Old Makati and Baile de los Arcos

When I arrived from the United States after graduating from college, our international airport was in Makati. The building where we had to show our passports and gather our luggage was called the Nielsen Tower, the first air control tower which makes the Philippines one of the first to have an international airport in this part of the world. What is now the Makati and Ayala Avenues and Paseo de Roxas, used to be runways of the airport. When it was first built in 1937, it was called Nielsen Field, named after an aviation enthusiast, Laurie Reuben Nielsen, who got Manila-based foreign investors to join him in building the airport, leasing 42 hectares of land in Makati.

The airport supported the growing economy then, especially the mining industry, before the Japanese occupation. Then, in response to the expansionist policy of Japan, authorities in the Philippines set up the United States Far East Air Force (FEAF) headquarters at the Nielsen Airport. Commercial flights at the airport were halted in October 1941 and the private carriers were asked to relocate their services to make room for the US Army Air Corps. Now we know that Nielsen Tower became the permanent home of the Filipinas Heritage Library located in what is now called the Ayala Triangle.

I had no idea that Makati would become the financial center of Metro Manila and that I would be residing there permanently. Makati used to be known as Sampiro. It stood for San Pedro because the full name of Makati was San Pedro de Makati. Makati was then just an outskirt of Manila. The timely arrival of the Americans in 1945 saved the town of Makati from the scorch-earth tactics of the retreating Japanese. Old-time residents were not displaced and they have served as the curators of Makati’s most distinctive living tradition, en baile de los arcos, an arch dance that is the hallmark of its town fiesta. The San Pedro Church, Makati’s oldest building arrested in stone, served as the museums.

As I have always been curious about beginnings and have always tried to know the past, one time in my younger years, I visited the old San Pedro Church in Makati and there, for the first time saw sagalas during the baile de los arcos. Literally, it inspired me to write ten couplets. Some of my favorites:

San Pedro Zagalas

Zagalas depict in motion

Makati’s soul in devotion.

Dance Exultation

Through the arches of time

Makati’s dance sublime.

Deathless Dance

Before Saint Peter’s portal

Makati’s dance immortal

Not just anyone can be a zagala. In the old days, only fair-skimmed girls of good reputation, and virgins, were chosen. The baile has three parts — the diccho or simultaneous chanting of prayers, the trono or singing of prayer, and the baile, a combination of prayer, dance and song. The dance was first performed in honor of Our Virgin of the Rose from Acapulco, a Marian image brought in 1718 to the Sts. Peter and Paul Church by a Jesuit priest, Fr. Juan Jose Delgado. Today, it is performed every June 29 and 30, the feast days of the poblacion’s patron saints, Sts. Peter and Paul.

In Makati’s town fiesta, dance (baile) and architecture (arcos) meet and blend perfectly.

La Danza de los Arcos

The dance of the arches is a penetration

To Makati’s soul in perpetuation.