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Opps! The article I quoted on Nov 28-29 was published by CNS not CBS. My apologies to the author and to the publisher!

The column of Nov 26 on the demolition of Puerto San Juan, a.k.a. the Provincial Jail has elicited responses but the letter from a reader forwarded to me by the Visayan Daily Star encapsulates the reactions of people which are mostly of dismay and unbelief.

Anyway this is what our reader wrote and as usual under this circumstance, I prefer to keep the writer's name confidential unless he gives me permission to use his or her name. I have also omitted portions that have no bearing on the subject.

“I was shock to hear the news that the old Provincial Jail has been demolished. Adding information that this is already a heritage site adds to the horror.

“I have been working in Manila for 6 years now and come home only in Decembers. I found out that the Provincial Jail is no longer inhabited only last December when I came home. I suggested to my mother it would be better to make it a tourist attraction since tourists would go out of the country to view these kinds of historical sites. Knowing that they were previously inhabited by criminals and probably people have died here only adds to the interest of this place.

“After reading Modi's column no words can explain the regret of knowing that something very valuable has been lost and can never be brought back. It's very sad that our former Provincial Jail has been a victim of commercialization as Modi would put it.

“No amount of investment from 888 will ever compensate the value of the Provincial Jail to our province and to our history. I hope in the coming days I can read news of the investigation on how this monstrosity was allowed to happen.

“We can create thousands of malls and buildings. But no matter how beautiful they are, they can never replace the history and the lessons of these old structures that can or have provided us.”

Indeed, once a historic structure is gone, it is gone forever. There is an item in the news that said the lessee (is this 888?) will rebuild the structure. This is naïve because no matter what restoration is done, it is never the same. That is a fake.

I went to the site, the demolished and planed over area and I wondered where the 19 th century bricks went. Perhaps the contractor kept it or sold it? Some of those bricks have their markings dating to 1894 and 1896 and the name of the manufacturer. In a word, the bricks by themselves are historic in that they were either made here in Negros, in Iloilo or imported. The markings in those bricks tell a story of their own – we had a brick-making industry that is now gone though some old churches still have them.

Are the bricks gone too?

For many years from 1976 when the government launched its Reunion for Peace Program, thousands of American, Japanese and Filipino veterans and their families came to the Philippines to recall their war experiences. Among the places they went to were the sites of encounters. In Negros, the Japanese and their families went to see the interlocking tunnels they constructed in Patag, Silay City. By then only a few of these tunnels survived from the hordes of looters in search of the fabled Yamashita gold. Nothing of the kind was found but the tunnels were lost due to either ignorance or indifference of government officials, particularly of Silay.

I am reminded of this because today, one of the major tourist attractions of Vietnam are their tunnels constructed during the Vietnamese-American war. Of course, those who have gone to Rome take time to see the catacombs, the tunnels that early Christians dug to bury their dead and to worship in secret.

They preserved these sites because they tell part of the story of their country and now make money of them.

We destroy whatever little we have. I can cite several that were destroyed for lack of local government knowledge of the requirements of law – no demolition of historic structures without the approval of the National Historical Commission.

Our tourism groups that are beneficiaries of this lost heritage are silent. Does this mean they have not truly appreciated what historic structures mean to their businesses?

What will the architects of 888 come up with? Off hand, by my account, they have already violated the law on the preservation of historic structures. Whether they can be made to account for this is anybody's guess but like so many other lost heritages, this can just be relegated into the dustbin of memories.*

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