The Latin side of Mindanao

With limited time to explore Chabacano-speaking Asia’s City in southern Mindanao, my brother, Ramon, and a captive group forced to become history lovers set out to visit Fort Pilar in Zamboanga City. Such an imposing presence was this historical vision that upon leaving Celso Lobregat’s city I decided to reread what I had actually written years back — I’d forgotten certain details!

As early as 1593, to mount operations against the plundering Moros, Spanish forces arrived in Samboangan. The Spaniards proceeded to make Samboangan an important naval base to carry the sword and cross into the heart of the peoples of the south. The Spaniards had to abandon its first fort in Cotabato-Pulangi River because of difficulties in communications, inadequate supplies and losses of ships and men facing defeat in Maguindanao from where Cotabato City can be easily reached today.

The fort the Spaniards established in 1597 became known as Fort La Caldera — later renamed Real Fuerza de San Jose and further renamed “Real Fuerza de Nuestra del Pilar de Zaragoza.” From a wooden fort, and with Fr. Gregory Belin as the soldier’s first chaplain, the fort was reconstructed out of the very strong stone that you see today. Its groundbreaking was held on June 23, 1635 with Capt. Nicholas Gonzales as commandant. That same day marked the change of name from Samboangan — so called by the Samals meaning “pole” — to its present Zamboanga.

What were the indigenous materials used in this grand structure? Lime, coral, mud and sand from the city.

Lime was a product of shells, free of stones, ground down and baked and later used as whitewash for the fort’s walls. The sand had to be rough to touch, loose and fine without any clay or soil. If the source of the sand was from the shore, it had to be along the shoreline. This was then gathered in heaps near the work sites to await the rains, which washed the sands, removing the saltiness and acidity of the sand; otherwise the sand and pebbles would not stick together. The sand that contained the gravel was separated using a sand screen. The gravel served as filling material for the groundwork of the fort’s foundation. Rough coral from the sea was abundant in the area of Zamboanga-Basilan Strait. After measuring the exact dimensions for the foundation of the fort, the coral was cut using a giant shell called a taclobo. Its edges could be used like a saw.

The solid stone blocks of Zamboanga and the tablets of coral from its seas were used for the fort’s walls but first it had to be cut to its exact dimensions to support the strength of the walls. Those stones with cracks and big holes were rejected. But who were the construction workers for the fort?

The workers were seafaring Lutaos and Samals, hailing from a small settlement called Magay, now a noisy, traffic-heavy commercial district in the center of the city. The head mason was a Samal named Sabtal from Tawi-Tawi who moulded the bricks and stone for the fort’s walls. He used limous mud from the depths of Recodo, a notorious district now located beside the present shrine of Our Lady of Pilar. He mixed lime, limous mud and egg white to make the ingredients stick together and to allow the plaster spread evenly on the walls of the fort. The limous mud was slimy, and thick earth was used to make the bricks. In constructing the walls of the fort, these bricks made of red clay from Recodo were baked in an oven until they became extremely hard. The bricks were positioned in layers, one on top of the other, and in-between, plastered securely with the lime, a product of burnt shells was finely ground and mixed with the white egg to make it sticky, again binding the bricks and lime. The bricks were made by Samals under the direction of Fr. Belin, the Jesuit priest who acted as the capellan or overseer.

Now to skip forward to the present, and join it with the past. It was in this fort museum that indigenous Samal boats called lepa were on display. These were the homes of the Samals and it pained me to see them because I acquired two in the ‘80s. One I gave to the Florendos in Davao for their Pearl Farm to use as a buffet table, and mine was exposed to the sun and wind and disintegrated in the backyard in Zamboanga.

The lepa was how, linguists tell us, Samals first appeared in the Zamboanga-Basilan straits in 800 AD. These ancient Samals were a nomadic sea people (later called “Austronesians”) and likely to have migrated from Southern China until they sailed through different parts of Mindanao in hard, wooden, wet and weather-beaten lepas. The inside of the lepa is narrow so possessions were few, leaving space to carry five or more relatives. Inside, the Samals cooked, ate slept and gave birth.

The lepa carries an old legend: it is said that the boat’s shape was a punishment upon the Samals by an ancestral island queen named Sibian. Her husband, Sawas, committed adultery with her sister. The queen declared that the lepa would hence represent the human body, with the front of the boat looking like a tall mouth constantly seeking nourishment and the back seemingly an anus shaped for defecation.

We saw a bugoh-bugoh, a smaller-sized Samal boat in which only one man can sail to dive for sea cucumber and other sea products. These boats traveled together as a flotilla. Seeing their enemies out on the sea, they split up and scattered, confusing and dissipating enemy forces. As divers and beachcombers the Samals scoured the seas as they still do today for fish, mollusks and sandworms to eat, plus shells, sea snails and sea cucumber. Sometimes they dove for pearls and oysters to barter with Christian settlers in Zamboanga while they lived on land during the monsoon season.

Also displayed in the museum are hand-carved traditional goggles made of wood! The visors are fitted with a type of glass like puit ng baso and sealed with tree sap. Devoid of wealth, they believed if they possessed riches, the pirates would attack them. So even today, they carry just what they need in their simpler boats.

The ground portion of the museum housed another indigenous people’s exhibit, the Subanon. Their body-hugging blouses of cotton I will copy to wear for sure, with their closed necks and long tight sleeves. Also displayed are their bamboo musical instruments like those of Las Piñas choir. At the time the Spaniards arrived in Zamboanga, these people were already the subjects of the poor Samals of today exchanging their supplies of forest products like beeswax, cinnamon, civet, deerskin, dyewood, rattan and resin for food and clothing. Once they were a warlike people giving precedence to red-turbaned chiefs who had killed other persons. Taking their name from suba, meaning river, they lived in small settlements scattered along banks of streams all throughout Zamboanga Peninsula, now divided into four provinces — namely, Misamis Occidental, Zamboanga del Norte, Zamboanga del Sur and Zamboanga Sibuguey (formerly part of Zamboanga del Sur until 2001).

You should go to see the Griffin, a ship on display at the Fort Pilar museum. Griffin was the “East Indiaman” owned by the British East India Company based in Bombay. Its mission was to search for a new route for the expansion of British trade. But unluckily, the ship was wrecked by a storm beside Dua-Bulog Island, Sulu in 1761. The Griffin carried Chinese porcelain intended for the British market and was salvaged in 1990 by the First World Wide Company based in France under the supervision of marine archaeologist Frank Goddio.

The cargo of blue and white teacups, pitchers and preserved tea bags is now extremely rare. Several crates found intact consisted of blue and white octagonal plates with designs by seven Chinese artists, each recognizable by his unique brush strokes.

You must go to Zamboanga City, Celso’s enclave, soon to be a sister city to Zaragoza of Spain. It is an historical abode. And then go to his mom, Tita Caling’s restored Fort Pilar, a truly admirable endeavour, recommended as well by Congresswoman Beng Climaco and Congressman Erbie Fabian, all Celso’s partymates, and the children from Jolo, Sulu who embarked on a boat trip just to see this museum.