Our Colourful Past

FOR PEACE AND LIBERTY

The long-forgotten masterpiece by Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, Per Pacem et Libertatem, overlooks the assembly of Filipino and American representatives in the Salon de Marmol of the Ayuntamiento de Manila in Intramuros. This 1905 photograph by Burr McIntosh was included in Alice Roosevelt Longworth’s collection, taken during the 1905 William Howard Taft Mission to Asia. Today, the album is in safekeeping at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. The painting depicts Philippine-American partnership towards the country’s development as an independent democratic republic, which would materialise four decades later.

A LEGACY BEHIND

Manuel Luis Quezon y Molina served as the first president of the Commonwealth of the