When I ask my mother about the history of the Philippines, she begins with the Spanish. She says our history starts with Ferdinand Magellan, who landed on the island shores of Cebu in 1521.
“He discovered the country.”
I frown. Something about the word ‘discover’ leaves a bitter taste.
“How did he find us?” I ask.
My mother laughs. “He found us on the way.”
“Then we were never supposed to be found.”
Before asking her more questions, I do my own learning of Magellan. He was the first European to cross the Pacific Ocean, and would’ve been the first to complete an entire trip around the world if he avoided the Philippines. After landing on their shores, Indigenous Filipinos led by a local king asked him and his crew to help them fight a neighbouring tribe. With their rifles and gunpowder, he believed victory was assured. In battle against a people resisting their colonization, Magellan was killed by a poison arrow.
In the dim glow of my computer screen, I smirk. The reflexivity of the motion startles me. I recall a book I read in elementary school. The book was titled Famous Explorers. Its author had given Magellan an entire spread, two pages side-by-side covered by blocks of writing and coloured illustrations of his life.
After almost three years at sea, Ferdinand Magellan was killed in the Philippines. Despite his death, the voyage back to Spain continued, and his legacy as one of history’s most important explorers remains today.
Fifth-graders do not know the meaning of colonialism. They know the sour taste of their favourite soup, and attribute the word ‘prehistoric’ to bone, not skin. To my ten-year-old self he was an explorer murdered by my people. And I shot the arrow.
I throw up on the keyboard. Bits of vomit are stuck in between the keys. My mouth tastes bitter, stinging like a wound exposed to air. After cleaning up, I go to the washroom. I turn the shower knob and let the cold water rush over me, clear and clean. The feelings of childhood slip off my brown skin. My guilt is transparent like the water on my body. Both of them mix until I cannot tell them apart. Together they flow down the drain.
My mother cooks Sinigang for dinner. Sinigang is a Filipino pork soup with a sour taste. If cooked well, the broth is a translucent yellow, clusters of orange bubbles will simmer at the edge, and the smell sours the air. I sip a spoonful and it warms my soul.
“Our people made this soup before anyone found them.”
I sip another spoonful.
I imagine a beach at night. There is a group of villagers huddled around a fire. They all have dark skin, some of which are tattooed. Their eyes are sepia-coloured, reflecting red and brown in the flickering light. Each person holds a bowl with stew inside. History will arrive in the morning. But the night before their discovery, they have already found each other. They all breathe the same sour air.
Inspired by my reading of Wayde Compton’s commentary on colonialism in “Lost Island” and the theme of identity in Lee Maracle’s “Yin Chin,” I wanted to research the colonisation of the Philippines by the Spanish. I read an academic review by Gregg J. Galgo of the book “Filipino Prehistory: Rediscovering Precolonial Heritage,” in which he uses the term ‘prehistoric past’ to describe pre-colonized Philippines.
To me, it implies that Filipino history began when we were colonized. And this thought prompted me to ask: what were my people called before we were named by our colonizers? Galgo also asks a similar question, “Is it possible…to write a history of the Filipino people from his own viewpoint?” (Galgo, 1) My struggle in answering these questions mirrors the inner conflict of my narrator as he negotiates his present and past ways of thinking. I was also interested in writing a story which interrogates the word ‘discovery,’ especially when used to describe a country’s beginnings.
Galgo, Gregg J . “Filipino Prehistory: Rediscovering Pre-Colonial Heritage.” Academia.Edu, 31 Oct. 2019, www.academia.edu/40794132/Filipino_Prehistory_Rediscovering_Pre_colonial_Heritage.
