Looking back on the 20th century

Although my area of specialization is the late 19th-century Philippines, particularly the heroes who figure in the birth of the nation, I have recently strayed into the 20th century. I have been browsing through old periodicals—newspapers, magazines, journals, even komiks, looking for topics for more contemporary, hopefully, more relatable, Philippine history. Going over issues of the Sunday Times Magazine in 1948, I was surprised by the editors’ choice of topics and focus. Elpidio Quirino, president of the Philippines; Jose Avelino, Senate President; and Eugenio Perez, Speaker; appeared on the cover in swimming trunks! Not the most edifying image made public, with the editor commenting on the Speaker’s “low belt line.” Quirino had just emerged from the Malacañan Palace pool after doing his daily laps and the Palace photographer probably thought it was a good idea that the Senate President and Speaker bare more flesh. The cover caption read “Pool Pals” and the editor’s note explained:

“The legislators’ interest in the water may be purely recreational; the President’s is not, since it’s part of a closely supervised program for his health. Despite a recent illness, he is well able to meet the demands of his office.” A three-page spread shows him at work and at play, with one photograph showing him in a suit, pitching a ball at the Rizal Memorial Stadium.

Going backward from August to June, there was a full-page photograph of young boys dousing bus passengers with water from pails and a hose. It was June 24, the Feast of St. John the Baptist, that Pinoys know under his Spanish name San Juan Bautista. More than 70 years since, it became known as the Wattah Wattah or Basaan Festival; people were already complaining about the inconvenience it posed to commuters. The heading of this story was “St. John’s Feast Day. Its water-dousing ritual no longer amuses city folk.” Some things never change.

I went through these magazines in search of the article on “Modern Art” by Victorio Edades that prompted a response from the “conservative” sculptor Guillermo Tolentino some weeks later titled “Modern Art?” Tolentino was then a professor at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. He told his students that he not only liked modern art “but I also like the ancient and primitive art.” He qualified his answer by stating that “anything done in this atomic age is modern. But the works of our faculty are not modern but academic, classical or conservative … Still, we are all modern.”

Commenting on an exhibit organized at the National Museum by the Art Association of the Philippines, Tolentino confessed: “I do not like those distorted ones and I am of the opinion that they should not be shown to children or women in the family way. There is no beauty in those paintings at all.” When you go to the National Museum of Fine Arts today, you will see a whole range, from religious paintings of the Spanish period to the works of 19th-century masters to the modern artists, many of whom have been declared National Artists: Edades, Francisco, Ocampo, Manansala, Ang Kiukok, BenCab. And of course, a whole gallery dedicated to Tolentino and another to his contemporary, Fernando Amorsolo. Reading these postwar texts gave me a deeper appreciation for the development of Philippine art from the so-called “primitive” to the modern.

I cast my net beyond postwar English-language periodicals. I went earlier to El Renacimiento, La Vanguardia, and Excelsior. Also the Tagalog satirical magazines like Lipang Kalabaw (a plant that caused itchiness and welts when touched), Buntut Pague (stingray tail), Aray! And Aruy! The artwork on the covers and the satirical cartoons were well worth the trouble. My survey was not confined to periodicals in Manila, there were periodicals from the Visayas that I could read but not understand like “Makinaugalingon” from Iloilo so I focused on the advertisements, like the “Emulsion de Scott” that Rizal prescribed to patients and recommended highly. This was sourced from cod liver (Ulay nga mantika sang atay sang isda nga Bacalao cag Hipofosfitos). There were ads for a Japanese factory (Tomikawa & Co.) of noodles and sweet cookies like “barkillos.” There were small ads for tailors like Mauricio Tesoro and bigger ones for a titled master tailor named Enrique S. Cabrera who claimed “El Triunfo de la Moda (The Triumph of Fashion).” Speaking of fashion, there was coverage of fancy, high-society balls like Kahirup where the ladies were decked out in the latest in American or Filipiniana attire accented by the family jewels.

Speaking of fashion, there was a complaint against the parish priest of San Nicolas, Cebu made public in 1932 on the pages of Cebu magazine “Progress.” A certain Rev. Emiliano Mercado “caused too much annoyance and unnecessary interruptions” to people attending the Flores de Mayo. During the religious service, Father Mercado went about inspecting the attire of women, publicly calling out those who wore garments whose sleeves he thought were too short for church. If we brought Father Mercado on a time machine to churches in 2025, he would have a fit. Parts of the past seem strange and foreign to us because they did things differently then.

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Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu