Rekindling racial pride

In the latest study of Filipinos going abroad for greener pastures, statistics show that everyday, 3,000 Filipinos leave the country. That’s 3,000. Majority of us do so, not because we want to but because we have to. We move into an international global world where identification of one’s presence is often made, not by the individual’s skills but by the race of which we are a member of. Even the best of us shake our heads at the downward trend our racial pride has taken in the past decades. We in foreign lands mix and mingle into the host country’s culture and lifestyle, we want so much to be assimilated, to belong in that foreign milieu, while deep inside, we long for the life and family back home. Many of us abroad find that distance makes the Filipino soul long to be expressed, thus, community gatherings and the expression of an inner "kalooban" are paramount. Then we realize, that in this shrinking, flat world defined by globalization, what makes us unique is our culture. What roots us is our country, with its own unique history. More now than ever, we must love, proclaim and celebrate it. This, I believe is what is so sadly lacking today. The knowledge that we are the sum of many cultures and that even those we revile as colonizers have contributed to the richness and dynamism of what we call Filipino culture.

In Metro Manila, if we were to identify a cultural site one can visit in a day, Intramuros would be the only choice. Intramuros is a heritage site where history is ever present via the ruins of walls left by Imperial Spain. It took all of 400 years under Spain to have a foreign culture assimilated, acculturated into our own, to be part of our race’s consciousness. It wasn’t all that bad really, the coming of Spain and Christianity...but this often has to be retold beyond history books in school. We need to go back to the stories that Intramuros represents now in our adulthood, even if but to nurture the "Filipino-ness" inside us.

I’ve been working with the Department of Tourism on a project we will launch on Nov. 17. It is called A Walk Back In Time: The Intramuros Theater-in-the-Round Experience. In this year ending, we invite Filipinos to revisit the past. The Intramuros pasyal or walk-about allows visitors to watch a cutting edge interactive, multi-media pocket theater experience amidst the ruins of Plaza San Ignacio. It will include a parade (as everyone loves a parade) and a fashion show of the costumes and styles of the period. Then theater amidst the stars and the ruins! Tanghalang Pilipino’s dynamic actors and actresses will dramatize in song, music and dance the lifestyle during this unique period in the timeline of Philippine history. The theater presentation will repeat twice nightly, at 8 and 9 p.m. Music runs in the soul of the Filipino... so there will be chorale presentations of kundimans, and we’ll celebrate the roots of the colonial brass bands that first played music in the squares of Intramuros by having contemporary bands of all musical styles and genres perform starting at 10 p.m. during some nights. The nostalgia of the Christmas spirit will be reflected in the beauty of the Filipino parols while puto-bumbong and bibingkas are being cooked nearby. But of course, we will throw in a cuisine festival, highlighting the cuisine of countries that the Philippines interacted with before and during the Spanish colonial period. As we are all such foodies, there will be a choice of Spanish, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Filipino, and Arabian-Malay-Persian cuisines. Young award-winning filmmakers will put together beautiful AVPs that may be viewed, too.

This Christmas, I suggest to make a shift, a change...join us in Intramuros. Let’s leave the malls alone for a while for they will forever be there anyway. A Walk Back in Time is just for this season. And for that, it becomes special. I believe that deep down, we really are proud of being Pinoy...and for those who aren’t, it’s because you don’t know or care to know much about our culture. Retracing the steps of history’s past is not some boring scholarly endeavor, rather, a major tool in harnessing one’s unique identity in a world fast-becoming, acting and looking all the same everywhere.

(Walk-Back-in-Time will run every Friday and Saturday from Nov. 17 until Dec. 23 at the Plaza San Ignacio in Intramuros from 6 to 11:30 p.m. Admission is free to the general public. Visit the weblog http://awalkbackintime.multiply.com.)