Carmen Guerrero-Nakpil

Title

Language

English

Source

Volume XV (Issue No.1) January 1963

Year

1963

Subject

Philippine history

Essays

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Abstract

What if Magellan had not come upon the Philippines? This remains an intriguing speculation, but it is too late for that. This historical essay tells what happened.

Fulltext

Whitt if Magellan had not come upon the Philip* pinta? This remains an intriguing tpoculation, but it it too late for that. This historical essay tells what happened.* Carmen Guerrero-Nakpil It is an orthodox—as it is deplorable—to begin any ac count of Philippine history with Fernando de Magalla nes. Many brave attempts have been made, especially in recent years, to push back the beginnings of formal history. Most Filipinos now gag at both term and concept of “discovery by the Spaniards,” cite Chao Ju-kua, the Chinese official and geographer who described the Philippines in 1280 and try to quote even earlier fragments of Indone sian, Chinese and Japanese records. It is unnecessary here to argue and fret over the lack of pre-Magellanic re cords or to point with out raged adjectives at the delib erate culturecide of the colo nizers. It is still simpler, if less faithful to one’s histori cal sense, to assume that as far as we are concerned, pre Spanish is almost synonymous with pre-history. The fact is that, like Chur chill’s British isles, our is lands-have been "the creature of men and events across the seas.” The great larid up heaval which, geologists maintain, wrenched us from the mainland of Asia; the wave upon wave of Indone sians and Malays who crossed the seas to-merge their blood into the Filipino nation; the early Chinese, Indians, Japa nese and other Asians who came to trade and stayed to marry, teach and rule were perhaps no less important to our history than the unpreposessing Portuguese naviga tor Magellan. But while he JANUARY 1963 5 and the powerful forces be hind him live on in history, they, his Asiatic precursors, have become almost impossi ble to discern. “The documentary history of the Philippines,” wrote the American scholar Bourne, “begins with the Demarca tion Bulls and the Treaty of Tordesillas, for out of them grew Magellan’s voyage and the discovery of the is lands.” Certainly, whether the Pope was to halve the world like an orange for Spain and Portugal and whe ther Fernando and Isabel of Castille and Joao of Portu gal were to redraw the line 370 leagues west of the Ca bo Verde Islands "for the sake of peace and concord” was something of a turningpoint in our history. Other opinions ascribe the begin nings of Philippine history in western records to the Isla mic blockade of Europe which, by running the trade routes to the East, sparkled the age of exploration, the desire for the Christianiza tion of unknown lands and to the growing convictionone which seems unbelievab ly simple to modern minds— that the earth was round. At any rate, on a Saturday morning, on March 16, 1521 we see (through the eyes of the Venetian Pigafetta) the small bearded unimposing figure (lame in one leg if we are to credit one historian) of Fernando de Magellanes, standing on the deck of his ship Trinidad and peering at the horizon where the heights of Samar had just becor discernible. We see him tl next day landing on the tiny island of Homonhon, ex claiming with his sailors over traces of gold in the earth, setting up tents for his sick men, and a day later, meet ing a party of nine men out for a day’s sport. These were the first island ers Magellan and his expedi tion saw. Pigafetta found them graceful, neat and courteous, "ornately adorn ed” with gold earrings and armlets and "very pleasant and conversable.” On anoth er island explorers met na tives travelling in large boats, armed with swords, daggers, spears and bucklers, eating and drinking out of porce lain dishes and jars, living in houses built "like a hayloft,” thatched, raised on “huge posts of wood” and divided 6 Panorama into “rooms like ours.” They were governed by a, king dressed in embroidered silk, □erfumed and tattooed whose dishes and “portions of his ^ouse” were made of gold. In Cebu, the Europeans net the self-assured but prud ent Rajah Colombo who first demanded tribute of the vhite strangers and then, on the advice of a Siamese trad er who had met the power ful Portuguese in India, ac ceded to their offer of friend ship. Pigafetta’s first impres sions are significant: they first saw Coloirtbo seated on a mat in his palace, wearing fabulous jewelry of gold and precious gems, delicately picking at a sophisticated meal of turtle eggs and palm wine sipped with reed pipes. For entertainment he had four girl? “almost as large and «s white as our own wo men,” noted the Venetian with Renaissance roguery, dancing to musical instru ments consisting of brass gongs and drums. The queen when they met her was “young and beautiful", with mouth and nails reddened, wearing a black and white cloak and a hat “like a pope’s tiara” and attended in great pomp. The strangers also remark ed—as did the explorers who were to come after them— that the natives had weights and measures, calendars, bamboo manuscripts, a reli gious body of beliefs with painted idols and the offer ing of the sacrifices, an or derly and stable social struc ture governed by oral and written laws and elaborate manners and customs, vast and active trade among them selves and with neigboring countries. There was also am ple evidence of mines, looms, farms, naval constructions, the raising of poultry and stock, pearl fishers, civet, horn and hide industries and, as Magellan was to discover with his dying breath an ef ficient military. These were the spirited, self-sufficient, bold and lusty men who were to become transformed, by some alche my of conquest and coloni zation, into the indolent, dull, improvident i n d i o s who would have to be prodded with the tip of Spanish boot or flogged at the church door because they were so timid, and so stupid and whom the JANUARY 1963 7 Americans, much later would find unfit to govern them selves. The modern mind balks at the circumstances which made a Papal Bull and a let ter from the Spanish incon testable legal title to these Asian islands. It is hard for us to accept the simplicity and presumption of this stranger from halfway around the earth to stand on a Visayan beach and, erecting a cross, claim to have discover ed for his king lands which existed and prospered when Iberia was marshland. How preposterous! we say; but Magellan did not think so. Creature of his age and race, he had all the lordly audacity of the race of the explorers and discoverers. Ex tremely able, patient, ingeni ous and resolute he was also fiercely imaginative and indo mitable. His heritage was that of Prince Henry the Na vigator, of Vasco da Gama who had gone to India and returned to Portugal with merchandise worth sixty times the original cost of the expedition; of Columbus who had set out With a letter to the king of Cathay and found America; of Ponce de Leon, Cortes, Pizarro, and Balboi. It is not easy to understand the world of Magellan wify its insatiable curiosity for th< unknown, its inordinate de sire for adventure and re. nown and the fableci weald of the Indies, a world so fulj of unshakeable courage anq faith that is set out on wood, en ships to conquer thu trackless seas and the pathles: continents. Magellan's personal history before his great voyage was typical of a lower class noble man of the 16th century. Brought up as page in the ro yal court of Portugal, where he grew up in the exciting company of cosmographers, hydrographers and swords men, Magellan saw service in Africa and was soon deter mined to embark on a career of exploration. Because the Portuguese king ignored his plan to reach the Spice Is land—there must have been dozens of such ambitious pro posals from all manner of courtiers and adventurers in the Portuguse court—Magel lan renounced his citizenship, went to Spain and offered his services to the Spanish mo narch. The Spaniards prov ed no more receptive to his 8 Panorama plans of exploration than his < om p a tr iots: for many months Magellan was quite a 4 est at court, showing every one his little painted globe. In his desperation, he decid ed to make exploration a pri vate venture—a not uncom mon method in that age. He had secured the backing of Christopher Haro, a wealthy Antwerp merchant, and was nil but ready to sail on his own initiative when the Spa nish king, set on his ear by such determination, finally signed a contract of “capitu lation” with the Portuguese mariner. Leaving a wife and a six-month-old son behind, Magellan set sail on August ~}0, 1519 from Seville, with five ships, 256 men, and the promise of staggering wealth and fame on a voyage that was to include mutiny, star vation, astounding discover ies, terrible hardship and at last, the circumnavigation of the globe. Yet, “the greatest naviga tor of all time” as Magellan has been called, was to meet his match in a Malayan chieftain, Rajah Lapu-Lapu, whom western historians have called with undisquised an noyance "a naked savage.” Lapu-Lapu was, from early youth, an excellent fighter and swordsman. He had in comparable bravery and a subtle intelligence. He had fought and manuevered him self from the position of mere datu to that of the major ru ler of the island of Mactan and when the Europeans came he had spies in the courts of his rival kings in Cebu with instructions to ob serve the fighting gears and tactics of the newcomers. With uncanny pre-science, he mistrusted this matter of mak ing friends with the white men. When Magellan, prodded by his new allies, Humabon of Cebu and Zula of Mactan, determined to make this surly native chieftain sub mit to him or he “would know how our lances wound ed,” Lapu-Lapu was prepar ed. He sent back an equally arrogant answer: if the stranger had iron lances, he had lances of bamboo and they were more terrible. He dug pitholes along the beach, retreated and waited for the Spaniards to approach. Leav ing their boats in the shal low waters and boastfully charging their native allies to JANUARY 1963 9 leave the fighting to them, the Spaniards, once on land, were quickly outflanked, out numbered and outshot. In an effort to turn the tide of bat tle, Magellan ordered his men to burn the houses of natives. Forever afterwards, western men in Asia would make the same mistake and would think that acts of sa vagery and inhumanity would increase their power. The sight of their burning villag es^ instead of terrifying the natives, infuriated them and they fell upon the white men with loud cries until those who were not slain ran back to their boats. Magellan was wounded by a poisoned arrow in his arm, and a bamboo spear in his face, and -no longer able to draw his sword, he was cut down with a kampilan, the native cut-lass, and falling face down the water, was overwhelmed by LapuLapu’s warriors. Their leader dead, still an other tragedy overtook the expedition. Their two newlyelected captains, Barbosa and Serrano, went ashore at Cebu to attend a banquet or to ask for pilots to direct them to Borneo (historians differ) and they and a score of others were massacred by the Cebuans, only recently baptized and embraced in friendship. Pigafetta says the massacre was an act of vengeance t the Malay slave Enrique whom the new captain had abused. Another authority says that the rape of Cebuan women by the Spaniards was the cause of the massacre. It is more logical to suppose that it was the result of thie Spaniards’ loss of prestige air Mactan. Humabon and his allies had, after all, been merely temporizing: they had been warned that the Euro peans were too powerful to resist. But after Lapu-Lapu had proved that the white men were not invincible there was no point to continuing a dangerous friend ship. Nor did their new Christianity, built on so fra gile a foundation as whole sale baptisms and the pro mise of a suit armor from the Spanish king, deter them from slaughtering the evan gelists. The Spaniards lost from 20 to 30 men, Serrano and a few others being still alive when the ships set sail “in great fear of further treach ery.” The expedition stopp 10 Panorama ed at Bohol to burn the now undermanned ship Concep cion, and at Mindanao and Palawan, before finally leav ing the archipelago, not with out hearing of the large and prosperous island of Luzon in the north, where it was said, the Chinese traded. Thus ended the first contact be tween Spain and what was to be known as the Philip pines. Although its ultimate ef fects on the native popula tion were probably negligi ble. We can assume that, for a long time, no one question ed the supremacy of LapuLapu in that area, although progress of his career is lost in time, and that inlanders returned to their old life, the only trace of the Spaniards being a curious new idol in the Queen’s palace, which fifty years later Legaspi’s men would recognize as the image of the Child Jesus. The effect of the Magella nic expedition on Castille and Europe was much more lasting and dramatic. Magel lan discoveries not only prov ed that the earth is round and accomplished the circum navigation of the globe but tantalized the Spanish crown, the trade houses and the, whole area of explorers. Two more expeditions—under Loaisa and Saavedra—both unsuccesful, were sent. In 1529, King Charles, in financial straits, sold all claims to the Spice Island and all other lands west for 350,000 ducats. This treaty was “a plain re nunciation” of any rights over the Philippines, yet both Charles and Philip later chose to ignore it and sent, first, Villalobos who it was who named the islands Filipinas and twenty years later Legaspi, whose great expedi tion, fitted out from new Spain in America “establish ed the power of Spain in the Philippines and laid the foundations of their perma nent organization.” What if Magellan had not come upon the Philippines? Most historians are agreed that we would have become a Portuguese colony, also Christian and Europeanized. With the Portuguese, as with Spain, "Christianization was a state enterprise.” In India and elsewhere, the Portu guese have shown great spi ritual enthusiasm coupled with the familiar theorieis of possession and exploitation. JANUARY 1963 11 Failing that, either the Dutch or the English would have conquered us, as indeed they did mount invasions against the Philippines, and we would have known a colon ization more punishing be cause it was built on the commerical rather than the religious ideal with all the “merciless exploitation and frank racialism” of their co lonial policy, yet more merci ful because it would have left us something of our his tory and our culture. Or per haps the power of Islam which was strongest in the 17th century would have en gulfed us, or perhaps the tribute which some of the is lands were paying China would have been enlarged into more definite subjec tion. We could have been another Korea under Japan which for many centuries be fore Pearl Harbor had defi nite political ambitions with regards to the Philippines, or another Indo-China under the French whose attitude of racial superiority and “utter distrust of democracy” cause the extreme nationalism of the Vietnam; Or perhaps the Germans? Or, who knows, we coud have known the relative independence of Siam? At any rate it is too late to speculate on whether we would have been spared the long paradoxical Spanish colonization with its strange combination of hideous cruel ty, humane and beneficent policies and incredible cor ruption and conservatism. It was too late that morning in March more than four cen turies ago when a small bearded Portuguese mariner stood on the deck of his wooden ship and glimpsed through the mist of the Pa cific the gray mountains of Samar.—The Saturday Mirror Magazine. The cruder minds are taken in by variety and exaggeration, the more educated by a sort of gentilty. — Goethe. 12 Panorama

pages

5-12

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