Paper Short Abstract:

In this paper I will focus on the stories told by members of the informal communities living in Intramuros. Their make-shift houses are nothing close to the supposed grandeur of the Old City, yet they are the places where life is lived and memories are created, spaces with a connection to the past and the future, through the bodies of the generations inhabiting them. If the informal communities cease to exist, all the traces of life will be removed from the Old City, leaving a landscape full of the forgotten dead, erased heritage, freshly-reconstructed old buildings, and a bright new future bereft of the past.

Paper Abstract:

It would take several volumes to write about the memory games in Intramuros, yet in this paper I will focus on the stories told to me by members of the informal communities living there. Their make-shift houses are nothing close to the supposed grandeur of the Old City, yet they are the places where life is lived and memories are created, spaces with a connection to the past and the future, through the bodies of the generations inhabiting them. Even if disconnected from the pre-war and war-time history of the quarter, they are the bearers of meaning and of life in the city, the ones inhabiting the historical streets, operating the service sector, providing food to visitors.

That the memory of these communities is being undermined, and even erased, can be seen in the fact that the administration has a plan to get rid of them. The hovering relocations offer a constant threat to the communities and cause instability in their lives. The reasoning behind this idea is connected with traces – these communities are supposedly way too visible and too noisy in the heritage space. This was mentioned in almost all of my conversations about Intramuros, but no one thought of documenting the local memories. If the informal communities cease to exist, all the traces of life will be removed from the Old City, leaving a landscape full of the forgotten dead, erased heritage, freshly-reconstructed old buildings, and a bright new future bereft of the past.