Origins of the Chabacano Pueblo

The transportation system in Zamboanga city is very simple to figure out. All jeepneys go from a certain barangay to the downtown area or what we call pueblo and vice versa. Growing up in Zamboanga city and not ever having left it even for vacations, I have always thought that the downtown area of all cities in the Philippines are called pueblo. It wasn't until in high school where some of my classmates came from nearby provinces that I learned that this was not the case. In college, I learned that the equivalent of this word in Cebuano is centro. When I started working in Manila, I realized that the cities in Manila don't even have a well-defined downtown anymore which is incidentally, also what Zamboanga city is currently developing into.

I have always wondered why we called the downtown area of Zamboanga city as pueblo. When I checked the meaning of this word in Spanish, I learned that it meant 'the people or the town'. If we are to believe the Chabacano-is-parroted-Spanish theory, it does make sense for us to use the word pueblo for 'downtown' since the Chabacano and Spanish definitions are almost the same. But I felt like there was a different story behind it.

Later on, I realized that pueblo is not a general term for 'downtown' but a name that our ancestors have placed on the downtown area of Zamboanga city. But why did they call Fort Pilar and its environs as pueblo?

I remember a Spaniard from a Facebook group told me that his great grandfather was a Spanish soldier born at Fort Pilar. At the time, I had my doubts because if you look at Fort Pilar today, it's just a very small edifice and it's hard to imagine people living there. When I told my friend about it, he told me that there probably was an adjacent village to the fort which was just unimaginable for me at that time.

Yes. Believe it or not, Zamboanga used to be a small village attached to what is now known as Fort Pilar. Everywhere else were probably heavily forested areas or small tribal villages which farm, hunt, or fish.

In fact, if you go to the BIR office in Zamboanga city today, you will see the remnant of a gate from the walls of the old city. The city or what was left of it was probably destroyed during the second world war.

Even before the second world war, according to a Wikipedia article I read (which I unfortunately, can no longer find), the Spaniards destroyed several buildings so that the revolutionary forces wouldn't be able to use them. That is probably a common practice during war. Growing up, I have always wondered why we didn't have many Spanish era buildings in Zamboanga city (Fort Pilar is the only one I know) and after reading that *article (yay, I found it) in Wikipedia, I realized that most were probably burned down by the Spanish or destroyed in world war II. In the oldest Chabacano text found, we could see one of the characters in the dialogues talk about an incendio. Is this the same incendio that the Wikipedia article talks about?

When I asked my late uncle what the difference was between quema and incendio, he said the former is a regular fire while the latter is a big one.

Suddenly, everything fell into place. Think about it. If you live in a farm in Mercedes in the 1800s and you made reference to the village of Zamboanga (Fort Pilar and the walled city around it), you will definitely call it the pueblo (Spanish for town). That's pretty much how most places get its name. For example, if you live in an area called kamias, there probably is or used to be plenty of kamias in that area.

Today, the pueblo is no longer just the Fort and its environs. When I visited the uncle of a friend, he told me aqui lang yo na pueblo ta queda. I was surprised when I later found out that he lived in Canelar which in my mind definitely was not part of the pueblo. But when I visited his place, I realized that it had already been captured by the sprawling urbanization in Zamboanga city with several banks, hotels, and restaurants along its main roads.

The term pueblo is also becoming synonymous to the urbanization of a certain locale. For example, you can say ta queda ya pueblo el Santa Maria which means that Santa Maria is becoming urbanized.

In Camins' dictionary, he defines the word pueblo as the town, village, or people. Santos' dictionary has the same definition for the word pueblo and lists the word centro for the Chabacano term of 'downtown' in the English to Chabacano section of his dictionary. It is not until the recent English to Chabacano dictionary published by the city hall of Zamboanga that we get a more modern sense of how the word pueblo is used wherein the listed word for 'downtown' is pueblo and centro del ciudad.

*On May 23, 1899, the Spaniards finally evacuated Zamboanga, after burning down most of the city's buildings in contempt of the Zamboangueños' revolt against them.