When the historians of a government protest over a rapper’s own version of history in a land where histories depend greatly upon foreign archives or documents written in the languages of the colonizers, then we are a truly pathetic, bathetic community of confused citizens, of a nation at best imagined and a territory at worst assumed.
What is the root of this rage at the thought that a popular artist perhaps in his own attempt at heroic illustration sang of Lapu-Lapu beheading Magellan? Where is the certainty that this valiant act of violently decapitating an adventurer/navigator/colonizer never took place? There were observers with quills but they came from the other camp. Those who were supposed to be on the side of the “Filipinos” did not have the tradition of chronicling defeats and victories.
In terms therefore of historicizing things, we on the Lapu-Lapu side have, by default, the losing proposition. We are ahistorical while the Spanish armada or whatever they were belonged to a civilization marked by histories, an empire loaded not only with cannonballs but lots of ink to draw maps of encounters and domination. Thus, there is Pigafetta on whose name our historians swear allegiance because, naturally, there is no one else to vouchsafe any claim to historical knowledge of what transpired on that lonesome beach of Mactan. See, I just wrote a beautiful sentence about that Battle involving inglorious “basterds” out to conquer us, in the guise of a quest for spices and a discovery that there were not only golds but also golden-skinned women and, let us not preclude this—the golden muscled men.
And who can stop me if I curse the invaders? I have the right to be angry and be contemptuous of those who try to come and dominate the land where I was born. In much the same way, who does not remember how we were told of that Battle of Mactan where the “Filipinos” (never mind the hasty assertion of national identity where it was not even clear yet because our narrators then were not yet briefed about being critical of histories) wielded only bolos against the more superior cannons and arms of the invaders?
The fact is the cinematic Hollywood narration of yore where the narratives of the past are said to be “glimpsed through the mist of histories” captures both the limitations and infinitely poetic as well as prosaic licenses historians and narrators are open to committing.
But this nation that does not have cultural proofs of being a nation (of course, the legalese of nationhood is the easiest to impose, lawyering being the most arrogant of disciplines) rests on having a history. Only historians steeped in the rakish investigations of theories will insist that in a land with its own defined territories and cultures, there are histories and not a monolithic narrative, not a single history.
So, what is the problem of that rap spoken over the layered music of Cariñosa? As with any rap music, it is a subversion of what music is all about. As with jazz, blues, and rock.
What is there to protest against such interpretations? Do we join this cancel culture where we banish those whose thoughts and acts are not in accordance with what we deem proper, i.e., Filipino and patriotic? See how patriotism is terrifically sexist.
It does matter, however, how we can be selective about things that get our nationalistic goat. When the late and much lamented Yoyoy Villame attributed to Magellan an old nursery rhyme as he was dying (O, mother, mother, I am sick. Call the doctor very quick. Doctor, Doctor, shall I die? Tell my Mama do not cry) we never raised hell. That was in the 70s when Lapu-Lapu was a staple joke as a fish and not a hero.
But we raise hell now. And the reason is because we are about to commemorate the circumnavigation of the world and, whether we like it or not, the leading man of the plot is Magellan. Substantial are the materials about the Portuguese while scanty are the materials for Lapu-Lapu. We need to settle also a severe flaw in officiating over the enshrinement of this memory for the collective—the journey was not our journey, that history was not our history.
We run around like headless chicken in coming up with a commemorative image of Lapu-Lapu. We scour the archives of the State that devalued this Mactan chieftain hoping we could find images and hidden fragments that will assure he was indeed the man—let us forget the label, Filipino—who was the first to repulse the invaders. The search was flawed ab initio: no battle was won in Mactan. The three centuries of Spanish presence and the structured inequality that was its main legacy other than the religion, which supported the same iniquities, are material proofs needing no archival testimonial about the success of colonialism.
And, typical of us, we managed to find new discoveries. One archive said Lapu-Lapu was never there. Another said, Lapu-Lapu could not have killed Magellan because he was already an old man during that monumental siege. Whereupon artists after artists started presenting images of an old man; whereupon people started missing the gallant, buffed warrior embodied by statues depicting Lapu-Lapu.
The thing is if we are not even sure how our first hero looked like, if we cannot at all supply hard facts to support what really happened in Mactan long, long time ago, shouldn’t we let the metaphor stay. Let us be quiet, let us allow the symbolling to work. Do not talk too much lest we reveal the hands behind the manipulation of Lapu-Lapu, the ultimate symbol that arises from the dialectical tensions that people unconsciously employ to resolve socio-political contradictions.
Respect the search and writing of more histories—the discrepant, the alternative, the revolutionary. A single, unchallenged history, let us be cautioned, is a product of an authoritarian thinking, one that is free to erase identities and biographies.
E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com
Image credits: Ed Davad
1 comment
Amen.
Very well said.
Filipino historians praised a foreigner but did not give credit to the native. Enrique, who guided Magellan to Cebu, Enrique’s homeland!
Which makes Enrique the 1st circumnavigator of the world.