Bridging the Gap
By Prof. Henry Funtecha

Iloilo's pre-Spanish development

It is evident that Iloilo's development started long before the coming of the Spaniards. Early Spanish writers like Antonio de Morga, Miguel de Loarca and Franciso Colin attested to the fact that Iloilo had been enjoying a certain degree of civilization at the time of the Spanish contact in the 16 th century (Blair & Robertson, 1903-1909). According to them, the inhabitants fabricated different kinds of boats which they used in fishing and transporting their wares; they also manufactured fishing gears and finished arts; they wove textiles from abaca, cotton, and silk, the last they imported from China and they embroidered and carved sculptures symbolic of their ancestor's spirits. They were expert silversmiths and coppersmiths, working on metals for artistic jewelry and for bedecking their weapons and tools. They also had their own alphabet, their own language, their own music, native dances, epics, and folk songs.

The observations of early Spanish writers that Iloilo had already attained a civilized state when they arrived are backed up by Feodor Jagor, a Prussian traveler who had stayed in the Philippines from 1859-1860. He said that when the Spaniards landed in Panay in the second half of the 16 th century, they found the natives dressed in cotton and silk clothes, the latter they obtained from the Chinese to whom they gave in exchange sapanwood (sibukao), gold dust, dried sea cucumbers, edible swallow's nests, food stuffs and animal skins (Jagor, 1875). Jagor further noted that the Ilonggos at that time traded with Japan, Kampuchea, Siam, the Moluccas, and the Malay archipelago.

Early Spanish writers also attested to Iloilo as having already a flourishing boatbuilding industry. Both Loarca and Morga related that because Panay Island contained great abundance of timber and other resources for construction purposes, Iloilo had a number of shipyards, the most notable of which were in Arevalo and Oton (Blair & Robertson, 1903-1909).

Morga and Loarca further described Iloilo as having many settlements or centers of population that were maintaining substantial contacts with other groups of people from within the Western Visayan region and from without.

The early development of Iloilo and its progress towards the 19 th century as the commercial and cultural center of Western Visayas were due to, among others, geographical location. The most notable geographical feature of Iloilo is its strategic location with a natural harbor. The channel of deep water so formed at the mouth of the Iloilo River facing a strait protected by Guimaras Island provides excellent anchorage, and shelters the area from the southeast typhoons.

Another significant geographical feature of Iloilo province which helped in the development of the town of Iloilo is that its rivers such as the Iloilo River, Salog River, Jalaur River, Tigum River and others, were also navigable and served well the needs of the area in terms of transportation and communication. Moreover, the neighboring towns such as Jaro and Molo possessed harbors that sustained very frequent commercial and social relations with neighboring provinces and islands. Molo, particularly, was well connected with the outside world through the Iloilo River, the latter serving as the life-vein of its trading activites.