Memories of colonialism are embedded in urban space…
Ateneo de Manila University organized a fantastic, month-long history festival inviting leading scholars to reflect on 500 years of Asian-Iberian encounters. Last night I had the opportunity to join the conversation as part of a panel focused on the city.
Danny Gerona shared his research on the establishment of the first Spanish cities in the Philippines in the seventeenth century. Ros Costello presented her new book project that traces urban reform campaigns in Manila in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Gary Devilles gave a fascinating talk exploring water, language, and place in Manila. All of this new scholarship highlights the global dimensions of the city in the Philippines. Cebu was founded because of its ideal location to launch conquests of the Spice Islands. Sanitization campaigns in Manila reproduced water, lighting, and street-widening projects in Madrid and Barcelona, and were developed by a generation of technocrats who worked in colonial Hong Kong and Jakarta.
My presentation reflected on Manila’s anti-colonial public histories. In 2020, communities confronted the connections between monuments that venerate historical figures who performed or championed violence ( dispossession, enslavement, genocide) against Black and indigenous populations and the ongoing violence against these peoples today. In the United States, bronze conquistadors including Christopher Columbus and Juan de Oñate were dismantled by activists and local government officials. Statues of confederates and Anglo slave traders were also vandalized and removed.
Oñate must fall!
What do we do with these torn-down monuments? Do we melt them down? Do they belong in a museum, properly contextualized by explanatory panels and docents? And what kind of monuments, if any, should replace them?
I make the case that Manila’s decolonized public histories of the Spanish empire in the Philippines can serve as a model for other cities to learn from, and be inspired by.
The entire session is available to stream via youtube. I chime in at the 30 minute mark. Future sessions will be steamed live via the Contacts & Continuities facebook page.
Further Reading
I’m a big fan of Ana Maria Araujo’s work on the politics of monuments and memory. Her writing engaging and accessible and does a great job explaining why and how the history and legacies of slavery and colonialism matter today. Arajo’s monograph Slavery in the Age of Memory: Engaging the Past was published by Bloomsbury in 2020. Her edited volume, Politics of Memory: Making Slavery Visible in the Public Space (2012), is also brilliant.
We need more studies of monuments in Manila and the Philippines. I liked Robert Mason and Lauren Istvandity’s article on the conversion of the Spanish Fort Santiago into the Rizal Shrine. Ian Morely’s research provides valuable insight into how the US colonial government in the Philippines influenced anti-Spanish public histories (Cities and Nationhood: American Imperialism and Urban Design in the Philippines, 1898-1916, University of Hawaii Press, 2018), yet it makes the mistake of dismissing Filipino agency in campaigns to venerate José Rizal.
