Conserving our Heritage

A PERCEIVED dilemma for the city administrators, planners, and mayors is that preserving our heritage buildings is costly and is not economically sound. They say it is better to demolish these old buildings and build new ones. They say the new ones would be more efficient and safer to work or live in. Nothing can be farther from the truth.

As a matter of fact, old buildings provide the required prestige and dignity, requirements for a city to become truly great. Prestige and dignity as provided by the visages of old buildings can and will boost the economy via tourism and increased investments.

Tourism, obviously, will increase because the added aura of respectability from the facades of old buildings casts shadows of awe among people.

Potential tourists are intrigued and would want to get to know more about the history of these structures, the history of the people who built them, and this will then build genuine appreciation of the people who built such structures.

The Pyramids at Giza, and the numerous heritage buildings and cultural heritage like the mummies, has substantially contributed to Egypt’s economy, in the underneath these buildings. Increased investments will come in, especially when the investors realize that the prestige and dignity of a place, will add luster to their companies’ corporate image. Real estate around some well maintained heritage structures also increase in value.

There is no surprise why real estate around Central Park is one of the steepest in New York, or even in the whole of the United States.

Take Venice, for example. There are reasons why Venice is still a thriving city despite seizing to be a water trade powerhouse decades or centuries ago, despite the inconvenience of gondola and water taxi rides, despite the flooding of the overreaching Adriatic threatening to engulf it.

There are reasons why preserving it from the impending doom of going under the sea is a priority of the Italian government and other concerned organizations and the funding amounts to billions of dollars.

I am not an expert but there are three reasons even laymen would know: first, the city is simply one of the most beautiful cities in the world; second, the city is historically important, as its royal families who lived in this waterworld, played an important role in Italian, and ultimately, world history; and third, the city generates millions upon millions of dollars in tourism alone.

As a matter of fact without the tourists, Venice would be a ghost town about to be buried by the sea, as the economy solely revolves around the tourists. In this example, maintenance of Venetian buildings (maybe some of them have real Venetian blinds…) did not come cheap, but its returns are in the long run, worth it, and worth millions of dollars, too. The question is, can our city’s heritage match Venice’s tourist drawing power?

The answer is, why not? We do not lack in History. Iloilo is as “historical” as any place in the world. We have had war heroes in Jalandoni, Quintin Salas, Martin Delgado, and the barely known Second World War guerillas; the foot their feet trampled whether in victory or in retreat is hallowed ground. We have had women warriors; Teresa Magbanua in all of her steed-riding-bolo-up-high glory is an example.

We had successfully routed the Spanish Army on Liberation Day 1899. Graciano Lopez-Jaena, to whom every Ilonggo looks up to, was joined by Rizal and del Pilar in Spain to fight for the betterment of our country. We were once supplying textile to most of Europe, Mexico, and the World.

From our bloodiness came to the Lopezes and other ancient tycoon families whose ancestral homes dot our plazas majestically. Our sugar mills have brought sweetness to every Filipino home; our rice lands and fruits have nourished Filipino muscles for centuries. Our churches stand majestic. We were once a capital of the Spanish operations in the Country. We were once the Queen City of the South.

Can our heritage generate tourism and boost investments? If Vigan is to be taken as an example, yes it can. Vigan has been transformed from a sleepy town content to sleep its way to obscurity into a city that has its looks to the future.

All of these because of a line of well preserved whitewashed buildings fronting each other along one street, an early experiment by the Spanish authorities into mass housing.

Iloilo has Calle Real! It is a street whose murky exteriors betray the rich heritage that it keeps hidden through decades old neglect and a mudpack of three generations of jeepney smoke and flood sediments.

The potential for Calle Real and Muelle Loney once restored to its former glory of being Escolta’s great rivals is immense.

Just imagine a line of restaurants serving authentic Filipino and Spanish cuisine, to flea market shops specializing an antiquities, to cafes where a young brood of Ilonggo intellectuals will Sartre their way into enlightenment, to a museum which will enlighten the present and coming generation of citizens and tourists alike as to who are the people who rendered their names to streets and barangays; for example Iznart, Loney, Delgado, Jalandoni, Guzman, Quintin Salas, and Torre, to a shopping mall in a well-restored century old-building approximating Harrod’s in England, where one can get quality Ilonggo textile which we use to export everywhere around the world. The possibilities are immense.

But the sad fact is that the buildings near Calle Real and Muelle Loney are going under one by one. If it is not due to neglect, then it is due to the perceived economic benefits of new buildings.

This merciless, wanton destruction of our heritage buildings only shows that we do not respect the work of our predecessors, we kick at the graves of our forefathers by rejecting their legacies to us, we spit at their achievements by bringing down the structures that represent it. We are like the heirs of a rich family, who upon looking at an heirloom of family pictures was dejected and want only the money.

We are like the heirs who destroy an old ancestral home to build a generic shopping center, not caring for the memories that dwell in every nook and cranny, not caring for the memories of the elders but rather only look forward to profit.

Indeed, most do not see as a thing of immense value these monuments of the past; rather most people see a cumbersome, outdated, white elephant of a structure that is fit for the wrecking ball. How sad, indeed the theories of Maslow and Schumpeter are right, a starving people cannot look into the value of these buildings, they can only look into how to feed themselves and survive for the moment.

However, this sad realization that a starving people cannot really be expected to develop aesthetic sensibilities as to preserve their heritage should not overpower our efforts to preserve what is left of our cultural heritage. The enlightened will show the way, the leaders should lead the pack.

Conservationists should educate the people as to the value of these treasures.

Besides the economic benefits of bringing in tourism and providing a stimulus for renewed interest in the city, preserving these heritage buildings will also lead to the development of feelings of “pride of place”. What is this pride of place?

Like all feelings, it is almost indescribable, really. It is a feeling of intense belongingness to a group of people in a certain place, a feeling that leads one to identify himself as belonging to such place and then is happy to let others know about it. How many among us are happy to be Filipinos?

This is the perennial, quintessential question. Are we happy to be Filipino? The trend of immigration, tells us that most people are not. Of course, some have gone in search of pastures of a different color than ours, but most of these same people will have no qualms admitting that they’re rather live in another place than in our country.

In our country, what is there to love? The traffic is going from bad to worse everyday. It is sticky and hot all the time. The minimum wage is not decent enough according to Ibon Foundation. The minimum wage law is not followed, and so people sweat their brows for lesser dough than they deserve according to law. The streets are dirty; floodwaters only recede once a year. The prices are so steep; it is no longer practical to buy brand new apparel.

Rather, we dive into ukay-ukay stalls and brave the threat of SARS and parasitic infestations just to buy clothes. The politics is always volatile and anytime a farcical coup may erupt.

The politics is always volatile, and it is also hopeless. Gone were the days when we voted for the brightest in the land for our leaders, especially the senators. Now we vote according to star quality, whether the senator can still win a FAMAS after his term office. The senatorial seat has become a sought after acting job. What is there to love about this country? In microcosm, what is there to love about Iloilo?

There are a thousand things to complain about the country, and the sad thing about it is, these complaints are not new. Similar complaints have been aired by Lopez-Jaena and company in the streets of Madrid and Barcelona, complaining of why government officials for the Philippines are chosen among the rejects of Spanish society. It is also interesting to see a series of pictures of leftist placards brought during their rallies. The only things that really change are the names of the presidents. The same complaints are always there. Why? Because we never learn.

Experience is the best teacher, and so it seems to follow our centuries-old History’s lessons should at least help us make wiser decisions. Wrong. Ours is a nation of short-term memories. We forget the lessons of History. We forget our History.

As I have mentioned we do not lack in history. What we lack is a sense of history, a sense of a continuing plight for our people. We lack a connection with what happened with our people in the past.

If this connection is severed, we are bound to make the sacrifices of our heroes into nothing. We are bound to repeat the mistakes of the past. We miss the lessons taught by the past. If his connection is severed, we feel as if we are like the abandoned orphans, we feel an enormous lack of self-identity, a sense of belongingness.

An orphan finds it very difficult to see a whole family with kids in the arms of their fathers, and the mothers looking on. Without a sense of history, there will be always a big lump in our throats as other nations honor their pasts and look to their heroes as children do their parents. They will be made proud by their ancestor’s struggles.

We must preserve this link with the past. An oft-repeated Filipino adage says “ang ‘di marunong tumingin sa pinanggalingan ay ‘di makakarating sa patutunguhan.” It is true.

To preserve this link with the past, we seek out an preserve documents, we continue our traditions, like the fiestas, novenas, eating batchoy, we compose our experiences into song and keep singing old songs, even recite tribal epics which belong to the tribes that have remained intact despite the influence of Western Culture.

But for me preserving heritage buildings is as important as preserving documents, or any of these activities. By looking at the façade of a building we can see how the inhabitants, or the owners, wanted the building to be seen.

Looking at the interiors, one can see how they wanted to live. Were they people of comfort or Spartan-like? The interior decoration of a building alone is a goldmine of historical interest. Old houses of Iloilo and Negros have paintings on their walls by artist’s famous and unknown, some will remain anonymous forever, but it speaks of Ilonggo artists. The artistry of the Ilonggo is on display by the manner of intricate carvings at par with Paete and the rest of the world.

The engineering of the houses itself is of marvel, how has it withstood the test of time? Our Churches speak of a people that are unique in the history of colonization; we accepted an introduced in religion and so became the only predominant Christian nation in Asia for quite a time, although East Timor can now be counted as another nation steeped in Christianity.

Let us preserve our heritage buildinggs. It will help us define our national identity, and more specifically in our City, which is the center of the Hiligaynon speaking peoples of the country (I dare say, even define a Hiligaynon Nation if the shift to federalism is approved). Thus by preserving our structures of national historical interest, we uphold the Constitutional provisions on the preservation of heritage.

But all of the above reasons are shallow compared to the ultimate reasons for preserving our national heritage. We owe it to our children. Let us not make a nation of misguided people, people who have no sense of direction and float aimlessly among other nations, simply because they have lost the landmarks of History.

(The writer is a student of the Iloilo Doctors’ College and the first prize winner in the essay writing contest organized by the Rotary Club of Iloilo City and the Iloilo City Cultural Heritage Conservation Council last February)

By Rodelyn Pasyal
Source - Sunstar Iloilo News Online

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