Manila Noir

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1. She mostly wears red. And sometimes black.

I like to think of Manila as a woman of mystery, the ultimate femme fatale. Sexy, complicated, and tainted by a dark and painful past, she’s not to be trusted. And why should she be? She’s been betrayed time and again, invaded, plundered, raped, and pillaged, colonized for nearly four hundred years by Spain and fifty years by the United States, brutally occupied from 1942 to 1945 by the Japanese army, bombed and pretty much decimated by Japanese and US forces during an epic, month-long battle in 1945. In spite, or because of this bloody history, Manileños (her wild and wayward children) have managed to adapt, survive, and even thrive. Their ability to bounce back — whether from the latest round of catastrophic flooding, the ashes of a twenty-year dictatorship, or a horrific world war — never ceases to amaze.

Manila is where I was born, a city of heat and shadow and secrets, perfect for this genre we call noir. Built on water and reclaimed land, Manila has evolved over the years into an intense, congested, teeming megalopolis, the vital core of an urban network of sixteen cities and one municipality nowadays collectively known as Metro Manila. Around twelve million people live there presently, maybe more. The numbers are increasing by the minute.

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