Pakinggan! A Case for Filipino Community Archives
/In early December 2019, my sister and I spent the afternoon with our lola, looking through family photo albums. She showed us images of her mother, Nanay Salud, and her father, Tay, when they traveled to the States; snapshots of her childhood home in Cavite City; and a picture of the First Baptist Church there, where she married my lolo. Viewing my family’s history through our own photographs, I learned about how my ancestors served in various military outfits during the World Wars, traveled across the Pacific to work for the U.S. Navy, and adapted to a new country amidst waves of xenophobia. I realized that the photographs told me stories I never saw in history textbooks, museums, public monuments, or memorials in the United States.
In the absence of our stories in these public spaces, I began a memory project—a public, community archive entitled “The Pakinggan Archive,” accessible at pakingganarchive.omeka.net. Named after the command to “listen,” the archive collects family photographs that can provide dynamic views of Filipino history and life in the diaspora. By themselves, the images are random, sometimes blurry, torn, or worn. Assembled, curated with care, and given detailed captions and cross-referenced themes, the archive provides insight into Filipino diasporic living in the late 20th century.
While The Pakinggan Archive focuses on immigration paths to Southern California, it can be a model for the larger Filipino community. For Filipinos living outside of the archipelago, community archives help to document trans-Pacific and other global displacements. Community archives operate outside regular archival institutions and allow individuals the flexibility to control their own narratives. Whether through objects, images, exhibits, or preservation sites, community archives offer alternative routes for contributing to public memory. Ultimately, they record and present histories to inform our futures.
Contributing everyday imagery to the study of Filipinos in the diaspora, The Pakinggan Archive provides a platform for close analysis and focused readings of the images and their impacts. The full archive offers photographs from the Villapando, Reyes, Elegado, Samodal, Hayag, and Obille families, who were mostly from urban areas, including Cavite City and Manila. Many subjects earned various degrees and filled professional opportunities in the States. All the people in the archive immigrated post-World War II and were connected to the U.S. military and the labor recruitment trade.
The First Baptist Church in Cavite City, where Ate Luzing took her Reyes siblings when they were teenagers—the church where Marietta and Teofilo Obille married in 1964
The Pakinggan Archive the photographs offer details about spaces and their accompanying histories. The Reyes’ family collection, for instance, captures images of the First Baptist Church in Cavite City, where the family worshipped. One photograph shows a small crowd of parishioners lined up outside. The church is an unimposing white structure with slick, slanted walls and a tilted roof capped with a short steeple. It appears both formal and informal, traditional and reformed. The post-WWII building’s sweeping gable marks the entrance to the building. Beneath the steeple is a long rectangle of square geometric patterns and vertical ridges on the sides. Together, this form rests on a small triangular pediment. Additionally, the central entrance includes a projecting cantilevered roof. While a unique form in the Philippines, the model of the First Baptist Church [1] is also reminiscent of commercial architecture such as the Howard Johnson chain hotels and restaurants from the 1950s and 1960s in the U.S.[2]
Howard Johnson Hotel Plan, Architectural FORUM, March 1955, p. 165- 167: Kummerlowe
Howard Johnson’s buildings commercialized the steep roofs and steeple as a mechanism to brand its business. The staple architectural elements are evident in marketing slogans for the business: “Howard Johnson’s—An American way of life—convenience, comfort and hospitality for the entire family, at home and away from home.”[3] The First Baptist Church’s design denotes a proximity to American culture.
DG Elegado
“DG Elegado: born in 1937, graduated from Agricultural Engineering in the Philippines. The United States sent for 125 graduates to come, all expenses paid, to work. My dad was excited and envisioned working in Corporate America. Unbeknownst to him, they put him to work picking vegetables in the crop fields of Salinas, in association with Cesar Chavez and the movement.” - Aileen Elegado Catapusan, daughter of DG Elegado
The Pakinggan Archive includes photographs of farm workers and personal narratives behind their immigration paths. One photograph reveals a striking and underrepresented story regarding misleading labor pathways to the States. DG Elegado’s black-and-white portrait is from the early 1960s. He wears a cap and tassel, a black bow tie, and a graduation robe. DG stares directly into the camera. His gaze is confident and calm. DG appears proud and accomplished, prepared to use his education. He graduated with a degree in Agricultural Engineering in the Philippines. His academic accomplishments are not visible to the viewer, but his confidence and youth translate through the photograph, taken a few months before his immigration to the States. The United States sent for 125 graduates to come, all expenses paid, to work. DG was excited and envisioned working in Corporate America. In the photograph’s caption, DG’s daughter, Aileen Elegado Catapusaun, tells of his anticipation: “My dad was excited and envisioned working in Corporate America.” However, upon arrival in the States, DG and other graduates were put to work picking vegetables in the Salinas crop fields despite their degrees. DG worked in the same field and fought alongside Larry Itliong and Cesar Chavez. Filipino workers are often left out in the farm worker movement’s history. DG’s portrait is a significant departure from the usual image of Filipino laborers. The three-quarter pose, his gown and cap, are codes for DG’s intelligence and power.
Archival intervention is a flexible model that continues to grow and creates space for restorative histories and new information. The Pakinggan Archive should evolve into a replicable and usable model for intervention that supports public memory and the re-imagination of Filipino histories. It is also a workable model for other racialized communities seeking to preserve and present their cultures and create more ethical, antiracist futures.
To submit images and stories to The Pakinggan Archive, visit bit.ly/PakingganArchiveSubmission or the home page of pakingganarchive.omeka.net.
Footnotes
[1] “First Baptist Church,” The Pakinggan Archive, accessed November 20, 2020, https://pakingganarchive.omeka.net/items/show/10.
[2] “America's Landmark: Under the Orange Roof,” America's Landmark: Under the Orange Roof, accessed November 22, 2020, http://www.orangeroof.org/.
[3] Ibid.
Bibliography
America's Landmark: Under the Orange Roof. Accessed November 22, 2020. http://www.orangeroof.org/.
Lafferty, Eliza Faye. The Pakinggan Archive, August 2020. https://pakingganarchive.omeka.net/.
Eliza Lafferty graduated in December 2020 from Georgetown University with degrees in Art History, Government, and a History minor. The above article is an adaptation from previous research initiatives as a Lisa J. Raines Research Fellow and for her award-winning Georgetown Art History thesis, both under the guidance of Dr. W. Ian Bourland. She has presented and published versions of the text at the University of Arizona Global Campus Teaching and Learning Conference (November 2020), the University of Toronto History of Art Students’ Association Symposium (March 2021), and the Collegiate Association for Inequality Research (April 2021).
