Professor Lina Quimat’s challenge to the Cebuanos (Part 2)
In 1980, a book “Glimpses in History of Early Cebu” written by Lina Quimat, a newspaperwoman and president of the Cebu Historical Society, was published. Her book presented facts that challenged the conventional history presented to the Filipinos by foreigners. CEBUpedia is reproducing the first few page of her book, and may this enlighten the present generation:
“Earlier than the Spanish period here in the country, those involved in world trade were only natives of the Bisayan Islands within which found the progressive international port of Sugbu. Little was known about our past since the coming of the Spanish because those Spaniards destroyed all those that would show our advancement in civilization. However, some writers who admired luxurious happy life of the Bisayans noted and kept these by writing the chief characteristics of the natives, their economic progress, their relationships with other people in their trade. The Americans did not rely on the evaluation of the Spanish “Conquistadores” of the Philippines. They doubted on the accuracy of the reports and they knew that the Spaniards who intruded into the country stripped off from the natives their dignity and real worth as a people. As revealed in the writings of Pigafetta, the chronicler of Magellan, who in spite of the shameful defeat of the invaders sent by Spain (one of the two only powers of the world at that time), when King Lapulapu killed Magellan in the Battle of Mactan in 1521, still the Spaniards shouted to the world that they discovered us. And most of our so called Philippine historians swallowed all of Pigafetta’s chronicles “hook, line and sinker” notwithstanding.
“What is called history of Cebu can be briefly enumerated properly through the events; the progressive trade of foreigners all over the world thru Arab ships with the natives of Cebu as early as the first century A.D. moslem missionaries reached Bisayan islands and many of them settled in Cebu; Magellan landed in 1521 and planted a cross right after landing on the soil of Cebu they first stepped on (the place is now called Santa Cruz by Cebuanos) and he was killed by King Lapulapu in the Battle of Mactan; Legaspi landed in 1565 and built the Fort San Pedro which the Cebuano call Cota (this site of the fort was called by early historians as the First Spanish Settlement); Spain declared that the port of Sugbu open again to foreign trade in 1863 to show to the world their claim to have “discovered us; 1898 the Spaniards were defeated by the American forces and they evacuated from the Philippines and the U.S. established a civil government; the Japanese occupied Cebu on April 18, 1942 and destroyed her on May 22, 1942; Admiral Shegeru Fukudome of Japan’s Combined Imperial Fleet was caught here on April 1, 1944 at Balud, San Fernando, Cebu was imprisoned with other Japanese officials by the Cebu guerilla men; and Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s troops landed here on March 27, 1945 and “historians” called this American liberation, in spite of the thousands of Filipinos who died fighting for the American war against the Japanese.” (To be continued)
- Latest
