Cebuano people of the Philippines
“Sugbo” comes from the verb “to walk in the water,” which is where “Cebuano” comes from.
“Cebuano” comes from the root word “Cebu,” which is the Spanish version of the original name “Sugbo.” “Sugbo” comes from the verb “to walk in the water,” which is where “Cebuano” comes from. In the past, the shores of the Cebu port were shallow, so people coming from the sea had to wade through the water to get to dry land. Add hanon to the end of the word to refer to the language, culture, and people of Cebu. This makes the word Sugbuhanon or Sugbuanon. The Spaniards changed Sugbuhanon to Cebuano, and the early Americans changed it to Cebuan. “Cebuano” can also be used to describe the person who speaks the language, no matter where he is from.
The Cebuano are also called Bisaya, but this is a general term that can be used for many other Visayan language groups besides the Cebuano. The origin of the word “Bisaya” is unknown, but it may come from a word that means “slaves,” since the area was either a target or a staging area for slave raids in precolonial and early colonial times, or it may come from a word that means “beautiful,” which is what a Bornean sultan said when he saw the islands.
About a quarter of the people in the Philippines, or about 15.8 million people, speak Cebuano as their first language. It is the main language in Cebu, Bohol, Negros Oriental, Siquijor, Camiguin, and parts of Leyte and Masbate. Most Visayan settlers in Mindanao speak it, especially in the Davao provinces, General Santos, Bukidnon, Iligan, Cagayan de Oro, Surigao, Butuan, and Agusan. It is part of a group of languages called Austronesian. In the Philippines, this family of languages has split into many smaller groups or subgroups.
The Cebuano language is the most important thing that defines the Cebuano people. The main part of this group is the province of Cebu, which is a long, mountainous island with about 150 smaller islands scattered around it. Cebu province is made up of 5,000 square kilometers of land. The Visayan Sea is to the north, Bohol and Leyte are to the east and northeast, and Negros is to the west and southwest, across the Tafton Strait. Cebu is in the middle of the group of islands, or archipelago. There are 6.8 million people living in this area, which is made up of four provinces, 16 cities, 116 municipalities, and almost 3,003 barangays or villages. Cebu City is the country’s second largest city.
The Cebuano culture has a wider reach than just Central Visayas. Cebu and Central Visayas have a lot of people living in a small area, and there isn’t enough land to grow crops. This has made them important places for people to leave. Cebuanos make up a big part of the population in other parts of the Visayas and Mindanao because of this. Metro Cebu, which is the second largest urban area in the country, is also a center for education, media, and transportation in the south. This gives Cebu a cultural influence that goes beyond provincial or regional borders.
Visayan is spoken in Cebu, Bohol, and Davao. It is the same language, but there are some differences in how it sounds and how it is put together. During the time when Spain controlled Cebu, the Catholic Church translated the Bible into a form of Cebuano that was spoken in the southeast of the island. This version of the language became the standard for written Cebuano. It is called the Sialo vernacular. Before the Spanish came, the southern Cebu towns of Carcar and Santander were part of the area called Sialo.
Over the years, people who speak Cebuano but don’t live in Cebu have pointed out the differences between their vernaculars. This was clear from the 2000 Census, which gave Bisaya, Boholano, and Cebuano their own language groups. In the 2000 Census, 8% of the people said that Bisaya or Binisaya was the language they spoke. Many Cebuano speakers talk about the language by saying “Bisaya,” even though there are other languages in the Visayas.
In the version of Cebuano spoken in Cebu City, some words drop the “l” and add a “w” instead. In towns on Bohol that face Southern Leyte, the “y” in some words is pronounced as a hard “j,” and Bohol has its own words as well. Cebuano-Davao is spoken in two different ways. The first is a mix of the local dialects spoken in southeastern Cebu and Cebu City. The second is a mix of Visayan and Luzon languages that borrows from Tagalog and other languages for its grammar and vocabulary.
The Sialo language is still the standard for written Cebuano. Literary writers are influenced by the house style of Manila Bulletin’s Bisaya Magasin, which is also in the Sialo style.
There is no standard for spoken Cebuano yet. Because of the influence of writers’ groups, the media, and academic institutions, the types of Cebuano spoken in Visayan towns other than Cebu and parts of Mindanao that are considered economic hubs have become more well-known.
History of Cebuano
As early as the 13th century, Chinese traders noticed how well off the Cebuano were. They traded plates and jars made of porcelain from the Tang to the Ming dynasties with them. The Cebuano used these items every day or buried them in their graves. When they weren’t trading, the Visayans raided the coastal villages of Fukien, using Formosa as their base. People say that the Visayans rode on bamboo rafts that could be folded up. When they attacked, they were armed with lances that had very long ropes attached to them so that they could be retrieved and the valuable iron tips kept safe.
At the beginning of the 16th century, when Rajah Humabon was in charge, the people of Cebu traded woven cloth, embroidery, cast bronze tools, and jewelry. Small foundries in the settlement made mortars, pestles, wine bowls, gongs, inlaid betel boxes, and rice measures. Humabon wore a silk loincloth, a silk turban, and pearl and gold jewelry. East Indian, Siamese, and Chinese traders were said to have paid tribute to him. At that time, the eastern coast of the island was full of villages, and the villages in the highlands were close to streams and lakes. The interior was connected to the coasts by rivers or trade routes. People lived in houses made of bamboo and palm leaves that were raised off the ground by four posts and reached by a ladder. The space under the houses was used to keep animals. Humabon’s big house looked like other homes, with a big haystack on top of smaller ones.
Ferdinand Magellan stopped in Cebu on April 7, 1521, on his way to the Moluccas. This was the start of Spanish colonization in the area. After a blood pact between the conquistador and the native king, Rajah Humabon and his wife, whose name was changed to Juana, became Christians. But Lapulapu, the leader of Mactan, refused to let Spain take over. His people killed Magellan, eight Spanish soldiers, and four of Humabon’s warriors, even though they were outnumbered by 1,000. After Magellan died, Duarte Barbosa and Juan Serrano took over as leaders. They and their soldiers were all killed at a goodwill banquet put on by Humabon. Magellan’s remaining group, led by Sebastian del Cano, sailed home after losing, but they were the first to show that the earth is round.
Miguel Lopez de Legaspi and Andres de Urdaneta led the second Spanish trip to the Philippines. On April 27, 1565, they arrived in Cebu. Like the first time, the natives were friendly to Legaspi at first, and he even made a blood pact with Sikatuna, the chieftain of Bohol. Later, Humabon’s son and successor, Tupas, fought with the Spaniards. The Spaniards easily killed about 2,000 warriors who only had wood corselets and rope armor, lances, shields, small cutlasses, arrows, and headdresses for decoration. Their own boats, which were “built for speed and maneuverability, not for gun battles,” couldn’t compete with Spain’s three powerful warships.
On May 8, 1565, Legaspi and four Augustinians built the fort of San Miguel. This was the first place where the Spanish lived there for good. Before the Spanish moved the capital to Panay and then to Manila, it was in Cebu for six years. Legaspi, Goiti, and Salcedo hired a lot of warriors from Cebu to help them take over the rest of the country.
On July 3, 1565, Tupas signed a treaty that was almost the same as giving up. In exchange, he was given a 13-meter brown damask. Father Diego de Herrera baptized Tupas on May 21, 1568, just a few days before he died. This helped spread the word about Spanish rule. On January 1, 1571, the settlement was renamed “Ciudad del Santisimo Nombre de Jesus” (City of the Most Holy Name of Jesus) in honor of an image of the Child Jesus that had been found in a house that had not been damaged by the Spanish invasion of 1565. This house is now the site of the Augustinian Church. People thought it was a piece of Magellan’s expedition. They thought it was the same piece that was given to “Queen Juana” at her baptism.
In the 1600s, Cebu was one of the most populated Spanish settlements in the country. There were usually between 50 and 100 Spanish settlers living there, not counting those who were there for religious reasons. But this number dropped sharply after 1604, when Cebu stopped taking part in the galleon trade. Every year, Cebu prepared and sent a galleon to New Spain. Few profits were made because there were limits on what could be loaded. These limits were put in place by Spanish officials who wanted to keep the Manila-Acapulco trade going because it was more profitable. Also, a galleon from Cebu went down in 1597.
Cebu’s importance dropped a lot because it didn’t take part in the galleon trade. By the late 1730s, only one or two Spaniards who weren’t government officials, soldiers, or priests lived in Cebu City. Few Spaniards owned land in the countryside, and this was made worse by a law that said Spaniards couldn’t live with Filipinos until 1768.
In the late 17th century, the Italian traveler Gemelli Careri and the French scientist Le Gentil both wrote about Cebu’s lack of trade. The island was no longer important. The threat of so-called Moro raids from Mindanao and Moro pirates on the seas, which lasted until the late 1790s, and the attempts of the alcaldes-mayores (provincial governors) to monopolize domestic trade for their own economic gain also made it harder for people to trade between islands. Because the Spanish central government never had enough money to pay local officials and bureaucrats their salaries, these alcalde-mayores were allowed to buy the special license to trade.
As soon as Spanish officials got back on their feet after the British occupation of Manila from 1760 to 1762, they started making changes that made it easier to do business. Cebu’s business slowly got back on its feet.
The opening of the Philippines to world trade in 1834 and then of Cebu to world trade in 1860 helped Cebu’s economy. Sugar and hemp were big moneymakers for Cebu’s economy. Before Magellan got there, sugar had already been grown on Cebu. A strain called Cebu purple was one of the four types of sugar that were found in the Philippines when they were ruled by Spain. As in most other parts of the Philippines, the huge rise in demand for cash crops caused a big change in how land was owned. More and more land was owned by a small number of people. This usually happened through the pacto de retroventa system, in which land was mortgaged by its original owners to new cash-rich landowners with the agreement that it could be bought back at the same price on a certain date. This system, which favored the creditors, made a new class of wealthy landlords and a large number of landless agricultural wage laborers. Both of these groups became angry with the Spanish government and the power of the religious. The rest of the country was used to seeing this kind of thing.
Leon Kilat, Florencio Gonzales, Luis Flores, Candido Padilla, and Andres Abellana were in charge of the revolution in Cebu. On April 3, 1898, they rose up in Cebu against the Spanish government. On Valeriano Weyler Street, which is now called Tres de Abril, and in other parts of the city, there was a lot of fighting. The revolutionaries drove the Spaniards across the Pahina River and then to Fort San Pedro. They surrounded the fort for three days, but they left when the Spanish sent more troops from Iloilo and started bombing the city.
The Treaty of Paris, which was signed on December 10, 1898, put an end to Spain’s rule over Cebu on December 24, 1898. Under Adolfo Montero, the political-military governor of Cebu, the Spaniards left the city and gave the government to a group of Cebuano citizens who would run it for a while. On December 29, 1898, the Philippine Government was officially set up in Cebu City. Luis Flores, the leader of the revolution, became the first Filipino provincial governor of Cebu.
The republican interregnum ended when the United States took over. After the Americans took over Iloilo on February 11, 1899, they began moving toward the Visayas. A few days earlier, people who were in charge of the provinces in the newly formed civil government met at the Casa Real to plan the war. Some of the people who were there were Luis Flores, Miguel Logarta, Juan Climaco, Arcadio Maxilom, and Pablo Meija. But differences in class between these people caused them to split into groups. During a meeting on the American ship Petrel, the civil leaders of Cebuano talked about whether or not to give up or go to war. Because of this, there were two groups: the moderates, led by Julio Llorente and Pablo Mejia, who wanted to give up, and the younger officials, led by Arcadio Maxilom and Juan Climaco, who wanted to fight back. The argument went to the middle ground. Under the threat of being bombed by US naval ships, Cebu City gave up to the Americans on February 22, 1899. But a war broke out in the whole province, led by Climaco and Maxilom.
The Cebuano army went to the highlands and split up into smaller guerilla groups. This was a strategy Maxilom borrowed from Emilio Aguinaldo. These groups moved around the province, destroying American communication lines and recruiting more insurgents and civilian allies as they went. At the same time, American units were being attacked all over Cebu, so they started looting towns and setting houses on fire to scare civilians into giving up.
The resistance was slowed down by problems between different classes and a lack of unity and stable leadership. When the educated members of the civil government left, the united front against the Americans was broken up. At the start of the war, the resistance movement lost their guns and soldiers because they wanted to fight from fixed positions instead of using guerrilla tactics. At the same time, the number of people who helped the Americans and worked with them grew. The Catholic leaders in Cebu looked out for their own interests, and many businesspeople wanted order and stability. Around 1,000 Cebuanos died in the war. The Americans only lost 100 people.
Cebuans fought hard against US rule, but in October 1901, the Cebuano generals had to give up because American weapons were better. On October 27, Maxilom and 78 other men turned themselves in to Lieutenant John L. Bond of the 19th US Infantry in Tuburan. Maxilom helped convince other leaders of the resistance in the Visayas to give up. But rebel groups and bandits of different beliefs, who were all known as “pulahanes,” kept fighting against the Americans until 1906.
The Americans started public schools, helped businesses grow, and changed the way local governments worked. Julio Llorente was chosen to be the civil governor of Cebu in 1901. All of the laws and rules that had been in place before were allowed to stay in place. In the end, the positions on the municipal board were no longer filled by appointment but by popular vote. In 1902, Cebu City was the place where the governor of the province was chosen. Juan Climaco beat Llorente, who only got 122 votes, with 249 votes.
As American rule became more stable in Cebu and the nearby provinces, local elites and intellectuals, including those who fought in the first and second phases of the Philippine Revolution, ran for office in the local government. One of these people was Sergio Osmea, Sr., a young lawyer who was known for writing nationalist pieces for the Cebuano newspaper El Nuevo Dia. Governor-General Luke Wright put Osmea in charge of Cebu as acting governor when he was 25 years old (Valencia 1977). The young Osmea then moved up in the political world. In 1904, he became the provincial fiscal of Cebu and Negros Oriental, and in 1906, he became the governor of Cebu Province. Soon, he was thrown into politics. He and Manuel L. Quezon started the Partido Nacionalista for the 1907 elections for the Philippine Assembly, and he was the Speaker of the Philippine Assembly (later the House of Representatives) until 1922, when he was elected to the Senate (Cullinane 1989). Quezon and Osmea were elected President and Vice President of the Commonwealth in 1935, and they were re-elected in 1941. (Mojares 1994). After Manuel Quezon died in August 1944, Vice-President Osmea took over as president and quickly went back to the Philippines with General Douglas MacArthur. With the return of civilian rule in 1945, Osmea put the different parts of the government back to work and started the economic recovery of the country right away. After losing the 1946 presidential election, Osmea gave up on politics (Santos 1999). But his family stayed in charge of Cebuano politics for many years after him.
Under the American Homestead Settlement Act, a lot of people from Cebu and Iloilo moved to Mindanao in the 1930s. Most of these people came from Cebu and Iloilo. Most Cebuanos lived along the Davao Gulf, which was known for its abaca and coconut plantations at the time. The Americans encouraged this wave of migration from Luzon and the Visayas to stop peasant uprisings in these areas and, in Mindanao, to stop the resistance of Muslim and native communities and the growing number of Japanese settlers. Most of the people who moved to Mindanao were farmers who took advantage of the chance to get land and jobs. However, there were also teachers, business owners, and people in other professions.
Even now, the people who speak Cebuano in Mindanao continue to have an impact on the region’s culture and politics. Cebuano-Visayan is one of the most widely spoken languages in Mindanao. It is spoken by the most people in towns along the Davao Gulf, where there are the most Cebuano people. Cebuano-language radio, TV shows, and newspapers are played and read in both Davao and Cagayan de Oro. Entrepreneurs in Cebu expand their businesses to Cagayan de Oro, Davao, and General Santos, which are all cities. A number of Mindanao’s political leaders come from the island of Cebu.
Cebu was made a city on February 24, 1937.
Vicente Rama wrote the Cebu City Charter and got Congress to agree to it. The name “presidente” was changed to “mayor” in the Charter. Alfredo V. Jacinto was chosen to be mayor by the president.
On April 10, 1942, the Japanese came to Cebu and took it over. Bombs hit more than half of the city. Cebu’s USAFFE (United States Armed Forces in the Far East), Constabulary forces, and some ROTC units and trainees put on a short, unsuccessful offensive. General Wainwright, who was in charge of all American forces in the Philippines, told a few of them to give up to the Japanese. Many people ran away to the mountains, where they later formed guerrilla bands that caused trouble for the Japanese during their occupation and made it easier for the American forces to get into the province. During the war, people who were thought to be working with the enemy were tortured and killed everywhere in the country.
The group led by Harry Fenton, who was in charge of northern Cebu, was known for killing suspected collaborators quickly. James Cushing was in charge of those in central and southern Cebu. The guerrillas killed Fenton on September 1, 1943, because he had hurt both his fellow soldiers and civilians in many ways. James Cushing took charge of Cebu’s resistance movement against the Japanese, which was one of the best in the country. By the time MacArthur went back to the Philippines in October 1944, Cushing had about 25,000 armed and trained men.
During the war, Juan Zamora was in charge of running the city of Cebu. When the Americans came back to Cebu in March 1945, Leandro A. Tojong was put in charge of the city as its military mayor. After the Philippines were “liberated,” elections were held on April 23, 1946, and Manuel Roxas was chosen as the new president. In 1946, he made Vicente S. del Rosario the first mayor of Cebu since the start of the Third Republic. In 1955, the Charter of the City of Cebu was changed to let people vote for the mayor. Sergio Osmea Jr. was elected mayor by a large majority.
In 1969, Osmea ran against Ferdinand Marcos, who was running for a second term as president with the Nacionalista Party. Before martial law was declared, Osmea openly criticized Marcos’s corrupt government, which made him a fierce political rival of Marcos. Marcos won the election, but Osmea and the Liberals said that Marcos stole the election. In 1971, two grenades went off at a Liberal Party rally in Manila’s Plaza Miranda and hurt Osmea. When Marcos put martial law in place in 1972, Osmea ran away to the U.S. The Philippine government found out that he was a key part of a plan to kill Marcos. Osmea stayed in the U.S. until he died in 1984 from problems with his lungs.
Several members of the Osmea clan were sent to prison for their political beliefs, and others were sent to live in the United States as refugees. Sergio R. Osmea III, who was the son of Sergio Osmea Jr., was arrested and put in Fort Bonifacio until he and Eugenio Lopez Jr. dug a tunnel to get out in 1977. He went to live with family in the United States, where he led the Movement for a Free Philippines and the Justice for Aquino, Justice for All groups. After the EDSA Revolt, Osmea III went back to the Philippines. In 1995, he won a seat in the Senate.
Emilio Mario Osmea was locked up in Fort Bonifacio for nine months and had to stay in his home for four years. After Benigno Aquino was killed, Emilio Osmea ran for governor of the island of Cebu and won. After martial law was declared, John Henry Osmea, who had been in Plaza Miranda in 1971 as a senatorial candidate, flew to the United States, even though he had been elected senator the year before. John Osmea went back to the Philippines after Aquino was killed and helped the campaign against Marcos.
Because Cebu is far from Manila, it was a safe place for leaders of the opposition to plan a revolt. During the EDSA Revolt, Corazon Aquino stayed in Cebu for four days. Students like Jorge L. Cabardo, who helped Sergio Osmea III get out of Fort Bonifacio, led protests against Marcos’s government. Cabardo had been a student activist at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman before coming to Cebu to study at the Cebu Institute of Technology. Even after martial law was lifted, Father Rudy Romano led protests against Marcos, and most of them turned violent. People in power thought Father Romano’s protests were more dangerous because they weren’t led by political groups but by farmers and regular people who were upset about something. Father Romano went missing on July 11, 1985, after he was picked up by state police. In 2012, a marker was put up in Plaza Independencia in Cebu City to remember all the Cebuanos who died fighting against Ferdinand Marcos’s government.
Decades after the EDSA Revolt, the Osmeas and the Garcias, clans that have given the Philippines two presidents, still have the most power in Cebu’s politics. Gwendolyn Garcia and Tomas Osmea, who is the son of Sergio Osmea Jr., are the most well-known descendants on both sides. Garcia was the governor of Cebu from 2004 to 2012, and Osmea was the mayor of Cebu City from 1988 to 1995 and again from 2001 to 2010. Both were critical of the way the other ran their government. One time was when they fought in public over a failed land swap deal between the city and the province.
Garcia was the first woman to be governor of Cebu. During her time in office, she faced a corruption case over a questionable land purchase and was reelected in 2010. President Benigno Aquino III gave her a six-month suspension two years into her second term for “grave abuse of authority.” After being taken out of office, Garcia won a seat in Congress in 2013. Tomas Osmea lost the election for mayor to Michael R. Rama, who was already in office.
Cebuano Economy
Cebu has been a distribution center for the Central Visayas for a long time, even before the colonial era. Because of this, its economy is still based on non-agricultural sectors. Because Cebu doesn’t have a lot of arable land, they put a lot of focus on agriculture. This has helped the economy stay strong, especially in the last two hundred years.
The many businesses in Cebu, Mandaue, and Lapulapu take advantage of the good harbor, which is protected by Mactan Island to the east and south and by the Cebu mainland to the north and west. The port of Cebu is now an international port. It is home to 22 shipping companies, including some of the best interisland shipping companies in the country, like Aboitiz Shipping Corp, William Lines, Sulpicio Lines, George & Peter Lines, and Sweet Lines. There are more domestic ships that stop at Cebu Port than at Manila Port.
Mactan International Airport on Mactan Island is the other major way to get into the province. It is connected to Cebu City by the 864-meter-long Mandaue-Mactan Bridge. The airport, which is the center of air travel in the south, connects Cebu to the rest of the country as well as places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Guam, and Tokyo.
Cebu’s main economic activities are based on the fact that it is a transportation and communication hub. Cebu City is mostly a center of trade and commerce because these are the types of businesses that make up about 90% of the businesses there. But Cebu is also a center for making things and doing business. The Mactan Export Processing Zone, which was set up in 1980, is there. Metro Cebu is home to companies like Aboitiz Jebsen Co., AboitizLand, Ayala Land Inc., Cebu Holdings Inc., International Pharmaceuticals, Norkis Industries, and the Cebu plants of companies like San Miguel Brewery. Other businesses make liquor and drinks, paper products, ceramics, chemicals, metal products, rubber and plastic products, and paper products. It is also a place where a lot of crafts and gifts made of rattan, shell, wood, bamboo, stone, and other things are made for export.
Danao is a city not too close to Cebu-Mactan, but it does have a cement factory and a paper bag factory. Atlas Mining, which makes more copper than any other company in the country, is in Toledo City. In addition to copper, Cebu has a lot of coal, cement, and possibly some oil that hasn’t been used yet. Gold, silver, molybdenum, limestone, dolomite, feldspar, and rock phosphate can be found in small amounts. Many big businesses and banks from Manila and other countries have moved to Cebu. There is a branch of the Central Bank there, as well as banks like the Rural Banking Association of the Philippines, Bank of the Philippine Islands, Banco de Oro, Asia United Bank, Metrobank, and Philippines Veterans Bank. In 2010, the province had 445 banks with a total of about 218.554 billion pesos in deposits, which was the most of any province in the country.
Cebu’s per capita gross domestic product grew by 372.2 billion pesos in 2011, which is 3.8% of the country’s GDP. This is another sign that the city is getting better. There are jobs in factories that make starch, soy sauce, clothes, shoes, slippers, paper, tiles, bricks, and glass. Some foundry shops, tanneries, fertilizer, ice, bottling, truck and car assembly plants also hire people. Cebu doesn’t have a serious labor problem like other provinces do.
Not every business in Cebu is focused on making things. Mandaue City is where traditional Cebuano crafts are made, such as mats, brooms, rattan furniture, shell crafts, and ceramics that are both sold abroad and used at home. Weaving is important in Argao and the southern parts. Mactan is known as the place where handmade guitars, ukuleles, bandurrias, and violins are made. These instruments are sold in the Philippines and also sent to Japan, Australia, and Germany.
In the northwest of Cebu, the island’s large fishing industry sells sardines, herring, salmon, mackerel, and anchovies. Fish and corn are important parts of the Cebuano diet, even though the corn grown in the province isn’t enough to feed everyone. Sugar, tobacco, and coconut fiber are also grown on the island. Bananas from Toledo, pomelos and grapes from Carcar, and mangoes from Guadalupe in Cebu City are some of the other things that are exported. Native delicacies include dried mangoes, turrones, and Rosquillos biscuits.
Cebu is the educational capital of the south. Students from Mindanao and the Visayas come to study at its private and state-run schools, such as the University of San Carlos, University of San Jose-Recoletos, University of the Visayas, and University of the Philippines Cebu. There are about 68 public schools and 65 private schools in Cebu City. Nine of these schools are universities.
Tourism is also a source of income. Cebu City is the oldest Catholic city in the Orient. It is both modern and old, with luxury hotels and department stores next to horse-drawn carriages called tartanillas. Magellan’s Cross, the Santo Nio Basilica, Fort San Pedro, the Metropolitan Cathedral, the Legaspi Monument on Plaza Independencia, and the Moro watchtowers at Boljoon and other places are all Spanish colonial landmarks in Cebu. In Mactan, Argao, and Danao, tourists can also find modern things to do, like golf courses and country clubs, restaurants and discos, and many beach resorts.
In 2013, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake hit the Central Visayas. It caused damage to churches in Cebu, some of which were built in the 1600s. The quake broke the bell tower of the Basilica Minore del Santo Nio and cracked the bell tower and facade of the Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral, which was built in the 1800s. Since then, both private groups and government agencies have promised to fix up these churches. Businesses, such as the Gaisano Country Mall in Banilad and the Cebu Doctors’ University, were also hurt by the earthquake.
The Central Visayas, with Cebu as its main city, is one of the most economically healthy parts of the country. In 2011, Central Visayas sent out 2.3 billion US dollars worth of goods. Abaca pulp, copper concentrate, dried mangoes, carrageenan (an extract from seaweed), seaweed flour, activated carbon, drilling machine accessories, rattan and wood furniture, coconut shells, and coco fatty acid distillate are the top exports from the area.
In the 2000s, the economy has grown even more because of investments in digital technology and real estate. Business process outsourcing (BPO), real estate, tourism, and the service industry are the most important ones in Cebu. About 95,000 people work in information technology centers, most of which are in Lahug. In 2011, the Board of Investments (BOI) confirmed that 14 companies wanted to start projects that would cost a total of 12,1 billion pesos. In 2012, 7,000 condos were built by the building industry. In the same year, exports from the manufacturing sector brought in $3.6 billion. 92.2% of the Central Visayas economy is made up of the manufacturing and service sectors.