By Jose Eleazar Bersales
Sociology-Anthropology Department
University of San Carlos

It was called plaza de armas in the early 1600s, alluding to generic term for a public square used as military training and parade grounds. Later it was widened, bordering the properties across the Cathedral of Cebu, and was aptly called plaza mayor. Toward the twilight of Spanish colonial rule, it was landscaped, with borders finally defined and was christened Plaza Maria Cristina, in honor of the queen regent. When the Americans came, it was called Plaza Libertad, as the Americans were asserting that they had liberated Cebuanos from the yoke of Spanish oppression. Still, when the colonial masters had all left, it became what it has come to be called now: Plaza Independencia.

Today the plaza has aged with the unmistakable dignity of its acacia trees after seeing years of conflict interspersed with short periods of lull — an enduring mute witness to the comings and goings of colonial masters at nearby Fort San Pedro or, on the opposite side, the old Casa del Gobierno de Visayas, which until 1938 was the provincial capitol. This much some people know about the old plaza today where underneath is a subway under construction that will eventually connect the South Coastal Road to MacArthur Avenue leading to the North Reclamation Area.

What the general public does not realize are the secrets that lie beneath, the evidence of times long gone unearthed in four different periods of excavation within or adjacent to the plaza. My attention was called while I was on a brief vacation in Manila two weeks back when writers from this newspaper asked me if I knew about the artifacts that were alleged to have been surreptitiously removed and perhaps sold to unscrupulous collectors even as the subway project is going on. If this is true, then the Cebuano public missed its chance to see what secrets the plaza has yielded.

Fortunately, not all is lost. During the last three decades, four excavations have been conducted in and adjacent to the plaza, which have yielded tremendous information about the pre-colonial trading port called Sugbo, one of many that dotted the east coast of the island. The name “Sugbu,” which in old Cebuano language means to walk on or wade over swampy ground to reach dry land, is fully confirmed by the excavations that have been done in or near this 17,000-sq.-m. park. The 1984 University of Michigan excavations, as well as the 2000 and 2006 excavations by the National Museum — which were required as part of the archaeological assessment for the subway project — proved that four centuries of erosion from the nearby hills has raised this part of the city by an average of two meters.

Once you go that deep, the pre-colonial period begins, marked by a very sandy and wet swampland with burials accompanied by local earthenware and ceramics from China, Thailand and Vietnam. The 1971 excavations of the University of San Carlos inside Fort San Pedro, led by the late Dr. Marcelino Maceda, yielded Ming dynasty blue and white wares as well as Thai ceramics, dating most probably to between 1368 and 1500s. Magellan’s chronicler, Antonio de Pigafetta, mentioned a Siamese trading boat that had docked at the port three days before they arrived in Sugbo. The presence of Thai wares further reinforces his account. And reports I hear of artifacts being removed surreptitiously as the subway project progresses is very disheartening, to say the least. Whether true or not, the city government must ensure that this is looked into, if only because whatever artifacts are removed now will surely make for a good addition to the other artifacts that are now stored in the National Museum awaiting display in a future museum at Fort San Pedro.

More importantly, one of the recommendations made by the archaeological assessment team to the Department of Public Works and Highways, which supervises the subway project, is the stationing of a permanent monitor, an archaeologist, to observe the removal of earth as the project progresses. If this has not been followed through, then I can understand fully why these rumors about burials being uncovered and artifacts smuggled out persist even until today. Perhaps the plaza may be yielding some of her secrets but only to a select few. And this must stop.