MANILA, Philippines - Fernando Nakpil Zialcita, a true Manileño from Quiapo, heads the Cultural Heritage Studies Program at the Ateneo de Manila University while being deeply involved in Bahay Nakpil-Bautista, his family’s 1914 landmark house in the heart of Quiapo, now a museum and community center.

A respected authority in the study of Philippine culture, his two recently published books, “Quiapo: Heart of Manila” and “Authentic though Not Exotic,” are companion pieces that attempt to understand the casual, belittling Filipino regard toward the value of his culture and heritage.

In “Quiapo: Heart of Manila,” Zialcita looks at Philippine heritage from the perspective of an inner Manila resident who has devoted years of effort to the revitalization of the district of his birth.

Quiapo was a riverside suburb south of Manila (then confined mostly to Intramuros) in the 19th century that rose to prominence as the “city’s heartland in the 20th century,” always at the center of Manila activity.

Various writers bring out the uniqueness of Quiapo as an urban district and its transformation into what it is today. Still Manila’s central business area of crowded shopping areas and department stores, streets specializing in particular products (flowers, music, photography, optical goods, folk medicine, wedding supplies, dressmakers’ notions, and so much more) radiate from grand Quezon Boulevard and from Quiapo Church at Plaza Miranda.

It is a pilgrimage center. “Outside the [Quiapo] church is the world of Plaza Miranda, the very center of magic in the entire country,” while outside the mosque is the national center of pirated videos.

“Quiapo has its flavors, too: a crunchy version of fresh lumpia, a tangy ham, and halo-halo.”

The neighborhood is absolutely fascinating. Compact and highly complex, it surprises visitors with its wide range of multitextured, multicultural offerings. It is also where people from all walks of life continue to live within close contact of each other. How interesting it is that Quiapo has never lost its sense of being a neighborhood.

The district is what urbanists call an ensemble, a place that offers its residents all the services needed for their daily lives?work places, shops, markets, entertainment, schools, universities, places of worship and places of mysticism?all within walking distance.

Much of Quiapo has fallen into total disrepair. Its riverine network of streams, developed into esteros in the early 20th century, is now hopelessly clogged into stagnant pools.

People and vehicles congest what once were grand avenues and leafy streets. Hawkers illegally convert the few remaining open spaces into makeshift markets.

Houses, whether splendid mansions of the wealthy or modest working-class dwellings, continually deteriorate into dilapidation, many dismantled and substituted with cheap commercial architecture that degrades the heritage houses they have replaced.

Urban lesson

Quiapo, now bursting at its seams, has morphed into an overpopulated city center district with all the attendant web of social, economic and urban problems, each demanding immediate solution.

Quiapo is an urban lesson that builds upon the maxim that nothing remains the same. There is no room in present Quiapo reality for introducing romantic Intramuros-type conservation or restoration plans. With the economic, social and cultural pace of Quiapo today, old Quiapo, or even the Quiapo of just 30 years ago, is now memory that cannot ever return.

“Quiapo: Heart of Manila” documents the district, outlines its history, brings out its strengths, establishes its uniqueness among urban neighborhoods in the Philippines, and asks questions that must be answered to arrest urban and social degeneration any further.

Admittedly, much work is needed by the government and, most importantly, its residents to slowly breathe new air into rheumatic Quiapo, to resuscitate it into a community that responds to the present and future needs of its residents, while also upgrading its economic, social and cultural image in a way that can be sustained by 21st-century living.

What cultural images are we looking for? This is the question asked by Zialcita in “Authentic though Not Exotic: Essays on Filipino Identity.”

We have no vast temple complexes like Angkor in Cambodia or pre-Columbian pyramids like those built by the Maya at Copán in Honduras. Neither do we have an Eiffel Tower, a St. Peter’s Basilica, or a Parthenon as monumental symbols of cultural achievement.

Living monument

But we do have the Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordillera, an immense system of rice paddies carved into steep mountain slopes considered by world conservation experts as a monument on the scale of Angkor.

What sets the Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordillera on a different level from extraordinary but empty Angkor is that it is a living monument that continues to support life and is used today for the same purpose that it was built over a millennium ago.

A site definitely of outstanding universal value that Unesco inscribed on the World Heritage List and admired worldwide, many Filipinos routinely dismiss it.

Zialcita observes that the world does not find the lowland Christian Filipino fitting the stereotyped Western image for an Asian people. Therefore, we do not seem “exotic” enough, he writes, to the Westerner expecting to find “mysterious” Asia in Chinese, Japanese or Thai cultures that appear, in Western consciousness, to be out of the ordinary.

Out of the ordinary are the tribal cultures, the rice terraces, the Maranaos who dance the singkil, the seafaring Badjao. Tribal architecture, carving and weaving which “qualify” as Asian and exotic. Lowland crafts like the delicately woven piña, religious carving that combines Filipino with Western styles, or traditional Filipino cuisine that fuses the local palate with Chinese and Spanish influences, are simply regarded as derivative of the West.

Zialcita examines the effects of Spanish colonialism on the present Filipino psyche, responds to the “accusation that lowland Filipino culture is ‘elitist and derivative,’ …examines appeals to joining ‘Asia’ and ‘Southeast Asia,’ showing that though we should participate in both, we should realize that both concepts were invented by Westerners whose content tends to exclude Westernized peoples like us.”

Establishing a strong Filipino identity in today’s global village is what Zialcita advocates. His thoughts on how to achieve that recognition make “Authentic though Not Exotic” an extremely interesting read.

“Quiapo: Heart of Manila” is published by the Cultural Heritage Studies Program of Ateneo de Manila and the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, assisted with grants from the Toyota Foundation, Beatriz Susana Zobel de Ayala, and Gregorio Araneta Social Development Foundation.

“Authentic though Not Exotic” is published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press.

Bahay Nakpil-Bautista, a museum open to the public on 432 Bautista St. off Quezon Boulevard, is definitely worth visiting. For information, call 7349341.

E-mail comments to pride.place@gmail.com.(Inquirer News Service)