The role of the Iloilo River in early times

Posted by Explore Iloilo

Long before the coming fo the Spaniards to the Philippines, Iloilo River was already noted to be a busy artery of commerce to the towns of Molo and Jaro. This will explain why when the colonizers came to Iloilo, they already found a considerable number of Chinese residing in Molo and a thriving settlement in Jaro which, in early times, was known as Salog. The river was also a rich fishing ground for fishermen who had started putting up huts along its banks.

With the transfer of the capital of the Spanish administration in Western Visayas from Arevalo to the small village of Iloilo in the early 17 th century, more and more communities began to sprout along the riverbanks.This was especially true between Molo and Iloilo or Irong-irong in the north and between Arevalo and Baluarte in the south. What could be observed in the 18 th century were clumps of houses here and there because the expanse of land in the area was essentially swampy. Population date for 1760 indicate that the village of Iloilo at that time had only 835 residents (Mallat, 1846).

The opening of the Port of Iloilo in 1855 to international trade spurred more communities to emerge in the vicinity of Irong-irong, eventually assuming a continuous line of connection with the towns of Molo and Jaro. The growing concentration of population, however, was in that piece of land jutting into the Iloilo Strait known as Punta, attracted by the prospect of working at the port.

Iloilo River was also instrumental in the development of the sugar industry. It provided for a safe entry point for the Negros and Panay sugar which subsequently were loaded on ocean-going vessels bound for other countries. As the volumes of Negros sugar landing in the Iloilo port grew with each successive cutting season, from 12,000 piculs in 1855 to 2,470,400 in 1898 (McCoy, 1982), British and spanish firms began to crowd the marshy area along the Iloilo River’s banks. During the 1850s and 1860s, they constructed stone warehouses fronting the Iloilo River. From the 1870s onward, more foreign firms built permanent offices, retail shops and residential houses along the streets parallel to the river.

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