WALA LANG
This month we commemorate the 501st anniversary of Ferdinand Magellan’s arrival, highlighted by an exhibition in the National Museum, El Viaje mas Largo – La Primera Vuelta del Mundo.
The festivities center on “the longest journey, the first circumnavigation of the globe.” Nothing much, however, is on the feelings—hostility? astonishment? welcome?—of Rajah Humabon and Sugbuanons on waking up one morning to see strange ships, hear cannon fire, meet bearded, unkempt, pale, sweaty and probably smelly men descend onto their sandy beach.
The Sugbuanons received them hospitably, fed them on porcelain plates and with gold utensils. In return the newcomers gave gifts of mirrors and red caps and proceeded to ask them to discard their old beliefs and adopt a new religion.
ASIA’S MOST CHRISTIAN COUNTRY The First Baptism, Fernando Amorsolo, (Google Images)
Pigafetta reports easy and quick conversion to Christianity but nothing survives of how Humabon and his fellows truly felt. They were seafarers with blood brothers across the Pacific and Indian Oceans and would have nodded politely over the “longest journey.” The massacre that felled many of the newcomers barely two weeks after Humabon, his Queen, and 800 followers were reportedly baptized makes me wonder if hospitality was mistaken for submission.
I was pleasantly surprised last week with a greeting from fellow Facebooker Zeus Menor asking if Juan C. Laya (my father) was a relation. He had discovered a 1941 magazine that contained an article by Tatay and Menor very generously gave them to me.
It turns out that Tatay’s article was about our rich and eventful past, centering on how our ancestors might have viewed Magellan’s arrival. I was a toddler and Tatay, 29, would have been teaching at the Cebu Normal School when he was inspired by a day in Mactan to write about Magellan’s encounter from our ancestors’ eyes. Tatay’s thoughts:
There is a painting of a bow-legged Spaniard by the name of Andres Calafate wedding a niece of Tupas, chief of Sugbu. He looks like a mere yokel beside the regal dignity of that ancient Sugbuan maiden. He was far beneath her in rank, in breeding… She was condescending to marry him, she of the royal purple, niece of Tupas, a brown maiden. She belonged to a people who believed in their destiny. For all the years that had extended back to remote times, from when barangays and vintas arrived, they had believed in their own destiny. No man came upon them, to press them down to the dust and tell them, “Kneel!” They had never knelt.
Then a man came, catching the sun upon his armor, and in oracular voice from behind his helmet, “Kneel!” he thundered. The ships dropped anchor off the coast of Mactan and let loose with fire and thunder. The bayug boomed from the rocky island. The hollowed log thumped into the very heart, so deep and strong its note, and stirred the brown warriors into frenzy. Kneel?
The landing boats were tossed on the waves, oars dipping upon the native sea, the dozen legs of a swarming monster. Kneel? The excited brown men, the men who had been kings and the sons of kings through the years that went back to the gods of legend were beating upon the bayug. They leaped from one sheltered rock to another. They crept from palm to palms to the beat of the bayug. They were silent men, not awed men but angry men, seething in anger at the impudence of those that sought the sun in their breasts. Kneel? The brown men of long ago would not kneel. They were as proud a race as ever trod upon God’s own earth. …
On that same spot now, the shell paved beach, the coral heaps on the sand, the nipa, the mangrove, the coconut palms, they still bear witness to the warriors that would not kneel. There is a humble fisherman’s hut where old leaking boats rest. Further inland, there is an imposing monument, railed with iron marking the place where the white man, the first white man, fell as all will who insult our dignity.
Here he stood, the doughty commander of a dozen ships. The glint was in his eyes as the brown men rushed onto the yielding wet sand. Here they perished from his swift, strong strokes—brown men slain. But more of the brown men drew close, shouting defiance. Spears rang on the glinting crest. More mighty blows rang upon the pale form. He fell and wrath tore him limb from limb. Wrath tore him limb from limb. …
East of the Magellan monument is a pavilion, a dance floor and above a stone slab that tells Magellan’s wonderful story. Excursionists dance on the polished floor. Fat drips from the bursting throats of three roasted pigs, beer mugs spill bubbles as music and happy laughter fill the air.
Under the nearby trees, men, women, shapely young girls, and children look on at the flowing of feast and music. Men lounge, one knee bared with rolled trousers. Vendors sell Coca Cola and Tru-Orange, and bibingka on trays. They look on, those humble folk of Mactan.
Those are the same people that walked on that same ground long, long ago when gods walked on warrior legs. Only they did not look in from the outside. They were masters of themselves then. They gazed out in the distance and faced invading aliens, calculating with cold courage the gaps in their armors where they might strike hard and strike still harder at the men that would abuse the dignity of many generations. Now the sons’ sons’ son of Lapulapu look from the outside, disinherited
Has the Filipino soul changed with the brutality of 400 years? … That girl leaning against the coconut tree is a daughter of Lapulapu. There is the girlish lift upon the tip of her nose, the chubbiness on her cheeks, the gentle roundness upon her hips, the bold swell upon her breast. Now on her face is a look of longing, a vacuous look, and she never dreams of the heritage that is hers. She should be a queen. Her mother was a proud queen.
Only, 400 years are too many years.
Notes: (a) This column is mostly from Juan C. Laya, “The Old, Beautiful Story,” Primary Educator (November 1941). It asks why (at that time) schools teach, storytellers tell, movies show the stories of Elixabeth and Essex, Nelson and Lady Hamilton, Frankenstein, D’Artagnan, when we have our own colorful epics, history and legends to draw from; and (b) Raja Tupas was the ruler of Cebu when Miguel López de Legaspi arrived in 1565.
Comments are cordially invited, addressed to [email protected].
ASIA’S MOST CHRISTIAN COUNTRY The First Baptism, Fernando Amorsolo, (Google Images)
Pigafetta reports easy and quick conversion to Christianity but nothing survives of how Humabon and his fellows truly felt. They were seafarers with blood brothers across the Pacific and Indian Oceans and would have nodded politely over the “longest journey.” The massacre that felled many of the newcomers barely two weeks after Humabon, his Queen, and 800 followers were reportedly baptized makes me wonder if hospitality was mistaken for submission.
I was pleasantly surprised last week with a greeting from fellow Facebooker Zeus Menor asking if Juan C. Laya (my father) was a relation. He had discovered a 1941 magazine that contained an article by Tatay and Menor very generously gave them to me.
It turns out that Tatay’s article was about our rich and eventful past, centering on how our ancestors might have viewed Magellan’s arrival. I was a toddler and Tatay, 29, would have been teaching at the Cebu Normal School when he was inspired by a day in Mactan to write about Magellan’s encounter from our ancestors’ eyes. Tatay’s thoughts:
There is a painting of a bow-legged Spaniard by the name of Andres Calafate wedding a niece of Tupas, chief of Sugbu. He looks like a mere yokel beside the regal dignity of that ancient Sugbuan maiden. He was far beneath her in rank, in breeding… She was condescending to marry him, she of the royal purple, niece of Tupas, a brown maiden. She belonged to a people who believed in their destiny. For all the years that had extended back to remote times, from when barangays and vintas arrived, they had believed in their own destiny. No man came upon them, to press them down to the dust and tell them, “Kneel!” They had never knelt.
Then a man came, catching the sun upon his armor, and in oracular voice from behind his helmet, “Kneel!” he thundered. The ships dropped anchor off the coast of Mactan and let loose with fire and thunder. The bayug boomed from the rocky island. The hollowed log thumped into the very heart, so deep and strong its note, and stirred the brown warriors into frenzy. Kneel?
The landing boats were tossed on the waves, oars dipping upon the native sea, the dozen legs of a swarming monster. Kneel? The excited brown men, the men who had been kings and the sons of kings through the years that went back to the gods of legend were beating upon the bayug. They leaped from one sheltered rock to another. They crept from palm to palms to the beat of the bayug. They were silent men, not awed men but angry men, seething in anger at the impudence of those that sought the sun in their breasts. Kneel? The brown men of long ago would not kneel. They were as proud a race as ever trod upon God’s own earth. …
On that same spot now, the shell paved beach, the coral heaps on the sand, the nipa, the mangrove, the coconut palms, they still bear witness to the warriors that would not kneel. There is a humble fisherman’s hut where old leaking boats rest. Further inland, there is an imposing monument, railed with iron marking the place where the white man, the first white man, fell as all will who insult our dignity.
Here he stood, the doughty commander of a dozen ships. The glint was in his eyes as the brown men rushed onto the yielding wet sand. Here they perished from his swift, strong strokes—brown men slain. But more of the brown men drew close, shouting defiance. Spears rang on the glinting crest. More mighty blows rang upon the pale form. He fell and wrath tore him limb from limb. Wrath tore him limb from limb. …
East of the Magellan monument is a pavilion, a dance floor and above a stone slab that tells Magellan’s wonderful story. Excursionists dance on the polished floor. Fat drips from the bursting throats of three roasted pigs, beer mugs spill bubbles as music and happy laughter fill the air.
Under the nearby trees, men, women, shapely young girls, and children look on at the flowing of feast and music. Men lounge, one knee bared with rolled trousers. Vendors sell Coca Cola and Tru-Orange, and bibingka on trays. They look on, those humble folk of Mactan.
Those are the same people that walked on that same ground long, long ago when gods walked on warrior legs. Only they did not look in from the outside. They were masters of themselves then. They gazed out in the distance and faced invading aliens, calculating with cold courage the gaps in their armors where they might strike hard and strike still harder at the men that would abuse the dignity of many generations. Now the sons’ sons’ son of Lapulapu look from the outside, disinherited
Has the Filipino soul changed with the brutality of 400 years? … That girl leaning against the coconut tree is a daughter of Lapulapu. There is the girlish lift upon the tip of her nose, the chubbiness on her cheeks, the gentle roundness upon her hips, the bold swell upon her breast. Now on her face is a look of longing, a vacuous look, and she never dreams of the heritage that is hers. She should be a queen. Her mother was a proud queen.
Only, 400 years are too many years.
Notes: (a) This column is mostly from Juan C. Laya, “The Old, Beautiful Story,” Primary Educator (November 1941). It asks why (at that time) schools teach, storytellers tell, movies show the stories of Elixabeth and Essex, Nelson and Lady Hamilton, Frankenstein, D’Artagnan, when we have our own colorful epics, history and legends to draw from; and (b) Raja Tupas was the ruler of Cebu when Miguel López de Legaspi arrived in 1565.
Comments are cordially invited, addressed to [email protected].