Manila: Why am I here?
(See previous postings re: Here Lies Love.)
Here’s a quote from James Hamilton-Paterson’s book America’s Boy,
one of the best accounts of the Marcos era, putting it in the context
of both village life and global politics. From the chapter "The Politics
Of Fantasy":
“There are moments when it seems that the
world’s affairs are transacted by dreamers. There is a sadness here in
the spectacle of nations, no less than individuals, helping each other
along with their delusions. This way what is thought to be clear
sighted pragmatism may actually be shoring up a regime’s ideology whose
hidden purpose is itself nothing more than to assuage the pain of a
single person’s unhappy past.”
And these quotes from "Imperial Grunts":
“Just
as the stirring poetry and novels of Rudyard Kipling celebrated the
work of British Imperialism…the American artist Frederic Remington, in
his bronze sculptures and oil paintings, would do likewise for the
conquest of the Wild West.”
“‘Welcome to
Injun Country’ was the refrain I heard from the troops from Colombia to
the Philippines, including Afghanistan and Iraq…the War on Terrorism
was really about taming the frontier.”
These two
quotes encapsulate for me why I am here in the Philippines. Granted it
is a very short trip. And at a peculiar time of year. The Here Lies
Love music project might be about this conflation of fantasy, personal
pain and politics that runs through history and that played itself out
here in a dramatically obvious way. Hamilton-Paterson nails it better
than I could.
I suppose besides gathering some more research and archival material
(hours spent watching archival materials and looking through old books
at the Cultural Center are missing from this journal.) I hope also to
catch and absorb some whiff of the Philippine ethos, sensibility and
awareness — by osmosis — and by conversation, too. I believe that
politics is an expression of the landscape — the streets, eroticism
and hum-drum lives — as much it is of backrooms, ideologies and
legislature. Geography, religion, sex, weather, music, food — these all
contribute to a national policy and how it functions.
As in current
genetic thinking, the word “expression” is appropriate here; just as
there are elements in the genes waiting for chemical keys to allow the
cells to express themselves as a chicken liver or a human heart, there
are elements in a place that trigger expression in action and in
culture. Much human behavior is a kind of expression of latent keys —
genetic or geographical and cultural — unlocking tiny doors.
Joel Torre, an actor, generously met me at the airport, and
everyone said hi to him as we walked to the car pickup area. We drove
by the Cultural Center on the way to the hotel — a giant
Lincoln-Center-type edifice that Imelda built.
The disco music has stopped outside my hotel. I must say, given that
I’m filled with thoughts of the HLL project, the music is actually
inspiring rather than annoying — though I’m glad it doesn’t go on all
night. A song with a radical synth squealy pulse gave me some ideas. A
cover of “In Da Club” was the last thing I heard as I pedaled towards
the old city center. (I brought my folding bike.)
Binondo is the
area I end up biking to. Karaoke machines are everywhere. Even little
stalls in the funky old city center have them. This is an area of
crowded winding streets and vendors with tiny one-table emporiums. The
traffic slows in these areas, or is relegated to bikes and little
trucks that bring supplies and goods to the vendors, but other traffic
avoids these areas, as the narrow streets are too crowded with
pedestrians and the overflow from the stalls. Here the Jeepneys are the
largest vehicles — slowly inching forward while attempting to pick up
passengers — but I move faster than most of them on my bike. It’s a
great place for walking, and for and buying fruits, vegetables,
washcloths, bootleg CDs and DVDs, Christmas gifts (at this time of
year,) fresh fish, medicines — anything that can be displayed stacked
in little piles on wooden tables.
Why is it that all 3rd world markets are the same? I was reminded of
Kuala Lumpur, Cartagena, Marrakech, Salvador, and Oaxaca, and many
other places. It’s almost as if these areas were all designed by the
same person the world over — they organically take the same form
everywhere. The human scale and pleasant chaos are part of the
unconscious though carefully worked out plan, as are the smells and
piles of refuse here and there. One of the stall owners sweeps the
rainwater and mud out of the street with a broom. There is a system of
maintenance. I suppose it’s a case of similar goods and scale
automatically self regulating the manner in which they are all sold,
how and where. I’m glad the whole city hasn’t been malled, as some of
the guidebooks claim. This is a really nice area to stroll in if you
don’t mind smells and bustle.
Oddly enough, one could say some of the same things about the more
built-up areas of many cities — that many of them could have also been
designed by the same person — the most widespread ubiquitous designer
in the world. Mr. High rise and mall design at your service. Somehow I
think there is a little more conscious borrowing at work in the
business towers and mall design than in this pleasant hodge podge of
stalls and tiny shops.
Along the bayside walk closer to my hotel there are outdoor
restaurants, many of which feature cover bands. As rumored, the bands
are all surprisingly good — if by good you mean amazingly faithful in
their ability to reproduce well known songs. The singing and playing is
uniformly competent and professional, though of course unoriginal,
which is by design. One man sings on a little stage with glowing
plastic Santas on either side of him. I wonder if I should reconsider
using one of these bands or these singers for HLL?
I bike past the U.S. embassy, which I first mistook for either a military base or a walled in luxury hotel complex.
Sol’s History Lesson
I meet up with a group of people whom I’d previously contacted at
film director Antonio “Butch” Perez’s apartment, which is conveniently
around the corner from the hotel. Marcos’ former cameraman Edgar
Navarro and his very pregnant wife sit beside me and we are joined by
editor Jessica Zafra (her magazines Flip and Manila Envelope, both in
English, are wonderful,) poet and columnist Krip Yuson, photographer
Neal Oshima, restauranteuse Susan Roxas, performance artist Carlos
Celdran, adman David Guerrero, …and eventually even more filmmakers and
writers.
Butch’s place is beautiful — tropical Zen sparse decor
with a view over some tin roofs to the expanse of Manila Bay. “Not so
many years ago this was one of the quietest places in town,” he says.
“But now there are car stereos and burglar alarms, police klaxons and
sirens, open-air karaoke on the bayfront and more scooter traffic, so
the noise level is so much higher.” As a New Yorker I’m used to it.
I
describe the HLL project to everyone as best I can, which isn’t saying
much. The CD of demos I brought and especially the compilation of
Peter’s rough video edits explains the concept much better than I am
able to. The videos especially are well received — though some of these
folks view them as if their own lives were being replayed, so theirs is
hardly an objective view. Painful memories, some of them.
Sol Vanzi joins us — she lives on the same floor. She informally
handles Imelda’s relations with local and international media. She runs
a website that collates Philippine news: http://www.newsflash.org.
She’s 61, she tells us, and she immediately sits down, opens a beer and
launches into a tirade during which she disputes all the conventional
wisdom about the Marcos regime and Imelda. She just naturally assumes
(rightly, I suspect) that she’s not addressing a group of loyalists.
She says, for example, that she instructed a video cameraman to hide
in the basement of the palace when it was being overrun — after the
Marcoses fled — with instructions to videotape the state of things as
they were the moment the family left. She claims that this video shows
that the various stories of half-eaten tubs of caviar and other
evidence of excess were “urban myths”, as she referred to them. Proof
that these things were planted — by Cory Aquino and others, so she
claims.
She also claims the Americans most likely killed Aquino (I
thought Marcos said it was the Commies?) and that Imelda was never poor
as a child. This latter claim is relative; she certainly wasn’t as poor
as the people living in the shanties squeezed along the riverbanks:
— but, well, by all accounts she did live in a garage while children
of the fist wife lived in the house, and then things went downhill from
there. As someone from an important local family she was relatively
poor.
Sol segues into a riff on the very limited class mobility in the
Philippines. How, if you are from a provincial town you are
handicapped, even if you are from a “good” family there (this mirrors
Imelda’s situation.) Anyway, she implies, as do others, that it is
almost impossible to rise above your station — your accent will give
you away, and even if it doesn’t folks will ask you where you’re from
and then the game’s up. Shades of the UK.
What I also learn, despite all her endless protesting claims that no
one has voiced, is that things are not as black and white as I, or many
other left-leaning westerners, might prefer to think. The Marcos
regime, though corrupt from the start, was no more corrupt, at least at
first, than many others. What distinguished them was that they did
instigate health programs, highway building, cultural centers, a high
school for the arts and many other programs. (The high school produced
many of the creative types who are still active.) The Marcoses were
truly loved by many Filipinos at the start…and, according to some, they
continued to be loved in the provinces even during their ouster, an
event which somewhat baffled the country folk. At one point (in the
60s) the Marcoses intentionally modeled their image on that of the
Kennedys, posing for family snaps in Malacañang Palace wearing versions
of native dress, and looking young and glamorous, which they were. As
with the Kennedys, the public loved it, as did the international media;
the Marcoses were featured in Time, Life, etc. etc. Everyone bought
into the fantasy, just like they bought into the Kennedy myth, which
was around the same time.
Of course, beginning with Marcos’ ‘69 reelection campaign and
continuing to when martial law was declared in ’72, the scales
gradually tipped, and the chicanery, human rights abuses, murder,
corruption and lies eventually outweighed the love and good works.
“Here Lies Love” indeed. At first. As power seemed more secure after a
reelection it must have been irresistibly tempting to use it — none of
that nasty inconvenient time wasting money squandering politicking
anymore — power made things more efficient. But it seemed to me that
soon enough the need to hold on to that power took precedent over
almost everything else — as usual. The palace in the end became a
miasma of schemes, intrigues, paranoia and backstabbing.
One book I read claims that Filipino politicians don’t look on
politics as a means to realize their ideology as much as a means to
hold power. So sometimes politicians there will switch sides if they
think they stand a better chance of winning as a candidate from the
other party. Marcos did it early on. It worked. The parties seem to be
allegiances that can be remade at will, um, much as they are elsewhere,
though most other places make a pretense of ideological continuity.
This flexibility goes way back. A “hero” who fought against the
Spanish colonial rule, Aguinaldo, felt that Bonifacio, the firebrand
leader of the revolution, lacked the requisite military skills, and he
broke ranks with him. Aguinaldo made a demand to the Spaniards that in
return for peace and a promise that he would leave the Philippines a
huge payment would be made in installments — climaxing in a final
payment along with a public apology and the playing of “Te Deum” at the
Manila cathedral.
In 1897 Aguinaldo signed the deal with Spain in a cave where he was
holed up, and upon receiving the money he split, with the cash, for
China (or Japan) and in the process suddenly declared his loyalty to
Spain (!). What? After all that he just skipped off with the money? (To
be fair, the Spanish did capitulate to the peace demands, but with some
U.S. help) In ‘98 he returned, and disavowed his disavowal, and then
pledged to fight the Americans, who had helped to oust the Spanish. The
Americans had decided that the land was too nice to give up. (This war
to oust the Yanks lasted 10 years — America’s first dirty war, all but
erased from U.S. history books.)
Aguinaldo resurfaced in the public eye again in 1935 when the
Philippines became a quasi-independent nation. He ran against Manuel
Quezon in the first election, but he lost. Anyway, the point is that he
changed colors, back and forth, and no one seemed to mind, or they just
took it in stride. He seemed just as passionate about whatever side he
was on.
Dinner and karaoke
After Sol’s lecture we head out. Joel has two chicken restaurants in
town. We stop at one and a group of us sit around a little wooden
picnic type table outdoors. The restaurant used to be simply a counter
and a few tables in back, but it’s become very popular — the chicken,
the livers on a stick and the garlic rice were delicious. There is a
smattering of all ages, races and types hanging out and chatting over
drinks and chicken. If there were dishes other than what we had I
didn’t see them — the barbecues installed on the nearby roadside where
the birds were being roasted were all filled with legs and livers.
On the way back to the district where my hotel is Butch says he
needs to stop at a karaoke bar to say “Merry Christmas” to his
production designer and erstwhile muse, Marta, who is now “playing for
the other team” and is there with her girlfriend.
We are led by an attendant down a buttery yellow hallway past a
series of identical doors and the assistant opens one and there are 4
friends of Butch’s singing to a TV screen. We order beers but fail to
join in the singing festivities. Someone programs “Burning Down the
House”, maybe in the hopes that I will sing, but I just stare at the
screen as a guy that looks like 80s Bon Jovi poses with a guitar while
a model house burns. Marta, who is exhuberant and very pretty in plaid
pants, sings along, though my phrasing in this song was a little tricky.
It is claimed karaoke was invented here as the Sing Along System in
‘75 by a man named Del Rosario. TVK/Video karaoke clubs are everywhere
and come in all shapes and for all incomes. Maybe it’s a way for
everyone to sing — singing is therapeutic and fun to do, I know this
from experience even though I was a party pooper at the karaoke club.
They sing western pop songs here — and some Filipino pop songs too,
many of which are in English. Singing western pop songs here is not
like singing a foreign song — western pop, especially U.S. pop, was
such a part of Filipino culture that they feel it is their own. And it
is, in a way. Who can own the experience you have when you hear a song?
There’s
even a karaoke TV channel. Endless cheap corny videos with music
playing and scrolling lyrics. You can stay at home and sing along with
your television. Like some kind of radical conceptual art piece — but
super popular.
Makati
The next day I bike up to Makati, the district where Imelda lives
now. An area of high rises, gated communities and shopping malls. Not
really typical, but a source of local pride.
Biking here is not always easy — there are no bike lanes as there
are on the bayshore and the fumes from the jeepneys and motorized
tricycles are overwhelming. Here’s a nice jeepney front:
Foreigners notice Jeepneys right away. Freakish progeny of leftover
U.S. Army jeeps that have mutated into a kind of cheap tricked-out
public transport. (Jeepney rides in Tacloban, where I took quite few,
are around 9 pesos — about U.S. 20¢ at the current exchange rate. This
can get you as far as the neighboring town or to the airport!)
Jeepney drivers adorn their vehicles with names and sayings. A kind of jeepney wisdom:
“Lovely”
“Mama - Cita”
“Metal Mania”
“Pray for Our Way”
“Grandma’s Pet”
“Reconnaissance patrol”
The traffic sometimes devolves into pure chaos.
The above is borderline gridlock, but mostly it is O.K., and I make
better time than most of the 4- or even 3-wheeled vehicles. Jeez I
can’t believe I was pedaling through this.
One of the Makati high-rise condominiums was taken over by a group of disgruntled soldiers in ’04, but they were soon ousted.
This, for many Americans, is the land where maids and nurses come
from, and that’s all they know about the Philippines. I have to admit
I’ve seen quite a lot of men and women in medical attire. The
Philippines are anxious that Japan, for example, employ some of the
trained medical personnel from here, but the Japanese are uncomfortable
dealing with foreigners, and prefer to spend their efforts developing
robots to take care of their own mundane needs.
After Makati I explore the landfill area where Imelda built many of
her cultural projects — like the Film Center, which now hosts a Korean
cast doing an Egyptian themed drag show. The building is haunted, or
cursed, as part of it collapsed during its rushed non-stop construction
and it is rumored that some of the bodies are still in the concrete. I
am told that Koreans don’t believe in ghosts, so that’s why this show
is running here.
The Cultural Center and the Folk Arts center are here as well, and those are still quite active.
Malacañang Palace
The next day I ride my bike through a funky shopping district
(Quiapo) and through San Miguel (where Imelda grew up on Gen Solano
avenue) to get a pre-arranged tour of the Malacañang Palace.
I see
the chair where Marcos signed order 1081, the declaration of martial
law. On the walls are numerous photos commemorating People Power, the
mass movement that ousted the couple in ‘86. Students giving flowers to
soldiers, people wearing yellow. Yellow was adopted due to the song
“Tie a Yellow Ribbon” which was adopted in celebration of the return of
Aquino to the Philippines — the welcoming crowd wore yellow. Surreal,
these pop connections — a connection between Tony Orlando and Dawn and
a grass roots uprising that overthrows a dictator — it makes my head
spin.
Unfortunately Ninoy Aquino was gunned down at the airport…but Cory and her supporters kept with the yellow from then on.
The large room that commemorates previous Philippino leaders has a
glaring absence. They're all here and their memorabilia is on display —
except those of the Marcoses, who are relegated to a couple of back
rooms. Their absence is a lacuna in history, but the back room makes up
for it — commemorative dolls, clocks, and of course paintings.
Here are two famous paintings in which the Marcoses had themselves
depicted as the Ur couple of the Philippines — the Adam and Eve of
tribal Philippine mythology, who sprung from a piece of split bamboo,
the strong man and the beautiful woman:
So, the idea was that
they were fulfilling destiny, facilitating a kind of rebirth and
renewal of Philippine identity — which did happen to some extent — and
these paintings make explicit their wish to become part of the national
mythology. Like George Bush and Ronald Reagan wearing Western clothes.
Laoag, Ilocos Norte
I travel to the area where Marcos was from, up north, and the people
still like him here. His son Bong Bong (yes, real name!) is the
governor of the province and Imee, one of the daughters, is a local
congresswoman. In my research it was said that this area was and is
like Philippine cowboy country — a little harsher than the more
tropical south, and disagreements were, and are, often settled with a
gun.
I spy on a map a neighborhood on the outskirts of town named
Discolandia, which sounds like it might be appropriate to this project,
so I aim my walk in that direction. I wander though a neighborhood of
families, residential houses, chickens, little bodegas and then past
the bus depot and then sure enough suddenly there is a whole zone of
clubs. It’s daytime, so there is no music or activity, except an older
woman painting a young girl’s toenails in front of one club. The door
is open so I ask if I can have a look. No problem, in fact the older
woman escorts me in and hollers something as she leads me further and
further into the club which has a few scattered chairs and some
Christmas lights dangling.
She brings me to a back room, which is fairly large — it is filled
with rude wooden bunk beds, most without sheets. This is where the
bargirls sleep and rest, I think to myself. She hollers again and from
a further back room emerges an attractive girl in red who immediately
escorts me back into the club room, asking, “what would you like? You
like girls?” Her face is painted white — as if she is in the middle of
a facial. I remember toenail girl had this whiteface as well. With her
full red lips she looks like an erotic clown.
Ooohh, now I get it. These places are all whorehouses! Why didn’t I
notice all the signs saying “No Condom — No Sex”? Duh! With music and
karaoke (naturally) to bide the time while you’re making up your mind.
Here are some choices:
I walk on. I see a few girls lazing around, some doing washing and
some sitting and chatting over a soda. Signs saying check your firearms
at the door. This really is the Wild West — where’s Miss Kitty?
Around
the corner is the cockfight arena where a whole bunch of tricycles and
cars are parked. A match is in progress. “Register your birds”. I’ve
watched cockfights elsewhere, so, though it is a great scene, it’s one
I’ve enjoyed before and since I’m not betting there’s not much in it
for me.
I thought the epoch of underage sex for foreigners here was
over, but it seems not. There are al least two geezers in my hotel
sporting Filipinas who don’t seem to be much over 20. On my bike
meanderings I’ve seen quite a few more — from Mr. Buster Bloodvessel
ready to explode to The Professor out for a nasty holiday. It seems
this is the place for a foreign man to get what he never had or get
what he craved but was discouraged from indulging in back home. Maybe
here one could fulfill that lifelong dream.
Once in a while I do a kind of double take when I spy a couple —
usually an older white man with a very young Filipina — in a hotel or
restaurant. Most of them rarely touch, or hold hands, but many times
they’ll be having lunch together. I gather there are famous girlie
clubs and transvestite bars here and there, but probably the days when
the Vietnam soldiers and U.S. military personnel had wild rampages of
Rutting and Relaxation are past. Also spied some lonely foreigners with
rent boys — one overweight limping Yank with a southern accent had two.
In a restaurant he orders them around: “Salt, I need salt…and pepper.”
One of the boys dutifully goes and fetches the salt. “Toast, is that
toast over there?” One of the boys fetches him 3 pieces of toast. He
seems temporarily satisfied. Wonder what the boys say to each other
when he’s not around? I can see the temptations of power at work — the
more he senses that he has power, the more he will flex it to witness
it in action, to feel the pleasure of command.
“Coffee and cigarettes,” he announces. “Coffee and cigarettes is my breakfast back home.”
To
be fair, not all western-Filipina relationships are about power or
desperate sex. A family in the hotel restaurant is composed of an
Australian man and his attractive Filipina wife and their kids. He
grumbles and grunts in response to the kids’ entreaties while she texts
someone on her cell phone. Hardly a perfect relationship, but not
obviously predatory either.
Politics and sex. It has been said that the percentage of
institutionalized corruption in the Marcos regime tipped when his
affair with Dovie Beams, an American B movie actress, became public and
embarrassing. (He may have been somewhat serious about this fling — his
carelessness may have betrayed him. She was also canny in making audio
tapes and Polaroids as “insurance”.) Anyway, he was screwed.
Conventional wisdom is that it was at this point that Imelda began
to gain a firmer grip on the reins of power. When the affair exploded
in the press he gave her a fiefdom shortly thereafter — Metromanila —
within which she could exercise control and make her own projects with
autonomy — and skim the usual piece off the top as well.
Imelda sent hit men to off Dovie, and made a few money offers to buy
the “insurance”, but Dovie managed to escape thanks to help from the
U.S. Embassy.
Meanwhile, Marcos’ unacknowledged Lupus was getting worse. He was a
sick man in the 80s, needing a kidney transplant and dialysis machines.
This tipped the scales further in Imelda’s favor. The power fell not
only to her, but also to his numerous cronies and lieutenants, none of
who were as canny as he. Things began to get pretty ugly. And surreal.
With unlimited power and no critical press allowed the possibilities
were limitless.
Bong Bong had daddy create a kind of Jurassic Park for his hunting
expeditions, or so it is rumored. That’s why numerous African animals —
giraffes, zebras, elands, impalas and gazelles — were brought over from
Kenya and plopped on Calauit, an island in the south formerly populated
solely by aboriginal tribal people. To make an African hunting reserve
for Bong Bong. The aboriginal people were relocated to another island,
one that couldn’t support their livelihood, so almost immediately a
“Back to Calauit” movement started.
These bizarre abuses of power might be slightly amusing — if you
weren’t one of the people who had lived on Calauit — but other
activities were not so funny. Paranoia set in, naturally, and suspected
“agents” and “spies” and “revolutionaries” were disappeared. Even those
who managed to get to U.S. soil were not safe.
It’s Christmas and in Wild West Laoag kids are caroling on the
streets just after the sun sets. I sing “Joy To The World” along with
one group. They expect money — and not just from me, a foreigner. They
go house to house, hoping for small handouts…that does not mean a hot
chocolate.
You know, I don’t see any of these other foreigners that
I spied in the hotel restaurants out and about. Do they stay in the
hotels all the time? Do they get air-conditioned taxis to the sights
and then immediately retreat to their hotel rooms?
I begin to take motorized tricycles (below, a tricycle and a view
from a tricycle) on short trips. My bike is in Manila as I want to make
day trips from here. A tricycle affords a limited view, so not so good
for sightseeing, but they are everywhere — hailing one takes about a
minute. And they look great.
The view from inside:
Coupled with the Jeepneys and buses they make an incredibly
efficient public transport system (excepting the pollution they
generate.) New York has, strikes aside, a pretty good public transport
system, one that rivals, say, Mexico City, though not as clean. But
this is much easier — other than the buses, which leave from designated
depots and travel mostly intercity, the tricycles and Jeepneys can be
hailed absolutely anywhere within minutes. And for a foreigner, they’re
cheap. About P5 for a tricycle and P9 or P10 for a jeepney. This comes
to about 20¢ or 25¢ U.S. A bus to Batac, or Vigan, a town 80 km away,
was about P100. I think. $2 U.S. My hotel, while not fancy, is clean —
shower, air con, nice restaurant, quiet, karaoke lounge (natch)… $20
U.S. a night. No free wireless Internet but most U.S. hotels don’t
offer that, either.
I catch a bus to Sarrat, where Marcos was born. The house is his
birthplace, now decaying and dusty. Furniture heaped in piles and
fading pictures of his mom everywhere. Some manikins of the man in
barongs, the traditional shirt that he wore as a nationalist cultural
statement.
On to Batac, another very small town where Marcos lies in state in a
refrigerated class casket. Batac has a great fruit and vegetable market
where every conceivable local foodstuff is displayed. Not that
different than markets in Oaxaca or Cuernavaca. I buy an orange, as
hotel breakfasts tend to serve something like Tang. Come to think of
it, there is a surprising Mexican influence here. It seems the Spanish
colonists stopped in Mexico on the way here — it was part of their
trade route — so some of the local Mexican culture and foods got
transplanted. The house next to the Mausoleum is where Marcos grew up,
I think. The children use it now, or so it seems, as there lying on the
ground is a discarded cardboard package in shreds with Imee Marcos name
written on it.
The little museum attached outlines Marcos’ accomplishments —
bridges, highways, hospitals and sessions with foreign leaders like Mao
and Nixon. It refers to the Marcos’ ouster as a military coup —
referring to the defection of some of the generals, which is
significant in that it meant that his military enforcers had split
ranks. The museum is a capsule version of the mythology he created for
himself — his imaginary war record on to his accomplishments mixed with
scenes of true public affection. A mythology mixed with fact, and all
the more powerful (and confusing) for it. Like a Hollywood movie that
depicts “true” events, the past inevitably comes to be perceived as the
Hollywood version. Marcos was prescient here. He had two “biographical”
films made in advance of his election campaigns that depicted parts of
his life “story”. It worked. This reminds me that John Wayne’s director
John Ford is quoted as saying "When people prefer the myth to the
truth, print the myth." The mausoleum plays Mozart liturgical music
creating a creepy haunted vibe, and, as you enter the air-conditioned
chamber there are a number of staffs on either side with sculpted metal
tops that resemble weird Masonic symbols. Crescent moons, stars,
spades, hammers and indecipherable symbology — the security guy
couldn’t tell me what they symbolized but the effect is deeply
mystical, mysterious, almost Egyptian. His embalmed body sure looks
more like waxworks than a real body — the glass coffin is bathed in an
eerie blue light and photos are strictly prohibited. Rumor has it that
the real body lies deeper below, slowly decomposing and still denied
burial along with the other former presidents.
I travel on to Vigan, a small town that was spared the American
carpet-bombing at the end of World War II that destroyed the colonial
architecture of many of the others. It’s on the UN list of important
world historical sites, so though it’s not on the research agenda I
catch another bus to have a look. The center of town does indeed
abound in the type of old buildings of which a few remain around Laoag
and very few in Manila. Mostly wooden structures that withstand
typhoons pretty well, but that usually require periodic upkeep because
the tropical dampness and termites will destroy them after a number of
years. Impermanence is part of life in the tropics. The windows are
made of sea shells — little squares of mother of pearl that allow
filtered light to enter the upper floors — and can be opened up for
ventilation. Many of these in the Vigan town center are preserved and
turned into a tourist destination for Filipinos and foreigners, so
though many are still lived in, many a ground floor has been turned
into an antique shop selling T-shirts and knock-offs.
Here’s one outside the town center that hasn’t been cutesified:
I stop and buy a sweet on a side street. A girl is roasting over
coals a concoction held in a bowl shaped by a piece of banana leaf. The
leaf gets a little charred around the edges over the coals, but it
doesn’t burn. She explains that the sweet is made of coconut (shavings)
sugar, egg and milk. It becomes a kind of hot crunchy custard — and
it’s delicious. Wonder if I can try it at home, minus the banana leaf?
Leyte
Imelda was born in a small town in the province of Leyte and spent a
good part of her formative years in Tacloban, the main city there. Her
family, the Romualdezes, still hold power there — the airport is named
Romualdez, as is one of the main streets, the local judge and the
current mayor, on and on. However, she was from the less successful
side of the family — she grew up in a garage and a Quonset hut — though
family connections still counted for much. This Cinderella aspect of
her past has been whitewashed or tweaked quite a bit, the poverty and
pain part lessened, though she would sometimes refer to it in passing.
The house they occupied for a while in Manila in a funky neighborhood
she had bulldozed, a way of literally remaking her past. Wipe out those
painful memories with a bulldozer.
In later years she built a
“shrine” in Tacloban, ostensibly to Santo Niño, the baby Christ. The
entrance room is a large chapel, but really the shrine is to herself.
Jeepneys heading in this direction from downtown Tacloban simply give
“Imelda” as the direction. It houses lots of her furniture collection
but more importantly a series of lovely dioramas depicting her life
story — or her life story as she imagined it.
Here is a nice one of her as a young girl on the shore having a
family outing with an image of Marcos looming in the sky, awaiting
their fateful meeting:
The rest of the “shrine” is a series of bedrooms and dining rooms —
none of which were ever used or slept in. They too are a kind of
diorama. Some bedrooms were for Imelda’s children — Imee, Bong Bong and
Irene — and others are for, whom? There is a bedroom for every region
(several provinces grouped together for development purposes) in the
Philippines, and the décor of each is meant to be thematic — reflective
of that region. So one room has Italian leather walls made to look like
Nipa — palm thatch. Each room also contains one the above dioramas
detailing the Imelda myth. There are 15 Stations of the Cross.
The hotel I am intentionally staying at was build by Madame and
opened in 1980 on her birthday. It was a place where she could
entertain local pals and cronies. It has 2 karaoke bars, a floating
bar/lounge filled with foreigners, an empty seafood restaurant, and a
restaurant buffet filled with Filipinos.
In the buffet at lunch I heard “Climb Every Mountain” possibly by
Tom Jones on an endless loop — for an hour! Climax after climax!
Occasionally I could hear diners quietly singing along.
The Philippines did have a written language before the Spanish
colonists arrived, contrary to what many of them claimed. However, it
was a language that theorists believe was mainly used as a mnemonic
device for epic poems. There was simply no need for a written language
in a decentralized land of small seaside fishing villages that were
largely self-sufficient.
One theory is that written language is primarily an agent of control
(a William Burroughs phrase — “Language is a Virus” was one of his
claims.) Written language was needed once a top-down administration
came into being. That and trade — which needed administrators, too.
Administrators and rulers needed to keep records and know names — who
had which plot of land, how much did they sell, how many fish did they
catch, how many children do they have, how many water buffalo? How much
then do they owe me? Naming and accounting seem to be the primary
“civilizing” functions of written language. Naturally, a version of the
local oral language gets translated into symbols as well, these
non-administrative words sort of go along for the ride.
What’s amazing to me is that what may have begun as an instrument of
control has been internalized by us as a virtue, a mark of being
civilized. We have conceptually turned what is often an object of
oppression into something we think of as good. We accept written
language so much that we feel and recognize its presence as a sign of
enlightenment — “you too are a cog in a larger system — and that’s
good.”
In the 80s a discovery of a “stone age tribe” in a remote area of
the Philippines made worldwide news. National Geographic ran a major
piece on The Gentle Tasaday, which portrayed their lives as edenic, a
kind of Ur people without any of the hang-ups of contemporary civilized
lives.
The Marcoses capitalized on this “discovery” (later exposed
as a fraud by the post-’86 press) and restricted the area — except for
visits by Madame escorting Charles Lindberg (still alive!?) and Gina
Lolabrigida for photo sessions. Hamilton-Paterson called the Tasaday a
clear-cut hoax in his Marcos book but retracted this a few years later
in an article in the London Review of Books, realizing perhaps that in
the Philippines, things so seldom are what they seem at first, even
edens, even hoaxes.
James Hamilton-Paterson on the sounds of a small village where he lives:
“Sounds
have a ringing, precise quality here. Instead of being dampened by so
much woodwork they bounce around the [palm tree] columns and are
reflected back down by the vaulting palm ribs overhead. Cocks crow; a
buffalo groans down by the river; someone chops wood. There is sudden
clatter of an iron lid on a cooking pot and a harassed mother’s
exclamation “lintik ka!” followed by a child’s laughter. The clarity of
the sounds is extreme, like a digital recording of a thousand years
ago.”
The pharmacies are filled with skin whitening creams. There are numerous TV ads for these products as well.
There are signs around town advising that there is a 5 PM curfew for
those under 18. Somehow I doubt that this is enforced — but it’s there,
just in case.
A sign on a building: “The Fraternal Order of Utopia”.
In today’s paper: NPA [New People’s Army] rebels swiped arms from a
congressman’s ranch here but left him unharmed. Further south, in
Mindanao, a group of 100 NPA killed 2 cops. These incursions by rebels
and the NPA seem an almost daily occurrence. I try to imagine what it
would be like if rebel armies roamed the U.S., taking over shopping
malls, country clubs and multinational corporation campuses. The
country would freak out, most likely. Here no one blinks.
A man zips by on a motorcycle with a Santa hat wildly flapping.
One final fantasy image. Imelda as the nurturing mother Goddess:
So, though the Marcoses’ conflation of national mythology with their
own lives and political strivings was blatant, it’s also pretty obvious
in the staged contrivances and the managed press of the Bush
administration, among others. The “story” of the inevitable triumph of
democracy the good (and messianic Christianity too) is a potent one for
a certain audience, a grand story that the media goes along with, at
least until recently. Manifest destiny, the march of progress, of
civilization. Once a “story” is “in place”, believed in, accepted, one
need only supply the appropriate images and little anecdotes to make it
seem self-fulfilling and real. Living “in” a story is more satisfying
than not.
Realpolitik sometimes gets in the way, though. The “story”
of the U.S. in Iraq does not play well with the actual global scramble
for the diminishing world oil resources, nor does the U.S. support for
Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan, a “democratically” elected dictator who
wheels and deal vast oil reserves. There’s a cognitive dissonance here;
the two stories can’t co-exist, can they?
The “civilizing” story, old as recorded history, and the desperate greedy need for resources?
The China Airlines flights both to and from Asia have a piped-in
version of the Rat Pack doing what they must have thought of as jazzy
“hip” versions of Christmas songs — they (Dean Martin?) do this glottal
stop hiccup effect that is supposed to imply feeling, emotion, but is
actually just an annoying tic — my favorites are the “jazzy” versions
of Silent Night (!) and Jingle Bells. If I didn’t know better it I
would have thought it was a parody. Maybe it is — a kind of
martini-induced ironic take on Christmas songs. An odd choice for China
Airlines, but I suspect the boozy irony got lost.
+++
Link: Torn and frayed in Manila
