"Arriba!"
In 1620, the Catholic order founded by St. Dominic established an educational institution in Spain’s far-off East Asia colony. The Orden de Predicadores (Order of Preachers) named its educational institution after St. John Lateran—the Colegio de San Juan de Letran.
This year, the Colegio de San Juan de Letran—Letran College for short—is 400 years old, only four years younger than its sister-Dominican institution, the University of Santo Tomas (UST). At the time of their establishment, Spain’s power was still great, though starting to wane under the combined challenge of the rising colonial powers Great Britain, the Netherlands and France. The Philippines was and remained Spain’s only major colony in the Eastern Hemisphere.
During its four-century history, San Juan de Letran College has been at the front and center of the political evolution of the Philippines from a docile colony to a territory experiencing the growing yearning for freedom to a member of the family of independent nations. From its vantage-point in Manila’s Walled City, Letran witnessed it all: the early revolts against Spanish rule, the steadily growing popular dissatisfaction with the powerful clergy, the growth of the independence movement, the Revolution against Spain and the subsequent Philippine-American War, the American colonial era, the establishment of the Commonwealth, the Japanese occupation, Liberation and, at long last, the re-winning of this nation’s independence in 1946. Through it all, Letran stood firm and silently involved.
Through its four centuries of history, Letran also witnessed the emergence of Manila from Maynilad to Spain’s La Mas Leal Ciudad de Manila, to the Pearl of the Orient Seas to today’s robust center of East Asian economic activity. From its central location in Manila’s business area, it observed the two hundred years of the Galleon Trade, which greatly influenced Philippine commerce and culture.
If only Letran’s walls could talk, what a tale they would tell. Sadly, many of those walls were destroyed by the heavy American bombardment of World War II’s closing days. Manila’s liberation from the Japanese forces left the Letran buildings pockmarked and heavily defaced.
There is no Philippine educational institution that can surpass San Juan de Letran College in terms of illustrious alumni. Aguinaldo, Quezon, and Osmeña once walked the hallways of Letran.
The remark is sometimes heard that of the great male college quartet in the first half of the 20th century—Ateneo, San Beda, De La Salle, and Letran—it is Letran that has made the least strides forward in terms of fame and fortune. If that is true—and the point is arguable—it must be due to the traditional conservatism of the Philippine Dominican Order and of Letran.
Yet, San Juan de Letran College was one of the first educational institutions to recognize the need for academe to gradually move out of Metro Manila. In the 1970s, it established a satellite campus in Calamba, and a few years ago it established a spanky-new facility in Bataan.
As San Juan de Letran College celebrates its quadricentennial anniversary, one cannot help but reflect on the irony and the folly of the claim of the imperialist fringe of the late-nineteenth-century US Congress that the Philippines needed to be civilized by America.
Faithful to its long association with Spain, the battlecry of Letranites, at NCAA games and elsewhere, is still in Spanish : Arriba Letran. To which, as a Letran alumnus, I add, y mas arriba.
Happy 400th birthday, San Juan de Letran College.