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Lapu Lapu, San Francisco and a Small Filipino History Lesson

By Efren | Sunday, August 17, 2008 | Comments

So thanks to Ernie and the RAAW blog, I was pointed to a blog post about a clueless white person poking fun at a street named Lapu Lapu in the South of Market (SoMa) district in San Francisco, not realizing that Lapu Lapu is seen as a Filipino anti-colonialist hero known for allegedly lopping off Magellan’s head — the first European to attempt to circumnavigate the world — and raising the ire of many Filipinos around the area.

However, there’s one small problem — unbeknown to most people, it’s not exactly known if Lapu Lapu was actually the guy who killed Magellan. The details of this are only known by a couple of accounts from Magellan’s crew, but who actually killed Magellan is lost to history. It is known that Lapu Lapu was known as being the first ruler from the islands known now as the Philippines to resist colonial rule, but since he was the one who led this drive, the killing of Magellan has been historically attributed to him, even if he wasn’t the one who actually wielded the machete.

Does this make the clueless white person any less of a douchebag? Not really. He could’ve been a little bit more aware of the history of SoMa, and how it is one of the major Filipino communities in San Francisco, even if it has been obliterated by gentrification and the Metreon. At the same time, those of us who do protest should be made aware of all the facts before we react to said douchebags. (And that concludes my API Public Service Announcement for the weekend.)

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Jason

This post was written by the same SFist author who last year described a parol a some kind of Xmas ornament. Is this guy the laziest blogger in the world?

Jesse!

I also heard he's, GASP, not really an SF resident.

It's his "Update" comment that really tipped his post from ignorant to racist if you ask me:

"UPDATE: One of the sentences in this post insinuates that 16th-century inhabitants of the Philippines had an ethnicity, an insinuation at which some commenters (one) take offense. SFist regrets the error."

MattyMatt is an idiot.

Smack ThaT

The City of Lapu-Lapu is a 1st class highly-urbanized city in the province of Cebu, Philippines. The city occupies most of Mactan Island, just one kilometer southeast from the island of Cebu, and also covers the whole of Olango Island five kilometers further to the southeast plus a few other islets. Lapu-Lapu City is part of the larger Cebu Metropolitan Area or Metro Cebu centered on Cebu City. According to the 2000 census, it has a population of 217,019 people in 44,439 households. Lapu-Lapu City is linked to Mandaue City on mainland Cebu by two bridges: Mactan-Mandaue Bridge and Marcelo Fernan Bridge. From Mandaue, the provincial capital of Cebu City is only five minutes away. The area of the present city was called Mactan before the arrival of the Spanish colonizers. Augustinians then founded the town of Opon in 1730 and the town retained its name until 1961 when it was made into a city and renamed after Lapu-Lapu, the first Filipino hero who, in 1521, defeated Ferdinand Magellan. The Mactan-Cebu International Airport is located in Lapu-Lapu City and is the country's second-busiest airport.

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