The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
For the last seventy-one years, I’ve known the Foundation Day of Lopez, Quezon, my beloved town, to be April 30.
Honestly, during my tot years, I wasn’t familiar with the year it was founded as I was just haphazardly taught and oriented about the date without being conscious of when and how it is such.
Although, looking intently at the banner or the seal of the municipal logo when I was growing up, I learned that it was in 1857 (although the year inscribed in the emblem is 1856) that Lopez came officially into being.
So, on that date, the municipality led by its political leaders have been observing the occasion annually come hell or high water.
In time of tranquility, though, and is almost always so despite some uncalled for events like the bloody encounter at the central downtown in the early sixties between the local police and the disciples of cult leader Valentin de los Santos’ Watawat ng Lahi, the wild fire that ate up almost half of the town in the late sixties, it is always celebrated with lavish preparation by the hierarchy of the local government in any regime especially in the golden age of rurality in 60s and with heightened anticipation and great expectation from the townspeople in the decades after.
Colorful and glitzy activities were held to commemorate the geo-political event.
Agri-business trade fairs were displayed as Lopez is an agricultural municipality.
The whole day was devoted to frolic and merrymaking.
Residents from the barrios and the town proper would parade in their best costumes.
By nighttime, dance parties were launched in various parts of the community that culminated in the town square.
I remember in the early seventies 1973 Miss World First Runner-Up Evangeline Pascual had a personal appearance at the Nursery hub somewhere in Barangay Villahermosa.
In 1971, Mutya ng Pilipinas Polly Penson, certainly a native of Lopez being a Lagdameo—a prominent family of Spanish descent—from her maternal side was guest of honor during the celebration.
Sometime in the early nineties, I brought along Pilar Pilapil who was mobbed by the crowd at the town plaza.
I also tagged along former Boy C. de Guia’s StarBrighter Ilonah Jean in the same venue where she sang and danced with gusto with the town officials.
All these fun and excitement until historian, writer and heritage conservationist Ma. Gemma A. Suguitan, better known as Gem Suguitan, researched about the real founding of Lopez.
“April 30 is not the Foundation Day of Lopez. It is June 30,” announced Gem as early as the millennium.
But the reseptive local leaderships wouldn’t heed it.
As early as the dawn of the millennium, Suguitan has been advising Iasias “Sonny” Ubana, the mayor of Lopez at the time, about her research.
According to Suguitan, the true Lopez Foundation Day is supported by historical facts.
In 2014, Gem said, she submitted all her research materials to the Local Government Unit (LGU) of Lopez for proper action.
Suguitan recalled that there was a municipal resolution passed through the Sangguniang Bayan at the time but she heard nothing about it since then.
The paperwork must have gathered dust on the shelves.
In her feature stories in broadsheets, tabloids and social media posts, Gem said that “…visita (village) Talolong (the name of Lopez during the pre-Hispanic period) was declared a pueblo: a town separate from Gumaca, in Tayabas Province. April 30, on the other hand, is merely “Kapistahan ng Pamahalaang Bayan (Fiesta of the Municipal Government)” as agreed upon by the Municipal Council sometime in the early 1910s.”
The derivative term Talolong, said Gem, is a kind of plant. It is not balitbitan/balikbikan, she clarified.
Suguitan also disputed Don Mateo Lopez as the founder of Lopez. “Don Mateo Lopez is not the founder of our town. The natives of sitio Talolong have long petitioned first to be a visita, and then to become a pueblo. They were the real founders, led by Don Carlos Matriano, Don Antonio Olivares, and the leaders of Talolong whose signatures can be found in the Spanish Records from the National Archives. Mateo Lopez became the town’s Capitan, equivalent to present day mayor, three years after Talolong’s foundation,” she noted.
“’Lopez’ would have been a tribute to then Governor of Quezon, Don Candido Lopez y Diaz,” she clarified.
The archives where Suguitan got some of her materials were written by Fr. Felix de Huertas entitled “Estado Geografico, Topografico, Estadistico, Historico Religioso de la Santa y Apostolica Provincia de San Gregorio Magno” which was published in 1865 and stored at the National Historical Commission of the Philippines.
Until recently, the Sangguniang Bayan opened again and initiated the resolution and passed it, still, under the current administration of Mayor Ubana.
Municipal Resolution No. 2026-031 has been approved for compliance.
According to the resolution, the book by Fr. de Huertas is “a widely regarded as a primary historical reference containing detailed accounts of pueblos, widely regarded as a primary historical reference containing detailed accounts of pueblos, visitas, and parishes under the Franciscan administration, thereby lending credibility to the identification of June 30, 1857, as the founding date.”
It is clear now, June 30 is the official founding date of Lopez as legitimately claimed by Suguitan.
But April 30, I supposed, is still the political town fiesta.
It is with truthful and mindful implementation of historical fact that a community moves forward.
But the book of Fr. Felix Huertas was not the only reference accounts Suguitan got her comprehensive and solid information but also from the archives of the National Archives of the Philippines, the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) and the National Library.
Gem is the main source of all these pieces of information.