Pacete: Cultural research: The making of Silay

A GROUP of teachers from DepEd-Silay has been tasked to know more about Silay as a part of their assignment for the International Rondalla Festival Exhibit to be presented at the Puericulture Center during the Festival week, November 3 to 11, 2018. The event is hosted by Silay City.

Silay is among the six oldest villages in the island of Negros with the present-day Ilog, Binalbagan, Bago, E. B. Magalona, and Tanjay.

In the early writings, Silay was known by four names used interchangeably: Carobcob, Calubcub, Caraco and Caracol. Carobcob means “skeleton” specifically the rile cage and the backbone. Caracol (Caraco) means “snail” or a winding, or spiral staircase. “Pangarobkob” is a ‘karay-a (mother tongue in Antique) term for shell scratching.

Carobcob was once a part of “encomienda,” an assigned large area given by Legazpi to Cristobal Nunez Pareja (1571) because of his loyalty to Legazpi and the Spanish Crown.

Carobcob as a community of the faithful became a “visita.” It is not a ‘parroquia’ (parish) yet.

Carobcob has a definite territory, an assembly of a group of faithful, particular church or temple of worship... but has no resident curate or priest.

The Moros of Zamboanga began their attacks of the coastal areas of Negros in 1755. The natives in Carobcob settled in the isthmus of Matagoy and Matigoy creeks on “esteros” that joined farther down with the river at Tres Fuentes and finally to Mambulak by the coast.

The inhabitants constructed the “estacada” or palisade to further discourage the pirates from attacking the new village. The “estacada” today remains in name only, though contracted to “estacada.”

According to historian Modesto Sa-onoy the “estacada” was located in “Kang Silayan,” the place of Silay trees.

Carobcob was thus recreated into a town in 1772 in its new site (the present Silay). It was during the incumbency of Fr. Bernardo Montenegro that the bishop of Cebu, Mateo Joaquin Rubio de Arevalo ordered in 1776 the creation of the Parish of Silay.

Silay was originally used for the parish rather than the town, Carobcob, and the town simply adopted the name of the parish.

Fr. Ignacio de Molinas (1780-1782) is recorded as the first parish priest of Silay. On November 1, 1840, Fr. Eusebio Locsin became the parish priest of Silay until July 18, 1882. He was the 12th parish priest. The development of the town was relied by the Spanish government on the leadership of the priests. The “gobernadorcillos” (native Filipinos having the function of the “mayor”) worked more for the collection of tributes and enforcing orders.

The Crimean War (1853-1856) devastated the sugar beet farms, the actual source of European sugar. The war was declared on Russia by Turkey.

Russia was expanding its territory in the Balkans, the peninsula of South Eastern Europe bounded by the Rivers Danube and Sava in the north and by the Adriatic, the Aegean, the Mediterranean, the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, and including Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Yugoslavia and European Turkey. (To be continued)

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