Monday, August 25, 2008 Editorial: Memory custodians
THOSE who have walked through the four period galleries of the Museo Sugbo will single out artifacts riveting their attention for one reason or the other: great antiquity and rarity, appeal to aesthetics or singular place in history.
Toured by University of San Carlos (USC) sociology and anthropology chairperson Jose Eleazar Bersales, Sun.Star Cebu glimpsed the past of the Cebu towns and cities that were represented in the Museo, opened last Aug. 5, 2008.
From the trained perspective of the Cebu Province’s museum affairs consultant, there is no dearth of treasures. Spotlighted in a cabinet, for instance, are the Boljoon finds recently excavated in the parish and now on loan to the Province.
Even an untrained eye will appreciate the voluptuous whorl of a pre-Hispanic tubular gold earring favored by the men. Even an inexpert hand will curl around the piece, instinctively preserving the ancient skill that fashioned such an ornate piece as if plucking it from mere air.
But the province’s first museum contains a lot more.
Small but telling victories
A visitor abreast with local news will view the museum’s assets differently. For decades, Cebuanos’ tangible heritage has been vandalized and sacked by hunters of the fabled Yamashita treasure of World War II loot, as awell as by grave robbers riding on the boom of speculative prices for antique gold, heirloom jewelry and Chinese ceramics.
Recently, churches in the south were victimized by thieves who stole church icons or harvested ivory parts from religious statues.
Ranged against the rapaciousness of collectors’ greed and market speculation fueling the unabated and unsolved desecration of heritage sites, a cabinet in the Museo Sugbo may seem unlikely to spark optimism. But, according to Bersales, the Bantayan archaeological finds displayed on the shelves represent the growing heritage activism stirring individuals, communities and local governments to stop the plunder of the past.
The northern town of Bantayan was one of those hit hard by the illicit trade in antiques. Rather than submit to the looting destroying once rich repositories of Cebu’s pre-Hispanic past, the Bantayan government linked with academe for assessments of local sites, excavated and saved artifacts before they could be grabbed by looters and buyers of antiques of dubious provenance.
The Bantayan government is far from being the only major donor to Museo Sugbo. Alongside many families that gave access to heirlooms—for instance, the Senator Vicente Rama Memorabilia constitutes about 60 percent of the American, Commonwealth and Japanese occupation materials—institutions like the USC University Museum and the USC Cebuano Studies Center shared artifacts from their valuable collections, including ceramics that have never been displayed to the public, not even on their own campus.
Continuing education
However, the challenge of converting Filipinos not just to become museum lovers but a people valuing heritage as part of a continuing past cannot be left only to prearranged educational or city tours.
Cebu Governor Gwen Garcia has committed not just resources but the vision of involving communities in heritage promotion. Aside from opening the Museo Sugbo, the provincial committee on sites, relics and structures recently finished the last of the provincial heritage caravans. According to Bersales, the caravans train and enable local governments to conduct their own cultural mapping, which identify and inventory the tangible heritage of a community. On Sept. 5-6, a conservation management workshop will be conducted for the last six towns participating in the caravan last July.
Making heritage as a development priority should produce more than plans on paper. Because of its size and a yellowing skull displayed alongside, a hollowed out log in the archaeological gallery grabs the attention of Museo Sugbo visitors.
This is a boat ossuary that pre-Hispanic Filipinos used for storing the bones of clan members for secondary burial.
According to Bersales, when Binongkalan Barangay Captain Ernesto Tagalog learned that a treasure hunter dragged a boat coffin from an upland cave, he investigated the matter, traced the looter, and personally retrieved and brought back the coffin, which is now on loan to Museo Sugbo. All 20 barangays of Catmon culminated the nutrition month of July with their town’s version of the heritage caravans. In their booth, each barangay created a museum to display local artifacts, even interactive demonstrations of heritage food preparation.
In community museums, what glitters may not be the only ones of true value.
