History of Pila

     
The Four Horsemen of the  Apocalypse began to terrorize Pila, one after the other, in the middle of the 18th century. It was probably during this period that a second patron, San Roque, was invoked for the town in order to “assist” St. Anthony of Padua in defending the villa and pleading its cause in the celestial court. San Roque’s specialty was curbing epidemics, which usually followed calamities because of the severe stress, disruption and contamination of food and water supplies, malnutrition and overcrowding in places of refuge. Various miracles were attributed to him by the faithful of Pila, some of which were juridically confirmed by the Franciscan Order and duly recorded in its official books (Huerta 1855, 138). (24)

For the last time in memory, Mount Banahaw erupted in 1743. It buried the town of Sariaya in Tayabas (now Quezon) to the south but mercifully spared Pila and its environs to the northeast (Gorospe 1992:11). (25)

A widespread agrarian revolt broke out in 1745 in the friar estates of Tondo, Cavite, Batangas and Laguna. Pila and it suburbs were left untouched by the strife because the Franciscans did not own haciendas, as noted earlier, and those owned by laymen were not involved in the conflict. But just north of the town, the Dominicans possessed the vast estates of Calamba and Biñán and the Jesuits, that of San Pedro de Tunasán. For a while, the unrest in these places threatened to spill over to Pila whose people certainly sympathized with the victims of Spanish injustices (Roth 1977, 100-116). (26)

Halley’s comet flashed awesomely through the sky from 1758 to 1759 as predicted by the British astronomer for whom it was named. Despite their evangelization, the Filipinos- like other peoples of the world – must have been deeply disturbed by this sign. The subsequent turn of events did not help alleviate their fears. Three years later, the British invaded the Philippines and occupied the hapless colony for two years. They caused more devastation and misery in Laguna than the eruption of Banahaw had done four decades earlier. After burning Pagsanján, the capital, to the ground, they swooped down on Pila. Here they took down the first bell and plundered the sacred ornaments and vessels and most probably the first book published in the town, San Buenaventura’s Vocabulario, as spoils of war (the latter is now in the British Museum). (27) But the Pileños were able to hide their second bell (1681) from the invaders through some ingenious way, perhaps by dragging and submerging it into the Laguna de Bay not far from the churchyard (Zaide 1939:17; Blair and Robertson 49:220,249; José 1993a: 28).

After the British left in 1764, it seemed that the Pileños’ pastor, Fray Mathías Pico (1762-67), instead of recognizing their gallant deeds during the war, took his turn to abuse them. When they could not take his “discourtesies and maltreatment” any longer, the fearless Pileños brought formal charges against him in court. The pastor went on leave for six months (May to November 1766). When he came back, however, he filed a counter-suit against the community as a whole for making up “lies” against him. The long and short of it was that Fray Pico was transferred to another assignment but not before he demanded an apology, in order to save face, from the parishioners. The latter might have complied just to get rid of him. (28)

A violent typhoon lashed out at Pila and nearby towns in 1781. It killed livestock, destroyed crops and toppled and wrecked several houses both of the poor and the elite. Thus, it remained for a long time in the mirthless memory of the town (Rivera 1792) (29)

On August 11, 1792, the French naturalist Louis Nee, a prominent member of the Malaspina expedition (1789-94) accompanied by the Spanish botanist, Juán de Cuélar, roamed in Pila gathering plant specimens. They found the medicinal herb cantulay or cuntulay (Pistia stratiotes L. Araceae). They observed that, after heating and stripping it by hand, Pileños would rub it on bellies of children for the relief of abdominal pains. Unlike in other towns, the scientists did not did not stay longer than a day at Pagalangan probably because of the flooding in the rainy season. Putting Pila in the scientific map again, they published their findings in the Anales de Ciencias Naturales in 1802 (vol. 5, no. 13 pp. 76-82). (30)