More Halloween stories
on heritage

 

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THE HORROR stories recounted in the last column were too early for Halloween, but they drew some response from readers. Fr. Milan Ted Torralba, who hails from Bohol province, and now assigned to the Apostolic Nunciature in Manila, sent a text message that a group of which he was a part recovered in 1998 what was left of pigskin "cantorales" with notes in Gregorian chant. These were stored in the Tagbilaran Diocesan Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church. He promised to scout for similar material. While we appreciate the prestige that comes with his promotion and present appointment, we wish that he would maintain his interest in the heritage of Bohol.

We also have to make clarifications on the remnants of the long lost Carlos V. Francisco mural now in the care of National Library Director Prudenciana Cruz. The mural was made in 1952 on the theme "400 years of Philippine History" for the International Fair. It was displayed in Rizal Park. So impressive was this mural that it was given a full color spread in Newsweek (not Time as stated in my column) in 1953. After workmen dismantled the mural, it was stored in a building on Lepanto Street in Sampaloc, Manila, where it was then recycled for minor building repairs.
What remained of the mural was later transferred to the National Library on TM Kalaw Street in Manila. While we have lost the mural, the remaining panels can provide art historians with a way to know and understand Francisco's working method.

I started this column with bright news and will have to end with one last horror story on cultural heritage. In the late 1980s, I contemplated a career shift from history to archeology that turned out to be a failed experiment. I was physically unfit for archeological excavation having been turned into a couch potato by library and archival research. Worse, I did not have the required natural science subjects that are handmaids to archeology: chemistry, biology, botany, and anatomy. I became a historian because I only took basic math and science courses in school.

I funded a National Museum archeological expedition to Barrio Laguile in Batangas province to see first-hand how scientific excavation was undertaken. There was no archeological program available in Manila, and this was literally hands-on training. I don't know what Laguile means, but everyone knows that Batangas is a rich archeological site. The names of places in Batangas can be suggestive: a town called Kalansayan suggested a place of skeletons or a gravesite; Calatagan town was a place where you lay things or people flat, or "latag." Calatagan, a major archeological site, probably got its name from all the corpses laid to rest there in pre-Spanish times.

We rented a plot of land from a local farmer and began to dig. There are too many (mis)adventures worth recounting in that exercise but, to cut a long story short, we did not find the untouched burial complex I was dreaming about. All I brought home with were boxes of broken shards from pre-colonial Philippine earthenware. Not a single piece of Oriental ceramic, not even a shred was found. Not all was lost though because, on the third day of excavation, farmers from nearby fields came to the site with baskets that yielded not only vegetables and fruits but an array of Oriental ceramics: Ming blue and white, celadon ware, some dark dull Thai pieces all literally dirt cheap. For example, a Ming blue and white saucer with frolicking Fu dogs could be had for a hundred pesos. Had I purchased the whole lot and sold a third of it in Manila, I could have actually made money rather than burn it on the excavation. I reluctantly declined the wares because to purchase even one would have encouraged the farmers to continue pot-hunting or the illegal retrieval of archeological artifacts.

Despite my little sermon about the importance of safeguarding our cultural heritage and my advice that they inform the National Museum whenever they find archeological specimens while tilling their fields, nobody seemed to care. One of the farmers tried to break my position by inviting me to reconsider their wares. I then replied that all Oriental ceramics were "imported" ware and I was interested in the older, Philippine-made earthenware. The farmers looked at one another and laughed. "Is that what you really want? Nobody buys that!" One of them said they had found a whole pit with earthenware nearby. When I asked what became of these, he proudly said that they had destroyed everything.

When I asked why, he replied: "There was no porcelain there, no profit there, it was a waste of time." Another farmer gleefully recounted how they found earthenware jars which they lined up on the ground and used them as duckpins, smashing them with freshly picked coconuts that served as makeshift bowling balls. One cannot imagine how terrible it was to listen to all this. Proof of our pre-Spanish past completely vanished because of sheer ignorance.

If ordinary people are not made to appreciate and value the tangible and intangible heritage in their midst, these artifacts in their daily lives will never get to be displayed and preserved in our National Museum, National Library, National Archives, Cultural Center and National Historical Institute. The first step in heritage protection is to develop an appreciation for our heritage.

Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu

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