By NORMAN SISON
PASSERSBY and motorists routinely ignore the 50-foot marble column at the center of a rotunda on Bonifacio Drive, gracing the main entrance to Intramuros, the centuries-old walled-in Spanish quarter that formed the core of what is now Manila.
Every day, come rush hour, Anda Circle is gridlocked with traffic that is often blamed on large trucks that carry shipping containers to and from Manila’s South Harbor. To ease the jam, the Department of Public Works and Highways plans to demolish the rotunda and install traffic lights.
The monument has “no historical value” anyway, according to one DPWH official.
For the education of public works officials, here are some “historical values” of the monument:
The Anda Monument was built in 1871 in honor of Simon de Anda y Salazar, who served as the Philippines’ Spanish governor-general from 1770 to 1776.
What makes the monument significant, however, is that it marks a chapter in Philippine history that set a chain of events in motion and eventually led to Filipino nationhood.
And, inexplicably, it all began with cigars.
In 1592, a Spanish ship plying the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade, the San Clemente, brought in 50 kilos of Cuban tobacco seeds, which were distributed among the Spanish religious missions. By the 1700s, Filipinos were planting tobacco in their backyards and were rolling cigars as large as eggplants.
Smoking so popular that entire families smoked. Racism being the norm of the time, the Spaniards sneered that the Indios — as they called the natives — learned how to smoke before they learned how to think because children also puffed.
Then, a new order arrived. In 1762, the Seven Years War erupted between Britain and France. Ever the enemy of Britain, Spain sided with France. That year, on October 6, a British navy task force entered Manila Bay and landed troops to occupy Manila — present-day Intramuros.
The Spanish governor-general at the time, Manila Archbishop Manuel Rojo del Rio y Vieyra, had been captured. That left Anda, appointed lieutenant governor before Manila fell, to lead the resistance. Manila was handed back in 1764 after a peace treaty had been signed the year before.
However, the British occupation of Manila left a profound effect on the Spaniards.
“The ease with which the invaders had forced the surrender of the capital caused the Spaniards a serious loss of prestige among the Indios,” wrote professor Ed de Jesus, in his book The Tobacco Monopoly in the Philippines. Indeed, the occupation emboldened one local leader, Diego Silang, to stage a failed uprising in his native Ilocos region in 1763.
The Spaniards also realized that the colonial government in Manila had to be financially independent if it were to build up its defenses against future invasions. At the time, subsidies needed to run the colony had to be brought in via the galleon trade.
“The British conquest of Manila was the crowning demonstration of how appallingly easy it was to cut the colony’s lifeline to Mexico,” wrote de Jesus.
Seeing the popularity of smoking among the Indios, the Spaniards decided to impose a monopoly on the growing of tobacco and the manufacture and sale of cigars. Anda, appointed governor-general in 1770, started laying the groundwork of what will go down in Philippine history books as the “tobacco monopoly”. He died in 1776 before he could get everything ready, and the monopoly was formally implemented in 1782.
Ironically, the monopoly would help plant the seeds of Filipino nationalism.
Native resentment quickly set in because what used to be free prior to the monopoly had to be purchased from government stores with cash — and the peasants were generally cash-poor.
The resentment was not all about vice. “The farmers believed that tobacco sustained them against chills and fevers, while they worked knee-deep in the mud of their fields,” said de Jesus.
How the system was implemented provided opportunities for corruption and abuse. Farmers licensed to plant tobacco were either shortchanged on their harvests or weren’t paid on time.
The rich and powerful — including native politicians — cornered the best tobacco for themselves before they reached the stores. Those avoiding the monopoly resorted to smuggling and banditry. Police checkpoints enforcing the monopoly often shook down nervous travelers.
By the 1870s, liberal Spaniards were lobbying for the monopoly’s abolition. They argued that it had become too costly to operate and that it was causing too much hardship on the natives.
“The concern was not entirely altruistic,” de Jesus wrote. “It was partly based on the fear that if the government did not do away with the monopoly, the people might just do away with the government.”
King Alfonso XIII abolished the monopoly on June 5, 1881. But the royal order came too late. Filipino nationalism was already taking root following the executions in 1872 of dissident Catholic priest Jose Burgos and two other native clergymen on charges of allegedly masterminding a mutiny by Spanish troops in Cavite Province.
Among the crowd who witnessed the executions at Luneta — present-day Rizal Park — was future Philippine national hero Jose Rizal, then only 10 years old. Nineteen years later, he dedicated his second of two novels that helped set Filipino nationalism aflame, El Filibusterismo, to the memory of the martyred priests.
And the road leading to the Philippine Revolution of 1896 was open.