Pensando en América Latina

I have mentioned many times in this blog that whenever I travel to Latin America, I am reminded of the Philippines. So when I travel to the Philippines, am I reminded of Latin America? 

When I moved to the United States in 2007, I enrolled as a 6th grader in a public middle school. Because of my full name, which includes two Spanish surnames and a gratuitous “Maria” thrown in there too, I would get all official mailing from the school in Spanish. At the time, I did not speak Spanish, and resented the school administration for not bothering to find out more about me, instead making assumptions. My school had a lot of Latino immigrants, so they assumed that I came from some Latin American country. It angered me that they did not care to know more about who I was and where I came from, and that they did not bother learning that children in the Philippines were educated entirely in English, thanks to American colonization. In 7th grade, when given the choice to learn French or Spanish, I chose French, snubbing my nose at Spanish in protest of the assumptions that came with having Flores as a last name. 

I had no interest in Spanish or Latin America until I met exchange students from there later in high school. My interest was mostly a universal interest of wanting to visit the countries where they all came from, since I had developed a boundless curiosity for the world outside the United States and the Philippines. By the time I started college, I had traveled to Asia, Australia, North America, and Europe. I decided that at some point in my college career, I wanted to travel to both Latin America and Africa. 

The first time I visited any Latin American country, it was the summer after my first year of college in 2015. I traveled to Bolivia as part of a college volunteer group after having been convinced by my friend Julio, a Bolivian-American, to join him on his homecoming. Perhaps significantly, Bolivia was also the first other country in the Global South I had ever visited. Coming from the United States, where I had gotten used to suburban lethargy, the chaos in Bolivia was refreshing. It reminded me of growing up in Cebu. I was fascinated by Bolivia simultaneously because of the cultural attributes it shared with the Philippines, but also because of its mountainous geography, the likes of which I had never seen before. I became enamored with the country, its people, its food, and with the newfound realization that there was a whole part of the world just like my homeland, whose history was intertwined with my own. 

I threw myself into learning Spanish and learned to love having a Spanish name. I traveled to more countries throughout Latin America, all the while proudly sharing my Filipino origin and telling people about how the two far-flung places are connected. I searched for reminders of the Philippines wherever I went, finding menswear in Mexico and monuments to Magellan in Chile, and plenty of people who shared my last names. 

On this trip to the Philippines, I sought reminders of Latin America. Although the cities in the Philippines more closely resemble nearby Asian cities, there are still traces of Spanish style architecture and public squares surrounded by government buildings. Examples of this can be found in the Intramuros neighborhood of Manila and the city of Vigan on Northern Luzon. 

One day in April, James and I took a tour of Intramuros, the old walled city. Most of it was destroyed in World War II, so the buildings are pretty much replicas. The main surviving structure was the cathedral of San Agustin. The plaza outside the cathedral used to be a parking lot which was converted into a pedestrian plaza. We did not enter, but I heard a choir singing from within. 

San Agustin Cathedral

View of a courtyard from a historic home

Stained glass windows in the Manila Cathedral depicting various Catholic popes. Spot the Argentinean flag for Pope Francis!

Next to Intramuros is Fort Santiago. The fort was built by the Spanish in 1571 and subsequently used by more occupying forces (British, Americans, Japanese) as a prison. Our tour guide told us about how the site on which it was built used to be home to a thriving indigenous society, which referred to the site as Maynila. There is not much emphasis on precolonial societies in the Philippine (or any) education system, but it has been encouraging now to learn more about our history prior to the Spanish arrival. Indigenous politics are something that vary greatly between the Philippines and even individual countries in Latin America, and I am thankful for Bolivia (probably the icon of Latin American indigenous resistance) for helping me realize that the Philippines, too, has its own precolonial cultures and peoples who persist today and maintain their traditions. Unfortunately, structures built by colonizers tend to be what survive into the present day. 

At the entrance to Fort Santiago with our friends Jason and Claire

Peering into an open-air theater on the site

Close to the Intramuros and Fort Santiago complex is Plaza México. I found it while perusing Google Maps, as I am wont to do. I told myself that I had to visit one day, take a picture, and show it to my Mexican friend Magaly. So I am showing it to her through this blog, since she is now receiving my email updates! (Sorry about the mix up, Magaly.) 

I'm upset that the "ME" in "MEXICO" hasn't been replaced. Instead you just have ME! and James.

The plaza commemorates the centuries of trade that happened between Acapulco and Manila through ships known as galleons. This trade allowed the Spanish empire to engage in commerce with China. Magaly told me that her home region of Mexico, Nayarit, has a town called San Blas along the Pacific coast. It was one of the stops along the Mexican coast that the galleons made. Today, there are a lot of people with Asian features who live there. It’s nice to think that even hundreds of years before she and I met in a college in the United States, our peoples still came into contact with one another!

Moreover, I can’t discuss the Philippines and Latin America together without mentioning Vigan, a town in the north of Luzon Island. Vigan is considered Asia’s most Latin city, thanks to the preserved Spanish colonial architecture in its old town. James and I tried to see if we could go, but it seemed like too much of a hassle without a car. Coincidentally, my uncle invited us to come along on a road trip with their family to Vigan. So my uncle, aunt, cousin, grandma, James, and I all piled into the car and made the eight-hour trip north to Vigan during the Holy Week vacations. 

Being in Vigan felt just like being in any town in Latin America, though it also felt more catered to tourists rather than its own inhabitants. Another place where James and I would have loved to go for our fix of Latin America in the Philippines is Zamboanga, a city in the south who speak Chavacano. People there speak the only Spanish Creole language in Asia, and it is so interesting to be able to speak Spanish and other Filipino languages and see how Chavacano is a mix of both. If you’re curious how it sounds, here is a song I enjoy in both Chavacano and Tagalog.

Finally, it seems that these blog entries are also turning into mini book reviews. While James and I were visiting a bookstore called Fully Booked the night before flying to Cebu on our last trip, I told myself I wanted fiction set in Latin America. James found a book called The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas. One of the blurbs about it was “Mexican gothic horror,” and I was sold. I initially meant to read it throughout my time in Cebu and Hong Kong, but I enjoyed it so much I finished it before I even left Cebu. It had elements I adored, such as religious syncretism, forbidden romance, and a setting in a particular historic period, which in this case was Mexico post its independence revolution. I also appreciated that there were two characters named Maria Catalina and Maria Beatriz who, like me, were only referred to by their second name.

At the end of the book, there were acknowledgments and an author’s note, which I always love to read. I felt so inspired by the author Isabel Cañas, a historian and Mexican-American, and how she was able to draw from both her academic and personal background in the writing of this book. She has also lived all over the world and now lives in the Pacific Northwest. I found the end of her author’s note was especially resonant:

If you’re too lazy to click on the photo and read, then note this excerpt: “Reading historical fiction can teach us about worlds long gone, but in doing so, it must also inspire reflections on the present. …I hope this novel inspires the courage, anger, and compassion we all need to face the ghosts of colonialism that linger today.”

I used to resent my Spanish name and the Spanish language because it felt like a ghost of colonialism that would follow me wherever I went, obscuring my real identity. But now I know that our histories, however shaped by violence, cannot be taken away from who we are.  This should empower us to advocate for a future liberated from these ghosts, whether they haunt centuries-old forts or the power structures that govern our society. It is true that the Philippines and Latin America share so much because of their past subjugation by the same empire; nevertheless, I aim to work towards a world in which people from both places–and all other places facing exploitation–can build a more free and just future together.