Inventory of times past

By: Ambeth R. Ocampo - @inquirerdotnet

Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:09 AM December 20, 2017

There are many superstitions that accompany wakes in the Philippines, the most popular being
that relatives of the deceased should not see visitors off at the door, that you should not bring
home any food or drink served at the wake. These traditions are supposed to keep death from
following you home so most people do “pagpag,” literally dusting or shaking death off your
tracks by either taking a circuitous route back or stopping along the way, usually at a
convenience store, for a drink or snack leaving death in the establishment.

Added to this list is another superstition: You should not use the bathroom in a funeral parlor
because regardless of whether you do Number 1 or Number 2, you are literally leaving
something of yourself behind. Not good at all. So when I warned my friends at a recent wake
about this, one of them laughed when he saw me signing the funeraria guest book saying I did
worse by leaving my name and address behind. He refused to sign the book. Later, during the
Mass, the priest warned, in jest, that after the burial God would go through the names in the
guest book to choose a lucky person to die next. I didn’t check, but I’m sure some people erased
their names from the guest book as they left. Historians analyzing funeral documents will
complain that incomplete guest list data will skew their research and conclusions.

Lists comprise the dry bones of history and it is up to a historian to find patterns and conclusions
that make the data relevant and make them come to life. Many years ago, I came across a list of
the raw materials for prescription medicine that were in Rizal’s clinic in Dapitan during the visit
of Pio Valenzuela. Nobody had taken the trouble to give these a second look so I showed the list
to a medical doctor and he said these were mixed and prescribed for people afflicted with
syphilis! Next question that has remained unanswered is who was this for? Another time, I
looked at the list of the contents of Antonio Luna’s bags at the time of his assassination in 1899
and was amused that his toiletry kit included borax (for soap or tooth bleaching?) and a pair of
small curling irons for his iconic moustache.

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Lists can tell us a lot about the past if we investigate them well. I have gone over inventory and
budget lists during the time of Emilio Aguinaldo to see not just how funds were spent but to
discern why. Separating the common from uncommon expenses gives us an idea of their
priorities and the challenges they faced. In the book “Flavors That Sail Across the Sea”
published by Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation are many lists from the
Archivo General de Indias in Seville that shed light not just on Philippine history but the
development of our cuisine: What food ingredients were exchanged between the Philippines and
Mexico in the 16th and 17th centuries, what ways of cooking were introduced, and how did
tastes develop into what we now know as Philippine food?
One of the relevant lists was an inventory of the kitchen of the Colegio de San Jose in Manila
made from Oct. 3-5, 1768, following the expulsion of the Jesuits. There is mention of stoves,
furnaces and cauldrons, and even the different types of jars: a large Martaban with a lid for oil,
dozens of earthenware jars made in San Pedro Macati, four Chinese jars, two large earthenware
jars — one in red, the other in blue. The faculty and students used the following: 28 Flemish
knives, 10 dining knives, 42 copper spoons, 30 forks, 84 mother-of-pearl spoons, assorted table
clothes, napkins and rags, various sizes of serving trays and platters, more than 60 copper bowls,
24 medium-sized coarser bowls for food, over a hundred fine plates, 10 extravagant soup plates,
250 medium or ordinary plates of which 48 were blue for the use of the schoolboys, 800 coarse
plates, 48 soup plates, 114 pozuelos, or small cups for chocolate, and much more.

Some of the food left in the pantry at the time of the inventory included: 13 large earthenware
jars of coconut oil for light rather than cooking, two large earthenware jars of butter, five large
jars and 12 loaves of Pampanga sugar, half a jar of barley, six gantas of anise, seven crates of
Zamboanga cinnamon, 28 cans of tea, jars with beans and mongo, two bottles of Castilian oil.
All these are trivial to most but together with other documents, such lists can recreate ways of
life and lifestyles of times past.

Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/109617/inventory-times-past#ixzz56DoYrRXm

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Dying traditions
By: Ambeth R. Ocampo - @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:09 AM November 01, 2017

We visited my mother’s grave two days before the November 1 rush making it a pleasant and
comfortable experience. She is buried in a church crypt so there is a roof over our heads with
light and electric fans. No lighted candles in this crypt so children will not be able to make the
rounds collecting candle drippings and forming them into great balls of wax as we used to in a
traditional cemetery. In a modern crypt, one will get an attack of rhinitis from all the plastic
flowers left by relatives who think these artificial flowers in perpetual bloom can make up for
their negligence. I wish the crypt administrators would clear the place of plastic flowers every
year before November 1 to shame relatives into sparing some time and effort to remember their
dead in a proper way.

Our crypt is like a condominium with four niches per row and my father remarked recently that
my mother had bought theirs long before and that she chose the lowest niche because then, we
could set a bouquet of flowers on the floor by her grave. I explained later that some Chinese
friends claim that it is bad feng shui to be on the lowest row and that the top niches are best. We
looked up and saw many of the niches still empty but discreetly marked by the owners who we
know to be still alive and kicking.

My mother’s niche is decorated with a card that her granddaughters pasted 14 years ago when
she passed away. In nearby niches, we see the same complete with children’s drawings
expressing how much they miss lolo or lola and hoping they would be together again—soon!
Other niches have photographs of the deceased, or family pictures to keep the deceased happy.
Our Thai friend left some coins on the niche together with a handmade bracelet left by yet
another grandchild who retains but vague memories of her lola. I was looking at all of these
reflecting on how our burial customs have changed over the last half century, with people
moving from cemeteries to crypts, with people choosing to bury an urn with ashes rather than a
whole corpse in a coffin. Niches in crypts being smaller than the standard ones in a cemetery or
memorial park means that these are often secondary burials, the decomposed remains gathered
into a smaller container and transferred from cemetery to crypt.

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What were funerals like before the war? What were burials like in the Spanish period or even
earlier? I know from some rather gruesome photographs known as recuerdos de patay (souvenirs
of the dead) that there was a time when relatives posed around the dead before internment for a
souvenir photograph, sometimes with the dead being brought out of a coffin to sit with grieving
relations. We know, from archeological sites, that the dead were buried differently before and
after the introduction of Christianity by the Spanish in the 16th century. Those hallowed places
within a churchyard were designated as burial grounds for Christians in good standing while
non-Christians, Chinese, and heretics were buried elsewhere. We know that pre-Christian burials
had pabaon or grave furniture that were sent with the deceased into the afterlife. Today all the
pabaon we send are the flowers and handfuls of earth thrown into the grave at the time of burial.
In pre-Spanish times, the pabaon were Philippine-made earthenware and prestigious objects like
glass or gold beads and Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai ceramics from the Ming period (1368-
1644) or even earlier.

The All Saints and All Souls Day holidays led me to re-read Robert Fox’s preliminary report on
the archeological excavations on the Zobel property in Batangas, today a high-end millionaires’
playground called Calatagan that yielded over 500 graves in the late 1950s and more even before
the war. Calatagan is rooted in the verb latag indicating a place where the dead were laid flat.
Near it are places called Pinagpatayan and Kalansayan whose names, referring to a massacre and
skeletons, leave no room to doubt that the area was a pre-Spanish burial ground. Reading about
the graves dug there, the orientation of the bones (none faced westward) and the objects speak
more eloquently than the tales the dead can no longer speak of. Perhaps if we compare and
contrast the way we commemorate our dead in the last five centuries, we may get closer to that
elusive thing we call Filipino identity.

Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/108345/dying-traditions#ixzz56DodCADV

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Interpreting Luna’s paintings
By: Ambeth R. Ocampo - @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:09 AM November 22, 2017

“Century of Light” is the joint title for two landmark exhibitions at the National Gallery
Singapore: “Colours of Impressionism” features a survey of French impressionist painters
according to the predominant colors they used at various stages in their development, and
“Between Two Worlds” features the extraordinary lives of two 19th century painters, Raden
Saleh of Indonesia and Juan Luna of the Philippines. Both artists created iconic works that
represented the idea of nation and led to their being acknowledged as national heroes in their
respective countries. Naturally, I spent more time in the Luna section of the exhibits, but viewed
his paintings in a new light after putting these in the context of the development of art in 19th
century Southeast Asia and France.

Hung side by side on one wall are two versions of Luna’s “España y Filipinas (Spain and the
Philippines)” also known under its longer more descriptive title “España guiando a Filipinas al
camino de progreso (Spain Leading the Philippines on the Road to Progress).” Most known and
reproduced, of course, is the version on loan from the Lopez Museum and Library in Manila.
This undated work (probably painted in Paris circa 1888–1893) depicts two women: a fair-
skinned one dressed as an allegory of Hispania guiding another with darker skin, wearing the
Filipina everyday dress of the period, up a staircase toward the rising sun.

In 2012, an earlier version of “España y Filipinas,” signed and dated 1884, surfaced in Spain and
was later acquired by the National Gallery Singapore. The second version, documented in a
Barcelona magazine in 1886, sparked off additional background research, revealing that —
contrary to popular belief — Luna made copies of his own work, and that there were at least six
versions of “España y Filipinas.” Only three are extant: the 1884 work presently in the National
Gallery Singapore; a large canvas, dated 1888, presently in the collection of the Prado, on loan to
the Ayuntamiento de Cádiz; and the undated, reduced copy of the 1888 work, presently in the
Lopez Memorial Museum that found its way to Manila after it was deaccessioned by the Museo
Balaguer in Spain.

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“España y Filipinas” was entered in the 1888 Exposición Universal of Barcelona as well as the
1893 Exposición Historico-Natural y Etnografica de Madrid. The painting is referenced in the
Filipino reformist paper in Spain, La Solidaridad, which reproduced a speech Graciano López
Jaena had delivered on Feb. 25, 1889, at the Ateneo Barcelona discussing the Philippines’
participation in the Universal Exhibition of Barcelona:

“Had it not been, gentlemen, for Luna’s immortal genius which contributed to that contest his
painting entitled Spain Leading the Philippines on the Road to Progress done with masterful but
light strokes and revealing a genius’ brush whose bold colors produced marvelous effects; it has
a surprising brave perspective, one of the enchantments of the art and glory of the Philippines—
had it not been for that, there would have been no exhibit from the Islands worth seeing.
However, I must point out a defect in it. Though incompetent, I take the liberty of criticizing the
painting of the great artist: it lacks a most important detail: a friar on the third step blindfolding
the india with a handkerchief so that she would not see the road to glory to which Spain is
leading her. (Great laughter, deafening and prolonged applause).”

We see these paintings today as works of art but what did they mean at the time the paintings
were made? Do the 19th century meanings read into the work and hold true in the 21st century?
What do the paintings say about Luna’s ideas of independence? Rizal, for example, expressed in
a letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt dated April 10, 1889, that: “Luna has always been a
Hispanophile; he never wanted to paint anything against the Spaniards; his painting ‘España y
Filipinas’ shows them on the road to the temple of glory, carried by that, now he is doubtful, he
does not know what to think or say.” Paintings can be read in many ways and that’s what makes
them so engaging. What did Luna want to say in his paintings? What did viewers read into
Luna’s paintings? Time to look again at old paintings to find something new.

Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/108912/interpreting-lunas-paintings#ixzz56DohPV8l

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To forgive the unforgivable

By: Ambeth R. Ocampo - @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:28 AM October 13, 2017

Last Saturday I was shown an archive of papers that concerned the pain, loss, suffering, and
healing that resulted from the violence of World War II, particularly those suffered by Filipinos
during the Japanese Occupation. The archive was not within my usual research interests, but then
history often takes me to places I would never have visited outside of work.

Such a place was a small private museum in Yasugi City, Shimane Prefecture, in southwest
Japan, close to Hiroshima; it celebrates the art of Tatsuo Kano aka Kanrai Kano (1904-1977),
whose early works are in the style of the French school, particularly Cezanne. Kano had
maintained a determined correspondence with then President Elpidio Quirino that began in 1949
with his appeal for the pardon of Japanese prisoners of war held in the New Bilibid Prison in
Muntinlupa and ended with his advocacy for repentance and forgiveness as a means to end
militarization and achieve world peace.

We do not know if Quirino had actually read any of the 63 extant letters sent by Kano, but these
were at least acknowledged by various members of the Malacañang staff that included his private
secretaries Juan Collas and Federico Mangahas (the fathers of Inquirer Opinion columnists Solita
Monsod and Mahar Mangahas, respectively). Kano’s link to postwar Philippine history is but a
footnote, but his story strikes at the core of human relations: His appeal to Filipinos was to
“forgive the unforgivable.”

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Kano served as a military artist in China during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). Upon his
return to his hometown, he met Rear Adm. Takesue Furuse who had returned from Manila to
Japan but chose to stand trial by the War Crimes courts to admit his guilt in the so-called
“Infanta Incident” that saw the massacre of 152 Filipino civilians in the closing days of the war
(April-May 1945).

Inspired by Furuse’s remorse, Kano began in 1949 a persistent one-man campaign for the pardon
of Furuse and the Japanese POWs in the Muntinlupa penitentiary. Kano carefully drafted his
letters in Japanese, had them translated into English, and sent them off in handwritten,
typewritten, or mimeograph form to various people and groups: 63 letters to President Quirino,
43 letters to Pope Pius XII in Rome (one acknowledged by then Cardinal Montini who later
became Pope Paul VI), four letters to Douglas MacArthur (all ignored), and miscellaneous
correspondence with presidents of the Philippines from Quirino to Ferdinand Marcos and
officials of the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs and the Philippine Mission to Japan.

Among all these papers I was intrigued by the complicated signature of Alfredo M. Bunye, then
superintendent of the New Bilibid Prison who sent Kano a full list of Japanese POWs and the
status of their cases in the War Crimes Tribunal. When I sent a photo of the signature to Bunye’s
son, former presidential spokesperson and now newspaper columnist Toting Bunye, he replied
that Superintendent Bunye’s father was killed by the Japanese during the war and yet he
protected the Japanese POWs in Bilibid from vengeful Filipinos who wanted to lynch them all.
The Japanese POWs considered their jailer their Filipino father.

Japan and the Philippines remained in a state of war six years after 1945.

How could Quirino, from a hospital bed in Johns Hopkins Hospital in the United States on July
4, 1953, go against the anti-Japanese sentiment at the time and grant executive clemency to 105
Japanese POWs in Bilibid? He was criticized for this act of forgiveness and his allies thought it
political suicide, yet he chose to take the high ground and at different times cited the value of
moving on:

“Personally, were I to consider that my wife and my three children were all killed by Japanese
machine guns, I would swallow the Japanese allies now; but I am not living in the world alone. I
have my remaining children, and their children to follow. I am not going to allow them to inherit
feelings of revenge.”

Much maligned in his time, Quirino must be remembered for paving the way for the
normalization of relations between the Philippines and Japan:
“I know it will be hard for you to take, but I’m thinking of forgiving the Japanese, because we
are neighbors, and neighbors must learn to talk to each other, live together, trade and help each
other.”

Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/107861/to-forgive-the-unforgivable#ixzz56Dp4SzDt

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Real-life teachers
By: Ambeth R. Ocampo - @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:24 AM October 06, 2017

Each time I visit the National Museum and gaze upon the haunting portrait of a woman once
upon a time believed to be the ill-fated wife of Juan Luna, I remember the late Fr. Gabriel Casal
who put me on a path to Luna research and scholarship. On a visit this week, I also recalled that
Father Casal was the first Benedictine I ever met, and he was an ex-Benedictine. Father Casal
was a short, handsome man who left the cloister to take up directorship of the Ayala Museum
and, later,
the National Museum of the Philippines. Father Casal spoke with a heavy Spanish accent that
went well with his mestizo good looks. He was, I heard, a man with a short-fuse whose face
could transform
in an instant from angelic as his patron saint to the kontrabida Eddie Garcia he
resembled remotely.

While discussing the biggest bequest of Juan Luna paintings to the museum, I could not help but
notice the clutter in his office dominated by a pair of oversized stuffed chairs in orange
leatherette that was so tacky it was hip. By force of habit, my eyes scanned the room and focused
not on the papers and files that littered his desk but on an ancient marble head, the size of a golf
ball, given to him as a gift by a Spanish abbot who had wrenched it off from some ancient
Roman sarcophagus.

I mentioned, in passing, that folks at home complained about a presence that allegedly emanated
from the prehistoric Philippine pottery I had been collecting. My mother was not pleased to find
out these were grave furniture, looted from archeological sites by pothunters before the National
Museum got wind of them. Spirits and heritage laws did not bother me. I was drawn to these
crude earthenware vessels by an appreciation of their age—10th century or earlier—and the idea
that these shiny red vessels of pleasing shape accompanied our ancestors on their journey to the
underworld.

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I asked Father Casal if he could do a house call to pacify the terrified help. His eyes opened wide
as his lips pursed into a disdainful smirk, and pointing to two prehistoric limestone burial jars on
a shelf behind him, said: “One of these burial jars still contains human bones, how come I am not
haunted?” He opened his right desk drawer, reached inside, and handed me two aluminum
medals that bore the image of St. Benedict on one side, and a cross with mysterious letters on the
reverse. “These are powerful medals,” Father Casal explained. “They should do the trick because
these have been given a blessing so special that no prayers are required to use them. Place one in
your car and forget about it, put the other one in room with the pots, and if your household is still
bothered by spirits after a week, I shall go and bless your house.”

Driving home from the National Museum that evening, I stopped at a red light along Quirino
Avenue and a jeepney crashed into the passenger side of my car. I looked at the medals Father
Casal had given me half an hour earlier and was tempted to throw them out the window because
they did not protect my car from accident. I should have been grateful though that I was unhurt.
When I stepped out to assess the damage, I saw the reckless jeepney driver scratching his head
and took it to mean he had no insurance and no money to pay for repairs. The jeep’s fender lay
on the street, its headlights broken and part of the hood was like crumpled aluminum foil, but my
car that absorbed the impact had nary a scratch. I returned to the car and drove off dumbfounded
as the jeepney driver. This time I gave the medals a second, now appreciative, look. Needless to
say, the medals put the mischievous pot spirits in their place, too.

Next day, intrigued by all this, I went to the Rizal Library reference section to read on the medal
of St. Benedict—a sacramental cleansed and empowered by double exorcism—then I was led to
read more on: Benedict of Nursia, founder of Western Monasticism and Patron of Europe; the
Order of St. Benedict; Benedictines; and Benedictine congregations. I ended up reading on
Monasticism and Monastic life and remembered my first visit to the Abbey Church of Our Lady
of Montserrat. I visited again and again later joining the community for five happy years.
Yesterday, World Teachers Day, reminded me that not all teachers are those we encountered in
classrooms.

Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/107667/real-life-teachers#ixzz56Dp8ocjN

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