‘Atsuwete, kamote, zapote’

A future historian going over our print and broadcast news last Jan. 9, 2012, may get the impression that the world stopped, at  least in the Philippines, during the 22 hours it took for the ancient  image of the Black Nazarene to inch its way back to its sanctuary in  Quiapo from the Quirino Grandstand. We all expect  minor accidents and  petty crime in the unruly crowd. We are not disappointed.  We expect  random acts of kindness like devotees distributing free food and  drink. We are not disappointed. We expect brisk sales in souvenirs and  religious articles. We are not disappointed. One can actually write  the news report of the fiesta a year ahead to be embellished later  with live reports from the scene.

Coverage of the Quiapo fiesta is an example of looking at the trees rather than the forest. How come nobody provided an authoritative history of the image. Did it really come from Mexico? How and when? Was it originally dark or just became so due to age? Did it originally have a maroon costume, of the same shade that the senator-judges want to wear in the coming impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona?

Only  TV-5 made the effort to find a new angle on the story by reminding  viewers that “Nazareno,” a common Philippine surname, actually means  “a person from Nazareth,” the place where the Christ Child was raised  by Joseph the carpenter. People on the street, when asked where Nazareth was, offered a lot of wrong answers, given with great authority and conviction. One devotee placed Nazareth in Germany!

The Black Nazarene of Quiapo is but one quiet reminder of our long historical relations with Mexico. Every schoolboy knows that the  Philippines was a Spanish colony for almost four centuries, but they  do not realize that the Philippines was ruled by Spain through a viceroy in Nueva España or New Spain (Mexico) from the 16th to the  19th century. Filipinas was only ruled directly from Spain in 1815 when the insurgent movement in Mexico began. The Galleon Trade provided for an exchange of people and goods between Manila and  Acapulco  from 1565 to 1815. That’s why there are mangas de Manila  or Philippine mangoes in Mexico. That’s why there are people in Oaxaca  with the surname “Maganda.” That’s why we have many of the vegetables  mentioned in the Tagalog nursery rhyme “Bahay Kubo.”

These plant names are just names until you come across the actual  plant or see photos of it in botanical illustrations such as Fr. Manuel Blanco’s “Flora de Filipinas” (first edition 1837) or go through  the list compiled before the war by Elmer D. Merill, who began  to  collect and classify specimens that grew into the Philippine herbarium that was completely destroyed during the Battle for Manila in 1945.

Picking up from the ashes, former National Museum director Dr. Eduardo  Quisumbing (National Scientist, 1980) began collecting anew so that today the Philippine National Herbarium in the National Museum boasts  over 200,000 specimens. According to Dr. Domingo Madulid this is the  largest and oldest herbarium in the Philippines. It is the national  repository for Philippine plant specimens resulting in plant systematic and taxonomic studies. Our National Herbarium is not confined to herbs or flowers. It also collects specimens of algae,  fungi, hepatics, liverworts, moss, ferns, pollen, etc.

Many of us think that the National Museum is all about art and paintings,  that it only has archeological and ethnographic exhibits. You will be  surprised to know that the National Museum has other scientific divisions that support the herbarium and even the planetarium.

Long  before the National Museum building had a make-over, I was fascinated by its exhibits on butterflies, stuffed animals and fish. I  was terrified by a whole wall filled with dried insects arranged to  simulate an invading swarm. Deep in the bowels of the National Museum  rest much material for historical research often overlooked by  historians who head to the National Library, National Archives and  National Historical Commission first.

To commemorate Philippines-Mexico relations, the National Museum set up  an exhibit from the National Herbarium of Philippine plants that  originated from Mexico. An exhibition catalogue with notes by Corazon  S. Alvina and Dr. Madulid was published in 2009. Going over these to distract myself from the Quiapo Nazareno news, I was surprised to  discover that many of the plants we have grown up with and presume to  be from the Philippines are actually from Mexico.

A sampling is as follows: flowers like adelfa, campanilya, cosmos,  kalachuchi, sunflower; a shrub known as akapulco; edibles like aratiles (Spanish cereza that led to variants like serisa or saresa),  atis, avocado, bayabas, guyabano, kamatis, kamatsile, mais, mani,  papaya, piña, sili, sinigwelas and tsiko. We also have the Mexican  plants that end with “te” like atsuwete, kamote and zapote. Finally,  what was our world like without kakaw and tabako?

The list above made me wonder what the Philippines was like before  the Spanish contact. It made me think of the Black Nazarene of Quiapo, which should make us look back into Philippine-Mexico relations to  discover how much common history and culture remains to be brought out  from hiding to update our textbooks.

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