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Another Look at Magellan’s Journey Around the World #YOC

April 13, 2021 by admin Leave a Comment

The Philip­pines is cel­e­brat­ing 500 Years of Chris­tian­i­ty. They are also com­mem­o­rat­ing 500 Years of the Vic­to­ry at Mac­tan. #500YOC I’m shar­ing this arti­cle that I wrote a while back about the Por­tuguese nav­i­ga­tor Fer­di­nand Magellan:

FOR years I believed what many peo­ple prob­a­bly still say today, and that is that the Por­tuguese explor­er, Fer­di­nand Mag­el­lan, sail­ing for Spain, dis­cov­ered the Philip­pines. Mag­el­lan was the first per­son to cir­cum­nav­i­gate the world, I used to say. Only as a grown woman did I stop to think that Mag­el­lan had not “dis­cov­ered” the Philip­pines; peo­ple had lived in the arch­i­pel­ago for cen­turies before his three ships showed up — the “Trinidad,” the “Vic­to­ria,” and the “Con­cep­cion” — to irrev­o­ca­bly change the lives of the peo­ple born there.

It also took a while before I real­ized that Mag­el­lan was not the first to go around the world. The first Euro­pean giv­en this cred­it is Juan Sebas­t­ian del Cano, one of Magellan’s crew­men who iron­i­cal­ly had par­tic­i­pat­ed in an abort­ed mutiny against the iron-fist­ed Mag­el­lan, but who lat­er led the bat­tered “Vic­to­ria” back to Seville from where they had depart­ed. Del Cano and sev­en­teen oth­ers, a rag­tag group, marched bare­foot to the church­es of San­ta Maria de la Vic­to­ria and San­ta Maria Anti­qua to thank God that they, out of 265 men, had suvived the tor­tu­ous three-year journey.

Even longer did it take me to under­stand that the first doc­u­ment­ed per­son to cir­cum­nav­i­gate the world was Magellan’s Malay slave. “What an amaz­ing moment, one of the most remark­able in the his­to­ry of mankind!” wrote Ste­fan Zweig, author of Con­queror of the Seas, a biog­ra­phy of Mag­el­lan. “For the first time since our plan­et had begun to spin upon its axis and to cir­cle in its orbit, a liv­ing man, him­self cir­cling that plan­et, had got back to his home­land. No mat­ter that he was an under­ling, a slave, for his sig­nif­i­cance lies in his fate and not in his per­son­al­i­ty. He is known to us only by his slave-name Enrique; but we know, like­wise, that he was torn from his home upon the island of Suma­tra, was bought by Mag­el­lan in Malac­ca, was tak­en by his mas­ter to India, to Africa, and to Lis­bon; trav­elled thence to Brazil and to Patag­o­nia; and first of all the pop­u­la­tion of the world, tra­vers­ing the oceans, cir­cling the globe, he returned to the region where men spoke a famil­iar tongue. Hav­ing made acquain­tance on the way with hun­dreds of peo­ples and tribes and races, each of which had a dif­fer­ent way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing thought, he had got back to his own folk, whom he could under­stand and who could under­stand him.”
Most his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments have assigned Enrique a back­ground role, often sum­ming him up as a foot­note. How­ev­er, if one reads between the lines one can see that Enrique was a major play­er in the events that took place between 1519 to 1521 in Spain, the high seas and the arch­i­pel­ago lat­er called Las Islas Fil­ip­inas. My inter­est in Enrique lays in the fact that he spoke the same lan­guage as the peo­ple of Samar and Cebu, which in my eyes makes him my kababayan. I was, after all, born in Cebu, the land of the pin­ta­dos (tat­tooed), a major turn­ing point for Mag­el­lan and his crew.

Let me back­track here and start from the beginning.

Fer­di­nand Mag­el­lan, also known by his Por­tuguese name of Fer­nao de Mag­a­l­haes e Sousa, was born about 1480 in North­ern Por­tu­gal. At the time, the Por­tuguese were eager to cor­ner the spice mar­ket. They sought a sea­ward route to the East Indies to trans­port the cov­et­ed spices from the east to Por­tu­gal. They were also engaged in an expan­sion­ist pro­gram where­by they cap­tured trad­ing posts along the African coasts all the way to the Far East. Mag­el­lan served in sev­er­al East Indies expe­di­tions — wars, one may more accu­rate­ly say.

Sev­er­al impor­tant events hap­pened dur­ing those mil­i­tary for­ays: Mag­el­lan received sev­er­al wounds, one in par­tic­u­lar was a lance-thrust to his left knee so that he walked with a limp; sec­ond, Mag­el­lan struck a close friend­ship with Fer­nan­do Ser­rao, who lat­er desert­ed the Por­tuguese navy to live in Ter­nate as cap­tain-gen­er­al of the local king. In exchange for his ser­vices as mil­i­tary advi­sor, the King of Ter­nate gave Ser­rao his own house with slaves. Ser­rao acquired a native wife and had chil­dren, and over­all he lived an idyl­lic life, prompt­ing the Zweig to com­ment, “Down to the day of his death, nine years lat­er, the refugee from West­ern civ­i­liza­tion nev­er quit­ted the Sun­da Islands, being not per­haps the most hero­ic, but prob­a­bly the wis­est and the hap­pi­est of the con­quis­ta­dors and cap­i­tanos of the Great Age of Portugal.”
After sev­en years in the East Indies, Mag­el­lan served in Africa where he and anoth­er offi­cer had the impor­tant job of look­ing after the hors­es and cat­tle tak­en from the Moors. An inci­dent occurred where a dozen sheep van­ished and Mag­el­lan and his com­pan­ion were accused of secret­ly reselling the sheep back to the Moors or allow­ing the ene­my to steal the sheep. Mag­el­lan packed off to Por­tu­gal to clear his name. His encounter with the king regard­ing this mat­ter and a sub­se­quent meet­ing regard­ing his pro­pos­al to go West­ward to reach the Indies were dis­agree­able ones. Mag­el­lan final­ly asked King Manuel per­mis­sion to serve anoth­er coun­try. In an act that had deep reper­cus­sions, the king did not object. After a year of qui­et­ly gath­er­ing nav­i­ga­tion­al infor­ma­tion in Lis­bon, Mag­el­lan with Enrique in tow, left for Seville. There he quick­ly mar­ried Beat­riz Bar­boza, who as daugh­ter of the alcalde of the Seville arse­nal and Knight of the Order of San­ti­a­go, pro­vid­ed Mag­el­lan the nec­es­sary con­nec­tions to make his dream a reality.

Magellan’s idea was to sail west to reach the Indies, a vision inspired by his friend Serrao’s enthu­si­asm for his adopt­ed home: “I have found here a new world, rich­er and greater than that of Vas­co da Gama.” Serrao’s let­ters gave pre­cise geo­graph­i­cal and sta­tis­ti­cal infor­ma­tion about the Sun­da Islands, which trig­gered in Mag­el­lan the thought that per­haps it was clos­er to go west­ward, instead of east­ward, from Por­tu­gal to reach these same islands. It was this pro­pos­al that he par­layed to the Spaniards; and Mag­el­lan being the thor­ough per­son that he was had even aston­ished the Privy Coun­cil, a group of four coun­cil­lors of the King of Spain, by pre­sent­ing Enrique, a woman from Suma­tra, and a pair of “Ori­en­tals,” the sight of whom made the fabled Spice Islands that much clos­er acc­ces­si­ble to the Spaniards.

The Spaniards financed the jour­ney, not out of love for this Por­tuguese nav­i­ga­tor whom many per­ceived as a trai­tor to his own coun­try, but out of love for mon­ey. So expen­sive were spices in Europe that pep­per­corn was worth its weight in sil­ver and was sold corn by corn. The way pol­i­tics were at that time, Por­tu­gal owned the East, and Spain owned the West. If Spain could find a back­door to the East via the West, well, they would have fol­lowed the rules and still get their spices. Magellan’s pro­pos­al was accept­ed but to check the Por­tuguese nav­i­ga­tor, four high-rank­ing Spaniards were assigned cap­tains of four of the five ships.

On August 10, 1519, the flag­ship “Trinidad” along with the “San Anto­nio,” “Vic­to­ria,” “San­ti­a­go,” and “Con­cep­cion” sailed down the Guadalquivir Canal and on to the Atlantic. Mem­bers of the crew includ­ed Span­ish, Ital­ian, French, Por­tuguese, Greek, Cata­lan, Ger­man; and two Malays (one of them Enrique). With a few excep­tions, the crew was a rough, une­d­u­cat­ed bunch, who basi­cal­ly had lit­tle to lose. “Weeks and weeks had passed before they had been gath­ered from the alleys and the tav­erns. They arrived in rags, dirty and undis­ci­plined,” wrote Zweig.
Sur­pris­ing­ly, one of the pas­sen­gers was an Ital­ian noble­man, Anto­nio Pigafet­ta, around 28 years of age, whose wan­der­lust com­pelled him to join the expe­di­tion. Most of what we know about that his­toric trip came from Pigafet­ta who was like a cam­era record­ing what tran­spired, in his famous journals.

One of the more mon­u­men­tal events that occurred was the mutiny led by the Span­ish cap­tains. Ear­ly in the trip, Mag­el­lan had been warned that the Span­ish lead­ers would mutiny if they did not get their way. At Port San Julian, off the coast of South Amer­i­ca, they staged their rebel­lion and demand­ed to turn back. Mag­el­lan dealt with the mat­ter swift­ly and sure­ly. Pigafet­ta summed up the event in a few lines:

“We remained about five months in the port of Saint Julian. And as soon as we had entered the port, the cap­tains of the oth­er four ves­sels treach­er­ous­ly want­ed to kill the Cap­tain Gen­er­al. And they were Juan de Cara­ge­na, the trea­sur­er Luis de Men­doza, Anto­nio de Coca, and Gas­par de Que­sadea. The treach­ery hav­ing been dis­cov­ered, the Trea­sur­er was killed (by dag­ger blows) and quar­tered. Gas­par de Que­sa­da was behead­ed and quar­tered. Juan de Carta­ge­na was left behind in Patag­o­nia with a priest.”
Very slow­ly, very painful­ly, the jour­ney con­tin­ued. They lost one ship, anoth­er aban­doned them, and down to three ships, they tra­versed the “paso” — the Strait of Mag­el­lan — on to the huge body of water they called Pacif­ic because of its unre­lent­ing tran­quil­i­ty. Pigafet­ta report­ed: “We sailed out from this strait into the Pacif­ic Sea on the 28th of Novem­ber in the year 1520, and we were three months and twen­ty days with­out eat­ing any­thing (i.e., fresh food), and we ate bis­cuit, and when there was no more of that we ate the crumbs which were full of mag­gots and smelled strong­ly of mouse urine. We drank yel­low water, altready sev­er­al days putrid. And we ate some of the hides that were on the largest shroud to keep it from break­ing and that were very much tough­ened by the sun, rain and winds. And we soft­ened them in the sea for four or five days, and they we put them in a pot over the fire and ate them and also much saw­dust. A mouse would bring half a ducat or a ducat. The gums of some of the men swelled over their upper and low­er teeth, so that they could not eat and so they died. And nine­teen men died from that sickness…”

They came upon two bar­ren islands, which offered them noth­ing and which they called the Unfor­tu­nate Islands; but they had bet­ter luck on March 6, when they found a lush island, which they called Ladrones (Guam) because the natives stole their things. It had nev­er occurred to Mag­el­lan that they too were guilty of steal­ing, that the very notion of split­ting the world into two — one-half for Por­tu­gal, the oth­er half for Spain, that they were “ladrones” all the same; and so with vengeance, Mag­el­lan and 40 men taught the natives a bit­ter les­son. They burned a vil­lage of 40 or 50 hous­es and killed peo­ple. “When our men hit some of them with arrows that passed through their flanks from one side to the oth­er, they pulled out the arrows so that they could look at them; and when they had pulled them out they won­dered great­ly and so they died,” — from Pigafet­ta again.

March 16, 1521, was the day they hit Samar, which was pop­u­lat­ed with friend­ly peo­ple. Refreshed and delight­ed at the “rea­son­able” natives, they pro­ceed­ed to explore the sur­round­ing islands, which Mag­el­lan named the Arch­i­pel­ago of San Lazarus, but which was lat­er renamed the Philippines.

And now we come to the part of the sto­ry where Enrique plays an impor­tant role. Despite his low­ly posi­tion, Enrique was prob­a­bly the man clos­est to Mag­el­lan. Acquired by Mag­el­lan when he was only 16 or 17, Enrique had spent over a decade as Magellan’s com­pan­ion. When Mag­el­lan was one of the con­querors of Malac­ca in 1511, there was Enrique; when he was dis­graced in Africa, there was Enrique; when he returned to Lis­bon and was so poor he had to endure a lot of red­tape to increase his pen­sion by a few marvedis, there was Enrique; when he went to Seville to play the nec­es­sary game to get his expe­di­tion financed, there was Enrique; and when he final­ly sailed west­ward to waters and lands unknown, there was Enrique.

The slave/master rela­tion­ship must have dimin­ished in time, so that Mag­el­lan, before leav­ing Seville, wrote in his last will and tes­ta­ment: “I declare and ordain that from the day of my death thence­for­ward for ever, my cap­tured slave Enrique, mulat­to, native of the city of Malac­ca, of the age of twen­ty-six years more or less, shall be free and man­u­mit­ted, and quit, exempt, and relieved of every oblig­a­tion of slav­ery and sub­jec­tion, that he may act as he desires and thinks fit; and I desire that of my estate there may be giv­en to the said Enrique the sum of ten thou­sand mar­avedis in mon­ey for his sup­port; and this man­u­mis­sion I grant because he is a Chris­t­ian and that he may pray to God for my soul.”

On March 28, by Pigafetta’s reck­on­ing, the explor­ers came to an island where Enriquez could under­stand the people’s lan­guage and be under­stood as well. “They saw a fire on the island,” Pigafet­ta record­ed, “and they saw a small boat, and eight men in it, which approached the Captain’s ship, and a slave from Sama­tra, which is called Tra­por­bane, being in the Captain’s ship, spoke, and they under­stood at once, and quick­ly came to the port of the ship, and did not want to board her.”

This was a land­mark moment not only to him but also to Mag­el­lan who must have real­ized how close he was to reach­ing the Spice Islands and who under­stood the his­toric sig­nif­i­cance of his journey.

His­to­ry books give lit­tle infor­ma­tion about Enriquez, but he had prob­a­bly been yanked away from his vil­lage by slave traders when he was young. For cen­turies, slave traiders sail­ing in their prahus raid­ed coastal vil­lages and kid­napped peo­ple, some of them mere babies. They were sold in slave mar­kets in the same way Enriquez was sold in Malac­ca. As Magellan’s slave, he trav­elled far from his own peo­ple to places where the weath­er, peo­ple, and foods were alien to him. How strange he must have felt when Euro­peans looked at him as if he were an exot­ic or a freak. How cold he must felt when the clam­my Iber­ian win­ters came. How sur­prised to note that Euro­peans rarely bathed unlike his own peo­ple who bathed dai­ly in rivers and in the sea. How lone­ly he must felt when he found no one of his own kind to talk to.

When they crossed the Pacif­ic, and even before they reached the Ladrones, he must have sensed a shift in humid­i­ty, a change in weath­er, sig­nalling that they were enter­ing the trop­ics; mem­o­ries of his past must have drift­ed back to him. When he saw the peo­ple of Guam, his pulse must have quick­ened at the sight of their brown faces; and in Samar when at last he met peo­ple with whom he could con­verse with, his hap­pi­ness must have been boundless.

They were “hand­some peo­ple,” wrote Pigafet­ta about the peo­ple in Samar. “They go about naked and paint­ed (tat­tooed), they wear a piece of tree-cloth over their shame­ful parts. The women are clothed from the waist down, with black hair reach­ing the ground. Their ears are pierced and full of gold. All day long these peo­ple chew a fruit that they call are­ca, and it is like a pear…And when they have chewed it well, they spit it out, and it makes their mouths red.”
Using Enrique as inter­preter, Mag­el­lan inquired where the best place was to stock-up on food and sup­plies. The local kings named three places, one of them (and the largest) Cebu.

Mag­el­lan and his crew went there. “On the sev­enth day of April at mid­day, we entered the port of Zubu (Cebu), pass­ing by many vil­lages, and see­ing many hous­es on tree trunks, and we approached the city. And the Cap­tain ordered to ships to approach, and to low­er their sails and arrange them­selves in bat­tle for­ma­tion and to fire all their guns. Where­fore these peo­ple were great­ly frightened.”

Pigafet­ta record­ed the events that led to Magellan’s death as follows:

“Instead of stock­ing up on their neces­si­ties and leav­ing for the Moluc­cas, Mag­el­lan and his crew tar­ried in Cebu where Mag­el­lan befriend­ed the king. They exchanged gifts; they had a blood pact. The King of Cebu, called Rajah Hum­abon, even gave the Spaniards a place in the square to bury their dead. The Span­ish crew trad­ed their goods in Cebu’s mar­ket. Mag­el­lan talked of Chris­tian­i­ty and insist­ed that the peo­ple burn their idols “made of wood, hol­lowed out behind…with bare arms and the feet turned up with bare legs, and a large face, with four teeth as large as boar tusks and … paint­ed all over.”

The king, queen, and many of their sub­jects were bap­tized. The queen, by the way, received a stat­ue of the Child Jesus, which Mag­el­lan did not per­ceive as an idol. This same stat­ue exists and is revered as the San­to Nino de Cebu.

Despite the seem­ing acquience of the peo­ple from Cebu, a vil­lage from near­by Mac­tan Island refused to obey Mag­el­lan; and the Spaniards burned down that vil­lage and set up a cross there.
Short­ly after, Zula, the chief of Mac­tan, sent one of his sons to Mag­el­lan to ask for one boat­load of men to help him fight Lapu­la­pu who refused to obey the king of Spain.

Mag­el­lan sent three boats with 60 men; and he him­self would fight to teach these natives a les­son. Even though Rajah Hum­abon was there with 20 or 30 boats, Mag­el­lan told him to stay put and watch how Spaniards fought. The Por­tuguese vet­er­an of many wars was count­ing on Euro­pean can­nons, mus­kets and cross­bows over­pow­er­ing the natives with their charred bam­boo and charred point­ed stakes. They had done this many times before, go ashore, burn the vil­lage, kill peo­ple, and get back on their ships; they had done it effec­tive­ly at the Ladrones. There was one mat­ter that Mag­el­lan had missed, a ques­tion of logis­tics. He had not fig­ured on when low tide or high tide was in this par­tic­u­lar island. Specif­i­cal­ly, he was unaware that the shal­low coral reefs of Mac­tan extend­ed far dur­ing low tide and boats could not nav­i­gate these extreme­ly shal­low waters. The coral reefs were as good a bar­ri­er as a moat, or a high wall or cliff. Mag­el­lan dis­cov­ered this fact too late, when he and his men leaped into the shal­low water and had to wade a long dis­tance so that their boats were so far away. The shoot­ing of the mus­kets and cross­bows from the boats were total­ly inef­fec­tive, a fact that Lapu­la­pu and his 1,500 men quick­ly not­ed and which made them shout loud­er and hurl their weapons at Magellan.

Hop­ing to fright­en the natives, Mag­el­lan ordered some men to burn their hous­es. But this only infu­ri­at­ed the natives fur­ther. “And so great a num­ber came upon us that they pierced the right leg of the Cap­tain with a poi­soned arrow, where­fore he ordered that they grad­u­al­ly retreat, and they would fol­low them, and six or eight remained with the Cap­tain. These peo­ple aimed only at their legs because they were not cov­ered with armor. And they had so many spears, darts and stones that Magellan’s sol­diers could not with­stand them, and the artillery of the fleet was so far away that it could not help them. And our men with­drew to the shore, fight­ing all the while, even up to their knees in water, and the natives recov­ered their own spears four or five times in order to throw them at us. They rec­og­nized the Cap­tain and so many assailed him that twice they knocked his sal­let from his head. And he, like a good knight, con­tin­ued to stand firm with a few oth­ers, and they fought thus for more than an hour and refused to retreat. An Indi­an threw his bam­boo spear into his face and he imme­di­ate­ly killed him with his own spear and it remained in the Indian’s body. And the Cap­tain tried to draw his sword and was able to draw it only half way, because he had been wound­ed in the arm with a spear. When our men saw this they turned their back and made their way to the ships, still pur­sued with lances and darts until they were out of sight, and they killed their native guide,” lament­ed the Ital­ian who hero-wor­shipped Magellan.

Eight Euro­peans died with Mag­el­lan; four Chris­t­ian Indi­ans died from friend­ly fire from the Span­ish ships; fif­teen of Lapulapu’s men died.

What fol­lows intrigues me and makes me won­der if the native chiefs had con­spired to get rid of the Euro­pean invaders, espe­cial­ly after hear­ing sto­ries from a Moor­ish mer­chant about the hor­rors the Por­tuguese had com­mit­ted in the con­quer of Cali­cut, India, and Malac­ca. Enrique, one of those who had par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Mac­tan bat­tle, had been wound­ed. He lay bedrid­den, nurs­ing his wounds and mourn­ing Magellan’s death, when along came Duarte Bar­bosa, Magellan’s broth­er-in-law, to com­mand Enrique to get up and inter­pret for him. Bar­bosa, in a vile mood because of the recent dis­as­ter, told Enrique that although Mag­el­lan was dead, this did not mean he was a free­man, and that when they returned to Spain, he would have to serve Magellan’s wid­ow Beat­riz. Bar­bosa threat­ened to whip Enrique if he did go ashore as he com­mand­ed. Barbosa’s ill tem­per would cost him his life. Enrique, who must have known of Magellan’s last will and tes­ta­ment, hid his anger. Mus­ter­ing what­ev­er dig­ni­ty he could, he rose and act­ed as if he did not mind Barbosa’s words, and then he went ashore and told Rajah Hum­abon that the Spaniards were plan­ning to leave soon, but that he ought to take the Span­ish ships and merchandise.

Hum­abon, who had been record­ed by Pigafet­ta all along as Magellan’s ally, sent word to the Spaniards that he had ready the jew­els for the King of Spain, and he invit­ed them to eat with him. Twen­ty-nine crew­men walked straight into the trap, Bar­bosa among them. At an appoint­ed time, Hum­abon ordered his men to attack the Euro­peans. The remain­ing crew, learn­ing what was hap­pen­ing, pre­pared to sail away. It was a dis­grace­ful hasty depar­ture. Just as they had aban­doned Magellan’s body in Mac­tan, they aban­doned their fel­low crew­men on Cebu. One of them, Jaoa Ser­rao, had man­aged to flee to the beach, where he begged his com­pan­ions to ran­som him, a plea that was ignored. Ony Enrique sur­vived the mas­sacre; and Pigafet­ta made note Enrique’s “treach­ery.”

The sto­ry con­tin­ued: they had to burn one more ship, “Con­cep­cion,” and they took a cir­cuitous route to the Indies, stocked up on spices, and sur­pris­ing­ly the soli­tary ship “Vic­to­ria” that made it back to Seville on Sep­tem­ber 8, 1511, still made mon­ey from its spice cargo.

But what hap­pened in Cebu and Mac­tan? Some­thing more hap­pened than was appar­ent to Pigafet­ta. My premise is that, the chief­tains of Cebu and Mac­tan did not want to the Spaniards there. Mag­el­lan had arrived shoot­ing bom­bards and swing­ing his weight; he had refused to pay the cus­tom­ary trib­ute to Hum­abon; he had forced the peo­ple to get rid of their old reli­gion; his men had raped local women; all in all they had con­duct­ed them­selves in a bar­bar­ic way and, play­ing the diplo­mat, Hum­abon had grit­ted his teeth, hop­ing they would leave soon for the Moluc­cas or wher­ev­er their des­ti­na­tion was. See­ing that they were hang­ing around and had even burned a vil­lage in Mac­tan, and warned by the Moor­ish mer­chant of Por­tuguese bar­bar­i­ty, Hum­abon and oth­er chiefs had pulled their forces togeth­er and duped Mag­el­lan and his men into that coral reef trap. One thou­sand five hun­dred men wait­ed for Mag­el­lan and his men — this large num­ber was a result of an amal­gam of armies from the var­i­ous chiefs, not one chief’s army.
How sur­pris­ing that Hum­abon, sup­pos­ed­ly an ally of Mag­el­lan, had not warned the Por­tuguese about the tides and coral reefs; how sur­pris­ing the mas­sacre the day after Magellan’s death; how inter­est­ing the dis­play of hatred for the reli­gion forced on them by the Por­tuguese: “Our men see from the ships that the beau­ti­ful cross which they had hoist­ed on a tree was hurled to the ground, and kicked to pieces by the sav­ages with great fury,” report­ed Max­i­m­il­ian of Tran­syl­va­nia, who record­ed anoth­er his­tor­i­cal account of the famous journey.

As far as Enrique was con­cerned, I sus­pect he may have sensed that Hum­abon had not been a true friend to Mag­el­lan. He may have warned Mag­el­lan, but Por­tuguese arro­gance may have got­ten the bet­ter of the nav­i­ga­tor who may have said, wait and see how he, Mag­el­lan, would bend the will of Hum­abon and his peo­ple. Per­haps Enrique may even have believed that Hum­abon had been bul­lied into com­pli­ance; but when his mas­ter was slain on the shores of Mac­tan, Enrique under­stood it all. After the bat­tle, he assessed the sit­u­a­tion, which was: Mag­el­lan and the whole lot of them had been tricked by the local peo­ple; but Enrique also knew that the Span­ish crew had not been nice, that they had kid­napped and killed peo­ple, raped women; and he knew that if he con­tin­ued on that jour­ney, he would be prob­a­bly die from the incom­pe­tence of the new cap­tain, and if he did make it back to Seville, what faced him was a life of slav­ery for Beat­riz. Cold drea­ry win­ters; cold harsh words; Bar­bosa had already giv­en him a sam­ple with his scream­ing and threat­en­ing to beat him. No thank you, must have been Enrique’s con­clu­sion. And so he left the “Trinidad” and went ashore and threw his lot on the peo­ple who were more kin to him that those he had just left behind, and he made his deal with Humabon.

Was it treach­ery? Or was it a mat­ter of sur­vival? Was it nation­al­ism? It all depends what your point of view is in terms of assess­ing the actions of those peo­ples in Cebu and Mac­tan and Enriquez. As one descend­ed from those “Pin­ta­dos” I look at the events of 1521 as ear­ly resis­tance to for­eign dom­i­na­tion. It was not pet­ty trib­al war­fare that killed Mag­el­lan and drove the Spaniards away, but a con­cert­ed mil­i­tary effort by peo­ple who did not wish to be subjugated.
Of course anoth­er ques­tion enters my mind: why have his­to­ri­ans always referred to Magellan’s death as a result of his involve­ment in trib­al war­fare? Was it very dif­fi­cult for Pigafet­ta and oth­er West­ern his­to­ri­ans to con­sid­er that Mag­el­lan had been out­wit­ted by the peo­ples of Cebu and Mac­tan, that in fact the peo­ple there had not want­ed Span­ish pres­ence from the very start? Was it too humil­i­at­ing to say that what occurred was a real bat­tle, a war, the local peo­ple ver­sus the Spaniards, and that in this bat­tle, the Spaniards lost? Or was it a polit­i­cal manuev­er to say that the peo­ple wel­comed them and Catholi­cism so that they could more eas­i­ly finance future expe­di­tions to the Philippines?

I leave it up to the read­ers to reflect and answer these questions
(This arti­cle appeared in the book, Jour­ney of 100 Years: Reflec­tions on the Cen­ten­ni­al of Philip­pine Inde­pen­dence (PALH, 1999)

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Welcome!

I am a daugh­ter of the Philip­pines and an adopt­ed daugh­ter of Amer­i­ca. I have also trav­eled to many places so I am also a daugh­ter of the Earth. My expe­ri­ences have found their way into my sto­ries, which try to depict char­ac­ters caught in impor­tant moments in their lives, sit­u­a­tions that force them to act, make deci­sions, change. I try to see the world from my own point of view, not the dom­i­nant West­ern one, thus my inter­est in his­to­ry, cul­ture, and set­ting. But my char­ac­ters car­ry my sto­ries; they are the most impor­tant in my sto­ry-telling. I have to dive deep into them to under­stand their human­i­ty – their good­ness as well as their bad­ness, their beau­ty as well as their ugli­ness. Just like us. Just like each of us. I need to know where they came from, where they are now, so I under­stand where they are going. Just like us.

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