First colored image
of Intramuros

LAST Wednesday, a delegation of high-level government officials from Spain gathered in the National Museum to open an exhibit of wonderful artifacts showing the long cultural and historic ties between our two countries. From our side the Speaker of the House, the mayor of Manila, and Senator Edgardo Angara (author of a bill instituting annual observance of Philippine-Spanish Friendship Day) were present. The "usual suspects" were also around: diplomats, cultural workers, the curious, professional party crashers and two National Artists, Napoleon Abueva and Arturo Luz. Representing President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo were the executive secretary and one of her daughters-in-law.

It was a high-powered group that stood patiently in the Tambunting Hall during the customary speeches. That there were no chairs in the room made the speeches seem longer than they actually were.

I resisted the temptation to slip away and come back another day, because of my desire to see the famous 17th-century chest, or" baul," the lid of which was painted with what is probably the earliest colored image we have of Intramuros [Manila's Spanish-era "walled city" area]. I had only seen this baul in photographs until then, and it was a real treat to see the original and study the map closely, looking at details like Chinese sampans and depictions of different types of people. The chest is well preserved but, except for the painting on the lid, quite ordinary.

A wealthy antique collector asked me if the metal locks and fittings depicted the double-headed Hapsburg eagle. I looked at it and looked at him blankly saying they were simple locks.

One can say that looking at artifacts is an exercise in history, or at best like an ink-blot test-one sees what one would like to see even if it is not there.

There were so many other beautiful things on display, some never before seen in the Philippines, like huge ivory carvings, "salakot" [native wide-rimmed head covers] embellished with silver, weapons, paintings and, of course, some of the rarest books on the Philippines. Yet to the baul I returned three times because of its resonance in contemporary life.

Filipinos today send their "personal effects" home from certain points around the world in what is known as a balikbayan box. These sturdy carton boxes travel by sea very much in the same way that the famous chest I am raving about traveled from Manila to Acapulco and back in what our textbooks call the Galleon Trade (1565-1815). From Manila these chests were packed with spices and, of course, many goods from China, like silk, tortoise shell and ivory. When the boxes came back to Manila they were loaded, we are told, with silver.

Fortunes were made overnight on these boxes. The arrival of a Manila galleon was always an excuse for a fiesta. Well, fortunes were also lost overnight in case of shipwreck or when English, Portuguese or Dutch rivals seized them along the way.

I was never interested in the Galleon Trade until I walked in the National Museum Wednesday morning. This was history come alive and people should come and see the exhibit while it lasts.

The clueless asked me why the mayor of Legazpi City in Albay province, southeast of Manila, and the mayor of Zumarraga, Spain, birthplace of Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, were around. I had to explain that the exhibit and a three-day conference of Filipino and Spanish historians were organized around the figure of the first governor and captain general of the Spanish Philippines. Because of his pioneering efforts, and of course spending his own funds in the exploration and settlement of the Philippines, Legazpi was the only one given the title "adelantado," which eluded over a hundred of his successors as governors-general.

At this point, I remembered the Legazpi-Urdaneta monument in front of the Manila Hotel as well as Legazpi's tomb in the San Agustin Church in Intramuros. Fray Francisco de Ortega, writing to the viceroy of Mexico from Manila on June 6, 1573, gave a brief narration of the death, on Aug. 20, 1572, of Miguel Lopez de Legazpi:

"His death was greatly deplored and is so even at the present day, for doubtless his valor and wisdom have been greatly needed. Those who regarded him as wicked in his life will now canonize him as a saint. I believe that he is in glory or on the way to it, for he was a good Christian and if he erred in some things, I believe that he desired to do right, while in some other things he did the best he could.

"He died poor, which is a great evidence of his goodness. That was a cause for great confusion to those who regarded him as very rich, and who were murmuring about, saying that he had a chest of gold and more than 25,000 pesos in tostones. All that he was found to have on the day of his death was 460 pesos in two little sacks. These he had asked as a loan a few days before. He had also in gold about 120 pesos not counting a large chain and one small one that he had brought from his native land. He had also the wrought silver of his table service. All the rest of this was not worth 500 pesos. This is the whole of the wealth and treasure that he had. Of this fact I am practically an eyewitness, for I was present at his death and at the inventory of his property..."

For a government official to die poor today will invite ridicule rather than praise. History shows how much our lives and thinking have changed from those simple times.

Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu