THERE is no alternative truth, there is only true and false. The only people saying that are that nincompoop Noynoy Aquino to escape his accountability from the Mamasapano Massacre and the stupid Leni Robredo to circumvent her incompetence and failure as a leader.
Leni Robredo, for the nth time, Leila de Lima’s fight is hers alone. It is not our or the nation’s. The truth (not alternative) is we really don’t care about her and we’re happy that she’s in jail and stays there.
The usual suspects and Leni Robredo want the government’s vaccination program against COVID-19 to fail so that the economy will not recover and blame President Duterte, with the ultimate goal that he will fall. That’s how evil they are. They don’t care what happens to the country and the people. They just want to grab power.
I’m sure after reading the first three paragraphs you must be fuming mad and triggered. The old man is up to his condescending ways again. Of course I am, and this next line will probably escalate that up several notches.
The Senate, the other day, on a majority vote passed a bill declaring Davao as The Chocolate Capital of the Philippines and I’m guessing this just triggered you more and added to your misery that tomorrow when you wake up Rodrigo Duterte is still the President of the Philippines.
And we segue to a fish called “Lapu-lapu” with these excerpts from an article in Inquirer Visayas:
Lapu-Lapu as national hero? Not so fast
A prominent Bicolano historian and author suggested taking a second look at the heroism of Lapu-lapu.
Dr. Danilo Madrid Gerona, a member of Sevilla 2019-2022 that is leading and coordinating the global celebration of the 500th anniversary of Ferdinand Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world, said declaring Lapu-lapu a national hero would be premature.
Gerona, who specializes in pre- and Spanish colonial period accounts, is the only non-Spanish member of the multisectoral committee based in Seville, Spain.
The committee published the book “Ferdinand Magellan, The Armada de Maluco and the European Discovery of the Philippines” using sources from archives in Seville.
Some history books describe Lapu-lapu as the first native Filipino who fought Spanish colonizers, but Gerona contended that Lapu-lapu’s heroism was based on the wrong belief that he killed Magellan, a Portuguese explorer who sailed under the Spanish flag.
He said there was a dearth of information on Lapu-lapu’s actual participation in the Battle of Mactan in 1521. “The story of Lapu-lapu, depicted with bulging biceps rushing toward Magellan to kill him with a swift stroke of his weapon, is a folklore or ‘fakelore’ that had been repeated for five centuries,” he said.
Gerona said it was not even Lapu-lapu who killed Magellan. It could be any one of about 1,500 warriors the chieftain sent to fight the foreign troops in the Battle of Mactan.
The historian pieced together the story of the battle from different sources in the original Spanish and Portuguese manuscripts and the accounts of Portuguese chronicler Gaspar Correa, who came to the Philippines with another Spanish expedition four years after Magellan, died.
He found Lapu-Lapu mentioned in the chronicles of Antonio Pigafetta, a Venetian who was not even the official chronicler of Magellan’s voyage.
Gerona said primary accounts that Correa obtained showed the battle was not a “one-shot” deal but a complicated story.
Testimonies of 18 of 27 members of the Spanish forces who survived the battle described Lapu-lapu as viejo, the Spanish description of people 60 years or older. As an old person, Lapu-lapu would even be exempted from work and taxes imposed by Spain in its colonies, Gerona said.
“It is impossible that Lapu-lapu led the Battle of Mactan because, based on the description of the survivors, the chieftain was very old, about 70 years old [at the time],” he said.
So Lapu-lapu was not the muscular macho chieftain who killed Magellan but an old man and to think they named an excellent fish – usually the main ingredient in sweet and sour or ezcabeche dishes – after an old man.
I really pity the fish. All his life he was of the belief that he was named after a muscular macho heroic chieftain only find out that that was not the case. The poor fish must not only be very disappointed but embarrassed as well.
Lapu-lapu and Ninoy Aquino have one thing in common – they’re both fictional heroes created out of the figment of the imagination of some interest groups.
Lapu-lapu, just like the so-called Code of Kalantiaw, turned out to be just figments of the imagination. (brotherlouie16@gmail.com)/PN
