Old Houses and Sugar Cane Plantations

February 21, 2019

From Balay Negrense Cecile drove us around the neighborhood where the old Spanish houses still stand. Some are well preserved but many look like they haven’t been lived in for a long time. Some are being restored. Cecile said the local government no longer allows these houses to be torn down. They’ve been declared as Negros’ heritage.

She told us the story about this house under renovation. This used to be two stories high.
The story goes:
The only child/daughter was sent abroad to study. She left behind her sweetheart who ended up marrying her best friend.
The two married and lived in the house across the street. The former girlfriend could see the couple’s house from the second floor of her house so she had the second floor demolished. Moral lesson: don’t entrust your boyfriend or girlfriend to your best friend. Bantay salakay.

We went to barangay Hermanos to see some sugarcane plantations. Cecile explained to us the processes involved in planting ’till harvesting. We had a crash course in agriculture just in case I win in the lotto and decide to become a haciendera.

The harvest is brought to the sugar mill where they are weighed and tested for sweetness.  This particular plantation consistently produces the sweetest sugar cane in Hermanos.

Bacolod had the biggest concentration of millionaires in the country in the 70s because the landowners were able to accumulate wealth from the country’s strong sugar exports beginning Spanish times.   The prices of sugar peaked in 1974 but the world market prices fluctuated and dropped towards the 80s.   Many farms stopped production.

We’ve seen farmlands being developed as residential subdivisions and some, commercial.  The sugarcane plantations in Bacolod City are gradually disappearing.

“Then God said ‘Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds. And it was so.”

—- Genesis 1:11