Street names: Remembering and forgetting

It seems the prayers of the Franciscans calling for the retention of the street name of San Francisco del Monte Avenue have been answered. After listening to stakeholders, Senate President Tito Sotto is seeking to amend the proposed bill honoring the late Fernando Poe Jr. with a street name by identifying another avenue that does not have the same centuries-old historical significance as “Frisco” or “SFDM.” If Senator Sotto wants suggestions, there are a number of major Quezon City avenues with generic names to choose from; North, East, West, and South (Timog) avenues come to mind.

There are times when the renaming of streets is done wholesale. The 24 Filipino Boy Scouts and officials who died in a plane crash en route to the 1963 Jamboree in Greece have since been memorialized not just with an impressive plot by the entrance to the Manila North Cemetery; their names also adorn streets in the Quezon City district now known as “Laging Handa,” the Scout motto. Fortunately, there were enough streets ready to be named after the scouts. These were previously simply numbered or lettered: South 2, South 3, or South A, B, C, and so on. I am familiar with these streets from my childhood, because we visited many family friends in the neighborhood. The streets now carry the names of the fallen Scouts: Albano, Bayoran, Borromeo, Madriñan, Rallos, Limbaga, Fernandez, Fuentebella, Gandia, De Guia, Delgado, Lozano, Castor, Ojeda, Chuatoco, Magbanua, Reyes, Santiago, Tobias, Tuason, Torillo, and Ybardaloza. The Dr. Lazcano and Fr. Martinez who seem to be sticking out like sore thumbs were actually the head of the Philippine delegation and chaplain, respectively. Renaming one of these streets today or in the future will detract from a coherent whole.

If you look at the names of the gated Makati villages, you will notice that everything was planned and thought out by the artist Fernando Zobel. He named the streets in San Lorenzo Village after Filipino artists and writers, and those in Magallanes Village after names relevant to the Magellan expedition. Urdaneta Village streets refer to those in Spanish-era Intramuros, while Forbes Park and Dasmariñas Village streets refer to plants, trees, or flowers that were planted or found in these areas. Finding the pattern in street names in a district is an engaging activity that shouldn’t be left to historians.

When Carmen Guerrero Nakpil found out that I had moved to a flat on Nakpil Street in the 1980s, she told me she wanted to buy property there and told me to keep an eye out for one that would come up for sale on or near Guerrero corner Nakpil Street. Malate was then populated by designers’ ateliers, those by Pitoy Moreno, Joe Salazar, Aureo Alonzo, Mike dela Rosa, to name a few. BenCab and Butch Perez shared a flat on nearby Maria Orosa, but the local history of the area was a surprise. Malate streets were originally named after US states: Julio Nakpil was formerly Vermont, F.T. Benitez was Kansas, Jorge Bocobo was Nebraska, Josefa Llanes Escoda was California, Felipe Agoncillo was Colorado, Galicano Apacible was Oregon, Luis Ma. Guerrero was Georgia, Pilar Hidalgo Lim was Indiana, Macario Adriatico was Dakota, Leon Guinto was Pennsylvania, Maria Orosa was Florida, Miguel Malvar was Tennessee, and Engracia Cruz Reyes was Arkansas.

Since the US states commemorated in Malate streets sent their young men over to fight in the Philippine-American War, it was best that these streets were renamed in more nationalistic times. Still, there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the renaming of the streets. While most of the street names now have heroes and historical personalities, one wonders why their illustrious company is joined by a Manila politician and the founder of Aristocrat restaurant.

An anti-Spanish bias explains why a group of street names in Sampaloc that represented a cluster of virtues was changed, because in their Spanish form they had ceased to be important: Constancia became R. Cristobal, Economia became Vicente Cruz, Sobriedad became F. Jhocson, and Trabajo became M. de la Fuente. One can only hope that in their lifetime these obscure people embodied the virtues they replaced on the streets of Manila.

Streets are not innocent. They always have a point of view, a bias that affects the way in which we remember.

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