Trixie Cruz-Angeles: In Our Image

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

INQUIRER.net

First Posted February 05, 2008

Religion is the opiate of the masses - Karl Marx

www.philippines.hvu.nl 

Even the most modern Filipinos will not allow two weddings in one family in the same year for fear of sukob, the belief that both couples will suffer bad, even fatal luck. To this day even city bred families send their babies or children to the hilot for unexplained fevers because of “pilay.” House moving and building are incomplete without the usual parade of cotton, rice, salt and religious figures – but only after coins have been strategically embedded into the foundations – after which, ironically, we ask a priest to conduct a house blessing.

Strangely enough, as exemplified by these house blessing rituals, we Filipinos have conscripted our Catholicism into this belief system, so that we even ask our priests to bless other mundane objects like our cars – often to the consternation of our more modern, Western-oriented priests.

Trixie Cruz-Angeles: Intramuros, Manila

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

INQUIRER.net

First Posted 10:58:00 07/09/2008

Ang tangi kong pag-ibig

Ay minsan lamang

Nguni?t sa iyong akala

Ay hindi tunay

Hindi ka lilimutin,

Magpakailan pa man?

Ang Tangi Kong Pag-ibig

Lyrics by Constancio de Guzman

During the governorship (1571-72) of Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, the founder of Spanish Manila, the only fortification in the city enclosed what had been Rajah Sulayman's palisade of palm logs and banked earth, though even then the city limits extended well beyond the Malay settlement to encompass what is today the Manila Cathedral site and adjoining land up to where San Agustin Church still stands.

Calle Real in a restored Intramuros is a scene from centuries ago

When Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim began dismantling some of former Mayor Joselito Atienza's projects, I did not raise my voice in protest. Of special interest to me was the dismantling of restaurants on the Roxas Boulevard bayside.

Mayor Lim was well advised in that instance, the area's attraction is not the entertainment provided by restaurants and bars, but Manila Bay's famed sunset. All the paving and fireworks could only gild the lily of that daily nature show.