Marikina is not the shoe capital of the Philippines for nothing. For the greater part of the 20th century, Marikina was the biggest manufacturer of quality shoes. There was a time, between 1978 and 1982, when Marikina’s women’s shoes and handbags made of snakeskin were the rave on Fifth Avenue, New York City. As early as 1935, Marikina already had 139 shops producing 260,078 pairs of ladies shoes and 86,692 pairs of men shoes worth P762,896.00. And as may as 2,450 inhabitants were directly engaged in the industry either as shoemakers or uppermakers. By 1983, Marikina produced 70 percent of the shoe production of the Philippines which was estimated at 30 million pairs. (Source:The Role of the Municipal Government in the Planning and Development of Local Industries: The Case of the Marikina Shoe Industry, by Mayor Osmundo de Guzman, De La Salle University, 1983). Even in those days, shoemaking thrived in such distant places as Cebu, Pangasinan, Iloilo and Ilocos Norte. But Marikina was recognized for its superior craftsmanship, and its proximity to Manila gave it a decided advantage. Florinio de la Paz, who traveled to Asian countries with a group of local manufacturers in 1968, noted that Marikina Shoes was unmatched in design in the region and second only to Japan in quality.Marikina’s shoe industry started one afternoon in 1887, at the residence of Don Laureano Guevara, known to this day as Kapitan Moy. Slippers and wooden clogs were already being made at a basement shop. But one day, Tiburcio Eustaquio, assisted by Ambrocio Sta. Ines and Gervacio Carlos, was working on the town’s first pair of shoes – a men’s shoes – while their proprietor, Kapitan Moy, watched expectantly.

       Kapitan Moy, highborn and a community leader, had bought   himself a pair of imported shoes, during one of his trips to   Manila. He used this pair of shoes as an example for his   workers to examine and duplicate; they dissected its various   parts and, by trial and error, learned how to put them back   together. On this particular day, Kapitan Moy and his shoemakers   had their onlookers. All the while, a group of young boys had   been craning their necks to watch the whole episode through   a grilled window. Kapitan Moy, bothered by their presence,   decided that they had had enough to tell their parents -- or   their children. One of the boys, Pablo de la Paz, would recount the episode to his children, claiming that it happened in 1888 when he was 14. Kapitan Moy saw to it that other Marikeños were taught the new skill at once, for he intended it to be a source of livelihood for a town that subsisted largely on fishing and farming. For this, he will be honored as the "Father of the Shoe Industry". Marikeños would build him and Tiburcio Eustaquio a statue that now stands in front of his house. His residence would become a public elementary school in 1912 and a venue of many social functions during the genteel prewar years. In 1968, the town council and the National Historical Commission declared it a national shrine. And in 1995, Mayor Bayani F. Fernando restored it to its former glory and declared it the city's "Sentrong Pangkultura".


     Marikina would become famous for its shoes and other leather products. They were much sought after in many a country churchyard, during town fiestas. Andres Bonifacio, a story goes, had a friend from Marikina make him a leather holster during his many visits to Marikina.

     Manila, however, was the prized market, and for a share of it, Marikeños had to deal with the Chinese merchants, who held fort in Gandara, Nueva and other parts of Chinatown. Marikeños, with their craftsmanship and little shops, had no choice but to enter into this partnership with the Chinese who had their stores and bundles of raw materials. It is a partnership that will endure for generations -- and a very unequal partnership it would be. Since they could dictate the price of finished shoes as well as of raw materials, it was not past the Chinese to take advantage of the Marikeños, and so there was much friction between them. One day in 1936, Marikeños lost their patience. Through "Oras Na" a worker's union organized by Mayor Wenceslao de la Paz, they struck to prevent the delivery of shoes to Chinese stores in Manila. They also prevented shoes from the neighboring town of San Mateo from being delivered to Chinese middlemen.

     Though the strikers had the sympathy of the local authorities, they could not outlast the moneyed Chinese merchants. Having made their statement for a better deal, the strikers struck tent and returned to work. It was not the last time the shoemakers would rise in protest against inequities. In the sixties, shoemakers, mostly from San Roque and Calumpang led by Rufino Rodriguez, left their “bonquillas” (work table) to demand higher pay from shoe manufacturers. And in 1994, a small group of manufacturers led by Barangay Captain Celso Mendoza marched to protest the high cost of raw materials. The protest fizzled out for lack of support from local authorities who had become friendly with the local Chinese chamber. In the meantime, the Chinese had relocated their shoe supply stores from Chinatown to Marikina. Operating side by side with shoe shops, the Chinese were able to preclude, by their superior financing, the possibility of Marikeños branching into shoe supply. By the sixties, the chamber had become so powerful that no aspiring politician dared fight with them, except Bayani Vergara, twice defeated candidate for congress who stood against them.

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