IcelleARTicles: A Paper on Post-Modernism or Post-Colonialism

As I earlier stated, the political aspect of Zamboanga City’s post-colonial influences should always acknowledge the fact that at the outset, the City derived its existence from the establishment of Fort Pilar.

Thus, the role it has traditionally played is that of a buffer against foreign incursions. The list of potential "enemies" has been expanded from the initial list of "Moro Pirates" to other countries, such as Malaysia and Indonesia – our neighbors in the South.

The Oft-repeated phrase "The Southern "Backdoor" indicates to the Manila-based strategists the potentials of the City as a "weak link" or a porous border in the defense of the country.

Moreover, cities like Zamboanga have begun to rail against the domineering, centrist outlook of political government in Manila.

The sentiments of a particular group of local businessmen and politicos from Cebu and Davao City against "Imperialist Manila" have gained much ground in Mindanao, including Zamboanga City.

The move is clearly towards more local autonomy. The belief is that a centralized bureaucracy in Manila is not sensitive to the unique situations obtaining locally.

Third is the determined efforts of secessionist groups, such as the Moro National Liberation Front; to establish Zamboanga City as the political capital of the Bangsa Moro Republic – a situation that has dire consequences for the predominantly Christian population.

Altogether, the political scene clearly illustrates the postcolonial influences in the city.

Not only is the city moving away from the structures imposed by the Spaniards and Americans, but it is also clearly questioning the structures imposed by a so-called "neo-colonial power" in the form of a centralized bureaucracy in Manila.

The denizens of the City are also aware of a subtle change in its role – from that of a bastion against foreign incursions into one that recognizes its socio-cultural links to neighboring countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia.

Clearly, the City, as a collective consciousness of its citizenry, are still in the middle of a modernist frame of mind. It is struggling to establish its unique identity. A city that produced – and supported – such maverick political persona such as the late Senator Roseller T. Lim and three time Mayor Cesar Climaco, is surely on the right track.

The reality is that although the city can count on its own resources to produce food and the most basic human necessities, its dependence on Manila for the supply of capital goods is highly apparent.

During the colonial period, and much of the time afterwards, the City, as hub of commerce for many satellite economic communities, produced and exported agricultural crops in exchange for capital goods.

The area produced coconut, fish, rubber and cacao for Manila and thence, for international markets.

However, what has been developed more extensively quite recently has been in existence in Zamboanga City for hundreds of years.

I speak of the barter system – a form of commerce practiced primarily by the Moros before and during the colonial period. Trade between the Southern communities and the Malaysian and Indonesian has been going on. Pearls and others marine produce were exchanged for silks, porcelain and other items from other countries.

Recently, during the Marcos Years, this system became more systematic with Philippines products such as Nescafe, sugar and milk being exchanged for stereo sets, umbrellas and toiletries. This situation only exacerbated smuggling on a larger scale – but it nevertheless highlighted the potential significance of an economy that could be geared towards something other than Manila-based.

What is of prime significance, however, is the emergence of a more lucrative and yet far from Manila-based development – the establishment of the Kalimantan – Sabah – Zamboanga City Growth Triangle. The EAGA (East Asia Growth Area).

This is an ASEAN-based initiative that ironically brings us back to the pre-colonial pattern of trade that existed much earlier than the advent of the Spaniards.

Under this economic arrangement, centers of development, Zamboanga City among them, would be declared Free Ports and manufacturing centers. Processed goods would be passed freely among these growth centers, with minimum taxes, thereby encouraging economic growth without having to pass through Manila.

Although still a capitalist-based idea, the significance lies on the belief that the City can develop at its own pace and priorities without heavily depending on the initiatives of a central economic initiative based in Manila.

"… In both literature and politics, the post-colonial drive towards identity centers around language, partly because in post-modernity, identity is barely available elsewhere…"

– Simon During

"… From the outset, modernization in Latin America unfolded as a process of Europeanization. All the models to be consumed… were based on European prototypes…"

– Nelly Richard

Nowhere is the impact of colonialization more evident in Zamboanga City than in the Chavacano language that is now only spoken and written by the elite.

Linguists have traced the main root to Spanish, but a pure Spaniard will not be able to understand what a Zamboangueño is talking about when the two meet. The language has influences of Visayan or Cebuano, and even sprinklings of Tagalog and Tausug.

The Chavacano dialect is the most obvious reminder of the City’s Spanish past.

Unfortunately, this dialect is also on its way to oblivion, primarily because of the heavy influx of migrants from other provinces into the City.

The experience of Nelly Richard in the Latin American context appears to be true in the experience of Zamboanga City.

During the Spanish colonial period, not only was Chavacano developed as an obvious attempt to reproduce the Spanish language, but even literature followed accordingly.

Thus, the phenomenon where we have a Jose Rizal who wrote poetry in Spanish that could compare to the best in Spain – a case where Filipinos tried to "out-Herod Herod himself" – developed.

During the American occupation and until today, writers from Zamboanga City also wrote in English – perhaps reflecting a decolonizing trend in so far as Spanish was concerned.

The American occupation and subsequent independence in 1946, is important to establish the significance of the recent trend – led by the former Congresswoman Maria Clara Lobregat and now the mayor of the city spearhead a move to preserve Chavacano as a cultural heritage worthy of preservation.

When seen against similar moves along the same lines, this movement can be seen as a concerted effort to view Zamboanga City’s Spanish heritage as a vital component of its emerging identity.

Today, there are concrete steps to reinforce the Zamboangueños awareness of their roots.

There are declamation contests in Chavacano, essay-writing contests, singing contests, poetry reading and the like.

In fact, we can view these developments as a post-modernist sense, since it seeks to integrate the City’s past to the City’s present.

Another literary writer of note is Antonio Enriquez who wrote "Surveyors of the Liguasan Marsh".

Enriquez, who comes from Zamboanga’s elite, writes of his own Condradesque experience as a surveyor in the Liguasan Marches of Cotabato.

In the process, all of his European-centered beliefs and morals are shattered forever in the vastness of the marsh. He reverts to the Pre-Spanish and pre-American animism that was prevalent in the past. However, his journey does not end here. After losing his Western-influenced notions to the animistic beliefs of his ancestors, he is able to construct in his mind a new realization – that as a being born out of the influences of his Western ancestors and his "mystic origins", he is actually a "man-in-the-making" aware of his roots but attuned to the future.

A study of Zamboanga City’s visual arts scene brings out the aspect that is most in ferment.

In the recent past, there have been a large number of artists that have burst into a formerly dormant landscape.

Their various styles, subjects and orientation defy immediate classification. But upon closer scrutiny, there appears to be a way to loosely gather them into different categories, when viewed against the concepts of modernist and post-modernist ideas.

The first classification encompasses those visual artists who subscribe to the "modernist" theory. Modernist here, for clarification, is defined as a movement towards "mythic origins", or a style and subject that is directed at the pre-colonial past.

Into this category we place the painter Saudi Ahmad’s most recent works. The subject of his paintings are concerned with the oft-ignored Moro cultural practices and beliefs.

His recent exhibit at the CCP (Cultural Center of the Philippines), for example, is exemplary not only in terms of his unique, painstaking style, but more so because his thematic and mystical rendition of Moro culture is a novel break from Western-dominated Manila artists.

In a scene where Manila-influenced artists attempt to develop art along Western-inspired themes and techniques, Ahmad’s work is a refreshing change.

But more significantly, the acceptance of Ahmad’s work at the CCP, considered the Mecca of Manila’s art scene, signals a re-orientation towards the Philippines’ cultural roots, as opposed to the colonial-inherited values of the West.

This is a belated, welcome development.

It is considered doubly appropriate because of Ahmad’s origins – Zamboanga City, long considered as the confluence point of West and East.

Another artist who can be classified into this category is Ramir Tawasil, another Muslim artist.

Although his style and composition tend to mimic Western painting styles, his subjects are concerned with ethnic matters. His paintings as vintas – Moro boats with colorful sails, houses-on-stilts, and Moro father-and-son motifs attempt to focus on Moro culture.

Jumalon, on the other hand, paints in a style and fashion that is obviously Western and traditionalist. Jumalon, however, should be given credit for initiating awareness among art patrons in Manila that Mindanao artists do have potentials.

Lastly, there is a third category, which to my mind provides the faint glimness of a postmodern style.

This group of artists is best represented by Isidro Floreta, a young artist whose style is still in the experimental stage and yet exhibits the attitude and the wherewithal to establish his own artistic identity.

Floreta is also a self-taught artist, like the others.

Like the other painters, he paints about scenes in Zamboanga City – Pasonanca Park, vintas, houses as stilts – but he does so in a style that has very little to do with Western influence. The best way to describe it would be to term it "unique’.

The painter portrays typical Muslim subject matter in a manner that is startling, rubbing the subject of the mystical veneer that other artists impart. It is as if Floreta has opened up a new way of looking at things – not with the eyes of a Westerner, not with an eye for the "mythical origins" of modern painters, but with the point of view of one who simultaneously accepts – and rejects both these classifications.

At this point, the writer wishes to emphasize that the purpose of this analysis is not to take sides with any particular category – that is not the objective.

It will be history that will determine the survivor and no amount of criticism will change that eventually.

What is really significant is that visual art in Zamboanga practically moribund in the last decade, has now suddenly burst forth in the national art scene.

Artists have taken hold of their styles wherever inspiration has led them. They have a very wide field to take root.

In last decade, they have jumped from the previous category occupied by the backyard artists – local artisans who have fashioned the "okir-okir" found in jars, brass pieces, weaponry, wood carvings – into the national art scene.

They are too unsophisticated to distinguish between traditionalist, modernist and even post-modernistic molds.

They are a "spontaneous evolution" occupying all shades of the artistic spectrum all at once.

Nowhere are the words of Nelly Richard more appropriate when she wrote"… The construction of history in terms of progress and linear temporarily is doubly inappropriate when applied to Latin America…"

The development of Zamboanga City’s visual arts is such that the populace did not support the emergence of a unified body much earlier. But once this movement emerged, it emerged full-grown, and not in evolutionary stages. What it initially lack is further maturity is easily made up by its artistic enthusiasm.

As the writer stated earlier in the introduction, Zamboanga City occupies a unique niche in the political, economic and cultural history of the Philippines.

As a city whose origins are steeped in military strategic value, it has endeavored to redefine its identity as the cultural hub in the Southern Philippines.

Its proximity to other ASEAN countries, heretofore perceived as a "weakness" of the Philippines – the so-called "backdoor" of the country, is now looked upon as an economic and cultural asset – are that can be exploited to the country’s advantage.

The establishment of the "growth triangle" concept as the basis for economic development further reinforces the City’s role in succeeding generations.

As territorial boundaries are broken down to impart greater strength to a fledgling ASEAN, the principles of a post-modernist situation becomes revealed.

From a Spanish-American colony, to Nationalistic City of the Philippines, to an economic and cultural partner of the ASEAN region – these are the stages of a post-modernist Zamboanga City.

Thesis statement on the effects and repercussions of the post colonial influences in Zamboanga City, in terms of economic, cultural, & socio-political development;

Spanish occupation – 1635-1898

American occupation – 1898-1945

Submitted by:

Icelle B. Estrada

Art History, University of the Philippines

College of Fine Arts

Prof. Corazon Hila

Art Theory II

Readings

-Post-Modernism or Post-Colonialism

by: Simon During

-Colonization and Cultural Reproduction

by: Nelly Richards

-Zamboanga Hermosa – Orendain

-Alexander Spoerh – Zamboanga Sulu

-History of Zamboanga – Series by: Navarro

Susesos de las Islas

-Zamboanga City Tourism Situation Report

-Architectura Espanola en Filipinas

by: Diaz Trecheulo-Spinola