History

Mandaue City is one of only two highly urbanized cities (HUCs) in the central Visayas region. The city has continued to experience sustained growth and development beginning in the 1960s when the city adopted policies to industrialize. Former Mayor Demetrio Cortes launched a massive campaign to lure business entrepreneurs to invest in Mandaue during this period. Within ten years, the town which relied heavily on agriculture developed into a major job opportunity basin and residential area and a minor port of trade and navigation. The greatest number of workers were classified as craftsmen, production process workers and laborers.

As of 2001, the city has 391 export and import private manufacturing firms and has more than 8,000 major business establishments engaged in local and domestic trade, wholesale and retail merchandising and services. Today Mandaue is Cebu’s new economic driver with more than 10,000 business establishments. About 40 percent of Cebu’s export companies are found in Mandaue. The city also contributed a lot to furniture production in the country with 75 percent of the total export coming from Mandaue.

The city has a long history of commerce. It was once a busy port where merchants traded and conducted business. During the time of Magellan, Mandaue was already active with commerce. The people traded their goods with villages. Foreign traders from came to sell their products among the villagers. One Spanish ruler also mentioned in his communication to Spain that Mandawe then was famous for her artistic carpentry and skilled carpenters. As early as 1575, the Philippine pieces of furniture that were mostly hand carved in hardwood by Mandauehanons found their way into the households of prominent citizens in Spain. The Spaniards chose Saint Joseph as the patron saint of this town because they noted that the natives were very hard working.

In the 1840’s, Mandaue was engaged in sugar production in response to an increasing demand for the commodity in foreign markets. The locality was favorable affected by the role of Cebu as an open port in the inter island trade as well as a distribution center for a rapidly developing area of commercial sugar production. Sugar of varied quality was shipped to Manila for export. By the middle of the 19 th century, Cebu province was among the leading sugar producers in the Philippines. Sugar plantations were located during this time along the northern barangays of the city. Today only some remains of “intusan” can be found in barangay Canduman as an evidence of the past agricultural activity.

In 1863, Cebu was opened to foreign trade that moved the province to economic growth. Cebu and its immediate environs subsequently prospered as a trading port. The primary export products of the Cebu trade area were sugar and hemp. Prepared by the British and American commercial firms in Cebu, these products were carried by foreign vessels to ports outside the Philippines. Thus Cebu became “an emporium for Visayan products” and the third most important port in the archipelago.

Mandaue’s early lucrative industries are salt making and fishponds, which provided income and employment to the people. It has also developed its ceramics industries and bamboo crafts. In the late 1800’s and early 1900”s, rice and sugar were extensively raised.

The industrialization of Mandaue progressed during the time when it became a chartered city in August 30, 1969 upon the approval of the Republic Act No. 5519. Today, as home to nearly 10,000 business establishments, Mandaue was tagged by the survey conducted by the Asian Institute of Management and the Department of Trade and Industry as the “little rich city”, notwithstanding its limited land area .
Mandaue Municipal Hall Inauguration
Sept. 11-12, 1937
A brief history of Mandaue
Bantayan sa Hari or Buluarte,
Built around the early 1800’s, the watch tower served to protect the locality from marauders from the seas.
Mandaue City’s Plaza, a prize winner in connection with a contest under the auspices of the nation’s beautification program, has four segmentary part .

Long before the Spaniards came to this archipelago, people already inhabited Mandaue. As some sources say, Mandaue was a fertile ground where thick vine variety known as “mantawi” grew abundantly. The neighboring places associated the place with this vine where Mandaue got its name. The Mactan Channel in the south and southeast and Cebu in the southwest bounded it. The head was a “datu” or “apo”. Datu Lambuzzan was the first known datu of Mandaue. Most of the natives of Mandaue as well as other villages in island Cebu wore tattoos in their bodies.

Mandaue was already a trading center before the coming of the white foreigners and already dubbed as the “merchant’s paradise” of the region.

The Spanish armada of Magellan sighted Mandaue in 7 th of April, at noon, in 1521. More than 40 years later, the galleons of Miguel Lopez de Legaspi, the San Pablo and two others ships, docked in Tipolo, a barangay in Mandaue for repair and restoration. Mandaue was constituted into a pueblo during the Spanish colonization and was put under the charge of the Jesuits. The incursions of the Moro pirates in the town led to the construction of the Bantayan sa Hari or the king’s watchtower in barrio Looc. During the revolution against Spain, the Katipuneros under Gen. Leoncio Eje liberated the town on December 8, 1898 and Mandawe was organized under the revolutionary government of Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo.

When the Americans came and made the Philippines their first colony, the Filipino-American War erupted. Gen. Eje rallied his ranks against the new enemies here in Mandaue. The Americans executed Presidente Benito Ceniza when he was suspected of being an insurgent supporter. They also burned the town in 1901. The Americans brought widespread education to the islands after the Filipino-American War. In February 14, 1920, Consolacion, along with 19 of the 42 original barrios of Mandaue became a regular town. The Mandaue Presidencia was inaugurated in 1935 during the term of Gov. Sotero Cabahug, a native Mandauehanon.

On the Second World War, the Filipinos fought along side the Americans against the Japanese. On this war, Mayor Alejandro S. Fortuna died in the hands of the Japanese and became a martyr-mayor.