Excerpt

In 1904 the Americans exhibited over 1,100 Filipino natives at the worlds fair held in Saint Louis, Missouri. The fair, officially named as the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, commemorated the centennial of the biggest land deal in U.S. history. It was the largest worlds fair ever, cost $50 million, attracted twenty million visitors, and celebrated the first modern Olympics held outside Europe. Its highlights included the eight main palaces; the Festival Hall, the fairs gem where lagoons and waterways rivaling Venice cascaded; and the Pike, the entertainment section, where the forerunners of Ringling Brothers, Cirque du Soleil and Madame Tussaud performed. The Saint Louis fair introduced, for the first time, novelty food and drinks, such as iced tea, ice cream cone and hot dog. The fair was a festival of music, art, architecture and landscaping, all combined into one unified whole, the likes of which had never been seen before and have never been seen since, wrote author Harry Brazee Wandell.

The native Filipinos, more than half of the over 2,000-human exhibit, were displayed at the Philippine Expositionthe largest and the finest colonial exhibitlocated on a 47-acre site. Within its walls were a square called Plaza Santa Cruz, a replica of the Manila Cathedral and Intramurosthe most striking part of the expositionand about one-hundred buildings, showcasing 75,000 Philippine exhibits, including agricultural products, art, ethnology, and a Philippine relief map, similar to the one at the Rizal Park in Manila, complete with a viewing deck. Along the Arrowhead Lake, symbolizing Laguna de Bay and Pasig River, that flowed adjacent to the Philippine site, stood five villagesNegrito, Igorot, Bagobo, Moro, and Visayanhousing the Filipino minority groups.

Each village, made of bamboo, nipa and other Philippine building materials, was clustered to simulate the typical communities in the Philippines. The Igorot Village became the most popular and the biggest moneymaker, mainly because of the Igorot dog feasts, the most remembered and controversial aspect of the Filipino exhibit, drawing ire from Filipinos. Vicente Nepomuceno, a member of the Philippine Honorary Commission, protested: Impression has gone abroad that we are barbarians, that we eat dogsno matter how long we stay here [in Saint Louis], we cannot convince the public to the contrary.

The Filipino ethnic groups entertained the fairgoers with their own culture, consisting mostly of songs, dances, and other tribal ceremonies. Datu Bulan, a Bagobo Chief, ended the show with a display of his luxuriant growth of waist-length hair; the Visayans capped their show by singing the Star Spangled Banner, with two little children running in from the stage sides, waving the American flag and the Exposition flag, bringing the house down. When not performing they pretended to be doing what they were supposed to do back home.

Colorful personalities inhabited the villages, including Antonio, a popular Igorot chief, who was fascinated with the telephone, a talking box as the Filipino children called it; Antero, an Igorot boy who was the only Igorot who spoke English; Datu Facundo, a fashionable Moro Chief who volunteered to accompany the Moro contingent, otherwise they would not go; and Pilar Zamora, the highly educated teacher of the Model School.

Tragedy struck the natives along the way: Two Filipinos froze to death on their way to Saint Louis when, despite the freezing weather, the train conductor left the windows open; the Bagobos arrived late at the fair because their steamship caught fire before leaving Manila, its passengers contracted smallpox, and some died of the disease; and about a dozen more Filipinos perished in the fairgrounds due to illness and suicide.

Due to the strong emphasis on Anthropology, a nascent field of science then, the Saint Louis worlds fair acquired a racist and an imperialistic tone, subjecting the Filipino natives to racial discriminations, human degradations, and ethnic prejudices. Except for the Visayans and the Philippine Scouts, who were considered the civilized elements of the contingent, the rest of the Filipino minorities were treated as savages and barbarians, with the Negritos and Igorot being classified as the least civilized, and the Bagobos and Moros as semi-civilized. Treated as a captive body for scientists, they were studied, measured, questioned and subjected to all kinds of scientific experiments.

Allusions to the colonial status of the Philippines were highlighted in the fair: in the way it was located at the fairground, in the display of weapons the Filipinos used to defend their freedom, in staging a Philippine Day, reminiscent of the taking of Manila from the Spaniards. Exposition officials compared Filipinos to the American Indians, who, with the Louisiana Purchase and the oft-quoted manifest destiny, were vanquished in the American westward expansion, as the Filipinos were similarly subdued when the United States, fresh from their victory in the Spanish-American War, grabbed the opportunity to expand overseas and adopted the ironic benevolent assimilation policy in the Philippines.

When the worlds fair ended on December 1, after a seven-month run, the Igorot were whisked away to prevent them from being exhibited in the next worlds fair in Portland, Oregon. This effort, however, failed. Because of the Igorot and the other Filipino natives capacity to draw crowds and fill in the till, they became almost fixtures in subsequent fairs and carnivals around the United States and even in Europe.

The legacy of the Louisiana Purchase Expositionone hundred years laterlingered long after it was gone. The Wydown Middle School in Saint Louisin what is now the City of Claytonbuilt over the original site of the Igorot Village, named its yearbook The Igorrote Yearbook and called its football team The Igorrote. Up to now, a legend endures in St. Louis that a community called Dogtown acquired such name because the Igorot stole and butchered the dogs of its residents. The derogatory term dogeater stuck with Filipinos, arming some entertainers, such as Joan Rivers, the television comedienne, to bash Filipinos. While declaring a program break, she urged her general viewers to feed your dogs, but asked the Filipinos to eat your dogs.