IN 2021, the Philippines will celebrate 500 years of Christianity and of Filipino nationhood. Before 1521, we were anito-and-Allah-worshipping islanders living independent lives in separate islands that the royals of Spain named Las Islas Filipinas and the Americans, centuries later, the Philippines.
That the event of 1521 changed our lives is an understatement. It forms the core of our heritage past. It is, therefore, worth commemorating for all its worth as the start of our still continuing march towards nationhood.
Hopefully, the commemoration would include a discernment of the good and bad features of the national identity the medieval Christian and colonial culture developed in us and a setting of the nation’s course for the future.
We cannot undo our colonial past. We can only manage the changes it has brought on us. That would mean not only appreciating its benefits but also liberating ourselves from its ill-effects which are many and deleterious in our economic and political life.
Cebu, of course, will be at the center of the commemorative celebration. In this connection, a regular reader of my columns shared with me what strikes me as a brilliant idea. Hence I am advocating for it and sharing it here as early as now because it is something that will take some doing in the next couple of years.
Essentially, the idea is to “transform a part of downtown Cebu in (sic) a state -of-the-art (UNESCO?) World Heritage Sight.” This could be Cebu’s answer to Manila’s Intramuros. Considering that it all started in Cebu we have every reason to come up with a heritage site that would at least match if not surpass Intramuros in both beauty and significance.
“The area (stretching) from Colon St. to Sto. Nino Basilica and Fort San Pedro could be transformed in (sic) a environmentally friendly pedestrian zone, that one could walk trouble-free (or ride horse-drawn calesas?) from one place to another. It would be a world-class tourist attraction, the pearl of Cebu and the Philippines. Just like Vigan.”
A project as big as this but highly worthy of a core event in our heritage past will naturally cost billions. But it will also generate so much additional tourism revenues plus it will create jobs for millions of jobless Filipinos. We are not talking here only of construction jobs but also of other jobs in the tourism industry and in downstream and upstream businesses that will sprout in the area.
Cebu City, (Province?), and/or the Department of Tourism could do the feasibility study while Cebuano congressmen could sponsor a bill for this. In any case, Cebu should come up with a heritage site that will do justice to the supreme historical significance of the event we will commemorate in 2021.