Descendant of Aroroy, Masbate founder to open new museum
A descendant of the Aroroy town founder in Masbate province is set to open a museum this month as the country celebrates National Museums and Galleries Month.
Alex Alonzo, a descendant of Aroroy founder Gregorio Cordero, said that he will open the private museum Museo de Casa San Rafael at the Poblacion village.
Alonzo is aiming to be a member of the Bicol Association of Museums, an organization composed of museum curators and staff throughout the Bicol Region.
Read the Museum Profile: Museo de Casa San Rafael
“I was inspired to make a museum because the founder of Aroroy is our great-great-great-great-grand-father,” Alonzo told Visit Bicol News. “That makes us the sixth generation.”
He said that when Aroroy celebrates the town fiesta, pageant competitions are usually given more importance than heritage.
The patron saint of Aroroy town is St. Raphael the Archangel and the Alonzos are the camareros or caretakers of the oldest existing image, which was brought to the town from Spain in the early 1900s.
This is also why Alonzo named the museum Museo de Casa San Rafael.
“I saw the potential of Aroroy because it is rich in history,” Alonzo said. “We have here the Kalanay burial jars.”
He is pertaining to the burial jars excavated in the Kalanay Cave—also in Aroroy—in the 1950s that feature intricate carved designs. These jars are believed to date as far back as 500 B.C.E.
Aside from Kalanay burial jars, Tinigban burial jars—secondary burial jars—were also found in Aroroy. Secondary burial jars are jars in which the remains of the dead are kept after they have been kept in the bigger primary burial jars for a while.
Alonzo’s Museo de Casa San Rafael feature some of these burial jars.
Since Aroroy is a mining town, some of the museum’s displays will also give insights to the history of looking for gold in Masbate.
They also have celadon plates, Chinese wares that are also famously called green wares. Alonzo told Visit Bicol News that an archeologist told him that there is high probability that the wares are from Vietnam.
Alonzo estimates that his collection of historical artifacts totals around 300.
Aside from these artifacts, his museum will also feature a gallery on Aroroy’s sons and daughters, who have made marks on their respective fields.
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