I was invited to talk about the topic "The History of Leyte and Samar" before this gathering of esteemed media practitioners in the region. Of course, the topic is too broad and potentially boring to an audience who I presume already have basic knowledge of the region’s history and whose attention have been partially left in their beat and areas of assignment. So I decided on a delimited but controversial angle to my topic. Hopefully, this will result in an animated open forum and private discussion and debate.

I shall talk about some fiction that were presumed as facts and became part of the conventional history of the Leyte-Samar region. Fiction-as-history dot the broad expanse of the written history of this region from the time of Magellan up to the present.

The First Mass

The Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan "rediscovered" our archipelago in March 1521 by entering through our region. Little did he know that more than 400 years later, two places will contest the site of the recorded First Mass in the Philippines. The controversy was whether this event was held in Limasawa Island in southern Leyte or in Masao, Butuan. This issue reached hilarious proportion two years ago when Limasawa and Masao both commemorated in grand style the 475th anniversary of the recorded First Mass in their respective places.

By way of a background, Dr. Gregorio Zaide and his daughter, Sonia, in several editions during the 1980s of their widely-disseminated history textbook, insisted that the recorded First Mass was held in Masao, Butuan. In the process, they dismissed the Limasawa claim as erroneous. In contrast, Father Peter Schreurs, a retired Columban missionary priest and former parish priest of Magallanes in Agusan del Norte, where Masao is found, also refuted the Masao claim. After conducting archival research for his book Caraga Antigua, Fr. Schreurs concluded that Limasawa was the historical site of the recorded First Mass. He dismissed the Masao claim as "an imaginary event."

The Limasawa-versus-Masao controversy continues and the experts have been called to intervene and to settle the dispute once and forall. I was told recently by a reliable source that the National Historical Institute, in a decision handed out early this year, had ruled that the recorded First Mass in the Philippines was held in Limasawa Island. Unfortunately, the erroneous textbook entry in the popular Zaide publication remains uncorrected and will likely remain gospel truth for some more years.

Legazpi’s route

The second piece of fiction I would like to refute pertains to the Philippine route of the Legazpi expedition in 1565. The Zaide textbook implied that the expedition anchored first near Cebu before proceeding to Samar. This is an error.

The Philippine landfall of Legaspi’s ships was an islet now called Tubabao, off Oras town in northeastern Samar. From here, they made a week-long stop-over near another islet now also called Tubabao, off Guiuan town in southern Samar. From Guiuan area, the ships proceeded to Cabalian in southern Leyte, which the Spaniards raided to procure food. From Cabalian, they proceeded to Limasawa, which had been depopulated in the aftermath of a reported Portuguese raid. Without meeting anybody in Limasawa, the expedition eventually proceeded to Camiguin, then to Bohol where the famous "Blood Compact" between Legazpi and Sikatuna was held, and finally to Cebu, where they established the first Spanish settlement in the Philippines.

No Bankaw-Legazpi meeting

This brings me to the third fiction that I seek to refute: the purported meeting between Bankaw and Legazpi in Limasawa in 1565. Almost all our history textbooks mentioned this event. But the Legazpi chronicles did not mention such meeting at all, during which Bankaw supposedly received royal thanks from King Philip II through Legazpi.

The source of the fictitious Bankaw-Legazpi meeting was a history of the Jesuit missions in the Philippines, written by Jesuit Father Pedro Murillo Velarde and published in 1749. Historians quoted from his work without verifying from the original sources, and thereafter propagated a fiction that was accepted as historical fact.

The massacre of Bankaw’s family

A fourth partly-fictional event was the Bankaw Religious Revolt in 1621. After reviewing many of the published accounts and official documents, I have come to a conclusion that there was no Bankaw Revolt as claimed by historians. Of course, there was active dissent in Leyte at that time, which I had discussed in a speculative biographical article on the life of Bankaw. Indeed, Bankaw threatened to return to the religion of his ancestors after actively supporting the initial Spanish plans, which included the concentration of people and settlements into pueblos with a town plaza.

Bankaw’s dissent created panic among the Spanish priests in Leyte. One of them, Father Melchor de Vera, the Jesuit superior in Carigara, quietly left for Cebu to report about Bankaw’s alleged apostasy and sedition. Don Juan de Alcarazo, the alcalde-mayor (governor) of Cebu, quickly gathered a fleet of 40 ships and sailed for Leyte to suppress Bankaw.

During negotiation for Bankaw’s return to the Catholic fold, the unwelcome visitors, composed of Spanish officials and soldiers and hundreds of Cebuano reinforcements, appeared to have massacred instead the chief and his family. For the Cebuanos, it might have been their first taste of victory and revenge against their perennial Waray tormentors. But their act seemed too shameful they had to report a revolt to hide their treachery.

However, folklore, place-names, and rituals -- now acceptable as legitimate indicators of history -- suggest a totally different version of the Bankaw episode. Two barangays in Carigara named Hiraan suggest a verbal altercation or debate, and not a battle, between Bankaw’s camp and his visitors. And the turugpo, an annual festival of cock-fighting, carabao-fighting, horse-fighting, and gambling every Good Friday, the holiest day in the Christian world, suggests the Church’s complicity in the massacre of Bankaw and his family.

As if these indicators were not enough, the natives changed the name of their island, formerly Abuyo, into "Ila-Iti" (or "This is Iti’s land!"), which was later corrupted to Leyte. Iti, an endearing old nickname meaning Good Boy, seemed to have been Bankaw’s baptismal name. Therefore the name Leyte, muted and forgotten its historical meaning and context may be, appears to be a protest call, telling our colonizers and oppressors (of different guises, then and now) that this is not their land; that they should not dictate to us what to do with this land! We echo the same call now, when everybody else, except us, is deciding what to do with our geothermal resources and how much we pay for our electricity.

The natives also echo the name Tirana to this day. Tirana was the unreported victim of the so-called Bankaw Revolt. The one wife left after the four others were divorced, she seemed to have been blamed for Bankaw’s apostasy. As suggested by a folk song titled "Tirana," which soulful line is "Tirana bitaw’ng makalulu-oy" (or "Tirana, really the pitiful one"), she seemed to have been drowned to death.

Tirana was buried wrapped in banana leaves, because a priest disallowed a decent burial for her. And though the Spaniards tabooed her name, it still persists in altered form in Maritana, a sitio of Palarao in Leyte-Leyte, my theorized burial area of Bankaw, and in Triana, the largest poblacion barangay in Limasawa.

Biliran Religious Revolt

A fifth fiction I would like to refute is the historians’ claim that all the native revolts prior to the Philippine Revolution in the 1890s were effectively suppressed by the Spaniards. This general claim extends from the text about the failed revolts written by Fr. Murillo Velarde, which I cited earlier. However, this generalization, when extended beyond the post-1749 period, is not necessarily correct.

Perhaps some of you had watched the movie titled "The Mission" in the late 1980s. If memory serves me right, this critically-acclaimed movie starring Robert de Niro and Jeremy Irons won the Best Picture Award in the Cannes Film Festival in France, but not in the Oscar Awards. The movie was about the aborted Jesuit experiment in communal society living among the Guarani Indians in the forest of Paraguay, in South America. It might interest you to know that its Asian parallel was carved out of the forest of Biliran town in Biliran Province.

The Biliran Religious Revolt from 1765 to 1775 was the most successful revolt in Philippine history, though it is not found in our history textbooks. It was led by Padre Gaspar Ignacio de Guevara, a Samar-born native priest who was appointed as the first parish priest of Biliran pueblo by the Spanish colonial government.

Padre Gaspar turned out to be deluded and heretical. He created a new poblacion for Biliran pueblo by moving it away from its original site in Sitio Ilawod of Barangay Caraycaray in the present town of Naval. The new poblacion was carved out of the mountain top forest in what is presently known as Barangay Hugpa in Biliran town.

Padre Gaspar called the new poblacion site as Albacea, a Spanish word for "executor of the testament." Here he set up a sanctuary, enthroned himself in the "chair of Peter" with the royal throne in Biliran Island, and styled himself as the "first of the priests of the world."

From his sanctuary, Padre Gaspar spread his doctrines, granted indulgences, spread out news of miracles in the Leyte-Samar region, recruited and sent out disciples to incite revolts, conferred sacred orders, gave out offices, legislated, threatened those who opposed him and, together with a native "alcalde-mayor" of Biliran whom he appointed, fought against the Franciscan friars in Samar and the Augustinians in Leyte.

Padre Gaspar ordained sub-deacons, and attracted a great number of followers, especially among the women. He was also cordially treated and sheltered by the Catbalogan-based alcalde-mayor of Samar, who also worked with him.

The revolt ended after Padre Gaspar was captured by Moro pirates about 10 years later. He was drowned to death near Tagasipol Islet off Kawayan town in Biliran.

The Franciscans in Samar believed that if the Moros had not caught Padre Gaspar, "there would not today (this was 1775) be a Christian left on Samar and Leyte."

The "Biliran commune" would be replicated elsewhere by members of the "Dios-dios" movement in Leyte and Samar in the 1890s, during the revolution that ousted the Spaniards from the region in 1898, and during the Pulahan Wars against the Americans from 1902 to 1907. This native model of commune living, invoked by milleniarist movements during dangerous and uncertain times, preceded Karl Marx’s "The Communist Manifesto" by nearly a century.

Conclusion

As media practitioners, I would not be surprised if you have also come across some fiction that became accepted as historical fact in your places of origin or assignment. I just gave you five of what I know. Perhaps you can add up to the list during the open forum or workshop.

Thank you and may you have a good day.

Home