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Founding
Founding of Pasig
city of the Philippines in Metro Manila
- 1573 – 1995
- Southeast Asia
Founding
city of the Philippines in Metro Manila
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Pasig, officially the City of Pasig (Filipino: Lungsod ng Pasig), is a highly urbanized city in the National Capital Region of the Philippines. According to the 2024 census, it has a population of 853,050 people.
Located along the eastern edge of Metro Manila, Pasig borders the province of Rizal and is traversed by the Pasig River, from which it takes its name. Formerly a predominantly rural settlement, the city has developed into a major residential, industrial, and commercial center, particularly following the development of Ortigas Center, which it shares with Mandaluyong and Quezon City. Pasig is also the seat of the Diocese of Pasig, based at Pasig Cathedral, which was established around the time of the town's founding in 1573.
Pasig was formerly part of Rizal province, being transferred to NCR's jurisdiction upon the latter's creation in 1975. Despite this, Pasig continued to serve as Rizal's official capital, and became a city in 1995; Rizal's provincial government later transferred its seat to Antipolo in 2009. Although the capitol had relocated, Pasig remained the de jure provincial capital until 2020, when Republic Act No. 11475 formally designated Antipolo as the capital of Rizal.
The city's name, Pasig, is a Tagalog word which means, "a river that flows into the sea" or "sandy bank of a river".
Etymologically, it is derived from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *pasiR. Its cognates include Tagalog dalampasigan ("shore"), Pangutaran Sama pasil ("gravel"), and Malay pasir ("beach" or "sand").
There are no surviving firsthand accounts of the history of Pasig before Spanish colonizers arrived in 1573 and established the settlement, which they called the Ciudad-Municipal de Pasig.
However, surviving genealogical records and folk histories speak of a thriving precolonial barangay on the banks of the Bitukang Manok River (now nearly extinct and known as Parian Creek), which eventually became modern-day Pasig.
The creek was given the name Bitukang Manok (Tagalog for "Chicken Gut") due to the serpentine shape of its waterway. Among its early dwellers were Tagalogs and people from South China with origins dating back to the Ming dynasty). The Bitukang Manok was once a principal tributary of the Marikina River. The Spanish colonizers called the creek Rio de Pasig; however, the natives still called it the Bitukang Manok.
The first stretch of the Bitukang Manok became known as the "Pariancillo" (Estero de San Agustin), where its shoreline was once settled by ethnic Chinese and Malay merchants to trade their goods with Tagalogs until it developed up to the 1970s as the city's main public market. Likewise, the creek contributed enormously to the economic growth of Pasig during the Spanish colonial era (1565–1898) through irrigation of its wide paddy fields, and by being the progressive center of barter trade.
The Bitukang Manok, also known as the "Parian Creek," had once linked the Marikina River with the Antipolo. Before the Manggahan Floodway was built in 1986, The Parian Creek was connected to the Sapang Bato-Buli Creek (which serves as the boundary between Pasig's barangays Dela Paz-Manggahan-Rosario-Santa Lucia and the Municipality of Cainta), the Kasibulan Creek (situated at Vista Verde, Barangay San Isidro, Cainta), the Palanas Creek (leaving Antipolo through Barangay Muntindilao), the Bulaw Creek (on Barangay Mambungan, besides the Valley Golf and Country Club), and the Hinulugang Taktak falls of Barangay Dela Paz (fed by the Taktak Creek passing close to the Antipolo Town Square), thus being the detached and long-abandoned Antipolo River.
Since the early 1600s up to the period of Japanese Imperialism, over a thousand Catholic devotees coming from "Maynilad" (Manila), "Hacienda Pineda" (Pasay), "San Juan del Monte", "Hacienda de Mandaloyon" (Mandaluyong), "Hacienda Mariquina" (Marikina), "Barrio Pateros", "Pueblo de Tagig" (Taguig), and "San Pedro de Macati" (Makati), followed the trail of the Parian Creek to the Pilgrimage Cathedral on the mountainous pueblo of Antipolo, Morong (the present-day Rizal province).
The Antipoleños and several locals from the far-reached barrios of "Poblacion de San Mateo", "Montalban" (Rodriguez), "Monte de Tanhai" (Tanay), "Santa Rosa-Oroquieta" (Teresa), and "Punta Ibayo" (Baras), had also navigated this freshwater creek once to go down to the vast "Kapatagan" (Rice plains) of lowland Pasig. Even the Marian processions of the Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage passed this route back and forth eleven times.
In the 1600s, Fr. Joaqin Martinez de Zuñiga, conducted a census of Pasig City based on tributes and each tribute representing an average family of 5 to 7, and found that it totalled 3000 tributes, half of which were Indios (Native Filipinos) and the other half were Sangleys (Chinese Filipinos) These tributes were policed by a company of Mexican soldiers under command by a handful of Spanish, patrolling the Pasig river from nearby Fort Santiago which has the Pasig river snake through it. The years: 1636, 1654, 1670, and 1672; saw the deployment of 22, 50, 86, and 81 of these Latin-American soldiers from Mexico at Fort Santiago patrolling along the Pasig. Some of these Mexicans, after being discharged from their duties, had settled in Pasig and other nearby areas. So that they would be close to the Mexico-made image of Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage in nearby Antipolo. Indian Filipinos (from India) that had later settled in nearby Cainta, Rizal also visit Pasig on their way to the capital.
The creek has been also used during the British Occupation of Manila in 1762 to 1764 by the Royal British army, under the leadership of General William Draper and Vice Admiral Sir Samuel Cornish, 1st Baronet, to transport their red troops (and also the Sepoys they've brought from East India) upstream to take over the nearby forest-surrounded villages of Cainta and Taytay. They even did an ambush at the "Plaza Central" in front of the Pasig Cathedral, and turned the Roman Catholic Parish into their military headquarters, with the church's fortress-like "Campanilla" (belfry) serving as a watchtower against Spanish defenders sailing from the walled city of Intramuros via the Pasig River.
The Sepoys backstabbed their abusive British lieutenants and sided with the combined forces of the Spanish Conquistadors (assigned by the Governor-General Simon de Anda y Salazar), local rice farmers, fisherfolk, and even Chinese traders. After the British Invasion, the Sepoys remained and intermarried with Filipina women, and that explains the Hindu features of some of today's citizens of Pasig, especially Cainta and Taytay.
In 1742, an Augustinian friar named Fray Domingo Diaz, together with a group of wealthy "Mestizos de Sangley" (Chinese Mestizos) from Sagad, ordered a construction of a marble, roof-tiled cover bridge across the creek in the style of an oriental pagoda. It was named "Puente del Pariancillo", and a few years later, it changed to "Puente de Fray Felix Trillo", dedicated to the dynamic parochial curate of the Immaculate Conception Parish. Edmund Roberts visited Pasig in 1832.
On the night of May 2, 1896, more than 300 revolutionary Katipuneros, led by the Supremo Gat. Andres Bonifacio, Emilio Jacinto and Pio Valenzuela, secretly gained access in this very creek aboard a fleet of seventeen "Bangkas" (canoes) to the old residence of a notable Valentin Cruz at Barangay San Nicolas, and formed the "Asamblea Magna" (mass meeting).
Three months later on Saturday evening, August 29, about less than 2,000 working-class Pasigueños (along with a hundred Chinese "Trabajadores" (laborers) who were descendants of the previous rioters & mutineers from the failed Sangley revolts of 1639 and throughout the 17th century), armed with coconuts, machetes and bayoneted muskets (some were donated by the rich Ilustrado families, while many of those guns were looted from Spanish authorities), joined the Katipunan and made a surprise attack at the "Municipio del Gobernadorcillo" (the current site of the Pasig City Hall) and its adjacent garrison of the "Guardias Civil" (Civil Guard), situated near the border of barangays Maybunga and Caniogan.
That was the first and victorious rebellion ever accomplished by the Katipunan, and that particular event was popularly known as the "Nagsabado sa Pasig" (the Saturday Uprising on Pasig). After they had managed to successfully out-thrown the seat of Spanish government on Pasig, the Katipuneros fled immediately and advanced towards a "Sitio" located at the neighboring "Ciudad de San Juan" called "Pinaglabanan", and there they launched their second attempt to end the numerous cases of corruption made by the greedy Castilian "Encomenderos" (town officials) and "Hacienderos" (landlords), which shall be commemorated as the Battle of San Juan del Monte.
On June 11, 1901, during the Philippine–American War, the province of Rizal was created through Act No. 137 of the Philippine Commission. Pasig was incorporated into the province of Rizal, and was designated as the capital of the new province.
In 1939, the barrio or sitio of Ogong (Ugong Norte), which includes the present-day Libis area, was separated from Pasig to form part of the newly established Quezon City.
After World War II, the Bitukang Manok was slowly exposing its ecological downfall. It resulted in water pollution due to rational ignorance. The worst came to the Bitukang Manok in the late 1960s when the disappearing waterway, instead of being revived was totally separated from the Marikina River, and was converted into an open sewage ditch, with its original flow now moving in reverse towards the direction of the Napindan Channel (a portion of the Pasig River bordering between the barangays Kalawaan-Pinagbuhatan and Taguig), to give way to public commercial facilities.
Pasig was home to a number of prominent human rights advocates who became prominent during the administration of Ferdinand Marcos from 1965 to 1986. One of these advocates was lawyer and publisher Augusto "Bobbit" Sanchez, whose publication The Weekly Post was largely considered uncompromising in its coverage that Pasig politicians came to refer to it as the "Weekly Pest." Another human rights advocate who was an early critic of Marcos' policies was opposition figure and Liberal Party member Jovito Salonga, a Pasig native who was elected representative of Rizal's second district in 1961.
When Ferdinand Marcos' economic policy of using foreign loans to fund government projects during his second term resulted in economic crises at the beginning of the 1970s, numerous Pasigueños participated in the various protests of the time, which eventually came to be known as the First Quarter Storm. This included brothers Eman Lacaba and Pete Lacaba, who lived in nearby Pateros but studied at the Pasig Catholic College (PCC) where their mother was a teacher.
When Marcos suspended the writ of habeas corpus in 1971 and eventually declared martial law in September 1972, students were unable to congregate. In Pasig, one of the prominent residences that sheltered them and allowed them to meet together was the Bahay Na Tisa in Barangay San Jose. Because the house was also the venue of meetings of prominent Pasig leaders who were pro-Marcos, it came to be known as Pasig's "Freedom House." The house has since been declared an Important Cultural Property by the Philippines' National Museum.
Another prominent site in Pasig which was affected by martial law was the Benpres Building, which was shuttered by the Philippine Constabulary when Marcos' declaration closed down all media outlets on September 23, 1972.
After the fall of the dictatorship, one of the first properties to be surrendered by a Marcos crony to the PCGG was the "Payanig sa Pasig" property, at the confluence of Ortigas, Meralco and Doña Julia Vargas Avenues, whose title businessman Jose Yao Campos said he was keeping under the name of the Mid-Pasig Land Development Corp (MPLDC) in lieu of Ferdinand Marcos. This was eventually sequestered by the Presidential Commission on Good Government as part of the Unexplained wealth of the Marcos family.
On November 7, 1975, Pasig was incorporated into Metro Manila when Presidential Decree No. 824 created Metropolitan Manila and the Metropolitan Manila Commission. Pasig was among the municipalities of Rizal placed under the commission's jurisdiction.
In July 1994, Pasig was converted into a highly urbanized city through Republic Act 7829. And in December 1994, President Fidel V. Ramos signed it into law, which was ratified through a plebiscite on January 21, 1995.
According to investigative journalist Antonio Montalván II, Mayor Vicente Eusebio assigned every government construction project in Pasig to the construction firms of Pacifico and Sarah Discaya, the latter his niece, during the mid-2000s.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Pasig”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.