Intramuros: memory, violence and national becoming in Manila

ABSTRACT

Fort Santiago marks the site at which Spanish forces began the consolidation of the conquest of the Philippines, guarding the capital city of Manila from the 1590s. The fort, now in the heart of the Intramuros heritage precinct, was almost destroyed during the Second World War. It was gradually reconstructed in the decades that followed, and formed a centrepiece for the 1998 centennial celebrations of Philippine independence. It is now one of Manila’s most popular attractions, with visitors walking along the restored walls and exploring the Shrine to Freedom. The site memorialises José Rizal, a writer and leader of the Philippine independence movement, who was executed by the Spanish in Fort Santiago in 1896. By focussing on his last moments, the Rizal Shrine coopts a language of martyrdom and redemptive suffering, from which a nation was born and continues to evolve. The use of Rizal in the site marginalises alternative forms of suffering that might otherwise challenge the state’s use of violence. The tensions between a politicised authorised heritage discourse and acts of legitimated historical violence reveal the ethical dilemmas that exist when heritage management deliberately eulogises some forms of suffering and marginalises others.

KEYWORDS:

• Colonialism
• authorised heritage discourse (AHD)
• suffering
• memory
• violence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert Mason

Dr Robert Mason is a senior lecturer in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science, with interests in heritage, memory and violence. He is the author of The Spanish Anarchists of Northern Australia: Revolution in the Sugar Cane Fields (University of Wales Press), and most recently edited Legacies of Violence: Rendering the Unspeakable Past in Modern Australia (Berghahn).

Lauren Istvandity

Dr Lauren Istvandity is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre, with interests in music, heritage, and memory studies. She has two forthcoming books: Curating Pop (Bloomsbury) and The Lifetime Soundtrack: Music and Autobiographical Memory (Equinox), and is co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Popular Music History and Heritage (Routledge).