New Langton Arts: Filipinos in SoMa, SF

Yay and thanks to community artist Amanda Eicher of New Langton Arts. Amanda has contacted me to have work included in Presences, a publication project on SoMa (South of Market), and engaging the neighborhood and its denizens. She is interested in having artists do a walk around the neighborhood, talk to folks, and have projects come from these experiences. It goes without saying that there’s a sizeable and visible longtime Filipino American population present in SoMa, and my contribution to Presences will be all about that Filipino American longtime presence.

I’d done a series of walks around and about SoMa, and a bunch of this writing can be found in the Asia Society’s Asia in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as in my Poeta en San Francisco, and Bay Poetics, the anthology Stephanie Young edited. And as a general rule, a lot of my writings on Filipinos in San Francisco are centered in SoMa, which is where Arkipelago Books is located. I’m happy to do another series of walks and additional/further writings on Filipino Americans in SoMa, though in the interest of time, I will be excerpting my Asia Society write-up for New Langton Arts, as I believe this write-up is fairly comprehensive.

A snippet:

HISTORY IS WRITTEN ON THE WALLS

Landmarks are history lessons insisting upon Pilipino presence and visibility in a place that continues to simultaneously support and erase Pilipino presence. Pilipino American (or Pinoy/Pinay, or Pin@y) history, cultures, literature, and languages are rarely ever taught in American primary and secondary schools despite the growing numbers of Pilipinos in the Bay Area’s cities and suburbs. Additionally, what does exist of Philippine Studies in local colleges and universities is sparse, and constantly threatened by state budget cuts. Because of this inappropriate, obvious absence of material in American classrooms, Pin@ys have taken it to the streets.

Starting at Market Street at New Montgomery, take a moment to read the plaque on the corner of the posh Palace Hotel at 2 New Montgomery Street: “Doctor Jose P. Rizal, Philippine National Hero and Martyr, stayed at the Palace Hotel from May 4 to 6, 1888 in the course of his only visit to the United States.” The plaque was installed on December 30, 1996 in commemoration of the first centennial of his assassination. It goes on to explain that Rizal is known for his writing of two novels, Noli Mi Tangere and El Filibusterismo, which were scathing critiques of Spanish patriarchy and the corruption of the church. For these, his contributions to fomenting the Philippine Revolution, the first successful uprising in Asia against a Western colonial power, he was executed by firing squad. This plaque is a nice reminder, especially because if you walk north of Market Street to the center of the upscale Union Square, you will see a huge monument, a female personification of victory atop a 97-foot granite column, commemorating Commodore George Dewey’s victory over the Spanish in Manila Bay on May 1, 1898. This monument was dedicated by Rough Rider turned U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt on May 14, 1903, thus ending the Spanish American War and beginning the often-forgotten Philippine American War.

The naming of streets can be seen as merely symbolic, and even benign attempts at cultural and political activism. But the naming and dedication of these streets in 1979 also asserted a community’s presence, and a city’s official acknowledgment of this presence: Take a walk down 4th Street from Market, past the massive edifices of the Sony Metreon, and Moscone West Convention Center. Hang a left on Folsom Street, and your first right on Mabini Street. Intersecting Mabini is Bonifacio Street. If you turn right here, you will see Tandang Sora Street, but hang a left instead, and you will find, on the corner of Bonifacio and Lapu Lapu Streets, the Office of Community Development funded mural, Ang Lipi ni Lapu Lapu (the descendents of Lapu Lapu), painted by Johanna Poethig, with the help of Vic Clemente and Presco Tabios, in 1984. The building on which this mural is painted is 50 Rizal Street, the San Lorenzo Ruiz Center, which was named after a Pilipino saint, and which houses primarily low income Pilipino seniors. This center, originally called the Dimasalang House, named after the fraternity of Pilipino workers formed in the 1920’s, the Caballero de Dimasalang, was built in 1978.

What’s represented in the mural: at the top, a legendary female warrior figure, perhaps the Princess Urduja of the northern province Pangasinan. She is astride the Banaue Rice Terraces, above a Philippine eagle, from whose left wing sprouts the Philippine Islands, painted a vivid green. The bayani (heroes) of the Philippine Revolution: Dr. Jose Rizal, known as the Philippines’ National Hero. Apolinario Mabini, the intellectual and revolutionary. Katipunan leader Andres Bonifacio, holding his bolo knife in the air in a war cry. Katipunera Melchiora Aquino, more commonly known as Tandang Sora, tending to those wounded in battle. And in the center of these figures: Senator Benigno Aquino, whose August 21, 1983 assassination fanned the fires of the 1986 People Power Revolution, in which the dictator Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown.

Farther down the mural are the Pin@y political and cultural heroes: Carlos Bulosan, whose well-revered novel America is in the Heart is required reading for all students of Asian American Studies in local colleges and universities. Victoria Manalo Draves, who grew up in South of Market, a U.S. Olympic diver and two-time gold medalist in the 1948 games. Francisco Guilledo, better known as Pancho Villa, the leader of the “Great Pinoy Boxing Era.” He was the World Flyweight Champion Boxer of 1924. Larry Itliong, founder of the Filipino Farm Labor Union in California. The masses: Pin@y medical professionals. Manangs and Manongs, the Pilipino migrants of the early twentieth century. U.S. Navy men. College graduates. Fishermen. Farm workers. Whole nuclear families, intact. The International Hotel, just outside SF Chinatown, which became a rallying cry of Pin@y activism after the San Francisco Police Department’s violent eviction of the building’s elderly tenants in 1977, and its subsequent demolition, just two years prior to the renaming of these streets.

At the mural’s bottom left corner, Datu Lapu Lapu, the legendary killer of Ferdinand Magellan. At the mural’s bottom right corner, the Manila Village, founded in 1565 by the “Manilamen” of the Spanish Galleon Trade between Mexico and the Philippines. These men who jumped ship and settled in Louisiana were the first Pilipinos in the Americas. To the left of the heroes and rice terraces are symbols of migration and settlement: Spanish galleons, and the Philippine eight-pointed star, which may represent the eight datus (tribal chieftains) whose bangkas (boatloads) of people are said to have populated the Philippine Islands. And THAT is history condensed on a single wall.