THIS week, we begin with Wright Park.
Wright Park is that lovely sea of green with a rectangular pool in the middle, out there in Pacdal. It’s also near “Mansion House,” the official resident of the Office of the President of the Republic of the Philippines in this official Summer Capital of the nation.
The park bears the family name of Luke Edward Wright, a member of the second Philippine Commission (1900), who was subsequently appointed Governor-General of the Philippines, serving from 1904-06. Reportedly, he also designed the park, which is prettier than Burnham Park on any given day, if you ask me.
Much is written of Wright and of Burnham and of Baguio. Which is fine. The men were definitely instrumental in the makings of the Baguio City we can’t stop loving and of the republic that was to become “us.” To such men do we owe the architectural charm of the American version of Manila (I’ve friends who will debate this) and of Baguio. Of Baguio, we have even called its very existence a poem, albeit an American one.
Some is written of how the Burnham-planned city was designed and built over Ibaloy lands, the heart of the burning issue of ancestral land in the city and the Cordilleras. Less is written of how that is specifically true over most of Pacdal, including what is now called Wright Park. Let me add to that “less” to make more.
As with the rest of what is now Baguio, there are only a handful of families or less (pun, pun) who can trace their lineage to Pacdal’s original owners. The most prominent of those Pacdal families are surnamed Molintas, one of whom holds actual title to a vast section of Pacdal, to include the land on which so-called Mansion House stands and on which so-called Wright Park stands. I could go on, actually, and so could the Molintas metes and bounds.
From we which we could go on and on and zoom out and see from above where the boundaries of the properties of Baguio’s original Ibaloy families were between uh, themselves. But the history books have done that -- one in particular more succinctly than the rest, Bagamsapad and Pawid’s A People’s History of Benguet (1985). Let’s go there another day, though, and get back to Wright Park and horses for now.
Former DENR honcho Victor Carantes says that the Molintases were “one of the first to groom the horses of the Americans at Wright Park” and that said “Molintas family also owned horses.”
Certainly, they did. Long before American foot ever trod up these Baguio hill and dale, the Ibaloy families of note kept horses and other cattle and other “animals.” In stupendous numbers.
Of which more should be written. So that we read not only that Wright Park was designed by and named after the American Luke Edward Wright, but also that the park stands on Ibaloy land, right?
The pun, the pun.