This is the afterword to ‘Roots of Identity,’ a book of essays by Renato L. Santos, with Alice Guillermo, published by Leon Gallery to be launched June 11 at its main gallery, at Eurovilla I, in Legazpi Village, Makati City.
Retired from banking and finance for some years now, Renato L. Santos (“Butch”) has devoted himself to an undertaking he was only able to take up on the side before, although he has always applied himself to it with a passion that normally, I would think, is difficult to match for a regular business enterprise or job. And he happens to have the temperament for it; he is, after all, a poet at heart — an awarded poet in fact — and a lifelong student of Philippine art and culture and history, with a specialization in some of the study’s sub-disciplines. This book is itself testament to all that.
Butch and I come from the same town, Malabon, and went to the same Catholic high school there, St. James Academy. As young men, we moved freely in a community where the dominant operating legacy was revolutionism and multi-ethnicity, not the more typical one — patronage. Until my young adulthood, I lived with my parents on a street named for a Filipino-Chinese lawyer and reform advocate under the Spanish colonial rule — Gregorio Sanciangco. According to my father, his own father was a Sanciangco devotee. Only a few kilometers south of us, in the contiguous town of Caloocan, lay the village where the historic Cry of Pugad Lawin was raised, in August 1896, signaling the launch of the Philippine Revolution.
Butch himself lived on our northeast end, site of a rousing annual celebration of the Immaculate Conception, the seminal Christian miracle for which his village was named — Concepcion — and to which his parish was consecrated. As a boy and a young man, I never missed that carnival, and recall it now in a way that might be serviceable here, even as a little footnote.
Allegedly, the Aglipayan image was all head, hands, and feet, its disembodiment concealed in clothes. The third and last image was a Virgin all dressed up
Concepcion reserved its ultimate religious fervor for the Immaculate Conception with three days of feasting, fairgrounds fun, and church rituals, from December 8, the official day, to 10. Each day built up to a procession carrying an image of the Virgin with a different look. The first appeared in its everyday look in church — simply clothed. The second was an all-wooden sculpture, with everything carved in — clothes, accessories, everything; it was intended, I would be later told, to make a comparison between the Catholics and the breakaway Aglipayans of how they revered the Virgin. Allegedly, the Aglipayan image was all head, hands, and feet, its disembodiment concealed in clothes. The third and last image was a Virgin all dressed up, jeweled, and paraded on the streets and the river around amid copious fireworks.
Those Aglipayans were followers of Gregorio Aglipay, whose own story goes into the heart of the matter Butch raises in his book. It makes a case, if a rather extreme one, for the reservations with which our colonials approached evangelization. Aglipay fought discrimination against him and his fellow Filipino clerics and, upon excommunication, built his own Philippine Independent Church, with himself as its chief bishop. He went on to join the revolution both against the Spaniards and their successors, the Americans.
Although townmates and schoolmates, separated by a mere few years, Butch and I had not actually met until recent years, as comrades against latter-day propagators of colonial political habits and their clients. Having breathed the same invigorating sea air and imbibed the same liberal traditions, we immediately hit it off.
For his book, to be sure, Butch had to go and investigate beyond home turf. A generalist myself by the nature of my profession — “just a journalist,” as they say — I’ve been spread rather thin and therefore had scarce opportunity, if at all, to develop any side specialization of my own. And, once retired, which I don’t even foresee coming voluntarily, I probably would not have the energy left for that. I, therefore, have had to rely on specialists like Butch for a deeper and more nuanced appreciation of certain things.
Another connection between us is Alice Guillermo, the art critic and historian. Her essay in this book was written, upon Butch’s request, as early as when his book was only taking form in his mind. It overarches and at the same time reinforces his findings. Alice was herself a first choice of mine as a resource expert in her field when I was a newspaper editor. Pity she could not stay long enough to see Butch’s idea in full fruition— she’s been gone six years.
I am myself only grateful to have had to do somehow with the book, professionally at first, as editor, and progressively more intimately, as an avid learner myself. The experience has been so edifying and intriguing it has set me off on a trajectory of thought that helps me considerably in my work as a sociopolitical columnist.
It certainly takes a special quality and turn of mind for one to be taken intently with something at first sight and quickly see well beyond it. With Butch, that instinct and prescience led him to the roots of the identity of a people who had accommodated a foreign faith and system of governance over centuries of Spanish colonization. His investigations deepened and intensified with his acquisition, which became purposeful over time, of items of Catholic religious art and artisanal works done in the Philippines. These he acquired with such detailed provenance as only someone like him could have turned up. Nearly fifty of them illustrate his book.
The book points to some sort of compromise between prospective converts and colonial proselytizers as reflected not only in the appearance of Catholic icons done by Filipinos but also in the way these icons are venerated. Again, only someone in Butch’s special shoes could have reasonably suspected, and eventually validated, the sort of concessional acceptance that that foreign faith had gained among natives who had had absolutely no idea of it beforehand. Native representations of the faith incorporate aspects of the converts’ pre-colonial beliefs and traditions, and even of their physical characteristics.
I myself have begun to wonder how much of those native traits and predispositions carry over into contemporary history, into our own time. I wonder what of these constitute virtue and what constitute iniquity, and what make for fair advantage and what don’t in a social system supposed to aspire to freedom and equal opportunity for all. Indeed, seeing in my fairly long life how even more lopsided our society has become, I wonder whether to feel good or simply being humored every time such normally admired qualities as hospitality, adaptability, resiliency, flexibility, and patience are attached to our national character.
The foregoing is an afterword to Roots of Identity, a book of essays by Renato L. Santos, with Alice Guillermo. It is published by Leon Gallery and will be launched at its main gallery, at Eurovilla I, in Legazpi Village, Makati City.
