PAIN IN LOCAL FILIPINO ART, PERFORMANCE RITUAL and BELIEF

 by Dulce Cuna Anacion

Paper delivered in  the University of Ghent, Belgium at the

29th International PSYART Conference, July 4-8, 2012

In 2007, they removed my womb. It was a relief after months of excruciating pain and the feeling of heaviness around my lower abdomen, the hard and swollen sides often throbbed of pain when touched or pressed. I went under the knife with a surgical procedure called TAHBSO (Total Abdominal Hysterectomy Bilateral Salpingo Oophorectomy), the removal of the uterus, both ovaries, fallopian tubes with an incision on the abdomen. They also removed my appendix and I guess cleaned my stomach cavity for I knew any of those swelling glands burst. I whispered to my doctor: “Paano ‘yan Doc, hindi na ako mabubuntis” (Now what, Doc, I can’t be pregnant anymore!) to which she smiled: “My dear, you are in Menopause!” After 5 hours in the operating room, they removed two large cystic ovaries as big as grapefruits, a shrunken uterus and an appendix. I was relieved from the pain of my abdomen. However the post-operation pain was just as excruciating. One dark thought hang over me like a sword of Damocles: “Will I ever be Creative again without a Uterus?”

To a Woman, the Uterus and its Ovaries is the most important feminine “machinery” in her body. It takes centre stage in all the whys and wherefores in her life like a second brain. Its equivalent is similar to the male testicles or “balls”. Hence when she manipulates in the external world of things and people she is said to “have balls” or it “takes balls”, thus it takes some sort of an “ovarian energy”-- an energy field which is related to her domestic work, sense of well-being, love and sex. Here the woman relies so much of her Identity with this gland. With this belief, I felt disconcerted and uneasy with this situation. It felt like a feminine castration.

The painful advent to my hysterectomy was the synopsis of my maidenhood. It developed a uterus on its way to degeneration of its cells, on the transition from the benign to the malignant, which may or may not metastasize into cancer or even death. I connected my Uterus to the years of suffering I had with dysfunctional relationships, work pains and frustrations, death of my parents which marked the end of my childhood. It was the pain of Reality, of waking Life which was greater than the physical pain imminent in nurturing those cysts that caused all the chronic pains in my body--bloating, migraines, dizziness, etc. I approached many ways to alleviate the pain, taking a lot of pain relievers, yoga, herbal medicines and acupuncture to stop the enlarging of my cysts to full blown. I procrastinated a lot and defied doctor’s advice of early removal because I believed it would somehow melt down or “disintegrate”. Thus I resorted to visualization. Being a painter, I painted my pain, its physical and its abstract, its entirety and specific. 

 

I painted “The Wounded Pintado Princess” after my hospital pain. Though the tag line is so literal, the images I imbued in the painting is in a sense of play--playing with the Art of Pain. I poised myself with the urge to construct, to recreate, or maybe to award myself with a sense of “royalty” for enduring surgery and bodily change. I visaged the scars of the operation into items of texture, line, space, and used colour for volume and intensity. At the back of my head, I was wrenching myself out of the dark realms of of non-creativity, and perhaps holding on to the passion of creativity by the thought of non-fecundity.

      

“Ovum” is a commemoration of what my body could create, a once fecund Shape which held a fetus, but now festooned with “flores para los muertos” (flowers for the dead, the dead ovum not the fetus), mounted on a silvery background which signified status. The painting itself was my self-trophy, a plaque of merit for it produced me children which one could be proud. It was homage to an ovoid ovary, now deified.

                                                                        

The latest performance art I did was called “Boxed” - it conceptualized the Artist as an altruistic mercenary. In the four phases of the box she tempers the Pain of Mediocrity with the use of multi-media, the varied construct and deconstruct of artistic expression when obliged to conform to societal issues. In the last face of the four sided box she resurfaces from the colour box; from being boxed, from dictates, from expectations-- after cutting a thin membrane of superficial colours, she emerges from the shackles of “put on” art, to be wild and free once again which actually is her gain. But then again, the performance was intended to vilify the dictated and shackled artist, who expresses on an extremely measured space…literal though, so my “boxed” audience will understand.

This note is an example how Pain is “beatified” in an individual artist, in the creation of two-dimensional artworks, in three-dimension visionary performance and the belief that there is something greater than the Pain experienced, or being experienced by recreating the Pain itself.

PAIN in CONTEMPORARY FILIPINO ART: ANG KIUKOK and NUNELUCIO ALVARADO

  

Leading contemporary artists on Pain today in Philippine Contemporary Art are Ang Kiukok and Nunelucio Alvarado. Although Ang Kiukok died in 2005, he influenced his contemporaries on images that portray the angst of pain felt after he arrived from New York in 1965 where he was culture-shocked at the sight of stark alienation and dehumanisation in the American lifestyle. Since then, in different mediums such as oil, watercolour, pen and ink, he began filling his canvases with distinct abstract expressionist style of vivid, cubist figures and images of outrage and agony filled with anger, sorrow, ugliness and madness, which are grotesque and often morbid representation of life scenes, a factor unappreciated by many which slighted the commercial viability of his works until the 1980s when he firmly established himself as a top-seller. Since then, he enjoyed eminent success in the country and around Asia, with exhibits in Manila, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, as well as in the Netherlands, Canada and the United States. He had become the best-selling Filipino artist in auctions locally and internationally at Sotheby’s and Christie's.

His lineage was Chinese, and Chinese in the Philippines (Tsinoys) were mostly idealists, and Ang Kiukok’s personal philosophy was no exception. What could not be doubted was the violence in his imagery, a factor that slighted the commercial viability of his works until the 1980s. He favored such subjects as fighting cocks, rabid dogs, and people enraptured by rage or bound in chains. He painted multiple depictions of the crucified Christ that did not shirk from portraying the agonies normally associated with the crucifixion. When asked why he was so angry, he replied, "Why not? Open your eyes. Look around you. So much pain, anger, sorrow, ugliness. And also madness." The intensity of his works stood in contrast to his own personality, described as "placid and affable" 

 Continuing Ang Kiukoks’ vision of angst and pain are the works of Nunelucio Alvarado, a Negrense living amidst the workers of the sugar cane fields of Sagay, Negros Occidental. He depicted the plight of the underpaid sugar cane hacienda workers called Sagadas. His paintings created a visual twinge of its own, images of bamboo stakes, scythes, knives, created the stark symbolism of social realism. An Alvarado work shows the painful disparity of social class: the hacienderos and the sagadas, managed thru a depiction of stunted figures, bulbous eyes and veined hands and feet, sheer colors and iconography to represent allegory, dreams and spirituality and even candid comedy. Alvarado’s paintings speak of Pain as part of the Joy of Life, where harsh reality is a longing of a sweet toothed Sagada boy for a Tootsie Roll, while parents work on the sugar cane fields for a measly sum of pesos…Alvarado has induced satire and irony of the poor and impoverished, the silent victims who endure inequality and oppression, and one way to find out their Pain was to live amongst them. I myself was invited to stay in his “residencia” (a hut out of bamboo and nipa, devoid of indoor plumbing, but with a roofdeck and lanai where I could sleep). In Sagay beach, a drive away from Bacolod city, Nune, whom I fondly call him, paints Pain, not to alleviate suffering, but as a struggle to effect social change.

PAIN in PHILIPPINE HISTORY and RITUAL

The Pintado image in “The Wounded Pintada Princess” was also my homage to courage of endurance. Pintados were tattooed peoples in our archipelago long before we were rediscovered by the Spanish and were colonized. These people however were eradicated by religion and conversion to the Catholic faith by the friars in the 1600s  after Ferdinand Magellan landed on the shores of our country. Francisco Alzina, a Jesuit friar and chronicler noted on the tattooing practices of the Pintados as a very painful and enduring process, (please note that he referred tattooing as “painting”):

"The Bisayans are called Pintados because they are in fact so, not by nature although they are well-built, well-featured and white, but by painting their entire bodies from head to foot as soon as they are young men with strength and courage enough to endure the torture of painting. In the old days, they painted themselves when they had performed some brave deed. They paint themselves by first drawing blood with pricks from a very sharp point, following the design and lines previously marked by the craftsmen in the art, and then over the fresh blood applying a black powder that can never again be erased. They do not paint the whole body at one time, but part by part, so that the painting takes many days to complete. In the former times they had to perform a new feat of bravery for each of the parts that were to be painted. The paintings are very elegant, and well proportioned to the members and parts where they are located. I used to say there, captivated and astonished by the appearance of one of these, that if they brought it to Europe a great deal of money could be made by displaying it. Children are not painted. The women paint the whole of one hand and a part of the other."[1]

  

For want of a term in those times, since “tattoo” (tatu) is a Asian-Pacific term, the Spaniards described the Bisayans as “painted people”, hence the term “Pintados”. Yet they had misgivings of the practice and blatantly blamed the female Bisayan for instigating the practice and considered it a “work of the devil.”

“I am inclined to think that these people imitated the custom from newcomers to the Islands; or that one of their braggarts started the practice himself to give an appearance of greater ferocity; or that one of their ancient priestesses instigated it. These devil-women, to whom the devil appeared in a tattooed body might have started the custom in imitation of him. (I am told these women practice their calling even before Faith reached these Islands). Whether this custom was started by the people themselves or whether their common enemy taught it to them for his own ends (none of which was good), it is a fact that all Bisayan men tattooed themselves with the exception of those they call Asog.[2]

This however exemplifies the apparent bias of the Spanish on our local practices regarding Pain. To the early Pintados , the pain concept was regarded as a rite of passage in every Bisayan man. It was said that their nobility had tattoos all over and the more tattoos on a person, the higher the status you had. It was reported that Rajah Siani and Kolumbu, the nobility who met up with Magellan’s party upon landing on the islands had tattoos all over, hence they were those who have undergone the pain of body carving, which their tribal members follow suit. The chronicle of Alzina noted this as a form of bodily decoration…but it was more than that!  Alzina even suggested bringing natives abroad and displaying them in fairs or selling them as slaves. The more decorated they are, the higher the price they would be in the market. The Spanish reduced the sanctity of the rite of passage through pain into crass commercialism.

WOMEN and PAIN 

Scattered throughout the visages of Philippine History, Women are objects of Pain. History becomes “Herstory” when juxtaposed against sagas and epics of women as high priestesses and healers (“babaylans”) who instigate practices, recreating and paying homage to childhood and rites of passage, birth pains, and even the pain of loss: Motherhood or Widowhood. Pain experienced in the intransigence of time found in literary characters of the national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal, like the demented “Sisa”- the battered woman who succumbed to dementia after losing her sons to the atrocities of the friars in “Noli Me Tangere” (Touch me Not). To Dr Jose Rizal,  Sisa was the woman-oppressed, the woman stripped of her dignity of motherhood, the woman consumed by social cancer. Rizal’s archetypes of Pain were carried by the women in his novels, Noli me Tangere, and the El Filibusterismo (first published in Ghent in 1891). It articulated that women felt intensely pain in domestic home, in body and in memory.

BLOOD and PAIN

Earlier treatises on the tattooing practices in the Philippines assumed that the universal concept of “drawing of blood” is the noblest act to established bravery, valor, courage and pact. The endurance of pain while cutting the wrists to draw blood is associated with the rite called “Sandugo” (El Pacto de Sangre) and established a validation of friendship or a sacred seal of kinship. The “One Blood” rite is immortalized in the painting of Juan Luna (Blood Compact) portraying the ritual between Rajah Sikatuna (also known as Datu Sikatuna) and Miguel López de Legazpi who is accompanied by other conquistadors. Rajah Sikatuna was described to be “being crowded out of the picture by Miguel López de Legazpi and his fellow conquistadores”.  The drawing of blood was described to be the coming of Age of the Filipino and the birth of the Philippines as a nation in the 19^th century. 

“Sandugo” is now a festival celebrated in the island of Bohol, Philippines in the Month of March to commemorate this treaty and pact. Pain ensues into celebration. Filipinos commemorate Pain (of War, of loss, or of being conquered) in the joyful festivals that mark the holidays in the Philippine calendar.

PAIN and BELIEF:  “Yunal” – the Orasyon Tattoo

A very interesting presentation of Pain in Filipino folk life is found in their “Anting-Antings”, (amulets). This particular amulet which carries the pain of its installation is called “Yunal” – it is a mark or tattoo on the skin of the folk Catholic religious of the Islands who do not only believe in the strict dogmas of Catholicism but inculcate into them their animistic past and the supernatural which were not totally eradicated by religious conversion in the Philippines. Not only did the Filipinos embrace the religion of the Spanish but they also “Filipinized” its elements. These amulets come in the form of prayer tattoos embedded on the skin. It is said that the wearer of a special “orasyones” (prayers) becomes one with the virtue elicited by the prayer. Sometimes these prayers carry with them symbolic motifs and are forms of religiousity, the cross, the all-seeing Eye of Omnipotence, and even the Mother of Perpetual Help icon. The motifs and symbols may be artistic or recreated from local understanding of religious icons and imagery. And again, the more orasyones in one’s body, the more invulnerable one is. For these prayers and symbols are marks of protection. There are many kinds: Prayers for vulnerability and invincibility, prayers for business and prosperity, prayers to ward off the supernatural and prayers for healing and well-being. “Yunal” has been my study in my postgraduate years but still gather nuances on it for the practice is slowly encroaching or replaced by decorative notions, thus losing the potency of it or what it is meant by it. The prayer shaman (parapamatbat) instructs the wearer that he must perform a feat of pain in order to claim possession of the virtue or prowess to where it is attached, or take possession of its merits. Usually the feat is either participating in Holy Week ceremonies depicting the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ or Self-Mortification. Fr. Leonardo Mercado SVD, an authority on Filipino Religious Psychology notes why the Filipino does not make a big deal on enduring Pain because it is imbued in his sense of belief:

In all major aspects in folk life, the supernatural takes a part, the belief that otherworldly elements participate in our way of life is strongly observed. He explains that the belief of the supernatural world also has a role in Christian belief. For that effect he calls that Filipino worldview as “Monistic”. He talks about it as a non-dualistic way of looking at the world, where the Filipino way of life  does not dichotomize between mind and matter, body and soul, between one and many, thought and reality or the objective and the subjective, the sacred and the profane. [3]

IN CONCLUSION

So what is Pain, really? I have started writing this paper and painting pain not because of the PAIN I have undergone carrying my cysts and thru surgery, but because of the FEAR of losing my Creativity. But I was wrong. Pain induced Creativity. The myth of the Womb and Ovaries as our “Balls” I debunked. Feminine Intelligence does not lie in our Balls but on that abstract concept which triggered fecundity. Our History, Herstory, Rituals and Belief have records of pain as a faculty or catalyst to stir and create osmosis of social change, physical metamorphosis (abstract pain to tangible artwork), or spiritual “awakening”. 

As a race who has undergone “chronic pain” through history, we enjoin Art and Pain as a sense of Identity in the strength of our human spirit.

Journals:

1. Alzina, Francisco SJ, “Historias de las Islas de Indios de Bisaias, 1668”, (translated) Leyte-Samar Studies Journal, Divine Word University of Tacloban
2. Ibid.
3. Mercado, Leonardo N., SVD, Filipino Religious Psychology, DWU Publications 

                                                                           

   

A Peak on the First Chapter of my novella "COMPRACHICA"

COMPRACHICA
A mystical journey through the Trumps

Chapter I: AN BOBO (The Fool)

Amador woke up before the cock crowed. He had much to do this day, and much to plan about. Josephine was with child, his third, and this means more work, more things to attend to and more acres of land to inspect for probable rice planting and coconut production. He did mostly what he was told, even though Fernando thought he was lazy and good for nothing. It was only yesterday Fernando ranted and berated him for adding excess “crop” to the household, it meant more mouths to feed and he was not even married to Josephine after siring two other children!

Josephine came from far-off Embuscada in the province of Samar. The moment Amador saw her, he was far from being smitten, he was enchanted. She had this unusual essence of beauty that went beyond the alluring. It was as if she came from some different realms far beyond where the sun rose and where the moon set. Her long, dark hair fell like black satin in her white shoulders, her eyes seemed to peer beyond any veil that obliterated this world and she had the most ethereal smile that the people of the village called her “Encantada”.

Oh, Josephine indeed did not mind that. She was a strong woman and her body was built for that strength. She usually kept to herself and accepted sewing jobs. This is how she came by in this adoptive village of San Jose, she thought it uncanny to be in this village to reside because St Joseph was its patron and she was named after the saint then. She left Embuscada at a young age of twelve when the war was raging with her Aunt Isabel to escape the Kempetai (Japanese “police” during World War II) for Josephine’s parents were guerillas who hid in the hills and no one knew whether they were still alive or not. She, and her aunt, escaped the Japanese and came to the village of San Jose with Padre Damian, who then became the village curate. They posed as seamstresses for the church but Josephine no less had the makings of a fine seamstress and even knew how to “calado” (embroider). Her prowess spread to the nearby village of Lantawan and did embroidery jobs for “kamisas” and “baro’t saya”. But it was still post-war Philippines, people were still hard up on having dresses sewn or clothes embroidered. They resorted to having the other basic necessities of life like food and shelter, for clothing was provided by the American Liberation camps in the villages in the province of Leyte. She and her Aunt Isabel lived in a makeshift nipa hut near the church convento and had their most prized treasure with them—a second-hand Singer sewing machine Padre Damian salvaged from an American surplus trade market after the Liberation.

It was in this blossoming to a maiden that Amador saw Josephine, he usually visited the Church where his brother Damian served as Curate. When he gets seared by the fiery rantings of his choleric brother, Fernando, he sought the solitude of the church and brother Damian’s indifference. Josephine was crocheting a doily in the rectory’s receiving room when he caught a sparkle of her aura and was mesmerized by the movement of her fingers thru the threads..he saw in his mind a celestial angel making herself a pair of wings.

Amador always trusted his senses, as a young boy, he saw things beyond things, pictures in shapes and shadows, images that told him stories, events of yesterday or maybe of that of tomorrow. He loved to tell anecdotes, sing and recite a “siday” (poem) at the drop of a “tagay” (drinking spree). His happy-go-lucky and fun character made him a favorite amongst the village people for he always saw the bright side of things. He had lots of friends from every corner of the village where he loved to hang out. Also good-looking, he had captivating eyes framed with thick eyebrows that “spoke” instead of looked. He was good with his hands. One time, before the war, an American came to the village and showed him many things he could do with his hands, he taught him tricks with little balls, cups, playing cards and coins. Amador used this to entertain his friends. When a friend was down and out, Amador was the person to talk to, to be with to brighten up one’s day. He also had a song or two, a riddle or two, to water down the heaviness of a problem. But though sometimes, the riddles Amador quoted bore an answer to a problem. With this disposition Fernando thought of him as unrealistic and too much fancy free, a bummer and a “istamby”(unemployed individual), a useless member in the village.

Thus Fernando decided to put his younger brother to work. His other siblings Damian and Pedro were noteworthy than Amador. Damian was a priest and Pedro attended a public high school of the village. The family owned hectares of coconut and riceland owned by their parents, Juan and Adela. They all lived in a stately house built during the American Occupation. To the village of San Jose, the Solidon family was one of its respected and affluent members of their community. So Amador Solidon was put to work by brother Fernando tending the ricefields and overseeing the planting and the harvest that repeated every rainy and dry season. This would diminish his roving ways, Fernando thought, and at least put order to his life and more income to the family coffers with everybody helping out. He was thinking of settling in the nearby big town of Taboanan, where he just opened up a rice outlet. There was good income in rice now for the demand of rice for export was quite high.

It was post-war Philippines and everybody was picking up where the Americans left off. The country just claimed their independence from the USA but yet the American presence was still there, it came as a tidal wave of new ways, new gadgets, new innovations, culture and trade. How easily his countrymen succumbed to the American ways he thought, why, even his brother Amador was totally taken by that American friend of his who taught him magic tricks and songs! Amador spoke of him all the years during war time and was disconcerted when he vanished from the village when war came. Now Amador sings songs to his friends he has heard from an American channelled radio program…”Gonna take a Sentimental Journey…”. Yes, no doubt Amador had a beautiful baritone voice and has captivated that pretty lass in Damian’s convent with it! So it was of Amador tending the fields and when he had time he would visit Josephine in the convent while she took care of the domestic chores there. Making dresses and embroidering the church linen came rarely those days. The country was slowly picking up the modernization of the western world and everything around came like a subtle culture shock. Usually Fernando came home from the strait port of Taboanan with magazines and reading materials with beautiful pictures of new household appliances now out in the Philippine market. There was the phonograph, a bread toaster and a freezer called Frigidaire…all which Fernando discussed with Amador saying that they would buy one when the harvest was good. Fernando was known for his successful scrimping, but it always paid off with a reasonable luxury one way or another. The household of the Solidon added more rooms and a “kamalig” (outhouse) where the field workers came in to deposit the sacks of palay, ready for the makeshift rice mill Fernando installed in the outhouse.

A MYSTIC SHOPAHOLIC IN DOWNTOWN TACLOBAN

Shopping in downtown Tacloban transports me to a kind of Yoga that triggers the mystic in me. With a few extra “lavender” bills in my wallet, residue from a multi-purpose loan; after the remittance of the rent bill, light bill, water bill, cable, internet…etc, and what’s more, they issued out on the payroll the “clothing allowance” and “productivity pay” direct to my ATM card. Thus it called for the one great bhakti entertainment I nurtured since ye olde Asha’s Department Store circa 1960s: Shopping!

So off I commute to Zamora Street, where the Taiwanese stores were, where the “wild things are”-- the Ukay-Ukays, the budget stores, the “mäde in China” thrift emporiums where I spend those extra bucks as if there was no tomorrow, in my mid-life abandon—

First the shoes, like a real Leytena, I have the shoe fetish of what is true, good and the beautiful--and Bensons, Budget, beckoned me with those Thailand mules and step-ins with designs straight out from a Phat Phong jaunt.

But like a practical shopper, I do my window ogling and my cost discrimination first. I may have this spree like a malady, but I still know where to put my money’s worth. After an hour I come out from a little budget store in front of Gabrino’s with a pair of “gladiator” espadrilles, which my daughter would say later on: “Mommy! that’s too kikay!”

Ah, well, sometimes Tack in In. And for a funky Lola like me, it is understandable.

An old cinema was converted into a Taiwanese emporium. 578 was cavernous, reminiscent of Lim Ah Hong the pirate’s treasure throve. It had three spacious floors and had almost everything in it from plastic cabinets, DVD players, Android tablets, China cell phones to faux designer jeans. A minor fire gutted part of it and the perennial reason was “faulty electrical wiring”; but come to think of it, the building was wired naturally as a cine house, not as a watt-consuming emporium. As of this writing, the building is now being renovated for its re-opening, but I can’t forget my frenzy scouring the place for knick-knacks to buy that rainy day before the inferno. What was just to go in to buy a Shanghai-made umbrella, came out with a ceramic yellow and red rabbit, polyester drapes, a John Lennon T-shirt with a Peace symbol tote bag to match.

What is a shopping spree without feeding the gray matter in our skulls? Another favorite haunt is Booksale in Gaisano Capital. I cull around for my favorite novels and bestseller paperbacks on a price half of what it was in their new published editions. With 50php I could read Amy Tan’s “Joy Luck Club” and Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” I browse on the magazines with relish, creating a pile for me to take home –- Cosmopolitan, The Artists Magazine, Heavy Metal, Omni, Elle, Tattoo, Scientific American, Discover, Conde Nast…and so forth. I am what I read

Pegged with tote bags around my body, I saunter off to my end-of-the-fever relaxation moment: A coffee at Mr Donut. Amidst sips of the brew and the karasikas of the plastic sando bags of shopped items, I fall into my usual enlightening Samadhi of a downtown Tacloban shopaholic!

Dulz 2011

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Resurrecting the “Pintado” Tattoo

Resurrecting the “Pintado” Tattoo

Paper delivered at the “TATU” Symposium, Leyte Heritage Festival 2008, Price Mansion, May 18, 2008, Tacloban City

By: Dulce Cuna Anacion, M.A. Art History

There are many Ethno tribal motifs proliferating to this day because the art of tattooing has became a popular, albeit lucrative endeavor. Tribal motifs like those gathered by collector Lars Krutak and “Indiana-Jones”-like researchers Vince Hemingson and Thomas Lockhart have been discovered and recreated, but none has ever delved into the mystery of the vanished Leyte Pintado tattoo. Of course, since the local inhabitants’ practice of tattooing was abruptly stopped by the Jesuits in the 1600s with religion, tattooing in the island of Leyte has extremely vanished and all we could do now is merely speculate on the tattoo motifs and designs which were recorded by the Jesuit priest and chronicler Francisco Ignacio Alzina, who also avers that the tattoo phenomena is a universal experience. He had great misgivings on the practice and considered it as a “work of the devil”:

“I am inclined to think that these people imitated the custom
from newcomers to the Islands; or that one of their braggarts
started the practice himself to give an appearance of greater
ferocity; or that one of their ancient priestesses instigated it.
These devil-women, to whom the devil appeared in a tattooed
body might have started the custom in imitation of him. (I am
told these women practice their calling even before Faith
reached these Islands). Whether this custom was started by the
people themselves or whether their common enemy taught it
to them for his own ends (none of which was good), it is a fact
that all Bisayan men tattooed themselves with the exception of
those they call Asog.”[1]

It was Alzina, in his monograph “Historias de las Islas el Indios de Bisaias…1668” who termed tattooing as “paint”. But it is only one chronicler’s word against the others:

"The Bisayans are called Pintados because they are in fact so, not by nature although they are well-built, well-featured and white, but by painting their entire bodies from head to foot as soon as they are young men with strength and courage enough to endure the torture of painting. In the old days, they painted themselves when they had performed some brave deed. They paint themselves by first drawing blood with pricks from a very sharp point, following the design and lines previously marked by the craftsmen in the art, and then over the fresh blood applying a black powder that can never again be erased. They do not paint the whole body at one time, but part by part, so that the painting takes many days to complete. In the former times they had to perform a new feat of bravery for each of the parts that were to be painted. The paintings are very elegant, and well proportioned to the members and parts where they are located. I used to say there, captivated and astonished by the appearance of one of these, that if they brought it to Europe a great deal of money could be made by displaying it. Children are not painted. The women paint the whole of one hand and a part of the other."[2]

Legaspi in 1565 made a similar observation when he set foot on Leyte. " The torsos, thighs and arms of the men were tattooed with pigment deep in the flesh; most of them wore only bahag to cover the loins; gold pendants hang from their ears; and the chiefs also wore gold anklets."(Documentos Ineditos)

Despite this proselytization, Alzina described in text, rare motifs found in the Pintado tattoo, but there were no exact illustrations of it as that found in the Boxer Codex, a manuscript of written text and illustrations which Alfredo Roces suggests in “Boxer Codex in Filipino Heritage: The Making of a Nation” “that the artist did not actually visit the places mentioned from the text, but drew from imagination. Boxer notes that the descriptions of these countries are not original. The account of China, for example, was largely based on the narrative of Fray Martin de Rada. The technique of the paintings suggests that artist may have been Chinese, as does the use of Chinese paper, ink and paints.”[3] However, those found in the Boxer Codex come close to evidence of how the Pintado tattoo looked like.

---

In finding out the tattoo of Leyte, we formulate the following question:

What were the shared traits and customs in tattooing found in neighboring cultures which we could speculate the Pintado tattoo?

Early Tattoo Patterns in Leyte

The first impression of the western man on the native in Leyte could be read in Pigafetta's account in Limasawa when he described the brother of Rajah Siani of that island: He "was the handsomest among these people. His hair was very black and of shoulder length; he had a silk cloth on his head and two large gold rings hang from the ears. He wore a cotton cloth, embroidered with silk to cover himself from waist down to the knees. On his side, he wore a dagger with a long handle, all of gold, with its scabbard made of carved wood. With this he wore upon him scents of storac and binoin (benzoin). He was tanned and his face was all painted... The painted king was called Colambu and the other Rajah Siani." (Blair & Robertson)[4]

Pigafetta described the garb on Siani as painted, although the markings were tattoos which were shared by many peoples of the Islands upon the period of discovery by the Spaniards. He was describing then the manner of grooming of Pintado men especially those who belonged to the upper structure of society.

Before I go on to the discussions of early patterns, I would like to elucidate what “TATU” means. The term is understandably generic. For lack or absence of a name aside from “Pintados”, I choose the term “tatu” or “tatau” (Tahitian) meaning “to mark”, “to strike”[5] which is the act one native tattoo artist does to his model with the use of a tattoo wand or stick with a long handle and a sharpened comb-like “tooth” at the end. The Kalinga call it “patik” or “batik” or “patiktik”, but today it is referred more as the act of tattooing, than the instrument alone. Together with a mallet the tattoo act is likened to “tapping”, which is, hammering the sharp points directly to the skin or slightly wounding it. To the wound, dark soot, or dark sap from a special plant is added and embedded to the grooves, thus darkening the wound.

Why does man tattoo himself? Art historian Gene Weltfish answers the question by a misconception on the origins of art—that it is natural for all people, especially the “primitive” or early man, to personify objects.[6] He describes that the tendency to accent and underline special features of an object is a universal impulse. The human body is a natural background for décor. People who wear less clothing often mark their bodies with elaborate designs to make it appear as “haberdashery”[7] or extensions of themselves. However, Weltfish notes that this ethnographic custom indicates that people were borrowing decorative techniques from objects instead of the other way around. Together with tattooing, there was a large number of pendant decors, necklaces, anklets or head nets.

Early motifs in the South East Asian archipelagic rim and the Micronesias noted various crenulations and tattoo designs that John R. Swanton in his anthropological monograph
“Southern Cultures” noted that the tattooed body “published records of valorous acts performed in war” or “social attributes” of the wearer (whether he was a hunter, farmer, fisherman, pearl diver, basket maker, weaver, widow, widower, or had many wives). In most cases, certain sentiments are expressed and are of importance to his tribe or society.

The following are typical of early Southeast Asian motifs:

These are, however ancient Bornean tattoos as recorded by Robert Heine Geldern in his monograph of “Some Tribal Art Styles of Southeast Asia”. Typical is the motif called the “Aso” or the “dog motif” which traces its roots to the Late Chou and Dongson period in China. I would like to remind you a bit of our anthropological history that elucidates the concept of Diffusion[8] The central idea of this theory is that similar traits appearing in separate cultures are proof of some kind of contact between the cultures, and is best interpreted as due to a diffusion of influence from one to the other or from a parent culture. Trade, borrowing, immigration, imitation are some of the probable mechanisms of transmission.[9]

Another interesting motif to note in these tattoos are the spirals as seen in its singular design or double, sometimes joined or interlocking:

Oftentimes, we do associate this spirals to sea waves and movement of the sea as in these tattoo designs found in bamboo containers from Bahau, central Borneo.

Likewise, however, we could also note that motifs such as these come from biomorphic and nature forms like this particular pattern coming from the belly of a tadpole:

We are reminded of the “okir” or “okkil” which the Maranaws of our country use to decorate their panolongs. All these indicate the close connection of that tattoo society to the sea and water. The Pintado society of the 1600s were peoples whose livelihood and folkways were close to the sea and traveled mostly to the neighboring islands. Since they traveled a lot, they assimilated some traits from their neighbors. Perhaps thru the theory of diffusion, I could make a probability that the close cousins of the Leyte tattoo was that of the islands closely accessible like Mindano and Borneo.

However, the following motifs were gathered as tattoo designs from Mindanao(still to be verified):

From “The Vanishing Tattoo Museum” http://www.vanishingtattoo.com/the_vanishing_tattoo.htm

These motifs are a typical of ridges and repeating calligraphic lines that symbolize or associate itself to “access” or “climbing”, as in mountains and loftiness where one is close to the sky or stars. Angled lines and pyramidal shapes could be said as reminiscent of rice terraces or rough mountainous regions. Repeating or alternating patterns are atypical of tribal tattoos or basic to primitive designs.

The particular Mindanao motif shares the same pattern with the Igorot, Kalinga in the Northern tribes of the Philippines:

Worcester/Jenks Photos

But what is most interesting are the criss-crossing, zig-zag and striped line patterns of weaving found in the tattoos of women from the Iban tribes of Borneo. To the Iban women of North Borneo, tattooing was a mark of high social standing[10]

“The Kayan believed that a tattoo is like a “torch” in the world of spirits and that without it they would be engulfed in utter darkness. They believed that only tattooed women were able to bathe in the legendary Julan river and collect the pearls that lay on its bed, while the Biajau were convinced that in paradise tattoos turn into gold and take the place of clothing. There's no doubt that tattooing was thought to confer great beauty. Young Kayan girls were probably comforted – while undergoing the torment of the tattooist's needles – by the legend of the pheasant, which was believed to have been tattooed, at the dawn of time, by a caucal (a tropical bird similar to a pheasant) and to have become the most beautiful bird in the forest, instead of staying the dull, insignificant creature it originally was. The number of tattoos Kayan women had depended on their standing. A young slave was only allowed a single line along her legs, drawn freehand and called “Ida teloo” (three lines). A young girl, if free but of humble extraction, could wear a slightly more elaborate tattoo, called an “Ida-pat” (four lines), whereas the daughter of a chief would have highly elaborate tattoos on her forearms, on the backs of her hands, on her legs (from the top of the thighs down to the knees) and on the tops of the feet.

The ninth day after new moon was considered a propitious time to start. The girl's brothers had to be in attendance, taking turns, and special food was prepared every day for the girl and the tattooist. The work was in pre-established stages, often with long intervals between one and another. The back and backs of the hands were tattooed first, then the tops of the feet, the forearms and lastly the thighs to just below the knees. The arms were divided into longitudinal sections, bands containing the following symbolic patterns: concentric circles, spirals, two concentric circles representing two full moons joined together (the most important motif), a series of horizontal zig-zags, entwined tree roots, a tuba, the ribs of a boat and the “Kayan hook”, two linked spirals.

Tattoos could vary from person to person but certain figures were always put in the same position. The symbol representing the roots of the tuba, for example, was always placed in the top half of the arm (women used these poisonous roots to catch fish). The design considered most important was the two full moons. Interestingly, each band always contained a small detail preventing it from being perfectly symmetrical. The back of the thigh was usually decorated with a linear pattern, the number of lines making up the pattern depending on the girl's social standing. The front and side parts were completely covered by the patterns described above, often embellished or modified, including the following: Balalat lukut, Tinggang, Hornbill, Silong, “Tailless dog” (only in the Rajang area). The final leg tattooing session – decoration of the kneecap – was particularly solemn because considered the conclusion of the whole operation.”[11]

Tattoos on the leg and thighs of an Iban woman Tattooing in the Iban region is done by a woman

In similar treatises, these repeating and “striped” lines were joined with motifs of birds, scorpions, insects or flowers, depicting that tattoos were foremostly cosmetology and marks of beauty. Also, older women displayed “weave” marks and criss-crossing lines which could symbolize the order of their social status as weavers and basket makers.

In Leyte, weaving (paglalara) has been an ancient and age-old craft. The history of the Eastern Visayan is cross-cultured, embellished and influenced by the many cultures in a manner of cross-currents (“Sungduan”) being geographically situated in the navel (pusod) as the crossroad of the South East Asian belt. The womens’ motifs are likened to the criss-crossing lines of the Leyte baskets, mats that they weave, and the cultures that they assimilate. We then could speculate the intrinsicness of the vanished Pintado tattoo to be as eclectic as the various patterns they have assimilated from the Iban, Dyak Borneans, symmetrically arranged like that of the Kalinga, Igorot, Maoris and Marquesans, yet speaking of the grace and fluidity of the Eastern Visayans, deeply rooted in meanings of social folkways and self-identity.

(Videos)

“The Vanishing Tattoo” from http://www.vanishingtattoo.com/the_vanishing_tattoo.htm

Notes:

[1] Alzina, Francisco S.J., “Historias de las Islas y Indios de Bisaias…1668”
[2] Ibid.,
[3] Alfredo R. Roces, et al., eds., Boxer Codex in Filipino Heritage: the Making of a Nation,
Philippines: Lahing Pilipino Publishing, Inc., 1977, Vol. IV, p. 1003.
[4] Blair and Robertson, The Philippine Islands,
[5] Allen, Tricia “Tattoo Traditions of Polynesia”
[6] Weltfish, Gene, “Origins of Art”
[7] Kennedy-Cabrera, Caroline “Tattoo Art” in The Filipino Heritage, Vol 1
[8] Heine-Geldern, Robert, “Some Tribal Art Styles of Southeast Asia”, The Many Faces of Primitive Art
[9] Ibid.,
[10] Edwin H.Gomes, missionary amongst the Iban, Seventeen Years Among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo: A Record of Intimate Association with the Natives of the Bornean Jungles, from Man, Vol. 11, (1911)
[11] Ibid.

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