If the history written by Pedro Monteclaro in Maragtas  is true, in the 1200s CE, ten datus from Borneo, led by Datu Puti (whose name in the present time has been unfortunately reduced to be cooking condiment) arrived at Aninipay, the old name of Panay Island, and asked Pulpulan, the chieftain of the ati natives, and his son Marikudo for land where they could settle.  The ati people are an ethnic group of short, dark-skineed people with curly hair who were the earliest occupants of the islands with their own culture and way of living (sadly, they have been ignored and relegated to a minority). And over the centuries, long before Ferdinand Magellan arrived in the archipelago, the communities of those Borean datus must have thrived in the plains and along the coastlines of Aninipay . These settlers were expert seafarers even before they arrived at Aninipay . They treated the sea, not as barriers, but as highways that enabled them to reach other islands. Like all early settlements, a rive

The current, crowded city center is not the original settlement of Victorias. Everything began 1.2 kilometers to the west of the Victorias public plaza, at the shorelines of what is now Barangay 9 of the city. Before becoming a town in 1898 and a city in 1998, Victorias was just a barrio, a small settlement of nipa houses near the mouth and at the banks of the Malihao River on the northwest side of Negros island facing the Iloilo Strait. That barrio, also originally named Malihaw (also spelled Malihao) after the abundant malihaw plants on the river banks, is now known as Daan Banwa (Old Town), the oldest known settlement. Though there are no verifiable written records of the barrio's earliest settlers, the 1953 compilation mentions of Indonesians, Cebuanos, and Boholanos as the early inhabitants of Daan Banwa even before the Spaniards arrived in the Philippines. Although there are studies about the tracing of ancient genomes of the origin of the earliest settlers of the islands lat

Standing in the middle of the Victorias public plaza facing southeast, I was face-to-face with the stone municipio whose presence and history dwarfed me literally and figuratively. It was completed in the late 1930s with the cost of 30,000 pesos under the town leadership of Don Felix Lozada Montinola (1934-1940), originally an Ilonggo after having been born in Jaro, Iloilo, with his ancestors coming from Malaga, Spain, in the 18th century. Then, this municipio was surrounded by trees, open spaces, and a few houses owned by the town hacienderos (read related history on Chapter 16). In the morning, public servants, local politicians, and townspeople crowded its halls, while in the late afternoon, its façade was bathed with red-orange hues of the setting sun with its twin, stucco-ivory columns driving home the message that this building was more than just a huge office for public servants. Back in the 1930s, tall stone buildings constructed near the national highways were rare on this p

After having lived away from this town that I also call my own, I came home to walk its streets, roam its busy corners, and rediscover its history. From the stories I was told when I was young, to the ones I asked and read about, and lately, to the detailed history written in 1953 by the Victorias public school teachers, and another written by one distinguished Victoriahanon who made sure the generations that would come after his would be able to read it as he once lived it, I thought of bringing their interesting stories together and write them because, firstly, they have to be shared, and secondly, their stories have become ours. I'm talking about my hometown, Victorias, in the Philippines, and thanks to the kind Victoriahanons who patiently answered my questions about their lives and their past, who walked with me as I explored the corners of this town to satisfy my curiosity, and who gave me mental images of what this town was like when photographs were not available about the