A blip in Philippine history

I

WAS involved in the initial stages of the commemoration of the 500th anniversary (quincentennial) of the Victory at Mactan under the auspices of the National Quincentennial Committee (NQC). I was quite active at the time (2019) — as I still am — in the arena of public history with another Manila Times columnist, Dr. Xiao Chua. I suppose that was the main reason why Chua and I were asked to write some historical articles for public consumption in relation to the quincentennial.

Chua and I originally came up with 20 historical topics relating to political, economic, social and cultural aspects of 16th-century Philippines. I even wrote a little bit about Southeast Asia and world history owing to its implications for the archipelago’s maritime trade-oriented economy.

Writing the articles in a brief manner (similar in length to a standard newspaper column such as this one) and using a language — whether in English or Filipino — that the broader public could easily digest was the easy part. The hardest part was grappling with the commemoration’s historiographic land mines.

According to the NQC website, the country’s planned commemorations were just the “Philippine part” of the global celebrations of the “first circumnavigation of the world and other related events.” This is a serious historiographical matter because of the circumnavigation’s multilayered ramifications for our national history.

Spanish academic Jorge Mojarro insisted that the Ferdinand Magellan expedition innocently planned to circumnavigate the planet, nothing more. The expedition was not even “mandated to conquer any land,” according to him.

Mojarro expected everyone to uncritically accept this version of history. What a joke!

Spain in 1521 was an empire on an expansionist trajectory. Magellan may not have been a conquistador with the notoriety of Hernan Cortes or Francisco Pizarro but as far as Philippine historiography is concerned, there is no pressing need to split hairs on Magellan’s role in advancing the Spanish imperial agenda. Suffice it to say that the Magellan expedition — and the circumnavigation completed by Sebastian Elcano — was a key cog in the Spanish imperialist machine’s Asia-Pacific ambitions.

The NQC’s position in the glorification of the Spanish imperialist agenda associated with the circumnavigation was quite problematic from the start. I sidestepped this problem by focusing on historical concerns that had, at best, tangential relations with the circumnavigation. Before the commemoration ran full steam, I was accepted as visiting professor of international relations at Changwon National University in South Korea.

Thus, my participation was limited to writing a few articles — which were published after I left in 2019 — and delivering a webinar about “Our Ancestors and the World Trade in the Pre-Hispanic Times.”

In an article that eventually came out as “Cebu and Southeast Asia During Magellan’s Arrival,” I focused on the political, economic and social context of Rajah Humabon’s ambition, which led him to accept Magellan’s offer of an alliance. Humabon’s Cebu was an important regional port-city engaged in entrepot trade.

That, however, did not make him overlord of other independent communities in the Visayas similarly engaged in entrepot trade. Humabon’s acceptance of Magellan’s offer to promote him to regional overlord in exchange for his support of the Spanish imperial agenda set the stage for Mactan.

This article came out under my name but was rewritten, probably by the staff of the NQC, to incorporate additional information that was not in the original draft that I submitted. Nevertheless, the main points of the article remained unmolested.

Another article under my name was “A Test of Sincerity,” about the ancient practice of a blood compact signaling ritual brotherhood between the parties and the communities or polities they represented. Again, more information was added to my original draft but the general tenor and main points were not altered.

I shared authorship with Chua in an article entitled, “Battle of Mactan Beyond Textbooks.” It probably came out as a joint authorship because Chua originally wrote it but information from my other submissions were added to the final draft.

Historians in the NQC were aware of the implications of lionizing Magellan and the circumnavigation vis-a-vis Philippine historiography. “Victory and Humanity” was their best effort to embody Teodoro Agoncillo’s notion of a Philippine history written from the Filipino point of view. However, it failed the test for Zeus Salazar’s “Pantayong Pananaw.”

The circumnavigation and related events may indeed be seen from the Filipino point of view. Victory in Mactan used the Filipino perspective. “Humanity,” on the other hand, is a stretch. The Visayans gave food to the starving Magellan expedition but such hospitality is attendant to the business demands of an entrepot, not necessarily out of humanitarian concerns primordially.

If Philippine history was written by Filipinos for Filipinos (i.e., Pantayong Pananaw), however, the circumnavigation would never even be discussed. It was a blip in the lives of the inhabitants of the archipelago.