The Beginnings

Together with a small group of friends from more than 50 years ago, we recently had a reunion for no particular reason except to rekindle old friendships and reminisce about our youthful past when all were just exploding out of our adolescent years.

Now, hobbled by advanced age and the usual aches and pains of geriatrics but still eager to forge ahead, I marveled at how life had passed so quickly with its joys and pains and can only wonder what the future still has in store for us. Our conversation turned serious as Nonoy Yulo regaled us with his ambitious plans as president to restore the old glory of the Chamber of Commerce of the Philippine Islands (CCPI) and its rightful place in the annals of Philippine business history. I raised my hand and enthusiastically took up Nonoy’s offer to visit the past.

I am not sure how many of you have heard of CCPI, but what I learned was certainly something new to me and was well worth the ride in Nonoy’s latest Miata Mazda sports car, top down no less — the only way to go for a pair of aging baby boomers — ingesting, in the heat of the midday summer sun, all the noise, badgering of street vendors (Nonoy wisely counseled me to keep my watch and cellphone safely tucked away in the glove compartment), smoke pollution, and dust that a traffic-ridden Quirino Avenue and Roxas Boulevard have to offer from Alabang down to Intramuros where CCPI has its own building on Magallanes Drive along the banks of the Pasig River amid other Spanish colonial era structures. Thus began my ride back to the past.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy famously counseled that… ”the farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” In this light, as a history buff, I found it extremely interesting to discover the history of CCPI, which began on 9 April 1886, even before the nation’s birth.

Business lobby groups called “camaras’’ or “chambers” were instituted in all Spanish colonies through a Royal Decree issued by the boy King Alfonso XIII through his mother, Queen Regent Maria Christina.

The chamber for our country, “Camara de Comercio de Manila,” held its first general assembly on 24 May 1887, which was the same month and almost the same day the Noli Me Tangere was published in Madrid and Barcelona on 29 May 1887, which sparked stirrings in the hearts of the Filipinos with the desire to be free of Spain.

The initial members were prominent businesses still very much operating today, like Ynchausti y Compania, now Elizalde & Co., and La Fabrica de Cerveza de San Miguel, now SMC, which were likely owned by Insulares, a shade lower in social standing and business privileges, like taxes, in the eyes of the colonial powers compared to the Peninsulares who were born on the Spanish peninsula.

Taxes, the bane of businessmen, were mandatorily imposed by Spain on the colony, similar to the despised taxes imposed by Britain on its American colony in 1776, almost a hundred years before. Of course, we know that, eventually, the taxes triggered the American Revolution, which succeeded and signaled the birth of the United States of America.

In our case, we failed because of regional squabbling and the duplicity of our soon-to-be colonial masters, the USA. Pure coincidence? Nope. Regardless of where and when, it only takes a handful of hardy, brave souls composed of business people dismayed with their business prospects and angered by a distant overlord’s imposed inutile additional costs, primarily fueled by commercial self-interests, no doubt, to ignite a revolution.

The difference? You have to wisely set aside your differences temporarily and successfully coalesce to be victorious. Just squabble later after you gain victory, i.e., the current schism in American society between the liberal Biden-ers and the conservative Trump-ers, and of course, our very own, the now open skirmishes between BBM-ers and RRD-ers.

Taxes, the bane of businessmen, were mandatorily imposed by Spain on the colony, similar to the despised taxes imposed by Britain on its American colony in 1776, almost a hundred years before.

The next chapter in the camara’s history was the Benevolent Big Brother American epoch, which imposed on the Little Brown Brother Pinoys the American ways of managing businesses to efficiently service the commercial interests of the Benevolent Big Brother.

The name and the by-laws were aptly changed to the anglicized Chamber of Commerce of the Philippine Islands during the second assembly meeting in 1903, which promptly installed then-Governor General William Howard Taft as its Honorary President.

To enhance the chamber’s ability to disseminate its commercial advocacies to the business community and to serve as its voice to communicate and lobby the colonial administration, since the internet and social media were still to be conjured a hundred years in the future, the chamber’s first magazine was published in 1905 and renamed simply “The Commerce,” adding the “Voice of Business” in 1927.