Lapu-Lapu
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- Named after the hero, Lapu-Lapu is also the name of the grouper fish in the Philippines.
Lapu-Lapu (Kaliph/Salip Pulaka) (1491 – 1547) was the earliest known indigenous Visayan chieftain, and datu (king) of Mactan in the Philippines. His real name since a childhood is "Pula-Pula", meant "Red skin body" in Tausug (Sulu) langguges. He is a Kali-Warrior. He was Hindu/Muslim/Pagan/Tantric Buddhist. Then the Spaniard called him "Lapu-Lapu". Known as the first native of the archipelago to have resisted Spanish colonization, and Roman Catholic prosylitizing. He is now regarded as the first National hero of the Philippines.
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 captain Ferdinand Magellan. Lapu-Lapu was armed only with a stick created in the native way. In what would later be known as the Battle of Mactan, Magellan and several of his men were killed.
In his honor, the Cebuano people have erected a statue and church in Mactan Island and also renamed the town of Opon in Cebu to Lapu-Lapu City.
[edit] Timeline
April 13, 1521 - Rajah Humabon, his family, and 800 Sugboanons (people from Cebu) befriended Magellan and converted to Roman Catholicism. Magellan declared the people of Cebu a servant of God and Spain, while the pagan inhabitants of Mactan island became the "enemies of the Church".
April 27, 1521 - Magellan, with armored men, ploughed ashore Mactan island and fought Lapu-Lapu and his warriors. The encounter is known in Philippine history as the Battle of Mactan. The Spaniards were driven off the island in a terrible defeat, as Magellan was killed while he ordered a retreat.
It has been suggested that the rest of Magellan's men, most of whom were strongly against his insistence on fighting the native warriors of Mactan, refrained from coming to his aid by ostensibly mooring far from shore, the result of which might be construed as a "passive mutiny."
It has also been suggested that Lapu-Lapu killed Magellan himself in single combat. This however, is not very accurate.
June 9, 1522 - Juan Sebastian Elcano, navigating Magellan's only remaining vessel La Victoria with eighteen men and 533-hundredweight-cloves on board, successfully returned to Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain via the Tidorein Maluka (present-day Moluccas), Juan Sebastian Elcano was listed in world history as the first man to have ever completed the circumnavigation of the world.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Lapu-Lapu (Photo and Article)
