FILIPINO historians no longer consider 1521 as the year the Philippines was “discovered” by Ferdinand Magellan.
At most, Dr. Nilo Ocampo, a history professor at the University of the Philippines for 46 years, said it was just a “meeting”—or an “encounter”—with our people then, when the Spanish armada led by the Portuguese explorer landed on the Philippine archipelago in the search for the Moluccas—the spice islands.
“Irrelevant” was how Dr. Zeus Salazar, a revered historian and anthropologist, described the event as the country marks the quincentennial of Magellan’s tragic voyage.
When the Spaniards came to the Philippines, the local inhabitants had been exposed to foreign affinities, from the Arabs to our Asian neighbors, who had influenced them in trading, culture and religion.
According to Salazar, “a great deal of what we now call our own has come from a common source, a common civilization formerly shared with at least some of our fellow Asians (particularly the Malays and Indonesians)—i.e. , from our Austronesians or Malayo-Polynesian base-culture.”
Their differing views from “traditional” historians were hardly surprising, considering that Salazar and Ocampo were part of the movement that began in the early ’70s among academic scholars and intellectuals who tried to correct approaches in Philippine historiography, making the study of historical writing nationalistic and more culturally sensitive.
The late nationalist historian Renato Constantino once noted that those who had earlier documented our colonial past were, by training, “captives of Spanish and American historiography, both of which inevitably viewed Philippine history through the palm of their own prejudices.”
In The Past Revisited, Constantino wrote that history is not merely a chronology of events nor is it just a story of heroes and great men. History, he said, is “a recorded struggle of people for every increasing freedom and for newer and higher realization of the human person.”
But the struggle, he explained, is a “collective one” and as such “involves the mass of human beings who are therefore the motivators of change and of history.”
Ocampo said it is time to look at our history “from the point of view of the Filipino people.” There is really a need to educate the Filipinos that our history began even before the Spaniards “discovered” the Philippines in 1521; followed by the colonial years and the period where the Filipinos became free, he said.
“Yet until now, the framework of our history remains to be dominated by that of our colonizers,” Ocampo said. He deemed such orientation of history as partly to blame for the colonial mentality in a country that was built through the “dark days” of our history and the anti-colonial struggle of its people.
Ironically, Ocampo’s mentor, the historian Salazar, didn’t even mention the events that happened in 1521 in the Kasaysayan ng Kapilipinuhan: Bagong Balangkas, where he divided into three periods the country’s history—the Pamayananan (500,000/250 BC-1588), Bayan (1588-1913) and Bansa (1913-present).
‘Pantayong Pananaw’
THIS approach in historiography, as shown in Salazar’s framework of Philippine history, was based on the “Pantayong Pananaw”—or “Bagong Kasaysayan” (New History) which he spearheaded before it evolved as a popular movement among nationalist academic scholars and intellectuals calling for an indigenous perspective in conducting historical enquiries.
In an essay, Ateneo University history professor Aaron Rom O. Morlina explained Salazar’s “Pantayong Pananaw” or “PP”—“pantayo” simply means “from us-to-us” and connotes that the speaker communicates with an audience that is also part of the speaker community.
It was a method espoused by historians led by Salazar, who acknowledged development of the nation based on the “internal interconnectedness and linking of characteristics, values, knowledge wisdom, aspirations, practices, behavior and experiences.”
The “pantayo” perspective, Salazar said, could be rooted in revolutionaries like Andres Bonifacio and Emilio Jacinto, who looked at the history and struggle of the Filipinos for independence from an internal perspective and use the Pilipino language to communicate.
The problem, he said, was the nation that was formed by colonialism. There was the “pangkami” perspective (from-us-to-you), espoused by the Filipino “elite” who were seen in the generation of intellectuals educated in Spain during the time of Rizal and the propaganda movement. Then there is also the “pangkayo” (from-you-to us), the judgment made by “external agents upon one’s culture.”
In this approach, Prof. Ramon Guillermo cited the need for a “talastasang bayan,” which is a “substantial dialogical circle” consisting of subjects within a community with a homogenous socio-politico-cultural code. The “code” becomes the referent of analysis in historiography and other academic fields under the social sciences and the humanities.
Shattering the ‘myth’
“SO why [commemorate] 1521? If we want to celebrate the implant of Spanish power in the Philippines, it wasn’t there,” he said. “The Spaniards were there for a just a few weeks, and their leader, Magellan, was even killed by Lapulapu.”
At that time, each “datu” like Lapulapu wielded power in their own turf since there was no concept of a nation then, though there were already sultanates in the South.
Salazar suspected that Lapulapu killed Magellan simply because he wanted to get the Spanish galleon, although at that time the ships of Butuan were even bigger than the size of the vessels in the Spanish armada.
Magellan, on the other hand, meddled in internal affairs of the island leaders, if only to impress King Humabon of Cebu and his newfound friends on how the Spaniards can discipline an arrogant local chieftain.
“But how can we really celebrate, when our being a nation did not start there?” Salazar asked.
Salazar also doubted that Christianity really began at the time of Magellan. The indigenous people he encountered on the Visayan islands were supposedly baptized and imbibed with the Catholic doctrine, when the natives couldn’t even understand the language of the Spaniards, he said.
He then cited historical enquiries on the image of the Santo Niño, the oldest Christian artifact left by Magellan in Cebu. It was a gift to the queen of Cebu after she agreed to be baptized.
Salazar noted, however, that when the Spanish colonizers returned to the island half a century later, they found the image inside a box in a shack. He believed that the Santo Niño was merely used as medium by the babaylan—the women priestess—in calling anitos or their ancestors during their Cebuano traditional religious rituals.
As Salazar put it, “This was a complete ignorance, I may say on the part of the Spaniards, on the religious practices of the Filipinos, while the latter then had no knowledge of the Western religion.”
It was only during the term of Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, the first Spanish governor-general in the Philippines, that the people were Christianized since the colonizers already brought with them missionaries, specifically to evangelize the natives when they arrived in Cebu to conquer the archipelago in 1565.
In one of his writings, Salazar cited a 1630 account of Fray Juan de Medina claiming that the image was being used for “paganism” by the Cebuanos, as “the representation (likha) of an anito (spirit, divinity) connected with the sun, the sea and agriculture (as epiphanies of the ‘supreme god’ in our ancient religion, in fact) and to the fact that the Filipino family (mag–anak)—and, for that matter, the Indo-Malaysian family (beranak)—turns around the child (anak) as center of preoccupation and fountainhead of life’s meaning.”
Indeed, the reluctance of modern-day historians to adhere to the traditional historiography on the “discovery” of the Philippines could have cautioned—if not just prompted—the National Quincentennial Commission to advise against specifically celebrating the 500th anniversary as the “arrival of Magellan,” but merely to commemorate the first part of the Magellan-Elcano circumnavigation in the Philippines.
Still, the government and the Church hierarchy maintained that this year, the nation is celebrating the quincentennial of the introduction of Christianity in the country and Lapulapu’s victory in the Battle of Mactan in Cebu.
Ocampo recalled a similar “big bang” that accompanied the Americans’ commemoration of the quincentennial voyage of Christopher Columbus to the “New World” and how he was honored for his “discovery.” “But now, after the death of George Floyd, the Americans started destroying monuments of the Confederates , those who were never really their heroes,” he said.
These myths of Western discoveries are finally being shattered by nationalist historians.
Western view of the Magellan legacy
TO Western historians, Magellan’s expedition which began in 1519 was considered to have changed the world forever.
American historian Laurence Bergreen, author of Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe, was even quoted by the National Geographic as saying that Magellan’s journey was “the greatest sea voyage undertaken and the most significant.”
Most historians concede they merely relied on most of the accounts of Antonio Pigafetta, a Venetian scholar and explorer who served as Magellan’s assistant when he sailed with his 250-strong, five-ship Spanish armada from the Port of San Lucar de Barrameda in 1519. The earliest accounts, however, were written by Maximilian van Seevenbergen, a courtier of King Charles V, based on interviews with the survivors of the expedition that first circumnavigated the world.
Pigafetta was also one of the 18 men who were able to complete the voyage—which many Western historians declared as the “first circumnavigation of the world” under the command of Juan Sebastian Elcano in 1522.
The Magellan-led expedition came at a time when the Spanish armadas, under Hernan Cortez, Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro, were meeting with remarkable success in the Americas, wrote American businessman Robert MacMiking in his book Recollections of Manila and the Philippines before the turn of the 20th century.
As a young man, Magellan, born Fernao de Magalhaes around 1480, was said to have started in a string of Portuguese voyages designed to discover and seize lucrative spice routes in Africa and India at a time of intensive rivalry between Portugal and Spain in finding the spices coveted by European aristocrats.
After joining the fight and traveling to India, Malaysia and Indonesia, he was accused of illegal trading, and fell out of grace with King Manuel I of Portugal, who had sponsored Vasco de Gama, which led to the discovery of the Portuguese Indian Armada route that guaranteed Portugal’s monopoly on the spice trade.
In search of the ‘untold wealth’
BASED on Pigafetta’s account, Magellan, although a Portuguese navigator, reportedly convinced King Charles V of Spain that by sailing south he could pass the “new western world,” and would be possible to reach the Moluccas—or the Spice islands—of the East, which he supposed contained “untold-of wealth in their bosoms.”
The king eventually honored Magellan with the distinguished military order of Santiago and appointed him to the command of a squadron that will conquer and annex these islands to the Spanish Crown. Apart from a noble title, Magellan was given a decade-long monopoly on any route he might discover and a cut of the profits.
During the voyage, Magellan’s crew mutinied after winter weather forced his ships to wait for months in what is now Argentina. One ship was wrecked and another ditched the expedition and returned to Spain. Some of the mutineers were beheaded on Magellan’s order and others were either marooned or forced into hard labor.
When the voyage got back on track, Magellan managed to navigate a treacherous passage, now known as the Strait of Magellan. He also passed through an island that was likely Guam where they later killed the indigenous people and burned their houses in response to the theft of a small boat.
Based on Pigafetta’s account, historians later wrote that after a long, perilous voyage, Magellan sighted at dawn of March 16, 1521, the mountains of “Zamal (Samar),” marking the first documented arrival of Europeans in the archipelago.
The following day, Magellan ordered his men to anchor their ships on the uninhabited shores of Homonhon island, “to secure and to get water and have some rest.” Two tents were set up on the shore for the sick.
According to the late Filipino historian and educator Dr. Onofre Corpuz, the Samar islanders gave gifts of bananas of various sizes to the Magallanes expedition. Some of the bananas were cooked. Coconuts were also widespread on the island and various technologies were employed for its many uses.
Betel and betel nut chewing were widespread. Pigafetta took note of different liquors: palm wine or brandy drunk by Kolambu, chief of Limasawa.
They stayed for eight days on the island, where Magellan befriended Kolambu, together with his brother Siaui, the rajah of Butuan. On March 31, 1521, an Easter Sunday Mass was officiated by Roman Catholic priest Fr. Pedro Valderrama, the Andalusian chaplain of the fleet, in a place he identified as Mazaua (Limasawa, now a sixth-class municipality at the tip of Southern Leyte).
Rajah Kolambu and Siaui attended the Mass with their people who later embraced the Christian faith. A wooden cross was erected on top of the hill overlooking the sea.
In the presence of the two kings, Magellan took ownership of the island where he had landed in the name of King Charles V and named the Archipelago Saint Lazarus, for it was the day of the saint when the armada reached the island.
Rajah Kolambu was so pleased with Magellan and his men’s help in harvesting of his rice that he offered to guide the Spaniards, along with his brother Rajah Siaui, to Cebu where they met Humabon, the influential rajah of the island.
Situated between Manila and Brunei along the Canton-Malacca route, Cebu was never Islamized, according to Salazar. At that time of Magellan, it was ruled “in the manner of the Malays,” with the rulers taking prestigious Malay-Sanskrit titles like rajah or batara.
The language and cultural overlay in all these areas were thus Malay with “Indian” elements. With Malay as lingua franca, intensive commercial and cultural contacts were entertained by Filipinos with Dunia Melayu. In his book The Malayan Connection: Ang Pilipinas sa Dunia Melayu, Salazar wrote that Filipinos were perceived early enough as part of the great ethnic and cultural continuum of Oceania and Malaysia.
Corpuz, on the other hand, noted that the separateness of the settlements in the archipelago was also reflected, in turn, in the hundreds of dialects spoken by the people, “all developed from a single mother tongue.” It therefore did not surprise the members of Magellan’s expedition that his Malayan slave, Enrique de Malacca, could make himself understood throughout the Visayas and Mindanao.
Believed to be a Malay member of the expedition, Enrique was acquired as a slave by Magellan when he was just 14, probably in the early stages of the Siege of Malacca. Pigafetta stated that he was a native of Sumatra.
The Cebu king and his queen were eventually baptized into the Catholic faith, Humabon taking the Christian name Carlos, in honor of King Charles of Spain, and Juana in honor of King Charles’s mother. In that event, Magellan gave Juana a Flemish-style, 12-inch dark wood image of the infant Jesus—the Santo Niño, as a symbol of their new alliance and held their first Mass on the coast.
On the island, Pigafetta saw swine, goats, dogs, cats, rice, millet, panicum, corn, ginger, oranges, lemons, sugar cane, garlic, honey, coconuts, jackfruit, gourds, palm wine and “much gold.” He also saw locally manufactured balancing scales in use.
At that time, Corpuz wrote, Cebu was already relatively developed and had dealings with foreigners. The island’s east coast was the principal trading port in the central Visayas and enjoyed the protection of Mactan Island.
The chief of Cebu, Pigafetta observed, was “far greater” than the two other neighboring chiefs that accompanied Magellan.
The Magellan tragedy
HUMABON later confided to Magellan that some of the chiefs refused to acknowledge him as their superior. It was then that Magellan decided to meddle in the affairs of the island leaders and ordered the burning of the village of Bulaia on Mactan so that these chiefs will recognize Humabon as their leader.
The principal village on the island of Mactan was Mactan, with two chiefs—Zula and Lapulapu. On April 26, 1521, a Friday, Magellan got a message from Zula that Lapulapu refused to recognize the king of Spain. He asked that a boatload of armed men be sent to him and help subjugate Lapulapu.
But the next night, Magellan himself decided to lead his force of 60 soldiers in corselets and helmets. Three hours before dawn, they arrived in Mactan, and immediately informed Lapulapu that if he and his people will recognize the king of Spain and pay tribute they would be friends. Otherwise, they “would learn the power of the Spanish lances.”
When Lapulapu reacted angrily to this manner of offering friendship, Magellan decided to do battle with the natives. According to Pigafetta, to confront Lapulapu they were forced to anchor their ships far from shore due to the shallow water filled with rocks and coral reefs. They couldn’t also bring their ships’ cannons to bear on Lapulapu’s warriors, estimated to be more than 1,500 in number.
Magellan and his men then waded through the shallow water to do battle with the natives. A number of the natives who were Christian converts came to their aid. Upon landing, Magellan’s small force was immediately attacked by the natives with a heavy barrage of ranged weapons, consisting of arrows, iron-tipped “bamboo” throwing spears, fire-hardened sticks, and even stones.
The Spaniards were surrounded by warriors who attacked from the front and both flanks. The musketeers and crossbowmen on the boat tried to provide support by firing from the boats.
Though the light armor and the shields of the natives were vulnerable to the invaders’ projectile weapons, they were firing from an extreme distance and the natives easily avoided them. Due to the same distance, Magellan could not command them to stop and save their ammunition, and the musketeers and crossbowmen continued firing for half an hour until their ammunition was exhausted.
Magellan, hoping to ease the attack, set fire to some of the houses, but this only enraged the natives even more. Magellan was finally hit with a poisoned arrow through his unarmored legs, at which time the natives charged the Europeans for close-quarters combat.
Seeing that, Magellan sent some men to burn their houses in order to terrify them. When they saw their houses burning, they were roused to greater fury. Some of the men were killed near the houses, while Magellan’s men burned 20 or 30 houses.
“So many of them rained down upon us that the captain was shot through the right leg with a poisoned arrow. On that account, he ordered us to a frontal assault. But the men took to flight, except 10 to 15 of us who remained with the captain,” Pigafetta recalled.
“The natives shot only at our legs, for the latter were bare; and so many were the spears and stones that they hurled at us, that we could offer no resistance. The mortars in the boats could not aid us as they were too far away.”
Many of the warriors then zeroed in on Magellan, who was wounded in the arm with a spear and in the leg by a large native sword. Lapulapu’s troops finally overwhelmed and killed Magellan. A wounded Pigafetta and a few others managed to escape.
Except for Enrique de Malacca, the soldiers who survived the battle and returned to Cebu were poisoned while attending a feast given by Humabon on May 1, 1521. Giovannni Battista Ramusio, an Italian travel writer and geographer at that time, later wrote in a discourse that it was Enrique who had warned Humabon that the Spaniards were plotting to capture the king, and this led to the killing at the banquet.
With his master dead, Enrique de Malacca joined Elcano, the new commander of the expedition, who ordered the immediate departure after Humabon’s betrayal.
In fleeing Cebu, Enrique’s presumed intention was to return to his home island. Nothing more was said of Enrique in any documents, but some historians consider him the first man to actually circumnavigate the world.
Meanwhile, Elcano and his fleet sailed west and returned to Spain in 1522, completing the circumnavigation of the world in that year.
Defiance and colonialism
LIKE most modern-day Filipino historians, Corpuz, in his book, The Roots of the Filipino Nation, honored Lapulapu’s victory as the “first native victory in the battle against the invaders.”
It would also be the last until the Spaniards would invade Maguindanao later in the century, where their losses inaugurated the Muslim wars. Lapulapu’s defiance against Spain also triggered the start of Moro piracy, which lasted during the centuries of Spanish colonial rule.
Local historians agree on the difference between the European piracies and the Moro piracies. While the Westerners were motivated by plunder in gold, the Moros, as the people of the Muslim South were called by the Spanish colonizers, were motivated by resistance to foreign aggression and colonialism.
While the European pirates carried gold and silver in the holds of their ships, Moro pirates carried Spanish Christians. “Doubtless this report of kings in the archipelago was taken as a wondrous thing when it reached Spain. This report and fabulous other tales of the adventurers of the Magallanes expedition did not die out forgotten,” Corpuz wrote.
The Spaniards sent out a series of expeditions from Mexico to try to retrace the route of the voyage in search of spices and treasure, and to conquer the heathen lands for the Spanish king and for their religion.
Spanish colonialism, Corpuz said, arrested the natural development of the native communities, but he asserted that “it also laid the basis for a unification of the archipelago, which was the very cause of an awakening that would end the days of Castilian overlordship in this part of the world.”
*Veteran journalist Joel C. Paredes is a former director general of the Philippine Information Agency and holds an AB History degree from the University of the Philippines.
Image credits: Namhwi Kim | Dramstime.com, Carl Frances Morano Diaman (CC BY-SA 3.0)
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