Continuing controversy

I DEBUT my column in the INQUIRER Visayas with an item about a continuing controversy involving the history of Eastern Visayas - the location of the historical Mazaua, the site of the first Mass in the Philippines. One group claims that Mazaua was Masao, Butuan in Mindanao, while another says it was Limasawa, Southern Leyte.

In 1997, an ad hoc panel, headed by retired Supreme Court Justice Emilio A. Gancayco, was commissioned by the National Historical Institute (NHI) to settle the controversy once and for all. On March 20, 1988, the panel issued its verdict: "[Based] upon a preponderance of evidence culled from the primary sources, the first-ever Christian Mass on Philippine soil on March 31, 1521 was celebrated in the island of Limasawa south of Leyte."

The ruling was disputed by the pro-Butuan group, which include among its vocal critics Vicente C. de Jesus, a speechwriter of several top-ranking former officials during the Marcos era. De Jesus is a member of The Hakluyt Society in London, the oldest academic society devoted to the history of discoveries.

I have never met de Jesus. Our first contact was through e-mail in November last year, when he commented on my article, "Lapulapu in Biliran: A tentative hypothesis," that was posted on my website. Then he brought up the issue of Mazaua and Gines de Mafra, a member of the Magellan expedition who returned to the islands as a member of the Villalobos expedition and was marooned in Mazaua for about two months in 1543.

De Jesus claimed that the Gancayco panel had ignored De Mafra's account and he used this lapse to dispute the widely accepted verdict in various papers and leaflets, which he sent me by e-mail.

Now, I am a believer of the Mazaua-Limasawa theory. And also I believe that De Mafra's account is crucial to Mazaua's identification as Limasawa. I have not read the Gancayco Report in full, so I was surprised to learn that the panel ignored this account.

Perhaps it is because of this lapse that Limasawa's First Mass commemoration is still celebrated in Barangay Magallanes on the southeastern coast of the island, where a modern cross and a marker were erected on the top of a hill.

I have always believed that the First Mass was celebrated in Barangay Triana in the vicinity of Limasawa poblacion, which faces a cove on the west-central part of the island. I infer from an aerial photograph in my possession that the 1521 cross was erected atop a prominent hill to the right of the poblacion when facing the sea.

I read Pigafetta's chronicles of the Magellan expedition again and realized that, indeed, he never mentioned the ships sailing around the island to the west and docking at the harbor there. The relevant paragraph started: "On Thursday morning, March twenty-eight, as we had seen a fire on an island the night before, we anchored near it..." It ended with: "In the afternoon, we went in the ships [and anchored] near the dwellings of the king."

This paragraph suggests that the boats pulled the anchors they had dropped in the morning and anchored the ships again elsewhere - in a place and direction not stated by Pigafetta.

The relevance of these two anchorages found clarification in the 1565 Legazpi chronicles. The relevant passages about Mazaua went as follows: "Because the [1543] report of Bernardo de la Torre says that the village was located on the eastside of the island and the landing place for ships at the westside, the ships with on board the Prior and Maese de Campo proceeded to that part of the island where the village was said to be.

"However, they did not find a single house, no Indio, nay nothing at all, after which they continued northward along the coast till reaching the landing place at the westside. Here they saw only one Indio who shouted at them from a rock-cropping; they shouted back at him.

"But when the Indio heard that they were Spaniards, he came down from his rock via a ladder of ropes and rattan; because they thought that he would be coming to the shore to meet the men, they waited a long time for him. But all that the Indio did was that after coming down from the rock he went up a low hill where a small hut was standing; he put fire to it and after that went furiously back to his rock, climbing up via the same ladder, and once on the top he cut it and let it drop, all the while shouting at the sailors. The latter went back aboard and reported these matters."

The western anchorage mentioned in the Legazpi chronicles might have been the same place mentioned by De Mafra in his account.

De Jesus' paper, "Mazaua: Magellan's Lost Harbor," cited that the explorer had a direct hand in naming the isle "Massawa," also the name of one port of entry in the Red Sea. The word has a local meaning and context. "Masawa" in Butuanon means "bright" or "light."

The root word might also have been "sawah," a native word referring to wet-rice agriculture. The natives were about to harvest rice during Magellan's stay in the island.

The poblacion barangay of Limasawa has always been named "Triana." Local folklore said this was a pun of Tirana, one of the fives wives of Bankaw (or Mancao) whose name has been immortalized by a Visayan balitao (folk song).

However, the name "Triana" might have been given by Magellan himself. Triana in Spain is a suburb of Seville, separated from the main city by the Guadalquivir River and connected to it by a series of bridges. In the main church of Triana, Magellan married Beatriz Barbosa.

The place-name "Triana" is my principal clincher for the Mazaua-Limasawa argument.