Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar

Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar is built on 400 hectares of land in the town of Bagac, in the south western part of the province of Bataan, with a total land area of 231.20 sq. kms. or 16.5% of Bataan’s total land area. It is about 157 kms. north western part of Manila along the National Highway. Bagac is one of the smallest and oldest towns of Bataan. In the early part of the 17thcentury, even before the coming of Dominican friars to the island, this town has already been existent, although it did not have an official name yet. This town formerly belonged to Mariveles, another town in the province of Bataan. It also had once became a barrio of Morong, Bataan for the reason that it could not stand on its own because of its population and income. However, when immigrants from different parts of the Archipelago arrived, they saw the town’s idle land, virgin forests, and fishing industry, fit to develop. In due time, Bagac was then able to declare itself as an independent town of Bataan. Today, the town is now on its stage of full development. Its present progress may be pointed to the different efforts exerted by corresponding agencies and communities in implementing the different objectives for the town.

Houses, dating from the 18th to 19 centuries, constellate on this recreated village of cobblestone streets, small plazas and outdoor sculpture, breathing new life and presenting refurbished dignity. Relocated from their original sites, they look at once curiously alike and radically different: powerful testimonies of the past, they meet at and diverge from various visual and architectural points and by extension, with the way once kept and maintained domestic histories and human lives within their walls.

Once owned by the socially and economically elect of their time, the awe inspiring structures, around 27 at latest count, flirt with nostalgia and somehow, with notion that the past, seen through the prism of our mundane concerns, is better than the present. By walking on the street of Las Casas, along side a calesa clip clopping along and amid the rustic sculptures that punctuate the property, its as if we are voyeurs to history, eavesdropping to secret conversations spoken in rooms shuttered by capiz windows, by the staircase with its sinuous balustrades or in balconies swept by wind and light.