My Home Lower Kalunasan Guadalupe Cebu City

t is the largest barangay in terms of population in the City of Cebu. It gets its name from Our Lady Of Guadalupe, a famous image of which is kept in the church of the same name. The barangay is known world wide for its export quality mangoes.

THE ORIGIN OF THE NAME "GUADALUPE"

            Historical accounts attributed to Padre Gaspar de San Agustin state when in the 16^th century Miguel Lopez de Legaspi and his Spanish conquistador’s landed on the beach of San Nicolas, Cebu & burned all the houses of the villagers particularly in the sitio Sawang, the natives evacuated to the hills near the present church of Guadalupe then known as Tagoan (hiding place) because of a cave there.

            It was said that five Augustinian missionaries Padre Andres Urdaneta, Martin de Rada, Diego de Herrera, Andres de Aguirre & Padre de Gamboa were accompanied by their religious mission by the prominent native of Guadalupe called KAMAHUKOM, the husband of Makiyung. They were quite successful in propagating Christianity to the natives. In fact, the first natives to be baptized were the guide himself baptized Romualdo & his wife Cleofe. Thus, the former barrio of Guadalupe derived it’s name from Romualdo (Maldo) and Cleofe (Pe).

            As converts increased in number, the missionaries gave an Image of the Blessed Virgin a replica of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe who appeared in Guadalupe, Mexico in the year 1530 to the villagers as a token of remembrance for their acceptance of the Catholic faith. But giving little significance to it, the native’s place the image inside a Kamalig. A bodega made up a bamboo & sawali, where they used to dump carabao hides. Soon the nearby residents noticed that the Kamalig brightened every night. The source of the light coming from nowhere. Later they discovered that the dogs that used the carabao hides inside the Kamalig all died of exhaustion because their teeth got stacked into the holed, permanently. The phenomenon reverend & strengthened the villager’s belief in the Catholics faith, so that they started calling their place Guadalupe, in honor of the Image of the Blessed Virgin.

the Finding of the Image in the Cave

No one knows why & when the image was placed in the Cave (Langub). However, it was said that there was a time when the Muslim pirates raided the district of San Nicolas and its environs. Due to fear, the villagers went up the hill & hid the Image in the cave to protect it from heretics. Others also said in the 19^th Century, the Hispano- Filipino conflicts, atrocities & uprising forced the natives to hides the Image in the cave at Tagoan. As years passed by, the residents forgot all about the Image. The discovery of the hidden Image of the Blessed Virgin inside the cave happened accidentally.

          It started when a trapper of wild chicken was sticking his wooden peg into the cart in the cave to tie his rooster bait. Unknowingly he was sticking it on the top of a concealed guano pit so that the soft soil gave away. Inside this guano pit, he saw the religious relic. He took it out and brought it to the Parish Priest of San Nicolas for identification. He told that it was the replica of the Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe of Mexico. From that time on, the cave tagoan (now part of Brgy. Kalunasan) became the object of Pilgrimages by people throughout the Visayas & Mindanao.

THE GUADALUPE CHAPEL

            Due to the difficult conditions in the cave, the Parish Priest of San Nicolas with the help of Teniente del Barrio, TOMAS LOPEZ, had the Image transferred from the cave to a chapel near the cave on a lot owned by Lopez & under the care of a couple Takyocleta. However, the river overflowed during the rainy days, the people became apprehensive that they decided to place the Image in another chapel built on the spot where the present Parish Church is located. Five siblings  (four brothers & a sister) built a small chapel surnamed Gonzales, Margarita & Salvador, named Panganiban; Francisco named Soganiban; Miguel or Domaurpan & Ignacio also named Tatoy. But the chapel was destroyed by a strong typhoon, Huracan in October 15, 1912.

            Thus the image was transferred to San Nicolas church for safety reasons & brought to Guadalupe Church once in a year. Every December 12, we the Guadalupehanons celebrates our annual fiesta in honor of OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE in San Nicolas Parish & they used to get the Image the day after to celebrate another fiesta in Guadalupe on December 14. This tradition was followed until 1926.

            One Sunday, while the devotees were about to return the Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe to San Nicolas Parish Church, it fell from the Andas (a contraption made of two bamboo poles with a platform in between the center; this is carried by two persons at the bottom ends of the two poles). To their astonishment, the relic fell upright standing on the ground, unbroken. The devotees took this incident as a refusal of the Blessed Virgin to be taken to the church of San Nicolas, so they decided to build another chapel on very spot where the present church is.

 

            Guadalupe became a parish when His Excellency, the residential Bishop of Cebu, Msgr. Gabriel M. Reyes, issued a decree on April 19, 1933 to effect a separation of the Barrio of Guadalupe from the Parish of San Nicolas & for the purpose to establish it as a Parish effective May 19, 1933.