#halupi

[iwriteasiwrite]

A little house cleaning...

The real world has infringed a bit lately on my posting ability. But it looks like my schedule is lightening up (though I still have some long overdue deadlines to meet), so I should be back on track with my historical stuff.

In that vein, I'm going to be offloading my Halupi posts to its own tumblr (halupi.tumblr.com). I'll be posting them over there (occasionally cross-posting to this account). I'll also be expanding the concept at bit to include some images and the like. The core concept remains the same; tracing Philippine history through bite-sized snippets and interpretation.

As well, I'm linking it to a twitter account @halupifilipinas. Of course the twitter will be linked to its tumblr account. But to differentiate a bit, the twitter will actually act as a historical timeline; there will be at least one tweet a day about something that occurred on that day in the past.

Part of the reason I'm moving Halupi off is my main tumblr seemed to be getting a bit too jumbled up with different ideas going around. I think would be best to keep it more long form essays and stuff that interests me.

Oh and there will be a new historical series that I'm playing around with and have been discussing with other writers and historians. It's experimental and I'll use tumblr to try and see if it can actually be successful. The basic idea is to try and bring a sense of immediacy and narrative storytelling to our history. Hopefully will actually work.

So, yes, house cleaning and all that. Changes will start tomorrow.

[iwriteasiwrite]

Halupi #12: Taking the Soul for a Stroll

Pre-Hispanic Filipinos had a diverse menu of gods, demigods and beasties they believed bedeviled and plagued the day…and night. For every little thing imaginable, from sickness to raging rivers, there was a corresponding element responsible in their pantheon. Of course that's in the unseen world; the realm of unfettered imagination and fears.

The visible world had its own bumps in the night; and more often than not they were related to an animist faith ritual; rituals where the visible and the not intersected. The most well-known, at least in pop culture, is the idea of the zombie. Traditionally, in West African Vodun, the bokor or witch doctor captured the soul of the unwitting, or unwilling, for power. Power derived from the soul and provided by the animated body. And then there are dreamwalkers, most famously known among Native American tribes. Well, thanks to Hollywood. They projected their spirit to the world beyond and sought visions for guidance in the tangible.

For pre-hispanic Filipinos there was the kalag (the animating force), the soul that could become unanchored and roam free. With the soul gone linahos inkamatay (a form of death) resulted. A state that could last for days on end, and upon waking, visions resulted. Not all Visayans were capable of the dreamwalking (and the vision state), but those who could were noteworthy. So much so that Iberian explorers wrote about it in their travelogues. For ancient Filipinos the idea of a soul was central to their faith. The kalag was worthy of veneration, along with the umalagad (ancestor spirits acting as personal guardians).

Got soul?

[iwriteasiwrite]

Halupi #10: Cuz we gotta have Faith

Christianity came and stayed. But so did other faiths. Older ones disappeared completely and a few became the new dominant kid on the block. It's the nature of faith and belief, especially of the animist kind. Religions die and evolve. Doctrine is never static  and when a new more resonant faith comes along, the old passes into oblivion. Yet traces do survive.

Whether an innate tendency or the nature of the process, we Filipinized as much as were Christianized.

Faith existed in those centuries we dub 'pre-Hispanic.' As we approach that flashpoint of 1521, the complexity and diversity of extant faith grew. We weren't just a country of animist beliefs and anitos. Influx of trade and subsequent cultural interchange brought our ancestors in contact with Hinduism and other regional faiths. Islam gained a foothold. And if some speculative historians are to be believed, it's quite possible even Eastern Christianity stepped a toe in the Islands.

Diversity in belief, complexity in faith and a whole lot of cultural exchange. It's what religion does, it's an engine. Pre-hispanic faith wasn't homogeneous. Truth be told, it still isn't.

We're complex and confusing. It's a good thing.

[iwriteasiwrite]

Halupi #8: All Hail the Chief

Part of our fanciful reconstruction of our pre-Hispanic past is the casting of datus as kings. Or kings and kingdoms where datus and chiefdoms existed instead.

Datus weren't kings. They are more akin to a tribal chief, though slightly higher on the evolutionary ladder of political organizations. People offered loyalty and tribute, and in return datus were protectors, traders, warleaders, judge and jury.

A datu derives his power and authority from his ancestry. He jealously guards it and does everything to protect it; including carefully selecting his marriage partners and those of his children. 

Material goods, called bahandi (heirloom wealth), represented his earthly dominance; usually in the form of gold, bronze and trade porcelains. Land though did not. Bahandi was worn, traded, given as gifts or loaned out. All ways to gain influence and enhance prestige. 

And when the mood struck them, they could even take secondary wives (sandil).

Oh yes, it was good to be the ki...datu.

[iwriteasiwrite]

Halupi #7: Tradewinds

We like to think of the Philippines as some sort of thriving pre-Hispanic entrepot. These glorious Islands rich with resources and good, intelligent and shrewd merchants who treated with the great empires of East Asia.

Nice to believe, noh?

There were trade and diplomatic relations on-going; isolated though it may have been to certain areas of the archipelago, and certain tribes. We were on the fringe, just barely touching the main of regional trade.

The Philippines does show up in Chinese trade documents. Mindoro was known as Mai-i, among others. 982 saw the first of the Mai-i traders to visit Canton; bearing gifts for the Emperor. Those tribes became vassals and a kind of a tributory state to the Chinese empire. And that was just the beginning, far from the end, of our growing connections to East Asia.

We do like to imagine the pre-Hispanic Filipinos as well-traveled, well-connected and experienced traders. Then on the other hand, our histories assume that they were idyllic Garden of Eden dwellers, noble and pure, who were tricked and debased by the wily white man.

Well, those two ideas just don't work together at all.

[iwriteasiwrite]

Halupi #6: We love goooooold

Parts of the Philippines 1000 years ago were involved in gold production. Through rudimentary panning and mining techniques gold was acquired, then painstakingly hammered and handcrafted into culturally important forms.

But gold really wasn't what brought the Philippines into more of the mainstream of regional trade, despite what we may think. Instead, trading communities in the Philippines saw an uptick in relations with huge markets, like China, only in the second millennium and primarily with new demand. Volume and connections increased as we get closer to the Spanish era, and positively exploded thereafter.

But if crafted gold was mainly used as a tribute and not a primary trading commodity, then what goods were? 

13th and 14th century Chinese documents give a clue: beeswax, cotton, pearls, tortoise shells, abaca, trade gold, cotton and most importantly, wood.

Look at that, our natural resources. 

Two guesses on what we are still squandering today.

[iwriteasiwrite]

Halupi #5: First!

The credit for the first Iberian to step foot in the Islands may not actually belong to Magellan's expedition. It may to some unknown, nameless Moor, or Andalusian (Muslim/Arab from Al-Andalus).

Andalusians, because of their relatively isolated location, frequently traveled throughout the Muslim world, reaching even the furthest Muslim courts of India and East Asia. Stories from the 10th century tell of an Andalusian ship shipwrecking in the East and even intermarriage. Reports from Portuguese expeditions in the 15th century detail encounters with Muslim Spanish speakers in Hormuz. A 1585 report to the Spanish crown about the Philippines explicitly connects the Moorish presence in Asia with exiled Andalusians.

Over the course of the centuries long Reconquista, there were periods marked by the expulsion and exile of hundreds of thousands of Andalusians. They scattered to the farthest corners of the Muslim world, a few settling in East Asia and possibly becoming the first Iberians to visit our archipelago.

The Christian world in their 'Age of Exploration', weren't really exploring at all. They were in a way...retracing.

[iwriteasiwrite]

Halupi #4: We Meet Again Old Friend

The Reconquista is a hallowed historical undertaking in Spanish memory. Concurrent with 800 years of ebbing and rising Moorish rule (711-1492), Christian Spain eventually won out. Soon after came the Spanish empire. For them it was a natural extension.

For 800 years Iberia was not trapped in the dark ages. Far from it. The period of Al-Andalus became the foundation for a globe-spanning Spanish Catholic empire. In its time, Al-Andalus was renowned as a place of enlightenment: the great libraries of Toledo, the economic and educational prowess of Cordoba, the Moorish infused architecture of the South, all spoke to the high-regard that culture and high learning were held. At times, their scientific achievements and cultural importance shined brightest in the world.

Nothing is static. Al-Andalus crumbled, as all empires inevitably do. Iberia was in Christian hands again. They sought to not only rejoin the world, but carve out a leading role.

On the heels of the final explusion of Moorish rule in 1492, they set out to again outstrip Europe. They were aggressive in their explorations. Yet, when they arrived on the other side of the world, they found an old foe.

So says Santiago Matamoros in Intramuros.