An Ayala diorama depicts the beginning of the revolution against Spain in Manila,1896.Credit:Ayala Museum
Where we confine dioramas – history told through toy soldiers – to the Australian War Memorial,Ayala deploys dozens of figurines in more than 50 disparate settings to tell the tale of the Philippines. Dioramas present history in the continuous present tense. After starting with tribals spearing an elephant in the Cagayan Valley and a hunter carting a pig back to the Tabon caves,the story segues into colonial horrors. Booted and armed Spaniards celebrate a first mass (1521) in the presence of seven bemused locals. The"first national hero",Lapu-Lapu,kills the renowned explorer,Ferdinand Magellan. Chinese pirates are repelled. Later,23,000 Chinese settlers are massacred (1603). Sultan Kudarat defends his lands against Spanish interlopers (1637). A Governor is murdered by an oddly affluent mob (1719). A savage revolt in Dagohoy persists for 85 years (from 1744). Filipinos are put to work in colonial iron mines. Another hero,Rizal,turns his back on a firing squad,while still more leaders are betrayed or assassinated. After the United States seizes the Philippines,locals ambush American forces at Balangiga (1901),then suffer reprisals comparable to My Lai. Japanese invaders arrive (1942) to conduct the Bataan death march,monstrously oppress the local Filipino population and raze Manila. Then,to round out the story,independence is declared (1946). As the song goes,is that all there is?
Not quite all the panels are soaked in blood. A few little bright interludes – the first printing press,a school open to all,Filipinos permitted to visit the presidential palace – are outweighed by the unmitigated misery suffusing most of the narrative.
What might the lessons be for a Filipino visitor to Ayala? Perhaps,never rely on foreigners,for they seek their own interests? Trust in"ourselves alone",as Sinn Fein proclaims? Never give up,despite horror and terror? Those are essentially the same national lessons that the people of Timor Leste,Kosovo and Eritrea have assimilated,and which Irish republicans and Basque separatists alike still propound.
A depiction of Japanese forces occupying Manila in 1942.Credit:Ayala Museum
All those events in the Philippines occurred eight hours'flight,or a world,away from Australia No element in the Filipino stories accords with the glib"Whig"or liberal economics notions of history,which hold that nations make steady progress,that rising tides lift all boats,that the powers that be have our well-being at heart,and that we are climbing towards the bright sunlit uplands. By contrast,the history told at Ayala is all about grit,grease,gore,guts – a quartet just sustaining a nation that has often been forced to hang on by its fingernails.
If a purist argued that declaring independence represents only the beginning of a national story,Ayala responds with film of the truly inspiring people's power revolt against the Marcos tyranny in 1986. The pronoun used shifts to"we",as the narrator extols a people's discovery of community,self-worth and power.