Filipino heads and headgear

The tale is told of Datu Bulan, headman of the Bagobo of Davao, who was shipped with Igorots of Cordillera for display as headhunting savages at the 1904 St. Louis World Fair. Bulan did not mind that a sign hung over his head, "Man or Woman," urging spectators to tell from his thick head of hair to the waist what he was. Mesmerized by the tall buildings and iron horses of the foreign land, he was in over his head. He determined to tour at fair’s end, and so began his heady adventure.

Signing up with Barnum and Bailey’s circus, Bulan traveled from the headlands of Oregon to America’s headquarters in Washington, meeting head-to-head many White men. One of them was a hardheaded tycoon, a collector of antiquities who took a fancy for Bulan’s headgear. Bulan bartered it over headlong, for a stout brew that gave him a bad headache in the morning. Only then did Bulan realize how headless he had been, for without his headwear he lost his nobility and native roots.

Bulan became forlorn. His headpiece somehow came into the custody of a museum headmaster. Knowing its import, the egghead curator asked Filipinos he met if they had seen or heard from the Bagobo warrior. By then Bulan had lost his head, alone and broken in strange soil. Still the headstrong keeper sent Bulan’s prize possession heading safe for home to Davao where, to this day, his descendants still wear it with head up high.

Bulan’s saga comes to mind in the exhibit, "Pang-ulo: Filipino Ideas about Heads, Headgear and Head of Community," opened last weekend at the National Museum. On display are deliberately deformed skulls from pre-Spanish ages, very old tribal headwear, death masks, moriones, scarves, earrings, necklaces, and other top ornaments. On request of exhibit planner Marian Roces, the Museum of Ethnology of Leiden, Netherlands, added its collection for the presentation that lasts till April. (Viewing hours: 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Wednesdays to Sundays.)

  Each item on show has a story all its own. Ancient Filipinos, ruling the islands for 3,000 years before colonization, deemed the head crucial: for sight, hearing, taste, smell and thought. Their headwear was not only shield from rain or sun, but also symbol of power or craft. The babaylan (medicine man), datu (chieftain) or timawa (freeman) had peculiar headpieces; so did craftsmen like the maghahabi (weaver) and the magpapalayok (potter). That of the mandirigma (warrior) usually was the most ornate.

Most tribal headgear had three common depictions: of man, bird and sun, carved from wood or sculpted with metal. This, anthropologist Zeus Salazar noted in a talk for Pang-ulo’s inaugural, was true for the Gaddang, Ifugao, Ilongot, Bisaya, Yakan and Magindanaw of the Philippine isles as it was for the Maori of Polynesia, Hemadu of central China, and aboriginal Formosan from whom all Pacific islanders descended. Man denoted leadership perhaps; bird, agility; and sun, life or plenty. The tri-symbol appeared as well on shields and later on flags, like the Katipunan’s.

The Spaniards introduced their own headwear, the tall, cylindrical, stiff top hat and the smart pointed Sevastopol among them. Tribal headgear began to disappear in mid-1800, coinciding with the first elections of native indios as cabeza de barangay (village head) and gobernadorcillo (town chief). Headpieces as class symbol gave way to handholds, specifically the baston de mando, a scepter or cane given by the Spanish governor-general to each gobernadorcillo. Genealogist Martin Tinio Jr., who described the trend, lends his collection of antique staffs and batuta to the exhibit.

Elections were an exclusive event. The gobernadorcillo was elected by the principalia: past and present cabezas and gobernadorcillos. He picked in turn the juez de policia (chief of police),  juez de sementeras (superintendent of fields), and juez de ganados (superintendent of livestock). Spain cultivated an elitist model of leaders. Elected and electors had to be citizens of high station, with no tax delinquencies. At first only 13 electors were designated to vote in the officials who served for two years. The number of voters and the tenure of officials grew under American rule to a thousand and for four years.

Spaniards served as alcalde mayor (province chief). Only in the late 1800s did indios begin assuming the higher post. By then the Revolution had erupted, and it too was led by principales. Aguinaldo and his generals were gobernadorcillos. Not being a lawyer, Bonifacio’s election at the Tejeros Convention as Secretary of Interior was questioned. The Malolos Congress too was an elite affair, historian Manuel Quezon III recounted. Local officials chose the delegates, who in turn elected the President and Cabinet. From then on local and national officials devised ways to stay in power. Only two or three families have ruled each province since the late 19th century.

Fast-forward to the present, Salazar noted, the two EDSA revolts too had tinges of elite power struggle. They might. The Filipino ideal of leader, from Roces’s research, is of katuwang, kabalikat or timbayayong – all denoting partner. Yet the leader often turns out to be of higher class. Might Filipinos today not be getting the headman of their desire, activists Mario Taguiwalo and Dan Songco thus asked, but one from concepts instilled by colonizers? And that is where the danger lies. For, today the rich complain about bad government because the poor elect bad leaders into it, while the poor blame the rich for a century of wasted opportunities to rise.

Filipinos do not change leaders by beheading. Toppling via popular revolt is symbolic guillotine nonetheless. They must resolve that big "class divide", for the aftermath could be bloody. It was so the last time it came to a head, between Aguinaldo and Bonifacio. And it also paved the entry of a new colonizer who brought to grief Bulan, whose black-and-white blowup from the 1904 fair is on display at Pang-ulo.

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