It is just a scene from ancient Rome. How can the same painting depict Ninoy Aquino on the tarmac of the Manila International Airport in 1983? Like an ink-blot test, sometimes we see what we want to see in a picture.
The central hall of the National Gallery of Art used to be dominated by Juan Luna’s impressive and very depressing painting “Spoliarium.” It shows a dead gladiator being dragged out of the coliseum, like a slab of meat in a market, while a woman weeps in a corner. We sympathize with the woman who can be a wife, sister, or lover.
From childhood we were taught that this huge painting was an allegory of Spanish oppression. Sometimes it is even suggested that the crying lady is actually Filipinas. Maybe I lack imagination, but I fail to see what other people see in this historical painting. It is just a scene from ancient Rome. How can the same painting depict Ninoy Aquino on the tarmac of the Manila International Airport in 1983? Like an ink-blot test, sometimes we see what we want to see in a picture.
If you visit the National Gallery today, you will find another large painting to engage both eye and imagination. For those bored with the over-exposed, over-discussed “Spoliarium,” there is Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo’s “The Assassination of Governor General Bustamante.” This is probably the painter’s largest extant work, but it is not well known because it was so controversial that it remained hidden for the better part of the last century. The painting depicts friars murdering Bustamante in the 18th century. Some sources claim that the original title given by the artist was “La Iglesia contra el estado” (The Church against the State), but he changed his mind and the painting has since been known as “The Assassination of Governor General Bustamante.”
Rolled up and kept in storage, it was only shown publicly in 1974 in the National Museum, then in the Metropolitan Museum of Manila in 1989, and now, thanks to the family of the late National Artist Leandro V. Locsin, this work is permanently shared with the public.
Fernando Amorsolo made his version of this painting, and it seems that the Bustamante story spawned other narratives and other meanings. One of the Bustamante-related stories is “La Loba Negra” (The Black She-Wolf), a work attributed to Fr. Jose Burgos based on a manuscript that was last seen in the collection of the late Luis Ma. Araneta. “La Loba Negra” was published before World War II and an offset reprint of the “original” manuscript was published by Roberto Martinez and Sons after the war. It was translated from the original Spanish by the ex-Jesuit Fr. Hilario Lim.
Aside from this novel, other Burgos manuscripts surfaced in the 1960s covering many different branches of knowledge. These papers made Burgos rival Jose Rizal as the most brilliant and prolific of our national heroes.
Some scholars were not swayed. Those who read the original “La Loba Negra” had their doubts: The Spanish was so bad that there were many inconsistencies in what was supposedly a historical text to which Burgos had firsthand knowledge through primary sources. Yet the plot of the novel is intriguing: La Loba Negra was a woman who was murdering friars in the dead of the night. She was not a psycho, nor was she a rape victim, but revenge was her motive. La Loba Negra was the avenging widow of Bustamante.
So moving, so powerful is the storyline that it has inspired more contemporary works, the most important being a play by Virginia R. Moreno titled “Onyx Wolf.” It won third prize in the 1969-1970 literary contest of the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Even before the play was first published in 1980, even before it was staged in 1971, Onyx Wolf was made into a landmark ballet by Alice Reyes known as “Itim Asu.”
What made me remember Hidalgo, Bustamante and Burgos today is the fact that “La Loba Negra” is a forgery. It was not written by Burgos, but is the handiwork of Jose E. Marco, an antique dealer from Bacolod City who was exposed for selling fake stamps. Later it was discovered that he peddled more interesting things: manuscripts supposedly by Burgos and another that gave us another mythical figure in history, Datu Kalantiaw.
Marco is a fascinating footnote in our history who has been maligned since 1968 when he was exposed as the forger of the Povedano manuscript of 1572, a text from which was born the Code of Kalantiaw supposedly promulgated in 1433 in Aklan, thus antedating the arrival of Magellan and proving to everyone the glories of pre-Spanish Philippine culture. That Marco has been credited with “La Loba Negra” and other works by Burgos is one thing, but because he had a long career that spanned half a century, his work has to be revisited not so much as forgeries but to understand what kind of problems misplaced nationalism can bring.
The late Rene Villanueva wrote a play about Marco and Kalantiaw and projected him as a historical villain. If I could write my own play, I would make Marco a more complex character who speaks of our own aspirations and our own fears. Confronted by an angry young historian (based on myself, of course), Marco would calmly say, “You wanted a pre-Spanish civilization. You had none. So I created one for you. You wanted a novel by Burgos. You had none. So I created one for you. If you want to be proud of your history then even if these manuscripts are forgeries, you just have to believe them.” This would make me less of a historian, but then the interplay of myth and history has always fascinated me and Marco is one way to study it.
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Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu.
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