Lapulapu (fl. 1521), also spelled Lapu-Lapu, and whose name was first recorded as Çilapulapu, was a Datu of Mactan, an island now part of the Philippines.
Lapulapu is known for the 1521 Battle of Mactan, where he and his forces defeated Spanish expeditionary troops led by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. Magellan's death ended his voyage of circumnavigation and delayed Spanish expansion into the archipelago until the expedition of Miguel López de Legazpi in 1565.
Lapulapu is widely commemorated in Philippine historiography and popular tradition as a symbol of resistance to Spanish colonization. Monuments to Lapulapu have been erected throughout the Philippines in his honor. The Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) use his image as part of their official seals.
Besides being a rival of another datu of Mactan named Zula (it being unclear if they were equal co-rulers or not) and also of Rajah Humabon of neighboring Cebu, very little is reliably known about his life. The only existing primary source mentioning him by name is the account of Antonio Pigafetta, and according to historian Resil B. Mojares, no European who left a primary record of Magellan's voyage "actually saw him, knew what he looked like, heard him speak (his recorded words of defiance and pride are all indirect), or mentioned that he was present in the battle of Mactan that made him famous."
Battle of Mactan
Lapulapu was one of the two chiefs of Mactan before the Spanish arrived in the archipelago, the other being Zula. When Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan arrived in the Philippines in the service of Spain, Zula was one of those who gave tribute to the Spanish king while Lapulapu refused. In the midnight of April 27, 1521, Magellan led a force of around 60 Spaniards and 20 to 30 war boats (karakoa) of Humabon's warriors from Cebu. They arrived in Mactan three hours before dawn. However, because of the presence of rock outcroppings and coral reefs, Magellan's ships could not land on the shores of Mactan. Their ships were forced to anchor "two crossbow flights" away from the beach. According to Antonio Pigafetta, they faced around 1,500 warriors of Lapulapu armed with large cutlass iron swords called "Kampilan (Scimitar)" and large shields,Including what Pigafetta described as a "large cutlass", traditionally illustrated as the two-handed kampilan. This may possibly have been another sword type because Pigafetta further says it resembled "a scimitar, only being larger", and the kampilan is straight while the scimitar is curved. bows, and "bamboo" spears.Bangkaw, a light spear weapon that can be thrown. It is actually made of fire-hardened rattan, which superficially resembles bamboo, and is usually tipped with metal heads.
Magellan repeated his offer not to attack them if Lapulapu swore fealty to Rajah Humabon, obeyed the Spanish king, and paid tribute, which Lapulapu again rejected. At the taunting request of Lapulapu, the battle did not begin until morning. Magellan, perhaps hoping to impress Humabon's warriors with the superiority of European armor and weapons, told Humabon's warriors to remain in their ships. Magellan and 49 of the heavily armored Spaniards (armed with lances, swords, crossbows, and muskets) waded ashore to meet Lapulapu's forces. They set fire to a few houses on the shore in an attempt to scare them. Instead, Lapulapu's warriors became infuriated and charged. Two Spaniards were killed immediately in the fighting, and Magellan was wounded in the leg with a poisoned arrow. He ordered a retreat, which most of his men followed except for a few who remained to protect him. Magellan was recognized as the captain by the natives, and became the focus of the attack. Outnumbered and encumbered by their armor, Magellan's forces were quickly overwhelmed and killed along with Magellan. Some remaining survivors escaped to their waiting ships.
The historian William Henry Scott believes that Lapulapu's hostility may have been the result of a mistaken assumption by Magellan. Magellan assumed that ancient Filipino society was structured in the same way as European society (i.e. with royalty ruling over a region). While this may have been true in the Islamic sultanates in Mindanao, the Visayan societies were structured along a loose federation of city-states (more accurately, a chiefdom). The most powerful datu in such a federation has limited power over another member datu, but no direct control over the subjects or lands of the other datu.
Thus Magellan believed that since Rajah Humabon was the king of Cebu, he was the king of Mactan as well. But the island of Mactan, the dominion of Lapulapu and Zula, was in a location that enabled them to intercept trade ships entering the harbor of Cebu, Humabon's domain. Thus, it was more likely that Lapulapu was actually more powerful than Humabon, or at least was the undisputed ruler of Mactan. Humabon was married to Lapulapu's niece. When Magellan demanded that Lapulapu submit as his King Humabon had done, Lapulapu purportedly replied that: "he was unwilling to come and do reverence to one whom he had been commanding for so long a time".
The battle left the expedition with too few men to crew three ships, so they abandoned the Concepción. The remaining ships – the Trinidad and the Victoria – sailed to the Spice Islands in present-day Indonesia. From there, the expedition split into two groups. The Trinidad, commanded by tried to sail eastward across the Pacific Ocean to the Isthmus of Panama. Disease and shipwreck disrupted Espinoza's voyage and most of the crew died. Survivors of the Trinidad returned to the Spice Islands, where the Portuguese imprisoned them. The Victoria continued sailing westward, commanded by Juan Sebastián Elcano, and managed to return to Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Spain in 1522. In 1529, King Charles I of Spain relinquished all claim over the Spice Islands to Portugal in the treaty of Zaragoza. However, the treaty did not stop the colonization of the Philippine archipelago from New Spain.
After Magellan's voyage, subsequent expeditions were dispatched to the islands. Five expeditions were sent: Loaisa (1525), Cabot (1526), Saavedra (1527), Villalobos (1542), and Legazpi (1564).. The Legazpi expedition was the most successful, resulting in the colonization of the islands.
Name The earliest record of Lapulapu's name comes from Venetian diarist Antonio Pigafetta who accompanied Magellan's expedition. Pigafetta noted the names of two Datus of the island of Matan (Mactan), the chiefs Zula and Çilapulapu. Pigafetta's account of Magellan's voyage, which contains the only mention of Lapulapu by name in an undisputed primary source, exists in several variant manuscripts and print editions, the earliest dating to around 1524.
In an annotation for his 1890 edition of Antonio de Morga's 1609 Sucesos de las islas Filipinas, José Rizal spells the name as Si Lapulapu. This supplements a passage where Morga mentions Magellan's death in Mactan, but does not mention the Mactan leader by name. In Philippine languages, si (plural siná) is an article used to indicate personal names. Thus Si Lapulapu, as rendered by Rizal, was subsequently interpreted by others to mean this way (though Rizal never explicitly asserts this himself) and the Si was dropped, eventually cementing the Mactan leader's name in Filipino culture as Lapulapu, Lapu-lapu, or Lapu-Lapu (e.g. Siya si Lapulapu "He is Lapulapu" vs. Siya si Si Lapulapu "He is Si Lapulapu"). However, this meaning for Si or Çi in Lapulapu's recorded name is doubtful because not all names recorded by Pigafetta contain it, as would be the case if it were. In an annotation of his 1800 edition of Pigafetta's account, Carlo Amoretti surmised that the Si or Çi found in several native names recorded by Pigafetta was an honorific title. E. P. Patanñe (1999) thus proposes that this usage of Si was derived from a corruption of the Sanskrit title Sri.
In 1604, Fr. Prudencio de Sandoval in his Historia de la Vida y Hechos del Emperador Carlos V spelled the name as Calipulapo, perhaps through transposing the first A and I and misreading the Ç. This further became Cali Pulaco in the 1614 poem Que Dios le perdone (May God Forgive Him) by mestizo de sangley poet Carlos Calao. This rendition, spelled as Kalipulako, was later adopted as one of the pseudonyms of the Philippine hero Mariano Ponce during the Propaganda Movement. The 1898 Philippine Declaration of Independence of Cavite II el Viejo, also mentions Lapulapu under the name Rey Kalipulako de Manktan (King Kalipulako of Mactan).Acta de la proclamación de la independencia del pueblo Filipino (in English and Spanish) from Wikisource. This name variation has further led to claims that Lapulapu was a Caliph and thus Muslim, whereas Pigafetta notes that the region was not Islamized.
In 2019, the National Historical Commission of the Philippines' National Quincentennial Committee, tasked with handling preparations for the 500th anniversary commemoration of Magellan's arrival, stated that Lapulapu without the hyphen is the correct spelling of the Mactan ruler's name, being based on Pigafetta's original spelling, which they took to be Çilapulapu (approximately rendered as "Silapulapu", not "Kilapulapu", in equivalent Philippine orthography). The committee agreed with previous scholarship that the Si in his name reported by Pigafetta probably was an indigenous form of the Hindu honorific Sri, so Lapulapu would probably have been called Si Lapulapu.
In 2021, President Rodrigo Duterte signed Executive Order No. 152, officially calling to change the rendering of the Filipino hero's name from "Lapu-Lapu" to "Lapulapu", to conform with earlier references. This executive order now requires government and non-government entities to adopt the name "Lapulapu" in all references pertaining to him.
Origins There is no reliable written record of Lapulapu's origins, but the Cebuano oral tradition holds that the Sugbuanons of Opong was once ruled by a Datu named Mangal and later succeeded by his son named Lapulapu."In the nearby satellite island of Opong, Datu Mangal ruled the Sibuanons there and later his son succeeded him, rising in power and popularity. This legendary successor to Mangal was Lapu-Lapu. There had been many versions, even myths surrounding Lapu-Lapu’s origin." John Kingsley Pangan, Church of the Far East (Makati: St. Pauls, 2016), 68
Religion
The historical record strongly suggests that Lapulapu was an adherent of Visayan indigenous animistic anito beliefs. The inhabitants of the Sulu Archipelago believe that Lapulapu was a Muslim belonging to the Tausūg or the Sama-Bajau people of Mindanao, a claim made by the now dissolved Sultanate of Sulu that many historians negate. Moreover, prominent Cebuano anthropologist José Eleazar Bersales says that Cebu was never islamized, referenced from an excavation in Boljoon in southern Cebu. Direct evidences such as accounts of Pigafetta and the native oral tradition did not indicate Lapulapu as a Muslim but a Visayan animist and a Sugbuanon native.
Cebuanos were predominantly animist at the time of the arrival of the Spanish. Visayans were noted for their widespread practice of tattooing; hence, Spaniards referred to them as the Pintados. Pigafetta, who recorded Magellan's encounter with the Cebuanos, explicitly described Rajah Humabon as tattooed. He also records the consumption of pork, dog meat, and palm wine (arak) by the Cebuanos, as well as the common custom of penile piercings (tugbuk or sakra). Tattooing, body modification, pork, dog meat, and alcohol are all ḥarām (forbidden) in Islam.