A future with a past unknown

Why culture and heritage have a key role in nationbuilding

I was a high school sophomore when Ninoy Aquino was assassinated. It was tough for me as a teenager in an all-girl school where I was sometimes at the receiving end of the hate and accusations hurled against people in my family, who were in government at that time.

My uncle, the late President Ferdinand E. Marcos, my dad’s sister Imelda Romualdez Marcos, and their children were safely ensconced at Malacañan Palace or abroad. I wasn’t, so I was able to witness all the anti-Marcos/anti-Romualdez protests at school, in the classroom, and among my classmates via pins and other pro-Aquino political paraphernalia first hand and in raw form. I didn’t have a gazillion bodyguards to serve as a protective cordon.

By my third year, it became so bad I asked my Dad if he could send me abroad for school, but he said no. He told me I had to face the attacks and be secure in the knowledge that Uncle Andy (as we called then President Marcos Sr.) was not responsible for Ninoy’s death. I managed to plod through high school, but not without being scarred for life. Who isn’t scarred by life somehow, right? High school is a tough place to be.

The attacks on my family really shook me. At that time, I saw the foundation of who I was crumble. After all, the nuns had drilled in me the importance of family and the attacks shook that foundation to its core. Who was this family I love and defended? The priest at church in his homily called us “evil,” a sentiment that was being bandied about at various churches across the archipelago following Ninoy Aquino’s death, which prompted my dad to stand up and leave the church with all of us in tow. I started to ask as I looked in the mirror and the faces of my family, “Is this what evil looks like?” I really wasn’t fully convinced. From then on, I was determined to know more about my family’s history. After all who knows, I may be able to trace by lineage the way back to the devil, if the priests in the Philippines were to be believed in the 1980s.

Many decades later, and thank goodness no links to the devil so far. But on that journey of learning more about my family history I began to learn to appreciate heritage. It made me understand how important it is for every Filipino to know and rely on their heritage in good times and bad.

As I was sifting through the speeches of the late President Marcos searching for his thoughts on culture and heritage, I saw State of the Nation addresses and speeches to various organizations. In those speeches, he mostly talked about progress in terms of infrastructure and programs to create opportunities for people to develop historical consciousness. He certainly valued it, but I had questions that needed answers.

“Why did he find it important?”

“Why should we value our heritage?”

“What purpose does it serve?”

On a personal level, I already knew the “Why?” but in the ‘bigger picture” how does one see it?

Well, my uncle always saw the bigger picture. As I continued my search to find why he found culture and heritage important, I came across three speeches that broached the topic. In essence, he believed that learning about one’s heritage and culture had a purpose: Our culture and heritage tell us our values or “ethics” (as my uncle called it) as a community, as a people, and as a nation. His cultural programs headed by my aunt, instituted commemorations of historical events and acts of remembrance (among others) to foster social memory among the old and young alike and to help reinforce cultural traits that governed how we behaved—much like the K-dramas we watch today. We see filial piety, loyalty, love of family, love of country, et al.

The priest at church in his homily called us ‘evil,’ a sentiment that was being bandied about at various churches across the archipelago following Ninoy Aquino’s death.

Our culture tells us the story of our forefathers. The stories told, whether through dance, song, cultural materials, and the technology to create them like textile, pottery, metal work etc., tell us what they deemed important, what they thought mattered because it allowed them to deal with their environment and reinforced their religious, social, political, and economic systems. These stories allowed people and societies in the past to survive. This knowledge is conveyed in our culture and in our heritage.

My uncle was concerned that the allure of the West (after all, we have been colonized by the Spanish and Americans) would eventually lead Filipinos, especially the Filipino youth, to lose their Filipino identity and forget the past.

When we look around us today, nothing evokes our historical consciousness. Our cities’ architecture, our manner of dress, the way we speak and even think and behave have been westernized. We have cultural centers but the structures themselves remind us of our colonial past, a past of subjugation, a past again influenced by the west. And there is the question in the advent of this world we call social media: Do we still need these structures to reach future generations? Or will these structures become relics of the past, just like the artifacts and performances contained within them?

As I was mulling over the ideas of my uncle, I couldn’t help remember a book I read by philosopher Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, the premise of which was “promoting the need for the natives to free themselves from those foreigners who have occupied their land.” The Spanish and Americans might have left our shores but with social media and the internet, the West and its many influences have become so ingrained in most aspects of our daily lives.