OUR two-part series on Lav Diaz’s movie, Magellan, drew reactions from readers, the most noteworthy being from Lapu-Lapu City Councilor Annabeth Cuizon.
“We from the city government were made aware of the film [September 11], and, true enough, were dumbfounded on the articles and review that we read. It seems like nowhere in the film was Lapulapu, our hero, ever mentioned. Imagine how history was distorted in this film that Lav Diaz claimed to be sufficiently researched (10 years, I think was reportedly mentioned). The City Council will act on this; but we need to see it first and contribute to its viewership, unfortunately.”
I am looking forward to seeing how the city government as a whole will act, and the city council, being the city’s law-making body, will have a massive role to play.
Although Republic Act 5659 – which elevates the Mactan Shine as a National Shrine – does not outline the duties and responsibilities of the Lapu-Lapu City Government on the matter of preserving and protecting history and culture, Republic Act 10066, dated March 26, 2010, does.
This mandates the protection and conservation of national cultural heritage and vamps up the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.
And while it does not automatically consider the Mactan Shrine a heritage zone, it provides a mechanism to establish heritage zones that, as per Sec. 13, are for Local Government Units to maintain.
Sec. 33 of RA 10066 also encourages LGUs to “incorporate programs and budgets for the conservation and preservation of cultural property in their environmental, educational and cultural activities.”
But beyond legal mandates, the Lapu-Lapu City Government has an obligation to every Oponganon to preserve its local history, culture, and heritage because Lapulapu is a large, if not the largest, component of the city’s cultural identity.
And if that cultural identity is to stand foreign socio-cultural influence already so prevalent in localities defined by tourism, the city government must ensure that locals understand the significance of the local chieftain in the wider conversation of Cebu and Philippine history.
For that, whatever next steps the city will launch must not be limited to the promotion of physical places. Efforts must be mirrored in schools and scholars must be given the opportunity and incentive to do research in history and archeology. Policy instruments must also be put in place to keep the efforts alive.
The city government must not repeat mistakes of the past. A 2016 academic paper shows the problem to be mythologizing.
In Mactan’s and, by extension, Cebu’s oral tradition, Lapulapu is encrusted with legend and mythic motifs – amulets, supernatural powers, and accompanied by equally super-powered friends.
About the only constant is that he slayed Magellan, which is broad-stroke storytelling.
Pigafetta, the only eye-witness to the Battle of Mactan, wrote that Magellan was wounded by arrows and spears, not in swordplay, fell after a javelin thrust into his leg, and overwhelmed by the island’s warriors, not the amulet-wearing, superpowered chieftain.
Perhaps the Lapu-Lapu City Government’s challenge now is to disentangle the man from the myth without diminishing either.
The sad thing, at least in my reflection, is that it is almost as if Lapulapu lost the battle for history despite winning the Battle of Mactan.
During colonial times, colonialists celebrated the European invader, not the chieftain. In fact, the Magellan monument in the shrine – built in 1866, predates the Lapulapu monument.
Lapulapu only captured the interest of intellectuals and nationalists in the late nineteenth century. Writers and reformers used him as an emblem of resistance to colonialism and amplified his symbolic value, helping convert a little-recorded chieftain into a proto‑national hero, facts be damned.
So little was known, and so little effort went into finding out. So much so that the first statue of the chieftain, unveiled in 1933, had him carrying a European bow and arrow.
The error was rectified in 1938 when Mayor Mariano Dimataga ordered the bow and arrow removed—not for historical reasons but because the mayor who’d installed the statue died soon after its unveiling. Two successors also died soon after taking office. People thought it was cursed.
The bow and arrow was replaced by a wooden shield and Dimataga stayed in office for 30 years, until he retired in 1968.
In 1979, according to Prof. John Olivares of the Southwestern University, the old statue, with its wooden shield, was torn down. A new monument – with a Kampilan and shield – was put up, but torn down again soon after. It was disproportioned and inaccurate. The shield was an Igorot Kalasag – with three upward prongs on top and three downward prongs on the bottom. Not Bisaya.
A second replacement was unveiled in 1981 and was more proportioned but still carried the wrong shield. The shield was redone, but the artist – said to the Ilongot-Ifugao sculptor Anselmo “Ansel” Bayang Day-ag, Sr., declined to sign the work to distance himself from controversy.