Book: Builders Of Bridges, The Rudy Cuenca Story

Builder of Bridges, The Rudy Cuenca Story

An interesting book that I’ll buy right about now.

With Marcos-era construction and with Marcos rule bits itself, I’ll buy this book. I am fascinated with events and people surrounding the Martial Law and it’s interesting how contracting and building went back then. Titled “Builder of Bridges, the Rudy Cuenca Story”,  is the story about the rise and fall from grace of Cuenca’s Construction and Development Corporation of the Philippines (CDCP). It also reveals insider’s account of the tensions and corruption inside Marcos circle. I gotta have this!

It is by Anvil Publishing and authored by By Jose Dalisay Jr. and Antonette Reyes.

Here’s a note from the author Butch Dalisay that makes me wanna own this locally authored and published book…

As my older readers will remember, Rudy Cuenca was the Marcos-era contractor responsible for some of the biggest construction projects of that time. As the back of the book notes, “Though he never finished college, he built the San Juanico Bridge and the North and South Expressways, undertook the massive Manila Bay reclamation project, initiated the export of Filipino labor to the Middle East, and ran the Sheraton, the Pines Hotel, and the Taal Vista Lodge, among many other enterprises. He built the Construction Development Corporation of the Philippines (CDCP) into the country’s largest construction conglomerate of its time. And yet many Filipinos remember him today only as a ‘Marcos crony,’ a tag he will not deny.

“At his heart, however, Rodolfo “Rudy” Cuenca was a builder of bridges—and a witness to some of the most interesting and significant events of 20th-century Philippines. ‘This book was conceived,’ he says, ‘in the hope that a new generation of Filipinos would look back to my life and times and realize — without condoning whatever wrongs and evils may have happened then — that some lasting good emerged out of that period that we can still enjoy and be proud of.’”

This project was particularly interesting for me as a writer, because my initial impulse when I was approached to do it was to say no. I was a martial-law prisoner and had not forgotten the horrifying excesses of that period, and I told Rudy so.

On the other hand, here was an opportunity for a Marcos insider to share his privileged insights into the day-today workings of that regime, the full history of which has yet to be written by far more qualified authors than me. So I let Rudy Cuenca speak for himself — it’s a truly remarkable life, quite apart from Marcos — for interpellation by the scholars and critics. via

I ordered it online thru Anvil site. Awaiting their reply. It turns out, order is manually sent. “Our Order processing department will reply within 24 hours with a quotation indicating the prices of the books you ordered and the freight and handling charges.” Payment is via money order or CC.  By the way, read this piece by Amando Doronilla with excerpts from the “Builder of Bridges” book.