Do you know these Filipino Martial Arts’ lies?
Many, not all, Filipinos like to enthusiastically tell the story of Lapu Lapu killing Magellan in the waters near a Cebu beach. They like to say Lapu Lapu was using Eskrima, Arnis, Kali.
Too bad it’s a lie.
Few know the history of the actual events about Magellan and Cebu (and few seem to have the wherewithal to do the incredibly easy task of researching the event). Be warned, I’m not going to go through the entire background (you can find it in yourself to do that); however, I will cover a few salient aspects.
The Lapu Lapu kicked Magellan’s Ass Myth:
Magellan (who was Portuguese) went to Cebu to impress another island’s chief he had recently converted to Christianity. He was going to demonstrate the power of joining Catholicism: the technological superiority of the West. Magellan took a small landing crew, 49 men, to the shore on Cebu. What he found were far more tribal warriors than he anticipated: 1, 500 of them. Although outnumbered, Magellan and his men were carrying Toledo steel swords, crossbows, muskets and wearing some armor. So in an attempt to psychologically unnerve the villagers a few of Magellan’s men lit a number of huts on fire. Unfortunately for the Spanish landing party this had the opposite effect. That is the Filipinos were galvanized and angry enough to descend en masse on what was left of the 38 man landing party (11 were at the boats holding them and those that had lit the huts on fire had been killed).
The Filipinos attacked the Spanish with a huge numerical superiority of men (something that is conveniently left out of the Lapu Lapu success story) 1,500 Filipinos vs less than 38 Spanish (there were Italians etc in the group in reality) I wonder which way the betting went. Anyway, the Spanish were broken into small groups trying to work their way back through the surf to the rowboats and then onwards to the ship. Magellan’s group was isolated. His official chronicler, Antonio Pigafetta, was in the band of 8 men with Magellan. Pigafetta stated that Magellan was besieged with over 10 villagers. He killed several (read that again–he killed several) before he was hit in the right leg with a poisoned arrow (to get through the surf they wore no leg armor). The Filipinos shot arrows and threw spears at the legs only. Even wounded and grossly outnumbered Magellan and his men fought for over an hour in the water (you try that–no matter what drills you think you’ve done in training it doesn’t begin to come close to that reality).
The Filipinos had noticed that Magellan was the leader of the remaining men. They then focused their attack on him. While killing those that came close enough Magellan inevitably sustained more wounds. It is because of this that Magellan was unable to use his right arm to use his sword. It is then, when the Filipinos realized he was nearly defenseless, that he was slashed in the left calf by a bolo (machete). He immediately fell face first into the water. Whereupon several villagers set upon him with spears (with absolutely no martial arts’ skill required–even drunk half blind men can do it) and stabbed him to death. With the captain now dead Magellan’s remnant of a landing crew made its way back to the ship. What likes to be told in the Lapu Lapu success story is that it was a resounding victory–they forget to state that a few years later the Spanish came back and completely dominated and conquered Cebu and held it for 333 years (so let’s see who were the ultimate winners?).
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Anyway, so, what do we know about Lapu Lapu? Well if he was the guy who slashed a wounded, nearly defenseless, tired, grossly outnumbered Magellan, it’s nothing to brag about anymore than beating a 1 year old baby in combat is something to brag about. Regardless how some want to retell the story and neglect the facts–one thing still remains: it wasn’t some mysterious indigenous fighting skill that killed Magellan–it was sheer numbers.
And how about this whole Eskrima, Arnis, Kali propaganda?
Well instead of me writing several pages about it, I’ll let some informed Filipinos put things right.
