Enrique de Cebu

Amirasolo and Other Essays

Part 2. My Trip Around the Art World

Essay 21. ENRIQUE DE CEBU

Reni Roxas and Marc Singer's collaborative book, "First Around the Globe: The Story of Enrique", was launch during the symposium held in 1997 at Bookmark's The Filipino Bookstore in the Glorietta Makati. The guest speakers I remember present at the symposium were Carlos Quirino, Cory Quirino,
Eric de Guia, Carla Pacis, and Rene Villanueva.

Carlos Quirino, a National Artist for Historical Literature, wrote the article which inspired the book. He was a historian and biographer of great note, and was very prolific. He wrote, among others, the biographies of Jose Rizal, Emilio Aguinaldo, Manuel Quezon, Ramon Magsaysay, Eulogio Rodriquez Sr., and Damian Domingo.

But his having written biographies and histories instead of novels, short stories, essays, and poems gave the 'purists' in the selection committee of the NCCA a reason to question his eligibility for the National Artist Award for Literature. These purists perhaps don't consider history and biography literature.

So, to get around their reluctance to consider Mr. Quirino for the honor, then President Ramos created another category for the National Artist Award, that of Historical Literature. That was neat, an accurate reading of what Literature really is, because in my opinion any well-written work should be considered Literature. It doesn't matter if it isn't a novel, short story, essay, or poem, but  biography, history, screenplay, graphic novel, or journalism instead.

Mr. Quirino, was 87 years old in 1997, the year the symposium was held. That was also the year he was awarded the National Artist Award. He was on a wheelchair when he arrived at the symposium venue. He died two years later.

Carla Pacis, a professor at the Dela Salle University, is a prize-winning writer of children's literature. She also later on wrote a novel, "Enrique El Negro"---a work of historical fiction published by Anvil, which narrates in detail what she presumed Enrique's life was as Magellan's slave.

Cory Quirino is a well-known television host, author, and beauty pageant title-holder.  The late Rene Villanueva, on the other hand, focused solely on writing and was very active in the theater, television, and children's literature circles here as their preeminent writer.

What added spice to the symposium was the arrival of Eric de Guia, who came as an Igorot clad only in 'bahag'(loincloth) and an Igorot headgear. Eric is not only a film director but also a performance artist of boundless wit and humor. One of his sons was his collaborator in the performance that day. He followed Eric around with a faux videocam made of rattan on his shoulder and acted as if recording his father's every move.

Eric is popularly known here by his nom de guerre Kidlat Tahimik. He said that he was doing a movie on the life and times of Enrique. Eric confessed that although he'd been working on the movie for many years already it still is a work in progress.

I'm afraid that 23 years after Eric gave his talk at the symposium, that Enrique movie of his is still a work in progress. It's good if it is, because it would be bad if he'd decided to shelve it permanently. I checked Eric's filmography when I learned that he was conferred the National Artist Award for film in 2018, and I didn't see on the list of films he made that movie about Enrique.

That symposium was the first marketing salvo 'fired' by Tahanan Books to stir up interest for the book which made it the success that it was. The book was out of print for a long time, the first edition having sold out fast. Reni and Marc, might have an inkling of the  probability of it doing so. That's maybe the reason why they paid me a fee way beyond the going rate of other publishers here. They paid me thirty-five thousand pesos for the illustrations which took me only a month to complete. That was a princely amount for me then because Rex Printing only paid me fifteen-thousand pesos for "The Origin of the Frog".

A big part of the success of this book was truly due to the superb marketing skill of Reni who also hit upon the brilliant idea of selling a book about a Cebuano historical figure aboard a ship bound for Cebu. My father was on that ship. He recounted that when he heard from the intercom that a book whose illustrator is Arnel Mirasol is being sold onboard he rushed right away to the booth selling the book. My father introduced himself to Reni as the father of the illustrator. Reni smiled and quipped: "Hindi ho maikakaila. Magkamukha kayo (Can't be denied, sir. You look like each other)."

Although I began doing the illustrations for the book "The Origin of the Frog" earlier, it was "First Around the Globe" which got published first in 1997. This book was inspired by an article written by National Artist for Historical Literature Carlos Quirino. Quirino claimed in the article that it was not Magellan, nor Juan Sebastian Elcano, nor any of the surviving crewmen of Magellan's fleet who circumnavigated the world first, but Enrique el Negro.

Enrique was the slave bought by Magellan in Malacca, where Magellan served as soldier.  When Magellan sailed in search of the island, which presumably Enrique had told him to be his native place, he brought him along to serve as interpreter.

I've read somewhere---most probably from the book on Philippine History written by Gregorio Zaide, or perhaps from the book "Magellan" by Ian Cameron which Reni suggested that I read---that when Magellan and his men landed in Humumu, an uninhabited Island off Samar, he realized that Enrique cannot speak the language of the curious natives who went there to see them. Humumu, now called Homonhon, is just a few miles away from mainland Samar whose inhabitants speak Waray-Waray. The natives must have come from Samar. They must be Waraynons.

They sailed next to Limasawa, an island off Southern Leyte, and then Cebu. There Enrique became useful as interpreter, because Enrique understood and spoke the language of the inhabitants in both places which is Sugbuanon (Cebuano). This book proposes the theory that Enrique could be a Cebuano because he spoke Sugbuanon. He couldn't be a member of the other tribes in the Visayas, and more so of farther Malacca, because the inhabitants of the different islands there have distinct languages of their own which are generally unintelligible to others, like Waraynon, Sugbuanon, and Hiligaynon, among others.

Since we have established that Enrique was most probably a Cebuano, it's more accurate to consider him as the first circumnavigator of the world. Consider this: Enrique was bought by Magellan in Malacca (now called Melaka in Malaysia), from which both master and slave sailed back home westward to Portugal and Spain. In trying to return to where Enrique came from, Magellan didn't sail back eastward but pushed on west beyond South America to Cebu, where he was killed.

Magellan may have set foot in Malacca before coming to Cebu, but there was a gap he hadn't traversed before he died---the distance between the longitudes of Malacca and Cebu. If Magellan was killed in Malacca instead of in Cebu he can be said to have accomplished his circumnavigation of the globe.

I've learned lately that according to National Artist for Historical Literature Carlos Quirino, Magellan may have gone on farther East to Sabah in North Borneo. That could be true, but that still doesn't negate the fact that Magellan hadn't completed his circumnavigation of the globe because Sabah in North Borneo and Cebu don't lie along the same longitude. There is a distance between their respective longitudes that Magellan hadn't cross.

Some of you may ask why a Cebuano like Enrique was in Malacca when Magellan was there. Well, since Magellan saw him being sold at the slave market, we can presume that he was captured by pirates who periodically went on marauding expeditions along the eastern coast of Cebu. An extant reminder of that fearful time was the baluarte ruin along the shore of Oslob, Cebu which the Spaniards used as bulwark or defensive wall to protect the inhabitants from those marauders.

We do not know for sure what happened to Enrique after the Spanish survivors with their lone ship escaped from Cebu. No record recounting that exist. The Spaniards including the expedition chronicler Pigaffetta have returned to Spain without Enrique. A most plausible guess though would be Enrique must have stayed for good in the place where the language he was familiar with is spoken.

Enrique had become a free man. No Spaniard had the right to force him to return with them to Spain because his master had already died. Besides he was no longer on good terms with Magellan's remaining crewmen and had became their worst foe. Enrique connived with the Cebuanos. He  invited the Spaniards to a festivity. Not everyone attended. Those who did were promptly massacred, poisoned, upon the instigation of Enrique who hated them. That was because Enrique suspected the Spaniards of deliberately abandoning Magellan at Mactan. They didn't join the fight. They just stayed on their ship while the fatal skirmish was going on. Some must have wanted Magellan dead so that they can take over the leadership of the expedition.

There was a fellow, a Filipino, who refused to believe that Enrique was most likely a Cebuano. He sided with the Malaysians who claim that Enrique was definitely a Malaccan because he was bought by Magellan in the slave market there. I have argued with him about this matter on a Facebook group.page.

That fellow claimed that the reason Enrique was able to communicate with the people of Southern Leyte and Cebu was because the Malay language of Malacca, which he asserted Enrique spoke, was some sort of lingua franca understood in the islands of Southeast Asia. But if that is so, why was the language of Enrique unintelligible to the people of Samar and the language of the people of Samar unintelligible to Enrique?

It was also suggested that the reason Enrique was able to communicate with the datus of Cebu was perhaps because these datus, like many Islanders of high rank then, must have travelled to Malaysia and learned the Malay language Enrique supposedly spoke. That was another improbable conjecture, because how can one explain how Enrique was able to communicate with the ordinary Cebuano-speaking inhabitants of Southern Leyte who were not the supposedly well-traveled cosmopolite that the datus were presumed to be?

(You can see in the photo collage above that I was my own model for the Enrique figure on the cover art. I just changed my attire to what was presumably worn during the pre-Hispanic period, drew my face leaner, and added the well-pronounced abs.)