Thanks to @ninaterol for sending this my way.

A fascinating 3D walkthrough of the Spoliarium by Juan Luna. The work was accomplished by ‘karlgustav’ (according to the Vimeo page) of UST.

Nicely done.

lopeziana:

Postscript to La Pepa and A Painting by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes: La Junta de Filipinas

“In 1815, Goya was commissioned to commemorate a meeting of the junta of the Royal Company of the Philippines, then a Spanish colony. The result was one of the most subtly devastating comments ever made by an artist on officialdom, on the pompous gathering of authorities to determine the fate of others. In the dead center of the canvas, whose vast dimensions (more than thirteen feet wide) and sweeping one-point perspective suggest virtual extension of the spectator’s space into the council room, we see Ferdinand VII himself, a tiny figure seated haughtily against a round-back chair a trifle larger than those that fan out around him. But this foreboding image of power is so remote that it becomes a phantom of judicial authority. Moreover, the simple box space, evocative of the most stable and rational order, is invaded by engulfing shadows that contrast strangely with the disintegrating glare of sunlight from what seems an alien world outside. Inside, all is darkness and inertia. The figures on the two sides have barely the energy left to shift their legs as they squirm with boredom, and those on the dais look as if they may soon be absorbed into their chairs.”

Quote from 19th-Century Art by Robert Rosenblum and H.W. Janson

To know more about the painting

Fantastic painting.

March 16, 1521

Ferdinand Magellan, after what can only be charitably termed an arduous journey filled with betrayal, murder, disaster, and derring do on the high seas, arrived at his ultimate destination: He arrived at Las Islas Filipinas, more specifically the expedition first spotted land on this date. Of course back then he named us, or at least the islands of Samar and others, Islas de San Lazaro. The name Las Islas Filipinas would come later, given by Ruy de Villalobos.

While the Magellan expedition is popularly thought to have been the first encounter between the inhabitants of the archipelago and Europeans, this actually wasn’t the case. There are encounters that predated his arrival, most likely by Portuguese who plied the southern trade routes. Which, naturally, brings up the interesting observation that the natives were not naive and innocent, there to be taken advantage of by the rapacious Spaniards and Europeans. But, that is a point for another discussion.

Magellan’s arrival and subsequent stay, up to that point, was the most document engagement between the West and East in the archipelago. And in effect, it was the moment that began the process of bringing our world closer together. East meets West. With Magellan bridging the gap, and later Urdaneta mapping a stable route, globalization began. We became, in many ways, one of the most important entrepôt in the world, at that time, and subsequently in human history. 

Forgotten yes, but fascinating nonetheless.

I don’t hate the West. As a matter of fact I like the West. I pretty much spent my entire educational career in a Western context, so I understand where a lot of this shit is coming from. The sentiments are in the right place, it’s the methodology that is flawed, and more than a little dangerous.

I think a lot of these armchair activists who jump on the advocacy du jour train need to spend a lot more time reading up and studying the underlying cultural and socio-economic contexts of other countries before offering solutions and being all “Imma gonna save the children.” It’s old, it’s tired, and frankly it’s just a rejiggering of the old white man’s burden schtick that has been oh so destructive in the past.

Being all academic for a second, Margaret MacMillan said that “If you do not know the history of another people, you will not understand their values, their fears and hopes or how they are likely to react to something you do. There is another way of getting things wrong and that is to assume that other people are just like you.”

Basically, learn about other cultures and their historical context. Understand why their country is the way it is and what it actually is like right now. Listen to them. Don’t try and relate, don’t be all “I feel your pain.” That’s just demeaning. But try and learn from them, be open to their experiences. Respect where they are coming from.

All you have to do is look at the history of Western interventionism to understand how profoundly misreadings of a people’s culture and history can fuck them up for decades. I live in a country that was the victim of that.

Most in the developing world do. That should give everyone enough to pause whenever military interventions are declared as necessary and immediate. Work with the people to come up with solutions, that’s key and that is the critical ingredient that is often forgotten. We know our countries, we don’t need saving and we don’t need rescuing. What we do need is help on our own terms.

I have encountered that a lot, people coming to the Philippines and immediately telling us what is wrong with our country and how to fix it; all the while making sad eyes and telling us they ‘understand our pain.’ Really? You do? How wonderful for you. Want a cookie?

In other words, listen, study, and learn about other cultures and countries. It’s a novel idea.

The power of well-written and researched history, by professional historians aware of their vast responsibilities, is that it provides the tools needed craft a better future for all. In Margaret MacMillan’s conclusion in The Uses and Abuses of History she wrote “…a citizenry that cannot begin to put the present into context, that has so little knowledge of the past, can too easily be fed stories by those who claim to speak with the knowledge of history and its lessons.”  That is the situation extant in the country today. It is a situation that fuels many of the social, cultural, and political problems that we still face. One of the things that history teaches is to challenge dogmatic and sweeping generalizations, especially those that purport to have all the answers, to be the one true interpretation of the past.  History provides us with the tools necessary to question and question some more, while bad history (and its application) does little more than mislead and obscure; usually for purely political or selfish interests.

A little self-serving is allowed now and then right? Please click through to read my little essay on bad history and how it is affecting our understanding of EDSA 1.

The Last February

Today marks the sixty-seventh (67th) anniversary of the commencement of the Battle for Manila. Beginning three days ago US forces began landing in Batangas and other areas, their objective the emancipation of Manila and the rest of the Philippines. For three long years the Philippines was under the thumb of Japanese rule; with far too many either outright killed or living in fear. And far too many of those among the social elites, those who chose not to fight or to at least resist (of which were the majority), were collaborating with the enemy. They hailed the Japanese Occupation as the ‘freedom of the Philippines from tyranny,’ all the while turning a blind eye to the plight of their own countrymen.

Over one million Filipino civilians died in those three years. They were brutalized, starved, scared, and cowed into submission. Men, like Benigno Aquino, chose to aid the Japanese in oppressing their people; while heroes like Justice Jose Abad-Santos were brutally executed for refusing to bow their heads. Some, later on, took the opportunity presented by World War II to pad their own personal history, to invent medals and honors and even battles for self-aggrandizement (Ferdinand Marcos). Between those three, who do we remember best? Or, for that matter, of all the moments of bravery and self-sacrifice, of all those who fought and died in defense of their country, what do we remember? That abuse of history for personal gain, that myth-making, is what happens when a country and a people lose the perspective and context that an understanding of history provides.

That was the story for those three years. Yet, for Manilenos the worse was still to come. February 1945 marked both the beginning of the emancipation of the Philippines and the worsening of a three year long nightmare.

Manila and the Philippines, while not necessarily as militarily important in the Pacific Theater as other objectives, was politically and socially significant (the Bataan Death March is still remembered) for the United States. It was the chief stronghold of American influence in the East; we were their first grand experiment in exporting American style democracy. It is arguable whether that experiment succeeded, whether they should have been here in the first place (for us, never), but what cannot be ignored the fall of the Philippines was the first, and only time, that the United States has lost territory under its control. Even here we forget that while Pearl Harbor was being bombed, the Philippines was under attack as well. The loss of the Philippines struck at the very heart of American military and social might. As expressed by General Douglas MacArthur, they will be back. They had to come back.

By this point in 1945, the Allied Forces were almost certain of victory in the European Theater; May 8, 1945 would mark Germany’s unconditional surrender. The United States and Allies had already turned its attention to the Pacific Theater, to us and other territories that had been conquered by Japan. The final offensive to end World War II was engaged.

In 1942, when the United States lost Manila, they declared it an open city. This time around, the Japanese military leadership in Manila refused to do so (there was actually an order to open up Manila that was refused). They kept Manila as a closed city. They rounded up civilians and incarcerated them. They upped their campaign of terrorization. They took out their anger towards the progress of the war out on a helpless civilian population.

There are few survivors left who remember Manila as it was before the War and during the War. But, when you sit down and talk with them their memories of February 1945 are harrowing. They are the stuff of nightmares. Japanese soldiers bayoneting women (after raping them) and children in the streets. Boarding up families in homes, setting the buildings on fire, and shooting anyone who tried to flee. Running from bombs and hit squads, watching mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, gunned down and killed.

This is not to denigrate the Japanese today in anyway. This is the reality of what happened in 1945. I think Beniting Legarda said it best: “We can forgive, but we should never forget.” Some survivors though, refuse to even remember; such was the horrors they saw and lived through.

While the Battle for Manila is much overlooked and basically forgotten in histories of World War II, the numbers are staggering. Manila saw the worst and most vicious urban fighting of the entire war. Over 100,000 civilians were killed, many by the Japanese. Much of Manila was destroyed. By the end, the Pearl of the Orient was no more. The destruction and death tolls in Manila compares or even exceeds that of Warsaw, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.

Sixty-seven years ago the long month began. Manila was already gutted by then. Manila was practically non-existent by the end.

Today it is all sort of forgotten, except in vague statements like “Manila used to be the Pearl of the Orient” or “We were the second-most destroyed city after Warsaw.” Outside of that? Nothing really. And I really do believe that loss of historical remembering directly informs how we see ourselves today and how we understand our country. We have lost the fundamentals behind the beauty that was Manila; we have forgotten the bravery and sacrifice of Filipinos who continued to fight against oppression and tyranny. We have forgotten all of that. The memory of that beauty of spirit, even amidst the destruction, of our people and our country is gone.

And maybe, because of how we relate and understand our history, the spirit of the Filipino is diminished as well.

Photo from Flickr

The Quote

Manila was uniquely beautiful: she was universally know as the Pearl of the Orient, a jewel beyond price. Many cities were destroyed between 1942-1945-a long list in which the names of Stalingrad, Hamburg, Warsaw, Dresden, Berlin, Hiroshima stand out prominently…Yet in the case of Manila, something rare, and something irreplaceable, was destroyed. The Philippines lost their capital, but the world had lost a city whose very evolution, drawing upon the cultures and histories of four different continents, had made it part of the international heritage.

- The Battle for Manila (pg. 16)

The Photo

Aerial photograph of Intramuros and Manila taken during the 1930s.

diariodefilipinas:

Jan 17, 1897. 2:20PM

Manila, Philippines - While the Philippine Revolution, which began in earnest on August 30, 1896 when hostilities broke out between the Manila-based faction of the separatist group “Katipunan” and Spanish forces under the command of Governor-General Ramon Blanco, has been…

diariodefilipinas:

A photograph of the scene earlier today when the execution of thirteen convicted revolutionaries was carried out at Bagumbayan Field.

Source

January 11, 1897 - The Thirteen Martyrs of Bagumbayan Field were executed. Among them was one of the wealthiest men of his day, Francisco Roxas. A man who refused to leverage his position of influence or to sell out his friends to save his life.

He was brought to trial at the same time as Antonio Luna, Pio Valenzeula, and others who testified against Jose Rizal.