“This is what the Lord has commanded: Fill a two-quart container with manna to preserve it for your descendants. The later generations will be able to see the food I have you in the wilderness when I set you free from Egypt.”
(Exodus 16:32, emphasis added)
I was already 16 when I had my first trip to the museum. When I went into the section about the Kingdom Era (the time before the Spaniards arrived) I had been given some very profound information. The most stunning information of all, one I could never forget, is the trade of the native’s gold with the Spaniard’s iron nails! The trade even sounded more unbelievable when I was told that the weight of the gold traded is the same as the weight of the nails traded! This is something you cannot see in the 21st century yet this was how wealthy we were back then. Gold was so common that it was just traded off for iron nails. It just gives me a very vague picture when we merge this information with the barbarian like ways we use to have according to the Spanish. I guess we were some rich barbarians.
It was soon a year after when I found out about the slander in the way the Spaniards described us. How did I find out? Through the play, correction the epic, HINILAWOD. An epic made in the Kingdom Era in the province of Panay. One of the longest in the world, where 3 days is needed to perform the entire piece. It opened my eyes to the unbarbaric way of living of the natives. The epic shows how they richly they adorn themselves with gold! It even shows that they had rituals and beliefs, in other words, they already knew that there was such a thing as a deity. It shows us that we even had chiefs back them who made sure peace was kept in the land.
Yet Hinilawod is still more than that. They play also shows the values that the natives had. It shows how one in the past would fight for the glory of their tribe, for love, for honor. It shows how our ancestors valued maturity, how they respected family, how they made decisions and how they celebrated in times of victory. Just like the epic of Labaw Donggon. Eldest amongst his siblings, he embarks on his journey a few years after his birth. Swimming through rough waters, climbing steep mountains, facing danger, and unwanted beasts around them. It just shows what the people before expected from a man. Maturity was greatly valued by the natives.
Above all, the epic is the “food” given to us by God so that “the later generations will be able to see” that the Philippines was not a nation forgotten by God. It shows us the kind of a people God planned us out to be. It shows us that we were not barbarians, that we were not lazy people who did nothing while the world continued in its development. It shows us that the Philippines had a place in the map, and more importantly, that we can regain that place if and only if we chose to be like the Labaw Donggon in the epic who fought for their pride, their people, their honor.
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