257. Her High School Yearbook: NIEVA PAZ ERAÑA , 1939 Miss Mindanao

HIGH SCHOOL TOPNOTCH BEAUTY. The young Nieves Eraña, as a high school graduate of Sta. Catalina College.

The future Miss Mindanao of 1939, Nieva Paz Eraña is seen in this photo taken from her Sta. Catalina High School yearbook, from where she graduated with the highest honors (Class Valedictorian) in 1933.

A year later, she enrolled at the Centro Escolar de Señoritas where she earned a reputation as a "brain and beauty" colegiala. No wonder then that in 1935, at the annual Centro Escolar Foundation Day, she was elected  as Queen of the Students’ Night held from Jan. 18-21, 1935.

Four years later, the fresh graduate was chosen as Miss Mindanano in the court of Miss Philippines 1939, Iluminada Tuason. She, however, relinquished her title and was replaced by Adela Planas. 

249. Queen of the 1939 Bacolod Carnival, VIRGILIA C. ARANETA

BACOLOD'S BELLE OF THE BALL. Miss Virgilia C. Araneta.

Virgilia C. Araneta of Bacolod City reigned as Queen of the 1939 Bacolod Carnival which was held from April 8-25, 1939.

The Aranetas of Negros are a prominent family of revolutionary patriots, government leaders, agriculturists and business maven.

248. Carnival Beauties: LULU SUZARA, Candidate, 1939 Miss Philippines

LUCK'S ON LULU. Lulu Suzara, one of the official candidates of the Miss Philippines search of the 1939 Philippine Exposition.

Miss Lulu Suzara, a favorite for the Miss Philippines title, was one of the leading candidates of that year's quest for the country's fairest. At the 1939 Floral Parade of the Philippine Exposition, she was honored to ride the float sponsored and designed by a certain Miss Uy Yet, which garnered the Most Artistic Award, an ominous start for the chinita beauty.

At the finals, however, it was the lovely Iluminada Tuason who was crowned Miss Philippines--the last royalty of the country's longest-running fair.

247. Queen of the 1939 Iloilo Carnival: EVELINA GARGANERA

ILONGGA CHARMER. Evelina Garganera of Jaro, rules as the 1939 Iloilo Carnival Queen.

Miss Evelina Garganera of Jaro, Iloilo, the queen-elect of the long-running Iloilo Provincial Exposition and Fair, 1939 edition. The annual carnival was held from 1-19 April, 1939. Evelina was also the year's Queen of the Jaro Carnival.

246. 1939 CHILDREN'S FANCY DRESS BALL WINNERS

HERE COMES THE LITTLE BRIDE & GROOM. Winners of the 1939 Children's Fancy Dress Contest.

Siblings Queenie Melvin Arcache (1935-1999) and Maurice Arcache romped off with one of the top prizes at the Children's Fancy Dress competition by coming in as little Bride and Groom. A sister, Olivia, also competed as a French princess, complete with a powdered hair wig.

The Children's Fancy Dress Ball was one of the highlights of the yearly Manila Carnival, an even that gave mothers the chance to show off their sewing skills and creative flair in fashioning the most fantastic costumes for their children.

They are the children of Joseph and Mary Arcache of Pasay and later, of Sta. Ana, Manila. (Another daughter of theirs, Pearlie Arcache, became a top ramp model of the country back in the 60s).

Maurice Arcache grew up to be the country's premier society columnist (currently with Philippine Daily Inquirer) and TV host.

242. Carnival Beauties: LYDIA TINZON, Candidate, Miss Philippines 1939

LOVELY LYDIA. Miss Lydia Tinzon (or Tingson) of Far 
Eastern University, was sponsored by Graphic Magazine. 

The 1939 Philippine Exposition was to be our last national fair, and, as a gesture of final support, the esteemed Graphic's Magazine fielded the accomplished Lydia Tinzon as its official candidate to the 1939 search for Miss Philippines.

Miss Tinzon, from Canlubang, Laguna was a co-ed of Far Eastern University at the time of the contest, and was one of the beauteous muses of the university ROTC. The last Miss Philippines title, however, went to Iluminada Tuason.

233. The Other 1939 Miss Mindanao: NIEVA ERAÑA y BASA

THE SECOND MISS MINDANAO 1939. Nieva Erana, a popular Escolarina student, is credited in extant Carnival photos as the other Miss Mindanao, together with Adela Planas.


Adela Planas was in the court of Iluminada Tuason, Miss Philippines of 1939, as Miss Mindanao; in fact, Adela was with the rest of the winners during Iluminada’s coronation night.

But we have visual documentation of another Miss Mindanao, who was accorded that honor but who politely declined it.

She is no other than Nieva Paz Eraña, who, four years before had previously reigned as Queen of the Students’ Night during the festivities at Centro Escolar de Señoritas from Jan. 18-21, 1935.

Shortly after the Carnival, she married Major Jaime Velasquez of the Philippine Armed Forces. He was also Quezon's aide-de-camp during the war; later he worked for the Ayalas in developing Makati--so now a a park and a street is named after him in Salcedo Village). Their 1938 marriage was short-lived. Nieva contracted malaria during her pregnancy, but sadly the passed away during childbirth in 1940. The baby boy she managed to deliver tragically passed away too, after 3 days.  Nieva is interred at the North Cemetery.

87. 1939, MISS LUZON, MISS VISAYAS, MISS MINDANAO

ESTRELLA SANTOS FABON, Miss Luzon 1939

Estrella Fabon was also a candidate to the 1938 Perlas ng Silangan Contest. A well-known society figure in her time, she died young and single at the height of the American liberation of Manila.

*****

ADELA PLANAS, 1939 Miss Visayas

Daughter of Iluminado Planas and Concepion Lim. She is the younger sister of Carmen Planas, the 1st woman councilor of Manila while another sister is Atty. Charito Planas, director of Nayong Pilipino-Clark and a champion of women's causes. Adela married a Paterno and became a doctor and a healer.

*****

(NOTE: Nieva Erana is also credited as 1939 Miss Mindanao 1939 in some extant pictures, but was never featured in the royal court)

*****

HERMINIA CAJULIS, Miss Mindanao 1939

Herminia "Meni" Cajulis was born on Feb. 1919 in Binakayan, Cavite to Mr. and Mrs. Felix Cajulis. She was also a contestant of the 1939 Bb. Perlas ng Silangan. After the contest, she went back to Cavite, settled in Kawit and ran a beauty-dress shop till the 1980s. She remained single all throughout her life.

*****

86. 1939, Miss Philippines of the Philippine Exposition, ILUMINADA MOJICA TUASON

1939 MISS PHILIPPINES. Iluminada Somera Tuason, the last of the long list of royals to reign in the annual carnivals that began in 1908. In the last 3 editions, it was renamed as the Philippine Exposition. Lumen married an escort, Ramon Fernandez, who went on to become a Supreme Court justice.

The last titled beauty from the fabled Carnivals of Manila was Iluminada Mojica Tuason. She was the only daughter of Rogelia Mojica of Indang, Cavite with a certain Tuason of Manila, who died while Lumen was still very young. Her mother remarried Jose Rosales of Butuan, where they ran a piano business. Lumen would have seven half-siblings from her mother’s second marriage: Loida, Perla, Angel, Josefa, Angelina, Rogelio and Fe.

LUMINOUS LUMEN. At the time of her coronation. But she was to have a short life, dying in childbirth in the late 1940s.

Despite it being the last Carnival, Iluminada’s reign as 1939 Miss Philippines was marked with the usual splendor and extravaganza. Her court included Estrella Fabon (Miss Luzon), Adela Planas (Miss Visayas) and Herminia Cajulis (Miss Mindanao). Fabon and Cajulis had been fellow contestants the year before in the search for Bb. Perlas ng Silangan, another national beauty search.

THE 1939 MISS PHILIPPINES COURT OF BEAUTY. With Lumen as Miss Philippines are Estrella Fabon (Miss Luzon), Adela Planas (Miss Visayas) and Herminia Cajulis (Miss Mindanao).

Two years after her reign, Lumen met Ramon Calleja Fernandez of Albay, who had been a top law student at the University of the Philippines and a classmate of future Philippine president, Ferdinand E. Marcos. In his U.P. days as an ROTC officer, Fernandez had been assigned to provide escort duties to Lumen and her court. But Fernandez’s had no real interest in the Carnival; after all, he had supported the candidate from the University of the Philippines.

AND THEN THERE WAS LUMEN. The light of the 1939 Carnival, Lumen married a legal luminary in the person of Ramon Fernandez, a classmate of Ferdinand Marcos at the U.P.

After graduating Valedictorian from law school, Fernandez took the bar and placed second to Marcos. He quickly proved his legal brilliance by winning an important case for a client who turned out to be Lumen’s aunt. This led to the fortuitous meeting that led to their romance and culminated in a wedding in Manila in 1941, just before the outbreak of World War II. The family relocated to the home province of Ramon Fernandez—in Albay—where they lived and waited it out through the Liberation. They had three children: Linda, Ramon Jr., and Pilar. A fourth child was conceived in 1949 but the young Lumen died tragically died in childbirth.

Atty. Fernandez took a second wife in the person of Lydia Aguilar Seva. He was appointed by Pres. Marcos as a Supreme Court Justice in 1982. He died in 1997.

85. 1939 PHILIPPINE EXPOSITION (Manila Carnival)

LIGHTS OUT. The last Carnival ended ominously with the start of the war in Europe. In just 3 years, the war would reach Manila, devastating the country and erasing every trace of our joyous Carnival days.

Interest in the Carnival began to wane in its last two outings, where attendance significantly dropped. After 21 years, the event was getting harder to sustain—and so was the interest of people who, it seemed, have seen it all. Sourcing funds was the biggest problem as corporate and private sponsors started to drop out and provincial participation wavered. There were other distractions for Filipinos like the threat of an impending War that was already raging in Europe. The mood, while upbeat, was also cautious—indeed, pistaym was about to end.

Three years of the Commonwealth had also started to change Filipinos’ mindset as they dreamt of the prospect of their own independence. In their most likely view, two decades of “celebrating Philippine-U.S. goodwill” was enough. Still to some others, the Carnival had just naturally ran its course. And so, in 1939, government decided to suspend its funding of the Manila Carnival to the dismay of the organizers.

Defending the cause of the 1939 Carnival, A.V.P. Hartendorp, an American editor wrote:

“ Jugglers and magicians, tight rope walkers, high divers and bareback riders, tumblers and contortionists, giants, dwarfs and fat ladies, clowns and pantaloons, chorus girls and hula-hula dancers, gypsies, fortune tellers and phrenologists, trained horses, 2 –headed calves, puppet shows, merry go rounds, ferris wheels and skating rinks, sparkling, beautiful girls behind black dominoes, dancing, romance, lights, music, noise, popcorn and peanuts—who is the man unburied, who is so dead that he can fail to respond to such things if only a year? And then there are the children. Ask the children whether they want the Carnival..”.

Not even this impassioned plea could make the government change its decision withdraw its funding for this event to be shifted to other nation-building priorities. The Carnival tradition which began in 1908, thus came to its glorious conclusion when the lights of the Manila Carnival—once touted as the greatest event in the Orient—blinked out for one last time.