavia, and I used to buy buko ice cream from that factory on my way home from school. My school, the Holy Child Catholic School, is just walking distance from Pavia.

We next rented rooms in a house at Tagumpay Street. This was the house I described before as almost like a farmhouse. It was pleasant living in that house, because it is quite big and airy, and seemed cooler because of the plants planted outside. Another thing I liked about that house was its nearness to the piers. The street next to ours was Mabuhay, and after that, if you cross the wide road is Pier 8 of the North Harbor. Although my mother forbade it, I often sneak out to go to the piers to have a look at the sea and the ships docked there. But our life there turned nasty when Typhoon Dading struck. Not only did the second floor got all wet with rainwater, the ground floor was also flooded almost knee-high. So, we have to relocate again.

We moved to Leandro Ibarra Street, where we rented rooms on the ground floor of an old house. Just in front of that house was the residence of the Nazareno family---a big compound with a big house. My father, before he became a mechanic for a fishing boat, and my grandfather worked for the family as paymasters for the company they owned, the Banahaw Labor Stevedoring and Arrastre Services, whose office was in that compound.

The Nazarenos, who were originally from Oslob, Cebu are our relatives. The company owner, Claudio Nazareno was the husband of Gregoria Mirasol, a relative of my Lolo Elpid. We called them Manong Kalaw and Manang Goring.

The Nazarenos were the richest family in our neighborhood during that time. Not only did they owned deep-sea fishing boats, they also won a contract to provide stevedores for many of the ships docked at the North Harbor.

Ship cargoes weren't packed in containers in those days, that's why stevedores were needed to do the job of loading and unloading bales and other cargos that can be carried manually. The stevedores Manong Kalaw hired were mostly Oslobanons. Aside from their wages, they were also provided board and lodging inside the big house. The room assigned to them was pretty expansive with teheras (canvas folding beds) and double-decker bunks arranged in rows. Some stevedores chose to stay in Tondo for good because here was where they found wives.

Me and my brother Rudy, and our boy relatives, who were the same age as us, found the Nazareno compound an ideal place to play. Not only was it spacious, there was also a lot of metal junk dumped at the back of the yard, where we boys convened, imagining the space or hole beneath the heap of scrap metal as some sort of war command post or bunker. The whole compound, including the ground floor rooms of the house itself, was our playground where we were free to play hide-and-seek and other boys' games, like 'gera-gerahan' or mock war.

The compound was our imaginary battlefield, where we acted like soldiers armed with wooden Thompson submachineguns. Those make-believe Thompsons were made for us by Ite Roger, the only son of Manong Kalaw and Manang Goring. Ite Roger used a circular power saw in cutting the pieces of scrap wood and shaping them into those toy guns.

Although Ite Roger was genuinely fond of us, we were considered nuisance by the resident cook, whom we called, but just among ourselves, asTunying Bayot. Whenever we got too noisy and rowdy, Tunying would chase us wielding a dustpan and broom. And we naughty kids would run out of the compound laughing.

I cannot help now but look back with affection at the Nazareno family who was so tolerant of us unruly and sun-smelling boys. We were a privileged lot. We were allowed to watch  television shows upstairs at several times of the day. We watched Darigold Jamboree or Student Canteen at noon, then around 3 pm, cartoons like Popeye, Space Ghost, Betty Boop, Tom and Jerry, The Impossibles, and Mighty Mouse. Then, during the early evening, we get to watch Oras Ng Ligaya and the  tv show we liked best, Combat. It was Ite Roger's sister, Inday Alice, and his wife Inday Linda who allowed us upstairs and opened the television for us.

In those days, the Sto.Niño fiesta every third Sunday of January was always the event to look forward to. Fiesta celebrations at the Nazareno compound were truly 'en grande' affairs with lots of guests, food, and drinks--- which were, in a manner of speaking, overflowing. One image etched in my mind up to now, are the several stacks of San Miguel Beer cases higher than the wall of the compound. And the stink of beer leftovers gone stale in the bottles was a distinct odor permeating the compound in those days.

In all fairness to Tunying, his cooking didn't disappoint. It was splendid. I remember to this day his morcon and embutido.

Another much-awaited event was the Nazareno family's Thanksgiving Prayer in May, during  harvest time. After the prayer, various fruits from their farm in Bataan were distributed to the workers and their families.

Now, that farm also stirred fond memories of summers past. It was planted not only to rice, but also to mangoes, watermelons, avocados, and many other fruits. Although our families were all from Cebu, Bataan, because it's nearer Manila, became the province we spent a few summer vacations in.

My father told me that it was he who accompanied Manong Kalaw to Bataan to pay for the farmland the latter bought. He said that he and Manong Kalaw rode a taxi from the bank in Manila all the way to Bataan with, if I remember correctly, 120 thousand pesos cash stashed inside a traveling bag. That amount may seem small today, but it surely was substantial then, because Manong Kalaw was able to buy with it that 60-hectare farmland.

I asked my father if the rumor about Manong Kalaw winning in the sweepstakes was true. "Hindi," my father answered.  "Ipon talaga nya yon. Meron silang negosyo."  ( "No. That was truly his savings. They have a business.")

So, it was really unfair for the Marcos government, in the guise of land reform, to confiscate 53 hectares of the Nazarenos' farmland and just leave them with seven hectares. A grave injustice was done the Nazarenos by that Martial Law regime. Not only was his land confiscated, Manong Kalaw was also jailed in Camp Crame for refusing to give up his property. And why would he, when he bought that land with money he earned through hard work and thrift?  That farmland was not a birthright. It was not land he just inherited without sweating from some rich ancestors.

Manong Kalaw was eventually released only after, I presume, yielding the land he worked hard for to the martial law government. It was fruitless holding on. With the judiciary, police, and military under the dictator's thumb, and  Congress abolished, Manong Kalaw must have felt powerless, and realized that no one can rescue him from his plight.

So, he did what any sane man would do, and thought it best to just surrender his property. His freedom and his life were far more valuable than any material possessions. I don't know if the confiscated 53 hectares were truly distributed to the farmers to score "pogi points" for the government. But that was immaterial. The government acted there like the modern-day Robinhoods of the movies, the big time thieves who robbed the rich to distribute part of the loot to the poor.

(The image above was of the Sto. Niño de Tondo, whose feast day is celebrated every third Sunday of January)