By Ambeth Ocampo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:46:00 12/05/2008
Last Sunday, Nov. 30, while the auction of Southeast Asian art was ongoing in Christie’s Hong Kong, I found myself in the Quezon City Sports Club for the quarterly auction of the Bayanihan Collector’s Club.
I have never joined an auction, and the few times I was tempted to try my luck, I backed out, suspicious that the owner of the item would bid against me, bringing the price up and leaving me with the bag. I must be missing out on something here, but what bring me to these quarterly auctions are the bourse tables where many other things are on sale. It is during these pre-auction activities that you meet with other collectors, compare notes or exchange the latest gossip.
I was surprised to find one of my former students browsing through the table of the veteran collector, lawyer Jorge de los Santos, and asked the latter to give the young man a good discount to start him early. De los Santos is now semi-retired from collecting, but he infected his son Edward with the bug, and it is from the son that I purchase postcards of pre-war Philippines as well as interesting photographs.
My loot was meager. I got a photograph of Sergio Osmeña visiting a certain Mr. Rodriguez in the hospital. The man in bed looked ill, but he sat up for Osmeña, resulting in another photograph showing the same man dead. These were known as “recuerdos de patay” and if it were not bad feng shui to collect them, I would have an enviable collection by now.
The first “recuerdo de patay” I saw was in the prewar El Renacimiento that ironically was named after “rebirth” but specialized in photographs of the dead and dying. They were the original “ambulance chasers” and their reportage can be distressing.
For example, in 1911 they ran a whole issue on Teodora Alonso, Jose Rizal’s mother, showing her from sickbed to coffin. Another issue had Emilio Jacinto on a bier carrying his rifle, while a row of sad faces mourned in the background.
My great bargain last Sunday was a paperweight made by the French silver company Christofle depicting a palm with the various lines read by “manghuhula” [fortunetellers]. Jeweler Ramon Villegas looked over my shoulder as I haggled and argued that this hand was not sterling silver, but silver-plated. He then sneered, “Iregalo mo ’yan kay Madam Auring!” [“Give it as a gift to the fortuneteller Madam Auring!”]
But why would I do such a thing? I don’t even know her. The palm now rests on my table—yet another distraction during deadlines.
Searching on the Internet that evening, I found out that the hand was unique and was never reproduced by Christofle. It was not even for sale; rather it was given as a present in 1973 to their best and loyal customers. So what was this Christofle hand doing in Manila? Who would have bought enough silverware to be gifted with such a useless but beautiful thing?
The De los Santoses asked me to stay for lunch and while there gamely answered questions like: What was the name of Admiral Montojo’s flagship during the May 1898 Battle of Manila Bay? (Answer: Reina Cristina) What is the most impressive copy of the first edition “Noli me tangere” you have seen or handled? (Answer: The one inscribed to Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo by Rizal himself. It used to be in the collection of Alfonso T. Ongpin but was acquired and later presented to Ferdinand Marcos as a birthday present. It now rests in a glass case in the Malacañang Museum.) How much do you think this 19th-century book by Montero y Vidal should cost? (Answer: Not as much as the reserve price at the auction.) I felt like reminding people that I am not the replacement for the late Ernie Baron, yet it was a pleasant way to spend a Sunday morning.
I asked Attorney De los Santos what he first collected as a child. He said they were shiny coins from his mother’s purse, sea shells on a trip to the beach, etc.
I tried to think when I became a collector. Like most children, I started with coins and postage stamps. I remember that long before Pepsi had a problem with 3-4-9 bottle caps, there was a promotion that required collecting all of Snow White’s seven dwarves on the inside of used bottle caps and this was to be exchanged for a round-trip, all-expense-paid trip to Disneyland in California. I remember parents opening more Pepsi bottles than they could drink just to find “Sneezy.” That probably made a collector of me and everyone else of my generation.
Now that I sit and try to remember, it was the late E. Aguilar Cruz who infected me with the collecting virus. Books he gave away. Other trinkets he also gave away. But I remember that he sold me my first painting, a rather impressionistic-looking still life of peeled pomelos by the late Ibarra de la Rosa. I don’t even know why I picked that out of his library floor, when there were other things to be had like pre-war landscapes, a 17th-century image of Michael the Archangel, a bust of Rizal by Guillermo Tolentino, etc.
At that time well over 25 years ago, collecting art or antiques was truly a hobby. It was affordable and there was a lot to choose from. Those were the days, best described by Belinda Olivares-Cunanan and Gilda Cordero when they maintained antique shops supplied from “walkers” and “runners” in Manila’s Ermita district.
Today, collecting is a high-end game of one-upmanship: I have a bigger thing than yours. Sexual in a way, but then all the fun is gone.
* * *
Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Treasure from trash
By Ambeth Ocampo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:45:00 12/03/2008
Historians are natural-born pack rats, their living spaces often littered with books and papers. Their life and livelihood come from all that clutter. There is order in that mess, so in my home the cleaning rules are that books or papers may be stacked up neatly but must not be moved to any other place lest I have to look frantically for them. No piece of paper on any surface should be thrown away, except those that have been crumpled, torn, and thrown into the wastebasket. My father added another rule: have two wastebaskets, one for immediate disposal and the other to be reviewed lest something important be thrown away.
By far the most organized study I have seen was that of the late Teodoro A. Agoncillo. Everything had its rightful place. Knowing his part in history, Agoncillo would file every bit of paper he received—from utility bills to letters, and even random notes from students on manila paper, which he later had bound into scrapbooks. If you opened the books in his library, you would find typewritten notes on the book inside. Sometimes he would paste commentary or citations on various pages that moved him.
Before he became old and infirm, E. Arsenio Manuel filed the research papers of his students by topic, indexed them, and bound them in a series called “Pasig Papers.” These had little to do with Pasig the place, or Pasig the river. The scrapbooks contained research on history, folklore, anthropology, etc. Manuel said he learned this from H. Otley Beyer, whose “Ethnographic Papers,” also arranged by geographic region and topic, are now in the National Library of Australia.
Books are a special challenge because they take up space, and, in my case, they are so heavy that some of my narra shelves have bent or fallen off altogether. I am often too lazy to file my books properly, so when I am trying to beat a deadline and I can’t find a reference, I rush out and buy a new one—only to come upon, days later, two copies I couldn’t find when I needed them.
When Sally Arlante, then of the University of the Philippines Archives, asked for my papers 13 years ago, I readily agreed, to clear my work space. What was then a mess in my study is now neatly arranged in folders, kept in a climate-controlled room in acid-free boxes. A catalogue put order into my papers and I can now see my life in outline. Every year I send boxes of papers to UP, sparing my sisters the long and painful task of sorting them out when I pass away. I turn over research that I have used, research that I will probably never use, so that a younger person can use them and build a career.
Doreen Fernandez passed away before she could organize and donate her papers to some archive. That task was left to her sister Della Besa and her niece Maya Roxas who recently turned over boxes of papers, photos, newspaper clippings, correspondence, etc. to the Ateneo Library of Women’s Writings (ALIWW). Doreen’s papers join those of other writers like Encarnacion Alzona (first Filipina historian), Lina Flor, and friends and contemporaries like Gilda Cordero Fernando and Eugenia D. Apostol. Perhaps ALIWW should visit the Philippine Daily Inquirer and ask for the papers of Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc, Rina David and Thelma San Juan, because journalists are very bad with papers. Surely one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.
A natural teacher like Doreen would want her papers to be useful, to be consulted by others rather than kept as relics to be venerated. Now other scholars can start where she left off in terms of food and theater research.
Among Doreen’s many affiliations was with the Cultural Research Association of the Philippines, which is now rightfully extinct because its acronym spells out CRAP! Was this a private joke or a Freudian slip? Her papers might provide an answer.
Those who were fortunate to have been invited into Doreen’s cluttered study on Acacia Lane in Mandaluyong City would have marveled that the small, book-lined cubbyhole cut out from their bedroom, in a space bursting with books, papers, and bric-a-brac, was where many of her columns, lectures, and scholarly articles were born. They were first written neatly in long hand, later on an IBM electric typewriter, then on one of the earliest word processors in Philippine academia, a white monster she called “Fred” or some other familiar name.
Her similarly cluttered office at the Ateneo de Manila University’s Department of Communication was visual proof that she was very busy. Now these papers, photographs, letters, photocopies, offprints, menus, and perhaps even hurriedly scribbled notes on napkins and notebooks are evidence of a productive and well-lived life. We have published columns and sometimes drafts printed out with her corrections and additions always in her clear handwriting. All these just prove that clear thinking is a must in any sort of writing whether you write in long hand, 3x5 cards, yellow pad, or a Blackberry. That is something you learn by going through her papers.
ALIWW is a specialized library for women’s writings. One can only hope that other major universities will follow suit and fill their archives and libraries with the papers of their distinguished and productive professors, so that a younger generation may continue to learn from the generation that came before them.
* * *
Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu.
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:45:00 12/03/2008
Historians are natural-born pack rats, their living spaces often littered with books and papers. Their life and livelihood come from all that clutter. There is order in that mess, so in my home the cleaning rules are that books or papers may be stacked up neatly but must not be moved to any other place lest I have to look frantically for them. No piece of paper on any surface should be thrown away, except those that have been crumpled, torn, and thrown into the wastebasket. My father added another rule: have two wastebaskets, one for immediate disposal and the other to be reviewed lest something important be thrown away.
By far the most organized study I have seen was that of the late Teodoro A. Agoncillo. Everything had its rightful place. Knowing his part in history, Agoncillo would file every bit of paper he received—from utility bills to letters, and even random notes from students on manila paper, which he later had bound into scrapbooks. If you opened the books in his library, you would find typewritten notes on the book inside. Sometimes he would paste commentary or citations on various pages that moved him.
Before he became old and infirm, E. Arsenio Manuel filed the research papers of his students by topic, indexed them, and bound them in a series called “Pasig Papers.” These had little to do with Pasig the place, or Pasig the river. The scrapbooks contained research on history, folklore, anthropology, etc. Manuel said he learned this from H. Otley Beyer, whose “Ethnographic Papers,” also arranged by geographic region and topic, are now in the National Library of Australia.
Books are a special challenge because they take up space, and, in my case, they are so heavy that some of my narra shelves have bent or fallen off altogether. I am often too lazy to file my books properly, so when I am trying to beat a deadline and I can’t find a reference, I rush out and buy a new one—only to come upon, days later, two copies I couldn’t find when I needed them.
When Sally Arlante, then of the University of the Philippines Archives, asked for my papers 13 years ago, I readily agreed, to clear my work space. What was then a mess in my study is now neatly arranged in folders, kept in a climate-controlled room in acid-free boxes. A catalogue put order into my papers and I can now see my life in outline. Every year I send boxes of papers to UP, sparing my sisters the long and painful task of sorting them out when I pass away. I turn over research that I have used, research that I will probably never use, so that a younger person can use them and build a career.
Doreen Fernandez passed away before she could organize and donate her papers to some archive. That task was left to her sister Della Besa and her niece Maya Roxas who recently turned over boxes of papers, photos, newspaper clippings, correspondence, etc. to the Ateneo Library of Women’s Writings (ALIWW). Doreen’s papers join those of other writers like Encarnacion Alzona (first Filipina historian), Lina Flor, and friends and contemporaries like Gilda Cordero Fernando and Eugenia D. Apostol. Perhaps ALIWW should visit the Philippine Daily Inquirer and ask for the papers of Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc, Rina David and Thelma San Juan, because journalists are very bad with papers. Surely one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.
A natural teacher like Doreen would want her papers to be useful, to be consulted by others rather than kept as relics to be venerated. Now other scholars can start where she left off in terms of food and theater research.
Among Doreen’s many affiliations was with the Cultural Research Association of the Philippines, which is now rightfully extinct because its acronym spells out CRAP! Was this a private joke or a Freudian slip? Her papers might provide an answer.
Those who were fortunate to have been invited into Doreen’s cluttered study on Acacia Lane in Mandaluyong City would have marveled that the small, book-lined cubbyhole cut out from their bedroom, in a space bursting with books, papers, and bric-a-brac, was where many of her columns, lectures, and scholarly articles were born. They were first written neatly in long hand, later on an IBM electric typewriter, then on one of the earliest word processors in Philippine academia, a white monster she called “Fred” or some other familiar name.
Her similarly cluttered office at the Ateneo de Manila University’s Department of Communication was visual proof that she was very busy. Now these papers, photographs, letters, photocopies, offprints, menus, and perhaps even hurriedly scribbled notes on napkins and notebooks are evidence of a productive and well-lived life. We have published columns and sometimes drafts printed out with her corrections and additions always in her clear handwriting. All these just prove that clear thinking is a must in any sort of writing whether you write in long hand, 3x5 cards, yellow pad, or a Blackberry. That is something you learn by going through her papers.
ALIWW is a specialized library for women’s writings. One can only hope that other major universities will follow suit and fill their archives and libraries with the papers of their distinguished and productive professors, so that a younger generation may continue to learn from the generation that came before them.
* * *
Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu.
Searching for Andres Bonifacio
By Ambeth Ocampo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:48:00 11/28/2008
A few months back, I received an intriguing text message from Dr. Michael Cullinane of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who was researching in the Philippine National Archives in Manila. He teased me silly with a “discovery” that I just had to see. Another researcher had stumbled across a document stating that Andres Bonifacio was apprehended on Sept. 29, 1896, shortly after the outbreak of the Philippine Revolution, and brought to the police detachment in the “tranvia” [streetcar] station of Malabon, now a city outside Manila. I pretended to be excited because I didn’t want to spoil the fun just yet. However, I don’t want to let this “discovery” fool the gullible.
I had come across the same document over a decade ago. It said that “Andres Bonifacio” was carrying a “cedula” [residence tax certificate] with personal number 2492892 (perhaps I should place a bet on this number in this weekend’s lotto draw because Sunday, Nov. 30, is Bonifacio Day). The cedula also stated that “Bonifacio” was a native of Tambobo, a resident of Concepcion and 41 years old. His occupation was listed as “formalero” (whatever that means).
There are a number of ways to read this document, but the common thread is that the man was not the Andres Bonifacio of our textbooks. If the cedula is legitimate then we have “Andres Bonifacio” from Malabon apprehended, interrogated and produced by the authorities for “pogi points,” or brownie points. If the cedula is a fake, then it was probably used by the real Bonifacio to mislead the police and military who were hot on his trail. If the document is a fake, then that explains how Bonifacio was able to hold rallies in various places where he would tear up his cedula to emphasize his freedom from Spanish oppression.
I am sure there are people out there who will disagree and make a mountain out of a molehill with this stray document in the National Archives. We leave them to their imagination.
The real search for Bonifacio has been done, not by a historian of the Revolution, but by a demographic historian: Dr. Dan Doeppers, now retired from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Doeppers graciously shared his data drawn from the “vecindarios,” or residence lists, of Manila’s Tondo area that he combed for the years covering 1889 to 1894. We all know that Bonifacio is from Tondo, but he is not the Hero of Tondo (the titled is reserved for Raja Soliman). Doeppers’ says that the records do not list any Andres Bonifacio in Tondo during those years. He did find the following:
1. Bernabe Bonifacio, age 36, tailor, married (probable wife Rafaela Uy-Tangco, age 29, “cigarrera,” or cigarette maker).
2. Dionisio Bonifacio, age 26 or 36, married, “carrocero” (probable wife Francisca Hilario, age 35, “cigarrera”). The latter had a son named Telesforo Bonifacio, age 6. In another vecindario entry, the same Dionisio Bonifacio’s age is given as 35 and his occupation is listed as tendero. He is still married in this document to the same Francisca Hilario age 37, “cigarrera,” but now they had two children: Telesforo, age 4, and Marcela, age 3.
3. Geronima Bonifacio, 24, “cigarrera.”
You will be amazed at the amount of useless information that Dr Cullinane has for Cebu and Dr. Doeppers for Manila. I can only hope that there are young Filipino historians who will give up the promise of finding some great historical theory and start solid archival work in the Philippine National Archives or better still the archives in Spain and Mexico. It is unfortunate that the Gen-X is separated from their past because of language. I am told that the Instituto Cervantes, the Spanish cultural center in Manila, has record numbers of students who are probably taking Spanish because they can get paid more than English, or should we say American, speakers in call centers. If only a small number of these Spanish proficient Filipinos can start research work in our archives, our past will become relevant to a new generation.
The material from our National Archives makes us ask the question: If Andres Bonifacio cannot be found in the vecindarios of Tondo, where was he all that time? Was he registered in another suburb of Manila? Maybe he was but a temporary resident of Tondo and was not included in the census count? Maybe the person assigned to collect cedula fees from Bonifacio could not find him or was too scared to present a bill? Perhaps the collector pocketed Bonifacio’s cedula money? Was the collector delinquent, negligent or both?
The bottom line is that Bonifacio cannot be found in the resident lists for Tondo. If he was indeed a bona fide resident, why was he not enrolled for the head tax among the “naturales” in Tondo? If Bonifacio did not pay his taxes, he did not have a cedula. If he didn’t have a cedula, what did he tear up during the famous “Grito de Balintawak,” the Cry of Balintawak, or, depending on the book you’re reading, the Cry of Pugadlawin?
History is a very slippery discipline because there is always more than one way to see an event. Then there is the added complication of sources. Whether there is a lot or nothing, the documentation is almost always problematic. Old questions when addressed often reveal new answers, yet Bonifacio remains one of the heroes we should know more about but cannot, pending better research to find new materials and renewed investigation of the scant material we have on hand.
* * *
Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu.
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:48:00 11/28/2008
A few months back, I received an intriguing text message from Dr. Michael Cullinane of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who was researching in the Philippine National Archives in Manila. He teased me silly with a “discovery” that I just had to see. Another researcher had stumbled across a document stating that Andres Bonifacio was apprehended on Sept. 29, 1896, shortly after the outbreak of the Philippine Revolution, and brought to the police detachment in the “tranvia” [streetcar] station of Malabon, now a city outside Manila. I pretended to be excited because I didn’t want to spoil the fun just yet. However, I don’t want to let this “discovery” fool the gullible.
I had come across the same document over a decade ago. It said that “Andres Bonifacio” was carrying a “cedula” [residence tax certificate] with personal number 2492892 (perhaps I should place a bet on this number in this weekend’s lotto draw because Sunday, Nov. 30, is Bonifacio Day). The cedula also stated that “Bonifacio” was a native of Tambobo, a resident of Concepcion and 41 years old. His occupation was listed as “formalero” (whatever that means).
There are a number of ways to read this document, but the common thread is that the man was not the Andres Bonifacio of our textbooks. If the cedula is legitimate then we have “Andres Bonifacio” from Malabon apprehended, interrogated and produced by the authorities for “pogi points,” or brownie points. If the cedula is a fake, then it was probably used by the real Bonifacio to mislead the police and military who were hot on his trail. If the document is a fake, then that explains how Bonifacio was able to hold rallies in various places where he would tear up his cedula to emphasize his freedom from Spanish oppression.
I am sure there are people out there who will disagree and make a mountain out of a molehill with this stray document in the National Archives. We leave them to their imagination.
The real search for Bonifacio has been done, not by a historian of the Revolution, but by a demographic historian: Dr. Dan Doeppers, now retired from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Doeppers graciously shared his data drawn from the “vecindarios,” or residence lists, of Manila’s Tondo area that he combed for the years covering 1889 to 1894. We all know that Bonifacio is from Tondo, but he is not the Hero of Tondo (the titled is reserved for Raja Soliman). Doeppers’ says that the records do not list any Andres Bonifacio in Tondo during those years. He did find the following:
1. Bernabe Bonifacio, age 36, tailor, married (probable wife Rafaela Uy-Tangco, age 29, “cigarrera,” or cigarette maker).
2. Dionisio Bonifacio, age 26 or 36, married, “carrocero” (probable wife Francisca Hilario, age 35, “cigarrera”). The latter had a son named Telesforo Bonifacio, age 6. In another vecindario entry, the same Dionisio Bonifacio’s age is given as 35 and his occupation is listed as tendero. He is still married in this document to the same Francisca Hilario age 37, “cigarrera,” but now they had two children: Telesforo, age 4, and Marcela, age 3.
3. Geronima Bonifacio, 24, “cigarrera.”
You will be amazed at the amount of useless information that Dr Cullinane has for Cebu and Dr. Doeppers for Manila. I can only hope that there are young Filipino historians who will give up the promise of finding some great historical theory and start solid archival work in the Philippine National Archives or better still the archives in Spain and Mexico. It is unfortunate that the Gen-X is separated from their past because of language. I am told that the Instituto Cervantes, the Spanish cultural center in Manila, has record numbers of students who are probably taking Spanish because they can get paid more than English, or should we say American, speakers in call centers. If only a small number of these Spanish proficient Filipinos can start research work in our archives, our past will become relevant to a new generation.
The material from our National Archives makes us ask the question: If Andres Bonifacio cannot be found in the vecindarios of Tondo, where was he all that time? Was he registered in another suburb of Manila? Maybe he was but a temporary resident of Tondo and was not included in the census count? Maybe the person assigned to collect cedula fees from Bonifacio could not find him or was too scared to present a bill? Perhaps the collector pocketed Bonifacio’s cedula money? Was the collector delinquent, negligent or both?
The bottom line is that Bonifacio cannot be found in the resident lists for Tondo. If he was indeed a bona fide resident, why was he not enrolled for the head tax among the “naturales” in Tondo? If Bonifacio did not pay his taxes, he did not have a cedula. If he didn’t have a cedula, what did he tear up during the famous “Grito de Balintawak,” the Cry of Balintawak, or, depending on the book you’re reading, the Cry of Pugadlawin?
History is a very slippery discipline because there is always more than one way to see an event. Then there is the added complication of sources. Whether there is a lot or nothing, the documentation is almost always problematic. Old questions when addressed often reveal new answers, yet Bonifacio remains one of the heroes we should know more about but cannot, pending better research to find new materials and renewed investigation of the scant material we have on hand.
* * *
Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
