El Ferrocaril Manila a Dagupan
Watching the movie Heneral Luna, in the film of the same title, recalled my labors at the Philippine National Railroad archives in Tutuban, Manila. Before it became a shopping mall, the old station in the 70’s was still the train depot for the North (Dagupan) and South (Bikol) lines. Sectioned off in a small corner of the station, in glass covered shelves were displayed documents and artifacts about the history of the ferrocaril since its founding in 1887. Mr. Butch Jimenez, PNR manager and UP High classmate gave me complete access to the archive. The documents were uncatalogued. Some were obviously friable and delicate. The good documents were those of parchment with handwritten text in ink that stood out crisply as it did a century ago. Most of the documents were reports of accidents, complaints, tariffs and the like. The story of the railroad had to be squeezed out from other sources. My interest was prescient. As a little boy growing up in Paco district, the Bikol train would pass through our barrio and I would rush out to see it rumble by with its blaring horn warnings. It fascinated me at no end.
The Luna movie then triggered this memories as well. But it also continued to perplex me why such an obvious transport method never went beyond the few hundred miles from its original plan – 120 km. The movie provided provided some insights as well, with rare moments of comic relief. When Luna encounters the railroad station manager, an Englishman (the British managed the consortium under lease from Spanish Manila), he demanded to sequester the train (requisition would have been a better term) for the Philippine army. Mustering his broken English, Luna demands that the train be placed in his command to transport workers and soldiers to build entrenchments along the line that were meant to slow down the U.S. Army. The Americans had already taken Caloocan, a commercial center north of Manila and the train depot. The railroad would be its tactical and logistic advantage in their campaign to squash the fledging Philippine Republic.
People have asked me if that incident ever happened. Whether that conversation between Luna and the British station master occurred is unknown to me. I do know, having written a short history of the railroad that the Spanish colonial administration built a rail line from Tutuban, Manila to Dagupan, Pangasinan with the engineering expertise of the British and Scots. Called the ‘ferrocaril’ Manila à Dagupan, railroad construction was started in 1888 and completed in 1892. When it was finished, the railroad created what economists call an “commercial corridor” – a length of territory that encouraged commerce from one end to the other, in this case, between Manila and Dagupan. The immediate beneficiaries were Pampanga and Bulacan, whose towns produce the daily necessities of 19th c. urban Manila and suburbs. Rice, sugar, fowl, and fruits that before was carted on buffalo carriages or shipped along the Bulacan and Guagua river by cascos – large cargo banca/barges that disgorged its goods along Manila Pasig River were now transported by rail. By the end of the 19th century Bulacan and Pampanga had emerged as among the prosperous provinces under Spain.
In the Luna movie, the General Luna faced the problem of common folks, relatives and friends who wanted to experience the novelty of riding the now-requisitioned train, displacing the workers and soldiers who need to be transported to their stations. Beyond the very Filipino trope of “makiki-angkas’ to fudge a free-ride through nepotism and “pakikisama” sharing, the railroad was a real, in fact the first novel transport technology coming to the Philippines along with the telegraph and electricity. Data from the railroad archives indicated that revenues for passenger fares was by far, more than that of freight. Precise demographics for this period in hard to come by but and 1887 census reported a total population of 4 million inhabitants, mostly in Luzon. Thus a fraction of that would be the traveling public. Foreign travelers who were in Manila during that time observed the obsession of the natives in riding the train. In a country that showed little progress in three hundred years of Spanish colonial rule, the train was a real novelle vision of progress and its possibilities. Where it took several days to travel from Manila to Dagupan by water and by horse, the ferrocaril would take the wide-eyed indio passenger only 8 hours to get to Dagupan, with no mud nor dust along the way. Along the rail line, it would pass several town stations where vendors of all sorts hawked their products to eager and hungry train passengers – live chicken, sweets, boiled bananas, suman, or mangoes – comfort food pangtawid gutom, until they reached their destination.
Even Jose Rizal could not hold his curiousity for this new technology. Well-traveled, Rizal had seen and experienced modern technology in America and Europe. It was even rumored that he and his engineer-friend Fernando Canon, played around with an electric charged cane that they would shock stray dogs with. Naturally, Rizal was curious how this novelty transportation would be of great importance to his project of reform and progress. But there was also a lingering angst in him in that this new technology had deal him its first blow. Leonor Rivera, his sweetheart of eleven years belonged to a prominent Dagupan family where the railroad terminated. Leonor’s parents feared that their daughter’s association with Rizal, who by now was notorious and a marked person to the Spanish authorities, would also befall them. The mother embargoed all her letters to Rizal as she did with Rizal’s letters to Leonor. Rizal would later learn that Leonor had been betrothed and then married to Henry Kipping, an engineer of the railroad. Thus, Rizal wrote in 1891 to his Austrian friend Blumentritt, acknowledging the disruptive history of the railroad elsewhere, that “alas, the first blow of the railroad was to me.”
The tricolor flag raised by Emilio Aguinaldo at Kawit, Cavite in 1897 ushered the birth of a nation. In the movie Heneral Luna, there is a scene of the 19th century train speeding across the Luzon landscape. Prior to declaring its independence, Aguinaldo at the urging of his advisers agreed to a truce with the Spanish in exchange for war indemnities and exile in HongKong. In a photograph/Users/mgonzalez/Dropbox/CCSF/ADMIN/ONLINE PROJ STUFF/OnlineImages/PhilAmWar/BiacNaBato_train.jpg, Aguinaldo and his advisers are shown peering out of the train enroute to Dagupan where they will embark on a ship for Hong Kong. The peace pact, known as the Biac-na-Bato Pact, was neither a surrender or a victory for both sides. Aguinaldo would return in 1898, courtesy of the U.S. Navy to raised the Philippine flag of independence upon his return. In fact, the ferrocarril bedecked for the inauguration, signaled the birth of the Malolos Republic, the first in Asia. As the train rolled towards Malolos, the Filipino Revolutionary army were in parade formation along the railroad tracks awaiting the arrival of Aguinaldo’s inaugural train to Malolos, Bulacan, the capital of the new Filipino republic. It must have been a splendid sight- the train was bedecked with tricolor and festooned with flowers. What more be a fitting image that Aguinaldo and his cabinet perhaps imagined to symbolize a free and independent nation.A new nation with a railroad with a railroad to boot.
The moment of glory was short lived. Two months after the inauguration of the Filipino republic, U.S. soldiers fired on Filipino sentries patrolling the outskirts of Manila. Thus began, the Philippine American War. The US army quickly captured the Tutuban railroad depot. As commanding general of Aguinaldo’s army, Luna understood the military importance of the railroad. One of their strategies was to tear up the tracks to delay the train carrying US soldiers and munitions. Accustomed to rail technology and military logistics, the Americans were able to quickly restore the rail service,move their troops to the front even in bad weather and mount flatbed cars with Gatling machine guns. Unable to defend the towns along the railroad and beset by Aguinaldo’s disloyal allies, Luna’s Revolutionary army eventually collapsed and he himself was assassinated by soldiers loyal to Aguinaldo. Once the US army secured the railroad, it also secured the economic corridor from Manila to Dagupan. The U.S. now had full control of the lowlands and the coasts.
After Aguinaldo’s capture, American entrepreneurs restored the railroad, now renamed MRC – the Manila Rail Co. It fell in the hands of British and American investors, including magnates J.P. Morgan with the intent of selling stocks as investment. The MRC did not attract investments even as they advertised running a line towards Baguio. the colonial summer capital. Their efforts were puny to say the least. During the dry season, lines were laid from Dagupan to Camp One at the foot of the mountain. During the rainy season, the rail ties and sleepers were dismantled to avoid losing it to flood waters! In the end, under Governor General Harrison, the proponent of “Filipinization” – the idea the Filipinos learn how to govern themselves, he transferred the management of the railroad to the Filipino Assembly along with a huge debt. Politicians and students objected to the transfer calling the MRC as useless project that siphoned money from the gold reserves and away from more useful development projects like a national road system. The MRR trudged along and was able to extend towards Bicol and as before, became the prize for political battles for pork barrel and various concessions. In the end, modern roads and gasoline bus and motor cars led to its demise towards World War II. The war totally wrecked the public transport system that until now, past governments have not been able to develop a new and invigorated inter-island railroad system. For the moment, Filipinos in Manila will have to count their blessings that there is an MRT/LRT that can move them around Manila’s congested highways and not to forget that once in their history, the railroad played an important role.
