Rajah Vs. Conquistador: Preface
The Philippines Through Experimental Lenses
When in 1521 Ferdinand Magellan plied chief Humabon with gifts, thrilled him with words extolling the power of the Spanish King and God, and proceeded to convert him and his followers, thought worlds collided. Humabon did not have a Pigafetta to record the native side of the encounter. The events that followed however—Magellan’s death in the shallows of Mactan, the massacre of his men—illustrated what has been demonstrated time and again: acts of conquest and conversion are not always what they seem.
— Resil Mojares, Brains of the Nation (2006)
All warfare is based on deception.
— Sun Tzu, The Art of War (5th Century BC)
When Magellan landed in Cebu City Rajah Humabon met him, they were very happy All people were baptized and built the church of Christ And that's the beginning of our Catholic life When Magellan visited in Mactan To Christianize them everyone But Lapu-Lapu met him on the shore And drive Magellan to go back home Then Magellan got so mad Ordered his men to camouflage "Mactan island we could not grab 'Cause Lapu-Lapu is very hard" Then the battle began at dawn Bolos and spears versus guns and cannons When Magellan was hit on his neck He stumbled down and cried and cried Oh, mother, mother, I am sick Call the doctor very quick Doctor, doctor, shall I die? Tell my mama, do not cry Tell my mama, do not cry Tell my mama, do not cry
— Yoyoy Villame, "Magellan," Philippine Geography, Vicor Music Corporation, 1972, track 3, verses 3-7.
It was mid-afternoon when I heard a succession of loud claps. I suspected that they might be gunshots, but they did not sound as macho as they do in the movies, so I dismissed the distraction and went on with my work, slightly annoyed that my focus hit a road bump.
I later found out that someone was shot dead right outside my workplace. The news said that he was a 37-year-old man named Jay.
The city I currently live in, Davao, is known for vigilante killings by a group operating under the mayor. So I wasn't surprised that taxi drivers I talked to concluded that the dead man must have been one of the suspects in the murder of a young female architect a few months back.
The mayor and his family have ruled Davao for decades and continue to have strong support from its citizens. I found out why after talking to long-time residents in my first few months in the city.
Davao used to be plagued by crime. For instance, a neighbor and his family were hog-tied while the robbers enjoyed themselves to their food, after taking their pick of the family's valuables. There were also some bombings by rebels.
The mayor placed the army under his control and built a personal death squad. The army took out communist rebels and guarded the city's borders, while the death squad assassinated people they considered criminals. They also bombed a mosque in retaliation for the bombing of the city's cathedral. My neighbor is a friend of the mayor. When the robbers who hog-tied his family were caught, the mayor personally invited him to carry out the execution. He probably declined.
Except for the shooting outside my workplace, all this violence in the city is hidden. The picture I painted here is based on second-hand information. From external appearances, the city is the cleanest, most law-abiding, and safest place in the country I’ve lived in.
I did not grow up in Davao but in Cebu, in the city's centuries-old downtown, five blocks away from Magellan's cross. The cross sits inside an octagonal pavilion with architecture typical of Spanish-era Philippines. It has a red-tiled roof and adobe arches with wrought iron grills. The cross commemorates the start of the Christianization of my ancestors, when in 1521, eight hundred of them were baptized by the chaplain of Ferdinand Magellan's crew.
If we walk two blocks closer to my childhood home, we would see a statue of Rajah Humabon. He was the ruler of Sugbo at the time of Magellan's visit. We still call our city and our island Sugbo, but it is known by the rest of the world as Cebu.
I didn't hear much about Humabon in school. I heard instead of Lapu-Lapu, whose men killed Magellan and who has entered the country's pantheon of heroes. He has become the first victor in the nation's long struggle against colonialists and imperialists. Lapu-lapu's statues tower above you, bare-chested, with action star muscles and a gigantic sword. Humabon's statue, on the other hand, depicts a sitting, unsmiling man with the body of a middle-aged dad who obviously enjoys tubâ, the coconut sap liquor we continue to drink today.
These depictions of Humabon and Lapu-lapu made sense after I read Antonio Pigafetta's Account of the First Circumnavigation of the Earth, first published in 1525. Pigafetta was the official chronicler of Magellan's crew. Here are his first impressions of Humabon, the "King of Zzubu."
When we came to the town we found the King of Zzubu at his palace, sitting on the ground on a mat made of palm, with many people about him. He was quite naked, except that he had a cloth round his middle, and a loose wrapper round his head, worked with silk by the needle. He had a heavy chain round his neck, and two gold rings hung in his ears with precious stones. He was a small and fat man, and his face was painted with fire in different ways. He was then eating tortoise eggs in two china dishes, and he had four vessels full of palm wine, which he drank with a cane pipe.
Pigafetta records Magellan's exchange with Humabon, from their initial stand-off over tribute, to their growing friendship, to the conquistador's death. In contrast, Pigafetta never actually sees Lapu-Lapu, giving artists a blank canvas to conjure an inspirational national hero.
The American novelist David Foster-Wallace has a famous graduation speech entitled "This is Water." It starts with this parable:
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
We tend to be blind to the worldviews we are reared in, the bodies of water that color how we interpret the world. Later in the speech, DFW urges his young listeners to examine these waters, to make them visible through empathy and mindfulness.
Books have always been my way of seeing my own seeing. For instance, the first time I noticed the body of water I was swimming in was when I read Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities. The book is about the roots of nationalism, the worldview that shaped my education through the school system and the popular media.
Humabon didn't make sense the first time I read Pigafetta's account. Then I remembered the water I was swimming in. Humabon's actions sounded strange because they did not fit the nationalist template. Worse, he sounded like a cartoon character, like Magellan's brown sidekick.
One day, I stumbled upon the key to Humabon. I tried imagining him to be a local politician. Suddenly, his moves made sense. He became a man of flesh and blood.
It turns out I have an archetype in my head that fits Humabon's actions perfectly. This archetype comes from knowing local leaders and power players, from the teenage kingpins in the Cebu of my youth to CEOs of giant companies to murderous politicians. Humabon’s spirit continues to live in them. He also lives in Davao's mayor.
There's a section in Pigafetta's account that I never heard mentioned in school. After the death of Magellan, and right before the remaining crew were about to leave, Humabon, a "Christian king" at this point, invited the men for one last meal. Pigafetta writes,
Wednesday morning, the 1st of May, the Christian king sent to tell the two commanders that the jewels prepared as presents for the King of Spain were ready, and he invited them to come that same day to dine with him, with some of his most honoured companions, and he would give them over to them.
Pigafetta was unable to go due to an injury from the battle a few days earlier. This turned out to be fortunate for him because the two commanders and twenty-four crew members who went were massacred by Humabon's men.
It’s not surprising that Filipino books skip this part of Humabon's story and even avoid talking about him. It looks unbecoming for one of our people's first rulers to appear in recorded history to deceive, betray, and kill his allies.
This discomfort is a consequence of the modern Christianized waters we swim in today. Is it possible for us to see Humabon's actions from his own viewpoint? Can we transport ourselves to the waters that he swam in? After reading anthropological studies of the "Big Man" of the Pacific islands, Iron Age kings, and modern power players like our mayor, I started to see Humabon's logic. His charisma and brutality fit his role perfectly.
The Magellan I was taught also sounded like a cartoon character, especially with the utter tactical stupidity that led to his death. After reading about his life and studies of conquistadors, the Magellan in my head changed from a two-dimensional caricature of Don Quixote to a human being with a complex personality that evolved throughout the voyage.
Revealing the worldviews of men long dead is a pathway to the goal of this book: to reveal these bodies of water we were reared in and currently swim in. To see these waters, I make use of lenses from all over the world. In the first chapters, I introduce models from the extremely online thinker, Venkatesh Rao, and the French-American social theorist, René Girard. As to be expected, I also make use of Benedict Anderson's understanding of nationalism.
We then revive the ancient Southeast Asian lens of animism by granting personality and agency to these big ideas that collided during the age of encounter and have battled and collaborated with each other across the history of the Philippines.
Karl Marx famously declared that "philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it." My education, and perhaps yours as well, has been the result of scholars and storytellers attempting to change the world. All these efforts to make an impact through education and interpretation, from missionaries to nationalist scholars, were guided by the invisible hands of specters haunting these islands across the centuries.
This book's goal is modest compared to Marx's call to action. The gunshots that killed Jay also ripped a small peephole into the hidden foundation of this peace and freedom I enjoy. Using these experimental lenses, can we see what lies in the darkness? Can we see the faces behind the masks of today's incarnations of Humabon and the spirits they collaborate with to gain and wield power? I just want to know.
Thanks to Raymond Ng for the editing and John Bengan for the conversation and the story that led to Davao entering this book.