Last week I received a text message from a friend requesting me to verify the cause of strong reactions flooding Facebook that the old kamarin building in Luanluan, Carcar has been destroyed. I immediately contacted the president of the St. Catherine Alumni Association. He told me the bad news that the old kamarin was indeed destroyed by orders of the mayor to give way to a community college. The worse part was that the Carcar City Council did not even know about the destruction. A staff member had to visit the site in order to believe it and was so exasperated describing the damage done.
I met more Carcaranons in a baptismal affair and they showed me photos of the destroyed building. They reported how the residents were on the verge of tears watching the destruction. They were enraged when they learned that the very strong beams with engravings were sawed into small pieces. I could only echo what my late sister said upon visiting Cebu City in 1994 after being in Canada for 30 years, “What have you done to my city?” This had to happen in May, National Heritage Month!
The kamarin is one of the mute witnesses of Carcar’s economic, cultural, social and political history. Built by the Americans in the early part of the twentieth century, the kamarin was one of four kamarins so well-located in Luanluan, Poblacion, Carcar. The buildings surrounded by 20 or more giant acacia trees served as the town’s public market every Sunday until the public market was transferred to the heavily congested Rotonda, a decision that turned Carcar into a mess.
I was born and grew up in the vicinity of these buildings and acacia trees. My memories of them are so vivid. Whnn I was in senior high school, I used to call the place the Acacia Park and the kamarin the Luanluan Coliseum. It was a public market but it was very clean with only one janitor, Noy Daniel, religiously maintaining its cleanliness and orderliness so that tired residents would take their siesta on the lantays and the stalls during hot days. Gamblers who were always out of town during the year would spend the Holy Week resting on the lantays under the acacia tress. Market day was always fun with lots of goods coming from different places, fruits and vegetables of all kinds, entertainment as a form of product endorsement kept everyone awake in the afternoon. I used to wonder about the kinutil served early morning together with the puto and sikwate. I enjoyed the hot puso always kept in a basket covered with banana leaves and the delicious viands which we could sometimes get for free because we were children helping lola and mama and siblings in the little selling business.
The kamarin also provided the best venue for basketball in the province. It had built in basketball goals attached on the beams. In my childhood and teen years, Luanluan produced the best basketball players in the province. When there were no games, the kamarin used to be the venue for rehearsals of dramas and literary musical programs for the coming fiesta of the barangay’s patron saint, San Jose, in May. In the 1960s , Beatlemania also brought Cebu’s first bands to perform in the kamarin. Because it is located near the river, it was not spared from the vast floods that visited the locality but it has withstood the floods. During World War II, it was used as one of the Japanese extensions of their military operations. Yet it was spared from the Japanese bombs.
Constructing a community college does not justify the destruction of a century old building. There are laws regarding heritage buildings to be protected and preserved. There are creative ways of using old buildings to serve the purpose. I was told that the original plan was not to destroy the building but to put walls or cubicles to come up with five classrooms. The roof needed repair because the sheets have been damaged by the natural elements. Then they would connect the four buildings to complete a sort of a building complex. But all these will have to change. Most important is to consult the people of the community since the school to be built is a community college. I echo what every Carcaranon living outside of Carcar, What have you done to my city? My generation helped build Carcar’s heritage and would like to help rebuild, restore, retrieve what has been forgotten and taken for granted.