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Philippine Industrial Archaeology Society (PIAS), Davao City (2026)

30/07/2020

DO YOU KNOW?
• The prewar Davao municipal building was built in 1926 using funds from the American colonial administration. The edifice, an enduring Chinese legacy, was built by Tan C. Tee & Company, a construction and lumber firm which later purchased Port Lebak Lumber Company two years later.

18/07/2019

Rewriting Oyanguren’s story
By Antonio Figueroa

Occasionally, while doing research, especially in the age of Internet, a writer stumbles on noteworthy discoveries by people equally interested in putting substantial contributions to current historical discourses.
Todd S. Lucero (this corner linked with him online), in his ‘Davao Genealogy: In Search of Don Jose Oyanguren's Family Tree’, provided interesting notes on the origin of Don Jose Cruz Maria de Oyanguren y Ybarzábal, the Spanish founder of Davao.
Born on May 1, 1800, Oyanguren was born in the town of Villa de Vergara, which was under the province of Guipúzcoa, Spain, where key historical icons like Juan Sebastián Elcano (first to circumnavigate the world), St. Ignatius de Loyola (founder of the Society of Jesus); Sta. Cándida María de Jesús (founder of the Congregation of the Hijas de Jesús); and Miguel López de Legazpi (Spanish conqueror of Manila), were also born.
Oyanguren, whose forebears owned several properties in their pueblo, was baptized the following day, and the entry in the baptismal record shows his parents were Jose Cruz Maria de Oianguren, the son of Melchor Ignacio de Oianguren and María Ana Josefa de Ybarzábal, while his paternal grandparents were Miguel Antonio de Oianguren and Manuela Jose-fa Ybarzábal.
On the mother’s side, his grandparents were identified as José de Ybarzábal, a grandfa-ther, and María Tomasa Aiastui while his godfather and godmother were Jose de Ybarzábal and Maria Ana de Ybarzábal, the sister of his mother, respectively.
The Davao Genealogy, moreover, states:
“One of the earliest mentions of an Oyanguren was in 1569, where listed among the inhabitants belonging to the parish of Santa Marina with the right to vote was a Pedro de Oianguren, almost certainly a direct ancestor of Don Jose Oyanguren. The earliest traceable ancestor of Jose Oyanguren is Nicolas Antonio de Oianguren, also from Villa de Vergara and who was married to Maria Con-cepcion Laspiur. Nicolas Antonio appears in a 1716 document where he requested permission to plant trees and where he indicated in his application that he and his ancestors have been owners and possessors of their house for generations.
“Nicolas Antonio's son, Joseph Joaquin de Oianguren, was born on June 11, 1713. He married Maria Josefa Unamuno on November 30, 1739 and they had at least two children: Miguel Antonio and Francisca Antonia. Miguel Antonio is the grandfather of Jose Oyanguren.
“Jose had 3 siblings: Justo Rufino, Martina, and Micaela. Being the eldest son, he was named in his father's will as the executor and successor of his father's estate.”
Another interesting subject the genealogy has sought to straighten out is Oyanguren’s marriage which has been obscured by certain historical flaws.
For instance, the Davao founder supposedly left behind a wife in Spain when he was ‘ex-iled’ to the country due to his Basque stance or that he married a Spanish mestiza and daugh-ter of a capitan general, Maria Luisa Azaola, a day before his death on October 10, 1858.
The deathbed wedding, actually, did not happen because nuptial records show that Oyanguren married Luisa on September 5, 1843, at Parroquia del Sagrario, Intramuros, Ma-nila. Their union did not bear a child; she begot, however, four kids when she remarried in 1861.
which goes: D. Jose Oyanguren Espanol adulto natural de Bergara Provincia de Guipuzcoa casado con Dna. Luisa Azaola mismo el dia antes ala una y media, which the researcher correctly translates: “D. Jose Oyanguren, an adult Spaniard from Vergara, province of Guipuzcoa, married to Dna. Luisa Azaola, is interred on the 11th of October 1858 at the Vergara cemetery, having died the day before.”
Simply said, the words “casado con Dna. Luisa Azaola” is an appositive to “D. Jose Oyanguren Espanol adulto natural de Bergara Provincia de Guipuzcoa.” Strangely, the translator adds the phrase “at the Vergara cemetery” when there is no actual mention of the place of his burial.
Be that as it may, the new facts add to Davao history very interesting details otherwise overlooked in the past. First, it can now be categorically said that Oyanguren did not come from a penurious family but from a middle-class household with known assets in the town of Vergara.
Second, it has been established, following Catholic tradition, that Oyanguren was bap-tized a day after he was born, with his closest relatives attending as sponsors. Third, he was single. Fourth, Oyanguren was not married in Davao but in Manila, and his wedding did not happen on the deathbed but in regular Catholic rites. And fifth, he was buried at the Catholic cemetery, which was then situated at the corner of present-day San Pedro and E. Quirino streets.
The pursuit to uncover the Oyanguren journey in Davao still has so many unexplained loopholes, especially in the years when he was trading in Surigao del Sur and Davao Orien-tal. As leader of the expedition that brought down Datu Bago, it is interesting to know the names of the Filipino recruits the Spaniard brought along to establish the town of Davao, some of whom were destierros or exiles.
Curiously, who was the priest who baptized him? Was he assigned in the Philippines? Did he become a saint? Was he a relative of the Oyangurens? Only time knows.

16/07/2019

House of Magno, Inc.
By Antonio V. Figueroa

Advertised in the 1960s as the “biggest store” in Mindanao, the House of Magno was arguably the first establishment to qualify as a department store (as opposed to today’s mixed-use malls) in Davao City. It opened its first store along San Pedro street, which the owners christened as Magno’s Department Store.
Tragedy, however, struck the establishment on February 10, 1964 when a huge conflagration razed down two commercial blocks from where the store was situated. Accordingly, the fire started at a Chinese restaurant but later gutted entire blocks that hosted some of the most iconic commercial stores along San Pedro street. The store was not rebuilt.
Founded by couple Eugenio and Cornelia Magno, the store, during its halcyon days, opened two branches. Magno, whose maternal surname was Maskariño, was a Leyte mi-grant, while his wife, fondly called Eliang, surnamed Canlas, was originally from Santa Rita, Pampanga. Cornelia was born on March 31, 1910 and died on June 29, 1993, the feast of San Pedro, at age 83.
Magno was the uncle and benefactor of former Davao City mayor and later congressman Cornelio Maskariño. His sole heir is Virgilio Magno, an adopted son.
The first branch, the House of Magno, Inc., was opened along Crooked Road, so named after a curved street that links San Pedro and Rizal streets. The road is an extension of Ponciano Reyes (now Cayetano Bangoy) street. The choice of Crooked Road as home of the store’s first branch, known for its well-stocked bookstore, was elegant. The iconic short street was informally known as the city’s “hairstyling capital” given the number of hair salons and open-air barbershops lining the road. It also hosted a few beer gardens.
As the company grew, so was the number of employees expanded, making it a fertile grown for labor unrest. Led by the Kabataang Makabayan and the Young Christian Workers, the employees formed a union and, after a failed negotiation with the owners, staged a strike in 1969.
Years following the death of its founder in 1979, the House of Magno was closed in 1983, its building was leased to Datu Complex, which introduced the first one-way, single staircase escalator in Davao City. The technological wonder became a draw and was instrumental in making the store a favorite address for shoppers. Today, the four-story structure houses an HB1 outlet, a convenience store owned by homegrown NCCC Mall.
(NCCC, mother company of HB1, was founded by Lim Tian Siu, a native of Chin Kang, Fukien, China who was born in 1919. He migrated to Manila in 1933 at age 14. After the war, he moved to Cotabato City where there was a sizeable Chinese community married to local Muslims. When his establishment was burned to the ground, he decided to go to Davao City along with wife Ko Giok Loo and opened their first textile business in the city in 1952.)
The second branch was the Magno's Department Store along Oyanguren street, fronting the Roxy Theater (inspired by a New York City cinema, founded in 1927, with the same name); it was a short distance from the Uyanguren exit of the Villa-Abrille Campus of the now defunct International Harvardian Colleges, the city’s largest academic campus.
Given its nearness to a huge student population and situated in a busy commercial district along Uyanguren (now Magsaysay) street, it became an overnight sensation, earning for it many good reviews from shoppers and consumers for its diverse offers.
The Magno couple also owned a printing press, housed along Crooked Road, and operated the still surviving Magno’s Security and Investigation Services, Inc. (MASIS), now man-aged by the founder’s grandson and namesake, Eugenio Asistido Magno.
MASIS had its original office across the Philippine Constabulary barracks (now Camp Domingo Leonor), along San Pedro street where most of the city’s pioneering security services started and were operating as a matter of convenience.
The same building that housed the agency in its early years was where the Magno couple spent their years of nurturing and struggling until the agency, now one of the longest surviving, was moved to its permanent home at Juan Luna street.
Meanwhile, the San Pedro Printing Press, also owned by Magno, was the most preferred printer by local publications given its accessibility, reasonable pricing, and the usual welcome its owners extended to strapped journalists in need to publish regularly their newspapers. It was the official printer of Mindanao Pioneer, a local newspaper.
With the advent of modern printing presses and the eventual death of its founder (who fondly called by journalists as ‘Jing’), the sound of the shop’s vintage Linotype, Solna and Minerva machines that churned out most of the Davao-based publications has stopped.

08/07/2019

Birth of Davao’s gold mining
By Antonio V. Figueroa

Historically, mining in the country was introduced by Spain with the issuance of the royal decree of 1837 creating the Inspeccion General de Minas; it was the first law that allowed the opening of local mineral resources to exploration. Between its approval and the takeover of the islands by the Americans by virtue of the Treaty of Paris, which was sealed on December 10, 1898 and took effect with the signing of the Spanish-American Treaty on November 7, 1900, only Lepanto Mine, established by Cantrabro-Filipino in 1864, took up the challenged; it, however, closed shop a decade later for lack of technology and as a result of the fierce re-fusal of natives to cooperate in the new venture.
During the U.S. colonial rule, mining became more dynamic. In 1900, the American ad-ministration created a mining bureau to handle the mineral exploration of the colony. To le-gitimize this, the Schurmann Commission, the first Philippine legislature under the U.S., passed the Philippine Bill of 1902, the second mining law ever enacted.
A year later, Benguet Consolidated Mining Company, the first American mine firm in the country, was founded by Metcalfe Clarke and Nelson Peterson, both former America soldiers, and Henry C. Clyde, a soda fountain owner, on August 12, 1903, the same year Kennon Road and Camp John Hay were constructed. Seventeen other gold mineral explorations fol-lowed suit in Baguio that by the early thirties, there was already a mining boom in the coun-try.
With the establishment of the Commonwealth, a new mining law known as Act No. 137 was enacted in 1936. That same year the Bureau of Mines was created. Before the breakout of World War II, the companies engaged mainly in gold exploration ballooned to fifty-two.
The first mining outfit to explore the mineral resources in Southern Mindanao was Miner-al Exploration and Development, which listed its office as Soriano Building, Manila. It was registered on December 1, 1933, had an authorized capital of P250,000, and listed N.H. Duckworth and J. Elizalde as president and vice-president, respectively. It was followed by Davao Gold Mine (DGM), which the Elizaldes controlled. It made its original claims of the Hijo area, in Compostela Valley Province, in 1934, but production did not start until 1940 later when its processing plant went into operations. Uranium deposits were also reported to have been found “in the mountains near Davao City.”
By 1940, encouraged by reports of a rich gold find in Hijo, two American miners, J.W. Brady and H. Lindbloom visited the site to observe the progress of the exploration. That same year, the mining company’s aerial tramway was completed by G.M. Kilcar of the Interstate Equipment Company of New York. One of the key members of the operations staff of DGM, J.H. McGillivray, a Canadian, resigned that same year to return to his home country to fulfill his war duty as reserve officer. The following year, Americans A. Durkee and D.G. Headley, formerly of the Balatoc mines in Kalinga-Apayao province, joined the DGM.
World War II disrupted any semblance of organized mining in Davao region. It was only in October 1955 when DGM, as Samar Mining Company (SMCI, first registered in 1937), started gold production in its Masara mines under the same owners. The mineral boom that followed in the seventies gave rise to new opportunities in the mining sector. SMCI, already in the red due to mounting loans, saw the rise of prices in the world market as a chance for recovery. With a claim over eight hundred twenty-one (821) lodes of high-grade ore scattered over 7,389 hectares in Amacan, within the peripheral areas of Hijo, the ball was set for a high-powered shot.
Negotiations, though, had earlier begun for the North Davao Mining Corporation (NDMC), another Elizalde interest chaired and presided by Manuel “Manda” Elizalde, Jr., to take over SMCI. With the usual due diligence, NDMC, which was organized not too long ago, took over SMCI in 1978 for P30 million but retained the services of Manda, then the government’s president assistant for national minorities (PANAMIN), to remain as company chairman and president. During this period, the NDMC had two major mining operations in the area, namely, the Amacan Copper and Hijo Gold Projects.
By 1979, obviously with the use of Elizalde’s connections, the new company obtained a huge loan from the Philippine National Bank (PNB), a state depository bank. That same year a complete supply agreement was signed by NDMC with international Finnish contractors, with the local firm D.M. Consunji Inc. (DMCI) undertaking the civil works for the building of a copper plant that was capable of processing 25,000 to 30,000 metric tons of ore daily.
Around this period, aggressive policies that affected the company and the financial scams that for sometime were kept under wraps started to leak. Preempting a full-blown scandal, Elizalde relinquished his leadership of NDMC to Panfilo Domingo, then the PNB chair, in 1980 and fled to Costa Rica, in Central America. A government audit report made during the first Aquino administration showed that NDMC obtained an overall loan of P4.7 billion from PNB using a collateral worth only P991 million. The obligation, in part due to non-payment, later bloated to P6 billion pesos because of dollar exchange losses.
In 1986 NDMC was sequestered by the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) on suspicion as one of the behest loans beneficiaries. The Assets Privatization Trust (APT), an agency created to handle state accounts, absorbed the financial obligation of the beleaguered firm until it was closed in 1992 due to plunging metal prices in the world market. Adding urgency to the closure were the prevailing difficult economic conditions and internal management issues hounding the company. Its assets were later placed under the receiver-ship of the Privatization and Management Office (PMO) until it was transferred to the Phil-ippine Mining Development Corporation (PMDC) on April 7, 2006 for disposal.

03/07/2019

Davao nuns as ‘comfort women’
By Antonio V. Figueroa

A historical issue that has yet to receive closure is the ‘comfort women’, a sticky matter the Japanese government has eschewed amid clamor from various countries to own up to the atrocities committed against women forced into prostitution as s*x slaves during World War II.
Two years ago, a total of 89 newly discovered documents from the archives of Japan's Kwantung Army, a military police corps, and the national bank of the pawn Manchurian regime stored in the Jilin Provincial Archives, in northeast China, threw light into this con-tentious issue, revealing that the first ‘comfort station’ was set up in Java, Indonesia, in 1938.
There are distinct revelations that have come to light from the files on the ‘comfort sta-tions’ in China: first, the brothels were paid by Kwantung Army; and second, in Nanjing, a single s*x slave shockingly served hundreds of soldiers during the height of Japanese occupa-tion.
For instance, from Feb. 1-10, 1938, six “comfort women” were assigned to 1,200 soldiers, in Xiaguan district of east China's Nanjing. Thereafter, eleven more women were added to the station. Over a five-month period since November 1944, the Japanese army paid 532,000 Japanese yen in setting up the stations, an appropriation that was approved by the Kwan-tung Army.
Anywhere the Japanese occupation forces were stationed, women were forced into prosti-tution. This reality was a grim picture that magnified the atrocities of war against hapless maidens and mothers using the male genitalia as tool of submission and abuse.
There are no exact figures how many children were killed during the Japanese occupa-tion. What is known, albeit privately, is that there were women who were r***d and turned into “comfort women” in Davao region during the war.
The crime of violating womanhood was not exclusive to the invaders, though; in fact, several cases of r**e committed by Filipino soldiers and civilians against Japanese women could also be found in wartime annals.
A report cited in Digital Museum: The Comfort Women Issue and the Asian Women’s Fund (2007) noted that in Manila alone the Japanese maintained 12 “houses of relaxation” or com-fort stations and five brothels for privates and non-commissioned officers. In northern North Luzon comfort stations existed at Bayombong, Nueva Ecija; central Visayas; and a “military club” in Masbate. Comfort stations were established in Iloilo, Panay, Cebu (which was oper-ated by a Japanese proprietor), Tacloban (managed by a Filipino), and Burauen, Leyte.
S*x dens were also found in Butuan, Cagayan, Dansalan (Marawi City), and in Davao, the report added, “where Koreans, Taiwanese and Filipinos were brought and forced into service.”
Ra**ng women has no convention. The crime was done wherever the Japanese soldiers were. There was no appointed site to consummate the lust. Accounts of women violated in garrisons, churches, training schools, residences and nunneries are given life in records.
A report cited in War Victimisation and Japan (1993) tells of the r**e of nuns at the Carmel-ite monastery in Davao City. Even daughters of prominent families were not spared, but their painfully ugly plight, being a shame , has remained a family secret until now.
A.M. Dubinski, in The Far East in the Second World War (2006), wrote about young women being taken to a hotel where they were r***d by Japanese men and officers before they were killed and the building set aflame.
In the 2000 report titled ‘UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and the McDou-gall Report on Systematic R**e, S*xual Slavery, and Slavery-like Practices,’ the government of Ja-pan was blamed for the plight of “comfort women” during World War II for the sole purpose of s*xual servitude, adding the crimes, including gang r**e, forced abortions, s*xual violence, human trafficking, and other crimes against humanity, were officially commissioned and or-chestrated.
One poignant, unedited story of war was that of Felipa, a 81-year-old grandmother (2011) from Sulop, Davao del Sur. Speaking through her granddaughter, she told her family’s plight and reechoed the other abused women’s ordeals in the hands of invaders:
“World War II occurred when I am 13 years young, during that time Japanese men called me ‘Child’ maybe because of my height - too short that hard to be recognized at my real age. My mother had an idea on putting charcoals on our faces so that Japanese warriors won't attempt any violence against us.
“I was in school at the time when I witnessed how Japanese warriors captured, tortured and killed men in our place. Women are being r***d and abused. Pregnant women were un-skinned alive and enemies put salt all over their bodies, after that, they cut the womb and get the baby inside and thrown upward caught by a hook. Those memories I prayed it won't happen again.
“Too many Japanese soldiers came to our place, my parents decided to go to deep forests to hide somewhere in Sulop, Davao del Sur. I have my elder sister needs to be protected by these cruel men. We walked 4 days and a half before we found our comfort place to conceal. Living by that time is so difficult; fruits are the only source to survive. After 4 years of hiding, the war ended with the help of American soldiers that brought us back to a peaceful living.
“I thanked God that my whole family were safe and out of danger.”
The Japanese also targeted young women who were unlikely infected with venereal dis-eases, some as young as eleven years old and were at times removed from elementary schools. To ensure the victims could not seek help, they were often brought to isolated, far-flung places where they have no linguistic or cultural ties.

30/06/2019

Davao labor shortage in 1909
By Antonio V. Figueroa

As interesting aspect in the burgeoning abaca industry in the early decades of American occupation of Davao was the shortage in manpower. The problem was so pervasive the legislative council of Moro Province under Col. Ralph Wilson Hoyt, a member of the US Infantry who was then appointed governor, had to request for the importation of labor.
(Hoyt was a colonel in US 14th Infantry where he was appointed on May 28, 1902 but was later transferred to the US 25th Infantry with the same rank on December 3, 1903.)
According to the proposal, the farm laborers would come from the norther provinces—that is, Luzon—and would be done with the “cooperation” of the American governor-general, hopeful the move would provide much-needed relief to h**p planters, chiefly American pioneers in their first agricultural ventures.
Col. Hoyt, in his 1909 report, reported that the need for more workers also extended to Lanao, Zamboanga, Sulu, and Cotabato, where there were twenty-nine farms needing man-power to cultivate, prone, harvest, and processed the h**p, adding “these plantations are in their infancy and have not yet reached a stage of development when success or failure can be safely prophesied.”
The lack of h**p laborers was also linked to the drop in the price of abaca. Col. Hoyt wrote:
“The same difficulties of labor and low price of products has re****ed the development of these plantations and during the coming year [1910] such governmental aid [as cooperating in the import of labor] as is consistent with existing law will be given these plantations as well as those about the Gulf of Davao.”
The governor believed that by approving a contract labor law, the plantation owners were guaranteed the stay of their laborers while recovering the cost of importing them. On the side, the contract, given its tenure, would relieve the labor shortage. It was the Davao Planters’ Association that petitioned the legislative council for the passage of a law. The re-quest was then forwarded to the Philippine Commission for appropriate action.
Shortage in manpower also affected by as much as thirty percent the harvest of crops and it discourage planters from expanding the acreage of the lands they were cultivating. Worse, the lack of labor also upset the timetable in processing the abaca into h**p fibers. Especially when there was a bumper harvest, any deficiency in farm hands would amount to bigger spoilage.
In a 1937 article titled ‘Japanese Migration and Colonization,’ which appeared in the Council of Foreign Relations, published by John Hopkins University, New York, Dr. Karl J. Pelzer attributed the Japanese diaspora or migration abroad to overpopulation.
But in the Philippine case, the strictures in the entry of Japanese nationals, which was part of labor recruitment for the Davao abaca industry, was due to a prevailing American law. To circumvent this, the migrants had to travel on their own risk and expense than if recruited which put the cost of travel as added burden of plantation owners.
“The law forbidding the immigration of contract labor into the United States, its territories, and insular possessions, prevents the importation of Japanese contract laborers. The la-borers of Davao have to come with their families as free immigrants. The government does not pay their passage, as in the case of the migration to Brazil, but the passage is much cheaper between Japan and Mindanao. The migrants are selected under government control, chiefly from the Rukyu Islands and south Japan. As in Brazil, they take over company land as tenants and pay their rent with a part of the h**p crop, the rest of which is bought by the company.”
Therefore, the Japanese had to initially survive on their own diligence with the help of other long-time Japanese residents in Davao. After becoming familiar with the local norms, including sociocultural nuances, they started to own lands, open businesses, and later imprint their influence in the community where they settled.
Pelzer wrote: “In spite of a suitable climate and an abundance of rich soil it has been impossible to enlarge the Japanese farming communities because of the present land law. The Japanese h**p growers have made Davao a prosperous province and one of the leading h**p-producing centers of the world. Seventy per cent of the roads of Davao have been built by Japanese. Most of the export and import trade as well as the retail business in their hands. There are approximately 190,000 Filipinos and 14,000 Japanese, but the latter pay half of the taxes. They are the economic backbone of the province.”
As of this date, the province of Davao had a total hectarage of 1,929,724 and a good sixty-five percent of this sprawling territory was classified as agriculture.
Today, the labor problem in the abaca industry persists but for slightly different reasons. Abaca growers, compared to a century ago, now use outmoded stripping machines. The number of farmers interested in h**p production has gone down due to the length involved before the crop is harvested. More importantly, the present generation of peasant scions are more interested in white-collar jobs than in the back-breaking efforts that come with tilling the land.

25/06/2019

Fr. Tropa and Spaceship 2000 ET
By Antonio V. Figueroa

Decades ago, at the corner of Anda and Bonifacio streets, Davao City, in a location that now hosts a Victory Chapel, the place was leased as a transient lodge to Eleuterio J. Tropa, fondly called Fr. Tropa, familiar to locals as the itinerant, long-haired, discalced founder-president of an organization known as the Lamplighter World Peace Mission.
Founded in Long Beach, California, USA, 1947, the Lamplighter, which still survives in some parts of the country with its main headquarters in Sanglan, Negros Oriental, was later renamed by its founder to Spaceship 2000 E.T. (after Tropa’s initials).
Born in Negros Oriental, Fr. Tropa, accounts claim, was a former Catholic priest turned conservationist and environmentalist. Others called him scientist and modern philosopher, with his sayings compiled in a small book. For two decades, he served as first director of the Cebu Zoo in Barangay Kalunasan, Cebu City, a stint that earned him the moniker of ‘Zoo Man.’ He was appointed on August 8, 1964, when the mayor of Cebu City was Carlos J. Cuizon.
One of Fr. Tropa’s original sayings is the ‘The Universal Creed,’ which goes: “I am a MAN. The world is MY HOME, the world is MY SCHOOL, the world is MY CHURCH, and the world is MY COUNTRY. I am a WORLD CITIZEN and HUMANITY is my True Family. EVERYONE is my Brother and Sister. My mission: TO LOVE AND SERVE THE WORLD!”
Fr. Tropa, who always carried a python around his neck, first managed a small menagerie in Zamboangita, Negros Oriental, before transferring to Cebu. There he opened and man-aged another zoo in Talisay City, Cebu but this was later transferred to Fort San Pedro. He also put up a mini zoo in 1971 at the public market square in Poblacion, Barili. When he died in 1993, the zoo’s management was entrusted to the Philippine Wetlands and Wildlife Foundation Inc. but its supervision remains with his surviving relatives.
As a zoo keeper, Fr. Tropa managed the Cebu menagerie hands-on, introducing children to the animals inside, and telling guests of random minutiae about the denizens kept in the zoo. He called the snakes “gentle creatures” and he believed in the healing properties of herbs.
The Lamplighter was not just a cohesive group; it also had its own preamble, which members recite during assemblies, thus:
“For Humanity and World we bind ourselves for the ultimate Salvation of Mankind in preparing a better and peaceful; life for our children; to devote our life through service and sacrifice in propagating the messages of Goodwill, Unity, and Peace for all men regardless of Religion, Creed, Race or Nationality; and to uphold natural and simple life; to reawaken and enlighten the morals of men towards spiritual and human brotherhood; that the real love to God is to Love Humanity through service, that such love not only belongs to one but belongs to all, to uphold the world as our true home, the earth our Mother and all men being the children are brothers; that HARMONY is the LAW of life; and all things and life looks to-ward the same sublime life of light, truth and peace; to act in the example of good and righteous; that we do to ourselves what we do to the others; to forgive those who have done any-thing wrong for they know not what they do and the last Hope of Humanity lies in this:" UNITED WE SURVIVE, DIVIDED WE PERISH.”
The Lamplighters believed that the world would end in 2000. To prepare for this eventuality, they built hut which the members claimed would transform into rocket ships that would bring them to another planet ifn the end-times materialized. When the year 2000 passed and the tragic ending did not occur, many Lamplighters left the group. Others, though, remained and founded another facility in Zamboanguita, called the Zoo Paradise of the World where Fr. Tropa’s collection of stuffed animals can still be found.
Aside from its main headquarters, the Lamplighters continue to survive in the tiny communities in Dumalneg, Ilocos Norte, where a museum and Dumalneg Spaceship Center are found.
As leader of his cult-like organization, Fr. Tropa, who always wore a smile and sported a Fu Manchu-type moustache, once required his members to wear black shirts and red and green striped pants and prohibited the cutting of hair. His followers were without shoes, an obvious emulation of earlier unshod Catholic monks in western monasteries.
Fr. Tropa’s occasional stay in Davao City was not without query. His fondness for chil-dren was misinterpreted and his s*xual orientation was in question given the numerous anecdotes that claimed he was sensuously coddling teens in his lodge.
All told, his life, though unarguably simple, was full of lost details: who were his parents, when he was born, his childhood years, what Catholic seminary he studied (if indeed he was a priest), and if he had any offspring. Only his persona as a nice guy and a single person. He even hosted a television program he predictably titled Spaceship 2000 E.T.

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