Marcos’ ‘anting-anting’

Last Monday the City of Vigan in Ilocos Sur rolled out a series of celebrations to mark the 125th birthday of Elpidio Quirino aka “Apo Lakay,” the first Ilocano president of the Philippines. It started with the laying of wreaths at the statue of the late president in Salcedo Park and the delivery of speeches, followed by a Mass in Vigan Cathedral officiated by the bishop who cited my page-one article on Quirino last Sunday to begin his homily.

There was also a flash mob on Calle Crisologo as well as a musical on the late president’s life in the Convention Center.

As a historian, I was interested in the formal opening of a Quirino research center where digital copies of primary-source material may be viewed, and in the opening of the town jail that had been donated to the National Museum. Up until a few years ago, this branch of the National Museum, which also houses the 14 paintings of Esteban Villanueva that depict the Basi Revolt, was a real jail. Its inmates have since been moved to a new facility. Quirino was born in a room on the second floor of the building, where his father worked as the jail warden; the room now houses some presidential memorabilia that include a number of barong Tagalog in vivid colors, two-toned shoes, and equally rowdy neckties.

From Ilocos Sur I traveled to Ilocos Norte to revisit Badoc, the birthplace of Juan Luna, only to find the Juan Luna Shrine closed for renovation. From there I proceeded to Batac to revisit the museum dedicated to Artemio Ricarte aka “Vibora” (Viper), which houses archival photographs, manuscripts, clothing, and even pieces of a  table service from his stay in Yokohama that are adorned with Japanese scenes and personalized with his signature. Another set is personalized with the signature of his wife Agueda Esteban de Ricarte. It’s a pity that I was the only visitor in the Ricarte museum on Tuesday afternoon. All the tourists were crowding around the nearby Ferdinand Marcos Museum and mausoleum.

The Marcos Museum has been renovated and is a far cry from the sorry exhibition of dusty shirts and yellowed documents that I saw years ago. It is now air-conditioned, inter-active, and has just enough to keep visitors interested. For example, the section on the whirlwind courtship that led to the marriage of Ferdinand Marcos and Imelda Romualdez opens with a bag of Chinese butong pakwan (salted watermelon seeds) and a pair of beaded slippers that marked their awkward first meeting. I observed the visitors, many of whom were born after Edsa 1986, and noted their interest in the series of one-digit car plates with which Marcos marked his rise from congressman to senator to president. The Plexiglas display case was broken in one part because someone had tried to steal one of the plates.

Then there was a glass case containing amulets or anting-anting bought from vendors in Quiapo—a reference to the urban legend about Marcos being given an amulet by the revolutionary bishop Gregorio Aglipay. This case was broken on both sides because visitors had tried to steal the displays as souvenirs, or maybe some thought these were authentic or actually owned by Marcos.

While the Marcos Museum naturally excludes the events of Edsa 1986, the interest in the Marcos amulets made me recall one of the enduring images of the people power revolt—ordinary citizens trying to stop a tank with their hands, armed with nothing but rosaries and an image of the Virgin Mary. This must have been a puzzling image to people in secular countries, but such a display of faith in the modern world cannot but be inspiring. Those rosaries and holy images at Edsa were used very much as anting-anting in an earlier time, and the image does resonate with the legend of the Marcos amulet.

During the Philippine Revolution, Andres Bonifacio was said to have distributed pieces of black cloth that were allegedly cut from the cassocks worn by the priests Gomez, Burgos and Zamora when they were executed by garrote in Bagumbayan in 1872. These bits of cloth were supposed to protect the Katipuneros in the fiercest of battles. Emilio Aguinaldo was said to have outlived all his enemies because of an amulet that was given to him by the friendly kapre that lived on a mango tree near his bedroom window.

Hundreds of Filipino amulets are to be found in many museum stockrooms in Spain and in the United States. These were anting-anting looted by the enemy during the Philippine Revolution and the Filipino-American War from the corpses of Filipinos who fought superior arms, thinking they would be protected by these amulets of wood, stone, metal, or cloth. One of the most important of these is an elaborate anting-anting vest or shirt once worn by Macario Sacay—that is, according to photographs I have seen, preserved in the US National Archives. All these are worth further study and are capable of producing at least a dozen doctoral dissertations.

Different types of anting-anting are readily available in Quiapo. most are forged in metal and covered with a merry mix of pig Latin and Filipino, with a mix of images from Christian iconography to elements of lower Philippine mythology. One would think that in these anting-anting we see a connection between pre-Spanish beliefs and Christianity that has yet to be fully studied.

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Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu.