Note 50 — Chapter XXXII

Concepción furnishes an interesting account (xiv, pp. 76–79) of the abolition by Arandía of the “rotten borough” of Cebú. During the term of Governor Arrechedera, he received a request from Juan Baraona Velazquez, governor and chief magistrate of Cebú province, that in view of the lack not only of regidors there but of citizens who could fill that office, the governor should confer it on certain persons named by him, among them two who were the only permanent (Spanish) settlers there. Nevertheless, affairs soon returned to their former condition: of the five persons thus appointed, one was long detained in Manila, and one died; another was deprived of office for harsh treatment of the headman of the Sangleys, and still another for failure to perform his duties. “Thus, only the regidor Espina was left, and in him much was deficient, if he were not actually incapable; for he could not read or write, and his judgment was not very sound.” Velazquez therefore proposed that these offices be extinguished, and some suitable person be appointed from Manila to assist him in ruling the province. Nothing came of this, and his successor, Joseph Romo, applied to Arandía for relief, saying that for two years no election of alcalde-in-ordinary had been held, and the office was exercised by the regidor Pedro Muñoz—the same who had ill-treated the Sangley—“of whom alone that municipality was composed;” that the latter had obtained his post only ad interim, and now refused to surrender it to Romo. “In view of this report, Señor Arandía decided that these remnants of the city should be abolished, leaving it with only the name of city, and that it should be ruled by its chief magistrate, as alcalde-mayor of the province; and in this wretched condition was left the first city of this sphere, endowed with privileges by our Catholic kings, and worthy of other and greater consideration. Its lack of citizens transformed it into so dry a skeleton; and, although this measure was provisional, necessity has made it perpetual.” Buzeta and Bravo say (Diccionario, i, p. 555) that since then Cebú had been governed by a gobernadorcillo, like any native village; and at the end of that same volume they give a table of the population of Cebú province in 1818, which shows that the ancient city of Santisimo Nombre de Jésus contained no pure Spaniards, its population of 2,070 souls being all native or Chinese except 233 Spanish mestizos. Its present population, according to the late U. S. census, is 31,079—of whom 793 are natives of China, 131 of America, and 168 of Europe. ↑