Sen. Manuel “Mar” Roxas II delivering a privilege speech on the floor of the Senate won’t normally make headline news, but when he denounces “Con-asswang” wearing a necklace of garlic over his neatly pressed barong Tagalog, now that translates into multimedia spots. After this attention-grabbing stunt I opened my wallet, looked at Manuel Roxas on the face of my crisp 100-peso bills and wondered what the original Roxas, or even Gerry Roxas would say if they were alive today. They must be rolling in their graves with laughter before turning grim over the way some senators conduct themselves. There is a time and place for everything: “Mr. Palengke,” and “Mr. Palengke on a padjak” are appropriate for TV, but garlic garlands on the Senate floor? Maybe my neighbor Conrad de Quiros is right when he says many Filipinos have lost the ability to appreciate irony and satire, but historians know that the Senate used to be a place where ideas incarnated by fine oratory dwelt, where reasoned, logical, and polite argument won the day. Maybe the MTV generation, with its highly visual sense and short attention span, requires different methods?Roxas hails from Capiz, traditionally believed to be the aswang center of the Philippines. Capiz tried to turn this negative image around and attempted to lure tourists into visiting the province during the annual “Aswang Festival” set around Halloween. Unfortunately, the Aswang Festival was scrapped in 2007 because some people, including influential clergy, believed it would encourage devil worship. Put these stray bits of information together and you realize that our past and our traditional culture are fast slipping away. In the studies of the late Dr. Maxino D. Ramos, whose doctoral dissertation was on “Creatures of Lower Philippine Mythology,” he noted that the belief in aswang goes beyond living memory and can be traced all the way back to the 16th century when Spanish friars, acting like ethnographers, wrote down the beliefs of the people they sought to convert. As early as the 16th century we already had a list of different types of aswang and their characteristics. In 1892 Rizal wrote and illustrated an essay titled “The Treatment of the Bewitched,” in which he gave his expert medical opinion on the ways and means of the neighborhood “mangkukulam” (witch doctor). Our aswang is not to be confused with the devil who did not exist as a concept or a Filipino belief until the Spanish friars introduced a new religion in the Philippines. Based on his research, Dr. Ramos says that aswang is a generic term used to describe one of five creatures in Philippine lower mythology: Ghouls if they eat human corpses; vampires if they suck human blood; “viscera-sucker” if they prefer human internal organs and sputum; “weredogs” if they take the form of a dog, boar or any beast and eat their victims fresh and raw; and finally witches if they use spells and potions to kill people or make them ill. Senator Roxas’ staff who crafted his Con-asswang gimmick are obviously young and urban, they grew up on horror movies. Had they been from Capiz or had they been reared on aswang stories from their “yayas” (nannies) and grandmothers, they would know that the Philippine aswang is not repelled by a crucifix or garlic, which only works for vampires from Transylvania. To kill an aswang you do not drive a stake through its undead heart, rather you drive a sharpened bamboo spear into its back. Furthermore, Filipinos never use garlic against the aswang. The traditional weapons are ginger and salt. This partly explains why Filipino males like to urinate in the most unlikely places. They are not marking their territory like dogs, but in an earlier time such a practice was meant as an anti-aswang method because urine was believed to contain enough salt to drive the aswang away. In this way holy water can also be used on an aswang, not so much because of the priest’s blessing but due to the salt that is traditionally added to the holy water. Many priests today forget that salt is the essential ingredient in holy water. Aswangs slowly disappeared from our consciousness as many parts of the country developed into urban spaces. The viscera-sucker or manananggal would prey on sleeping victims, particularly pregnant women, because the fetus in the womb was considered a specialty. First the manananggal would try to keep from falling on a steep thatched roof of a traditional bahay kubo or escape detection under the bamboo slat floor; their tongues would extend all the way into the sleeping quarters of the victims and once the tongue has punctured a body, the aswang would suck the entrails out of the victim very much like sipping water through a drinking straw. Unfortunately for the aswang today modern houses have tin roofs and concrete floors. Now out of business, they have probably become extinct like dinosaurs and dodo birds. Worse, as described in Jessica Zafra’s wonderful story “Manananggal terrorizes Tondo,” the aswang flying in a crowded urban setting gets caught up in the maze of electric wires and TV antennae! Now they may even bump into tarpaulin billboards that feature models showing off delicious flesh. Garlic wont repel an aswang or Con-asswang, but an angry mob with sharpened bamboo spears and buntut-pagi (stingray tail whips) probably will. * * * Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu |
