A mallet strikes against my skin… and echoes in the room.
"These symbols are from your lineage."
Francis San Diego, who's known on Instagram as tribal korner, tattoos my forearm.
"And these are symbols that exist, and I'm sure you've seen it, so they might look familiar to you."
He's been doing Batok for nearly three years in Riverside.
"Batok is a pre-colonial, traditional tapping tattoo practice, and it has been in the culture for hundreds of years."
San Diego says that the tattoos stood out so much that the Spanish colonizers nicknamed the islands.
"The first thing that Spain noticed was that the natives were covered in tattoos and they actually, Spain used to call the Philippines, Las Islas de los Pintados. They called them the islands of the painted people because they noticed that they were just covered in tattoos."
San Diego says that he's always loved art. But he didn't start tattooing until he was an adult.
He began making tattoo designs during the pandemic, keeping a binder at home.
He started posting online after his wife found his binder of designs.
San Diego says that's when his tattoo career took off.
"That's when people reached out to me and they were like, hey, I love your designs. You think you could design this for me? I said, "Sure, I'd love to. And that's when Tribal Korner began. It began in our small one-bedroom, one-bath apartment, and it was just my wife and I."
San Diego grew up in the IE, and is proud of it.
But he says lots of Filipino immigrants don't have a strong connection to their heritage because they're told it doesn't matter.
"But you come out to a point in your life where you eventually do realize that it does matter."
He says he's grateful he can make Batok more accessible to people who can't fly to the Philippines for it.
"It's just such an essential part of our history that needs to continue to be told and I'm just really thankful and honored to be a part of that, to bring it here to our community locally."
He continues to tap the mallet into my forearm.
"It [ECHO OF THE MALLET] sounds different in my ears, like when, in a literal sense, it sounds like, you know, an echoing."
I am not Filipino.
My family is from Chile… we are connected with the Mapuche… one of the country's tribes.
But these are very traditional patterns that are found in the weaving
I see the patterns come to life on my skin. The simple and elegant designs are symbolic of the eyes of the soul, and remind me of the generations that came before me so I can be where I am now.
