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Lapu-Lapu
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- Lapu-Lapu is also the name of the grouper fish in the Philippines. For the city, see Lapu-Lapu City.
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.
Lapu-Lapu is remembered for thwarting a Spanish invasion of his island and causing the death of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, in what would later be known as the Battle of Mactan.
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- Lapu-Lapu is also the name of the grouper fish in the Philippines. For the city, see Lapu-Lapu City.
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.
Lapu-Lapu is remembered for thwarting a Spanish invasion of his island and causing the death of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, in what would later be known as the Battle of Mactan. Magellan had earlier forced the king of the neighboring island of Cebu to convert to Christianity and pledge fealty to the Spanish king, but Lapu-Lapu stubbornly refused to submit. Magellan then sent a party of sailors to Mactan to burn villages on the island, but this only strengthened the resolve of the Mactanese. On the morning of April 27, 1521, Magellan and a larger force returned to Mactan to end the revolt. Lapu-Lapu and the men of Mactan, armed with spears, and kampilan, faced Spanish soldiers led by Magellan wearing armor from his head to his knees. Magellan and a number of his men were killed, and the Spanish ships promptly left for good.
According to Sulu oral tradition, Lapu-Lapu was a Muslim chieftain, and was also known as "Kaliph Pulaka". The people of Bangsamoro, the Islamic homeland in the southern Philippine Islands, consider him to be a Muslim and a member of the Tausug ethnic group. 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".
The 1898 Philippine Declaration of Independence refers to Lapu-Lapu as "King Kalipulako de Maktan". In the 19th century, the reformist Mariano Ponce used a variant name, "Kalipulako", as one of his pseudonyms.
Commemoration
The Cebuano people have erected a statue in his honor on Mactan Island, and renamed the town of Opon in Cebu to Lapu-Lapu City. A more recent statue was given as a gift to the Philippines by South Korea in 2005. It stands in Rizal Park in the national capital of Manila.
Lapu-Lapu appears as a central figure in the official seal of the Philippine National Police and as the obverse of the demonetised 1-centavo coin circulated in the Philippines from 1967-1974.
During the First Regular Session of the 14th Congress of the Philippines, Senator Richard Gordon introduced a bill proposing to declare April 27 as an official Philippine national holiday to be known as Adlaw ni Lapu-Lapu, (Cebuano, "Day of Lapu-Lapu").
A type of red grouper native to the Philippine Islands is commonly known as "Lapu-Lapu" in the Island of Luzon; but more commonly known in the Visayas, and Mindanao Islands as "Pugapo", (Cebuano, "fish of the shore").
Two Philippine films, both called "Lapu-Lapu", have been made about the figure - the first in 1955 and the second in 2002. The latter stars actor-turned-politician Lito Lapid and Joyce Jimenez.
Chief Lapu-Lapu cocktail is an alcoholic drink named in his honor.
A street in the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco, California is named after Lapu-Lapu.
See also
Further reading
- Agoncillo, Teodoro A. Magellan and Lapu-Lapu. Fookien Times Yearbook, 1965, p. 634.
- Alcina, Francisco, Historia de las Islas e Indios de Bisaya, MS 1668.
- Correa, Gaspar, Lendas de India, Vol. 2, p. 630.
- Cruz, Gemma, "Making Little Hero of Maktan."
- Estabaya, D. M., 445 Years of Lapu-lapu, Weekly nation 1: 26-27, April 25, 1966.
- Pigafetta, Antonio, Primo Viaje en Torno al Globo Terraqueo, Corredato di Notte de Carlo Amoteti, Milano, 1800.
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