‘Historical Markers ‘

Considered as a dull subject in school, most people never really know the importance of history and why appreciate it in our day to day living. Whenever people pass the road in front of Luneta Park, what impresses them is neither Luneta as a historical site nor the spot where our hero Jose Rizal sacrificed his life for the love of the country, but a picnic ground for the family; or those who go jogging to stay fit. In Claro M. Recto Avenue, what interests people are the shopping malls and other tiangge stores, but they don’t even dare glance at the marker there which contains very important information of the place being the location where Andres Bonifacio and company met at a house on Azcarraga near Elcano Street, Tondo District to form the KKK.
Although Andres Bonifacio, Deodato Arellano and Teodoro Plata are long dead and we have installed markers in their honor, we should not limit ourselves to venerating heroes or in deeper sense, personages who made outstanding achievements in the history. It was Thomas Carlyle who raised this attitude to the level of a philosophy with his ideas of the “hero in history”- the Great Man, whose superhuman powers, wisdom, or inspiration enabled him to accomplish some fundamental change, for better or worse, in the life of his nation. The absence of the Great Man would mean that the great event would not have occurred – no Jose Rizal; no Philippine Revolution, no Andres Bonifacio; no KKK, no Emilio Aguinaldo; no Philippine Republic. In other words, we look at history in strictly human terms. But do we have to honor only the people we considered heroes? How about old churches, lighthouses, edifices, bridges and other old structures we see that we would normally consider archaic? These structures are said to be monuments to our history, silent witnesses of our glorious past. Aside from documents, monuments are relics of human happenings, thus, they deserve to be preserved and marked for the next generation to recognize their role in history. The Great Wall of China, for example, is a national treasure among the Chinese as it protected for many centuries the northern border from attacks of barbarians during the rule of successive dynasties. In the Philippines, we have The Banaue Rice Terraces which are 2000-years old and were carved out of the mountains of Ifugao by ancestors of the Batad people. If the Banaue Rice Terraces could only speak, they will have many stories about our former times to tell about our former times that you might consider very relevant to the present.
We frequently ask this question, what good does History bring to us? Do we still need History and should we live in the past when we are already looking forward to the future? This question may be answered this way: History is the memory of a human group experience of its experience and if it is forgotten or ignored, that human group ceases in that measure, to be human. Without history we have no knowledge of who we are or who we came to be, like victims of collective amnesia groping in the dark for our identity. As the old saying goes, “Ang hindi lumingon sa pinanggalingan ay hindi makakarating sa paroroonan”. It is the events recorded in history that have generated all the emotion, the values, the ideals that make life meaningful, that have given men something to live for, struggle over, die for. … History is a source of inspiration, as it holds up to us the tradition and the glory, the clashing passions and the heroic exploits of past generations.- for the present and future generations to follow- if only to preserve their survival.