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Introduction
Why would a 2005 form of mass transit in the Philippines carry equine symbolism similar to that depicted in a 1905 American cartoon illustration? What links the symbolic expression of a horse from a hundred years ago with a Philippine vehicle of the present? One does not really think of the horse when driving an automobile. Yet there was a time, in many places for many people, when such was the case. This book revisits that moment when this connection was immediate and palpable.
At the turn of the century, the idea of a machine with a horselike quality—the ability to be self-propelling—seemed preposterous. What seems absurd to us today is the idea of the automobile’s dependence on the antiquated horse for acceptance and even survival. We, having largely forgotten our past and, with our early-twentieth-century predecessors, looking ahead to an unknown future, share a similar sense of puzzlement: how could the motorcar be even remotely interchangeable with the horse?