This Special Session will congregate a diverse group of scholars that will explore the representation of the Philippines among different mediums in the 20th and 21st centuries. Once part of the Spanish Empire, the role and influence of the Philippines on the western world has been overlooked, especially by Hispanic scholars. As mentioned by Paula Park in her text Intercolonial Intimacies (2022) “Hispanic and Latin American studies [...] have tended to relegate Philippine literature in Spanish or the Philippines in general to the margins.”

In order to relocate the prominence of the Philippines in the intellectual conversations, this panel will explore different contemporary viewpoints of cultural representations of the joy and sorrow of the postcolonial gaze on the Philippines in Mexico and Spain. The presentations of Miquel Bota, Ryan Woodall and Ilianna Vasquez seek to recentralize the Philippines and reflect on the remnants of colonialism as expressed in different contemporary artistic productions. The session will explore how the western gaze is projected on the Philippines to determine how a postcolonial approach can reshape the colonial discourse and challenge the oblivion that the archipelago has faced within the Hispanic World, and if this is done with joy, sorrow or both.

We will begin our conversation with the presentation “(Post)Colonial Fraternities: Contemporary Perspectives in Filipinas, textos cercanos” by Ilianna Vasquez (Yale University), which will look at the unexplored connection between Mexico and the Philippines. Once part of the same colony, these two countries have shared a colonial past that has been overlooked by artists and historians. For several centuries, the Acapulco- Manila commercial route allowed Mexico and the Philippines to share traditions ranging from fashion, gastronomy, and language to beliefs and symbols still present in contemporary Mexican poetry. The presence of the Philippines in Mexico is reflected in Filipinas, textos cercanos (2010) by Tomás Calvillo Unna. As an artist and a diplomat, Calvillo Unna reflects upon the forgotten history between Mexico and the Philippines. In this collection of short poems, Calvillo Unna looks at the Philippines through Mexican eyes. In these poems, Calvillo Unna reflects upon ecocritical and identity issues to create an understanding of the Philippines through a Mexican perspective. Through a close reading of these poems, Ilianna Vasquez will explore how Calvillo Unna attempts to reconstruct the forgotten history between Mexico and the Philippines through the poetic form in the twenty-first century.

We will continue with “The Stubborn Imperial Gaze: The Case of Los últimos de Filipinas” by Miquel Bota (California State University, Sacramento) who will explore the emotional content of contemporary Spanish films that focus on the Philippines. Back in 1946, in the darkest years of Franco's regime, movie director Antonio Román presented his film Los últimos de Filipinas. In this piece, Román, confers his audience with a nostalgic recreation of an event of the 1898 war that emphasizes an imperial gaze of the Philippines and the Spanish dominion. In 2016, Salvador Calvo recreates this same event in his movie 1898 Los últimos de Filipinas. Surprisingly enough, some of the cliches of Román’s work are regained in this 21st century adaptation of the story.

In his presentation, Miquel Bota reflects on the difficulty for contemporary Spanish creators to break off with an Imperial gaze othering the Philippine characters in their cultural products. Following Raewyn Connell’s postulates on Hegemonic Masculinity, Bota focuses on the patriarchal view that constrains the reach of both directors and that is present in most of the contemporary artistic recreations of the Spanish presence in the Asian archipelago and the 1898 war.

Finally, in “Queen of the socialites: Isabel Preyler and the construction of a Filipina celebrity in Spain” Ryan Woodall (University of Texas at Austin) will examine the production of celebrity Isabel Preysler. Preysler has been a staple in the Spanish press since the 1970s, featuring prominently in celebrity news magazines. As a hypervisible Filipina figure within Spanish society, her representation as national celebrity warrants greater attention. By examining the discourse surrounding Preysler through television programs and magazines such as ¡Hola!, this presentation will analyze how Preysler is depicted in Spanish media through a celebrity studies lens. By doing so, we can gain a better understanding not only of the construction of Preysler as a celebrity but also the effect that her Filipino nationality has on this construction.

The conversations from this Special Session will result in crucial interventions in the studies about the Philippines from a Hispanic perspective.