From St. Louis to San Diego

I’m writing this on New Year’s Day in San Diego, California, where we’ve been visiting our married daughter Demi, who’s been living and working here for the past 17 years. It was our first Christmas in America in ten years, and our second visit since the pandemic ended.

Last night, just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, I watched a long and fascinating documentary on cable TV on the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, also known as the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, which ran from April to December that year. We Filipinos recall that event for its importation of over 1,000 of our countrymen to demonstrate what “savagery” meant – specifically, through the public butchering and eating of dogs.

That bloody sideshow raised an outcry even then among both Filipinos and Americans, a pain we still feel more than 120 years after. Lost to many of us as a result of that diversion was the magnificence of the fair in many other respects, especially in terms of advances in science and technology. Many necessities and amenities we associate with the 20th century – electrical lighting, wireless telegraphy, the X-ray machine, baby incubators and tabletop stoves, among others – were first shown to the public at the fair.

But the fair, above all, was meant to showcase American ascendancy in politics and culture and in military and industrial might. America had just defeated Spain and had become a global maritime power and was eager to flex its muscle, so this triumphalism underscored the great urge at St. Louis to introduce the world to America, and America to the world.

Just a few days earlier, we came out to San Diego’s famous waterfront to watch a parade to celebrate the Holiday Bowl, a football game scheduled for the Christmas break, with floats, balloons, marching bands and military vehicles. It was a moment of pure Americana, brimming with Christmas cheer. I did my best to keep politics out of my mind for that golden hour, but of course it was never far away – especially in San Diego, a border city that could soon find itself caught in the mass-deportation drama promised by the incoming Trump administration, which takes office in less than three weeks.

This morning we woke up to