Reclaiming heritage
VALUING heritage takes more than a day or a month. Slowly but steadily, Cebu is reclaiming its own. Last May 18 was International Museum Day. In the country, May is considered as National Heritage Month.
According to the International Council of Museums (Icom), which started International Museum Day in 1977, this year’s theme is “Museums (memory + creativity) = social change.”
The theme reiterates the role of museums in preserving the legacy of the past and using creativity in making history, pride of place and identity as the bedrock of societal innovations and development.
Cebu demonstrates the synergy of many stakeholders to resuscitate awareness of who we were as a way of anchoring our vision and plans of who we want to become.
Leaps
From three participating museums and a heritage site in 2007 to 33 destinations this May 31, the “Gabii sa Kabilin” proves how museums tapping memory and creativity can bring about social change.
As reported by Sun.Star Cebu’s Bernadette A. Parco last May 8, the “Gabii sa Kabilin” was initiated by the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. (Rafi) to draw residents and tourists to visit the Casa Gorordo, Cathedral Museum of Cebu, the Basilica del Sto. Niño Museum, and the Fort San Pedro from 6 p.m. to midnight.
This year, more than 7,000 visitors are expected to take part in what has become the annual night heritage tour in Metro Cebu, regarded by the National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCCA) as “the first, and so far, the only one of its kind in the country.”
In 2012, the Cebu City Sangguniang Panlungsod passed City Ordinance No. 2327, which declares the last Friday of May as “Gabii sa Kabilin (Night of Heritage)”.
This year’s “Gabii sa Kabilin” will serve as a portal to history and culture in 33 museums and heritage sites in the cities of Cebu, Mandaue, Lapu-Lapu and Talisay.
Sun.Star Cebu also reported the NCCA’s recognition of Cebu as one of the first provinces instituting cultural mapping. Also known as cultural resource mapping or cultural landscape mapping, cultural mapping is a “systematic approach to identifying, recording and classifying a community’s cultural resources,” according to mappingauthenticity.com.
Undertaken by Cebu City academic institutions, non-government organizations and local government units, cultural mapping is crucial for making an inventory of communal heritage, both the tangible and intangible aspects, as well as the strengths needing preservation and the challenges that must be addressed.
The NCCA is also undertaking with the Visayas Association of Museums and Galleries Inc. (Vamgi) a basic museology and curation workshop on May 29-30.
Obstacles
Beyond the immediate relevance of May for promoting heritage, Cebu stakeholders must look beyond and prepare to address issues, particularly those that pit modernization against cultural preservation.
Communities and their leaders must respond appropriately to cultural tourism. As pointed out by Icom in icom.musuem, “tourism can widely contribute to the wealth of a country… unfortunately, it can also endanger (its cultural heritage), specially in the more vulnerable regions.”
The illicit traffic in goods—ranking third, after drugs and arms trafficking, in criminal activities worldwide—drives the pillaging and destruction of cultural artifacts in the country’s churches, heritage sites and other vulnerable areas. Aside from trainings for priests, caretakers, government officials and law enforcers on heritage safeguarding and security, ethics must also be applied by museums and private collectors in the acquisition and transfer of collections, as set down in The Icom Ethics Code for Museums.
The most fragile aspect of heritage is intangible. These traditions transmitted from generation to generation are threatened by any of the scourges of modernization: the daily demands of survival, disruption of communities, and apathy and neglect. Community support for a local historian or a local craft has a value that lies beyond tourism or enterprise: preserving and promoting these intangible legacies keeps a people connected to history, identity, and evolution.