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Did Ferdinand Magellan really
discover the Philippines?
Ferdinand Magellan did not discover the Philippines. He merely landed on its shores on March 16, 1521. Prior to Magellan's arrival in the archipelago, people had already populated nearly all corners of the islands. Various civilizations flourished in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao for thousands of years before Magellan's ships caught sight of the islands from afar. How can you claim to have discovered a place when there were already people inhabiting it when you arrived?
With that aside, what should be the appropriate term to use when referring to Magellan's arrival in the country. Some say we should use the term "rediscovered" instead of "discovered". This is still wrong and doesn't make any sense whatsoever. The best way to describe Magellan and the members of the expedition is this: they are among the first Europeans to set foot in the Philippines.
So, if Ferdinand Magellan did not discover the Philippines, who did? This is a very difficult question. One that can't be provided with a definitive answer until we are able to piece together the waves of human migration that led to the settlement of the islands. As of this writing, there are several models of migration to the Philippines. There's still a thick fog of doubt and uncertainty swirling around these theories. One theory posits that the first humans in the archipelago came from the north (Taiwan). Another theory claims the complete opposite: the first human inhabitants came from the south (Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei).
Was Bonifacio Really Poor?
Contrary to old textbook depictions of Bonifacio and his family as peasants, in reality they belonged to the upper middle class. His parents were white-collar workers: Catalina worked as a supervisor at a tobacco factory, while Santiago worked directly under the gobernadorcillo or town governor. In fact, his parents were able to send Andres to decent schools and even hired a private tutor for his arithmetic and Spanish, the lingua franca among members of high society at the time. Although he was not the rich kid Rizal had been, his childhood was better off than most Filipinos of that period.
After he dropped out of school, Bonifacio relied on his dexterous hands in making canes and paper fans to sell. This became a thriving family business, and he soon made posters for local businesses. His craft and his charm kept the family from starving. He sold canes and paper fans for a while before he started working for foreign companies in Manila. At 19, he worked as a broker for local raw materials such as tar and rattan for J.M. Fleming & Co., a British trading company, and then as a warehouse supervisor for Fressell & Co., a German company. Like Rizal, Bonifacio was equally charming and endearing. He used these traits to succeed in his jobs that entailed sales pitches and difficult negotiations with suppliers and clients. He used these later on to recruit members into the Katipunan, a secret organization that aimed to overthrow the Spanish government in the Philippines.
As a warehouse supervisor, Bonifacio’s salary was 20 pesos a month, which was more than what a high school teacher earned at that time. While his salary was quite decent, he still had to pay hefty taxes levied by the government, and support the daily needs of his siblings and himself.
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He was quite aware of this problem with burdensome taxes, so that when he set the monthly dues for members of the Katipunan, they were set to minimal amounts of 12.5 centavos to 25 centavos depending on a member’s rank.
Another reason that contributed to Bonifacio’s misrepresentation as a poor peasant is his modern depiction in various artworks. He is regularly depicted as a muscular man wearing camisa de chino, a salakot, and wielding a bolo. As a normal Filipino, he would have worn a suit to work. In fact, his only extant photograph shows him wearing formal attire.
Was it really a golden age?
The political economy of the Martial Law regime had become known as a “conjugal dictatorship” of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos characterized by “crony capitalism” or a “kleptocracy” of the first family and their favored clique of oligarchs. [1] Data of the country’s economic performance from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s indicate that there had been significant decline in standard of living, including in the environmental aspect, as shown in: decreased real wages of workers and farmers; increased levels of poverty, inflation, unemployment, and external debt; and massive deforestation where forest cover in the whole archipelago got reduced into almost half. [2] In regional comparative terms, the economic structure of the Philippines under Marcos had remained largely feudalistic and had not caught up with the industrialization process being undertaken by state leaders in its neighbouring economies in East and Southeast Asia (notably Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Malaysia).
The international community has come to know the infamous Martial Law years as a brutal, corrupt, and extravagant period in Philippine history. The Guinness World Records has given the Marcos spouses a title for the “greatest robbery of a government,” where national loss from graft and corruption amounted to 5–10 billion US dollars. The Amnesty International has documented extensive extrajudicial killings, torture, and enforced disappearances of at least 11,000 victims, and they also noted the interview of their organization’s delegation in 1975 with Marcos, who told them that the “over 50,000 people … arrested and detained under martial law from 1972-1975 … included church workers, human rights defenders, legal aid lawyers, labour leaders and journalists.”
Instead of its promised stability and prosperity, the imposition of Martial Law generated intense social conflicts and a worsening economic crisis. Growing civil discontent and political opposition combined with a restive military to resist the repressive Marcos regime. The United States of America had also withdrawn its support for the Marcoses. All these culminated in the momentous event now known as the “People Power Revolution”, which was a series of street protests that converged along EDSA (Epifanio De Los Santos Avenue), a major thoroughfare in Metro Manila, on 22–25 February 1986.
Practically, the four-day uprising led to the forced exile of Marcos, his family and their close allies to Hawaii, where he died in 1989. Politically, Corazon “Cory” Aquino became President. She was the widow of Marcos’ staunch critic and archrival, Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, who was assassinated on 21 August 1983 on the tarmac of the Manila International Airport. Ideologically, the People Power Revolution was supposed to be a turning point for the restoration of democracy as institutionalized by the adoption of the still-existing 1987 Constitution which, to a great extent, embodies liberal-democratic principles.
Who comprised the majority of attendees at the Tejeros Convention: the Magdiwang or Magdalo faction?
So, what's the underlying reason? Why did Bonifacio face defeat? Did both factions unite for a common cause, or did they succumb to regional biases? Can we rely on the testimonies of those present at the convention?
The Tejeros Convention stands as a pivotal gathering among the Katipuneros during the Spanish Colonial Period, shedding light on how the rift between the Magdiwang and Magdalo factions escalated into a significant conflict within the revolution.
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The KKK experienced internal division, with two rival factions each having its own leadership and territorial influence. These were the Magdiwang, led by Andres Bonifacio's brother-in-law, and the Magdalo, led by Emilio Aguinaldo's cousin. The Magdalo primarily consisted of affluent individuals or ilustrados from Cavite, whereas the Magdiwang was predominantly composed of individuals from the lower socio-economic strata or the middle-class, many of whom hailed from Manila. Despite sharing a common goal, these two factions were consistently at odds. The Tejeros Convention on March 22, 1897 was intended to resolve these conflicts.
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The majority of attendees at the convention belonged to the Magdiwang faction, although it's worth noting that not all of them were explicitly pro-Bonifacio, as he remained impartial. Through a democratic vote, Emilio Aguinaldo was elected as president, while Andres Bonifacio assumed the role of Director of the Interior.
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Nonetheless, Daniel Tirona contended that Bonifacio lacked the necessary education for the role and proposed that a lawyer should assume the position instead. Bonifacio, feeling slighted and disheartened, argued that the election process was too chaotic, rendering the results illegitimate. Indeed, there were accounts of manipulated ballots during the event. Additionally, according to Mariano Alvarez, the voters had already been influenced by the Imus faction, who covertly propagated the idea that they should be led by individuals from their own towns or pueblos, implying that they should choose Aguinaldo over Bonifacio.