the Juan Bautista de Anza trail, in miniatures

-
Within the John Muir national historic site was the Juan Bautista de Anza national historic trail exhibit. I was interested in it because it's about the Spanish history of California. I was hoping to find parallels to Philippine history. After all, both the Philippines and California used to be ruled by the viceroyalty of New Spain (Acapulco). I doubted, however, that I had enough time to scratch the surface.


If the Ayala Museum has dioramas, the Juan Bautista de Anza exhibit has miniatures too. These were much smaller than the dioramas so it was more challenging to take photos... I had to set my Canon Powershot to macro mode for this.

Anyway, the miniatures depicted the Spanish colonists, led by de Anza, going north to Alta California (encompassing present day California, Nevada, and Utah) through a land route. Along the way, they were able to establish settlements and missions in San Francisco, Monterey, and San Diego (among others).




This expedition made me realise that the Philippines is an older colony of Spain. Cebu and Manila were established in the 1500s while California missions were established in the late 1770s. But I'm sure that Spain was in North America prior to the trip to the Philippines because the Galleon Trade was established in the 1580s. Perhaps, the trip up to Alta California was an expansion of the thriving Spanish empire, rather than conquering new lands. After all, the miniatures did not depict war between the colonists and the indigenous settlers... unlike what's shown in many of the dioramas at the Ayala Museum.



I guess I need to read up more about California history during its Spanish period... find Philippine connections if there are any.

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for dropping by!

Before moving on, please share your thoughts or comments about the post. :)

Thanks again!

Popular posts from this blog

Skyflakes

-
One of the more famous Philippine exports is Skyflakes , a wheat-based, salty cracker. It is one of my emergency food items: I typically have some stocked at home and in my handbag in case I become hungry (like in traffic jams). When there's no electricity and it's impractical to cook rice (because the leftover would spoil), I'd open a pack of Skyflakes and generously coat each cracker with Cheez Whiz... if I had a bottle of it within reach. Anyway, each time I spent more than two weeks outside the Philippines, I'd be elated to see boxes of Skyflakes inside Asian stores (particularly when in I was Australia and in the USA). Back then, I took it as a sign of homesickness. When I moved to California, I didn't miss Skyflakes because Mommy made sure that there's a steady supply in the house. Skyflakes is embedded in Filipino gastronomy as a snack, a panawid-gutom , that anyone who reacts positively upon seeing Skyflakes outside the Philippines must have spe
Read more

10 things I learned while driving on Marcos Highway to Baguio City

-
I went on a day trip to the City of Pines, which was around a 700-km drive from my house. I drove  going up there and then from the city to Victoria, Tarlac. After that, my dad took over the driving duties. It was day trip with Tita Ising and Tito Sibing with us. Anyway, this trip was my first time to go to Baguio City with me behind the wheel. As everyone who drives up knows, there are three main routes to Baguio from the lowlands: Kennon Road, which ascends from Rosario, La Union. It was out of my options because it's too dangerous to use that road in the rainy season. The second route is via Naguilian Road, which makes my trip a lot longer because the beginning of the ascent is in Bauang, La Union (further north). The last route, and the one I took, was the Marcos Highway, now known as the Aspiras-Palispis Highway. This 47-km road starts from Agoo, La Union and is touted as the safest route among the three.  As I drove up and then down (on the same day; we were in Bagu
Read more

Surat Mangyan

-
Image
In high school, part of the Filipino curriculum was learning about one of the country's ancient native scripts called Baybayin . I learned back then that this script was eventually abandoned because the Spanish, and eventually the Americans, encouraged the use of the Latin script for written communications. But that's in the lowlands; the rules were different up in the mountains. In the lush mountains of Mindoro, groups of indigenous people called Mangyans  live largely in isolation away from the Christianised Filipinos. This isolation has led to the continuous development of the Mangyans' old script, Surat Mangyan . As I walked inside the Ayala Museum , I saw this bamboo tube (I'm not sure if it's an instrument) with Mangyan script written all over it. I suppose that this was equivalent to a book or a song. But I haven't figured out what's written yet, despite the translation guide provided. What I can do, however, is write my name in Ma
Read more