Acapulco and Manila: Embedded by history and blood in a common past

ACAPULCO, Mexico – A full moon, bright as a silver penny, hangs over the blue-gray of the Pacific, gilding the ocean as the white frost of its waves beat upon the shore. My balcony overlooks this scene torn from the pages of a Hollywood movie.

The sun, on the other hand, when it rises, is blood red – an orb so fiery, but muted in its crimson, that it can be contemplated with the naked eye. In sum, the sun in Acapulco rises and sets in red – the red of the Japanese hinomaru, or flag – while the pale moon casts a magic silver spell over everything. In this sense, Acapulco remains postcard pretty.

Honeymooners still flock to Las Brisas, Acapulco, overlooking one of the most spectacular bays in the world, where every wall, every nook and cranny, is painted pink and white. Las Brisas constitutes 16 hectares of lush gardens, magnificent views of the sea from its 231 casita-type bungalows which clamber up the steep hill, and total privacy in its 32 suites, shielded from paparazzi and osiseros by the typical high walls of a quinta. Residents have to be driven by jeeps – also painted pink and white – up winding roads to their assigned bungalows. Celebrities get their names engraved for posterity on the vehicles they use. The Acapulqueños, in pursuit of commerce, are the most assiduous "name-droppers" of them all.

However, fewer and fewer film stars and international celebrities have been coming lately to this once-upon-a-time haven of the rich and famous. One hostel, the Los Flamingos, with a "Hollywood Walk", tries to recapture the lost splendor of its long-past patronage. However, the movie stars who tarried here are unknown to the present generation, much less the bagets. At Los Flamingos, there are no longer any flamingos – while we actually have two languidly posing by the pool of our own hotel, the Acapulco Princess – and who remembers Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan? (Remember the dialogue you old folks: "Me Tarzan, you Jane. Where Boy?" Well, I can say: Boy gone for good. Gone to Cancun, or Ixtapa, or Los Angeles.

Who cares nowadays where John Wayne, Errol Flynn, or Edward G. Robinson slept – or who they slept with? New stars have risen on the horizon, like Leonardo Di- Caprio, Ben Affleck, and the still-resurgent (post-Kidman) Tom Cruise, but they go elsewhere. Of course, singer Julio Iglesias, or Luis Miguel, and Ricky Martin still come here – Julio is due this week. The season for the cruise ships, is just over. A few days ago there was the Radiance of the Seas of the Royal Canadian Lines; tomorrow, the Princess lines cruise vessel – an immense floating hotel – will dock. The latter will be the last one until November.

Acapulco depends mostly these days on local tourists, but, indeed, they flock in by plane, by train and by the busload. It also counts on the many conventions scheduled, with conventioneers still drawn to this lovely, if somewhat faded, resort city by its sun and sand, and its golf greens, and, of course, the prospect of romance.

Acapulco’s population has, alas, soared from 20,000 in the 1960s to almost two million today. There goes its once-sleepy charm! Too many people crowd the coastal neighborhoods.

Mexico’s total population, too, has jumped from just 48 million at the end of World War II to almost 100 million today.

It’s a Catholic country, all right: Too many baby factories!

Yet Acapulco, any other place on this planet, cherishes an affinity of us Filipinos. Manila and Acapulco are forever linked by the embrace of history.

Not long after Gil Gonzalez de Avila took possession of Acapulco, "the place where the reeds grow", the Spanish Crown began to plan Acapulco as a jump-off place for its trade with the Orient, as well as an "advanced base" for the conquest of the remainder of South America.

In 1535, Conquistador Hernan Cortez built ships here to ferry provisions to Pizarro, who was in the process of subjugating Peru.

It was from Acapulco that the Spaniards mounted their second attempt to conquer the Philippines. From here, a fleet commanded by Miguel Lopez de Legazpi sailed in 1564 to take Manila from Rajah Suleiman, and there founded a Spanish colony which was to endure for three and a half centuries – and continues to endure as an independent capital, until and unless it chokes on pollution.

Previous to this audacious expedition of conquest, no ships had been able to return eastwards to the Americas from Asia (except for the Portuguese, whose navigators and captains carried secret maps of the convoluted paths of the winds at each time of year). However, Felipe de Salcedo, Legazpi’s nephew, soon discovered the eastward passage back to Mexico. He arrived back in Acapulco in his frail and battered craft on October 3, 1565, after a journey of four months and two days.

It was the Basque, Andres de Urdaneta, who had been in charge of navigation and operations in the 1561 expedition led by Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, conceived of the idea of letting sailing ships, called galleons, plying between Manila and Acapulco, bringing with them silks and spices, and other treasures traded with the Sangleys (Chinese) and other Oriental providers. During the 250 years of trading between New Spain (Mexico) and the Orient, the amount of Mexican-mined silver – much of it from nearby Taxco in Guerrero province – amounted to 400 million silver pesos.

The galleons were constructed by the Spaniards in both countries. The ships were built in Cavite and some in Puerto Galera, Mindoro, by Filipino carpenters and wainwrights. Other galleons were constructed in the ports of Navidad, Zihuatanejo and Acapulco. According to the Leyes de Indias, it was decreed that the galleons would be large enough to transport 500 to 700 tons of cargo, but ships capable of handling up to two thousand tons were often built. The Philippine hardwood molave and a softer, flexible wood known as lanang were utilized, while cords and riggings were fashioned of abaca.

A typical galleon, El Filipino, was finished and launched in 1762. By the time the Santissima Trinidad (Holy Trinity) was constructed, according to Miguel Angel Fernandez, a historian: "The galleons manufactured in Cavite had such a reputation for sturdiness that the ships produced there were known as ‘sea castles’."

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The Manila galleons plied the Acapulco route with regularity, and the arrivals of the Nao de China or the "China Trade Ship", as the ships which crossed the Pacific came to be known, became the occasion for an annual fair in Acapulco to which merchants from Mexico City and Spain flocked to bargain. A narrow dirt road was pushed to the Pacific Coast from Mexico D.F., the capital, 7,400 feet high in the mountains, so that goods could be transported there in heavily-armed convoys and then sent on by mule train to Vera Cruz on the opposite side for transshipment to Spain.

The pirates of the ocean preyed on these rich, heavily laden galleons, while others attacked Manila, such as the Chinese pirate Limahong (who attacked Manila with 70 junks in 1574) and, in 1622, the notorious Kue Sing, known to the Spaniards as Koxinga.

To meet threats from the Chinese, British, and Dutch, the Spaniards built Intramuros and Fort Santiago. In Acapulco, to ward off pirate incursions, they constructed the Fuerte San Diego.

The most notorious raider was the Englishman, Sir Francis Drake, whose five marauding ships out of Plymouth (in 1577) were to form the nucleus of the English Navy. His fleet roamed the Caribbean and the Atlantic, finally breaking through into the Pacific through the straits discovered by Magellan.

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Every visiting Filipino must go tour the Museo Historico de Acapulco in the Fort San Diego. Here you’ll find the Manila Galleon hymned, plus artifacts recovered from them, and examples of the priceless silks, silvers, and other goods they transported. In those centuries, "Manila" was great in the annals of Spain and the known world.

Today’s Acapulqueños, in the hurly-burly of making a daily living and the scramble for the tourist dollar, have little memory of the ties which bound them to Manila for the good part of three centuries. And yet, in the most unexpected places you may discover traces of this intercourse. The Mexican "Indio", having come from Asia around 25 millenniums before Christ, looks Asian enough – but more than one waiter in our hotel, or a salesgirl, appears completely Filipino, although none of them have any recollection of Filipino ancestry. How many seamen from our shores "jumped ship" during the galleon trade – who knows?

There are other things which remind me that Mexico is our past. You go to the Cathedral of our Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, and find yourself in yesterday. Aside from the signs posted near the huge doors, warning: "No Tire Basura" (Don’t throw garbage) and "No Toca La Ventilador," (Don’t touch the electric fan), you find the familiar statues of St. Joseph, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, San Antonio de Padua, San Francisco de Asisi, the Sto. Sepulchro, and, perched high on the main altar, aside from the statue of Mama Mary, a splendid one of the Resurrected Christ.

In the religious shop next door are estampitas, agnus dei, scapulars, relics of saints, novenas, rosaries, and statuettes of my boyhood. You find yourself charmingly embedded in a Time Warp. Looking at the passing faces of the devotees, I can imagine my grandmother, summoning us to pray with her – the Holy Rosary in Spanish.

Time seems to stand still in the twilight, in that neat little plaza, as young men and girls promenade in the paseo. The church bells solemnly toll the end of the day, and the Virgen, from her pedestal on the church façade, smiles from above. In one who has journeyed far, from across the broad expanse of the Pacific, it is a scene that stirs half-forgotten memories of other churchyards and other towns in the never-never land of one’s vanished youth.

When the Filipino goes to Mexico, he comes "home".