Sacred Places: Blessings and Curses of Collective Memory and Rituals in Philippine Colonial History

The geographical region of the Philippine islands contains a landscape of public and sacred places as a result of two turning points in the region's history, the Spanish American War and the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during World War II. Historical sites became a place where rituals and memory generated by a veneration of ritual and healing and collective memory due to traumatic events. Roman Catholic churches and historical sites in the form of war memorials and monuments suggest a landscape of sacred ground that contributed to the healing of wounds by confronting and reconciling through faith, worship, prayer, pilgrimage, and collective memory. These sites not only represent sacred places of ritual and commemoration of memory, they form a greater whole of Philippine national heritage and identity.