By one account, some 60,000 Filipinos sailed on the galleons from Manila to Acapulco over two-and-half centuries, mostly as crews. Many escaped upon reaching Mexico, never to return to the Philippines. Most of the Filipino sailors were natives or indios. There were also many who belonged to the mestizo class, products of intermarriages between Spanish and native Filipinos who traveled as merchants, technicians or functionaries.Every year between 1570 and 1815, two galleons sailed from Manila to Acapulco to carry on a flourishing trade monopoly for Spain. One of every five members of the crew was a Filipino native but some historians claim it went as high as 50 to 80 percent Filipinos. The other crew members were Spanish, Mexicans and Portuguese.
I have been obsessed with the idea of tracking down the descendants of Filipinos who had migrated to Mexico. Because most of those ships were built by Filipinos in the Philippines, albeit through a compulsory system of labor called polo, I felt their role in the galleon trade should be recognized. Another point I want to bring out is that Filipinos had been in the New World much longer than any group of Asian.
A book published in Manila last year, "After the Galleons," written by eminent scholar, Dr. Benito Legarda Jr., had tipped me that a community of Filipino descendants could be found in Espinalillo near Acapulco. Another book that I found upon reaching Acapulco made a similar assertion.
Upon landing in Acapulco, I went straight away to Espinalillo in a hired car with a driver, Urbano Morales, acting as guide. Espinalillo, it turned out, was a barrio in the town of Coyuca, a half hour's drive north of Acapulco. The area is known as the Costa Grande, notable for its fine beaches washed by waves from the Pacific Ocean. Its most notable feature is a fresh-water lake 17 miles long that runs parallel to the seashore.
It was like being transported to the Philippines. The area is verdant with tall coconut trees and tropical fruits and plants. Many people walking the streets or staring from the windows of houses looked like Filipinos -- brown, with large eyes and black hair and of medium build. With the driver acting as interpreter, I talked to five or six households to ask if they were descended from Filipinos. They all said they had no idea. One person I spoke to was a woman who claimed she was 112 years old. She does not remember anything said about Filipinos living in their village.
All of a sudden, I realized I was asking the wrong questions. The term "Filipino" is a fairly modern appellation, referring to Spaniards born in the Philippines.
Most Chinese in Mexico are actually Filipino! The word "Filipino" was coined only in 1889.During Spanish times, natives from the Philippines were known as Chinos or simply as Manila Men. They thought these Filipinos came from China. This notion persisted in Mexico up to today. Until now, many Mexicans refer to Filipinos as Chinos, and they usually had no family names. When I asked the folk of Espinalillo if they knew of anyone in the village who was of Chino descent, they merely shook their heads.It was my driver who provided the answer, to my disappointment. He said: "After three or four generations, the thread of genealogy is lost. It becomes difficult to trace ancestry." He was right. Filipinos had been in Mexico for 10 or 15 generations. Their racial identity has become dissipated through intermarriages with other races. Mexico racial mixing is a very rich brew. One has only to look at its people today to reach this conclusion.
Thousands of people captured from India, Burma, Indonesia and Mindanao were collected in Manila and brought to Mexico as slaves. They filled up the labor shortage caused by the decimation of the Mexican Indian population from diseases brought by the Europeans.But one can see that in Acapulco and surrounding towns, Filipinos -- or their mixed versions -- are everywhere, apparent through their skins, black hair, almond eyes and ready smile. You find them in menial jobs as waiters and drivers, sales girls, security guards. They comprise the backbone of Acapulco's tourism industry.
Filipino Clans Take Root in Mexico My disappointment at not finding descendants of Filipinos in Espinalillo did not last long. At barrio Bajo los Ejidos, also in Coyuca in the Costa Grande, I saw a big sign at the side of a house in huge letters. The sign read: Parque Reyna Maganda. In short order, I was talking to a matronly lady, Lupe Maganda, who told me that Parque Reyna Maganda was a barrio park named after her mother who had just died. While we were talking she had an uncle summoned from another house to join us.
Soon we were joined by an old man walking with a cane by the name of Severino Maganda, 85 years old. When I explained to him that Maganda was a Filipino word (meaning beautiful) and that his family must have come from the Philippines, he showed no surprise. He told me that when he was a young boy, his grandmother told him that the Maganda family came from the Philippines. His father and grandfather both lived and died in Espinalillo.
Members of the clan have been living in the Costa Grande for generations and they are reputed to be quite a big clan. Their forbear must have adopted the Maganda name to perpetruate their memory of the Philippines.
In Acapulco itself, talking to knowledgeable people, I learned that there is another big clan in Costa Grande whose forbears came from Manila. This family has the unique surname of H-Luz (pronounced Acheh-Luz). One of its descendants, Rube H-Luz Castillo, has written a book on the history of Acapulco.
There are two other clans by the name of Guzman and Rodriguez, but I did not get to meet anyone of them. I was informed that in another barrio called Carizal, there were also Filipino descendants.
T
here is a unique private institution called Centro de Investigacion e Informacion Historica de Acapulco. I had a brief interview with its director, Benjamin Galicia Hurtado. Mr. Galicia told me that besides Acapulco itself, the big concentration of Filipino Mexicans can be found in the towns and cities of western Mexico, the coastal areas, in places like Puerto Vallarta, Guaymas, Navidad and San Blas.In the galleon era, San Blas was an active port second only in importance to Acapulco. San Blas actively traded with Manila in the 1770's, and this trade was not necessarily carries out on the galleons. Skilled women such as sailmakers, shipwrights and carpenters from the Philippines were stationed in San Blas to repair and maintain the galleons.
A Filipino shipwright who became famous in Mexico was Gaspar Molina. Married to a girl from Sinaloa, Molina was commissioned by the Spanish viceroy in Mexico City to build a ship in Baja California to be used by the Jesuit missionaires who were starting to pacify the area. The ship, Nuestra Senora de Loreto, was launched in Loreto in 1760 to the great satisfaction of the Spanish authorities. In 1764, Molina built a second ship which was named Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion.
The Filipinos' big contribution to Mexican culture, according to Dr. Galicia, is in the area of food. In 1618, 74 of the 75 Filipino crew members of the galleon Espiritu Santo abandoned their ship. They were then asked by the local Indians to teach them how to make tuba, the drink derived from coconut trees. In the sidestreets of Acapulco the heady brew is sold as tuba fresca.
The Filipinos also imparted their know-how in making ceviche (seafood kinilaw) and other unique ways of broiling fish and shrimps. The Mexican term for a beach hut is palapa, which is Filipino for coconut fronds.While it is common knowledge that their mangoes came from Manila, it comes as a surprise to me that the coconut tree, which they call palmera, also originated from the Philippines. The state of Guerrero, where Acapulco is located, is Mexico's biggest producer of coconuts and coconut products.
Juan de Cuellar, a botanist who was sent to the Philippines to study its plants and flowers - he preceded the other famous botanist Fr. Jose Blanco by a hundred years - had a hand in sending many Philippine plants to Mexico. One of the plants that De Cuellar introduced to Mexico was the rambutan which miraculously survived the long trip across the Pacific and thrived in the New World.
Filipino Sailors in the New World Filipinos had been going to the New World since the 16th century. A California historian, Lorraine Crouchett, noted that some Cebuanos sailed on the galleon San Pablo when it made its historic first crossing of the Pacific Ocean from west to east in 1565. Guided by Fray Andres de Urdaneta, the San Pablo was sent by Miguel Lopez de Legaspi to find the return route to Mexico and to obtain supplies for his expedition to settle the Philippines.The route discovered by Legaspi was used by the Manila galleons to travel to Mexico for 250 years. From that period, Filipinos traveled to the New World regularly. They continued crossing the Pacific long after the galleons were gone.
The first recorded landing of Filipinos in California took place in October 1587, on a frigate that came from Macao under the command of Portuguese galleon pilot Pedro de Unamuno. Unamuno left a written account of his landing at Morro Bay with a crew composed in part by Filipinos "armed with shields and spears." While reconnoitering the place, they were attacked by Indians who managed to kill one Spanish soldier named Contreras and a Filipino crew member. Unamuno was under instructions from the Spanish governor in Manila, Santiago de Veyra, to look for suitable ports for the Manila galleons.
The galleon San Agustin landed at San Francisco Bay in 1595 on a similar mission, also with a crew of Filipinos. The San Agustin, with Carmenho Rodriguez as commander, was sunk by a freak chubasco while lying at anchor, together with its cargo. The party was able to reach Acapulco on a raft which was built with the help of local Indians.
Two years later, the galleon Santa Ana was captured by the English buccaneer Thomas Cavendish while approacing the tip of Baja California. More than a hundred Filipino men, women, and children were forced to get off the ship at the town of San Jose del Cabo. In this town, one of the wealthiest families was a descendant of the Canseco family that used to live in Intramuros, Manila. "All the Cansecos in Mexico came from the Philippines," one family member told me.Cavendish, with a wealth valued at P3 million at that time, sailed to the Philippines, bringing with him the Spanish pilot of the Santa Ana and three Filipino prisoners. The Filipino prisoners were released in Capul (named after Acapulco) island in the San Bernardino Strait. One of the prisoners, Francisco Mansalay, tipped off the Spanish authorities in Manila on the presence of the English pirates in the Visayas. Before the Spanish could act, however, Cavendish had escaped through the southern backdoor back to England.
Over two-and-a-half centuries, about a hundred galleons were built in the Philippines. Most of them were built in Pangasinan, Albay, Mindoro, Marinduque and Iloilo. Task forces of as many as 8,000 men called cagayan were organized by the Spaniards to cut the trees, convert them to timber and haul them to the shipyards. Able-bodied Filipinos were forced to work in shipbuilding under a compulsory system called polo. Their breastwork of Philippine hardwood could not be pierced by cannonballs. Eight galleons were captured by pirates over the centuries and several were shipwrecked or sank by typhoons.In 1819, the capital of Spanish California, Monterey, was invaded and occupied for one week by a band of adventurers from South America, w
here handful of Filipino sailors were involved. The raiders came aboard the warship Argentina, commanded by Hyolite Bouchard, a French adventurer from Buenos Aires, Argentina. South America was in turmoil because of the independence movements and Bouchard was assigned to patrol the Pacific Ocean. The Argentina made a trip to the Philippines where it recruited more Filipino sailors.In Honolulu, Hawaii, Bouchard ransomed another ship, the Santa Rosa, which was being held by King Kamehameha as payment for sandalwood purchased by the ship's crew who had mutinied and taken over possession of the ship.
The two ships proceeded to Monterey and managed to capture the city with little resistance. The governor of California, Sola, fled to San Francisco City, California, along with the city residents. When they returned one week later, they found that the whole city had been looted and razed. The pirates had disappeared towards South America.
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Source:
http://filipinokastila.tripod.com/FilMex.htmlSource:
http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/redriver/1066/mexico.htm+++++
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Topic: Filipinos in Mexican History: A Shared History (Read 13252 times)