On Aug. 10, 1519, Ferdinand Magellan’s fleet of five small ships left Seville, Spain and travelled through the Guadalquivir River, reaching its mouth at San Lucar de Barrameda, there to stay for five weeks.
On Sept. 20, the fleet set sail and on March 16, 1521, Magellan landed at Limasawa, celebrating the first Mass ever in the archipelago there (an event incidentally contested by Butuan). Nearly a month later, on April 7, Magellan reached Cebu, converted the natives a week later in a baptismal rite participated in by Humabon and his men in the morning and by his wife (christened Juana) and other women in the afternoon. In that afternoon event the image of the Sto. Niño was presented to Humabon’s wife. Nearly two weeks after this, Magellan and about 50 of his men were dead on the shores of Mactan.
This ill-fated voyage will mark its 500th anniversary in barely a decade and my attention was called by architect Michael “Yumi” Espina, the new dean of the College of Architecture and Fine Arts of the University of San Carlos. You see, some of his students have already begun designing monuments and monumental structures, one of which he hopes will be adopted by either the city or province of Cebu as its official commemorative icon to celebrate this momentous event. I believe a replica of Magellan’s sword designed into a shell of a building that he intimated to me was better off rising above the hills declared decades ago as the Don Sergio Osemña Sr. Shrine where strangely, a private cemetery is set to rise.
Spain has already begun a decade-long series of commemorations focusing on San Lucar de Barrameda, where the fleet began in 1519 and where it also returned in 1522. San Lucar 2019-2022 has been carrying out, since 2008, a cultural week revolving around discussions on the circumnavigation of the world, a feat that Magellan would have achieved had Lapu-Lapu and his men not cut short his life on the shores of Mactan. The honor was left to his remaining navigator, Sebastian Elcano, but there is also some debate regarding this because the latter has no record of having joined Magellan in San Lucar. (He is recorded only when Magellan reached Malacca, where he joins him on his voyage to Cebu.)
There is also the strange case of Enrique de Malacca, a Malay slave Magellan acquired in Malacca in 1511 whom he christened “Enrique” and brought back to Spain. Enrique also joined the Magellan Expedition to the Philippines and some historians aver that it was he who actually carried out the first circumnavigation.
I agree with Dean Yumi that perhaps, if Cebuanos are to celebrate the brave defense of the land by Lapu-Lapu against a foreign invader, the planting of the first cross, the first baptism and the presentation of the miraculous image of the Sto. Niño, both the private and public sectors of Cebu and Lapu-Lapu cities should now start organizing and planning this international event. Manadue can even be counted in, so with Talisay and Mainglanilla because we are fortunate that Pigafetta mentions seeing settlements lining the coast for some kilometers from Humabon’s trading port.
Even Manila cannot lay claim to this important international commemoration, one that I expect would also be hotly debated, especially in regard to the disease and destruction of indigenous peoples and their knowledge upon the arrival of the Spaniards. Nonetheless, we can no longer refute the fact that had not Magellan successfully landed on the shores of Cebu in 1521, Spain would not have sent further expeditions to occupy the archipelago, eventually leading to its conquest by Miguel Lopez de Legazpi 44 years thereafter.
Given the penchant for Filipinos to create committees, to plan, to raise funds and then to create more committees to plan and raise funds further, I believe a decade of preparation should not be too much to do more planning, more fund-raising, more committee formation and more and more planning until we arrive at 2021. Mayor Mike and Mayor Paz, it is time to start by perhaps establishing cityhood ties with San Lucar de Barrameda and assure them that we will welcome another Magellanic fleet, this time without the poison that Humabon gave the rest of Magellan’s crew or the routing of Spaniards on the shores of Mactan.
This is a good time to do this, while we still have, of course, enough time.
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My good friend and colleague in the anthropological world, the young Dr. Julius Bautista, professor at the National University of Singapore, will be launching his latest book, “Figuring Catholicism: An Ethnohistory of the Sto. Niño de Cebu” published by Ateneo Press this Saturday, Aug. 6, at the Art and Changing Gallery of Museo Sugbo at four o’clock in the afternoon. See you all there.