Short Memory, History According To Yoyoy

HISTORY

BIMBO CABIDOG

Filipinos have short memory, a newspaper columnist if I remember right (see?) once wrote. Teachers note that majority of their students are poor in history.

Even old ones who already lived in that period forget that there was such a thing as the Marcos dictatorship. Some could remember instead Dovie Beams and Ferdinand Marcos (the dictator later) singing the Ilocano Pamulenawen on his way to her arms?

But Ferdie curtailing freedom, jailing or killing those who exercise their right, and plundering the country, what are you talking about?

Anyway, if not for Boholano songwriter and historian Yoyoy Villame, the generation of the 70s may no longer have been able to hark back to a bit of history taught in the elementary grades, that is: “on March 16, 1521when Philippines was discovered by Magellan.”

Of course the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan did not discover the archipelago. Others before him did, the Chinese Limahong, the group of Datu Puti, and the dwarfish men who wandered here through the ice bridges during the glacial age.

But Magellan must be credited for miscalculating his bearings in the high seas and hitting the wrong place. The long stormy Pacific crossing was a real dead boner.

Villame, who broke the chart in the early 70s for his account of the saga, related: “They were sailing day and night across the big ocean until they saw small Limasawa Island.” The island in Leyte was not the intended destination. Mollucas.

The Spanish fleet, or what remained of it, first hit Homonhon of Samar before Limasawa. But it was when “Magellan landed in Cebu City,” according to the Boholano historian, that things lit up, because Rajah Humabon and his court who met them “were very happy.”

As further narrated, “all people were baptized under the church of Christ and that’s the beginning of our Catholic life.”

This was not the case when “Magellan visited in Mactan to Christianize them everyone.” This time the people did not “meet him very welcome on the shores.”

The white man was spurned by the Muslim chief. “Magellan got so mad, ordered his men to come at land.” Anger did the arrogant European in, and the rest as always was history.

“Then the battle began at dawn, bolos and spears versus guns and canons,” Yoyoy graphically recounted. But the Spanish fleet commander was hit on his knee. “He stumbled down and cried and cried.”

At this point, strict parental guidance is advised on what Villame further told about the fate of the proud Caucasian. Let’s avoid that already.

Was Magellan really killed in battle, or was he just bitten when he alighted from his boat by a grouper called Lapu-Lapu, common in the waters off Cebu and a favorite by the natives? Was he fatally injured by the fish bite then died of infection later?  

What a cruel mistake for the fleet captain to accidentally be diverted to the Las Islas de Ladrones of the buko-eating people. For the blunder, Filipinos had to pay a steep price: four hundred years of colonial subjugation, 350 in monastery and 50 in Hollywood.

Yet, thanks nevertheless, for if the navigator did not goof, the Visayans and even the Tagalogs would not have had a top hit in the early seventies. The true discovery was not PI by Magellan, but Yoyoy Villame by the music industry. His single, Magellan, sold record high.

By the way, the story did not end with the unfortunate expedition that returned to its home country with only one ship out of five, and less the leader. The first appearance of the Western on our oriental shores would be followed by another wave about 50 years later.

This time, they saw to it that no incident, like the one that killed Magellan and almost decimated the Spanish fleet will happen again. They were better prepared in arms, superior fighting tactics and negotiating skills. They intended to dig in, get a foothold in the east, and rule forever.

Because of their victory, it would be their story that got to be told, by Villame nonetheless. One is of their discovering the Philippine islands, even if people were already inhabiting here who had their own social and economic life, and practiced a system of self-rule before conquest.

Four hundred years later, Filipinos would still wear the western colonial shades and look at the past as if the time before the white men came did not exist. The short memory would continue to cost them their national identity and independence.