The Anniversary Of the First Filipino Hero

Today is the anniversary of the death of Ferdinand Magellan at the Battle of Mactan in 1521 at the hands of Datu Lapu Lapu.

 

Lapu-Lapu was the king of Mactan, an island in the Visayas, Philippines, who is known as the first native of the archipelago to have resisted Spanish colonization. He is now regarded as the first Filipino hero.

On the morning of April 27, 1521, Lapu-Lapu and the men of Mactan, armed with spears, and kampilan, faced Spanish soldiers led by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. In what would later be known as the Battle of Mactan, Magellan, and several of his men were killed.

According to Sulu oral tradition, Lapu-Lapu was a Muslim chieftain, and was also known as "Kaliph Pulaka".^[3] The people of Bangsamoro, the Islamic homeland in the Philippine Islands, consider him to be a Muslim and a member of the Tausug ethnic group.^[4] A variant of the name, as written by Carlos Calao, a 17th century Chinese-Spanish poet in his poem "Que Dios Le Perdone" (Spanish, "That God May Forgive Him") is "Cali Pulacu".