The monuments to Edsa

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It’s called “People Power”, not “Cory Power”, not “Sin Power”, not even “Mother Mary Power” but you wouldn’t know it from the Philippine monuments that have been erected to commemorate the Edsa People Power Revolution that occurred 25 years ago.

On the silver anniversary of that historic event last February 25, Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim unveiled a life-sized statue of the late Jaime Cardinal Sin which he erected in Luneta Park right beside similar life-sized statues of Cory and Ninoy Aquino.

He did so, Mayor Lim explained, because “it was Cardinal Sin who called on the public for a people power so we are building his statue near the monuments of President Cory and Senator Aquino.”

The building of statues to honor particular individuals is a natural by-product of a hero culture that heavily emphasizes the role of individuals in the making of history. This narrative of history often does not include an appreciation of the dynamics of change and the role played by ordinary people in making history.

The alternative view holds that the changes in the world and in Philippine society propelled the Filipino people to revolt against 300 years of Spanish rule in 1896 and this revolutionary situation would have occurred even if the leader of the revolution, Andres Bonifacio, had not been born.

If it was not Bonifacio at the helm at that historical juncture, it would have been another Filipino leader who would have emerged to form a revolutionary organization similar to Bonifacio’s Katipunan to lead the people’s revolution.

This dynamic view of history does not deny the key role that individuals like Dr. Jose Rizal and Ninoy Aquino played in inspiring the people powered revolutions of 1896 and 1986 that overthrew oppressive regimes. But it accords due credit to the people as the agents of change.

A stark difference between the 1896 and 1986 revolutions is that there were no religious overtones to the 1896 revolution as it was as much anti-clerical as it was anti-colonial. In contrast, the very first monument built at Edsa to commemorate the 1986 revolution was a statue of the Virgin Mother Mary - “Our Lady of Edsa” – built in 1989 along with a small Catholic chapel for devotees to visit and worship. Critics charged that this made Edsa a religious shrine.

The most recent criticism of this sanctification of Edsa was leveled by Roger Merhan in his March 6, 2011 blog (definitelyFilipino.com) where he reminded readers that “every­one from all beliefs and walks of life” participated in the Edsa revolution.

“Then our religious started marketing the Edsa People Power event as a religious phenomenon. They wasted no time in putting up an Edsa Shrine at the center of the avenue. They commissioned a known sculptor to create an image of a Virgin Mary they would later call Our Lady of Edsa. Priests and nuns with locked arms, rosaries in hand, became poster figures of an otherwise unsectarian occurrence.”

“This move alien¬ated the great num¬ber of Fil¬ipinos, Catholic and non-Catholic, who came there out of sheer pa¬tri¬o¬tism–out of a burn¬ing de¬sire to make a dif¬fer¬ence and to be counted, if only to see their coun¬try free again in their life¬time, even if it would mean putting their very lives in the line of peril…The ac¬com¬plish¬ments of Edsa should have been an eter¬nal source of pride for all cit¬i¬zens of the Philip¬pines. But the pre¬dom¬i¬nant Catholic Church at¬trib¬uted it to a saint and turned it into a fi¬esta that is only worth a day’s cel¬e¬bra¬tion every year.”

Fortunately, not all the monuments to Edsa glorify individuals. Three years after “Our Lady of Edsa” was erected, the People Power Monument was built right across the Edsa shrine. A mammoth bronze monument created by Eduardo Castrillo, the structure presents Mother Filipinas, her hands with broken chains raised to the sky. Below her are representatives of the various segments of society who participated in the People Power Revolution.

Also, not all the monuments to Edsa were cast in stone. In San Francisco, a mural dedicated to People Power, Lakas Sambayanan, was commissioned by the San Francisco Mural Resource Center in 1986 and painted in the same year on the side of a building beside the city’s famed Farmers Market, visible daily to thousands on Highway 280.

The centerpiece of the mural is the stone head Ferdinand Marcos built on the side of a mountain in La Union to honor his Mt. Rushmore-like ego. The Marcos head is blown up into three parts by a torch of freedom with a bird, in the form of an image created by Marcos’ political prisoners, emerging from it. Beside it is the figure of Cory Aquino holding her assassinated husband in her arms, in front of people marching at Edsa and standing defiantly in front of Marcos tanks.

The mural also shows sacada workers toiling in sugarcane fields and a young girl scavenging in a "Smokey Mountain" garbage dump. The culture and history of the Philippines are represented in the Muslim kulintang and the Christmas lantern while beside them on horseback is the revolutionary hero, Gabriela Silang.

The huge 35 feet by 80 feet mural was painted by Johanna Poethig, Vicente Clemente and Presco Tabios. According to an online description (Johannapoethig.com), the mural is a “collaboration of artists who combined technical skill and conscientious sensitivity to the historical events depicted.”

As the years passed, the mural’s bright colors faded without any work done to retouch them until 2006 when scaffoldings were erected in front of it leading people to believe that the mural would finally be touched up in time for the 20th anniversary celebration of People Power.

To the shock and horror of the community, the painters did not touch up the mural but completely painted it over, replacing it with an advertisement for the kitchen and bathroom tile products of Uni Stone, the China-based company that bought the building.
Perhaps the fate of the People Power mural in San Francisco reflects the indifference of the people to the once bright shining promise of People Power. As Maria Ressa reflected in a recent CNN piece on the triumph of People Power in Egypt, its forerunner in the Philippines is now “more form than substance, (giving) little back to the people who risked their lives in the streets 25 years ago.”

And now that form is represented only by statues.

More from here: http://globalnation.inquirer.net/columns/columns/view/20110322-326966/The-monuments-to-Edsa