KOLUM
Winter and the Naked Nation
Reflection on Images of the Filipino in Successive Expositions
 A country need not be a colony of a foreign power; it can
well be a colony of its own leaders. - Salvador Madariaga, a Spanish
writer at a Philippine PEN lecture
Philippine Exposition in Madrid, 1887
IN ONE picture, for example, you see a landscape contrived to look
natural. The leftmost figure is a monkey. In the middle, a lumad in
hunting gear. Rightmost, there stands another lumad in a three-piece
suit.
The Asian Center hosted a "Symposium on Representations of
the Filipino in the Madrid Exposition of 1887." The historian
Jaime Veneracion lectured with a presentation of several images of
the Lumad. He explained the ideological trends in Spain that brought
our countries to that all too graphic juncture. Veneracion guided
us through the slides of the pictures, and gave us his account of
the affair, how the Lumad and our other groups were positioned and
made to pose according to the Darwinist gaze of the colonizer.
During the time of this display, texts reveal the rising temperature
of the ilustrados. Evaristo Aguirre composed a sonnet and published
it in España en Filipinas to protest the exhibition of the
Lumad who were made to reproduce their villages and rites for the
pleasure of the Crown. Aguirre lamented the death of a woman who developed
fatal pneumonia because her 'hosts' were unmindful to clothe their
specimen against their winter.
In a letter dated June 6, 1887, Jose Rizal wrote his Vater Freund,
Ferdinand Blumentritt, about the Exposition and the word from the
Madrid newspapers.
My poor compatriots who will be exhibited are
already in Madrid for some time. Some newspapers are mocking them…
I have done everything possible to prevent the carrying out of this
degradation of men of my race, but I have not succeeded. Now one woman
died of pneumonia…
I tell you, my dear friend, that my heart is very sad; I should like
to cry. I believe that right is on our side and we no longer owe Spain
gratitude.
May you fare well, my best friend, and rejoice and be grateful that
you are only a Filipino at heart and not in blood!
St Louis World's Fair Exposition in Missouri, 1904
Rizal did not live to see the St Louis World's Fair Exposition in
1904. The brutal Filipino-American War ended and the US government
systematically implemented the 'benevolent assimilation program' as
directed by the unholy vision of McKinley. The government needed grand
displays of the mighty imperial project to justify its rise as a colonial
power to its people and the world. They thus, exhibited the 'savage'
life-ways of the Filipinos to foster the sense need for white, 'humanitarian'
intervention.
In a newspaper article entitled 'Searching for Markod', Paulo Rafael
Subido covered the creation of 'Bontoc Eulogy', a 56-minute documentary
film released in 1995 by Marlon Fuentes. Fuentes followed the trail
of his ancestor, the missing Markod, a young Igorot warrior from Bontoc,
Mt Province. The Americans seduced Markod and his people on a journey
to the United States. Subido reported the proceedings of the Exposition.
Nineteen hectares of land were assigned to the
Philippine "reservation." Mock villages were built by the
tribesmen from materials that were brought from the Philippines, and
according to the exhibition catalog, there were 70 Bontoc Igorot,
20 Suyoc Igorot, and 18 Tingguian from Mt. Province and Abra.
It wasn't only the people from the Cordillera that were on display.
There were also 30 Sagobo, 38 Negrito and Mangyan, 79 Visayan and
80 Moro people at the fair. All in all, 1,102 Filipinos took part
in a living, breathing diorama.
Being the latest acquisition of the US, the Philippines was a big
hit among the fair visitors. The Igorot village proved to be a huge
success.
While Americans watched and took photos, Markod's people were forced
to perform sacred rituals to the enjoyment of the crowd. The rituals
were repeated over and over under the watchful eyes of the armed scouts
who patrolled the fair grounds.
Markod and many of the Filipinos never returned home. Two Igorot
men froze to death before they docked in San Francisco. The Americans
never returned the bodies and did not allow the captives to mourn
their dead. Fuentes discovered records stating that in 1905, a museum
held three Filipinos in a morgue. The Smithsonian Institute, he found
later, kept three Filipino brains.
Internalizing the Colonial Gaze, 2004
On my cubicle, right in front of my desk, I posted a full-page broadsheet
advertisement of last year's Ad Congress. It shows a Lumad couple
with their musical instruments. The ad extolled the musicality of
the Filipino. The picture came from the Missouri zoo known as the
St Louis Exposition.
I wonder in several directions now, one question foremost. Can I
look for this gaze in the contemporary global configuration? I cannot
find it in the usual exposition format. Close to that though, we now
view the programs of the National Geographic and Discovery channels
that portray the tribes living on the edge of globalization. I look
for it; I see a developed version in the orientalizing gaze of Hollywood
in every movie where their people, government, or some superhuman
projection of 'the American' comes in to save the world. I view the
gaze in advertisements and read it in the highfaluting, West-modeling
academe, in every hailing of 'native' or 'ethnic'. I read the condescending
gaze behind our self-denigrating 'Pinoy Kasi' or 'Ang Filipino Talaga'
statements.
Then, as I feared, this gaze becomes so ubiquitous that it escapes
our attention. It gets incorporated into the commonsensical, the most
accepted and sensible way to view things and people. We do not understand
that the colonial possession of our minds and souls infected us with
this very same, cruel gaze. They had our bodies; in return, we got
their eyes. This knowledge rises bitter as acid from my gut as I imagine
Rizal imagining other people viewing his people. In the postcolonial
condition when we appropriate and erase what we need to of the colonial
master, we must be careful that our own eyes do not deceive us in
this delicate operation of identity and identifying.
Very recently, I heard of the release of Angelo dela Cruz, a name
that recalls Flor Contemplacion and other migrant workers stranded
in conflicts and interests that seem alien to them. Such names excite
bile from our collective viscera. In the contextual flashpoints of
these names, the Filipino feels and the Filipino feels more real.
You could grasp it in the air, thick, this shared name. We know our
people are behind those names.
International media images and foreign government pronouncements play
important roles in these moments, but I focus for now on our own media
and government, at odds with the appropriation, dissemination, and
manipulation of these images. While the camps and blocs within them
solemnize the images, their exploitative interests show, eager to
make the most out of dela Cruz for their own good. The more refined
minds of our nation realize the ease of confusing the self-interest
of elections and scoops with national interest. Especially, if many
of us who call ourselves Filipinos defer the discussion and determination
of 'nation' and 'national interest, to the apparatuses and blocs of
the government, media, and religion.
We think, feel, and will miles of land and water away from our migrant
workers. Still, we grow at least interested and at most incensed with
what is available to perceive. I think that remains a good, healthy
sign of national sentiment if not national consciousness. With all
the mediation in place, however, our lenses grow multiform and multicolored.
Some eyes see our division and more internal fragmentation. Some eyes
view disappointment or downcast heads that refuse to see anymore,
giving up to the more fashionable option of paralysis. Such viewpoints
and mindsets, I posit, only render us vulnerable. The Panopticon project,
the development of an all seeing eye, falls because of the sheer impossibility
of seeing everybody inside out. The more cost-effective form of surveillance
and control is to manipulate what everybody else sees.
We must be careful - and it is a delicate, painful care we need
- that we do not appropriate the exploitative lens that the intervening
institutions inherited from the Western colonizers. I conclude this
exploratory discussion of exposition with my sentiment and stand,
but I end openly with the invitation to deconstruct the very eyes
behind positions such as this.
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