I was with a group of friends yesterday, entertaining a national artist guest whose works are on exhibit at the Synesthesia Gallery.  We were talking about tourism in Tacloban, and how there once was an attempt to merge tourism and culture in one committee.  My friend said that they argued for an art and culture committee, because art and culture go together, not tourism and culture.  I agreed with her that the tourism industry can only be responsible for marketing what we have, but it can never dictate what art should be, nor should it dictate how or what culture should be.

I believe that a culture is a reflection of a people’s identity, not something that’s dictated from the outside.  When there’s a stimulant, like a move for a change, then culture adapts, but still in its own slow process of change.  When there’s a stimulant that dictates what should be, there’s an immediate change but not sustainability.  People never really change, there’s only a semblance of change but when there’s a crisis, they go back to being who they were.  Thus the reason why culture can never be packaged for tourists, because as soon as there’s an observer, the observed changes to please the observer.  It’s never the genuine stuff that’s seen.  It’s not who the people really are.  In Thailand for example, even in the mountains among the tribes, everything was packaged for tourists.  It’s difficult to enter into the Thai’s psyche, you can never know who they really are behind their smiles unless you stay there for years.  Everything you read about Thailand is true, to a certain extent.  But you leave the place wondering if you only saw the wrapper of the gift, and never got to see what was inside. Thailand of course, is Asia’s disneyland for tourists.  Everything is tourist-friendly that nothing can ever go wrong, if you follow the rules.  I experienced the same distaste for the tourist industry here in the Philippines in Banawe.  There were these old people dressed in their tribal clothes waiting for tourists to have their pictures taken with them.  And you pay them of course.  It was so commercialized that they had lost their tribe’s dignity and pride.  Where is culture in that? 

I argued with my friend that art has no right to handle culture either. Just as they don’t want to be dictated by the tourist industry what to paint and what to produce for tourists, culture can never be changed and dictated to by artists, whatever they profess they can do.  Culture after all, is a collective expression of a people’s identity.  And artists only try to interpret this expression, from what they feel about it, to what they think about it.  Art like tourism, has no right to tamper with a people’s culture.

But back to tourism.  A month ago, I traveled with some friends to Palompon’s packaged tour of their marine sanctuary.  For P60 per head, you get to visit their mangrove sanctuary, you get to snorkel and see their rich seabed of over 50 different kinds of corals, and sleep in their hut in the middle of the sea.  At night, you’re taken out on their night safari, where they flash a light at the water, startling the fishes to jump, to skip, to fly...  And it’s a treat to see, for awhile, until you have enough of seeing startled fishes jumping in fear.  But the message is clear: the sanctuary is rich with fishes, and the whole idea of the marine sanctuary does work.  The hut we slept in had no beds, it was open to the wind at night, there were only two tables for picnics, and benches to sit on, and sleep on. It’s a package tour yes, an educational tour.  But in our case, the fun was not in being treated like tourists.  The fun was in being able to fend for ourselves.  The place was not built for us (tourists), it was originally a viewdeck for the guards.  The local guides were there to answer our questions about mangroves and the marine sanctuary, but not to please us as tourists.  They were guardians of the sea, not tourist guides.  In my opinion, that’s what traveling is supposed to be.  An educational experience, not entertainment.  And that’s where the tourism industry is missing the point.  We can never really be a tourist destination because everything we have, other Asian countries have and are better at selling them, packaging them, and are more tourist-friendly than we’ll ever be in a hundred years.  We can only attract the real travelers, those who are looking for experience and not entertainment, those who are looking for the real culture of the people and not those that are packaged and sold by an institution.  I for one can never be proud of the Pintados Festival in Tacloban, if it ever becomes a tourist destination for example.  Festivals these days are mere freak shows.  There is no culture in it, there is only a packaged destination to please sponsors and tourists and the organizers’ pockets.  And the local people dancing in the streets?  They are the caged monkeys behind bars that the tourists ogle at. In real life, our real tattooed native ancestors would probably have eaten the tourists for dinner (although I have no anthropological evidence to support that statement).

I am curious as to how this new committee plans to promote tourism in our region.  I agree art and tourism go well together.  They can package and market each other for tourists, but they should leave culture alone.  Culture can never be packaged.  It can never be sold.  It is as elusive as the agtas, and as ephemeral as the borong.  Culture after all, is the psyche of the people, and no appointed committee, even an art committee, can ever grasp its essence, and turn it into a package tour.