The Sinulog and the Family of Hari’ Humabon

Each year on the third Sunday of January people from all over the Philippines, and even from all over the globe, converge in Cebu City to celebrate the festival called the Sinulog. While the Sinulog is obviously about the Cebuanos’ --and the Filipinos’-- devotion to the Holy Infant Jesus, it’s also a celebration of a family that played an integral part in the Sinulog’s beginnings.

Only very few materials about the “royals” of Sugbu have been written and there has never been an extensive discussion about them. Maybe because the Conquistador Miguel Lopez de Legazpi decided Manila was a better capital for the new colony and so naturally most of the early chronicles on the ruling elite of the islands were focused on Manila’s Lakans. And although the late eminent chronicler to the rich and famous Luciano P.R. Santiago in his article on the Lakans of Manila indicated that a separate dossier of Tupas’ descendants was probably kept by the Spanish government, unfortunately, these files were most likely kept in the archives of Cebu and were lost or misplaced throughout the centuries. Thus, unlike the genealogies of the houses of Lakandula, Matanda, and Soliman which appear to be quite complete in the early generations until about the 1700s, those of the Tupases in Cebu can only be constructed based on the few archival documents we have, and a whole lot of oral tradition.

There was no mention of the parents or ancestors of Hari’ Humabon of Sugbu made in the early history of Spanish contact with the Philippines. In fact, the very few resources available only mention Humabon and his two brothers, Bendara and Cadayaw. Pigafetta’s writings say that Tupas had married Humabon and Juana's daughter Katherine as succession to Humabon's office was by male-preference primogeniture, but he only had daughters.

The solution was to make a lasting union between Humabon's brother's son and Humabon's daughter. When Legazpi came to Cebu, Tupas was already ruler. We know that Tupas and his queen were later baptized as Felipe and Katherine. They had six children, four girls (who were never named) and two sons, one of whom was baptized as Carlos. We also know that the “Isabel” described in history books who married one of Legazpi's men, a Greek named Andres, was a niece of Tupas.

Isabel and Andres go down in Philippine history as not just the first Catholic marriage in the colony, but also the first marriage between an indio and a European. Most of the personalities Magellan met were actually related. Testimonies from Ginés de Mafra, a surviving crew of Magellan’s expedition, show that Humabon and Lapulapu were brothers-in-law. Rajah Kulambo himself intimated to Magellan’s group that Humabon’s wife was Lapulapu’s sister. Because Pigafetta described Queen Juana as very young, Kulambo was certainly referring to an older, earlier wife. Records show that Kulambo and Butuan’s ruler Siago were brothers, and enough oral history also indicates that Humabon was their first cousin. Further non-archival sources say that Tamblot of Bohol and Bankaw of Limasawa, who both led rebellions against the Spaniards, were third cousins of Humabon.

The book “Aginid” by Jovito S. Abellana recounts the beginning of Cebu having been founded by Bataugong and Balintawak, supposedly Humabon's great-grandparents. It narrates how their descendants founded their own chiefdoms all over the Visayas and Mindanao. Of course, this oral history is genealogically suspect. The family tree Abellana constructed has clear Spanish influences. The children in the Abellana’s genealogy were given their father's name as their second name, which functioned as a patronymic, which was never practiced by early Filipinos.

The Sinulog, and all its history, is a special day of the beloved festival of the Cebuanos, a festival that celebrates not just Cebuano spiritualism but our connection to our beautiful past.