Paradigm Shift: A Walk with Carlos Celdran

by Jennifer G. Castro
Photos by Mark Jason C. Mariposa

“I can’t change the way Manila looks, but I can change the way you look at Manila.”

It is a bold statement coming from one of the country’s most famous tour guides, but Carlos Celdran manages to make good on his promise on showing both Filipinos and foreigners another side to the bustling capital of the Philippines.

Dressed in a yellow shirt emblazoned with a picture of Ninoy Aquino, Celdran enters the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) all set to start his Living La Vida Imelda tour. This tour, one of five, focuses on the Martial Law era through the woman who defined it all for Filipinos that time, Imelda Marcos.

Known for informative yet highly enjoyable Manila tours, Celdran confesses he never planned on being a tour guide. “I really wanted to be a painter and an actor. My college degree was in painting, not at all related to tourism. Being a tour guide is a job that found me,” he says.

He finds similarities, however, between acting and handling tours. “My experience as a visual artist helped me. I was a painter and worked in theater as well. Being a tour guide is like being an actor actually. You have to get a message across clearly and make an emotional impact.”

In the tour, Celdran uses the CCP as a metaphor for the rise and fall of the Marcos era. He combines historical facts with his own brand of humor, often portraying Imelda within that era’s social context compellingly. From Imelda’s zodiac sign being Cancer to the Ms. Manila scandal, he goes through his script with a practiced ease.

“It’s just a show. I guess it’s a show masked as a tour, because it has performance arts, theatre, and some folklore,” he says.

He admits the tours were not his idea to begin with. “The original idea was done by the Heritage Conservation Society. When I became their assistant director, I [did] tours for them through the old districts,” he says. “When they restructured in 2001, they decided not to make it so much about outreach, but more on advocacy. They fired the tour guide and I took the tours with me. I added the costume, pictures, and decided to make it a script. And the rest is history.”

As the tour moves to the CCP art galleries, Celdran uses old newspaper clippings and a variety of pictures for visuals. Hiding his face behind a faded picture of Imelda, he makes a spirited impersonation of the former first lady. In a scene involving Ferdinand Marcos, Imelda, and a New York psychiatrist, Celdran makes the audience laugh with a dramatic “Ferdie! I cannot take this anymore.”

Emphasizing the role of art in the 1970’s, he goes on to describe the “Imeldific” nature of how the Philippines was portrayed. What is Japanese sign language for “Filipina?” Why does the Filipino in Disney’s It’s A Small World After All wear butterfly sleeves? According to Celdran, these are all because of Imelda Marcos.

Asked how he got his information, he says, “Through research, talking to people, [and the] internet. [What] I’m giving is a very personalized history. All history is personal. There is no such thing as objective history because it is always written in somebody’s point of view. So I’m just giving my own personal opinions of Philippine history and I just want people to get interested in the topic enough to go out and do research on their own.”

In the end, people are left to make their own opinions about Imelda. Call her ambitious, devious, obsessive-compulsive or even a bit psychotic, she is still an influential figure in Philippine society today. Through his tour, Celdran manages to capture her ambitions, faults, and strengths in a one-of-a-kind entertaining act.

Being a tour guide in Manila is both fulfilling and frustrating for Celdran. “[I enjoy] all the interesting people I meet everyday, especially all the Filipinos who are interested in learning more about their own culture and city. [However,] it’s challenging [since] pedestrians are given low priority all over Manila and the bad reputation of the city doesn’t make it an easy city to sell,” he says.

According to him, an enjoyable tour is comprised of good weather, a good guide, and some fresh buko juice at the end of it all. What sets his tour apart? “I think it’s the theatricality. I approach the tour from a performance art point of view,” he says.

It’s the understanding of Manila as a city that Celdran wants to convey to his audience. “In a lot of times now, especially in the 1980’s, the Philippine mentality about the city of Manila is a mall,” he says. “We forget, in between, where we live, where we work, and the ‘mall’ is an entire city [that] actually is a reflection of our history [and] aspirations as a people.”

“I just want people to realize that there is a city out there.”