Plotter of history: A talk with archeologist Victor Paz

It would be in the middle of El-Nido-Palawan-nowhere, in the archeological site of Ille Cave, as it would be under the scorching sun on the untouched beach of Calitang, that I would find myself sitting with Dr. Victor Paz, archeologist.

It was not a conventional meeting. I had nothing planned on a trip alone to El Nido, save for some quiet time and plenty of reading. But it was difficult to say no to visiting an archeological site few have gone to and even fewer have written about. That I stayed – a night and two days more than I thought I would in any camp – is really because of Sir Vic.

Which is not to say that he talked me into it, as he would at the end of each day say: “You’re staying for tomorrow ha, Katrina.” Not a question, not an order, but a statement of fact. You wouldn’t know to say no.

It isn’t because Sir Vic is not one to compromise. In the course of talking to him I found that this was a man who has lived enough to know compromise like the back of his hand. It was refreshing really, to find Sir Vic to be that rare breed of academic who knows his limitations as someone who works at the University of the Philippines, and as an archeologist in the context of a nation that might not know what that even means.

He says it at some point in the interview, as we were talking about community engagement in archeological sites like Ille: “We always go against the default thinking that is merely about looking for treasure.”

But that’s getting ahead of this story.

Archeology and humility

This conversation happened because we were done with nervous laughter (mine) and stories about the personal life (also mine). These are important to mention because I had walked into that camp an absolute stranger, and while it was easy to establish links via U.P. Diliman, I was quick to say that I had left the academe years ago and had no real intentions of going back.

As such, I was there as a freelance writer that none of the people in the camp knew from Eve, yet here was Sir Vic willing to take me around El Nido with his team, to other (old) sites of archeological projects like Sibaltan, to newly-discovered sites like Imorigue Cave, to a wonderfully lush and protected mangrove forest that frames a river as it leads us to the open sea, to the most beautiful undiscovered beach I’ve ever seen, in Calitang.

In the course of my interview with him, over bottles of cold pale pilsen, it was easy to see how and why Sir Vic did not have the ego we usually expect of our academicians and scholars.

He is beyond it all. Which is to say that Sir Vic’s self-reflexivity is surprising for any of our intellectuals; even more so given our academics. He doesn’t speak with a tone of superiority, even as there was no question that fazed him. There is a humility here too, something that it seems the discipline of archeology allows him, if not demands of anyone who works in culture and the social sciences. Yes, that’s all of us.

“In the community of archeologists, we have a very long tradition of following the footsteps of the previous generation. Robert Fox followed the footsteps of Carl Guthe who went here in the '20s and went back in the '50s, and did a lot of studies. The next who followed him was my senior, Bong Dizon. We were here in ’98, and he was deliberately following the footsteps of Fox. Partly, there is a hint of arrogance there. We think that the older generations didn’t get it right, so you want to redo that. Then you realize that actually they did it right, and they were wiser even. And then you become humble.”

The beach of Calitang, El Nido, as untouched and unfiltered as it looks. Photo by Katrina Stuart Santiago

 

A junior in the community of archeology when Ille was discovered, Sir Vic says that it was only when he came back from getting his Ph.D. at Cambridge that he decided to work in Palawan. It would be in 2004 that he’d take over the project, later on to co-lead with Dr. Helen Lewis of the University College Dublin.

It’s be easy to say the rest is history, but that seems like an idiom that cannot apply to archeology as Sir Vic talks about it. “There are two reasons for archeology: basic research and the plotting of history. In the Philippines, an important goal is the enrichment of what we know about history, beyond mundane knowledge and hackneyed statements and slogans.” The task, Sir Vic says, is a “more textured way of understanding history frameworks are based on tracking down the transforming consciousness of Pinoys, that leads to the way we behave now.”

Now this task of historical understanding based on the mapping of consciousness can only be achieved through archeology, at least as far as Sir Vic is concerned. “Linguistically – that will give you more information directly, but it’s hard to get a time depth. It’s hard to check, is it transformation within a space, or transformation based on the movement of people? As such, you need an anchor.”

Archeology provides that anchor. And while it seems like a roundabout way of plotting and enriching history, as far as Sir Vic is concerned, it’s the only way. Then again, in the course of this conversation, archeology seems to be more than that.

Engaging community and local government

UP-ASP team members work together with locals at the archeological dig in Ille. Photo by Yo Muan

The original plan was to keep moving around Palawan, Sir Vic says, but that was changed by the fact that so much was happening in Ille. “It is more complicated than you think, Katrina.”

About which I could of course only agree. I was coming into that archeological site cold, and had been encouraged by the ideas of public archeology and heritage that came with the invitation to camp at Ille.

As far as Sir Vic is concerned, public archeology is not just about opening up the site to the public, as it is about engaging the community in archeology.

“We work at basic communities. Normally the communities go to our site, and we have exhibits and explain. We keep the sites open to the community as well,” he says. Which is to say that at the Ille site, locals were part and parcel of everyday activities doing work that the members of the archeological teams would be doing, too. The engagement of the community in this way provides the team an opportunity to work with the locals, and teach them about the importance of the archeological site. The goal is to have them become local advocates who might protect the sites, even when these are inactive.

But projects like the one in Ille need more than just the support of the community; that after all can be taught to some extent. Sir Vic’s years in Palawan (and elsewhere) have taught him that more than having a supportive community, if not one that might have advocates to begin with, is the need for government support. In the beginning Sir Vic had thought otherwise, thinking archeology could be done without the help of community or government. But sustaining sites like the one in Ille, which has gone on far longer than expected, has proven that sustainability depends on a community’s level of knowledge and willingness to engage, as well as on the local government’s support.

It is not something he considers much of a compromise. Instead it seems that Sir Vic has just lived long enough to see what works and what doesn’t. He is willing to engage a government receptive to the ideas of heritage and history, as he will go the extra mile to involve a community so that advocates might be molded from these spaces. “In the past, there were times when the people in the community would have the initiative to tell people who are looters, that they should protect this area. We want to hit the younger generation, and that’s one reason why we always have more people than we need.”

Consciousness, heritage, small successes

Sir Vic and his team at the Ille Cave site. Photo by Roel Flores

Engaging members of the local community is bound to Sir Vic’s ideological backbone, one that only the more confident of our academicians would so clearly and succinctly talk about.

“I don’t believe anymore that the solution to the well-being of individuals is that you start with the economic. Economics is important, but it’s not the most important thing. It’s consciousness. Which means culture is as important as economics, and if you really want people to change the way they treat their environment and the way they treat themselves, you lift their consciousness.”

This is what Sir Vic sees as part and parcel of the task of doing archeology. It is what is at the heart of doing it within and for a community. This is his personal advocacy, via archeology, for the cause of heritage.

Not that any of this is easy to do. Sir Vic is the first to say that it takes time, even with the support of government and the community. “For the lower classes and communities like the one in Ille, the focus is income generation. The question is: will this give them a better life? For some, life will change for the better, but not necessarily because you gave people the opportunity to earn. The latter is just one aspect of the more comprehensive approach .”

Sir Vic says that while they failed miserably at doing this in Mindoro, Sta. Ana, Manila has become their best practice archeology as far as local advocacy is concerned. A declared heritage zone, Sta. Ana is home to an elite that carries the cause of heritage. Their urbanity being their handicap, Sir Vic says there is still much to do. He of course, is being humble.

Sta. Ana might be the only place in this country on which an SM Savemore has been built without disrupting the landscape of its heritage streets and plaza; Savemore disappears into the landscape, instead of becoming a monstrosity. It might also be the only SM structure that protects an excavation of old stone houses and an old tree that goes out through the roof.

All because of the kind of work Sir Vic has put in, where he is willing to have conversations with institutions, from local governments to the local elite, to the bigger capitalists and oligarchies of our time, to create the conditions for compromise that might lead to the protection of archeological sites and heritage. This is borne of his sense of the bigger picture, of how at this point, and given the lack of State support for heritage, we just need to work with what we’ve got and be thankful for small successes.

If we can even acknowledge those successes, of course.

“Take that controversial attempt of a Bataan developer to tear apart and rebuild heritage houses, creating what looks like a version of Disneyland. The critique against it was that it wasn’t good work, and the houses were put by the sea which would soon enough be their ruin. Yet, at least those houses have been saved. The families were selling those houses and if that developer didn’t do what he did, then those houses would’ve just been demolished.”

Self-reflexivity and honesty

The ability to see the successes of the cause for heritage no matter how small, the insistence on engaging with institutions no matter how seemingly difficult or pointless, the decision to do archeology that seeks to change a community’s consciousness about itself, are all seamlessly tied together in the kind of work that Sir Vic does. Certainly it is reason to think this man mayabang, or like one of many local academicians who live up the ivory tower stereotype.

There is an honesty in him that allows for this conversation to go in the direction of admitting archeology’s limitations, even as we are talking about its importance. “Dati mayabang kami, we thought we could do everything. There was a time we thought we could do a documentary, and we had a really good exhibit. The documentary came out as a high school project ng Mababang Paaralan ng St. Andrew’s Field. Pero ang ganda ng exhibit. I realized that we cannot do everything. Basically we are researchers, and we can be small-scale heritage advocates. We need popularizers, documentarists, we cannot do that anymore,” Sir Vic says.

Being an archeologist with heritage advocacies comes with its pitfalls. “We aren’t heritage advocates full stop, and that is the problem. Ideally there are people we can pass on this work to, to keep the ball rolling, but that is rare. Sta. Ana is still best practice because there’s a local elite and community there that’s very conscious of heritage.”

Of course Sir Vic’s kind of heritage advocacy is one that can only be counterpoint to the more high-profile heritage advocates of these times, the ones who end up screaming and cursing at malls like SM when it is too late, and who barely think of compromise. He talks about these “radical heritage advocates” as merely reactive versus proactive when it comes to the cause of heritage. Sir Vic says that in fact when the law is behind you, and you get to these developers ahead of time, they actually listen.

“In other countries, the State plays a big role in saving heritage. But we don’t have that and the National Historical Commission doesn’t have the funds for it. But the point is we can have successes without making it a war. Of course developers just want to build and make money. But if you catch them early enough, they will adjust. It’s difficult when you get to them when they’re already building.”

Sir Vic falls back on that SM Savemore in Sta. Ana, which of course is exception to the rule, best practice as it is. That not many of us know about it is borne of this fact: this kind of heritage advocacy that’s premised on archeological practice and research is not one that we know to talk about. “Because what is talked about is built heritage, Fort Santiago, buildlings, there are more architects, and more art historians. At the same time I prefer to work and develop best practices and the grassroots. Hindi pa kami nagtatagumpay … pero gumagaling ng gumagaling,” Sir Vic says.

Sir Vic at the Ille campsite. Photo by Roel Flores

We go back to Ille as I ask how he knows it’s time to stop archeology on any given site. The answer is quick as it is honest. “When you’ve answered all your questions, if the information’s already redundant. But there are many other sites here, and across the valley. There are too few archeologists, for the breadth and scope of archeology here and in the Philippines.”

It would be easy to presume this a romance with the discipline of archeology, and yet it is also clear that none of what Sir Vic says comes from some echo chamber of praise and self-congratulatory pats-on-the-back, nor can one say that it is removed from nation given its insistence on engaging with the grassroots. Instead it is self-reflexivity that is here, a very clear sense of what one can do, an even bigger sense of one’s limitations.

At the tail-end of the conversation, raring to go into the waters of Calitang (me), and finishing up our bottles of pale (the two of us), I consider this kind of academic and heritage advocate, this kind of archeologist that we’ve talked about and throw Sir Vic one last question: does he consider himself a public intellectual?

“I cannot be that, because I’m institutionalized,” he says, with nary hesitation nor self-deprecation.

And while Sir Vic might believe that building consciousness is key, I think that I will take hard work and humility, self-reflexivity and honesty anytime. — BM, GMA News

A professor at the UP Archeological Studies Program, Dr. Victor Paz works on the Palawan Project.