Lapulapu
Lapulapu (1491-1542) was a datu from the island of Mactan, in the Philippines. He is considered by the Filipinos, in retrospect, as the first hero of the islands, for defeating Ferdinand Magellan, resisting Spanish colonization. It is also known as Çilapulapu, Si Lapulapu, Salip Pulaka and Kali Pulako (or Cali Pulaco), although the historicity of the names is disputed.
Biography
Early Years
There have been many popular accounts of the origin of Lapulapu. An oral tradition is that the Sugbuanons of Opong were once ruled by a datu named Mangal and later succeeded by his son named Lapulapu.
Another is from the Aginid book, Bayok sa Atong Tawarik ("Glide, odes to our history") published in 1952 by Jovito Abellana, which supposedly records the oral chronicles of the reign of the last king of Cebu, Raja Tupas (d. 1565). However, its historicity is doubtful. The chronicle records the founding of the Cebu Rajanate by one Sri Lumay (also known as Rajamuda Lumaya), who was a Hindu prince of the Chola dynasty of Sumatra. His sons, Sri Alho and Sri Ukob, ruled the neighboring communities of Sialo and Nahalin, respectively. The islands they were on were known collectively as Pulua Kang Dayang or Kangdaya (lit. "[the islands] of the lady"). Sri Lumay was known for his strict defense policies against Moro slave raiders and traders from Mindanao. His use of scorched earth tactics to repel invaders led to the name Kang Sri Lumayng Sugbo (lit. "the one of the great fire of Sri Lumay") for the city, later shortened to Sugbo (" 34;conflagration"). After his death in a battle against the raiders, Sri Lumay was succeeded by his youngest son, Sri Bantug, who ruled from the Singhapala (lit. 'city of the lion') region, now Mabolo in the modern city of Zebu. Sri Bantug died of disease during an epidemic and was succeeded by his son Rajah Humabon (also known as Sri Humabon or Rajah Humabara.) During Humabon's reign, the region had become an important trading center. The ports of Sugbo became known colloquially as sinibuayng hingpit ("the place to trade"), abbreviated as sibu or sibo ("to trade"), from which the modern name " 34;Cebu".
According to Aginid, this was the period when Lapulapu (as Lapulapu Dimantag) was first recorded arriving from "Borneo" (Sabah). He asked Humabon for a place to settle, and the king offered him the Mandawili (now Mandaue) region, including the island known as Opong (or Opon), in the hope that the Lapulapu people would farm the land. They were successful in this, and the influx of agricultural products from Mandawili further enriched the trading port of Sugbo. The relationship between Lapulapu and Humabon later deteriorated when Lapulapu turned to piracy. He began raiding merchant ships passing through Opong Island, which affected trade in Sugbo. The island thus earned the name Mangatang ('those who lurk'), and later evolved to "Mactan'.
Battle of Mactan
Lapulapu was one of two Mactan datus before the Spanish arrived in the archipelago, the other being Zula, both belonging to the Maginoo class. When the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan arrived in the Philippines in the service of Spain, Zula was one of those who paid tribute to the Spanish king while Lapulapu refused.
At midnight on April 27, 1521, Magellan led a force of about 60 Spaniards and 20 to 30 warships (karakoa) of Humabon's warriors from Cebu. They reached Mactan three hours before dawn. However, due to the presence of rocky outcrops and coral reefs, Magellan's ships were unable to land on the Mactan shores. His ships were forced to anchor "two crossbow flights"; far away from de beach. According to Antonio Pigafetta, they faced some 1,500 Lapulapu warriors armed with iron swords, bows and 'bamboo' spears.
Magellan repeated his offer not to attack them if Lapulapu would swear allegiance to Rajah Humabon, obey the Spanish king and pay tribute, which Lapulapu again refused. At Lapulapu's mocking request, the battle did not begin until morning. Magellan, perhaps hoping to impress Humabon's warriors with the superiority of European armor and weapons, told Humabon's warriors to remain on his ships. Magellan and 49 of the heavily armed Spanish (armed with spears, swords, crossbows, and muskets) went ashore to meet Lapulapu's forces. They set fire to some houses on the shore in an attempt to scare them off. Instead, Lapulapu's warriors raged and charged. Two Spaniards were immediately killed in the fighting, and Magellan was wounded in the leg with a poisoned arrow. He ordered a retreat, which was followed by most of his men except for a few who stayed behind to protect him. However, the natives recognized him as the captain, so he became the focus of the attack. Outnumbered and hampered by their armor, Magellan's forces were quickly overwhelmed. Magellan and several of his men were killed, and the rest escaped to the waiting ships.
Historian William Henry Scott believes that Lapulapu's hostility may have been the result of a mistaken assumption by Magellan. Magellan assumed that ancient Philippine society was structured in the same way as European society (ie, with royalty ruling a region). While this may have been true of the Islamic sultanates in Mindanao, Visayan societies were structured along a loose federation of city-states (more accurately, a chiefdom). The most powerful datu in such a federation has limited power over another datu member, but no direct control over the other datu's subjects or lands.
Therefore, Magellan believed that since Rajah Humabon was the "king" of Cebu, he was also the king of Mactan. But the island of Mactan, the domain of Lapulapu and Zula, was in a location that allowed them to intercept commercial ships entering the port of Cebu, Humabon's domain. Therefore, it was more likely that Lapulapu was actually more powerful than Humabon, or at least was the undisputed ruler of Mactan. Humabon was married to Lapulapu's niece. When Magellan demanded that Lapulapu submit as his & # 34;king & # 34; Humabon, Lapulapu reportedly replied that: "he was not willing to come and revere someone whom he had been commanding for so long."
The Aginid chronicle also records that Humabon had purposely incited the Spanish to fight Lapulapu, who was their enemy at the time. However, Humabón's men accompanying Magellan did not engage Lapulapu in battle, although they did help to recover the wounded Spaniards. Humabon later poisoned and killed 27 Spanish sailors during a party. According to Aginid, this was because they had started raping the local women. It was also possible that he helped Magellan's Malay slave interpreter, Henry of Malacca, to obtain his freedom. The Spanish refused to release him, even though Magellan explicitly wished for him to be freed upon his death.A speech by Giovanni Battista Ramusio also claims that Henry warned the Chief of "Subuth" that he was not released. that the Spanish were plotting to capture the king and that this led to the murder of the Spanish at the banquet. Henry stayed in Cebu with Humabon while the Spanish escaped to Bohol.
The battle left the expedition with too few men to man three ships, so they abandoned the Concepción. The remaining ships, the Trinidad and the Victoria, sailed to the Spice Islands in present-day Indonesia. From there, the expedition divided into two groups. The Trinidad, commanded by Gonzalo Gómez de Espinoza, attempted to sail east across the Pacific Ocean to the Isthmus of Panama. Illness and shipwreck interrupted Espinoza's voyage, and most of the crew died. The survivors of the Trinidad returned to the Spice Islands, where the Portuguese imprisoned them. The Victoria continued sailing west, commanded by Juan Sebastián Elcano, and managed to return to Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Spain in 1522. In 1529, King Carlos I of Spain ceded all rights to the Islas de las Spices to Portugal in the Treaty of Zaragoza. However, the treaty did not stop colonization of the Philippine archipelago from New Spain.
According to Aginid, Lapulapu and Humabon re-established friendly relations after the Battle of Mactan. Lapulapu then decided to return to Borneo with 11 of his children, three of his wives, and 17 of his men. Nothing more is known of him after this.
After Magellan's voyage, subsequent expeditions were sent to the islands. Five expeditions were sent: Loaisa (1525), Cabot (1526), Saavedra (1527), Villalobos (1542), and Legazpi (1564). The Legazpi expedition was the most successful, resulting in the colonization of the islands.
Religion
Lapulapu's religious beliefs are another matter of debate, but it is strongly suggested that he was an adherent of indigenous Anito Animist beliefs. The inhabitants of the Sulu Archipelago believe that Qadi Lapulapu was a Muslim belonging to the Tausūg or Sama-Bajau people of Mindanao, a claim made by the now-dissolved Sulu Sultanate that many historians deny. Additionally, prominent Cebuano anthropologist José Eleazar Bersales says that Cebu was never Islamized, referenced in an excavation at Boljoon in southern Cebu. Direct evidence, such as Pigafetta's accounts and native oral tradition, did not indicate that Lapulapu was a Muslim, but rather a Visayan animist and a native of Sugbuanon.
The Cebuanos were predominantly animists at the time of the arrival of the Spanish. The Visayans were noted for their widespread practice of tattooing; therefore, the Spanish referred to them as the Pintados. Pigafetta, who recorded Magellan's encounter with the Cebuanos, explicitly described Rajah Humabon as tattooed. It also records the consumption of pork, dog meat, and palm wine (arak) by Cebuanos, as well as the common custom of piercing the penis (tugbuk or sakra). Tattoos, body modification, pig, dog meat and alcohol are ḥarām (forbidden) in Islam.
The supreme deity of the Visayans, as explicitly recorded by contemporary historians, was identified as Abba by Pigafetta and Kan-Laon (also spelled Laon) by the Jesuit historian Pedro Chirino in 1604, comparable to Tagalog & #34;Bathala". Islam is not mentioned. This is in contrast to the other places visited by Magellan's expedition where Pigafetta readily identifies the Muslims they encountered; he would call them Moros after the Muslim Moors of medieval Spain and North Africa, to distinguish them from the 'pagans'; In fact, during the mass baptism of the Cebuanos to Christianity, he clearly identifies them as "pagans," not Moors:
We placed the cross there because those people were pagans. If they had been Moors, we would have raised a column there as a show of greater hardness, because the Moors are much harder to convert than the pagans. — Antonio Pigafetta, Primo viaggio intorno al mondo, c. 1525
A more doubtful hold of Aginid is that Lapulapu may have been from Borneo. The Aginid calls him orang laut ('man of the sea') and an outsider who settled in Cebu from Borneo. The Oponganon-Cebuano oral tradition indeed disputes this substantiation, saying that his father was Datu Mangal of Mactan, indicating that Lapulapu was a native of Opong.
Legacy
Filipino Hero Recognition
Lapulapu is retroactively considered the first Filipino hero.
On April 27, 2017, President Rodrigo Duterte declared April 27 (the date the Battle of Mactan occurred) as Lapu-Lapu Day for honoring as the first hero of the country that defeated foreign rule. Duterte also signed Executive Order No. 17 creating the Order of Lapu-Lapu which recognizes the services of government workers and private citizens in connection with the President's campaigns and campaigns. [49]
During the first regular season of the 14th Philippine Congress, Senator Richard Gordon introduced a bill proposing to declare April 27 an official national holiday of the Philippines to be known as Adlaw ni Lapu-Lapu, (Cebuano, "Lapu-Lapu Day").
Commemorations
The government erected a statue in his honor on Mactan Island and changed the name of the town of Opon in Cebu to Lapu-Lapu City. A large statue of him, donated by South Korea, stands in the middle of Agrifina Circle at Rizal Park in Manila, replacing a fountain and roller skating rink. Lapulapu appears on the official seal of the Philippine National Police, and his face was used as the main design on the 1-cent coin that circulated in the Philippines between 1967 and 1994.
In the United States, a street in South of Market, San Francisco is named after Lapulapu. That street and others in the immediate neighborhood were renamed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors with names derived from historical Filipino heroes on August 31, 1979.
On January 18, 2021, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, in cooperation with the Quincentennial Commemorations in the Philippines, launches the non-circulating commemorative 5,000 peso note, in honor of his heroism.
In urban legend and folklore
According to local legend, Lapulapu never died but turned to stone and has been protecting the seas of Mactan ever since. Mactan fishermen would throw coins at a man-shaped stone as a means of 'asking permission' for the fishermen. to Lapulapu to fish "in his territory". Another urban legend concerns the statue of Lapulapu erected in the center of the town square of Lapu-Lapu when the city was still a municipality under the name of Opon in 1933. The statue stood in front of the old town hall, where they used to occupy their charges the mayors; Lapulapu was shown with a crossbow in a position to shoot an enemy. Superstitious citizens proposed replacing this crossbow with a sword, after three consecutive mayors of Opon (Rito dela Serna, Gregorio dela Serna and Simeón Amodia) each died of a heart attack. The statue was modified during the administration of mayor Mariano Dimataga, who took office in 1938.
In popular culture
- Interpreted by Mario Montenegro in the 1955 film Lapu-Lapu.
- Interpreted by Calvin Millado in the 1995 children’s educational series Bayani.
- Interpreted by Lito Lapid in the 2002 film Lapu-Lapu.
- Interpreted by Aljur Abrenica in the musical video "GMA 2010" by Lupang Hinirang.
- Lapu-Lapu was the inspiration of a playable character of the same name in the mobile game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. The character is a dual swordsman who has two instances and can change between two weapons that also serves as head of Makadan (now Parlas, a sublocation on Vonetis Island), a reference to Mactan Island.
- In the Bayani Agbayani song of 2004, Otso OtsoIt was mentioned the last time the song mentions, Two plus two. Ironically, child rhyme mentions it in the second line: "One plus one, Magellan, two plus two, Lapu-Lapu..." This presumably refers to the Battle of Mactan in which Magellan died.
- The song "Panalo" by Ez Mil, had a line that mentions Lapu-Lapu being decapitated at the Battle of Mactan. The song was received with criticism for the lack of historical precision of the line. Among the critics of the song were the government of the city of Lapu-Lapu and the Philippine National Historical Commission.
- Interpreted by Zeus Collins in the 2019 film The Mall, The MerrierLike one of the statues in Tamol Mall.
Sanctuary
- The sanctuary of Lapu-Lapu is a bronze statue of 20 meters (66 feet) in Punta Engaño, Lapu-Lapu, Cebu, Philippines.