Baguio began a yearlong celebration of its centennial yesterday, because it was established as a chartered city on Sept. 9, 1909. As we made our way up on historic Kennon Road, carefully avoiding rocks on the slippery road, and entered the city, I did not feel much excitement. Maybe it was the rain or the fatigue of a long land trip, but I could not help but compare Baguio with Abra where streamers and banderitas directed pilgrims and friends all the way to a small multi-colored church established by the missionaries of the Society of the Divine Word, better known as SVD, a hundred years ago.

The SVD fathers and their female counterparts, the Holy Spirit Sisters, are known for the Divine Word and Holy Spirit Schools. They have a public face in pulpit and media, with Fr. Jerry Orbos who writes for the Inquirer and Fr. Bel San Luis. Both write in newspapers and sometimes appear on TV and radio. We must not forget the contemplatives who pray for everyone else, the Pink Sisters. The SVD centennial was a fiesta in Abra while Baguio did not generate the same festive energy that they have for the annual Panagbenga festival.

To encourage memory, the National Historical Institute organized a one-day conference on aspects of Baguio’s past in Teachers Camp, and a two-day seminar to update teachers on the use of history in the classroom. Despite the challenges to its landscape, Baguio retains most of its history in sites, like Teachers Camp, Camp John Hay, Baguio Country Club, and Burnham Park. It has preserved many old structures, like “Mansion House” (isn’t the name redundant? Mansion na House pa!), the houses on Cabinet Hill, the defunct Vallejo Hotel, Baguio Cathedral, US ambassador’s house, etc. More importantly street names have been preserved: Session Road, Outlook Drive, South Drive, Kisad and Pacdal to the names of men who made Baguio: Pack, Wright, Kennon, Legarda, Pardo de Tavera, etc.

In Manila, history is constantly obliterated by the wanton change of street names. Instead of creating new streets and esquinitas to honor contemporary figures, street names in old districts like Intramuros, Binondo and Sampaloc are slowly disappearing. Nobody seems to care that these street names have been sanctified by centuries of usage.

There is so much history in Baguio that it is easy to overlook it. That is why centennial celebrations and commemorations are important because they provide opportunities for people to temporarily forget the pressures of the present to focus on a hazy, often comforting past.

As a practicing historian, I am always looking around and beyond dates, names, and places, asking myself: What do we remember? Why do we remember?

Baguio is supposed to be a century old this year, but surely the place and its people can trace its history beyond the time it was declared a chartered city by the Americans in 1909. It was already around during the Spanish period. Archeological exploration might even prove that Baguio was around in pre-Spanish or pre-historic times.

Since the Baguio centennial is pegged to its 1909 foundation date, the man often credited for its “discovery” is Dean C. Worcester, a zoologist from the University of Michigan who had visited the islands for research before 1900 when he returned to the Philippines, with William Howard Taft, as a member of the Second Philippine Commission. As the story goes, Taft who weighed around 350 pounds found the heat and humidity of Manila oppressive and sent Worcester up north to that fabled place where people needed blankets at night to keep warm. Historians are grateful that Worcester didn’t have a cellphone, because if he did we wouldn’t have this first impression:

“We were literally dumbfounded when within the space of a hundred yards we suddenly left the tropics behind us and came into a wonderful region of pine parks. Trees stood on the rounded knolls at comparatively wide intervals. At the same moment, a delightful cold breeze swept down from the heights above us.

“Just at sunset we experienced a second surprise, coming out on the knife-sharp crest of a ridge, and seeing spread before us the Trinidad Valley, which is shaped like a huge bath-basin. Its floor was vividly green with growing rice. Igorot houses dotted here and there over its surface, and the whole peaceful, beautiful scene was illuminated by the rays of the setting sun. The air had been washed clean by the heavy rain which had poured down on us throughout the afternoon and the sight was one never to be forgotten.”

Like Magellan, whom our erroneous textbooks credit for the “discovery” of the Philippines, Worcester is also given credit for the “discovery” of Baguio. How could Magellan have discovered a place that had people in it already? How could Worcester have discovered Baguio when there were Igorots, Ilocanos and one German already living there? How come nobody remembers Otto Scheerer who antedated Worcester and walked around in bahag? How come we don’t remember Mateo Carino, the Igorot chief who laid claim to much of Baguio because he and his ancestors had occupied it in Spanish times or even earlier?

A centennial celebration limits our vision on one event. It shouldn’t stop us from opening our eyes to other voices, other stories, other histories.

Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu