Binondo-San Nicolas Tales 03: Cemeteries-turned-Schools?

For the previous post of this blog series, please click here.

For thousands of students of the two public schools situated in San Fernando Street, San Nicolas District in Manila, Pedro Guevara Elementary School (PGES) and Marcela Agoncillo Elementary School (MAES), they believe their schools were once places for eternal rest of those who passed away. Since I have neighbors and cousins who studied in PGES, so I’ll just focus on that particular school.

I was told of numerous creepy stories of apparitions of spirits especially when darkness bites the vicinity. Several boy scouts who camped in PGES for some time have also accounts of supernatural activities occurring inside the school such as sounds of footsteps, banging of doors and the like. They always relate these happenings to the supposed “past” of the public school, which is according to them, a public cemetery.

Way back, I believed to these stories. I was a child then year 1998, so I believed what they tell me. I even considered it a “stay away” zone for myself. I was afraid of going there until year 2003 (long time, heh?) when I finally set foot on PGES school grounds for a Scouting activity.

PGES is a big school with at least three school buildings, one spacious multi-purpose center, one basketball court, a computer center donated by a Chinese business organization among other facilities. At first impression, this school does not look like a former cemetery to me, not even a sign of it made me convinced that it really was. From then on, I started to doubt the stories my neighbors and cousins told me before. I plan to disprove that “cemetery-turned-school” belief, but I don’t have ideas how. Now I have the maps, I think this will help break the long-time “foolishness.”

San Nicolas District, Manila in 1898. From Wikimedia Commons.
(North on the left side)

Above is an 1898 map of San Nicolas District, cropped from the original old Manila map that I obtained from Wikimedia Commons. There are two numbers which indicate the exact location of PGES (Area 1) and MAES (Area 2). Though there are no annotations of what the two areas were, but it is clear that those were NOT cemeteries. In fact, Area 1 (in octagonal shape) was the silk market (in Spanish, alcaiceria) of the Chinese which was built in mid-18^th century (will be featured in succeeding posts, I just need some permission) and was later converted to be the Office for the Port Official (as written, Capitan del Puerto). Area 2, in my own view, does not even exceed a hectare of land area; therefore, if it was indeed a public cemetery, it is a very small space to house them (Them! You know the...).

And as you can see, the location of the two areas is on the mouth of Pasig River just a few kilometers from the shore facing Manila Bay (well, in 1898). So, port activities should be active in the area. If that cemetery theory is true, man, it is sickening and disturbing to see cemeteries surround you when doing any kind of work. Our old folks were good enough not to place cemeteries near areas of trade, which was vital to our economy mainly attributed to the Galleon Trade at that time, or else, they might die because of fright...just kidding.

So by means of tangible documents and a little amount of common sense, one can rule out that PGES and MAES both were NOT cemeteries in 1899, not even in the 18^th century, nor before the 18^th century.

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