The Philippines was not discovered in 1521

THIS WEEK’S WINNER

MANILA, Philippines - Madelline Romero holds a degree in Broadcast Communication from the University of the Philippines. She works for an NGO.

Teresa, recently graduated from high school, is at a friend’s birthday party. She gets introduced to Pavlo, a Ukrainian and a guest of a friend, who’s in the country for a brief holiday. They exchange pleasantries, and they get to talking about the best tourist destinations in the country. And then Pavlo asks: Does the Philippines have a very long history? To which Teresa replies, “We were discovered in 1521 by your fellow European, Ferdinand Magellan. Soon after, the Spanish Period which lasted 300 years began. Followed by the American Period from 1898 until the beginning of the Japanese Period, which lasted until the end of World War II.”

Teresa is not a real person, but a representative of every Filipino student into whose head the above mentioned version of Philippine history had been drilled all throughout primary and secondary education. And that is precisely the attitude — thoughtless and cavalier – towards our history which Carmen Guerrero Nakpil in Heroes and Villains wants us to realize and — she insists — change.

For Nakpil, proper appreciation of our correct history is fundamental to our sense of national identity, which has often been beleaguered with crisis and confusion. And that is where the problem lies: what is the real story of the coming about of the Philippine nation? Not those told and written by colonialists and colonialist-influenced “historians,” Nakpil seems to say, which is to say, not the version found in our history books and taught to us in school. Those that had been branded “heroes” and “villains” by this biased and inaccurate version of history might not have been in the proper category, after all, after thorough research and study of old records and documents.

Was Legaspi a bearer of governance system, thus civilization (hero), to Maynila when he “won a battle over a creek, claimed conquest and Spanish sovereignty over the city of Maynila, the island of Luzon  and the entire archipelago, naming them the New Castilla and bestowing a city charter with municipal councillors, a plan for a plaza , two grand houses and 150 smaller houses and a project for the distribution of land” on June 24, 1571 (Manila City’s Foundation Day)? Or was he a mere terrorist (villain) whose attacks disturbed the orderly life and governance and economic systems of those then living under the rule of three Muslim kinglets: Raja Matanda, Raha Sulayman, and Raha Lakandula?

Was America an ally (hero) in the young Philippine nation’s fight for independence from Spain, or an opportunistic and double-faced enemy (villain) that took Philippines from Spain (as if it was still hers to give) in a sham battle on August 13, 1898, thereby “strangling at birth the infant Philippine nation.”

Was Macario Sakay a mere bandit (villain) that terrorized the countryside, or a real patriot (hero) who, together with his 4,000 troops, continued the fight for independence from America until his death by hanging for the trumped-up crimes of robbery in band, murder, rape, summary executions, arson, kidnapping.

Reading Heroes and Villains is like watching a telenovela: each episode in the short essays tells of stories with all the hooking intrigues and engaging drama and action, all told in witty — if sometimes, sardonic — and concise prose. You get awed and sometimes pleasantly surprised by the revelations that unfold. And in the end, you understand yourself better because the story, after all, is about you and your identity as Filipino.

So who is the Filipino?

The Filipino inhabits the land called the Philippines — a name reported back to the Spanish court in mid-16th century by a Spanish government official — Ruy Lopez de Villalobos — who “tried to make up for his failures (he never landed in the islands for fear of suffering the same fate as Magellan) by currying favor with the offspring — Don Felipe or Philip II — of his principals.” Contrary to what is popularly taught in school, the land was not “discovered” — as if nobody had known of its existence until then — by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan in 1521.

The Filipino is a descendant of Malayo-Polynesian people from the Asian mainland, who migrated to this land as early as 13,000 B.C. “The Malays were the ancestors of today’s Filipinos, who became Tagalog, Bisaya, Pampango, Bicolano, Ilocano, organized into fiefdoms under kinglets called datu.” Towards the end of the 15th century, another group of people from Sabah, Brunei, Johore, Malacca — ancestors of people in Southern and Central Mindanao — came. As early as the 6th century, our islands and their inhabitants were well-known to the large, rich world of Chinese emperors and scholars and Arab traders, and by 1000 AD., “our shores were regular ports of call in the trade with China, then the most powerful nation on earth.”

I will not romanticize the supposed uncorrupted pre-colonial qualities and morals of the Filipino, nor the idyllic pre-Hispanic past, which many of us are not even aware of (mainly because we weren’t taught that in school). The confusion and insecurity stem from the historic inability to forge a solid national identity before the onslaught of foreign influences. Unlike our Asian neighbors — China, India, Japan, Korea — which can lean against their sturdy wall of recognized collective legacy and identity forged centuries after centuries and generation after generation, the Filipino reeled from a battery of foreign onslaught, and found that there was no formed national identity to lean back on and that would have made him stand his ground.

The Filipino today is a product of centuries of colonization — Spanish, American — and, unfortunately, an even longer mental conditioning through propagandist scholarship and storytelling, that has left him ignorant of his true story, and worse, in perpetual awe of his former colonial masters.

If there is one thing that Heroes and Villains tells me, it is to know the real story of your people, and only then will you break away from ludicrous and counterproductive notions that you had been fed since you were little. Only then will you get bits and pieces about yourself that you didn’t even know existed. And maybe someday — the Spanish last name and American accent notwithstanding — you will know what to say — and with confidence and certainty — the next time you’re asked Who is the Filipino?