Editors’ Note: We thank the author and THE CATANDUANES TRIBUNE for allowing us to feature this article, Part 1 of a series of 4. THE CATANDUANES TRIBUNE is a monthly print and online publication. It was founded in 1981.

Author’s Note: I am reproducing here a series of articles that appeared in my SISAY KITA? column in the Catanduanes Tribune under the pseudonym “tataramon.” Part 1 was in the October 11, 2023, issue.

In mid-September of this year, netizen Brijohn Sumalde posted in his Facebook account an archival aerial photo of Virac taken on January 7, 1936, taken from an aircraft. It is in black and white, with relatively high resolution. Zooming it out reveals quaint details that tell stories of how things were kaidtong panahon in the capital town of Catanduanes.

I have not gotten over the excitement brought by this photo. It was the Virac where my parents were born and grew up in, specifically the very landscape they roamed during their teens in the 30s.  Stories my forebears told became alive with the actual physical geographic setting.  The movie in my mind of the Viracnon Belle Epoque, the last half decade of what old folk called “Peace Time” became virtually real before my eyes. It was an expansive slice of Virac frozen in time, just five years before the war, the very eye-view of the birds that must have merrily flown over a lazy and cold 1936 January morning of Viracnon bliss. But it was too the sort of vision that the Japanese bombers saw as they harassed the town with a rain of explosives in December 12, 1941.

The photo is dominated by the entire Virac poblacion and the Gogon community. Captured on the upper margins were the mountains of Sibanhan while on the right was the sea. On the left and lower limits of the frame were the roads leading to the rural communities of the northwest (Calatagan, Bigaa, etc.) and the southwest (Pajo, Antipolo, etc.).

It appears that in 1936, the basic settlement pattern of Virac poblacion was already well in place. The most noticeable feature is that the major populations were concentrated in a column running from south to north, divided into three distinct areas namely Ilawod, Colawan and Taytay. Ilawod is composed of barangays San Pablo, San Juan and Concepcion. Colawan is the cluster of barangays San Roque, San Pedro, San Jose and Salvacion. Taytay constitutes Sta. Elena, Sta. Cruz, Rawis and Francia. These three broad areas are separated from each other by two geographic centros constituting two plaza complexes. The municipal plaza complex containing the parish church and the munisipyo divided Ilawod from Colawan. The Plaza Lizaso complex (now centered on the World War II Veterans’ Memorial that used to be a fountain) divided Colawan from Taytay.

Such a column of settlement was clearly defined on the right by the coastline of Cabugao Bay and on the left by the lengthy kare (creek or estuary) that ran from the northern mountains and fed the Gogon river that bordered Ilawod on the left side and emptied into the sea southward. Within these basic left-right boundary houses and other built structures were densely confined. Beyond the creek margin were vast rice lands that extended to Danicop and Sto. Niño. Beyond the seashore were the fishing grounds of Viracnon fisherfolk.

However, the columnar pattern was violated on its two ends. To the south just beyond the Gogon bridge was the expansive Gogon community that took shape laterally left-wise. On the northern end, Taytay fanned out on both sides: an expanding Sta. Elena community on the left and on the right was the promontory that juts out to the sea like a smallish peninsula. This was Rawis that back then appeared heavily foliaged, a virtual hinterland. The Gogon area compared to the northern Taytay sprawl was a bustling suburb of Virac poblacion that had its own nerve center, the large, well-appointed Roman Catholic chapel devoted to San Rafael (finished in 1918) that presided over the “triangle” from which radiated roads to the rural communities further south, west and north. 

Considering the big picture of the Virac poblacion then and compared to the present, a few things may be easily observed.  First, the roads all appeared to be cleared dirt without any overlay paving, neither asphalt much less cement. There were hardly any motorized vehicles plying the routes; people mostly walked. Faster transport would have been by horse or horse-pulled calesa or else by carts either wheeled or the sledge-type pababa hitched on to carabaos. Even as the streets appeared clean from high above, it could be imagined that they were littered with animal dung up-close. 

Secondly, the major streets were already in place, particularly those that connect and organized the major clusters (Ilawod, Colawan, Taytay, including Gogon). But the current layout has stretches that were not there in 1936. For example, the road passing through Salvacion was nowhere to be found. The road from the Gogon triangle traversing through the Virac Pilot Elementary School and the Catanduanes National High School (formerly the new capitol) and continuing all the way to Kawit, was yet to be paved. The simple reason was that those schools were not there in the first place.  The future sites of these premiere schools and the adjacent sports complex and DepEd facilities were yet extensive rice paddies.

Ilawod was the most well laid-out section, organized into blocks of clean lateral grid, exactly like the way it is now. It was too the most densely settled. What could have been the reason? Examining its geographic features, it certainly was conducive for settlement. Its topography was wide, flat and well-drained, there was no threat of flooding. It was conveniently located between two major bodies of water, the sea and the Gogon river. The former was for fishing and the latter for additional fishing and domestic needs. The river then was pristinely clean unlike the current state of serious pollution. My mother related to me that she learned how to swim in the river’s deep but still waters, which too was a communal laundry area.  But washing of clothes had to be done during low tide because sea waters would flow inland to the river during high tide.

The Gogon bridge was, and still is, the most important span in the poblacion of Virac. It allowed access not only to the Gogon suburb but to the rural villages west and northwest of the town.

Furthermore, it led on to the towns on the west flank of the island, Calolbon and Caramoran. This bridge and the river below it created a clear physical separation of Gogon to the rest of the poblacion. It was located right at the meeting point of two major estuaries, the one from the northeast (San Vicente area) and the one from the northwest (Danicop area) forming the Gogon river basin. This river created one other significant geographic feature that still dominated the Gogon area in the 1930s. This was the swampy groove that materialized opposite the Ilawod bank of the river.  It was extensive that could easily match the entire Ilawod area, forming an L shape of dense swamp vegetation mostly of nipa but also of mangrove trees. It afforded the folk of nearby communities with premium resources: the nipa for making roof shingles and the brackish shallow waters for marine delicacies. It particularly sustained a thriving tiklad cottage industry for the Palnab folk. Their tiklad was the most sought-after in the entire Catanduanes. Now, much of the Gogon riverbanks have been walled with concrete, the swamp mostly filled up with soil and settled, and the nipa wilderness depleted. Somewhere in the 60s to the 70s, the Palnab tiklad makers started to commit to their hearts a piece of elegiac poetic outcry: Goodbye kanipaan, ultimong sagasa!  

In the next three parts of this series, I will tackle the socio-political, economic and cultural implications of the photo. I will indulge readers with a nostalgic going-back-in-time of Virac some 87 years ago.