0n 21 December 2018, the Philippines government launched the National Quincentennial Commemorations (later renamed the 2021 QCP).  It is also the collective name for several quincentennials, or the 500^th anniversaries of events Filipinos often consider as the beginning of Spanish colonization.  The launching took place at the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP), Manila.

During the launch, the branding, logo and programs were presented to the public. The trappings were intended not to speak about Spanish colonialism but to emphasize the Filipino-centric perspective on the 500^th anniversary of the “first circumnavigation of the world” – the preferred term for the initial event to dismantle the Eurocentric phrase, “discovery of the Philippines by Ferdinand Magellan.”

The events during and immediately after the Magellan-Elcano expedition are often seen in Filipino history and by Filipino society as the beginning of Spanish colonization. According to Ian Christopher B. Alfonso, of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP), Spanish colonization of the Philippines began in 1565, not 1521, as commonly assumed. “This is an error,” he asserts in the chapter “Connection and Contention: The 2021 Quincentennial Commemorations in the Philippines” published recently this year in Arrivals, Conflict and Transformation in Maritime Southeast Asia, 1400s-1800s by the NHCP, Philippines Historical Association, and De La Salle University’s Southeast Asia Research Center and Hub; and edited by Fernando A. Santiago, Jr, Jose Victor Z. Torres, and Alfonso himself.

In his remarks at the International Conference for the Contacts and Continuities: 500 Years of Asian-Iberian Encounters, History professor and NHCP chairman Rene R. Escalante explained on the need for a Filipino-centric perspective: Focusing just on Magellan will complicate things, as the Filipinos have been battered with centuries of cultural timidity due to European narratives.” He was referring to the common notion that the ancestors of present-day Filipinos before the Spaniards were civilized barbarians, and savages and that Philippine history began only when Magellan arrived in the Philippines,  at the eastern part of the Malay Archipelago  in 1521. 

Alfonso reminds that it was incumbent upon the NHCP to “guide the Filipino nation in these highly contentious and divisive quintecentennial milestones.” According to Alfonso, the NHCP is mandated by RA 10086 to “strengthen people’s nationalism, love of country, respect for its heroes and pride for the people’s accomplishments by reinforcing the importance of Philippine national and local history in daily life with the end in view of raising social consciousness.”

Problems in Filipino historiography echo that of Malaysia’s; also that of the Malay Archipelago, commonly termed as Southeast Asia.  One example is the narrative of Kedah-Pulau Pinang. This is the common contention of “positivist”  history and historians.  These ignore perspective, also facts. A naïve consumption of facts have shaped many histories; not considering that facts can/are also invented. That positivist approach to history – in confining one’s understanding of the past to mere facts and rejecting interpretation – snatches one’s opportunity to view the past with a fresh mindset

Alfonso revisits the victory at Mactan. The event certainly predates the idea of a Filipino nation. Arguably the Filipino (of Malay) ancestors at Mactan did not fight for the “Philippines.” But it happened within a defined (or undefined) space, depending from the perspective either of the Philippines as a nation state or the rantau of the Malay Archipelago. Nevertheless, Alfonso argues that “the fact that it happened within the defined Filipino space, gives us, Filipinos, the right to claim it as ours.” The Filipinos have inherited from the founders of the Filipino nation the acknowledgment of Lapulapu as a political symbol. In the poem “Wake up Filipinos” dated 23 October 1895, Emilio Jacinto (under the pen name of J. Aging) included Lapulapu as among the Filipino ancient leaders whom he used as motivation for Katipunan members to think great.

Lapulapu was regarded as the defiant leader of Mactan. A line from Jacinto’s poem asks “Where has the blood of Lapulapu, the jubilant king of Mactan, flowed, after he killed the liar Magellan?” Quite pertinently, Jacinto also remembered Soliman (referring to Sultan Sulaiman), “the acclaimed martyr of the Battle of Bangkusay” when he asks “Where has the brave heart of Soliman gone?”  The Battle of Bangkusay was the first resistance against the Spanish invasion of Luzon in June 1571.

In 12 June 1898, Lapulapu and Mactan was once again reverberated. This time through the Acta dela Proclamacion de Independencia del pueblo Filipino. Through the document, written and read, the whole world knew that the Filipino people on that day, claiming freedom and independence from Spain, identified themselves with Lapulapu and his victory in the Battle of Mactan.  The Commemorations not only acknowledged, but affirmed the 1898 proclamation.  The NHCP member reminds that part of the legacy of the Philippines Revolution is to preserve the memory of Lapulapu as part of the national sentiment.

To discriminate Lapulapu as non-Filipino is trivial. To discriminate Lapulapu as non-Malay is also trivial. It is as if, to rephrase and borrow from Alfonso, to deprive all other personalities before the formation of the nation-state of the acclamation and acknowledgement from their grateful descendants. These are cultural communities, enriching Filipino (and Malay heritage), of our being and becoming, and of collective history and inheritance.

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