The 2014 UP TWSC Public Lecture Series on Natural Disasters Lecture 5--Imperiled Heritage, A Heritage of Peril: History and Legacy of Natural Disasters

The 2014 UP TWSC Public Lecture Series on Natural Disasters

LECTURE 5

Imperiled Heritage, A Heritage of Peril
History and Legacy of Natural Disasters

27 January 2015 (Tuesday), 9:30 – 11:30 a.m.
Pulungang Claro M. Recto, Bulwagang Rizal (Faculty Center)
University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City

PROGRAM
9:30 – 9:40 

Opening Remarks 
Elena R. Mirano, PhD
Dean, College of Arts and Letters
University of the Philippines Diliman

9:40 – 9:45 

Introduction of the Role Players

9:45 – 10:25 

Lecture

Atty. Rose Beatrix Cruz-Angeles
Legal Consultant
National Commission for Culture and the Arts

10:25 – 10:55

Reactions
Carlo A. Arcilla, PhD
Professor, National Institute of Geological Sciences
College of Science
University of the Philippines Diliman

Patrick D. Flores, PhD
Professor, Department of Art Studies
College of Arts and Letters and 
Curator, Vargas Museum
University of the Philippines Diliman

10:55 – 11:20 

Open Forum

11:20 – 11:30 

Closing Remarks
Ricardo T. Jose, PhD
Director, Third World Studies Center

College of Social Sciences and Philosophy

University of the Philippines Diliman

Moderator

Prof. Jely A. Galang

Deputy Director, Third World Studies Center and

Assistant Professor, Department of History

College of Social Sciences and Philosophy

University of the Philippines Diliman

ABOUT THE LECTURE

Catastrophic calamities devastate not only the tangible present but also the reminders of the fading past. When the heritage churches of Bohol, among the oldest in Asia, crumbled in the 2013 earthquake, many lamented the “national cultural treasures” having been reduced into rubble. The churches, according to the National Committee on Culture and the Arts (NCCA), “are artifacts of memory”—they “form ‘part of the soul of the community.’” Similarly, when Yolanda’s wrath felled the statue of Carlos P. Romulo, one of the seven bronze figures in the MacArthur Landing Memorial, in commemoration of a key event in America’s effort during the Second World War to retake the Philippines from Japanese occupation, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) immediately set to work its restoration. MMDA chair Francis Tolentino averred that “By restoring this memorial, we hope to inspire the Leyte people to rise again. Like General MacArthur declared, we shall return." In the twin disasters of 2013, earthquakes tampered with topography and disrupted the surefooted rhythm of local lives as these break belfries of faith and bury to the ground a culture’s material achievements. Floods and storm surges drowned bodies and reshaped the margins of habitable earth as these submerged histories that anchor identities, inundated and broke the tenuous link between generations and its heritage. Calamities are fires of societal transformations that force the living to sift through and find value in the ashes of what’s left, divine the past from the soot marks, and devise new spaces of being and belonging from the razed ground. Spaces that both honor society’s loss and pain are the very same spaces that herald society’s unyielding quest for permanence and remembrance. Heritage needs not only be conserved but reclaimed. Histories need not only be taught but rewritten and retold. Songs and practices that perform the past in the present must be drawn again from memories of minds muddled by the trauma of disasters. Despite the country’s limited resources, heritage compelled the need to stand up to unprecedented risks and rebuild the tangible and the intangible, epitomized by “Task Force Heritage.” But between the hunger pangs of the survivors and the elite’s penchant to preserve their very own legacy, is there a formulary of prioritization to address in humane and timely manner the need of the body and the need of the soul? Is there a point and value in giving up and just letting nature take its course on the material legacies of the past?

KEY QUESTIONS 

1. If heritage is only one of the means of accessing the past, why privilege it over other ways, even in times of natural disasters? Or does seeing it the subject of sudden and irreversible devastation creates a sense of urgency that may not be totally justified? What are historical examples of such in the country?

2. Given the increasing vulnerability of the country from unprecedented risks of natural disasters, has the government consistently looked out for the preservation of its “natural cultural treasures”? 

3. Should it always be government institutions that must bear the onus of securing heritage sites? Who are the other stakeholders at work, if any?

4. Is there a point and value in giving up and just letting nature take its course on the material legacies of the past?

See link for the concept paper of the public lecture series.