Readings in Philippine History

1
Content and Contextual Analysis of Selected Primary Sources in Philippine
History

Module 3 Week 3 Content and Contextual

Analysis of Selected Primary Sources in
Philippine History

At the end of this module, you are expected to:

1. Familiarize oneself with the primary documents in different historical
period of the Philippines.
2. Learn history through sources.
3. Properly interpret and understand the primary sources through
examining the content and context of the documents.

In this module, we are going to look into at a number of primary sources from
different historical periods and evaluate these documents content in terms of historical value, and examine
the context of their production. The primary sources that we are going to examine are Antonio Pigafetta’s
“First Voyage around the World”, Emilio Jacinto’s “Kartilya ng Katipunan”, the 1898 Declaration of Philippine
Independence, Political Cartoon’s Alfred McCoys, Philippine Cartoons: Political Caricature of the American
Era (1900-1941), and Corazon Aquino’s Speech before the US Congress before the U. S Congress. These
primary sources range from chronicles, official documents, speeches and cartoons to visual arts. These
types of sources requires different kinds of analysis and contain different levels of importance.
The Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan led the first voyage around the world, beginning
in 1519. Sailing southward along the coast of South America, Magellan discovered the strait that today
bears his name became the first European to enter the Pacific Ocean from the east. Magellan died while
exploring the Philippines, but his ships continued west to complete the circumnavigation of the globe.
The following account of the difficult passage through the Strait of Magellan was written by a member of
the crew, Antonio Pigafetta.

Antonio Pigafetta's First Voyage around the World: A Travelogue

Figure 1. Victoria Ship
Course Module
 On September 8, 1522, the crew of the Victoria cast anchor in the waters off of Seville, Spain,
having just completed the first circumnavigation of the world. On board was Antonio Pigafetta, a
young Italian nobleman who had joined the expedition three years before, and served as an assistant
to Ferdinand Magellan en route to the Moluccas Islands. Magellan was dead. The rest of the fleet was
gone: the Santiago shipwrecked, the San Antonio overtaken, the Concepcion burned and
the Trinidad abandoned. Of the 237 sailors who departed from Seville, eighteen returned on the
Victoria. Pigafetta had managed to survive, along with his journal—notes that detailed the discovery
of the western route to the Moluccas. And along the way, new land, new peoples: on the far side of the
Pacific, the fleet had stumbled across the Marianas archipelago, and some three hundred leagues
further west, the Philippines.

Pigafetta’s journal became the basis for his 1525 travelogue, The First Voyage Around the World.
According to scholar Theodore Cachey Jr., the travelogue represented “the literary epitome of its genre”
and achieved an international reputation. One of Pigafetta’s patrons, Francesco Chiericati, called the
journal “a divine thing” and Shakespeare himself seems to have been inspired by work: Setebos, a deity
invoked in Pigafetta’s text by men of Patagonia, makes an appearance in The Tempest.

First Voyage, Cachey points out, is intent on marveling at what it encounters—and therein lies much
of its appeal. It is a work that is intent on wonder. On astonishment. In travel writing, one often must
recreate the first moment of newness, that fresh sense of awe, on the page for the reader; Pigafetta
does it again and again, by reveling in odd and odder bits of detail. We watch Pigafetta wonder at trees
in Borneo whose leaves appear to walk around once shed, leaves that "have no blood, but if one touches
them they run away. I kept one of them for nine days in a box. When I opened the box, that leaf went
round and round it. I believe those leaves live on nothing but air.” We marvel, in the Philippines, at sea
snails capable of felling whales, by feeding on their hearts once ingested. On a stop in Brazil, we see an
infinite number of parrots, monkeys that look like lions, and "swine that have their navels on their
backs, and large birds with beaks like spoons and no tongues".

And yet, the very newness that can give travel writing so much of its power creates problems of its own.
For the travel writer there is, on the one hand, the authority of his or her observational eye, and on the
other, the call for humility in confronting the unknown. Pigafetta, encountering a new people, tries to
earn his authority through a barrage of detail. He attempts to reconstruct their world for us--what
they look like, where they live, what they eat, what they say--he gives us pages and pages of words,
from Patagonia, from Cebu, from Tidore. But there is little humility, and one can hardly expect there
to be so, not early in sixteenth century, a few decades after the Pope had divided the unchartered world
between Spain and Portugal,and certainly not on this expedition, where Magellan and his partners
have been promised, in a contract agreement with the Spanish monarchy, the titles of Lieutenants and
Governors over the lands they discover, for themselves and their heirs, in perpetuity. And cash sums.
And 1/20th of the profits from those lands.

In First Voyage is great gulf between what Pigafetta sees and what Pigafetta knows. I grew up, in the
Marianas, hearing about this gulf. It is part of why travel writing can be so fraught for me now. On
reaching the Marianas after nearly four months at sea with no new provisions,"The captain-general
 Readings in Philippine History
3
Content and Contextual Analysis of Selected Primary Sources in Philippine
History

wished to stop at the large island and get some fresh food, but he was unable to do so because the
inhabitants of that island entered the ships and stole whatever they could lay their hands on, in such a
manner that we could not defend ourselves.". The sailors did not understand that this was custom, that
for the islanders, property was communal and visitors were expected to share what they had.

So in that first moment of contact, Magellan and his starving crew retaliated. They went ashore and
burned, by Pigafetta's account, forty to fifty houses. They killed seven men. Mutual astonishment at the
new and the wondrous took a dark turn:
“When we wounded any of those people with our crossbow shafts, which passed completely through
their loins from one side to the other, they, looking at it, pulled on the shaft now on this and now on
that side, and then drew it out, with great astonishment, and so died; others who were wounded in the
breast did the same, which moved us to great compassion. We saw some women in their boats who
were crying out and tearing their hair, for love, I believe, of their dead.”
Magellan named the archipelago Islas de los Ladrones, the Islands of Thieves. The name would stick
for the next three hundred years, long after the islands were absorbed into the Spanish empire. The
name, the bold, condemnatory stroke of it, has long been anchored to my past, to those old history
lessons. There is no feeling in it but rage. So I was surprised to see, in Pigafetta's text, the sailors moved
to compassion. They seem to understand, in that moment of astonishment, that the islanders are
defenseless against the unknown.

From the Marianas, the fleet moved on to the Philippines. They linger there, exploring the land,
exchanging gifts with the chiefs, observing the people. And I know what's coming for the people; I know
that we're seeing, through Pigafetta, the hush of a world just before it changes, wholly and entirely.
And there is Pigafetta, marveling, at the coconuts and the bananas and the naked, beautiful people. It's
happening even now in the text, as the Filipino pilots are captured to direct the way to the Moluccas,
the way to the spices. There is Pigafetta, roaming and cataloging and recording, caught up in the first
flush of a new world, and as I read I can start to hear my father describing his country, wondering at
it, my father traveling as a young man up and down Luzon, across the sea to the Visayas, across the sea
to Mindanao. I can hear the ardor and the sadness and the terror and the delight. I can hear the
wonder. I can feel the pulse to move.

I suppose this is what great travel writing gives us: a way to wholly enter a moment, a feeling, and a
body. A way to be changed. I can be my father, marveling at his country, our country, transformed by
its vast expanse. I can be Pigafetta, on the deck of the Trinidad, moved to write from shock and wonder.
And I can be the woman on a boat in the Marianas, crying out of love for the dead.

Course Module
 This was taken from the chronicles of contemporary voyagers and navigators of the sixteenth
century. One of them was Italian nobleman Antonio Pigafetta, who accompanied Ferdinand Magellan in his
fateful circumnavigation of the world. Pigafetta’s work instantly became a classic that prominent literary
men in the west like William Shakespeare, interpretation of the new world.

References and Supplementary Materials

Books and Journals
1. Pigafetta, Antonio. The First Voyage Around the World, 1519-1522: An Account of
Magellan’s Expedition. Ed. Theodore J. Cachey, Jr. Toronto: University of Toronto Press
2. History of Micronesia: A Collection of Source Documents. Ed. Rodrigue Levesque. vol. 1:
European Discovery, 1521-1560. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1994.
3. Candelaria, John Lee P., Alporha, Veronica C.: Reading in Philippine History; Sampaloc
Manila : REX Book Store, Inc.
Online Supplementary Reading Materials
1. https://www.essaydaily.org/2013/11/antonio-pigafettas-first-voyage-around