While history is mainly built on narratives from verified facts, we should also be sensitive to its silences. For example, our focus on the Victory at Mactan on April 27 obscures the Massacre in Cebu
Remember that Humabon, identified in the sources as “the Christian King,” manipulated Magellan to help him deal with his rival Lapulapu. Stupidly overconfident, Magellan told Humabon to stay in his balanghai with his warriors and watch as he routed Lapulapu into submission. Pigafetta in his chronicle says that Humabon wept at Magellan’s death, but those were crocodile tears and probably flowed in frustration because, through his victory, Lapulapu became twice the rival he was after the battle.
Rereading Pigafetta and other accounts, it is clear that the villain is not Humabon but Magellan’s slave Enrique de Malaca. Enrique also known as Henrique, Heinrich, and Henry the Black, who has been raised to hero status in the Philippines, was heralded as the first Filipino to circumnavigate the world.
Enrique informed Humabon that the expedition was leaving and advised that he should seize the ships and its merchandise. According to Pigafetta, Humabon and Enrique “…arranged a plot, and the slave [Enrique] returned to the ship where he showed that he was more cunning than before. “On Wednesday morning, the first of May [1521], the Christian king sent word to the commanders that the jewels that he had promised to send to the King of Spain were ready, and that he begged them and their other companions to come to dine with him that morning, when he would give them the jewels. Twenty-four men went ashore…I could not go because I was all swollen up by a wound from a poisoned arrow on my face…[awhile later] we heard loud cries and lamentations.
Lendas da Índia , a little known account by the Portuguese Gaspar Corrêa, complicates the story. Lapulapu, “who was already old,” offered his daughter in marriage to Humabon and together they plotted the massacre. The account is problematic because it states that Magellan did not die in Mactan but during the banquet.
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