Five centuries hence

This week marks 500 years since the peoples of the Philippines encountered the Magellan-Elcano expedition in Suluan and Homonhon Islands east of Samar, in the first recorded circumnavigation of the world. Finding the crew starving, weakened by scurvy, and desperate for help, our ancestors showed magnanimity and hospitality, unmindful of the fact that this expedition will set into motion the process of colonialism that will define the course not just of our country’s history, but also of our sense of national identity.

Celebration, of course, is not the word we would use for such an occasion, as we continue to come to terms with the colonial legacy—including its violence—and advance the long and painful process of decolonization. Even so, despite the temptation to boycott its significance, I would like to take this moment as an opportunity to reflect on our country from the perspective of the longue durée. How might we revisit the events of 1521 in ways that decenter the narrative from its European mold?

Since we’re in the middle of overlapping ecological crises—including the pandemic itself—one starting point is the recognition that colonialism was a more-than-human encounter: People were accompanied by animals, plants, and even microbes, all of which contributed to the making of our country—and the world—as we know it. Catholicism and conquistadores may come to mind when we think of colonial encounter, but everything from cows and pineapples to mahogany trees and bougainvilleas were likewise participants, albeit nonhuman, of it. Ditto with diseases like smallpox and measles, despite the Philippines having some probable limited exposure to them as part of what the historian Linda Newson (1999) calls “microbiological boundary” between the Old and New Worlds. (Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that carries dengue, likewise found its way to the Philippines through colonial routes like the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade.)

It was also a multi-cultural encounter: It wasn’t just Spaniards or Europeans who came to the country, but people from all over the world—from Enrique de Malacca and Luzon Sukezaemon to the Mexican boys of the Balmis Expedition. Conversely, Filipinos migrated to all corners of the world, from Saint-Malo, Louisiana to Kalk Bay, South Africa. Can we revisit colonialism in these terms, allowing us to rewrite our history with the journeys of our people—and reestablish connections with other colonized peoples on the strength of this shared, albeit mostly unwelcome, past? And can we renegotiate terms of engagement with our former colonizers on the basis of equality and historical justice?

Such questions point to the fundamental character of colonialism: the fact that it was, and still is, an unequal encounter. For while early Filipino societies were far from classless (we cannot romanticize our ancient past), and while people resisted, syncretized, and (re)appropriated European influences—including Catholicism itself— Spanish and later regimes institutionalized a racialized and embodied socioeconomic hierarchy in the country that, even now, remains as indelible in our landscape as the piña fields in our countryside and the cathedrals in our cities. Although our academics have long moved on from viewing history from a Eurocentric perspective, as well as from a purely nationalist one, the material conditions and sociopolitical status of our people continue to be determined, at least in part, by the colonial order of things.

Indeed, much of our country remains governed like a hacienda; most of our people remain dispossessed of their land; and our leaders are as out-of-touch as the kings, queens, and viceroys who once governed the country from afar. Our indigenous peoples are discriminated against, no longer by Spanish and American colonists, but by their fellow Filipinos, even as we all remain minoritized and marginalized in the global realm. Moreover, critical thinking continues to be proscribed as in the colonial period, and just as Jose Rizal faced martyrdom in 1896, the reformers and revolutionary thinkers of our time face the firing squads of those in power.

Meanwhile, more than most other nationalities, it is Filipinos who are circumnavigating the world today, not in search of gold and glory, but for a tiny share of the wealth of those who, centuries ago, came to our shores in the name of God.

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