Trixie Cruz-Angeles: Lost and Longing

By Rose Beatrix C. Angeles (Trixie Cruz-Angeles)

INQUIRER.net

First Posted 07/29/2008

My love is like a river in the Sea of Tranquility

“The Arms of Orion” (theme of Batman Forever)

BEHOLD AND WEEP- at the totally different face of Manila a hundred years ago, with its esteros flowing as a network of transportation and trade. In that era, the American master architect Daniel Burnham “believed that with proper planning he could turn Manila into a ‘city equal to the greatest of the Western World,’ with a bay like Naples’s, a winding river like Paris’s and canals like those of Venice,” writes Rose Beatrix Angeles. 

(Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian Institute)

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Manila was becoming known as the Venice of the Far East. This was due in no small part to the admiration of the practical and aesthetic possibilities of the esteros or inland rivers by one Daniel Burnham, then architect of Manila.

Yes, he’s the Burnham of the park in Baguio and the Manila Burnham plan. Burnham believed that with proper planning he could turn Manila into a “city equal to the greatest of the Western World,” what with a bay like that of Naples, a winding river like that of Paris and canals like those of Venice.

And yet, according to one Alexander Russell Webb, an American diplomat in the Philippines in 1891, the Philippines, being a group of islands, had no need of canals. What did he know?

Rizal himself spoke of how the waterways were like streets where commerce was conducted and the houses by the esteros would have steps at their backs leading to the water. He was after all from a Tagalog province and spoke as a person of the river, a taga-ilog.

But in some way, Webb was correct. The waterways of yore were not canals, strictly speaking, but the incursions of the sea intermingling with the freshwater exit points of rivers. Manila itself is a series of islands and I theorize that the canals were actually the water filled spaces or inner seas between these islands.

When Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, founder of Manila, sailed into the then unnamed Manila Bay, he found, not mere communities but sovereign nation states that conducted international trade, with unique cultures of their own and governance as sophisticated as that of any European country. It is possible that the existence of these nation states were due in no small part to the island divisions. But like any conqueror of the time, Legazpi took that good thing as a matter merely to be disposed of, proceeding to claim the islands for the Spanish crown.

At the other end of the country – specifically, Butuan – were discovered balanghais, large ocean-going vessels made of hardwood, usually teak, held together not with nails by vines and vegetal glue. They constitute positive proof that our ancestors crossed the Pacific, reaching as far as Madagascar (Africa), a few years ahead of the Vikings’ Atlantic crossing, firmly establishes us as a sea-faring people. Ask any Pinoy seaman; he’ll tell you how good we are on any ocean and on any ship.

Our affinity for water is thus written into our genetic code. Whether island or river dweller, we recognize our desperate need to live with water. When I was in college in the United States, one of my friends wondered if I didn’t have some kind of shower fetish because I always had to take shower every time I went out. Even in the dead of winter. At any rate, it therefore comes as a surprise that the modern Filipino seems hell bent on treating the rivers as dumpsites. It is also so strange to see Burnham’s envisioned Venice of the Far East turned into ramshackle slum areas or unrecognizably filled in with concrete and turned into ugly condominium units – hence the floods and the traffic.

These waterways were “incursions of the sea intermingling with the freshwater exit points of rivers.

Manila itself is a series of islands and I theorize that the canals were actually 

the water filled spaces or inner seas between these islands.” 

(Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian Institute)

When did we stop caring about our water and waterways? When did we decide to crush them out of existence? How can we dream of far-away Europe and rhapsodize about the Thames and the Seine and the Danube, but not lift a finger for Maria Clara’s Pasig? So many of my friends have gone to Bangkok and were amazed at the explosion of color from the waterways, and awed at the respect and reverence those muddy waters get from the people who traverse it.

I have no answers. But I do know this: The ancient Filipinos had deities for the water. We continue to believe in those deities, as evidenced by the stories of annual drowning in certain beaches and rivers that make us whisper : the water has claimed another life. Yet despite these repeated sacrifices, we have continued to disrespect them. The deities of our ancestors, in accordance with our ancient beliefs, shall one way or another exact vengeance by taking away their life-giving goodness. Or our karmic retribution shall soon be evident. Or our Lord and Creator will decide that what he has given shall soon be taken away.

Whatever you believe, the current practices can no longer hold. We can no longer coddle vote-rich informal settlers in waterways or allow unabated logging. We must save our waters.

The toll has actually begun. Destruction by water has been the cause of massive deaths in recent history; floods unprecedented in swiftness and devastation now hound us. Sea tragedies shock us out of complacency. The waters no longer yield their bounty to us.

We must somehow find the strength to rediscover our water-culture and re-learn it in order to survive these times.

(Source: Trixie Cruz-Angeles - INQUIRER.net)
To know more about Trixie Cruz Angeles, check out: I AM TRIXIE CRUZ