500 YEARS GIFT OF SLAVERY

EDITOR/COLUMNIST

By Caloy Bueno

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There are between 2.4 to 2.5 billion Christians in the world today, including about 1.3 billion Roman Catholics. We are observing this year the 500th year of Christianity in the Philippines ~ supposedly brought by Ferdinand Magellan when his expedition arrived on March 16, 1521 from across the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans over a one-and-half-year voyage ~ celebrating a thanksgiving mass on Limasawa Island off Samar and Leyte, then finding his way to Cebu where he converted Rajah Humabon and his tribe to Catholicism. Cebu is where he planted the first Christian cross ~ and got himself nailed to it by Lapu-lapu (supposedly the chieftain of Mactan island just across a narrow channel from Cebu), who refused to be conned by the Spanish conquistadores with either the cross or cowed by their swords and guns, plus cannons.

 

When Magellan died, Juan Sebastian Elcano took over Magellan's expedition ~ and made it back to Spain, thus completing the first circumnavigation of the globe. Recently, the Spanish Naval ship Juan Sebastian Elcano arrived for a visit to Cebu City ~ on its journey to circumnavigate the globe going the other way. But for all intents and purposes, back then the Philippine archipelago was already claimed for Spain by Magellan, a Portuguese, who got left in the country he discovered and claimed dominion over. 

 

So if you look at what happened in 1521 ~ the conversion of Cebu natives under Humabon to Catholicism, and the resistance of (supposedly their rivals) the natives under Lapu-lapu's leadership, we have at that exact time a microcosm of the dynamics of Filipino Catholic faith and practice repeated throughout the rest of our 500 years of Christian history, but in more subtle ways and perhaps even deliberately forgotten or hidden under hundreds of years' worth of guilt or regret (or both). 

 

What is faith? Faith is believing ~ even without proof or evidence. Our faith in the Christian religion is based on such belief. It doesn't matter whether you're Roman Catholic, Iglesia ni Cristo, Aglipayan, Baptist, Pentecostal, Jehovah's Witnesses, Sabadista, largavista, and any other kind of "Hasta la vista, baby!" ~ we all believe in the Christian God ~ and we supposedly will be seeing Him (and His Only Begotten Son Jesus Christ, as well as the Holy Ghost ~ if ghosts can be actually seen!) when we already get too tired of this earthly existence of ours. 

 

Others would say ~ our (Christian) faith is only as strong as our belief in it. So if we go back to our beginnings as Christians, we either belong on the side of Humabon, or resisting on the side of Lapu-lapu. But the reality is that we modern Filipinos have already blurred that dividing line between them ~ which was consecrated by the blood of Magellan and the rest of all the Spaniards and natives who fell in that battle between them. The Spanish Naval ship Elcano came to pay a courtesy visit to Cebu this year to mark the special occasion ~  and a diplomatic way of saying, "You were once ours!"

 

But the observance of the 500 years of Christianity ~ which is an ecumenical way of saying "we are all in the same boat" (originating from the Greek word 'oikoumene') celebrating this momentous landmark ~ is being themed with the slogan, "gifted to give" (all in lower case letters). So that we were ostensibly "gifted" with Christianity ~ in order to be able to also give back (or share with others), and obviously referring to the Spaniards as the gift givers. And that 'gift' enslaved us for over 350 years in two ways ~ militarily/colonially (over our physical selves) and mentally (with the Catholic faith supplanting whatever beliefs we had prior to their arrival). And so the conflict started between Magellan and Lapu-lapu continues to this very day ~ but only inside of us, particularly as Catholics, and we are not even conscious of it.

 

However, the Spanish were not the first Christians to reach us here in our archipelago. Arab Christians (yes, there were Arabs who were Christians, too) had visited our archipelago before as traders ~ but never attempted to convert the natives they traded with. The Chinese had been visiting and trading with us for probably over hundreds of years before the Spaniards ~ but they never imposed Buddhism on us, nor even attempted to invade and conquer us from just across the South China Sea. (Just very recently, President XI Jinping declared that the Chinese have never bullied, oppressed or subjugated any foreign people ~ and that the over 1.4 billion Chinese today would never allow any foreign entity or interests to do any of that to them.)

 

So if politicians are using the Catholic or other Christian beliefs ('Christian faith') one way or another to either promote or destroy one side over another ~ that's another manifestation of the Magellan ~ Lapu-lapu redux, where invariably you as a Filipino will have to consciously choose whether to side with the Humabon or the Lapu-lapu side (because the Spanish side is no longer an option, and neither the Americans on the Protestant side of the Christian divide). For example, many DDS would probably identify with the Lapu-lapu side, because they no longer have much faith in the Catholic Church as an institution (but retaining privately their Christian beliefs as a religion). 

 

In other words, the complexity of our society is multi-dimensioned ~ and our politics always try to find and use to advantage the many nuances in our complex social nature ~ precisely causing our fractiousness and disunity or other problems. There is a historicity to our complexity ~ which began with Magellan winning over Humabon, but losing to Lapu-lapu . . .

 

#PagMayTime  👊🇵🇭👊