P130-M museum goes beyond Rizal's heroism

IF JOSE Rizal were alive today, he would probably be wowed by this 130-million-peso museum put up in his honor as part of the tourism revival sweeping Manila's Old Intramuros District.

For the recently unveiled Bagumbayan Light and SoundMuseum, which features up to 140 mannequins in dramatic, historical tableaux, offers not just another textbook version of the national hero's life and times. It also seeks to evoke among Filipinos the Rizalian spirit of "breaking psychological walls,"according to the museum's chief builder, Tourism Secretary Richard Gordon.

"Intramuros was the Walled City built by the Spaniards to keep ordinary Filipinos out, not only physically. The walls were used to harass and intimidate us, leaving us feeling eternally victimized and mired in our own petty bickerings. It was Rizal who broke through that wall," Gordon said.

Why Bagumbayan? It was in tribute to the "New City" founded by Rajah Sulayman after his old fortress in Manila was overrun by the invading Spaniards. That same stretch of land [which would later become Luneta] was eventually "fertilized by the blood of martyrs," like Rizal, Gordon explained.

The moving dolls in life-like costumes, the sets and other effects take visitors through a 45-minute tour of Philippine history: from prehistoric times, the arrival of the Spaniards and Christianity, the shaping of Filipino culture under the prayles and the brewing revolutionary movement, up to Rizal's execution in 1896.

But it was the voice-over script that made the museum a biting commentary on the social ills Rizal exposed during his time, and which Gordon said still plagued the Filipino way of life to this day.

In a series of scenes depicting how the friars ministered to the faithful, religion was said to have been reduced into a "transactional" relationship between God and worshipper, with the prayle acting as the "padrino" or go-between whose favors should also be courted.

"That's why up to today, we seek out padrinos and have politicians as wedding sponsors. When we need to apply for a building permit, we don't ask first about the procedures; we ask if we 'know somebody' at City Hall," he added.

When the Spanish succeeded in repulsing Dutch invaders in Manila Bay, the friars taught the people to attribute the victory to a "miraculous" intercession of the Blessed Virgin, rather than the bravery of the enlisted Filipino natives, one tableau noted.

Gordon would explain later: "This was how they killed our sense of enterprise and initiative. We were told to pray to St. Anthony and hope our lost wallet would eventually show up, or plead to St. Jude during 'hopeless' situations."

"We became a nation of prayer and song," the script read. The kundiman--which Gordon said was from the phrase "kung hindi man" or "if it is not to be"--evolved as a popular song genre from the Spanish period as a "consolation for our miseries."

"We are not questioning [Christian] beliefs but only what was bastardized in our faith," he said when asked whether the script has drawn criticism from conservative religious groups.

300 revolts

A major portion of the tour was devoted to explaining why it took up to "300 sporadic revolts" against Spain-short-lived uprisings led by local patriots like Dagohoy, Gabriela Silang, Hermano Pule and Tamblot-before a revolutionary movement of national scope began to emerge under the leadership of Andres Bonifacio and Emilio Aguinaldo.

This was because the majority of the Filipinos then preferred "to watch on sidelines and wait for who would emerge the likely winner," Gordon said. "Even in our politics today, we will join [the side] we perceive as popular and 'winnable.'"

The scene for the 300 revolts is arranged in such a way that visitors will be taking the second floor of the museum in order to complete the episode. Gordon said this conveyed the uphill "struggle" of the revolution at the time when most Filipinos preferred to "wait and see" from the safety of their balconies as battles unfolded below.

"Even if they were silently rooting for their countrymen, they were reluctant to take risks. They lost their convictions," he said. "Whereas Rizal put his real name on his novels even though he need not to. He returned home although he knew would be incarcerated and executed.

Former nunnery

The tour ends in a rather dolorous scene: a Pieta-like rendition of Rizal's burial, with her mother Teodora Alonzo kneeling next to his corpse draped in white cloth.

The two-story museum used to be the Beateria de San Ignacio of the original Intramuros, the first nunnery established in the Philippines.

When the Department of Tourism started reviving Intramuros as a tourist spot in 2002, the structure was just another dark "bodega," Gordon recalled. Governor Rafael Buenaventura of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (Philippine central bank), which owns the building, quickly approved the project, he said.

It took a year of construction work, using only locally made materials, to turn the decrepit warehouse into the crowd-drawer that it is today. The final script relied on several writers, including newspaperman and Makati Representative Teodoro Locsin, Jr. while the visual elements included inputs from film director Chito Roño.

For historical accuracy, the DoT consulted with the Ateneo de Manila history department and former education minister Onofre D. Corpuz.

No fees are charged visitors to the museum, which opened on Nov. 30. Visitors are admitted in groups for a guided, 45-minute walk-through.

At the end of each tour, they get to listen to a video "epilogue" delivered by Gordon himself, in which he calls for the "transformation" and the building of more "Bagumbayans around our hearts."

"Bagumbayan is not just a place," he stressed, "but an attitude" that must be displayed by an "enabled, ennobled, and free" Filipino.

"The walls of victimization no longer exists ... It's time to become horizon-chasers again (like the explorative, seafaring Filipinos were during pre-Spanish period)," he said.

The video montage includes clips from Gordon's accomplishments as chairman of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority. "Subic Bay was my Bagumbayan," he later explained.

The museum's exit door leads visitors out to an elevated landing where they are greeted by a sprawling view of the "new Intramuros" as revitalized by the DoT.

The tour was designed to end this way, Gordon said to symbolize how Rizal's vision of nationhood could lead Filipinos "out of the walls" and towards progress.

NEWSFEATURE

P130-M museum goes

beyond Rizal's heroism

http://www.inq7.net/nat/2003/dec/30/nat_3-1.htm

Posted: 10:54 PM (Manila Time) | Dec. 29, 2003

By Volt Contreras

Inquirer News Service