An excerpt from
Outside In, Inside Out: Seeing San Francisco’s Filipino Community

Filipino Poblacion, Town Plaza, and Kabayanan in America

By MC Canlas
As a passionate ethno-tourist, whenever I visit a barrio, town, or city I always rummage around for something familiar but different and unique to the place. During the 1980s, when I traveled and conducted seminar workshops for various groups in major regions in the Philippines—from as far as Ilocos Norte in the north and Basilan in Southern Mindanao—I spent my first hours in the town plaza, marketplace, or poblacion.

A poblacion, Spanish for population, is where the people are. We also refer to it as our kabayanan, the heart and nerve center of a town or municipality. What is common in Philippine towns and cities is the so-called plaza complex, the living landmark of Spanish colonialism. The town plaza community revolves around a central area, with an imposing church, friar’s convento, municipal hall or municipio, palengke or marketplaces, and mansions or bahay-bato of the local elite and other wealthy residents. The plaza is the center of inter-village activities such as trade and commerce, fiestas, electoral campaigns, religious activities, and cultural performances. It is where people come for basic health, social, and government services. At the same time, it is also a focal point for political demonstrations and mass mobilization.

Usually the plaza is the transportation hub, the terminal, transfer point, and connection to the neighboring towns and barrios. People from all walks of life congregate in the plaza. Many local folks and poblacion inhabitants can distinguish a stranger (dayo) or visitor (bisita) from the rest. Before the mega-malls and shopping centers evolved, the plaza was the center of gravity for the people, where they developed their own language and dialects, culture, and traditions.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, I had the opportunity to travel in Asia, Europe, and the United States. In all of these places I observed overseas Filipinos establishing their own centers of gravity: in central stations, parks, Catholic churches, community centers, and in certain nooks and corners. These new poblaciones were similar to the Manilatowns that existed in the United States from the 1920s to the 1960s.

Of all the poblaciones outside the Philippines, South of Market (SoMa) in San Francisco is perhaps the closest in layout and character to the plaza complex in the towns and cities of the Philippines. SoMa has been the home of Filipinos in San Francisco since the 1920s, and it functions as a town plaza, poblacion, and kabayanan for the Filipino community in the Bay Area.

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