Father Peláez and his search for justice

A few weeks ago, I asked Dr. Marco A. Joven-Romero, a Spanish instructor at the University of Santo Tomas, how many streets in Metro Manila carried the name “Peláez.” He is the right person to ask because he is finishing a doctoral dissertation on the history of the toponymy of the streets of Manila. He pointed out three completely irrelevant and hidden streets in Manila, Parañaque and Quezon City. Apart from that, there is a small primary school bearing his name. Nothing else.

The answer wherever I have asked my students several times at the university if they heard something about this person: nothing. To my knowledge, only three researchers have written consistently about this important figure — a Filipino (Fr. Albert Flores), an American (Fr. John Schumacher) and a Spaniard (Roberto Blanco Andrés). Therefore, it seems that apart from the historians of the Church in the Philippines, nobody has paid too much attention to Fr. Pedro Peláez.