PAZ Radaza is hopeful that the airport would be named after the local hero Lapu-Lapu.
“Mactan is a place. That’s why I keep on emphasizing that it (airport) has to be named after the hero,” said Radaza, the incoming congresswoman of Lapu-Lapu City.
Under House Bill 9198, the Mactan-Cebu International Airport will be renamed the Lapu-Lapu Cebu International Airport as a way of honoring the local chieftain who fought foreign invaders.
Rep. Raul del Mar (Cebu City, north district) is the bill’s principal author.
The House of Representatives recently approved the bill on third and final reading.
However, the Senate has no counterpart bill.
Radaza also said she is open to the possibility of crafting a law that would urge the schools in the city to discuss the life of Lapu-Lapu.
Books about the hero, she said, could also be distributed to the classrooms to help students learn about his life.
Most of the local stories about Lapu-Lapu came from the oral tradition, according to Resil Mojares, the National Artist for Literature.
“History is silent on much of the story of Lapu-Lapu, the Mactan chieftain credited with having killed Ferdinand Magellan in 1521. Where history is silent, local folk tradition has stepped in to fill the vacuum with its own order of ‘facts,’” read the first paragraph of Mojares’s paper titled “Lapu-Lapu In Folk Tradition.”
The scholar’s paper was read at the symposium on Lapu-Lapu held at the University of San Carlos on April 21, 1979.
Italian explorer and scholar Antonio Pigafetta, who joined Magellan’s expedition, had an account on Lapu-Lapu’s exploits.
However, Mojares wrote: “That Lapu-Lapu killed Magellan with a blow of the alho...cannot be proved. At best, it remains a possibility. Pigafetta’s account of Magellan’s death does not tally with tradition; but, of course, Pigafetta is not an entirely reliable witness.”
Mojares’s 10-page paper can be accessed at www.jstor.org. (From GCM of SuperBalita, KAL)